8-Fold Path - Step 5 - ETHER!

The 5th Stage of Patanjali's 8-Fold Path is called PRATYAHARA and is associated with the element of ETHER. Ether refers to what we more commonly refer to as "space." Space is the invisible element in which objects appear and appear as separate from each other. The time-space continuum posits a relationship between objects and the space they inhabit and the concept of time.

All objects appear on the invisible fabric of space. Space is created by vibration. This magic-mirror show has two sides: one that seems to show that all objects are separate, and another that reveals they are all connected and part of the same underlying reality.

Isolation and loneliness are potential steps towards personal disintegration and even suicide, if not the more common despondency and depression which is all but epidemic. One of the many benefits of meditation is a sense of connection with the people and world we inhabit. We could say that mental health presumes a feeling of connection with the space we inhabit. Our "space" includes all objects and all people of co-inhabit that space.

Space being invisible is ethereal, or non-material. And as experiments in quantum physics with sub-atomic particles reveals, matter, or particles, appear out "of the thin air" of supposedly "empty" space. In the popular book, "The Holographic Universe," the author quotes a scientist as saying that there is more latent energy in one cubic foot of empty space than has been calculated to exist in all the visible matter of the known (estimated) universe. (Even to me, the claim seems over the top, but even if it's only fractionally true, the essential point remains.)

From a meditative point of view, indeed, from the point of view of consciousness, it is out of the empty space of quietude that ideas, thoughts, images and feelings appear, even unsought or unexpectedly. The greatest creative triumphs are always a process of "something coming out of nothing." This "nothing" is far from nothing even if it validly can be said to be no-thing.

The point here is that this stage of spiritual awakening represents the realization of mind-space, or consciousness as a reality that precedes thought and precedes the reactive process of the lower chakras and their powers of perception and knowledge. Ether is the foundation for the grosser elements. It is also the invisible precondition for the appearance of the tangible creation and reactive, feeling consciousness.

While the 8-Fold Path necessarily describes the stages of ascendency, by definition, it describes the process of descent into creation as well. This stage emanates deep calmness, the eye at the center (or the beginning) of the storm of maya (waves of feeling, action, reaction and movement). Like the television screen whose blue image immediately precedes the images and words which subsequently can appear across its face, space and calmness are neutral and yet expansive and inclusive such that all things which follow depend and are connected to it.

Paramhansa Yogananda wrote "God's body is space. If you want to feel God, feel space within you and all around." He gave the visualization of one floating in deep space with millions of miles below, above, and all around you. While to some, this visualization would seem cold and lonely, the reality of the experience is that it invites us to have a sense of connection and oneness with all creation. The result is a calm, confident, and knowing level of consciousness.

In India's epic story the "Mahabharata" (of which the famous scripture, The Bhagavad Gita is but a chapter), the elder son (Yudisthira) sets an important stage for a part of the story when he gambles away his (and his younger brothers') kingdom. We humans gamble away our happiness when, thinking we can play in delusion simply because we can see that it is delusion and because we are, at present and as yet, unattached to it. But we gamble and we lose our perspective, our calmness, and our wisdom because the magnetic power of maya (delusion) exists in the macrocosm and is bigger than any individual perception. For the dice of life are loaded for those foolish enough to think they can play the "great game" without getting caught.

Many a devotee reaching certain insights of divine wisdom feels the exhilaration and sweeping vista of that wisdom and gets caught again because he pauses, entranced by the view below. He forgets to keep "climbing" upward along the spiral, spinal staircase, gazing steadily ahead to the goal and thus falls again as if mesmerized. By now you can sense how subtle this stage is and how fraught with spiritual danger it can be. Without the support of others of like mind and especially a true guru, the truthseeker easily falls prey to temptation.

This stage carries with it the meditative power to shut off the five sense telephones (represented by the chakras below it and itself.) Full realization of pratyahara and the power of the ether element is to cut off at will the sense stimuli and signals of the five senses by concentrating the mind into perfect stillness beyond the intrusion of restless thoughts.

