I am a stag: of seven tines,
I am a flood: across a plain,
I am a wind: on a deep lake,
I am a tear: the Sun lets fall,
I am a hawk: above the cliff,
I am a thorn: beneath the nail,
I am a wonder: among flowers,
I am a wizard: who but I sets the cool head aflame with smoke?
Incredible how European ancestry that bears no obvious relation to yoga nonetheless tells a perennial tale, a perennial truth. The gorgeous Celtic poem above, the Song of Amergin, restored by Robert Graves, evokes memories of the Ṛg Veda, the bulls and the dawn.
Here, our human fathers went forward on their way towards the Truth desiring to possess it; they drove upwards the luminous ones, the good milk-cows in their stone pen within the hiding cave, calling to the Dawns.
They meditated on the first name of the Milk-cow, they discovered the thrice seven supreme planes of the mother; That knowing the herds lowed towards it, the ruddy Dawn became manifest by the glory of the Cow of Light.
— Ṛg Veda 4.1.13 and 16, rendered by Śrī Aurobindo
These archetypes of humanity are subtle patterns-behind-patterns. We want to know what those patterns are, friends, and that knowledge won’t come quickly if we depend on the analytical brain and its material sciences. The left brain, the ego who thinks it owns a skull, who tremors at the conclusion of that assumption, that it is limited, under siege from a vast external world. No, that is not the apparatus for this process. We want to employ the right brain, the abstract and subtle body, however one wishes to frame it. It is the broader part of us that has any chance of ascertaining the metaphor upon which we spawn life experience.
I often say that we don’t need, surely must not need, books, beautiful as they are, hymns of the Indus Valley or Welsh and Celtic fables, no matter how intrinsic they are to human culture and civilisation. No books can be necessary when the archetypes themselves are seen individually in the first person. So the question is: if I may have first-person experience of these archetypes and metaphors, and need no teacher other than myself, how does it work? How can I engage without interfering or analysing? The answer was well elucidated the other day in Melbourne by a favourite teacher, Eoin.
I like to tell people that Eoin was an Irish terrorist, skilled in strange Indonesian martial arts. It’s probably counterproductive in my broader mission to allay the popular perception of Ashtanga yoga as extreme. Haha. Oh well, nonetheless. I’ve never met someone so able to pierce through my… just to give me pure reflection of… my current pattern. Laser-like insights; this is why we visit these masters, hidden in strange locations. Russia House in Fitzroy, in this case!
Anyway, he was talking about tension. Secret tension, occult even. Holding patterns that all humans possess, some fleeting and individual, others shared. It made me think of the granthis. Ashtangis like to mention these fabled energetic knots that persist across all humans, a common implication of maintaining a physical body, of falling into identification as a physical body.
What Eoin did so well is to not even front-load that particular kind of classical dogma. He skipped it and just talked about the experience of noticing. The kind that comes after you’ve done an hour and a half of practice, and then lay or sit for some time with pure attention, waiting for a glimmer to flash across consciousness. And that’s the point of yoga. That’s what the Yoga Sūtras and Yoga Tārāvalī refer to as śeṣa, often translated as residue. You can also call it the shared vāsanā of human experience.
And the place where yoga describes residue as living is the sūkṣma śarīra or the ātivāhika śarīra, depending on the text you are reading. Our lesson is to not quote it too much, better to experience it or help someone experience it. Welsh culture, Annwfn, talks about the deep world, the prior, during, and after world. It converges, just as pupils converge in the śālā after an intense psycho-physical breath-āsana practice, finally able to catch an attentive glimpse of what is gripping tight, what we are afraid of, what we think we have to maintain.
Eoin said, “don’t look; let it reveal itself”. Yoga Tārāvalī says, “upon the prior conditions being met, residue is drawn up and consumed in kevala kumbhaka”. Yes, śloka number 12 and its spontaneous and breathtaking glimpse, summarises a great deal of the Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā. It cannot be planned. You can set the scene and prepare the field, but ultimately it is the most revered kumbhaka, uncontrolled by the left brain and ego.
Elusive, perhaps, but there’s no need for concern. In many cities, there is a Mysore program just around the corner. Although the ego cannot control the entire circumstance and there may be an annoying dependence on time, immersion, and a teacher you may not always like, there is nonetheless a logic, and a mythos, to the whole thing.
Mythos, counterpart to logos in ancient Greek, both words used to indicate truth. Much the greater was mythos. As the concept of positivity has been cast toxic, myth is associated with falsehood. Not so.
Mythos represents profound truths that cannot be pinned down by linguistics and maths, here we glance upon expanded truths, patterns spanning lives of people and stars alike.
I am the creator: of all this,
The imaginer: barely bounded,
I am the flavour: and frayed edge,
I am the poise: that propagates,
I am the pupil: present at last,
I am the syllabus: ātivāhika.
