yoga at the speed of light

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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.

End of Matter

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