[Don Salmon]

Hi folks,

Wonderful discussion, sorry I hadn’t found it earlier.

I started “making up music” (hardly call it “composing”) one evening when I was 11. I had been playing the accordion since I was 4 (hey, it was the 1950s, United States…). My parents had gone out to a movie, I was alone in the house (older siblings off to college by then) and I “made up” a boogie woogie piece pretty much standard for, oh, the 1940s (still remember it – might put it up on YouTube soon!). I was hooked,

kept making up pieces on my own. Learned all the Beatles songs when I was 13 and just kept making up different pieces using their chord progressions, which I then changed to my own.

The first encounter I had with the conflict between LH and RH was when I took off a year from high school to study full time. My teacher (a composition teacher at Juilliard) liked one of the pieces I had basically improvised and wrote down – it was sort of influenced by Prokofiev and Bartok.

He wanted me to take it and ‘develop” the theme, which meant rationally analyzing intervallic relationships, developing appropriate harmonies, etc.

I was totally stuck. I didn’t know how to use my analytic mind to “figure out” music. After about 4 months of not composing and doing theory exercises, I sat down at the piano one day and I have no idea how, but suddenly perfectly logical, well connected and well developed phrases came pouring out of me and I filled up about 12 measures of highly complex music that actually flowed – it sounded good AND made perfect logical sense. It was a miracle to me.

I ended up struggling with this conflict through 2 years of music school, and then decided to switch to piano major, turn off my left hemisphere altogether for a few years, and just have fun.

I eventually switched after 20 years working as a professional composer-pianist to clinical psychology. I’ve never had to “analyze” or “figure out” composition since, but I use music I’ve improvised/composed all the time for mindfulness workshops, online courses, live pain management seminars, etc.

Such an amazing and fascinating revelation of many layers of our psyche.

[Don Salmon]

I thought I’d share two different kinds of music I have online.

So this is improvised throughout: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsllKlFubHw&feature=youtu.be It’s also meant to be viewed in a highly meditative way. Using earbuds or headphones if possible (to give the experience of being completely immersed in the music) you don’t really “Look” at the images but let the gaze rest in the center and feel as if the slowly moving images are flowing in synch with your breath, ultimately feeling the music and imagery pervading your body, and if you stay with it, you may “feel’ as if the energy is flowing through your entire experiential reality, to the point even your thoughts feel as if they are made of the same “energy” (apologies for the New Age sounding term; I don’t know a better one to get the feel of it) as the environment, the body, the music, the images, etc.

[Don Salmon]

The Tibetan Buddhists have a practice which may help give this a more visceral feel.

Imagine you are in a dream, right now. Look at the objects around you – see them as dream objects.

Feel your body, and recognize it as a dream body. Feel the emotions, thoughts passing through – recognize them as composed of “the stuff dreams are made of.”

What is it in which the dream objects and dream subject exist?

What is it, to quote St. Paul, in which the stuff of dreams “lives and moves and has its being?”

This is most definitely NOT something to”think” about – but to REAL-ize – make as real as possible – so real that you start to question whether in fact you are dreaming or “awake” – or whether you’ve ever been truly awake.

[Don Salmon]

I absolutely love this – I love the guy overhearing and then engaging them, sparking a sense of wonder – the key to the answer to their question (which is not really an “answer” in the way we usually think of it these days)

Just one thing – when the guy says the Greeks thought the Gods came to them from the ‘external world” –

he’s using a modern form of thinking that would have made absolutely no sense to the Greeks.

Owen Barfield, as usual, has given us one of the most perfect metaphors –

before modern times, he wrote, the average human being felt the cosmos almost like a cloak which enfolded them, enwrapped them.

Since the dawn of the modern age, we feel more and more like we’ve somehow been placed in a world mostly alien to us, from which we’ve been estranged.

When we try to imagine what stories or Gods or whatever meant to people not living in our age, we almost inevitably bring our way of attending to the world into it, without realizing it.

Krishna Prem, in an essay on symbolism written in the 1920s, said something shocking to our modern ears but actually quite simple once you get it.

Rather than thinking of Apollo as a myth about the sun, you could almost say the sun – that is, the supposedly “physical” object as our modern eyes perceive it, is a myth about Apollo.

And of course, who better to end with than William Blake?

