About me
I am a mere disciple and absolutely unimportant. Anything I knew and experienced I owe to my mentors and my Guru, the Great Master and Sage, Patanjali, also called Gonardiya, also called Gonikaputra, also called Ananta
So what IS important?
To ask at least two questions:
What are we? & What is the Path?
Before we consider what the Path might be, we should contemplate on the first question. Many of us think, humans are very important and funnily enough, they are not wrong. However, the spark of the Source of Creation is in every living being. But then, what makes humans special?
Out of all realms of existence, even if humans are not the only ones who can reach enlightenment, for us, it is definitely a possibility whereas other entities are less fortunate.
Actually, I've had a conversation with a Sadhu in India about this topic and we agreed, every living being is capable to a degree to attain enlightenment, but humans are uniquely capable!
This might not be so obvious for many, and they are not to blame. Considering the world we created, the whole concept of us "being unique" may seem absurd given observable human behaviour: the systemic suffering we generate, the demonic corruption we normalize, the distance between our potential and our deployment... It is easy to be disheartened or to fail seeing the human entity for what it really is. How is this gargantuan dissonance possible?
It is possible solely because we do not investigate deeply enough:
What are we?
When we practice REAL Yoga, it means we utilize tools and exercises to find a way to our final subjectum. Or Soul, if we are to use Christian terminology.
Those who do not do this in any way.. well, for them it is impossible to walk
the Path.
Let's begin with ourselves! Here in the Western World, this should be very easy because we live a very individualistic lifestyle, so if we are not too toxic, we may even have some advantage. For Eastern nations, the concept of "I" is very alien.
"What am I?"
"I", is not really a person. Not truly.
You won't find name or form in the centre.
Unfortunately I cannot tell you what will you find because that's impossible.
And even if it wouldn't be impossible, I'd rather let you to find it yourself.
Initially, you will find loads of thoughts, many emotions, many memories, lots of likes and dislikes, but you will not find an "I".
So shift the question: Instead of "What am I?" investigate "What is this?"
No-thinking is the way to no-I.
This is entry to the Path.
When we enter the Path we shall begin looking at the real human situation and impermanence. So it is time to lay down the very facts and investigate the structure of our existence.
The moment of conception is when body and consciousness becomes connected. Conceiving is when the first contact established. Depending on the karma of the mother and the karma of the father, they invite a being.
Their union seals what nature's infinite intelligence has set in motion: new mind joining new body, the blueprint written in an instant.
This sealing is birth.
Then birth unfolds into life.
Life=Mind+Body, they ARE together. Truly. From this point onward, whatever happens to the mind also happens to the body, and whatever happens to the body, also happens to the mind. During the courses we will talk about this in great detail but for now, you can easily confirm this just thinking of your own experiences. How your blood pressure goes up if you strongly imagine a turbulent scenario, how your stomach tightens up if you are worried, how you may smiled involuntarily when you thought of a sweet memory...
At birth, our little journey through time and space begins.
Although in our mothers tummy, we don't have the senses for that, nor the will, nor the freedom. But once we become independent we believe we have more freedom!
However, being born, we still do not really possess time and space experience because senses are just opening up and not really awake. Life comes later, when senses sharpen and sentience arrives.
Despite Abrahamite doctrines, there is no sin involved in any of this.
Only Nature.
...and being sentient is a choice.
The question only is: How much aware were we when we made that choice?
Safe to say, most of us do not remember at all.
If you may to walk The Path, you'll eventually have to stop seeing things as
good and bad, and see things for what they really are.
Discover impermanence. This will be important later.
Being an infant, life is not too complicated as our functions are only blossoming in this new form. We eat plenty, sleep loads, cry loud and poop our pants. Hopefully we cuddle a lot too and discover the act of smiling mimicking our mother.
But we develop at a very rapid pace and around year 3, the intellect opens up.
We attain language slowly, we like things and dislike others, discovering the dynamics of our inner and outer world. We develop a sense of "I".
What we brought here is not actually very mysterious.
The question is our awareness and even more so, our availability.
Fast forward, life goes by and we get sick.
Decay comes, death comes and life ends.
The mind heavily depends on the body because they become very closely connected, sometimes the mind even identifies with the body, especially this day and age. And so, as the body is declining, the mind follows and the functions drop at an alarming rate.
Old people are less coherent and clever, more forgetful and as their mind deteriorates, emotions become exaggerated and frail and they are easy to manipulate or offend.
ONLY BECAUSE
Remember? What happens to the body happens to the mind, and what happens to the mind happens to the body also.
In reality, ONLY the body gets old.
