Fw: [Shiva_Sena] Fwd: Yoga at the speed of Light

November 13, 2009

B.C.VENKATAKRISHNAN.

----- Forwarded Message ----Venkat Sekhar Subramaniam <aaviskar2006Shiva_Sena Sent: Thu, November 12, 2009 6:21:08 AMRe: [shiva_Sena] Fwd: Yoga at the speed of Light

Sarathchandran Sir,

Wonderful analysis.. My mind is predicting all the below :

-The scientists are goinbg to unravel "non living objects " such as Earth as a physical body /Seas/ and clouds have life (remember before Jagadish Chandra Bose none believed Plants have life..Our Veda teacher teaches about Boo suktham,Megha suktham, Bhagya suktham etc,..the so called rationalists of yesteryears were laughing at such things.. because the same were turned "Aryan culture"-we pefform "prayachittam" soas to make corrections for an activity performed wrongly.. this has a scientific meaning in the sense none of the natural activities go unsystematically and this is a way of setting us right so as to go in unison with nature

-someone is doing calculaion how the natural phenomnon like earth quatkes listen to Mantras and Seas subside no sooner the mantras are recited..

-performing physical suryanamskar in the morning and reciting Aaditya Hrudayam keeps one healthy and wealthy.. my father was used to tell the suryanamaskar keeps one's eyepower perfect till his death.. this needs to be scientifically analysed.

Moral of the day is we are proud of Bharthwasis and it is my request our Scientists and Artists please don't cut shortcut methods by adopting unnecessary controversies in particular on this religion called Hinduism which itself deserves Nobel as it is the first and Most tolerant religion in the world.. Hari Om..

V.Sarathchandran <v.sarathchandran@ gmail.com>shiva_sena <Shiva_Sena@gro ups.com>Wed, 11 November, 2009 12:53:23 PM[shiva_Sena] Fwd: Yoga at the speed of Light

I am giving below an article I received from one of my friends, which is interesting; but while we can be proud of our traditions , that should not lull us into thinking ourselves to be great. It is our duty, as a respect to our ancestors, to be tapasvis in our own lives as much as possible to be able to reach the inner sun of enlightenment. We are talking about knowledge and analysis using knowledge here and I request it is not confused with caste politics.

By the way how is the equation 1 yojana equals 9 miles arrived at ? How is Nimesha defined ? I am curious to know.

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -------- "Two thousand years before Pythagoras, philosophers in northern Indiahad understood that gravitation held the solar system together, and thattherefore the sun, the most massive object, had to be at its center."

"Twenty-four centuries before Isaac Newton, the Hindu Rig-Veda asserted thatgravitation held the universe together. The Sanskrit speaking Aryans d to the idea of a spherical earth in an era when the Greeks believed in a flat one. The Indians of the fifth century A.D. calculated the age of the earth as 4.3 billion years; scientists in 19th century England were convinced it was 100 million years."(source: Lost Discoveries: The Ancient Roots of Modern Science - By Dick Teresi p. 159 and 174 -212) *Yoga at the speed of Light*- By Linda Johnsen

It is amazing how much Western science has taught us. Today, for example, kids in school learn that the sun is 93 million miles from the earth and that the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. 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 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. Mathematical ly 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 malamany yoga students wear around their neck. Since these rosaries are used tokeep 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 paadas, 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 direction s. 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 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?- the Mayans or Inca-s!!!

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 astronomica l instruments. -as Sanjee argues!!

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 (concentrati on, 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.

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