Ajna Chakra - The Upper Floors of the Mind

Moving into the 3^rd Eye, or Ajna Chakra, we leave a lot of what we discussed in the lower chakras behind.  In a way, we can look at working with the 6^th chakra as a separate task entirely, although it is deeply related to what has come before.  When we worked with any of the first five chakras, we were concerned primarily with personality and our individual psychology.  This is a process the tantric mystics called “tattva shuddhi” or the purification of the elements.  These are the elements of the personality, which we call (for convenience) earth, water, fire and air.  Space, the element of the 5^th Chakra, is that which contains the rest and represents an individuated or whole personality. 

For most of us, this is the goal: reconciliation with ourselves, healing, and even the development of a new point of view independent of the ego and yet individual.  Psychology, especially Depth Psychology, has this as its main concern, and it the Jungians who go the furthest with it, describing the strange and wonderful individuation process.  But for the Jungians, this is pretty much the end of it.  Most of the rest of psychology stops much lower down the chakra tree. 

The yogis and saints of all ages tell us about states and stages well beyond this, and that’s what we’re talking about when we get to the Ajna chakra.  These, described in books like the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, are states that require incredible non-attachment and perfect concentration to master.  The sutras tell us that yoga is “the cessation of the fluctuating states of the mind” and that when we manage to stop the mind’s constant chatter “then the Self dwells in its own nature.”  Essentially, the Sutras make a claim that there is a Self beyond the mind, but which, when the mind is active, appears to be those very fluctuations.  We believe we are what we think, feel, or do, but according to the yogic classics, as well as most religions, we’re far more than that. 

In classical yogic metaphysics, there are two fundamental substances.  First there is Purusha, sometimes symbolized by Shiva, which is pure consciousness. Not thought, but the pure awareness which has no content, no aim, and no reflection.  According to the scriptures of yoga, this Self is eternal, independent of time (our time-sense being a product of mind), and forever unaffected by actions or karma.  This Self is utterly without content or mind, as I said, so it is also without personality, or even individuality.  Ultimately, this Self is considered non-different with any other Self.  My Purusha is not different from your Purusha, and in fact can be considered exactly the same thing.  Imagine, for instance, a paper globe with a candle inside.  If you prick holes in the paper, small beams of light will shine out in a different direction.  If you imagine that you in the small sense, your personality is one of those beams, we understand that Purusha is the candle flame, the source of the light for every beam of light, simultaneously.  As one of my earliest teachers once said, one candle flame loses nothing by lighting another.  You may have heard the very common platitude “we’re all already enlightened”.  What truth is in this phrase comes from the doctrine that indeed this Purusha is always free, and never in bondage, although it appears to be when it takes on the qualities of the mind.  It is the mind that is in bondage, or is liberated, never the Purusha. 

            The second substance is Prakriti, which is sometimes symbolized by Shakti, and it includes literally everything that is not Purusha.  The keyboard I’m typing on, the electricity in the computer, the light from your monitor, your eyes, face, brain, feelings, thoughts, memories, and mind.  It is, we might say, the world.  Purusha is consciousness, and Prakriti is what we are conscious of, and the means by which we know.  This Prakriti, while fundamentally one substance, which we call primordial Prakriti, is said to change and evolve into the varied forms that we see.  While there are 24 of these evolutes, I’m going to simplify the system for our purposes and talk about only a few.  We can begin with the five elements which make up the lower chakras – everything we’ve been working on up to this point.  You, the little self, are entirely made of Prakriti.

As we’ve moved up the spine, the elements have gotten subtler, especially when we got into the akasha or space of the 5^th Chakra.  In order to conceive of the space of the mind, or chidakasha, a level of non-attachment is necessary.  If we identify ourself with the ego, or with our desires, the non-ego and our aversions will seem to not be included in the space.  Only if we stop being so attached to the specifics of our personality can we begin to work with the psyche as a whole.  But the psyche is still individual, and in order to get at the 6^th chakra, the ‘third eye’, we must let even that go.

Last week when teaching about the Vishuddha chakra, I likened its inclusiveness to a phrase from the Chandogya Upanishad, but which has correlates in the West as well – satya brahmapuram, or the “true city of God.”  We imagine the psyche as a city, God’s city, not ‘ours’, and recognize that the city has good parts and bad, mansions and slums, and recognize that all of this is part of the city, even a necessary part.  In order to really look at the psyche like this, nonattachment is necessary.  Now, a mandala is the perfect illustration of this idea, and in fact mandalas are often intended to be read a sort of 2 dimensional city.  So imagine that you were looking down at a mandala, like a plan of your psyche.  If the psyche is the object, then what is the subject?  What sees?  Ultimately the Seer, but to the Seer no differences exist, no boundaries, no neighborhoods. No, the Seer sees through something else, a subtle, content-less part of the mind.

There is an ‘element’ of a sorts for the ajna chakra, and it is called ‘mahatattva’ or ‘mahat’ which means the ‘great element’.  It is a stand-in for the mind, and specifically one subsection of mind which we call the buddhi, (not to be confused with the Buddha) or ‘discriminative intelligence’.  Its job is to choose, to make differences between things.  We should try to understand this as the very root of the mind itself, its impersonal substructure common to all human beings. In yogic metaphysics, buddhi or mahat is the very first evolute of the primordial prakriti.  First there is just stuff, a sort of primordial soup.  Nothing is different.  Then a mind comes along and starts to find differences, like, this is ‘me’ and that is ‘not me’, and then ‘that not-me is a rock’ and ‘that not-me is a person’ and so on.  The first basic division is the me/not-me, which creates the illusion of an individual self.  I say illusion because this philosophy considers the self like a wave in the ocean – it’s there as long as the mahat is making it different, but soon enough the mahat desolves and now the wave is again non-different with the ocean.  It is this mahat or buddhi which can dispassionately observe the ‘city’ of the psyche.

The buddhi is considered extremely pure, and when we remember that the previous chakra, the 5^th, was called Vishuddha or “most pure”. This refers to the perfection of non-attachment that must happen in that chakra before we can really enter into the Ajna.  This goes back to what the sutras said about what yoga is really about – quieting the mind so that the Seer, or Purusha, can ‘dwell in its own nature’.  When we have all sorts of psychological twists and issues and complexes, the mind is tense and restless.  The buddhi, let alone the Purusha, is invisible.  It’s like trying to focus on hearing a pin-drop at the Superbowl – it isn’t going to happen.

The solution to this problem is to quiet the mind, to do yoga in its fullest sense.  The eight-limbs of yoga (ethical restraint, observances, postures, pranayama, withdrawal of the senses, concentration, meditation, and Samadhi) are a direct method towards this goal of stopping the mind, which we call Samadhi.  But this is a gradual process, and as we progress in slowing the mind down (which happens for a long time before ‘cessation’ occurs), we can begin to focus not on the content of the thoughts, nor the affect, but on the sub-structure of thought itself.  We begin to see the buddhi at work, labeling, separating one thought from the next.  We notice that we can witness, judge, and even control our thoughts from some removed place prior to the day-to-day thoughts that make up the rest of the mind.  The buddhi is the part of the mind that has the most control over the rest, and can begin to do the work of cessation, preventing thoughts from arising so that the true self, the Purusha, becomes manifest. 

The Ajna stands in a special place in the chakra system.  The rising Kundalini, that earthy energy, is called Shakti in Tantra, literally the Goddess of Power, or Goddess of the World. She begins the process coiled at the base of the spine in the Root Chakra.  As we move up, it is really her (as our mind) which moves up the spine to higher levels of understanding. Shiva is pure consciousness, sitting remote and unmoving, as if in perfect meditation, unattached and uninvolved.  He is said to sit at the Ajna Chakra, and that chakra thus represents an exact counterpoint to the Root chakra and its Shakti snake coiled there.  Shakti rises because she desires Shiva, and when they meet in the Ajna chakra, Liberation is said to occur.  We must remember however what is Liberated: the mind.  We may say that Purusha comes through the Crown Chakra (although this is a bit literalistic and simple) to meet Shakti (and animating the mind) at the 3^rd Eye.  You may also be familiar with the idea that there are two nadis or subtle channels going along either side of the spine, and a third at the center.  These represent male and female, hot and cold, etc – the duality of nature.  Of course, it isn’t a duality of nature at all, it’s the mind which makes things seem dual; the buddhi separating and comparing always.  These two side nadis are said to stop just below the Ajna chakra, and this represents a cessation of the functioning of the buddhi, which is indeed the goal of yoga.