Whereas the fire element relates to right posture and fixity of body for meditation, and the heart center for purification of desire into devotion, the ether element represents focus of the mind in one-pointed concentration. Hence, step by step, control of body, emotions, and thoughts! These are the prerequisites to the higher stages of the 8-Fold Path which follow as one ascends.
There is a vibratory connection, too, between the fifth chakra (ETHER ELEMENT) and the practice of watching the breath. Paramhansa Yogananda taught this technique with the mental repetition of the mantra HONG-SAU. Hong Sau is the seed mantra for the Sanskrit words "Aham Saha," which means "I am He." The mantra resonates with the astral sound of the pran and apan currents of prana as they move through the ida and pingala nadis (channels) and impel the physical body to breath in and out. The calming of the breath by concentration upon it lifts us toward the breathless state where thoughts cease and pure self-awareness begins. This is the ether soul consciousness upon which all thoughts, feelings, and actions subsequently play unceasingly in the storm of duality (maya).

Yogananda put it this way: "When motion ceases, God begins." This stage of ETHER then is the doorway to the higher stages of the soul consciousness.

Practice watching the breath in meditation. When the breath enters mentally chant HONG. When the breath goes out of its own, mentally chant SONG. The full technique is taught at Ananda meditation classes in person, online, or in books published by Crystal Clarity Publishers, Ananda's publishing division.

Feel space in the body and all around you. Feel the space between the words and sound you hear. Everything you experience is being projected from the invisible ether of space without which the appearance of separate existence could not be intuited.

Blessings, and until we meet again at the 6th Stage of Enlightenment!



Nayaswami Hriman

Resurrecting Easter from the Dungeon of Dogmatism!

I read in TIME MAGAZINE recently of a famous and popular fundamentalist pastor who has said that he feels Christianity is on the brink of great changes. Well, I, for one, hope so and I am happy to hear someone like him say as much, too! As Paramhansa Yogananda put it back in the Thirties and Forties, tongue-in-cheek, "Jesus was crucified once, but his teachings have been crucified daily ever since."

I do not intend to put down other sincere truthseekers and their credos. My purpose in these thoughts is to walk a fine line between "I come not to destroy the law and the prophets but to fulfill them" and "I bring not peace, but a sword." [Both are the words of Jesus Christ.] Truth is often at the center line between opposites. No one formulation of truth can be anything but an effort to explain a reality that is intuitive and unitive, and therefore, by its actual revelation, it "is, and it is NOT" (to quote the Indian woman saint, Ananda Moyi Ma).

We live in a world that contemplates vast vistas of time and space: the years of humankind's existence on earth keeps enlarging backward in time to millions of years. Space has become so vast in our calculations that it defies anything but the conclusion that the odds of advanced life forms such as exist on earth are nothing less than 100%.

So how can one have one foot in the modern "religion" of science and another foot in the religion of our grandfathers without falling flat on one's metaphysical face? How can one man who lived 33 years over 2,000 years ago on one lonely outpost of a planet on the fringe of one galaxy (of billions) be the savior of the world when most of the world before, during, and after this man's life never heard of him?

How can one misguided act committed in error, ignorance, passion, or delusion and in the minuscule boundaries of earth time and space condemn one's invisible spirit to an eternity of torture and suffering? Worse yet, for the simple fact of not having ever heard about this one man called Jesus Christ?

Is it possible we can embrace Jesus, his life and teachings, without condemning the rest of the beings of this planet and universe to hell? Each of us has for our neighbors and co-workers, people from other nations, races, and religions. Can we not see the obvious unifying needs and nature of all peoples as essentially no different than our own?

How, then, can true and original Christianity be resurrected from the tomb of ignorance? If Jesus truly lived, died, and was resurrected as the New Testament and its saints, martyrs, and sages down through ages proclaim and have given their lives to attest, surely, he must have been bigger in scope than so many of his self-proclaimed followers insist? There must be somewhere to be found a bridge, a life raft, to bring Jesus into the modern world and ever-expanding universe?

