The Essential Yoga Sutra Page 6

  Linked to the winds in this channel run all our good thoughts: caring for others, watching what they want and need, and most important the realization that this in itself will literally create a perfect world.

  The three channels are joined together below the area of our navel. Simply reading and understanding the words on this page sucks inner wind, or prana, out of the troublesome side channels and directs it into the pure central channel. This in turn further reveals to us the workings of earth and stars.

  You must realize that the true purpose of all physical yoga practice is to guide inner wind out of the side channels and into the central channel. This triggers our progress through all five paths, especially the direct perception of ultimate reality.

  When all the inner wind dissolves into the central channel, the body changes from flesh to light, and you stand upon all worlds.

  As they follow the central channel up the body, the two side channels twist around it at certain spots, like vines. This creates choke points that obstruct the flow of winds within the central channel, thus hindering the sweet and wise thoughts linked to these winds.

  During the development of the inner channels within the fetus, pressure builds up at these choke points, and secondary channels spurt out from them. Looking down the spine, these are seen radiating out like the spokes of a wheel. Thus they are called chakras, from the Sanskrit word for “wheel.”

  The first wheel to form in the womb is at the navel. Eventually an entire network develops, and the very structure of our skeleton, blood vessels, and nervous system forms around the channels, like ice around the contours of a twig. This means that any physical ailment we ever have can be traced to the channels, and cured, with understanding.

  Turning this understanding upon the chakra at the neck allows us, in time, to overcome even the need to eat. We gradually control all five physical senses, which are tied to five secondary winds such as the “turtle” wind, responsible for hearing and related to our turtle-shaped liver.

  The inner wheels, or chakras, begin as choke points, but the very act of focusing upon them with understanding releases the tightness of the two side channels wrapped around them.

  Think of the inner wind, or prana, within the three main channels as being a certain fixed amount, like the air inside a toy animal made of long thin balloons. If you squeeze the tummy, the legs get fatter.

  If you work on a choke point with thoughts of knowledge and caring for others, inner wind leaves the side channels that caused the choke point in the first place. The chakra then becomes a center of radiance and high spiritual realizations.

  Using this method, we can release a radiant, white, honeylike substance within the chakra at the tip of our head. This triggers worldly powers, and then divine ones. Again, all the powers ultimately support and also spring from a clear understanding of the seeds as they create the world.

  Within the chakra at the heart lies an indestructible drop of consciousness, infinitely smaller than the tip of a needle. Herein lies the storehouse of billions of seeds, projecting forth our life. When this chakra heart is opened, ultimate love bursts forth as crystal light.

  It's a lot easier to deal with the misunderstanding of our outer reality, which runs in the sun channel, than to correct the misunderstanding of the person—meaning ourselves—which runs in the moon channel.

  Take the outer reality of a pen, for example. If I hold a pen up to you and ask you what it is, you automatically say “A pen.” And in that split second you also believe that it's a pen from its own side. You think that “pen-ness” is somehow coming out of the pen itself.

  But if we hold the same object up to a dog, he simply sees it as a mildly interesting stick: perhaps something good to chew on.

  A moment's reflection tells us that neither view of the object is more “correct.” And we also quickly see that “pen-ness” is not exuding from the pen. Rather, “pen” is a perfect little idea-picture imposed upon a shiny cylinder by my own mind. And which picture my mind comes up with all depends on the seeds—on how I've treated others.

  That's in fact what makes me a human, and the dog a dog. Even the question of whether you can think these ideas is coming from the seeds.

  The ability to understand a simple pen then is a powerful tool that allows us to go behind reality and make adjustments at its very core: sort of like having the source code for a computer program, or working on an organism at the level of its genetic code.

  The distances at which we can hear two other people having a conversation is an example. If a certain number of feet were inherently the number of feet at which we can no longer hear what they're saying, then someone standing next to us who has much more acute hearing than us shouldn't be able to hear them either. Just like the pen and the dog.

  And so rather than bringing about some miraculous change in our ability to hear, we simply replace the seeds in our own mind that are creating the limit at which we can hear. A hundred feet becomes two feet, and we can listen to people talking two houses down the street.

  This could obviously drive you mad, and make activities like sleep and meditation impossible. Generally speaking, we are automatically protected by the fact that such powers are only gained through the desire to use them to serve others.

  We dearly love our bodies of flesh and blood, but imagine how they would seem to a person whose body had already changed to light. Sort of a slimy prison. A dangerous place to be stuck in.

  Incidentally, you maintain the general outer form of a human being when your body does change. Other people (remember the pen and the dog) might even see you the same as before. You and others like you, though, see you as the most exquisite being you can imagine right now, magnified a thousand times over.