What happens then?  Imagine a wind rushing over a mountain lake, which makes the surface appear grey with white caps.  Imagine the same lake, with no wind, totally still.  Which reflects the viewer?  Clearly, the still lake will do a better job.  When the mind is still, we may say that it perfectly reflects the luminance of Purusha, of the Self.  It is no accident that the lunar crescent is often used to symbolize the Ajna chakra.  Its two petals represent that duality (also the two eyes) which is overcome by the chakra (and the third eye). It is said that the mystic who masters the Vishuddha chakra gains the ability to instantly understand scripture and to interpret it for others.  Mastery of the Ajna chakra is said to give the mystic the ability to create scripture. 

What must this be like?  Well, if we understand that time, space, and all of prakriti are detected (even created) by the mind, then such concepts will be meaningless when the mind is stopped.  No space means reality is the monad – truly one. This is symbolized by the bindu or monad point, which Hindus often wear as a saffron or sandal-paste dot on the ajna center. No time means that that one is eternal.  No content means we only end up trying to describe it after the fact.  We might say with the Vedantins ‘neti, neti’ no, its not that, not that, because if it’s that, it can’t be this.  The famous phrase sat, chit, ananda, or ‘being, consciousness, and bliss’ is used to describe the feeling that lingers when the mind starts back up again to perceive it, but can’t be said to be attributed to the purusha itself, which remains fundamentally mysterious.

If this sounds really heavy, well it is.  We’re talking about stuff that is well past what words can really get at anyway (being rather limited products of human minds).  For most of us, the practice will not be to try to perfectly stop the mind right now, but to slow it down as much as possible in meditation and try to see how it works, so that maybe down the line we can make a stab at stopping it. 

But as with the rest of the chakras, the Ajna is indeed working in us even if we haven’t fully evolved into it.  It comes across in intuition – a decision seemingly made before thought, an insight that comes from underneath the surface of the mind.  It also represents our ability to concentrate and to think with clarity. 

Overall, the Ajna is the contact point between our mind and our spirit, and represents a tremendous mystery that is still beyond the grasp (or even the vision) of science and everyday life.  It is the entry point for the gifts of the spirit, a place of openness which transcends all of the particulars of individual life.  At the level of the Ajna, “all is one” is not an equalizing platitude of the heart, but a physical, literal fact which can be experienced only by the exceptionally disciplined and self-controlled. It is where apparent difference is dissolved into perfect light. 

Chakra cycle

Its that time again.  In my Sunday 10am classes, we'll be taking a journey through the seven chakras.  Last year I wrote some thoughts on each of the chakras as we went along, and I'm going to repost them here so you can easily find them.  Last time around, I didn't write anything for the last two chakras, so I'm hoping to remedy that this time around.  Expect those posts during the 6th and 7th weeks.  In the meantime, enjoy!

What the hell are the Chakras anyway: Part I
What the hell are the Chakras anyway: Part II

1. Muladhara
2. Svadhisthana
3. Manipura
4. Anahata
5. Vishuddha

Manipura – The City of Gems

"Remember when you were young,
You shone like the sun,
Shine on you crazy diamond."
                               -Pink Floyd, Shine on You Crazy Diamond

            (Nabhi) Manipura means literally “(naval) city of jems” and speaks to the tremendous wealth and power of this chakra.  It is situated in our navel center, the belly, home of the famous “core” that we always hear about in yoga and various other forms of exercise like Pilates.  The core isn’t one muscle, but rather a whole group of muscles that function as a sort of center of gravity for the rest of the body.  In hatha yoga, we tend to stretch outwards in most poses, the limbs reaching out infinitely, and the spine always lengthening.  The core provides the balancing act for this, literally and figuratively.  It pulls everything in to center, creating a sort of dynamic tension with the outward reaching limbs.  The core holds us up, orienting everything around that center of the body.  It allows for balance and movement, and is crucial for things like arm-balances and inversions.  Any fireman will tell you that carrying an unconscious person is much more difficult than a conscious person.  An unconscious person feels “heavy” because the weight is evenly distributed throughout the whole body.  A conscious person’s core is working, whether they are aware of it or not, pulling the limbs in to center, shifting their weight, etc.  It’s like the difference between trying to lift a 100 pound bag of bird seed and a 100 pound iron weight.  The weight is the same, but its concentration at a center (rather than shifting seed) makes for a very difficult experience in lifting it. 

            Just as the whole body orients itself to the core, we have a psychological factor that does the same job.  We locate this factor in the same physical area – the gut.  When we say “he’s got guts” or “she’s got a real fire in her belly”, we’re referring to this psychological quality of course, not the core.  We clearly identify the gut with courage, with fire, and with ambition, just based on those two simple images.  But what we’re really saying might be phrased as “he has a strong sense of his personal power which is able to carry him over any difficulty” (courage) and “she has a strong sense that she has the power to realize her ambitions” (fire the belly).  This is ultimately about our personal sense of self, of individual power and destiny – in a word, the ego.

            Now, in yoga the ego has a pretty bad rap.  Delve into the literature, especially the more New Agey kind, and you’ll read all about “transcending the ego” “realizing the illusion that is the ego” or the “limiting nature of the ego.”  I’m not saying that all of these are bad or wrong – I’ll say things far from it when we get into the higher chakras – but that they are incomplete.  We need the ego, just like we need the core.  The ego relates all of our experiences back to itself, organizing, translating, and importantly, assimilating.  We are constantly trying to incorporate our experiences into our sense of self, digesting them, so to speak.  When we have a regular psychological diet, we tend to have a rather stable (or even stagnant) ego; we ‘eat’ to maintain the status quo, or more negatively to expand the ego like a widening waist-line, perhaps overcompensating or protecting a ‘weak’ or ‘powerless’ core.  When we vary our diet, we may find nutrients our standard psychological diet neglected, like when we try yoga for the first time, but we may also find ourselves with a bit of spiritual indigestion.  Experiences come along that conflict with our notions of the way the world works, the projected order of our lives, and we may even find some ideas that we have a hard time “stomaching.”  We can’t figure out how to relate these things to the ego, and it gives us problems.  What happens then is psychologically called repression – if psychic fact or datum cannot be “me”, then is must be “not me”.  It then either sits below the surface, or is more often projected onto others.  

            Jung called this the “Shadow”, the bastard home of all those things that we reject (or vomit up, to continue the analogy).  I should also note that I connect the Manipura chakra to the Sun (this is not the only attribution, nor is it the traditional one), the classic Jungian symbol of the ego, our conscious identity.  The ego, relating everything to itself, creates a whole ordering scheme for the world.  The things that fit the scheme are excellent and put in their place, and the rest… well.  It becomes trivialized, or even violently rejected.  We might call experiences that don’t fit the scheme (especially those that show the ego as not the only or most important part of the whole person) are rejected as “irrational, silly, pointless, childish, pipe-dreams, dangerous, heretical, insensitive, over-sensitive, reactionary, radical,” just to list a few words commonly used to reject and ridicule.  An ex-initiate of a particularly literalist and seriously dysfunctional esoteric order called “The Hermetic Order of the Morning Star International” (or HOMSI, which may have been renamed by now – I can’t be bothered to keep track of esoteric politics) once told me that a common catch-phrase to explain away the many scandals associated with the leaders of this order was “the greater the light, the deeper the darkness.”  Clearly, this is a rather ridiculous platitude and excuse for bad behavior, but it is an excellent example of the ego in action.  Magic and mysticism can often be used for massive ego expansion, and I should note that the Golden Dawn tradition in all of its various manifestations tends towards a solar emphasis.  When we shine the bright light of the sun on the world, things are ‘illuminated’ indeed, and sight allows us to clearly distinguish objects in experience.  Bright sunlight also creates deep shadows that conceal and hide.  When we identify exclusively with the solar ego, we drive much that is important but which we have difficulty identifying with (or, ‘stomaching’) deeply into the Shadow.  Therein, we see it only in others whom we can then more easily hate, just as it seems that every magical order of the above type seems convinced that every rival order is full of black magicians (or every fundamentalist community sees ‘satanists’ or ‘witches’ under every rock).  In light of my previous post it may also be useful for me to note that HOMSI apparently (most of this is rumor, but from a few independent sources) had a universally Christian leadership, and despite their public claims, restricted the advancement of neopagans (a rather large group in the order) and Thelemites, aka, polytheists.  Christianity, ultimately a solar manifestation (despite its 4^th chakra origins – more on that later), privileges unity above multiplicity.  In Christianity, even the Trinity is really just One.  Polytheism is the way of the 2^nd chakra, the darkly lit world of many stars, and it looks like solar-Christian HOMSI just couldn’t stomach it.  Balance is crucial in dealing with the ego.  When the sun is too bright, we can’t see the stars, but when it’s just starlight all the time, we can’t see anything clearly.