Blake was questioned by a stereotypically phlegmatic Englishman (hey folks, don’t be angry with me – that was Blake’s word), “But surely Mr. Blake, when you look up at the sky you see a roundish golden disc about the size of a guinea?”

“No, no,” Blake responded. “I see a host of heavenly angels singing “Glory to God in the Highest, Hallelujah.”

And we fail to understand because we think Blake was being “merely” poetic!

[Don Salmon]

Hi Lucy, I don’t want to take us too far afield from the main topic.

But just a couple of things:

Here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?<wbr>v=BG31Oz0VWmI&t=13s – idealist philosopher Bernardo Kastrup and Advaita Vedantin Swami Sarvapriyananda discuss the relationship between idealism and Vedanta. At about 55′, Swami makes a claim that ultimately, Buddhism and Vedanta are pointing to the same thing, but because we tend to take abstract concepts literally, we get confused. Also, perhaps of interest to folks here, at about 48′ or so, Bernardo takes us through a history of how the very confused philosophy of materialism took root, also due simply to confusion about language.

Finally, I would say, if you want a world-class Tibetan Buddhist take on the underlying commonality not only of Buddhism and Vedanta, but all major world religions – along with excellent brief guided meditations to help you see this experientially – I’d strongly recommend Alan Wallace’s “Mind in the Balance.”

[Don Salmon]

Hi Mike:

Yes, I’ve seen that video and am familiar with the points you raise.

I just wanted to raise a concern. One can play with words in all kinds of ways. Going beyond duality and nonduality is one way of putting it, which you might say, if you wish in the dialetheistic way, both wrong and right.

But at some point we have to put the words down and just ‘taste the mango.”

This is not meant to be anti-intellectual but just being very very very cautious with our concepts.

Here’s perhaps a sign of my pro-intellectual, pro-complexity bona fides:

Sri Aurobindo distinguishes 4 levels of knowing beyond the ordinary thinking mind (beyond all that I’m aware of that Iain describes as right hemisphere thought – each level implies that one has both realized and become established in and AS the Self, the Atman, the infinite, all pervading underlying pure Awareness.

HIGHER MIND: All thought now is occurring with Pure Awareness as substrate. This does not necessarily occur with the initial realization of Pure Awareness. One comes back from the pure awareness state and uses the thinking mind as usual. The higher mind involves a complete transformation of thought – but still as “thought.”

ILLUMINED MIND: One no longer thinks in the same way (the identification with the thought process has gone long before). There are flashes of illumination – perhaps remotely like the insights that occurred to Einstein as he was performing his ‘thought experiment’ of riding on a beam of light, only Einstein showed, in his conversations with Tagore, that he understood little if anything about the Self.

INTUITIVE MIND: This is a seeing SO different from our ordinary way of thinking that it is very difficult to put in words. In fact, I’ll leave it there. Sri Aurobindo adds the “overmind” – which he says has been realized by perhaps a handful of yogis over the millennia.

And the core of his teaching is what he refers to as Mahat, or Gnosis (not the gnosis of Plotinus or the ancient mystics), the “Supramental consciousness.” The less said about this, Sri Aurobindo warns us, the better. He has a few chapters about it in The Life Divine, but warns at the start (something his followers tend to ignore almost altogether) that the mind cannot understand anything of it – not even the Overmind, much less our LH OR RH)

I’ve always found if I can’t say something in a way the average 13 year old can understand, I probably don’t understand it.

Now, as a 45+ year reader of Sri Aurobindo (and writer about Sri Aurobindo), who wrote what is probably the most intellectually complex literature on spirituality in the past 150 years, I don’t think I can be said to be anti intellectual. But Sri Aurobindo also pointed out fundamental errors in virtually the entire world of spirituality, East and West, since the Vedic age over 3000 years ago.

So given that so many of us have been misunderstanding (at least potentially) nonduality and spirituality in general for millennia, I always find it helpful to take great care when I put these things into words.

I often like to refer to walking in nature, talking with a dear friend, playing basketball, in moments where things happen spontaneously, as a way of pointing to the Presence of God, the surrender to Her Will, the sense of all pervading Silence, Stillness, Spaciousness, etc. Sometimes that can be a lot more powerful than getting overly complex.

