Yoga at the speed of light

[Guest guest]

Yoga at the speed of Light, - By Linda Johnsen, Courtesy & copyright Yoga

International

 

It is amazing how much Western science has taught us. Today, for example,

kids in grammar school learn that the sun is 93 million miles from the earth

and that the speed of light is 186,000 miles per hours.

 

Yoga may teach us about our Higher Self, but it can't supply this kind of

information about physics or astronomy.

 

Or can it?

 

Professor Subhash Kak of Louisiana State University recently called my

attention to a remarkable statement by Sayana, a fourteenth century Indian

scholar.

 

In his commentary on a hymn in the Rig Veda, the oldest and perhaps most

mystical text ever composed in India, Sayana has this to say: "With deep

respect, I bow to the sun, who travels 2,202 yojanas in half a nimesha."

 

A yojana is about nine American miles; a nimesha is 16/75 of a second.

Mathematically challenged readers, get out your calculators!

 

2,202 yojanas x 9 miles x 75 - 8 nimeshas = 185,794 m.p.s.

 

Basically, Sayana is saying that sunlight travels at 186,000 miles per

second! How could a Vedic scholar who died in 1387 A.D. have known the

correct figure for the speed of light? If this was just a wild guess it's

the most amazing coincidence in the history of science!

 

The yoga tradition is full of such coincidences. Take for instance the mala

many yoga students wear around their neck. Since these rosaries are used to

keep track of the number of mantras a person is repeating, students

often ask why they have 108 beads instead of 100. Part of the reason is that

the mala represent the ecliptic, the path of the sun and moon across the

sky. Yogis divide the ecliptic into 27 equal sections called nakshatras, and

each of these into four equal sectors called padas, or "steps," marking the

108 steps that the sun and moon take through heaven.

 

Each is associated with a particular blessing force, with which you align

yourself as you turn the beads.

 

Traditionally, yoga students stop at the 109th "guru bead," flip the mala

around in their hand, and continue reciting their mantra as they move

backward through the beads. The guru bead represents the summer and winter

solstices, when the sun appears to stop in its course and reverse

directions. In the yoga tradition we learn that we're deeply interconnected

with all of nature. Using a mala is a symbolic way of connecting ourselves

with the cosmic cycles governing our universe.

 

But Professor Kak points out yet another coincidence: The distance between

the earth and the sun is approximately 108 times the sun's diameter.

 

The diameter of the sun is about 108 times the earth's diameter. And the

distance between the earth and the moon is 108 times the moon's diameter.

 

Could this be the reason the ancient sages considered 108 such a

sacred number? If the microcosm (us) mirrors the macrocosm (the solar

system), then maybe you could say there are 108 steps between our ordinary

human awareness and the divine light at the center of our being. Each time

we chant another mantra as our mala beads slip through our fingers, we are

taking another step toward our own inner sun.

 

As we read through ancient Indian texts, we find so much the sages of

antiquity could not possibly have known-but did. While our European and

Middle Eastern ancestors claimed that the universe was created about 6,000

years ago, the yogis have always maintained that our present cosmos is

billions of years old, and that it's just one of many such universes which

have arisen and dissolved in the vastness of eternity.

 

In fact the Puranas, encyclopedias of yogic lore thousands of years

old, describe the birth of our solar system out of a "milk ocean," the Milky

Way. Through the will of the Creator, they tell us, a vortex shaped like a

lotus arose from the navel of eternity. It was called Hiranya Garbha, the

shining womb. It gradually coalesced into our world, but will perish some

day billions of years hence when the sun expands to many times it present

size, swallowing all life on earth. In the end, the Puranas say, the ashes

of the earth will be blown into space by the cosmic wind. Today we known

this is a scientifically accurate, if poetic, description of the fate of our

planet.

 

The Surya Siddhanta is the oldest surviving astronomical text in the

Indian tradition. Some Western scholars date it to perhaps the fifth or

sixth centuries A.D., though the next itself claims to represent a tradition

much, much older. It explains that the earth is shaped like a ball, and

states that at the very opposite side of the planet from India is a great

city where the sun is rising at the same time it sets in India. In this

city, the Surya Siddhanta claims, lives a race of siddhas, or advanced

spiritual adepts. If you trace the globe of the earth around to the exact

opposite side of India, you'll find Mexico. Is it possible that the ancient

Indians were well aware of the great sages/astronomers of Central America

many centuries before Columbus discovered America?

 

Knowing the unknowable

 

To us today it seems impossible that the speed of light or the fate of

our solar system could be determined without advanced astronomical

instruments. How could the writers of old Sanskrit texts have known the

unknowable? In searching for an explanation we first need to understand that

these ancient scientists were not just intellectuals, they were practicing

yogis. The very first lines of the Surya Siddhanta, for of the Golden Age a

great astronomer named Maya desired to learn the secrets of the heavens, so

he first performed rigorous yogic practices. Then the answers to his

questions appeared in his mind in an intuitive flash.

 

Does this sound unlikely? Yoga Sutra 3:26-28 states that through,

samyama (concentration, meditation, and unbroken mental absorption) on the

sun, moon, and pole star, we can gain knowledge of the planets and stars.

Sutra 3:33 clarifies, saying: "Through keenly developed intuition,

everything can be known." Highly developed intuition is called pratibha in

yoga. It is accessible only to those who have completely stilled their mind,

focusing their attention on one object with laser-like intensity. Those who

have limited their mind are no longer limited to the fragments of knowledge

supplied by the five senses. All knowledge becomes accessible to them.

 

"There are [those] who would say that consciousness, acting on itself,

can find universal knowledge," Professor Kak admits. "In fact this is the

traditional Indian view."

 

Perhaps the ancient sages didn't need advanced astronomical

instruments. After all, they had yoga.