THE YOGA IN HENRY DAVID THOREAU by Renée Silvus If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal—that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. When we think of Thoreau, we might recall a brash misanthrope chronicling his two years at Walden Pond. This invitation to joy and blessing is also his voice. While at the pond, he read the Bhagavad Gita twice, finding it “unquestionably one of the noblest and most sacred scriptures which have come down to us.” Thoreau continued to read more Vedantic texts and integrate Samkhya philosophy over the next six years while revising his Walden manuscript. He had been experiencing meditative states since his early twenties. “Silence is the communing of a conscious soul with itself….She is audible to all men, at all times, in all places.” This journal entry i...