           

            Manipura consciousness is greatly concerned with authority, hierarchy, and order.  A central image is that of the King and Kingdom – everything is fine when every subject does its job.  The serfs farm, the nobles fight and politic, the church ministers, and the king rules, directly and through his governors.  When some free-thinker comes along and refuses to submit, that free-thinker is soon a head shorter.  If it doesn’t fit the hierarchy, it is treason, heresy, or any other label you’d like, and must be annihilated.  Society, like our own egos, is conceived as fragile, and we must constantly be on the look out for that which threatens to send everything back into the chaos from whence it came.  Only the 4^th-chakra Enlightenment, with its notion of individual rights (where each is ultimately a King unto himself, within a society of Kings), do we have free enquiry without fear of persecution, and as recent politics has shown (stem-cell research is a good example), we’re not yet completely safe.  Why not?  Well, because our 4^th chakra democracy contains people who see the world through all of the lower chakras.  Those of the 1^st and the 3^rd warn us of dangerous ideas threatening society, of the Others, and tell us to “take it back” as local tea-party politician Greg Ball exhorts.  We may profitably ask what he wants to take back from whom. 

            This “King Consciousness” is extremely evident in religious thought, especially that which comes out of “kingly” civilizations, most especially the Roman Empire and Middle Ages.  Neoplatonism (and its close follower Hermeticism) originated at the end of the Roman Era and gave us notions like 7 heavens, choirs of angels like the Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, etc, as well as an inverted hierarchy for the demonic realm.  Ultimately, I believe that most of this stuff originated with personal, one might say Gnostic, experiences.  However, in order to ‘digest’ these often strange and inexplicable experiences, people organized them in a very 3^rd chakra way.  They looked without and saw that, at the time, the best, safest and most bountiful civilizations were characterized by a strong central government by one-man and his capable governors, along with the rest of the Imperial hierarchy.  Areas where that influence was not evident, as in the history before its ascent, were dark, barbaric, chaotic and primitive.  To them, as Maximus says in Gladiator, “Rome is the light.”  Affix to this admiration for the power of the Empire a similar appreciation of Plato, and you get Neoplatonism.  Plato said that the gross things of this world are but shadows to the perfections of the Ideas on another ‘plane’ that the objects here just emulate.  The Neoplatonists saw even in the corruption of the late empire, a divine blueprint of the harmony of the universe which on another plane took the form of God’s own hierarchy.  Natural phenomena were explained by the notion that spiritual beings were everywhere, ordering creation according to divine will, like the emperor’s soldiers or tax-collectors.  Further, to get over certain logical problems with that arrangement, they postulated numerous worlds, dimensions, levels, etc, that acted as planes upon which the various levels of intermediaries could act our their duties, just like the empire had the Capitol, as well as regional seats for the Governors.  This is projected outwards into the heaven in astrology as well, where the planets are said to rule certain signs, and govern certain things about our lives. 

            Ultimately, I regard all of this as a beautiful creative act of imagining that created space for the possibility of interaction with these various things - of gnosis, in other words.  That said, I regard the experience as of something real – that there’s something there (wherever there may prove to be) that can be experienced.  When we look at the angels and spirits of neoplatonism and magic, we might be tempted to call the whole affair “silly” or “irrational” and push it into the shadows.  Ultimately, we need these imaginings, to keep a conscious idea of these events and experiences, to make some kind of personal sense out of them, however untrue the imaginings may be as accurate descriptors.  They may well even limit the collection of future data – and here is what the mystics warned us of.  If we regard angels as silly, we’ll never see them.  This is not to say that there are angels, just that we won’t see them, objectively real or not.

            The King easily becomes the Tyrant, and this is a serious problem.  The Manipura chakra is the center of order, yes, but also of witch-hunts, as I previously implied.  The first chakra tells us to trust authority, and that authority is found in the 3^rd.  We trust that someone will fix things, often the President, our own democratic King.  1^st chakra loyalty tries to get us to overlook their faults, perhaps explaining their darkness as a by-product of their incredible light.  This is certainly the logic that keeps dictators in power.  Yes, President Mubarak is terrible and violated human rights with impunity, but he keeps the terrorists (read: Shadow) out.  Yes, President Bush violated the law, international and domestic in his persecution of the Enemy, but he’s our president, and we have to stand by him. 

            I think most of the readers of this blog have a problem with authority.  Many yogis and most of my friends distrust the government almost as much as they distrust Wall St (another excellent example of the selfish part of the 3^rd chakra).  Where does this distrust come from?  Ironically, I think it is from well-balanced and strong Manipura Chakras.  If we had weak 3^rd chakras, we’d be looking for authority outside of ourselves to tell us what to do.  We see that occasionally in the yoga world as those who never get out from under the shadow of the great guru, or who idolize the celebrity yogis like Rodney Yee or Cyndi Lee, who often display merit largely physically or through a good business acumen rather than real knowledge.  The 3^rd chakra, being about status, our own place in the hierarchy, locates us above or below others.  We are submissive to our betters and dominant to our underlings. It cuts your very own place in the tribe and greater world.  We all break away from our parents at puberty, and this is necessary – how far is the question.  When we have a weak 3^rd chakra, we imagine ourselves low down in that hierarchy.  When we have a strong 3^rd chakra, we imagine ourselves quite high.  To have a problem with authority, to me, means regarding your own authority as preeminent.  

            To see the world through the 3^rd chakra as a primary lens is to see hierarchy everywhere, and to be hyper-aware of one’s place in it, ie, to be ‘status-conscious’.  Our goal in the chakra system is to progressively awaken, balance, and transcend each chakra and all that it represents.  To transcend the bottom three, the physical triad if you like (as they regard all things as objects in some sense), we need a strong impulse.  We need drive, a strong sense of self-confidence, a belief in our own ability to succeed, and the courage to accept the possibility that spiritual growth and mystic experience is not just the purview of clerics, saints, or gurus, but our own natural-born right.  We need a fire in the belly.  Only with that fire can we evaporate the moisture of our imagination, sending it upwards to the airy world of the 4^th chakra (which is quite dry without it).  Only with that fire can we burn through the 1^st ‘knot’ that is said separate the bottom 3 chakras from the 4^th, keeping us from higher truths.  When we confidently step out of the 3^rd chakra we become aware that the hierarchy is all an illusion, that we are all Kings (or have the potential to be), and that each of us has a unique authority over our own lives. 

            As an addendum, I’d like to draw your attention to an intriguing article in the NY Times by Stanley Fish.  This piece contains some really interesting stuff, but ultimately I look at it as containing interesting chakra insights (particularly of the 3^rd and 4^th).  I don’t agree with all of it, especially his conclusion, but I’ll leave it to your own ingenuity to see what I mean.

