MORRIS KROK ON HATHA YOGA
An extract of material written by Morris Krok
Note: the material below was written by Morris Krok, and is extracted from
a long article released on Internet. This article was edited by Tom Billings.
Let us discover what all the world is seeking. Seeking for an
unobstructed body where everything flows with frictionless ease - blood
circulation, nerve energy and a mind that has been transformed and fully
aware. The yogis talk of the mind as the thousand petalled lotus that when
awakened shines like burnished brass.
Every invention, science and discovery has its simple principle or set
of simple principles. The mind of man has not been constructed to understand
the impossible or the web of complexity that civilization has woven. If
there is a solution it must be simple or there is no solution. As far as
health and clarity of thought is concerned, the key is found in the Nature
Cure philosophy and embedded in the science of Hatha Yoga. When you strip
these two of their unessentials, it amounts almost to doing nothing, but
intelligently. The search for the simple key is more fascinating than all
the mysteries that can be ever written as it deals with life's most
important teachings, that directly and intimately affects each and every one
of us. Its ending, unfortunately for those who love drama, is an anticlimax
because of its simplicity, making most of the claims in books and
laboratory produced elixirs irrelevant and redundant; for the simple way
needs none of these because it extracts all of life's goodness without
pageantry and ceremony.
Early on in my studies I stumbled on the book that opened the door to
this simple way. It is "Heaven Lies Within Us" which I republished under the
title "Yoga Gave me Superior Health". On page 40 of this book, the key is
given. For the author, Theos Bernard, to make the desired progress in some
advanced yoga techniques, he had to internally purify himself. His teacher did
not tell him that he had to eat a special food or take a laboratory produced
substance. Before he applied these purifying measures his attempts were
foiled by aches and pains in many parts of the body. The need to internally
purify the body is found in a concise way in the yoga texts. Although the
ancient yogis did not mince words, those sutras, as they are called, are
the greatest legacy that the ancient world has bestowed on modern man. In a
later chapter of "Heaven Lies Within Us", we are told how some yogis
abstained from the eating of grains so that their breathing could become so
silent that it would not cause a feather to move.
In "Hatha Yoga" another book written by Theos Bernard, on page 68 he
tells how his saliva was thick, heavy and slimy but became thin and
transparent as he continued with the internal purification.
It is interesting to note that he [Tony Officer] discovered
independently what the yogis taught and also what some Bantu tribes of Africa
did a few times a week: to regurgitate the contents of the stomach by drinking
large amounts of water. Cleansing the stomach in this manner is one of the
methods the yogis used to cleanse the system. Tony Officer incidentally made
it clear in his writings that germs and viruses cannot live or propagate in a
purified body. He also mentioned an interesting anatomical fact - the role of
the ileo-caecal valve. This valve between the small intestine and the colon is
a unique device that only allows solids to pass into the colon but no
liquids. So if you drink one glass of water or ten, this valve prevents it
from passing into the colon and the water has to be absorbed by the villi
into the bloodstream.
At this very moment you are the product of everything that you have
eaten drunk, thought, experienced through the five senses from infancy to the
present state. This is the baggage that we take with us every moment of our
MORRIS KROK ON HATHA YOGA (continued)
life. We take it on our journeys and we take it through mountain trails and
on marathons. All you know is what you are thinking and feeling at the
present moment. So what I am telling you today is based on what I have
experienced.
The basis of what I know came early on in my life, perhaps too early
for me to appreciate or give it the respect it deserves. I learned without the
help of societies and networks just by trying to tie two and two together and
the wonderful tool I learned from Hindu Philosophy - "neti-neti" which means
"not this, not that". It is a tool of discernment that aims at extracting
the truth from a mass of conflicting information. Because this knowledge
came relatively easy, I made many mistakes and had to learn through the
hard-taskmaster of experience. It is for this reason I say that a wise man
learns from the mistakes of others, but a fool does not even learn from his
own.
To find the truth we have to apply simple logic - the neti-neti (not
this, not that) tool based on Hindu philosophy. Throughout history there have
been persons who lived long, healthy and productive lives without any of
these items. They lived through epidemics and plagues. You cannot trap
sunlight, vitality and good sense in a bottle. Logic again should tell us
the futility of these substances when daily sometimes as much as five times
we are eating toxic and slime producing foods. These remedies do not touch
the periphery of the problem. Do not go through life thinking that whatever
is sold in the health shop is beyond reproach and has the approval of the
almighty. They may even sell some precooked products made with organically
grown items but how valuable can something organic be if it has been
pulverized by cooking. Therefore when going to a health shop it is
necessary to be very selective. On every label of packaged commercially
produced food it should include this statement "Surgeon's Warning" - Eating
this food is dangerous to your health.
Great truths and wonderful discoveries have often been stumbled upon.
