 ORIYI News - September 2002 |
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8 - Patanjali and Haagen Daz.
John Joseph Evans was in Newbury on March 9th to give another of his lucid talks on Patanjali. First off John reminded us how he came to meet BKS Iyengar: he happened to be in Pune in the early 70s and went by chance to a yoga class. Since there were many fewer students then it was much easier to build a personal relationship with BKS Iyengar, and although John wasn’t very good at the postures (his words!), he was interested in the man and so returned to Pune regularly. In the mid 80s Guruji needed help editing Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, and John stepped into the breach. As with the postures, John was pulled into philosophy and metaphysics by chance. He’s now editing the Yogamala Astadala series. Yoga is about the mind: the problem of human existence is not that we have bodies, but that we have minds. And it is our minds that Patanjali aims to help us with through the study and understanding of metaphysics. But what is metaphysics? It is whatever is beyond the physical, beyond the world of matter; subtle things like consciousness for example. Metaphysics is also a study of the conceptual world, one that gives a framework for the physical world and helps us understand it better. Metaphysics is also about many other concepts like Reality, Divinity, Spirit, Emptiness, Wisdom. Philosophy is defined as the love of wisdom, and Yoga philosophy tries to free us from the idea that the physical world is the only reality; it gets us to explore the limits and see if there is anything else out there – is there a “Void” and if so what’s it like? We all want to be secure, and to be really secure we must connect with something that endures, something eternal like freedom or unconditional love. Nature is forever changing, and so attachment to something in the natural world will always be insecure. “I, John” has a beginning and an end, and that begs the question: “Can who I really am be limited in time like this?” For the answer we have to look to the Void – paradoxically we seek security in “nothingness” rather than in the “reality” of nature. The human consciousness lies between Nature on the one hand (with diversity, and the karmic cycle that can make us prisoners of nature), and the Void on the other (with its security, freedom, Reality) – the more hooked we are on Nature, the less free we are. Yoga is about getting one foot into the Void while keeping the other firmly planted in Nature – it’s not about fleeing Nature, but being free to enjoy it. It is the mind / consciousness that is the real prisoner of Nature. Patanjali teaches that there are three parts to consciousness: manas or the mind, asmita or ego (the sense of individuality), and buddi or intelligence. The nature of the mind and the ego is to repeat pleasure and avoid pain, with the result that we can become addicted to pleasures, and pulled further and further into Nature and way from the Void or freedom. And it is our intelligence, something we all have, that can help us avoid attachment and addiction, even to Haagen Daz: When ego asks the mind / memory “Do I like Haagen Daz” the mind replies “Yes” and left to their own devices mind and ego would ensure another blow out. If, however, intelligence manages to get involved, it will ask the mind “What were the consequences last time I ate a whole tub of Haagen Daz?” with the result that we might at least think twice before diving in. The job of intelligence is to discriminate, to choose. Real choice – do or don’t – gives us the opportunity to do something different, something new, to change (maybe even by not eating the Haagen Daz), and thus is the road to freedom. Ego hates change because it identifies with the past: it gets stuck to by the barnacles of our accumulated experiences and possessions. For ego change is death; it wants to grow but change causes it to shrink. But the very fact that ego will die eventually means (probably!) that it can’t be our true identity. Yoga is about knocking the barnacles off ego so that it becomes a bit purer, a bit cleaner, so that like a lens we can see through it to our true identity, our real Self, rather than being forever hoodwinked by the impostor ego. Intelligence is the source of our willpower and so gives us the possibility of self control, allowing us to move towards freedom and Reality bit by bit, barnacle by barnacle. Intelligence is honed by asana – it asks the questions to see if the posture is good enough, whether its better than last time, etc. It then rectifies and improves the posture thereby helping us achieve things we’ve never done before. And to do this it utilises the other two parts of consciousness: the mind / memory and the ego. The goal, as Mr Iyengar has often said is to get consciousness into “every cell” of the body, to “awaken” the consciousness that exists throughout the body, because that way “you live before you die”. By doing this we give Nature its due, and that’s the starting point for being both able to enjoy it and able to transcend it. There are 8 limbs of yoga – Astadala Yogamala – and, according to Guruji, perfection in one limb means perfection in all. And asana is a good one to choose because anyone can start and gain immediate benefit. It may even lead you to being able to say “No” to Haagen Daz. Martin Colston |