Stories from the Bhagavata Purana: Part II, Churning the Ocean of Milk

You may have heard of Creatio ex Nihlo (creation out of nothing), but have you ever heard of Creatio ex Lactis (creation out of milk)?  That’s my subject for today – the story of the Churning of the Ocean of Milk, which is usually understood as a creation story but has much more to it than that.  It is a bit more elaborate than the Gajendra story, so please pardon the length of the post.  First, my synopsis (complete text here):

            Picking up where we left off in my last post, the paradise-like mount Mandara (Meru) floats in an ocean of milk.  After the Gajendra tale we discussed, the devas (“shining ones,” or Gods) and the asuras (demons) end up fighting a terrible war.  The Supreme Deity (Brahman the absolute, symbolized here as Vishnu) calls up Shiva and Brahma (the creator god, not to be confused with Brahman, the impersonal absolute) and suggests that to stop the war they convince both sides to join forces for a truly epic task:  churning the ocean of milk to find the mythic amṛta (pronounced ‘amrita’), or nectar of immortality.  Mṛta means death, and when you add an ‘a’ in Sanskrit, it reverses the meaning (like theist becoming atheist).  The amṛta then is the essence of life itself, the divine ambrosia which makes whomever drinks it immortal.  There are parallel European myths, such as the Norse Idunn with her youth maintaining golden apples, and more closely the ambrosia of the Greek Gods, with which there is a clear linguistic connection.  

            Who doesn’t want eternal youth?  Demons and gods both are excited about the prospect, so the war is quickly suspended and both the good guys and bad guys team up to churn the ocean.  Vishnu’s great serpent (called ananta, or "endless") uproots the great mountain so that they can use it as the dasher to churn the milk, and he also acts as the rope they use to rotate the mountain.  The mountain immediately starts to sink, but Vishnu is there in a pinch and holds it up by becoming a giant turtle.  The assembled forces then begin to churn the ocean.

            The first thing that happens is that an intense heat is generated, so that the gods can barely continue.  Also, the churning awakens the various nasties living in the milky “waters” – crocodiles and serpents especially.  The workers appeal to Vishnu, gives them the strength to persevere.

            Now the churning starts to bear its fruit.  Although in the story 14 different things come up, I'm going to limit myself to talking about the main three.  First comes the hālahala, a terrible fatal poison which threatens to spoil everything and poison every living thing on earth.  Desperate, they turn to Shiva, who, being so holy, and so self-contained and perfected, offers to drink all the poison up.  When he does so, it turns his face blue permanently.  A few drops of course spill, which become the venom of poisonous animals. That’s just how these creation myths go.

            Now that the poison is gone, the crew gets back to work, churning away for thousands of years.  The next thing to come is Lakshmi, the great goddess of fertility, wealth, and essentially all worldly goods and material happiness.  Immediately everyone gets distracted, presumably because of her sheer sexiness.  Most forget the amṛta entirely, even starting to fight over her.  Vishnu solves this problem, upraising Lakshmi to his side as his wife.  With her enthroned in heaven, everyone can get get back to work.  

            Finally, the amṛta comes out in a pot carried by the divine god of medicine, and no sooner does it arise than it is stolen by the asuras, which of course starts another war.  The devas eventually win, destroying the asuras and the nectar is rescued and the gods become immortal.  Creation also arises out of this churning (Lakshmi, etc). 

            Now lets get into what all this means.  Swamiji’s narrative was what got me started on this, so I’ll give that first:  the churning is yogic meditation, which first brings up poison, or impurities and complexes, to the surface of the mind which can only be absorbed by a yogi whose non-attachment, austerities, self-control, and self-understanding are like unto that yogic archetype Shiva.  Then comes Lakshmi, which represents the Siddhis, the “perfections” or “powers” that come to the yogi as he nears the goal.  These are traditionally said to be distractions from the path as it is tempting to use them for worldly gain and can lead the yogi to a great fall.  We see this in the churners forgetting their work when they see the beautiful Lakshmi.  The worldly powers must be offered up to higher ideas and wedded to God; in other words, used only for spiritual purposes, if at all, so that the churning can continue.  Lastly comes the nectar itself, knowledge of the Self, the immortal part of us, which we might call the immortal soul. 

           

            I must say, I love this interpretation, as it certainly follows the process of meditation, but reading the actual text I feel the need to add to it my own thoughts.  I've been reading a lot of Jung lately, so it's going to be heavily psychological.  You may recall from last time that the Ocean of Milk can be seen as the Unconscious, and that its an ambivalent symbol containing both our primal fears and issues (crocodiles and other reptiles), as well as the nectar of immortality itself.  The mountain is an earth symbol, stability, and here also I’d say consciousness, which is dislodged from its thrown by the serpent of wisdom, and nearly drowns.  Only the intervention of God (self surrender), saves it.  The serpent can also be a connection to the idea of kundalini, the shakti or power of consciousness dwelling in the spine.  It is kundalini which rises up to activate each of the chakras.  The churning first brings uncomfortable heat, as anyone who has ever examined himself, or for that matter practiced hatha yoga, knows.   The heat can also represent tapas, or austerity, the 'heat' generated by the purification of the body and mind.  It is characteristically unpleasant and difficult. Only faith in the process gets us over that first hurdle.  We get used to it and then we are able to start churning in earnest.

            The first things that come up are the complexes, the “issues” we all have under the surface.  Complexes are defined by Freud as essentially knots in the Libido, the sum total of our mental energy.  These knots “tie up” this energy, and when we work them out, whether through therapy or meditation, the release the energy back into the whole.  Jung adds to this that it is as if these complexes (and other psychic contents) seem to act autonomously, and he suggests that consciousness has invested them with a bit of itself.  By that logic, undoing these knots is reclaiming and unifying consciousness.  Clearly, this isn’t easy, and there’s a reason the poison was said to spread in every direction to destroy everything it touched.  Aren’t our own inner demons kind of like that?  Think of an irrational fear you might have and how that can poison an otherwise good experience.  Think of how jealousy can poison a beautiful relationship.  Without self-control and non-attachment, reclaiming these things (“swallowing” them), is nearly impossible. 

            Ah, but what rewards there are for those who are willing to do the work!  Lakshmi herself, all worldly good, comes out of the churning next.  In my opinion, the Siddhis of yoga are the increased mental (and physical) power that is unlocked as we work out our physical and mental knots.  The more mental (or physical) energy we reclaim, the more “powerful” we become.  Of course, if we began the process frustrated with the world, our new-found power may cause us to get lost in it.  Suddenly, the things that seemed unattainable become easy to the yogi, be it finding a healthy relationship (now that we’ve left our issues at the door), being physically able to enjoy the body in sports and recreation, or having the concentration and mental power to make lots of money.  The temptation is to stop at this point to enjoy our results. It's very common to use yoga as a way to merely “fix” ourselves, or help us function better in the world of men.  I don’t honestly believe that there’s anything wrong this – we should be glad for any yogi who is able to digest his own poison.  However, this text (and the whole tradition) is emphatic in its teaching that there is more yet available for those who can take their worldly power and dedicate it up to God (marrying Lakshmi to Vishnu).  This giving up of the fruits of our labor is called karma yoga, sublimating our worldly activities - work as prayer.  We can also consider this in terms of universal archetypes.  Lakshmi is the divine mother, the earth goddess, which here ascends to heaven as a divine consort.  We see something similar in the Catholic notion of the Assumption of the Virgin.  Jung makes a big deal of this in numerous works, and for good reason.  Mary, the earthly woman in whom Christ gestates, can be considered the “shadow” of the Holy Trinity which so conspicuously lacks a female component – Christianity’s blind spot we might say.  The Assumption of the earthly woman, bodily rather than in spirit, to heaven, has been depicted in art and literature for centuries, but it was not a part of official church doctrine until the 1950s, and then only in response to popular belief, not the church fathers.  See Jung’s Answer to Job for a more complete discussion of this.

            The last thing is of course the nectar itself, the symbol of the goal, which creates a war again between the devas and asuras.  I encourage you to glance back at an older post of mine, “Daddy, why do the Demons Howl,” for a bit about what the asuras represent.  We can liken the devas, the “shining ones”, to the opposite, the uplifting and virtuous thoughts of the mind.  We may take this war as a final conflict of the opposing forces in the mind, provoked by the end being in sight. It’s a fierce battle, and at its climax, the demons create a terrible illusion of a mountain from which falls burning trees, rocks, etc, and this nearly causes the lines of the devas to break and run.  But at the last moment, the supreme Lord himself appears on the battlefield, and the illusion instantly vanishes.  It’s an intriguing moment:  the illusion is specifically a mountain, which seems again to be a symbol of stability, and probably the ego itself.  We can call this the illusion of a stable ego, which the demonic forces exist only in relation to.  You can look at it this way – “demonic” ideas, as symbolized by the asuras, are given power only because we mistake the ego as the whole Self (taken either in a Jungian or Vedantic sense).  The thought to steal or possess is only possible in relation to the ego, which feels itself special and deserving of possession. In other words, we can look at the egotic asuras as selfish motivations and the limited attitude of the individual ego.  We can only justify selfish behavior when the ego appears dominant and stable.  If the ego is seen as illusory, then how do we justify gratifying its desires?  So too here, as the Lord, i.e., the true Self in the religious sense, or as a symbol for the totality of the psyche (in the Jungian sense), destroys at last the illusion so cherished by the asuras, and allows the gods victory.  