Fortunately, there is such a bridge, and surely not only one. But one such wayshower is the world renown yogi from India, Paramhansa Yogananda. His life story, "Autobiography of a Yogi," inspires, delights, and educates millions on every continent from the day it was published in 1946 to this day, today. Yogananda represents a teaching and revelation that goes back beyond the dim veil of recorded history in the world's oldest continuous spiritual tradition: that of the rishis of India.

When the first English translations of India's hoary Vedas and other scriptures reached the shores of America in the early 19th Century, the so-called Transcendentalists (Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman) recognized the overarching wisdom and termed it a philosophy, not a religion. More correctly it should be called revelation, for philosophy is only intellectual speculation about reality, truth, and ethics. In India this body of wisdom has long been termed "Sanaatan Dharma," the "eternal truth (or "religion"). It implies that what is handed down is as universally applicable as the law of gravity which does not depend on man's belief or awareness to hold sway.

In accordance with aspects of all faith traditions and the teaching of metaphysics everywhere, this world and universe is said to be a dream, a visible manifestation of the consciousness of the Creator who remains as yet untouched by the dream, just as a playwright is no more good nor evil owing to the characters of his creation. The playwright's intention is to entertain and to educate. Both the audience and the actors know that it is but a play but the actors strive, nonetheless, to play their role as best as they can and according to the script and intention of the playwright.

All is God, there is none else. This doesn't deny the relative evil we encounter or enact, but that evil is evil because it takes our consciousness further from the experience and realization of God as the only reality behind all seeming and appearances. Evil is an affirmation of separateness. So, too, are ego-affirming attitudes, emotions, and self-gratifying or seeking actions. Good is good because it expands our awareness to realities larger than ego.

The only begotten son of God, therefore, is that spark of divine realization that is crucified by selfishness and resurrected by goodness. It appears in every age, as the rishis of India have proclaimed since time immemorial, in the living person of those beings who, in past lives (many lives), achieved the final victory of permanent realization of their Oneness "with the Father." Their appearance, as saviors, or avatars, is a personal and dynamic promise of immortality and the proclamation, once again, of the "good news" of our souls as children of God.

Jesus used the personal pronoun "I" in proclaiming his Oneness with the Father and for that affront to the ego-entrenched priesthood of his time, paid the ultimate (human) price: persecution and death. His bodily resurrection, like that of many similarly God-realized souls, gave tangible testimony to those with "eyes to see" that we are not the body but we are the Infinite soul, existing since eternity ("Before Abraham was, I AM").

The time has come to realize this divinity through the science of meditation and to put aside divisive dogmas and creeds. To recognize other Christ-like masters is not to diminish the God-realization of Jesus, but merely to make it truly "catholic" ("universal") and personal to each and every one of us though it take many lifetimes. This is the promise of sages down through ages and the promise of our soul's immortality that can be resurrected by our recognition of the Guru-preceptors who come to awaken our memory.

Let us not hesitate, therefore, to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, knowing that it stands forever, today and yesterday, as a beacon of light, faith, and hope for all truthseekers everywhere.

Blessings,

Nayaswami Hriman

AIR ELEMENT-STAGE 4 of the 8-Fold Path of Patanjali

And now we come to the middle step on the eight-fold Path of Patanjali’s Ashtanga Yoga. We are half-way, as it were, to the goal of life: cosmic consciousness (Oneness, or samadhi). The elemental aspect of step 4 is AIR. The Sanskrit name of the fourth stage is PRANAYAMA. So let’s do some exploratory digging:

Pranayama. This term is comprised of two basic Sanskrit terms: prana, and, yama. Prana refers to the intelligent energy which activates and underlies everything in creation. In the practice of yoga it is associated with the breath and its many qualities and manifestions such as movement (in, out, up and down, restrained, expelled) or qualities (warm, cool, energizing, calming, oxygenating, detoxifying and so on). The physical breath is prana’s most visible, most material manifestation. Hence if a person is breathing we say “He is alive.” If he’s not breathing, we say “He is dead.” In the deeper or more advanced practices of yoga (meditation), prana refers less to the physical breath and much, much more to the astral (or subtle) energy which moves in the central astral spine known as the sushumna.

