Yoga and meditation.

All the Yoga books have gone com­pletely silent after talk­ing about Shamb­havi Mudra.It is a secret mudra in Yoga and one has to col­lect sev­eral ref­er­ences in scrip­tures to fully under­stand this mys­te­ri­ous yoga mudra. In the prac­tice of shamb­havi mudra, the most pow­er­ful mudra, eyes are focused on the eye­brow cen­ter, there­fore it is also called as “Eye­brow cen­ter gaz­ing”. This prac­tice is widely quoted in the scrip­tures like Gherand samhita. You can tran­scend the fet­ters of indi­vid­ual ego by prac­tic­ing shamb­havi mudra for a suf­fi­ciently long period of time. In Shamb­havi Mudra’s place is said to be between the throat and the fore­head. This is a secret Mudra in which the per­son doing it should sit still and con­cen­trate. He should then close his eyes par­tially as some peo­ple do when they sleep. Reg­u­lar prac­tice of Shamb­havi Mudra makes a yogi per­fect in doing it and makes him one step closer to sal­va­tion. Shamb­havi Mudra makes a per­son freefrom all his sins and helps in the attain­ment of knowl­edge and ulti­mate truth. It also pro­vides peace to the body and the mind.

Shamb­havi mudra, also call Bhairavi mudra, is a sub­tle inter­nal tech­nique involv­ing the eyes which can lead one to the depths of yogic med­i­ta­tion. It is described in many texts includ­ing Hathapradipika, Gherandha Samhita, Amanaskya Yoga, and Vij­nan­ab­hairava Tantra. These texts how­ever do not give full instruc­tions of this pow­er­ful tech­nique but rather only hint at what it truly is. It has been a well guarded secret in yoga and only dis­closed to a deserv­ing dis­ci­ple on whom a guru is extremely happy. The Agya Chakra opens dur­ing this mudra and the yogi becomes aware of the divine knowl­edge. A yogi can eas­ily awaken kun­dalini shakti in oth­ers when he is in this state of being and per­form shak­ti­pat. Not every­one is autho­rized to do shak­ti­pat and with­out being con­nected to the supreme guru con­scious­ness (shiva con­scious­ness) the a guru who attempts to do shak­ti­pat risks his own down­fall. On the other hand a yogi who is per­fect in shamb­havi mudracan eas­ily do shak­ti­pat, awaken kun­dalini , open not only the lower chakras in oth­ers but also the most difficult/premium agya chakra and sahas­trar chakra in oth­ers. Very few known yogis are known to have per­fected this mudra like — Chai­tanya Mahaprabhu ji, Guru Nanak Dev ji and Lahiri Mahashaya in KalaYuga. There could be oth­ers but very few yogis come out in the open in pub­lic dur­ing their shamb­havi state. Yogis pre­fer to stay secluded from pub­lic and pub­lic­ity and live this state of bliss. Acharya Chan­dra­has Ji was one such yogi who was blessed with this mudra when his guru was extremely happy with him. In his med­i­ta­tion he saw the rea­son why he was blessed with this extremely rare bless­ing. It was in one of the past births HH Ram­lal ji Maharaj promised him after meet­ing Acharya ji’s dur­ing penance that he would be granted a higher state of yoga in his next birth. It was dur­ing his life time he per­fected this mudra over a period of con­sis­tent prac­ticeof 30 years. The photo of Acharya ji with this arti­cle shows him in this state of con­scious­ness. Peo­ple have seen him med­i­tat­ing for tens of hours in this samadhi state. He could eas­ily enter or get out of this samadhi state while talk­ing to peo­ple and describ­ing his Guru, stand­ing, lis­ten­ing to devo­tional songs or while med­i­tat­ing in cross legged pos­ture. The nice thing about Shamb­havi is that it can be done any­where and at any time. It is not lim­ited to seated ses­sions of prac­tice. It takes our asana and phys­i­cal prac­tices to a whole other level.

Shamb­havi is the name of the wife or con­sort of Shambhu (Shiva). She has many other names, such as Par­vati, Shakti, etc., all of which have spe­cial sig­nif­i­cance in Indian mythol­ogy. It is believed that Shambhu taught Shamb­havi the prac­tice of shamb­havi mudra and urged her to prac­tice it dili­gently if she wanted higher aware­ness. It is said that the prac­tice of shamb­havi mudra will stir Shambhu (super­con­scious­ness) and make him appear before you.

The prac­tice is also known as bhru­mad­hya drishti. The word bhru­mad­hya means ‘eye­brow cen­tre’, and drishti means ‘gaz­ing’. This name describes the prac­tice exactly – eye­brow cen­tre gazing.

Scrip­tural references

This prac­tice (like agochari mudra) is widely quoted in the yogic scrip­tures. For exam­ple, in the Gherand Samhita it states: “Direct your eyes towards the mid­dle of the eye­brows. Reflect on your real nature. This is shamb­havi mudra, the most secret of all tantric scrip­tures.” (3: 59)

The tech­nique of Shamb­havi mudra begins with the eyes. We keep the eyes open. The texts say not to blink but in my opin­ion this mat­ters not in the slight­est because it doesn’t mat­ter what we are see­ing. The impor­tant point is the see­ing itself. This tech­nique in my opin­ion is also not about direct­ing the gaze. Gaz­ing is not Shamb­havi mudra. Gaz­ing at the mid­brow or third eye only puts the atten­tion on an object and not on the see­ing itself. The see­ing itself is what draws us in, not what the eyes are look­ing at. The open­ing of the third eye comes when the ordi­nary two eyes become clear of the men­tal pro­jec­tions. Ordi­nar­ily our eyes are com­pletely con­t­a­m­i­nated by the “eye of the mind” which dis­torts what we are see­ing through the pure­ness of the see­ing itself. I have given the exam­ple before of try­ing to see purely when one is think­ing of one’s favorite movie. Try it. Can you do it? Can you see with com­plete clar­ity and focus while the mind