            Interestingly, this victory is not as complete as it first appears.  Even after the asuras are slain, the Supreme One causes them to be revived.  There will be later wars between the two factions, and this appears to be God’s desire.  The lesser gods have faith in that plan, but don’t always understand it.  The demons don’t get it at all, even possibly thinking God on their side (like all egoists) and they continue on their destructive path.  I’m not going to go too far into it, but after the churning story, Bali, the greatest of the demons, even invades heaven, taking over earth and heaven.  He is tricked into giving Vishnu in one of his forms 3 footsteps of his new realm, whereupon Vishnu reveals to Bali his true celestial form, with one step covering the whole earth, with another heaven.  Bali, enlightened by the vision, offers his own head (ego), “a man’s most prized possession” as he puts it, as a place for his third step.  He becomes changed thereby, and tells the rest of the demons to retreat.  To paraphrase “The same Supreme Lord that helped us before (revived us) now wishes for our defeat.  We cannot therefore win by any means, and we must therefore retreat until the time is right for us.”  This is a wonderful change of events.  Bali, the demonic general, comes to a new understanding of himself and his type in the relationship to the whole (psyche).  Both the devas and the asuras are changed by this conflict, and a new order is given to the world.  To me, this can be just as easily read as saying a new order is given to the mind.

            In a way this esoteric interpretation is actually a full reversal of the popular meaning.  Meditation and many forms of mysticism actually seek to reverse the process of creation, and if you think about it, that’s really what this is describing.  The undivided Ocean of Milk is not the primordial unconscious, but the unconscious we start with when we begin to meditate: a mixture of poison, power and nectar.  Through the churning we separate out what the years have added to the psyche, trying to get at the immortal primal self or soul that underlies it.  The power and the poison are like nature and nurture, creating the content of the ocean, while the nectar is our bare essence.  If anything, we start with the amrita, and acquire the poison through our experience.  This “creation” myth esoterically interpreted is actually its opposite, a myth of “uncreation.”  I can’t help but think of the gnostic ascent, in which as the soul ascends upwards it sheds the influence of the planets (symbolical of the personality traits), getting lighter and lighter until only the bare soul stands before God.

            As I’ve covered most of this Canto, so its fitting that I end with its final image: Vishnu incarnated as a giant fish.  I’ve been reading Jung’s Mysterium Coniunctionis, and he dedicates some space to fish symbolism, emphasizing the unblinking quality of its eyes.  This appears in two forms, either the constellated form (many eyes, often appearing as stars), and a singular form (the eye of God).  Given the aquatic nature of this whole chapter, and thereby its connection to the unconscious, we can describe the various forces of the psyche that appear in it as the constellated unconscious; the autonomous complexes and forms which have to be resolved, i.e., fight it out, that their energy may be reclaimed.  If you’ve seen the movie Inception (which I heartily recommend), you may remember the moments where the unblinking eyes of the “projections” turn upon the dreamer – that’s the constellated unconscious.  The ocean of milk here is separated (as light from darkness) into the poison, the powers, and the nectar.  The differentiation requires a new order to be created; paradise cannot be regained once we have tasted the fruit and we have to find a new wholeness, and perhaps a new relationship with ourselves.  A battle must be fought in the mind for dominance, aka unification, of the world. And at the end the text presents as its last image of the chapter something that seems to have little to do with the rest of the story – God incarnating as a giant fish, with its unblinking eye, the eye of God.  This, as Jung would no doubt agree, is a symbol of the Self, the totality, now swimming dominantly in the ocean of the unconscious, whose unblinking gaze the newly reconstructed ego (like the enlightened Bali) can never again hide from.  The Self has become One whole, One mind, One God, and though the battles go on, even the generals of the forces of evil now know that there is a place for the good and the evil in the hands of God.

Stories from the Bhagavata Purana: Part I

            There’s a fascinating Hindu creation story in the Bhagavata Purana which Swamiji recently brought to my attention.  The Bhagavata is a rather long Vaishnava work, mostly detailing Vishnu’s (as Krishna) various incarnations but containing a wealth of other stories.  The 8^th Skanda, or Canto, called “Withdrawal of the Cosmic Creations” is particularly interesting to me, as it contains the story of the Churning of the Ocean of Milk.  You may have heard of it before, but I’d like to analyze it in a bit more depth.  It’s an important story, often told in a simplified form to children, but it is also a rich source of traditional exegesis, as well plenty of fodder for my own more modern interpretation.  I’ll retell part of the story here, and hopefully we’ll get at some of the underlying archetypal currents.  Before I get to the Milk story however, I’d like to start with the opening of the Canto, which superficially seems to have rather little to do with the rest of it (other than establishing the setting), but is very valuable in its own right.

            The Canto begins with the depiction of a setting much resembling Paradise, or the Primal Garden.  It is a mountain of three peaks rising out of an Ocean of Milk.  In this “garden” there is perfect harmony, lots of beautiful flowers, and peace among the inhabitants.  This peace is largely due to the power of the Elephant King Gajendra, who protects the small animals from the larger.  One day, he comes across a pool of refreshing water, and being a family man, brings his family along for a dip and drink on the hot day.  Being lost in the thoughts of his family, his foot is grabbed by a crocodile in the water.  All the other elephants come to help, but they can’t drag Gajendra out, as none is as at home in the water as the Crocodile.  Gajendra, realizing that no one can help him, surrenders himself to the Supreme One, and in so doing so is saved, the Crocodile being cut in half by the Lord’s power.  He then goes about the island praising the Lord, doing mantra and sacrificing, etc.  He then receives the further grace of remembering his past incarnation (something not normally allowed to animals) as a ascetic yogi who in meditation failed to rise to greet an ancient Rishi (seer), and was thus cursed by him to incarnate as an elephant.  He is then taken up as an associate of Krishna, and is allowed to ride upon the back of Garuda, the King of the Eagles.

            The story completely shifts course after this, but before I go further, I want to take apart what we’ve already seen.  Firstly, the Garden is the primal creation, the world before the Fall in the Abrahamic religions. It represents a state of innocence, and we can interpret the myth of the Fall as an awakening to consciousness - the eating from the tree of knowledge, prompted by that wise old serpent (that's the gnostic interpretation anyway).  In the Bhagavata, there's a similar "bliss in ignorance" (as we see, the elephant does not really know his own nature at first), and everything appears harmonious and without conflict. 

            As we have seen, the harmony is partially based on the efforts of Gajendra, the elephant King.  Things appear orderly, but we know there's more in the world than the innocent elephants know, and not all of it is good. The elephant is the traditional Indian symbol for the earth element and the root chakra, being large, physically powerful, and as immovable as a mountain. The elephant is stability, has ties to our roots (an elephant never forgets), and here the King of the Elephants is also described as a house-holder, connecting him with family life (the in-group, or tribe).  It is this that gets him in trouble, the text tells us.  By enjoying his family he is distracted and fails to notice the danger in the water.  He is, we might say, unconscious of it.  Water here is a crucial symbol, one which C.G. Jung never fails to connect to the unconscious and the irrational part of us that lurks under the surface.  It is an ambivalent symbol, as the unconscious is so incomprehensibly vast.  It is the nourishing, sustaining, life-giving water, the font of renewal (baptism), the creative power, as well as the keeper of our secrets, the place where our Shadow dwells, and can be full of unexpected dangers, symbolized by the Crocodile.  Gajendra brings his family to the water to rest and relax, to restore from the hot day.  Water also represents the feminine or relational quality (usually unconscious in men), which appears as Gajendra’s distraction by the familial relationships.  He is unable to see what lurks under the calm surface.  We may remember the Greek Narcissus, who caught his own image (the reflection in his unconscious, his persona) in the water, was fascinated and drowned.  Here, the elephant, the strongest of beasts, is caught as well, and begins a mighty struggle to extricate himself.  But, not being a water animal (the conscious ego is not the native inhabitant of the unconscious), he can’t free himself under his own power.  Neither can outside forces help him.  It is only by surrender to a higher power, a Redeemer, which Jung would call the image of the complete Self (not in the sense of the soul or atman, but in the sense of the totality of the psyche, conscious plus unconscious), that he is able to get free.  We might say that he then “gets some religion.”  His further grace of remembering his past incarnation is also worth commenting on.  He was once human, and because he was too lofty a yogi (who couldn’t even bother to pay attention to his surroundings – life on Earth), was given an animal form, specifically the symbolic animal of the Earth.  In other words, he is made to descend.  But by his struggle in the waters, he is uplifted, and his ego is understood and transcended. He ceases to identify merely with the conscious ego, but with more of his whole Self.