On many occasions, one finds something that he did not know existed, and found
it in the process of looking for something else. Often I have obtained
important information from an unsolicited remark, or from a book that had
nothing to do with my basic research. One such event was when I read a book
called "Icarus". It was about a Scandanavian who lived for a while in North
Africa. He met there a French hermit who believed that he could live for
ever if he practised a special yoga breathing method and lived only on
goats milk. In the end the Bedouins supplying the milk killed the goats and
moved away. This hermit, together with the Scandanavian and a few other
persons had to traverse a few hundred miles of desert to the next town. The
hermit because of his diet of rich goat milk was the only one who did not
survive the journey, much of which had to be made on foot. He was constantly
dribbling thick slimy mucous, and eventually his digestive tract
regurgitated so much that he was figuratively smothered and died of
suffocation.
A dairy farmer whose cows were stall fed i.e. fed on grains and very
little green stuff as he only farmed on a small plot close to the town,
found that the milk had to be filtered so as to remove the slime from it.
Here again the starch was the culprit. In Josiah Oldfield's book "Eat
Nature's Food and Live Long", he mentions how cows and horses fed on grains
developed dry skin and hair but when left out to the pasturage and fed some
linseed oil, their hair and skin became healthy and moist.
In a sense nature cure rediscovered independently what the yogis learned
three thousand years ago: that for higher health, the body must be
thoroughly purified of all toxic and unwanted substances.
In spite of what the yogis and naturopaths discovered, mankind today is
trying to establish good health by drugs, exotic substances, food
MORRIS KROK ON HATHA YOGA (continued)
supplements and many other complicated, suppressive methods. It is
ironic to think that the truth was known by these wise ancients
thousands of years ago, but generally ignored by modern man. Hatha Yoga is
very popular today in the form of stretching and breathing exercises but
what is generally not known is that the more important aspect of this science
is one's conditioning behind the scenes where no physical exertions are
involved. This conditioning consists of two main elements, purifying
measures and persevering with a diet that no longer leaves toxic and
stifling byproducts behind in the system. The yogis rightly say
unintelligent efforts are futile. What good therefore is it if, after a long
prolonged exercise programme, one neutralises the time spent by putting
back the rubbish that he/she has sweated out. The yogic poses release some of
the unwanted accumulations in the joints and muscles, and make you feel
better for a while, but if the diet is not altogether right, the digestive
tract will just re-feed a new quantity of obstruction within a short time
after exercising. Water treatments, cold and hot packs and the cleansing of
the skin will also achieve beneficial results but again it will only be
temporary.
The secret amounts to putting yourself into a deep elimination mode.
The body can do one of two things - either its energy is directed at
assimilation or at elimination. Therefore to be healthier, more at ease,
calmer and in better control of all our faculties, it is not necessarily a
question of a new food, supplement etc., but of assisting the body to
eliminate the accumulation of toxic substances that is interfering with the
finer workings of the body. Stretching, deep breathing, hydrotherapy, and
rest assist the body to do just this. But to achieve this without doing
anything special, miss as many meals as possible until the body has been
given the opportunity to eliminate toxic substances from the deeper tissues
and you feel comfortable in body and mind. In fact one should only eat when
copious saliva is flowing in the mouth and digestive juices are rumbling in
the stomach and the previous meal has made a complete journey through the
body and its residues have been evacuated through the bowels.
"Outwardly you will become silent but within your master will speak
in the voice of a roaring rapid and resounding waterfall."
"Cleanse the stomach so that the purified mind can be forever inspired."
Yoga, that remarkable science, tells us that the brain is the thousand
petalled lotus which is merely the billions of pieces of information that
life has recorded and engraved in it. The purpose of Hatha Yoga is Raja
Yoga which means the perfect development of the powers of the mind. The
postures, purification, breathing methods of Hatha Yoga are merely tools to
prepare the body for Raja. But the biggest stumbling block for civilized
man is food. The wrong food or should it rather be called substances,
saturates our tissues, organs and ducts with wastes that detract from
efficiency - the silent breath and the calm mind.
In the musical play Oliver, perhaps the orphanage keeper was right in
not heeding Oliver's request "Sir, may I have more. He would have only given
him another bowl of foodless soup. Although raw living food is alive, contains
usable nutrients, and is better processed and utilized by the body it is
still not a magical substance. However, when we eat our natural food when
actual hunger is present we become more dietetically satisfied and less
food conscious. These foods do not leave toxic substances behind that
produce allergies and disturb our mental composure. One obtains better
results from our natural food when our body is completely purified of every
drop of unwanted substance that has accumulated in our body since infancy.
It is for this reason that the body must be put into the elimination mode.
You can eat the best food and if bedridden for months, you will not even be
able to walk as the lack of movement will have resulted in atrophy of the
muscles of the legs. Life is movement and movement is life. We can also
truly say that life is breath and breath is life. Therefore make room for
MORRIS KROK ON HATHA YOGA (continued)
the breath of life. Food can do so much and no more.
