Leonard Perlmutter is head of the American Meditation Institute, headquartered in Averill Park, where he teaches meditation and Yoga. The Institute has published his book, The Heart and Science of Yoga.

 

Perlmutter’s talk was about what he calls “the Science of Yoga,” which has little to do with the common picture of Yoga as bodily contortion exercises. He began by likening Yoga to the principles of humanism, entailing a constant search for truth, focusing upon this earthly life and its betterment.

 

Yoga centers upon seeking to answer the question, “Who am I?” and thus upon the concept of “I-am-ness.” This is the background of all reality, a “cosmic soup of consciousness” wherein the only sure thing one can say is “I am.”

 

Yoga posits that human beings contain an animal nature, but also divinity, and aims to provide a metaphoric bridge connecting our “outer actions” (i.e., thoughts, words, and deeds) to inner wisdom. It distinguishes between “lower” knowledge, entailing such things as science and the arts, and the “super conscious” mind without which we can’t really know how to employ that “lower” knowledge.

 

To illustrate the idea of higher wisdom, Perlmutter related a parable about a man who died leaving 19 horses, his will giving half to his son, ¼ to the temple and 1/5 to a servant. (Sounds like one of Dick’s “secular stumpers”). After the villagers puzzled over this for a length of time, a wise man turned up on a horse, and solved the problem by adding his own horse to the kitty. The bequests are then readily parceled out, with of course one horse left over for the wise man to retrieve.

 

Life, according to this model, is all about our relationships with external objects (including people) with regard to which (or whom) we must act, producing consequences. In those actions, intention is paramount; Perlmutter quoted Jesus saying “blessed are the pure of heart.” He also advised that pain is an excellent teacher, which we should heed; and it’s better to respond when pain is whispering than when it’s shouting, telling us that we’re going in a wrong direction and need to make a mid-course correction.

 

Most of our mental energy, he said, is dissipated between past memories and thoughts about the future. But when we do something we love, the mind is focused, as a laser focuses photons, producing the bliss/fulfillment of one’s essential nature.

 

The highest principle of Yoga is “Ahimsa,” that every act must be non-injuring, both to others and ourselves. Everybody wants to live and be happy; that’s our essential nature. But contemplating mortality gives us anger and fear. Similarly, we desire things we think will make us happy; but when desires are fulfilled we experience fear of losing them, and thwarted desires produce anger. The solution lies in one’s “Buddhi,” or conscience (what Christians would call the “Holy Spirit”), enabling us to access our intuitive library of inner wisdom and reflect it into our conscious minds, showing us the difference between passing pleasure and eternal good. This may tell us we must sacrifice some of our desires. Perlmutter used the example of sacrificing the desire for a cup of coffee in order to avoid the negative effects that satisfying the desire would entail (e.g., sleeplessness).

 

He also spoke of the idea of a “guru.” In his own life, he related that he developed a childhood love for Elvis, and retained this later in life; but the example of Elvis’s life path was not consistent with his inner wisdom (his “inner guru”). Thus, Perlmutter said, it is okay to honor the teacher but reject the teaching.