            The lowest chakra is the Muladhara, or "root support" Chakra, and in Hindu mythology the world is said to be supported by elephants, and they symbolize Earth.  The second chakra is connected to water, and is emotional and fascinating (sex is an important association).  So we see here Gajendra stepping up into the second chakra, symbolized by being pulled into the water.  After his struggle, he dedicates himself to spiritual work, what we might call tapas.  This is connected to the internal flame of motivation and purification (Sulphur in alchemy), and the fiery 3^rd or egotic chakra.  By grace he is given knowledge of past lives, which effectively overthrows the limited egotic point of view (psychologically, we might say he becomes aware of other 'selves').  He recognizes that he is a high soul, who, because of past karma, has been brought low (to the earth).  By this, he is upraised by Krishna, who is said to rule the heart, and is given the privilege of riding upon the back of the Eagle King Garuda, a clear symbol of air. Air is the element of the 4th or heart chakra.  We may say, in total, that the story of Gajendra is the story of a man who rises high spiritually, but who is forced to “come back down to earth” before he may once again ascend, this time higher than before.  For many of us, this is what working with the chakra system is like.  It makes you start at the beginning, to get humble and dirty down in the gritty earth, before we can rise up again on the back of Garuda the Eagle. 

            I bring up the chakras because I’ll be starting a 7 week Chakra Cycle in my Sunday 10am Open Level Flow with Meditation class next week (4/10).  I hope to include a post on each of the Chakras as we progress through each, and it is helpful to understand them as symbols associated with very real psychic contents.  Stories like the above can be very useful in understanding the psychic processes that can result from meditation on these powerful symbols.  As this post has gotten lengthy, I’ll break it up and discuss the Ocean of Milk next time. 

Government Regulation of Yoga Teacher Training

I want to take a moment to respond to a recent blog post by Darla Magee in the popular yoga blog YogaDork. (Go ahead, read it – It’s short and I’ll wait.) While I often enjoy the light-hearted and occasionally silly posts, this one somewhat irritated me.  It concerns a new initiative by the Texas government to regulate Yoga Teacher Trainings in that state, under the jurisdiction of the Texas Workforce Commission which regulates post-secondary education (post high school, specifically vocational education).  I should note that this government organization specifically exempts dance, physical fitness and martial arts training from their purview, as these are non-vocational – in other words, they are not intending to train you to perform a job.  While clearly teacher trainings can prepare you for working as a teacher trainer, this is not the only reason people undertake them.  Furthermore, not only do many people who go through a training never teach professionally, a significant portion of the training hours usually covers philosophy, spiritual practices, and classic texts which are rarely taught, if ever, in a standard yoga class.

            Magee’s main argument in support of such regulation is that there are yoga teachers out there right now who clearly do not know what they’re doing.  She seems to believe that government regulation will fix this problem, and not only that – she seems to believe that it will help spread yoga to more people.  She writes: “Imagine getting the Federal Government to bring yoga to the military! Imagine getting your health insurance to pay for your classes! Imagine government money and student loans for teacher training! For all of these reasons and so many more, the state’s acknowledgment of yoga opens many doors toward making yoga mainstream, accessible, and affordable to all.”

            Without getting too deeply into the debate about what “yoga” is anyway (is it a spiritual practice and therefore protected from government interference under the Constitution, or is it just Zumba with Indian spice?) I want to point out why Ms. Magee’s view is superficial, economically naïve, and ultimately detrimental to the diversity and spread of yoga. 

            Who really thinks that state bureaucrats are even remotely qualified to regulate yoga?  (Let alone TEXAS state bureaucrats!)  How will they define yoga?  How will they regulate the curriculum?  How can they possibly be in the place to offer any guidance on this ancient tradition? With the abundance of styles, points of emphasis, how is it possible to really regulate such a thing effectively?  Consider meditation alone – is it part of the yoga practice?  If so, how much time should be allocated to it in a 200 hour training?  More importantly, how can a bureaucratic committee, which may not even include a single person with meditation or yoga experience possibly make such a distinction.  It may be fairly argued that the regulations can be kept fluid, much like the Yoga Alliance’s standards, but if that’s the case I don’t see the point of regulation.  After all, the Yoga Alliance has become the de facto industry standard unless laws are passed to make the teaching of yoga illegal without having graduated from a state certified training.  This leads to further complications caused by varying state standards, not to mention the potential embarrassment of the visiting authentic Indian yogis, whose only training may have been at the feet of their (unlicensed) guru, when they are fined for teaching yoga without being “qualified.”  The bag of worms is deep indeed.

            A perhaps more important question is why the State is getting involved anyway?  Have you heard of a spat of recent yoga accidents?  I haven’t.  Sure, there are bad teachers out there, even a few who may be dangerously negligent. But knee-jerk regulation is not the way to go.  Bad teachers, like bad anything else, will soon find themselves moving on to another line of work.  A few bad apples should not require that the government should inspect every apple tree.  Are state bureaucrats such passionate yogis themselves that they really care about making sure that yoga is properly taught?  Clearly not.  But if you look at what regulation of yoga schools actually means, the motivation becomes clear:  it allows the state to charge licensing fees to yoga studios who offer teacher training programs. 

 

            I have to assume that the financial factor is what Ms. Magee meant when she said she was “bowing out and taking my money with me once I got a look at the real motives of those who are most loudly protesting”.  Clearly this writer was absolutely disgusted with the fact that studio owners might protest that their bottom line was adversely affected by the regulation.  Oh, those greedy yoga studios, always out to make a buck! As the owner of a small yoga studio in a small town, let me tell you that a teacher training program is financially a godsend, and in many cases is the difference between subsistence living and being able to pay off the debts incurred by opening the studio to begin with, not to mention the possibility of expansion.  And by expansion I don’t mean lavish new facilities, but the addition of classes, and yes, the hiring of yoga teachers other than the owners.  When New York tried to regulate training programs (and thankfully backed down), what it meant for my small business was that we would not be able to afford licensing (in New York, the proposed application fee was $5,000), and therefore we would not be able to afford to offer a program. I ask Ms. Magee – is it bad to want to be able to pay one’s bills, to make a living doing what one loves, to want to share yoga at the deeper level of a teacher training, and to do so independently?   I can also say that, as a business owner, if I can’t support my family through my business, I can’t hire other yoga teachers either.  That cuts down on the diversity of voices in the community, as well as the ability of individual yoga teachers to support themselves.  Sure, there’s gyms, but any experienced yogi can tell you the differences between a yoga class held at a gym, where philosophy and spirituality is often discouraged by the owners, and a class at a dedicated studio space which offers a different level of freedom to teachers. 

            The costs of regulation on small businesses might also mean that only the largest, big-name studios would be able to afford to train yogis.  Perhaps this is what Magee wants when she writes about wanting yoga to enter the mainstream.  But to me, this means the further branding of yoga, and the consolidation of yoga under certain companies and/or teachers.  As the largest studios are in the cities, it also means that one would have to be near a major city to complete a training.  Of course, the market will eventually adjust, and with the further concentration of revenue in the large studios, franchises offering training (under the same license as the main studio) might appear in small towns.  I would predict that this will make it harder for small businesses like mine, and may even drive up the cost of yoga in some areas. 