Developed over thousands of years of careful observation and meditation,
truth handed down from master to disciple over the centuries, and tested
and retested every step of the way, the ancient yogis understood far better
than the professors and doctors of our time that health is the balance
between assimilation and elimination. Is it not ironic and strange that
this great truth is taught to us in primary school but forgotten or totally
ignored in our universities? The medical world of today speaks a language
that nature does not understand. The yogis did not make outlandish claims
that any specific food is endowed with remarkable virtues or elixirs but
they did say that we should eat those foods that nature supplies to us.
They did not talk in terms of carbohydrates, proteins, fats, minerals and
vitamins. Hovannesian, and Iranian wrote a book on raw foods wherein he
states that any one complete whole food will supply the needs of the body.
So one fruit is not better than another fruit, or one nut better than
another. Therefore on the raw diet we do not need in the same day, every
possible fruit. But they knew the importance of a purified intestinal and
colonic tract.
Theos Bernard wrote a remarkable book which I read in 1955 or 1956,
"Heaven Lies Within Us". When it went out of print I republished it as
"Yoga Gave Me Superior Health" but I may have made a mistake in changing its
title because to many "yoga" is another dirty four letter word. However on
page 40 of this book is found the true health secret. Theos Bernard, when
initiated into the science of yoga - "Infinite energy is at the disposal of
any man if he knows how to get it; and this is part of the science of Yoga" -
was told that he had to learn to stand on his head for three hours, he had to
sit in the lotus pose for the same amount of time. With all his efforts,
even though he had mastered the yoga poses and special exercises involving
the abdomen, it was only with difficulty that he could stand on his head
for one hour. When he tried to go beyond this period he suffered every
possible ache and pain - stomach ache, back pain, leg pains and headaches.
His teacher then told him that if he wanted to reach the desired goal, he
must purify himself internally by using water vomits, swallowing of a cloth
to soak up slimy wastes, and enemas. His teacher told him that the residues
which accumulate along the length of the entire membraneous tract is
responsible for his aches and pain and it must be removed if he wants to
make progress. Theos Bernard followed his teacher's advice and achieved his
goal which was to stand on his head for three hours every day for a month.
He was not told that the solution is in a special food, drug or supplement
but in the need of inner purification and avoiding those foods which
produce large quantities of mucous in the system such as the starches, fried
food and dairy products. He also had to eat very sparingly.
In "Heaven Lies Within Us", on page 17, Theos Bernard writes:
"All the philosophical and religious books I had read stressed the fact
that if I could hold the Right Thought anything that I desired would be
mine. The trouble was that it was impossible to hold the right thought long
enough. I had learned from all previous training that it was one thing to
be instructed, another to follow the instructions."
Yes, the answer is certainly to keep the right thought uppermost in
the mind - something that is not easy when there are so many divergent and
distracting things in this technical world to disturb us. In order to
achieve this, I go back to books that have given me insight which I re-read
from time to time or meditate on certain passages. But I also do another
thing. It is somewhat childish but I give it a tag of respectability and
justify it by believing that it enables me not to forget life's cherished
teachings. I always visit second hand book shops and whenever I find my
favorite books I buy them. They include the writings of Theos Bernard and
one written by Vithaldas - "Yoga Health System". I am also pleased to say
that I have been able to buy copies of my out-of-print published in 1958 -
MORRIS KROK ON HATHA YOGA (continued)
"Hatha Yoga in its Moods Multivarious" - from a number of second hand book
shops. For this reason I can list the cities and towns where I have found
my favorites: Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town, New York, Hay-on Wye near
the Welsh border, and in California, Fremont, Palo Alto, San Francisco,
Santa Cruz, Alameda, Oakland, Mountain View, San Jose, Davis and Menlo
Park. But of course the best way to keep the truth uppermost in the mind is
to apply it on a daily basis. But I have an affirmation to achieve this.
Start the day right if you want to end it right; and end it right if
you want to start it right. Consequently by never eating breakfast and doing
what I do in the morning I am starting the day right. But the best way, of
course, is to end it right, by eating sparingly at night or omitting the
evening meal altogether.
It is interesting to note that in Theos Bernard's book on Hatha Yoga on
page 68 he states that his saliva was thick, heavy and slimy at the
beginning but became thin, clear and smooth as he continued with the
purification.
That book also contains this quotation from Hatha Yoga Pradipika:
"By removing the impurities of the nadis (nerves), the air can be
restrained, according to one's wish, and the appetite is increased, the
divine sound is awakened, and the body becomes healthy."
Notes by the article editor (Tom Billings):
Special thanks to Morris Krok for writing the above, and for authorizing its
distribution!
See my note on the headstand, in the previous article in this series,
"Morris Krok on Excessive Fruit Consumption".
Comment: the purification practices of hatha yoga are not limited to
the kriyas (special cleansing practices, some of which are discussed
above). Most yoga postures have some cleansing effects; in particular
the practice of nadi shuddhi, alternate nostril breathing, helps purify
the nervous system.
Those in the U.S. can order the books by Morris Krok from his daughter,
contact:
Susan Krok
21 Coquito Ct.
Portola Valley, CA 94028
I suggest using her instead of alternate suppliers, as his family here
will benefit.
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