Prana has many other manifestations on the subtle astral realm such as light (seen in the forehead in meditation), as sound (heard inside the right ear and expressed in human vocalization as AUM), bliss, calmness, love, peace, vitality, and wisdom.

Yama we have seen in the first article as the term for the first stage of the 8-Fold Path. It means, simply “control.” Control here is more than the “grit-your-teeth-I-am –in-control.” Rather it means that one has an inner awareness of the realities of consciousness that gives one access, realization, and power over their innate qualities.

Now before we go to the qualities of the AIR element, we have some more work to do. No single blog article can do this stage justice. Pranayama also describes the basic thrust of many, if not most, yoga practices. We have breathing techniques which are described by this term. For example, the alternative breathing technique, sometimes referred to as nadi shodamam is a pranayama.

We have the advanced meditation technique of kriya yoga, popularized by Paramhansa Yogananda in his “Autobiography of a Yogi,” and it, too, is a pranayama. The term “pranayama” refers (like the term “yoga” itself) to BOTH the practices and the goal of the practices. A deep lesson is thus implied for while we seek the goal (of union), the goal is already there, just behind our seeking!

The fourth stage of the 8-Fold Path also is characterized by the heart’s quality of feeling. The most central feeling of our nature is love. Here, at the half-way point to cosmic consciousness, the feeling aspect of consciousness, known as chitta¸ must make a decision (from moment to moment, day to day). Should our feeling descend the subtle spine and go out through the lower chakras to identify with and seek fulfillment through the senses and the world of sense objects? Or, do we ascend the upward path that dissolves our ego-body-identified consciousness and expands toward Infinity? Do we love because we feel more joy in loving than in judging? This upward feeling of love moves toward Love itself, which is to say, more practically speaking, towards devotion to God, one of His aspects, deities, or through the guru.

And now, at last, the element of AIR. I confess that in relation to the importance of both pranayama (practices) and devotion to God, the aspects of AIR seem less vital or relevant to me than in the three chakras which precede this one. Still I offer some thoughts in our contemplation and meditation upon the AIR element.

Air is vital to life. Its relationship to pranayama (seen now as breathing techniques) is obvious. This chakra controls the vital functions of heart, lungs and the strength and mobility of arms and hands. Through our arms (and hands) we grasp the world, we hug our loved ones. But air gives to us (physically) our very life. If we think of air as encircling the earth in a blanket of life-sustaining oxygen, we see air as the very basis, however invisible it is to us, of our life. And what is life, without feeling? Without love? Surely life has no meaning without love?

An eagle soaring high above the earth sees the earth in a perspective unlike that of earth-bound mortals. This eagle sees all life in its interdependence, seeing both its diversity and its unity. Thus air gives life and the eagle of life appreciates, respects, and loves all, as parts of a greater whole. This eagle, if truly wise, looks upward to the heavens to the Giver of Life, to the source of Love itself. For we do not invent love, nor yet the impulse to seek and express it. It is an inextricable aspect of life itself and cannot be separated. Life, love, breath have a relationship that cannot be merely understood, but only experienced.

The more we live in the pure AIR of love that is without attachment or condition, the greater satisfaction we can experience. For love with attachment is bound to suffer. Rarely is true love found in the earth-bound, desire driven egos of humans. Death itself, if not betrayal or disillusionment, robs us of the object of our love. It is Love, Life, and Air (as a symbol of the others) that silently draws us onto Itself.

For those of us in our practice of meditation who employ pranayamas, we would do well to bring to the table of our practice the quality of devotion and feeling, lest our will-direct breathing techniques become dry and mechanical. Even hatha yoga can be performed as an act of devotion. Love life, love each breath, as the invisible manifestion of Spirit in human form. Worship, then, if you will, if you dare, on the altar of Spirit, in the temple of silence, in the flow of the Breath of Life.

Blessings,

Nayaswami Hriman