The dying process and the anomalies we experience during this very process is when body and mind start their separation. Once the connection is severed, one goes one way, the other goes the other way.
Prana (life energy) links body and mind together (and make no mistake, body mind and energies are still belong to the realm of human physicality, only more and more subtle and intricate).
Prana is "moved" by breathing.
This is why any spiritual practice anywhere in the world despite differing cultural connotations watches the breath, to experience the unity of body and mind, which is very true as long as we are alive.
If you do not watch your breath, attaining and understanding what life is
is not possible.
Also you won't be able to get familiar with the nature and dynamics of life and death. How could you?
The breath is the crux to attain the moment. We will come back to this.
So basically the dying process is totally the opposite of the birthing process.
Diffusion of body and mind. In the state of death, you have no-body. If you practice really really hard, you can also have no-mind.
In Yoga we call this Chitta Vritti Nirodha. The total severance of
mind-fluctuations. Which will result in the absolute freedom we call Moksha/Mukti/Kaivalya
I would like to interject and quickly mention what you already sense: real Yoga and Practice is NOT SIMILAR to the abomination they call "yoga" nowadays, but later I will get into this topic in depth so nobody will be able to fool you in the future and you won't waste your resources (mainly your precious lifespan) on charlatans and useless buffoonery.
Back to absolute freedom!
...where there is no mind, no body, no right or wrong, no birth or death.
Most of us never get to this point because in our lives we have different priorities and interests.
Other things like what should we have for dinner, who got together with who, what titles we hoard and how big the bedroom is...
seem to be more important than attaining freedom maxima, union with the Source of Creation and enlightenment.
Fair enough. Each to their own.
For this reason, upon death, the mind goes nowhere and indeed it has a content.
The discretionary mind we call Manas (which receives sensory input, selects, filters, compares, decides what to attend to and hands over data upward to a different dimension of consciousness), stops functioning altogether because it is heavily linked to the body. But the mind still carries:
Ahamkara
We may call it "me maker" as it's especially tied to asmita klesa (I-am-ness)
but it is not the gross ego, more like "existential identification"
(this will be... tricky to get rid of during practice).
Karmasaya
The non-conceptual, latent seed-bed of subliminal impressions which will affect future experiences and births. It's more functional rather than ontological, closer to a process than a permanent substrate.
To make our own life easier, let's group these together and call them
"karma body".
Now, this karma body of yours wants a physical body to continue where death made you stop (during the coming courses we will also discuss why the belief of "there is nothing after death" is so popular. You'll be surprised!).
This is the cycle what you were going through hundreds, if not thousands of times and more. Even if you may have the suspicion that many of our fellow human colleagues on Earth behave like "first-timers"!
Joke aside, if you think about your life this way, our original human responsibility ascends to the surface.
Walking on the Path is basically asking:
Do we have a direction? Where do we go with all these lives and deaths and whatnot? Or do we just migrate and wander the existence aimlessly from incarnation to incarnation forever for no reason?
That's why, in my opinion, every human being needs to walk the Path to a certain degree at least. That is what Uncorrupted Yoga is about.
No thinking, no wisdom, no life and death again and again, just walk directly towards Kaivalya
If you walk unswerving on the Path and attain the severance of mind fluctuations (Chitta-Vritti Nirodha), you will break from the cycle.
If you want to.
If you don't want to, you don't have to.
Your choice entirely.
Life is pretty fantastic though.
Birth is not very memorable, we have to admit. Your mother remembers every second of it and if lucky, there is a lot of love present, but when it happens, it's mostly painful for everyone involved!
Dying is also mostly painful and a huge taboo, we don't like to talk about it or think about it even. Besides there are too many conflicting theories and concepts coming from too many fruit-loops which is rather discouraging.
But we know one thing: We LOVE life!
Which makes sense because, even if some of us forget about this feeling being all depressed for some reason, if we didn't love life so much, we wouldn't be born in the first place.
What happens in this great life we yearn for so much?
What wonders will we encounter?
One thing that happens is that we are bound to the body.
And we cherish the body. Especially when we are young. Once we are not so young... we start moaning a lot!
We try all kinds of measures, procedures, chemicals, sports, surgeries and beauty salons, care products, rituals to keep the body nice, smooth, beautiful and strong and handsome but...
Sorry
The body has a shelf-life and when the stopwatch gets to zero, it goes to the cemetery inevitably. Finished.
So what is going on really? Why are we so impermanent and how does this world appear to us in this human experience when we are bound to the body?
We all know:
3 dimensions of space
1 dimension of time
In our daily life we don't really think about space unless we live in a studio flat or our belt is too tight. But time... ha! It is a different story.