I’ll close again by saying once again, I LOVE intellectual discussion. I just like it to be cautiously balanced with simple everyday language, childlike if possible. I guess I should add, I got a LOT of pushback on this from my friends in the Sri Aurobindo community, most of whom feel whatever can be said in 5 one-syllable words can be much better said in 82 5-8 syllable words!

I like both, you know, Nondualism and all that good stuff:>))

[Don Salmon]

This is a very interesting point about nonduality I was thinking of bringing up before – but wondering how difficult it would be to talk about.

Well, I’ll give it a try.

In his book, “The Matter With Things,” Iain makes a comment about “going beyond both duality and nonduality.”

He has, in other words, made a duality between duality and non duality.

But non duality is not one side of a duality.

Non duality actually does NOT mean

(a) a pure awareness experience

or

(b) the absence of subject and object.

Nonduality simply means NOT making a duality of subject and object. But even to say that is wrong, because then you’ve set up another duality: (a) making a duality of subject and object; and (b) NOT making a duality of subject and object.

This is why Zen and Advaita teachers traditionally did not set out definitions. I’m not meaning to be anti intellectual here – in fact, one of the best illustrations of this mistake about nonduality I’ve ever seen is in a highly intellectual book by a Zen teacher, Steve Hagen, who has worked as a science and math researcher, “How the World Can Be the Way It Is.”

Here’s an extremely simple illustration of why our minds fall into the same trap again and again when we try to talk about non duality.

Remember the old cowboy movies in which the good guy wore a white hat and the bad guy wore a black hat?

You’ve got a duality now. White hat = good; black hat = bad.

Now, how do you get out of the duality?

Easy, Hagen says: “no hat.”

Now, if you look closely, you may see for a split second, you’ve just stepped out of duality, but if you aren’t careful, you’ve just set up a new duality:

Hat = bad, duality

No hat = good, nonduality.

So nearly 2000 years ago, Nagarjuna tried to stun the folks who thought Nirvana (the pure awareness experience) was the goal of Buddhism, by saying “Samsara” (the world of duality) = Nirvana.

But way, is he saying duality is the same thing as nonduality?

Yes and no (!). It is the “same” but it’s a “sameness” which the mind cannot comprehend. It’s also not the same, in the way that wearing a hat is not the same as not wearing a hat.

It’s the sound of one hand clapping.

[Don Salmon]

Thanks so much Mike. That’s a very useful phrase to use when talking to people about the distinction:

Mind wondering

vs

mind wandering

Nice!

This distinction is one of the main themes of our online courses on effortless sleep and effortless mindfulness.

In the terms we use, mind wandering occurs when our attention is in “control mode” (trying to manipulate, control, manage experience) and mind wondering occurs when our attention is in “experiential mode” – just being here, or as we say, “remembering to be.”

I think you’d enjoy the 2nd video on our home page, which is all about this distinction: http://www.RememberToBe.Life.

Our theme song lyrics: (the “shift” referred to in the chorus IS that shift from control to experiential mode)

VERSES:

whatever the place you’re in

whatever you feel

whatever is going on

remember to be

let go of the future

let go of the past

set all your concerns aside

remember to be

(CHORUS)

no matter the grief or pain

we still can be free

with just the most gentle shift

remember to be

VERSES:

whenever the silence blooms

the heart can breathe free

the chains on our wings are broke’

just ‘memberin’ to be

let go of the future

let go of the past

set all your concerns aside

remember to be

(CHORUS)

No matter the grief or pain

we still can be free

with just the most gentle shift

remember to be

[Don Salmon]

sorry, that should have been “as far as the PHYSICALIST” view…”

[Don Salmon]

Glad to hear it was all taken in a friendly spirit:>))

About Escher – it’s quite amazing how much his life reflected a struggle for meaning so fundamental to the 20th century.

As far as physicalism, yes, I probably misremembered your comments. As far as the physicist view that physics provides an exhaustive account of the physical world, if “physical world” means the world we experience (it can’t mean anything else), then I think the simplest refutation of physicalism is simply to ask the physicalist, “If your view is true, then you don’t need to eat, you don’t need a house, clothes, money, etc. Use your exhaustive physics and see how far you will get in the physical world!”