  And so sometimes the body of light is called the “rainbow” body, because from a distance a rainbow looks like solid stuff, but up close you can pass your hand through it: no more guts and blood.

  Since a dog in the end is only the seeds to see things as a dog, a person again who really understands seeds could take on various outer forms, and appear to be born as various different people, if this would help us. He knows it's easier for us, on a day-to-day level, to relate to someone fairly much like ourselves. And so at the beginning he comes to us that way.

  When the inner winds race to a specific part of the body and gather there, even momentarily, to perform a necessary bodily function, we identify them as one of the five primary winds.

  The first of these, the “pervasive” wind, covers the entire body, governing the flow of all other winds to whatever place they are needed. The “life” wind maintains life itself and also the passage of breath. The “downward-clearing” wind ensures the elimination of feces and urine.

  The “upward-running” wind mentioned here relates to eating and speaking, also assisting the upward movement of any other wind. When with knowledge of seeds we gain mastery over this wind, we can move quickly—even over obstacles like lakes or thick brush—if someone needs help. In our final evolution, we pass through planets and galaxies at the speed of thought—the speed of a seed ripening.

  The final primary wind “resides together” with both digestive fire and mystic fire near the navel. On the first level, it distills nutrients from food and distributes them throughout the body. On the second level, it triggers a downward flow of the radiant nectar from the tip of the head, engendering knowledge, bliss, and our angelic transformation.

  The word here for “space” had three meaning in ancient times. One was simply sky, space, the distance between things.

  The second meaning, as we've mentioned before, was place itself: that unchanging thing which objects enter, stay in, and then exit.

  The third was space in the sense of the void that's left when you find out that something you thought was there never was. The feeling you get when you reach into your pocket after a meal at an expensive restaurant and realize you've left your wallet at home.

  We get the same feeling of a
bsence when we realize that everything around us is not coming at us, but from us. Seeing how this space allows us to hear, seeing how this space allows our body to be there, allows us again to adjust the “switches” on both these objects. Unheard switched to heard, heavy switched to light.

  Again we use the resulting powers first to help a limited number of people. As we grow, the number becomes infinite. All the powers evolve this way—from mundane, to helpful, to enlightened. In the end the mind flies free through the sky of what was never there anyway.

  These lines mark the point at which the combined effort of stillness and understanding has been sustained for so long that we undergo the final transformation, into a being who can serve all worlds. At this point we will have four distinct parts, or bodies.

  In a way, we already possess the first part of an angel, and we always have. It is the simple fact that we are not what we are: you are not the person they give that word, your name. Rather, the name—the seed picture—came first, and then made you you. Since you are not you any other way, you are available to become something else—an angel. And you always have been. This is your first body.

  When we grasp that the way we look—our physical appearance— is also available in the same way, we begin the hard work of collecting enough seeds to change the actual physical elements of our body into those of the angel.

  There is a traditional list of eight low-level powers that we can use to help others in a limited way: the ability to shrink and pass through a crack, or to lighten your body and fly through the air—the types of powers mentioned earlier.

  By this stage though we have reached the ultimate evolution of these powers, which is the second body of the angel: billions of different physical forms that we send out. Imagine the ability to appear as a pet dog to a lonely person, or even as their favorite television show.

  Then imagine filling an entire world with different beings, all interacting with each other; plus all the things they use every day. For a finished yogi, the first is considered “small” stuff; the second is “lightweight.”

  And so I really could be the last person left here who hasn't turned into an angel.

  At the center of all these forms that the angel is sending out sits the “home” body. This is the third body, the paradise body, exquisite and indestructible. And she will never leave us, until we become her.

  So far we have attained three bodies: the “emptiness” body, which makes all the other ones possible, plus two physical bodies: one that we send out in infinite forms; and another that we stay in ourselves, within our heaven.

  The fourth body then is the body of what our mind will become. Our sense powers take hold of objects and then report back to the mind. The mind, as we'll see more fully in the last chapter, is like a mirror, assuming the form or aspect of whatever the senses present to it. When you see a red apple, a part of your mind is in a sense imbued with redness.

  It takes a split second for the mind to identify the objects presented to it—including organizing thought-sounds into thought-words. So in one way we're always a split second behind what's going on around us, but the principal character, mind, is so quick that we never notice.

  In the last chapter we'll see how the true nature of every part of this process is that it's still coming from the mind. Understanding this allows us to reach the fourth body: the power to know all things.