The human experience of time is linear: past, present, future, pressing us relentlessly towards one direction, no escape.
This is the basis of our impermanence.
In space, we can make a U-turn, walk backwards or just go somewhere else. In space it is very easy to do. In time, it is not possible. As a human being.
Now, if you want to experience the universe independent of body and mind, which is why we are here, then... we don't know.
We don't know how many dimensions of space and how many dimensions of time we have.
But we do know that human body, human consciousness, human senses, human life:
3 dimensions of space
1 dimension of time
This is extremely important because time and space are not absolute. They are relative and depend on our consciousness and on our being.
Modern science failed to point out why, but spiritual traditions didn't. Let's see.
Time is only linear while we are alive. But there are and always were people who can be independent of their dualistic mind and go forward. Every great Master and Sage.
Everybody can go backwards a little bit thanks to memory but going forward is not easy. But once we severed our attachments, it is possible.
The reason why we talk about this and intellectualising this very topic is so we can see how this world we live in is inherently created by our being as we are.
If we would be equipped with a different physicality, different consciousness, different senses, the world would be different also.
Enough to imagine how different lifeforms on this planet experience the same thing very distinctively.
What we know is, when Chitta-Vritti Nirodha happens, time and space also disappears, along with the dualistic way of observing the world.
This is well documented in many sutras and scriptures in many traditions but more importantly, this can be your own personal experience if you work for it.
In the time-space continuum we have forms, names, many interactions, cause and effect, and so, we are bound to these conditions. This is the human environment while we live and then we die, we carry our karma to the next one...
Do not think about getting rid of bad karma and accumulating good karma. What karma is really, will be discussed, and good karma can make a society better and the people more humble, but it is not a "good" or "bad" thing.
The next step is to become free from the bondage of life and death, the absolute notion of time and space altogether. Now the second question:
What is the Path?
and also, what is not the Path?
Most of the time we follow likes and dislikes.
We make a new friend, we break a leg. We suffer heartbreak then find someone else. We get a new job, we get sick.... endlessly. Like a hectic rollercoaster.
If we put the rollercoaster in the time and space matrix we outlined, it will become obvious that not only it is going just up and down but also round and round.
Everything in the Universe works in cycles, and we are not an exception.
And these cycles also will appear repeating and eerily similar.
That is why one may decide to walk on The Path instead.
And if you do, you will start to see patterns and reflect on things.
You will see the notions clearly but you will not follow.
Your centre and your internal balance becomes stronger and stronger and the clarity of your mind will start to resemble the surface of undisturbed water.
Once you attain this, the forces of your karma which are pulling and tossing you up and down will simply be weaker than your inner stability.
When you practice, your perception changes. You will see all but will not follow any.
This is extremely important and you can take it as the world testing you.
It is also a time of exams for Yoga also, especially this day and age when the "yoga" people call as such, are not even a spiritual practice anymore.
Will we let corruption win?
Can we still believe in ourselves?
How do we respond to the extreme challenges of our era?
Every single one of us
by our little daily decisions,
the way we conduct ourselves,
and how we respond to challenge.
We are tested. Constantly.
But if you attained a certain internal balance and you are in control, you will be able to reflect to the outside world instead of identifying with it's various events and happenings, and you will realise:
You stopped being impulsive and reactive.
You will know how to operate in advance and your stability becomes unshakeable.
After going even deeper, you may find your true centre and stay there and by that,
also stay beyond life and death.
Or you can choose not to do this, even after significant amount of practice, the Path will again start breaking up, into cycles.
The cycles of birth, life, sickness and death, attachments, likes, dislikes again and again.
Which is fine. It's not bad at all, it is Natural.
Try not to look at it as "good" or "bad".
But you will grant a lot of suffering on yourself undoubtedly and you will also create unnecessary suffering in the world, it is inevitable.
The only question is:
What do YOU want to do?
Stabilised balance, absolute control, not moving empty, clear mind which operates by the whim of your will solely.
These are not religious ideals.
This is an opportunity for the human entity, just like complete enlightenment or "rupture" (Asamprajnata Samadhi).
The main action point is the MOMENT.
Because how do you really become free of this 1 dimension of time? The impermanence? The restless, relentless time based experience?
Simple, but sometimes the simple things are the hardest.
Stop thinking.
Severe the fluctuations of your mind.
Attain the MOMENT.
In this MOMENT
There is no time
There is no space
which equals to
Infinite time
Infinite space
So no endless whirlpool of worldly existence.
And you can make any kind of life.
And any kind of death.