[Don Salmon]

Hi again – just to show you I can really enjoy intellectual discussions, I’ve been meaning to get back to you about your comment that physics provides an “exhaustive” account of our experience (“experience” is my translation of “the physical world” – which does not exist for us apart from experience – Whitehead didn’t think it existed apart from any experience but we’ll leave that for now)

Ok, so here’s a story. A little over 40 years ago, i was in grad school studying music composition. I took a class on computer music, and learned a computer language based on Fortran (the most complex computer program of the time).

We entered the data in the computer lab on the West Side of Manhattan, then went 1 1/2 hours by subway to the computer room at Brooklyn College, where we would hear the music.

The data in the computer lab in Manhattan was entirely mathematical. It included precise mathematical descriptions of the wave forms (indicating amplitude, which is similar to but not the same as volume, pitch, timbre – tone color, which makes the difference between the sound of a clarinet, trumpet, violin, etc).

It was in the computer room at Brooklyn College where we had machines that received the data from the Manhattan lab so we could actually hear the results of the mathematical descriptions.

If physics truly provided an exhaustive account of our experience, I wouldn’t have needed to go to Brooklyn. I could just look at the equations I entered in Manhattan (it’s true, in undergraduate music school we did learn how to look at orchestral scores and “hear” the music – but that was only because we had prior experience – experience that is something more than mathematical equations – of the music.

Now, I think you’d agree that listening to Bach is not the same as reading mathematical descriptions of sound waves.

But it sounds to me like somewhere in what you write is the day that there is some purely “physical” world utterly independent of experience of any kind,

I can’t imagine what that would be except abstract equations, which is all that physics provides us – and most important, I think, is that ALL physics (as with all science), the equations are BASED on initial experience, from which all the math is extracted (or abstracted).

This is why Stephen Hawking’s question, “What puts fire into our equations, what makes them alive” is so typically delusional of most scientists, even the greatest ones, who haven’t thought through what they’re doing.

The fire was there all along. The fire of experience, of awareness, of Consciousness, the Divine Fire the Vedic rishis referred to as “Agni.” Scientists, somewhere in the late 19th century, forgot this, and like the 3 card monte players on the street corner, have hidden the “Consciousness” card and then try to say, “See, there was never any consciousness to begin with.”

It’s all just sleight of hand. And our patients are getting sicker and sicker the longer this game is being played.

[Don Salmon]

Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry if that came across as critical. I just mentioned “transitioning back to therapy” in case others were concerned. Personally I love intellectualizing (our integral yoga community does get into it a bit TOO much but a reasonable daily practice of it is marvelous)

So sorry to hear about the challenges of caring for your mother but wonderful that it has provided a powerful healing routine for you.

please don’t take anything I say as being critical. Just friendly sharing of these marvelous perspectives and observations.

[Don Salmon]

Thanks Mike,

Now, how do we transition back to therapy?

I’ve spent most of my life (since the mid 70s, at least) looking at the connection between what Sri Aurobindo envisioned and how it relates to psychology in general, and therapy in particular.

So a radical difference between anything I’ve found in Buddhism or in any aspect of the traditional Indian OR Western (or indigenous) spirituality, is the dynamic evolutionary view. (wait, this will get back to therapy, I promise:>))

There is, as far as I’ve been able to see over the decades, something everyone I’ve ever met and asked – without exception – knows and feels. St. Paul expressed it in the words, “All of creation is yearning for the return of the Christ.”

The ancient Vedas (Lucy, you may be familiar with this term) spoke of the Agni – the fire – in our hearts. Ayurveda also speaks of Agni in the belly as crucial for digestion, but in a symbolic way, you could say the entire modern era has lost touch with this Divine Fire, the fire which Darwin vaguely (as “through a glass darkly”) glimpsed, but only understood it in terms of scientific materialism.

Sri Aurobindo saw the present era as a “cauldron of Medea,” in which all the ideas and possibilities and challenges of the past several thousand years are being thrown together, creating more and more conflict and challenges. You can bring this right up to the crisis of depression and anxiety in teens, the increasing sense of drivenness and tension throughout the world, as time itself speeds up.

All of this is calling us to through our desires and fears into that Fire deep within our Hearts (beyond both hemispheres) and to give ourselves to that evolutionary impulse (I don’t use these words when I’ve invited patients to look within and find what their deepest yearning is).

