Review: "Sacred Jewels of Yoga" Compiled and Edited by Dave DeLuca
“For thousands of years, yoga teachers have taught the scriptures one passage at a time, having their students study and meditate on each passage for hours, even days at a time before moving on to the next,” says Dave DeLuca. “This has been a time-tested process throughout history, allowing for the deepest meanings of the wisdom to take root in the hearts and minds of earnest aspirants.”
Understanding that most 21st century yoga students lack both the conditions and the time for such study, DeLuca, one of the West’s most highly regarded yoga teachers and a longtime student of scriptural yoga and the Vedanta wisdom of ancient India, has met their needs with this compilation of historically and spiritually significant yoga teachings — passages so filled with meaning and light that exposure to them can fill the mind and heart with awe, reverence, and gratitude. From them, we learn that the true nature of reality is Oneness, that each human soul is divine, and that the highest purpose of one’s life is realizing and manifesting the divinity within us.
“The yoga scriptures teach us that not only is it our sacred duty, our dharma, to uphold the highest in us, but it is the only way to abiding joy and peace,” says DeLuca.
Sources for Sacred Jewels of Yoga: Wisdom from India’s Beloved Scriptures,
Teachers, Masters, and Monks are the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (the “uncontested bible of Raja yoga”), Narada Bhakti Sutras, and the Srimad Bhagavatam (two of the most revered of the Bhakti scriptures), the Astavakra Samhita (an important Jnana yoga scripture), and the Dhammapada (the yoga wisdom of the blessed Buddha). DeLuca has also included commentary on the yoga scriptures by such revered teachers as Sri Ramakrishna (1836–1886) and Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902).
“It is my great hope that the sacred jewels offered in this book will provide the reader with the same kind of joy, illumination, understanding, and spiritual guidance that they have provided to countless lovers of yoga throughout history, and that these passages will inspire those new to these yoga treasures to pursue the study of the complete scriptures they are drawn from,” says DeLuca. Meditating upon and then living the wisdom in this beautiful book can bring us closer to the day when, as Swami Prabhavananda declared, “the omnipresent, omniscient, immortal Lord of the Universe becomes revealed as the Lord of the heart — the Supreme Self.”