            Magee’s main argument in support of regulation is that it is equivalent to the state “recognizing” yoga, as if such a thing is needed.  She wants insurance companies to cover yoga, and student loans for trainings, etc.  A noble goal, certainly, but one which state governments do not have the power (or the interest) to enact.  New York State regulates Massage Therapy more strictly than just about any other state, and there are national standards as well.  Yet most insurance carriers still do not cover massage therapy.  Certainly, massage therapy is “recognized” by the government, and is possibly more accepted by physicians than yoga, but its recognition has done little to change the private sector, although it clearly generates revenue for the state.  This directly affects the cost of training, as the school must pay licensing fees on top of other expenses.  Different standards by state also means that tuition fluctuates wildly.  In Texas, for instance, the price of the 500 hr massage therapy training averages around $5000, while in New York, with its 1000 hr training can be over $20,000.  Ultimately, regulation does not make this practice more accessible, nor does it bring yoga into the light of mainstream awareness – yoga is already mainstream!  What it does do is streamline yoga, reducing diversity and intellectual (and spiritual) freedom by transferring control from the teachers and representatives of the tradition, who have an important stake in the discipline, to the state, which ultimately only cares about yoga for its potential revenue.  Yes, I'm aware that the state is only regulating trainings, not classes, but for a yoga teacher, what experience is more formative than a teacher training?

            I recognize that the Yoga Alliance often seems to have its head up its ass.  Regardless, they have successfully set the standard for 200 and 500 hr trainings, and I believe they are doing good thereby.  Yet even within Yoga Alliance certified trainings there is a tremendous variance of quality.  My studio’s training far exceeds  the minimum standards of the Yoga Alliance in terms of hours, as well as the rigor of the program.  I’ve also heard horror stories of some really, really bad teacher training programs which happen to be certified.  This is clearly a case of “buyer beware.”  Do your research before you throw down your hard-earned cash for a training – I did, and got exactly what I was looking for. 

            Regulation, in order to represent the diversity inherent in the yoga tradition, would substantially be no different than the Yoga Alliance, with the same flaws and problems.  The only difference would be the level of expense and its subsequent impact on small businesses, studio-contracted yoga teachers, and potential teachers looking for an affordable training.  Whatever qualitative problems may exist among yoga teachers, state regulation is clearly not the answer.

Thinking about Caturanga Dandasana

I've been terrible about keeping up with this blog lately, which I hope to remedy soon.  The reason is that I've been in 'research mode' looking into one of my favorite subjects, Renaissance and Medieval occultism, and in particular the 'angelic conversations' of Dr. John Dee and Edward Kelley.  This stuff fascinates me in a way little else can, and I hope to write a bit about this topic in the future.  For now, I have but a short post to sustain you.

As many of you have no doubt heard me complain, Sanskrit is a difficult language, and it is a constant struggle for me to learn it.  It doesn't help that the traditional way of studying the language is about as exciting as Ben Stein's voice, or that the study materials produced in India are inconsistent, full of errors, and in general a massive pain in the ass.  Part of my homework is "working up" new verbs that I come across in a notebook intended for that purpose.  The idea is to write out its numerous forms and conjugations for study and later reference.  Are you on the edge of your seat yet?

Anyway, while working up some verbs today, I came across a verb that relates to an asana that we might call "the bane of the beginners", चतुरण्ग दण्डासन or caturaṇga daṇḍāsana.  That strange half push-up which forms such an important part of the 'vinyasa', despite its Sanskrit name has been shown to likely be derived not from some ancient text, but from 19th century Indian gymnastics, and was an innovation brought into the yoga world by the great Krishnamacharya (teacher of B.K.S. Iyengar, Pattabhi Jois, among others), mostly as a way to get his young male students to work off their excess energy so they could sit for meditation.  Often called simply "caturaṇga", the full name caturaṇga daṇḍāsana means "4-legged stick or staff pose" wherein caturaṇga means 4-legged and daṇḍāsana means staff pose.  This comes from daṇḍa, meaning staff. 

Now the verb I mentioned earlier is दण्ड् or daṇḍ, meaning to punish.  दण्ड or daṇḍa is one of the noun forms of this verb, and is usually translated as stick.  Perhaps you see where I'm going with this.  This particular word for stick implies punishment, much like the connotations of the word "switch" in terms of a flexible branch used to discipline children.  I've heard stories from relatives of being made by their fathers to "go outside and fetch a switch" which is essentially the same as being made to aid and abet in one's own whipping.  Daṇḍa can essentially be translated as "the instrument of punishment."

Many are the struggles students have had to endure regarding this pose, whether due to an initial lack of upper body or core strength, a lack of bodily awareness, or in my case, just the horrors of relearning the pose correctly in teacher training (who knew the shoulder blades were supposed to squeeze together!?!).  It makes some people feel inadequate and others angry; its a pose few can claim to 'like'.  Towards that end, I'd like to offer a new translation for caturaṇga daṇḍāsana:

"Four-Legged Punishment Pose."

And certainly most serious yogis have had to pass through the stage of regarding it so.  But I also offer you hope, O ye who wouldst master the Mysteries of the Vinyasa, for by struggle (tapas) is the dross removed from the gold, and even the soul freed from its bondage in matter.  For if thou earnestly strengtheneth thy core, and if thou art mindful of  the working of thy thighs, nay even the deep muscles of the pelvic bowl as thou descendeth from Plank pose, and if thou tuckest thy tail bone, then shalt thou not only pass through the mysteries of the perfect caturaṇga daṇḍāsana, but thou shalt find much strength and sensitivity that thou mayest take unto all other asanas.  And so, by thy skill, thou shalt ascend even unto ūrdhva ḍhanurāsana, yea, even unto thy Upward Facing Dog. 

Daddy, Why do the Demons Howl?

[First, I want to say that what has happened in Egypt over the past few weeks has left me unbelievably moved.  I rarely get as emotional as I have while watching the crowds in Liberation Square, but when I heard Mubarak had finally resigned, I was on the verge of tears.  With the retreat of our own liberties over the past 10 years, the corruption of democracies like Russia's, I finally feel like the world is getting better for once.   The best part, at least to me, is that is shows the power of Ahimsa, or non-violence.  I applaud the restraint of the revolutionaries, and I must admit that after Thursday’s speech by Mubarak I really thought we’d see serious violence in the streets of Cairo yesterday.  Instead, we had fireworks.  Egypt, thank you for restoring my faith in humanity.  My heart is bursting with sympathy and pride for what you've accomplished.  Now without further ado, lets return to your regularly scheduled blog post.]

Yesterday during my Sanskrit lesson, a word came up that stirred up a whole lot of associative thought.  The word is रवणम्, ravaṇam, meaning “sound making”, or “howling”, from the root रु, ru, to howl, cry, shout, or scream.  I immediately connected this to the main villain of the Ramayana, रावण, and Swami was happy to confirm this derivation of the name.

Rāvaṇa, King of the रक्षस Rakṣasa, or “man eating demons” and part of the असुर Asura tribe or race.  Rāvaṇa is depicted in the Ramayana as utterly ruled by his passions, desires, and lower instincts, however he is extremely cunning and disciplined.  He is strong enough of will to have subjugated the Gods and the Worlds so that Viṣṇu must incarnate in the form of Rāma in order to defeat him and restore order to the Universe.  While Rāvaṇa was said to to have undergone countless austerities and vedic pūja (rituals) in order to gain the tremendous power he had, at the beginning of the Ramayana, that is all over and he has become a petty tyrant.  He is called “He who Makes the Universe Scream,” and he torments not only living beings but the elements themselves, all for his egotic pleasure.  He also screams and howls quite a bit himself at every set-back during the story. 