Spirituality itself appears to be taking a new turn, away from several thousand years of renunciation of the world (Zen and Sufism and some Tantric schools being somewhat of an exception, though liberation, rather than transformation and Divinization, still being the ultimate aim). In the integral vision, the earth as a whole, the entire human population, is being called on to find that which is beyond our ordinary selves and to open to this Divine evolutionary impulse and allow it to transform us all.

if it sounds Utopian, it’s actually quite the opposite. Without a sense of profound equanimity, infinite contentment, stillness, peace, vast Silence and spaciousness, we can’t truly let go. So even Eckhart Tolle’s simple practice of Presence (the “now” which is not the present moment – a Left Hemisphere take on things – but the Eternal Now) is a powerful assist to this evolutionary dynamic.

Sorry, I was hoping to put it even in simpler language. I will often ask patients if they can think of times in their lives of utter contentment – playing sports or dancing or walking in nature or talking with a dear friend. I’ve never found one who didn’t know what this was. And most “get it” when invited to bring their attention to that sense of contentment “right now.”

AND, even further, without any intellectual discussion, somewhat less often but still quite a few (the less intellectual the better:>)) can feel “something” of some kind of dynamic energy, a subtle, bubbling happiness that impels them more toward acts of kindness and care and love.

This seems to be the most powerful foundation for radical psychological transformation. When we can open our hearts, drop our mental stories, and feel that Fire in the belly, so to speak, and allow it to express itself through us in kind words, wise actions, caring, empathic, loving connections, it opens up a possibility for radical transformation without the need to define it too carefully.

[Don Salmon]

Hi,

really great conversations. I”m replying directly to Nic but want to bring in a great point Mike made, about the limitations of Advaita, the implicit dualism, rejecting this world while claiming “All” to be Divine.

This was the focus of Sri Aurobindo’s life teaching. Perhaps not coincidentally, before he “retired” to Pondicherry in South India to devote his life to bringing forward a new, life affirming approach to spirituality (as different from anything previous in the West as in the East) he was the leader of the independence movement in India (prior to Gandhi), and in 1907 was arrested and jailed as a terrorist (it was an inner “voice” that told him to leave Northern India to go to Pondicherry, which at the time was under the control of the French and therefore free of British rule)

Sri Aurobindo saw that spirituality over the past 3 to 4 thousand years had (despite tantric exceptions and similar exceptions in the West, such as the Sufis – well, Middle East, at least) been oriented toward a negative view of the world, a celebration of renunciation and an orientation toward putting up with this life on the way to our eternal life in heaven.

Sri Aurobindo radically shifted this view, incorporated an evolutionary view (one foreseen in the Vedas, and quite radically different from Darwin’s view) and actually saw humanity as “transitional” leading to a new species altogether.

In the extraordinarily complex psychology of Sri Aurobindo, he described two modes of thought almost exactly the same as the descriptions of the LH and RH, and saw them as both belonging to what the medieval Christians referred to as “intellect” (NOT ‘intellectual” which we might identify with LH).

Our true self is the Divine Consciousness which pervades the Universe, and we also have an evolving, individualized “Soul” which, using the Greek origin of the word “psyche” he referred to as “the psychic being.” (Aurobindo was one of the greatest Latin and Greek scholars who ever attended Cambridge University).

The mind (including what we are calling here LH and RH), the “vital” or “pranic” consciousness and the physical consciousness are, for him, the instruments of the Soul/psychic being and Self. So spirituality in this view is not the RH (or that aspect of the thinking mind, as Sri Aurobindo puts it) but is shifting entirely out of identification with ANY part of the mind, vital or physical body/consciousness.

Because his view of Advaita (an integral view as he puts it, “Purna Advaita” or integral non dualism) does not simply dissolve everything into some kind of pure Consciousness, the Soul or psychic being surrenders to the ultimate Divine Reality, which is dynamic and here in the universe, constantly evolving. All the chaos and polarization and climate change disasters and the rest are seen, in this light, as part of the evolution process in which the new integral (or “Supramental”) consciousness is emerging.

I think if nothing else, this vast integral psychology puts the LH and RH views into a very helpful perspective, one which encompasses the full range of developmental psychology, evolutionary neuroscience, quantum physics, personality psychology, all psychotherapies, the humanities, and much more.

