Eat, Pray, Love

There are few books I read over and over again. One of them is Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda.

And the other is - Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. It has touched me deeply and profoundly since I first read it almost two years ago.

Is there anyone out there who hasn't read this book? Give yourself a great gift and treat: read it!

I've bought the book several times because some copies were never returned to me. I presently keep at least two copies at any given time - a clean, hardbound edition - and a paperback version which I have underlined extensively - particularly the section on India.

Eat, Pray, Love addresses so much about the human condition on so very many levels. It is a veritable gold mine of insights, sage advice, and exquisite writing. There are sentences I would read and get so lost in, I could not proceed and would instead close the book and savor every word contained in it.

I would like to share some excerpts from the section on India that I have underlined...

On Practicing Yoga:

Why do we practice yoga?

Yoga in Sanskrit...can be translated as "union." [It means] to attach yourself to a task...with ox-like discipline...

But Yoga can also mean trying to find God through meditation, through scholarly study, through the practice of silence, through devotional service or through mantra...

You may use your Yoga - your disciplined practice of sacred union - to get closer to Krishna, Jesus, Muhammed, Buddha, or Yahweh...

The Yogic path is about disentangling the built in glitches of the human condition which [is] the heartbreaking inability to sustain contentment...

The Yogis...say that human discontentment is a simple case of mistaken identity...We wrongly believe that our limited egos constitute our whole entire nature...We don't realize that, somewhere within us all, there does exist a supreme Self that is eternally at peace...

Yoga is the effort to experience one's divinity personally and then to hold on to that experience forever. Yoga is about self-mastery...so you can seek instead, a place of presence from which you may regard yourself and your surroundings with poise...

Look for God like a man with his head on fire looks for water...

On the Turiya state (the elusive fourth level of consciousness):

...If you can move into that state of witness-consciousness, then you can be present with God all the time...you're in a constant state of bliss...

Your treasure - your perfection - is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the busy commotion of the mind abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart...

According to the mystics, this search for divine bliss is the entire purpose of a human life. This is why we all chose to be born, and this is why all the suffering and pain of life on earth is worthwhile - just for the chance to experience this infinite love...

I haven't even begun to note all the sections that spoke to me...At least another entry on this book awaits!