  The Master again summarizes the only way that we could reach the four bodies of an angel. In the end, the mind underlies all things— projecting everything we are aware of even ourselves. At the end, the mind then fulfills its true capacity, of seeing directly every one of these objects—past, present, or future.

  In one final mental twist, we need to understand that even our understanding of how all this works is itself a projection: a mental picture presented to our mind when extraordinarily rare and powerful seeds break open.

  The ideas presented in Master Patanjali's little book on yoga, especially the description of the powers that we've just covered, are coming from you. Whether you grasp these ideas to fulfill the destiny of this world, or whether it all seems a little far-fetched this afternoon, is also coming from you.

  Understanding this emptiness of understanding itself has the effect of destroying billions of old negative seeds within our mind. This in itself takes us a long way toward the final goal: total purity.

  The minute you first picked up this book, you attracted the attention of some very important people: everyone who has studied the book in the last two thousand years, and understood it, and practiced it, and become the angel.

  Simply by thinking the ideas we've read about so far, you have become part of a certain family of people. People who are very concerned about the pain of the world. People who have the spark of high understanding somewhere within them. Who believe that, somehow, there must be a key to stopping death and unhappiness altogether.

  We said that we had to understand understanding itself; that it too is coming from seeds. And the only seeds it can come from are planted by wanting to be the one who rescues all the rest of us.

  As your powers grow, and you evolve, your own physical and emotional pain will of course begin to disappear. There's a point at which you may get trapped, thinking to stop at that.

  But then, you see, these important people will show themselves to you, and invite you into the higher family, which acts only for the happiness of the entire family—of livingkind.

  There are three crucial moments at the end, when we gain all four bodies.

  The first is the last moment in which we are still not the angel: we are in what is called “the wisdom of the final instant.”To get here we have seen the ultimate directly, on the Path of Seeing, briefly. And then we have worked our way up through seven levels, using what we saw, and discriminating—in the sense of staying aware that even now the way things look to us is not the way they really are.

  During three more levels we need no longer discriminate this way: we no longer have the seeds for things to even appear to us in the wrong way. This brings us to that final moment; we cross over; and in the next moment we have this new knowledge—the power to know all things—born from the last three levels.

  For one split second, we sit in but one exquisite body, in paradise. And then, because of the prayer we have made for countless lifetimes—to serve others—we without a single thought appear on all worlds, angelic.

  Before we reach the final goal, it is completely impossible to be in an experience of ultimate reality and still be experiencing the normal, deceptive reality around us now. And for us to experience ultimate reality, we must be in a state of deep meditation. And so we cannot help anyone if we are not practicing how to meditate ourselves, every day.

  In a sense all things come from this basic ability to discriminate between the way we always thought things were happening and the way we realize they are really happening.

  Even at very high levels then we can only alternate between seeing ultimate reality during deep meditation and being in deceptive reality at other times. This changes when we reach the body of the angel: then, and only then, we can see all things, and all creatures in the world, and love them completely, serve them, and in the same moment see their higher reality, absolute emptiness.

  This very knowledge and love plants pure seeds that sustain it into the next moment, at which time its very existence again plants the seeds for it to be there in the following moment, on through eternity, total purity.

  The first chapter took us down the five paths, to perfection. The next two chapters took us there through the eight limbs. The final chapter now takes us through the mental details to the same place.

  There are many ways to the special powers we mentioned. If a person is very attached to his house, for example, then after he dies he may return as a spirit or ghost chained to the house, with powers like walking through walls.

  Deceased people in the spirit world, waiting for their next life, automatically gain si
milar powers, and try to contact loved ones. This existence and its powers also end, by nature, within seven weeks.

  One can moreover gain special powers and visions using herbs or drugs, or through extreme practices like sleep deprivation or drastic fasting. Or one can utter special spells to fly or pick up fire.

  The problem with all these methods is that they simply cannot be sustained at will. We must instead master deep meditation, and see that the qualities which all things possess actually come from our seeds. Then we must quietly, happily, and steadily tend the garden of our own minds, to produce paradise.

  The one most important power from the last chapter was the ability to emanate, or send ourselves out to help one person, and later on infinite people. Each requires a certain state of mind called the “emanation state.” We can only enter this state because its nature too is that it is produced by our kindness toward others.

  A popular exercise in ancient times for seeing that things actually come from us was called “neither one nor many.” You can't see a car without looking at its parts. But you can have all of the parts of a car and still not have a car—so the parts are not the car.

  So if the parts you need to see aren't the car, then where is the car itself coming from? Needless to say, two or three such cars.

  Grasp this about your mind itself—grasp this about the idea to send out countless clones of yourself to help people—and you are halfway there.