Two friends of mine just published an overview of Sri aurobindo’s “cosmo-psychology’ – “Consciousness-Based Psychology.” https://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Psychology-Aurobindos-Vision-Transpersonal-ebook/dp/B0BVRYGQQ7/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3KAHJSS7DGZ2P&keywords=consciousness+based+psychology+basu%2C+miovic&qid=1687094796&sprefix=miovic+consciousness%2Caps%2C123&sr=8-1

Michael is a psychiatrist in Boston, Soumitra a psychiatrist in Kolkata. Their book is a much more detailed examination of the relationship of therapy and Sri Aurobindo’s views.

The book Jan and I wrote, “Yoga Psychology and the Transformation of Consciousness,” was more intended to show how a non-materialist vision of the universe could be a far more profound AND far more practical basis for psychology than our current materialist/physicalist paradigm. In this sense the aim of the book was much closer to Iain’s, that is, to undo, to question, to challenge the materialist view. https://www.amazon.com/Yoga-Psychology-Transformation-Consciousness-Infinity/dp/1557788359/ref=sr_1_1?crid=UHJICJYJK5ZD&keywords=yoga+psychology+and+the+transformation+of+consciousness&qid=1687094937&sprefix=yoga+psychology+and+the+transformation+of+consciousness%2Caps%2C103&sr=8-1 (by the way, I see it’s now ridiculously expensive; if anybody would like a PDF, just write me at donsalmon7@gmail.com.

[Don Salmon]

Hi Lucy:

What you said about connecting from your heart really gets to the essence of it for me. I’m not sure that among the thousands of people I worked with over 25+ years, any intellectual knowledge ever made a difference. I know that every day of contemplation and meditation (and I don’t mean just sitting eyes closed but through all of life) affected every moment I spent with folks.

As far as the RH connecting to spirit – it sounds like you’re studying Ayurveda through David Frawley’s institute (I think that’s it, or is it Vasant Lad?) In any case, I assume then you have some familiarity with Vedic/Vedantic psychology.

So instead of RH/LH, let’s say intuitive/immersed consciousness (I-I Cs.) and analytic/detached consciousness (A/D Cs. ) Now, this has been known for thousands of years. Iain’s work, to my mind, is important mainly because so many people nowadays won’t trust anything in spirituality or psychology unless it comes across as “scientific” (no disrespect meant here; Iain has at times acknowledged this himself)

So let’s look at how Vedanta relates to this.

You have the intuitive and analytic consciousness, which are both aspects of the mind. Remember these are both related, as Iain describes them, to the conscious mind, related to the cortex, so there’s the whole subconscious, subcortical realm of the mind as well.

Furthermore, all contemplative traditions (Tibetan Buddhist, Christian, Vedantic, Taoist, whatever) speak of intuitive regions of mental consciousness far beyond our waking mind (that is, beyond all that Iain writes about in both of his books).

And all of that is just the mind.

Then you have the life energy, or “pranic” energy. You also have the consciousness (shakti) of the body.

And all of the above is just skimming the surface.

You have vast realms of consciousness beyond the waking state, vast inner dream worlds that are not just private but collective.

And you have the Pure Consciousness, Pure Awareness (which actually in some Tibetan schools IS individualized as well as non-individualized.

So I would be very very careful about equating RH and spiritual awareness. So far, after 50+ years of study, I’ve never seen anything in the scientific literature (even the research that touches on Tibetan Buddhism, Vedanta, etc) that is remotely touching “the hem of the garment” of what the contemplative traditions know.

But back to the heart – bipolar disorder and meditation. Many researchers will deny this, but I’ve also seen people who have been touched deeply by meditation, whose hearts – and pranic energy and much more – have woken up and through mindfulness, through heart-fulness, through connecting with other people, and countless more ways, have fully recovered, not just from bipolar disorder but from severe traumas, deep depression, and more.

To the extent we’ve bought into the world view of modern materialism, we just have no idea of the infinite possibilities of the human spirit – or just, the spirit (which is no different in essence from matter – as Iain writes about quite well toward the end of “The Matter With Things.”

I don’t think you have to read his books to understand this. David Frawley’s “The Yoga of Consciousness” goes into this in far more detail (or if I may add, our book, “Yoga Psychology and the Transformation of Consciousness: Seeing Through the Eyes of Infinity” goes into this in great detail, and relates the yogic way to much of modern evolutionary neuroscience as well as psychology and psychotherapy) https://www.amazon.com/Yoga-Psychology-Transformation-Consciousness-Infinity/dp/1557788359