            A quick aside for those of you who are interested in Norse cosmology.  There’s a theory that the Asura are connected to the Aesir, one of the two tribes of the Gods, of which Odin is King.  In the Norse/Germanic tradition, there are two tribes the Aesir and the Vanir.  As it has been explained to me, the more nature-oriented Vanir were likely the gods of the native folk of Germany or Scandinavia, who were invaded by Indo-European tribes.  According to my understanding, there was a war between them, mythologized into a war between the gods, in which the Vanir were victorious.  The tribes exchanged married hostages, and there was a peace, but it seems at some point the Aesir became dominant in the beliefs of the people.  Interestingly, in India, something analagous occurred.  The Indo-Europeans invaded and subjugated the pre-Vedic people of the sub-continent, and they also brought their Gods.  I’m not familiar of there being an early war between the Asura and the native, again nature-oriented Devas (lit. “Shining Ones”), but in terms of who ended up dominant, this time it was the native dieties.  By the time of the Ramayana (roughly 200BCE), the Asura were considered materialistic, egoistic, status-conscious, and full of unseemly passion.  Although there are more noble Asura depicted in the Ramayana, Rāvaṇa becomes the model.  The Asura gods have lost their hold on the popular imagination, and the Rakṣasas take their place. 

            Regardless of the origin of his tribe, the linguistic origin of Rakṣasa is of interest when we think of a much maligned form of Western esotericism, the Goetia.  Looking into its linguisitic origins, Goetia seems to be medieval Latin derived from the Greek word for Sorcery (low magick, as it is sometimes called, as opposed to Theurgy).  However, there is an important tradition which holds its translation to be “howling.”  I haven’t been able to (in my extremely brief search of the internet) find any explanation of this derivation.  Olulo is the only Latin word for howl that I can find, and while it actually sounds much like the some of the 'Barbarous words of Invocation', it bears no relation to the word Goetia.  If anyone has any insight here, I’d love to hear it.  I’m pretty sure I know where I personally picked up the connection of “howling” to the Goetia – that fun-loving fiend, Aleister Crowley. 

            Of course, Crowley was referring to a specific type of Goetia, the kind depicted in the famous book, the Legemeton, aka, Clavicula Salomonis, aka, the Lesser Key of Solomon the King, aka, the Goetia.  This book is a grimoire, a book which proports to instruct the reader on summoning the 72 spirits which are described inside.   Crowley wrote a phenomenal essay on the subject, “The Initiated Interpretation of Ceremonial Magic”, as an introduction to his 1904 edition of the book.  I’ve always liked this interpretation of the Goetia, which is primarily psychological, even though I recognize that this was very early in Crowley’s career, and that the position he takes is one that he will increasingly abandon (although I’d argue, never completely give up).  The essential argument is that the various props (robes, incense, wands, etc) are all intended to effect the senses in such a way as to bring about certain mental phenomena, namely the Goetia.  Crowley unequivocally writes that “the spirits of the Goetia are portions of the human brain.”  In other words, they represent unconscious forces in the magician who attempts to summon them.  I should note that, should this be the case, it is a potent argument for both the traditional dangers of such an attempt (dredging up the unconscious is never ‘safe’), as well as its traditional benefits.  Psychology tells us plenty about the way “complexes” tie up the psychic energy of a person (Freud’s concept of the Libido).  If we can free this energy up, we would (according to Freud), have more mental energy at our disposal.  Therefore, such Goetic aims as learning “all arts and sciences", "what the Mind is”, or even to cause “Women to love Men, and to bring them together in Love.”  How does that work?  Well, if we work out our issues, we’re much more likely to be happy in love.  The point is that we can make use of the vast area of the mind that is the unconscious, whose forces, according to Carl Jung, always appear to be ‘other’ than the self.  Evocation of a spirit then, is a potential means of dealing with these unruly forces.  It's also, if you are predisposed to psychosis, a recipe for disaster and even schizophrenia.  
            William James, in his phenomenal classic The Varieties of Religious Experience made a wonderful case for arguing for a psychological understanding of mysticism, but in such a way as to not merely reduce mystical experience to fantasy, but showing its direct impact on the real world.  He writes "Yet the unseen region in question is not merely ideal, for it produces effects in this world.  When we commune with it, work is actually done upon our finite personality, for we are turned into new men, and consequences in the way of conduct follow in the natural world upon our regenerative change. But that which produces effects within another reality must be termed a reality itself, so i feel as if we had no philosophic excuse for calling the unseen or mystical world unreal." (p561)

            Many people have compared the Goetia to the Jinn of Islamic cultures.  Jinn, according to Wikipedia, comes from a Arabic word meaning “hidden”, and that certainly would apply to “other-like” forces of the unconscious.  The Jinn share an additional mythic commonality with the spirits of the Goetia, they are both said to have been trapped or enslaved by the biblical King Solomon in a "vessel of brass". Entering into the legends of the West, the Jinn became the Genie, coming from the Latin, genius, and the "vessel of brass" became the Genie's lamp. The Latin genius was originally considered as an outside force which inspired a person, rather than a quality of a person.  For an excellent talk on this distinction, I refer you to this amazing Ted talk by Elizabeth Gilbert.  I never read Eat, Pray, Love, (and probably never will) but this talk was great.  

            This understanding of Genius as appearing as outside inspiration gives a positive twist on these unconscious forces.  But this notion didn’t originate with the Romans, but with the Greeks.  In Greek, Genius is Daimon or Daemon, which is where we get our word ‘demon’. Socrates famously talks about his Daimon, which seems to have some sort of veto power over his actions, in the Apology.  Similarly, in the Symposium, Eros is declared to not be a god, but a daimon.  In Greece, daimon was a rather neutral, or even positive concept, much like the Jinn.  Both types of hidden forces can appear as good, evil, or indifferent.  In many ways, these spirits were considered to be very human-like, even if usually immortal.  The spirits of the Goetia are usually described similarly by those who have dabbled into that questionable art. 

            There is another ‘species’ of spirits we should consider, if only to contrast – angels.  This word comes from the Greek angelos, or messenger.  Messenger of what?  Of God of course, which was considered to be the highest Good.  We have here the appearance of dualism – the increasing fixation of the Absolute World of God, so important in Neo-Platonism and Christianity.  There are “spirits of the air” (air is almost always esoterically associated with mind) everywhere, and some are worldly, some are messengers from God.  As worldliness became synonymous with ungodliness, impurity, and sin, the worldly spirits transformed from daimons to demons.   There became a division between the “messengers” and those who “howl.”  We can see this play out in the way demons are consistently depicted as dark and animal-like, and angels human-like, and effulgent.  (For more on that, see my previous post).

            While ultimately both can be seen as unconscious energies manifesting as “outside forces”, this distinction can be used to classify these things, perhaps unfairly, into two camps.  In Christianity, we’d see them as Angelic and Infernal, but for our purposes lets call them “worldly” and “transcendent”.  Yoga teaches us (rightly) that the worldly impulse takes us away from peace, from clarity about ourselves and our universe, by stirring up the citta vṛttis, the modifications of the mind.  The citta here is analogous to the Libido of Freud (not in its popular sexual connotation), as the sum total of the energy of the mind.  This energy gets whipped up by the senses, ‘modified’ into thoughts.  The word for modify is vṛtti which also means to revolve.  Swami Vivekananda describes these as ‘whirlwinds’ of the mind.  The ideal yogic state, according to the Yoga Sutras, is when these whirlwinds are completely stilled, so that the true nature of the Self is reflected by the still citta.  Devotional practices towards some ideal is a prescribed method towards this end.  Such messengers as angels may be useful, as they have been in inspiring many saints.  Spirits connected to worldly desires (concentrating the unconscious on such desires), would therefore lead to a rather uncalm mind, a sort of self-made 'hell'.  Maybe even one that howls. It is interesting to note that the method of the Lesser Key of Solomon is to first invoke one's own personal Daimon, (from the invocation "angelos ton Theon", angel of God), with faith in its authority over the 'lesser spirits' of the Goetia.

            Of course the final consideration is personal – do I want a quiet mind, or do I want to satisfy my unceasing worldy desires?  But I think that question may well be a false one.  As Sri Ramakrishna says repeatedly of Brahman, “He has become everything.”  Including the howling mad forces of worldly life.  While conventions like this dualistic ways of judging our deepest unconscious thoughts and impulses (some leading up, some down) may be useful in the gaining of self-control and attaining yogic states, they are just that, conventions.  Ultimately, these ways of looking at the world (or any ways of looking at the world) are illusory, are Maya. I think the truth is larger, grander, and stranger than any duality (including Yoga) can accurately describe.