Breath

Sometimes, a small paragraph can convey important message in clearest terms. These golden nuggets ought to be preserved. I came across one such paragraph today, while reading “Anatomy of Hatha Yoga” by H.David Coulter.

It’s about the importance of breath. First, Dr. Coulter gives an overview of how the two types of nervous system Somatic and Autonomic, interact with each other to regulate our breath. Now comes the kicker:

“All of our concerns so far have been with how the nervous system influences breathing. These are all widely recognized. What is not as well-known is that different methods of breathing can affect the autonomic nervous system and have an impact on the functions we ordinarily consider to be under unconscious control. Abnormal breathing patterns can stimulate autonomic reactions associated with panic attacks, and poor breathing habits in emphysema patients produce anxiety and chronic overstimulation of the sympathetic nervous system. By contrast, quiet breathing influences the autonomic circuits that slow the heartbeat and reduce blood pressure, producing calm and a sense of stability. Our ability to control respiration consciously gives us access to autonomic functions that no other system of the body can boast“. (emphasis mine)

Because breath is such a powerful force than what it appears to a casual observer, we also hear warnings that one should be careful in performing breathing exercises, and it is often advised that techniques (especially advanced exercises) should be learned from experts.

Gaia and Yoga

(‘Think global’ is the message of yoga. Image by chaitanya pullela)

When we look around us, two seemingly irreconcilable principles grab our attention — matter and consciousness. We observe forms either as completely inanimate matter or a curious mixture of matter and consciousness (I’ll use the terms ‘consciousness’ and ‘life’ interchangeably, even though all life forms may not be “conscious” or self-aware in classical sense). A great debate of our times is about the ultimate nature of these two principles and the relationship between them. Consider: (a) Is inanimate matter the primary reality and consciousness just an evolute of matter ? That is, consciousness explained wholly in terms of material electro-chemical processes. (b) Is consciousness the primary reality and matter just a kind of condensation of consciousness. (c) Neither of the two are sole primary, but each maintains an identity ultimately independent of the other.

The popular “science” of today has not been able to crack this puzzle yet. However, even if most of us consciously don’t consider this question, we implicitly take position-(a), that is primacy of matter. This is not surprising, since matter appears very real to our senses. Since we implicitly grant so much importance to matter, our “sciences” are almost exclusively directed to the study of matter. Even biological sciences, which is supposedly studying ‘life’, mostly focus on the material basis of life — which molecules are present in the cells, the electro-chemical-mechanical basis of physiological processes etc. I admit iam not very familiar with western psychology, but to my knowledge, it too does not present a comprehensive view of life.

This raises interesting questions. If most of our efforts are directed towards study of laws of matter, what are the laws that apply to the behavior of life ? If we take the position of primacy of matter, does it mean that all laws of human behavior ought to be derived from laws of matter ? The argument goes as: since consciousness is entirely an evolute of matter, the only laws that apply to consciousness, hence by extension human behavior, are the laws of matter. Think about this — Laws of human behavior can ultimately be derived from laws of matter ? The commonly accepted ethical precepts of our society such as “thou shall not kill”, are derivable from law of gravity or law of mass-energy equivalence or laws of thermodynamics ? Clearly, ethical precepts are not derivable from laws of matter.

We are left with two choices.

(a) Accept the primacy of matter. Then, It is up to life (human society at human level of consciousness), to frame laws of behavior in an arbitrary fashion without having any support and direction in the form of universal laws of life. In this case, there would be no ultimate universal law to judge or direct human behavior, but the whole human society (and evolution of life for that matter) stands on an edifice of principles which have been arbitrarily chosen by life itself. Going with position-(a), any discussion on social or environmental issues is futile, because social or environmental issues are ultimately ethical in nature, and here ethics stands on a weak edifice of arbitrarily chosen rules.

(b) Believe that just as matter operates precisely under a set of physical laws, consciousness is governed, supported and directed by a set of universal laws. Lets call them laws of consciousness or laws of life. I personally subscribe to this position. I simply find it hard to believe that life evolved from uni-cellular to multi-trillion-celled beings without an implicit direction or goal.

Tools

So, assuming that there are laws-of-life in the universe, what are the instruments at our disposal to discover these laws ?

By far the most dominant instrument immediately available with us is our intellect or thought power. But, it appears that while thought is a great instrument to comprehend matter, it does not appear to be helping us regarding laws-of-life. The great thinkers of our time, Einstein, Newton or the other great scientists, did not give us the laws-of-life. They gave us the laws governing matter and space-time. It’s amusing to see one of the greatest physicist our times, Stephen Hawking, turn to yahoo online community, for answers to pressing issues of our times. See Guardian and yahoo and more-yahoo. Thank you Dr.Hawking for being honest. This is strange indeed. Thought can comprehend black holes that supposedly exist gazillions of light years away, but does not know how to handle life itself ? Perhaps an indication that we should be more humble about the abilities of our intellect.

The great sages of past and present, have recognized this limitation of intellect. Infact, they assert that intellect and thought is a great barrier. They see thought as being an incomplete reflection of the full power of consciousness. Thought as a very poor imitation or ‘effect’ of the ’cause’ that is consciousness. How, they ask, can an effect fully comprehend the cause ?

So they dived deep into the cause (consciousness) itself to uncover its laws. The Matrix is cracked not by staying within the instruments of matrix (thought), but by taking the ‘red pill‘ and diving into deeper source which is unperturbed by the vicissitudes of the matrix.

Yoga

The gem that the great sages uncovered by diving deep into the consciousness itself, is Yoga.

The whole of Yoga is based on the following first principle:

“Where there is a division, there MUST be conflict .. this is law .. reason .. logic”. (Thanks to Krishnamurti for putting it in these simplest of terms. To be fair, he never referred to his philosophy as “Yoga”, but i see unmistakable similarities).

So, here is the crux. Yoga asserts there is only one ultimate consciousness which is the cause or source of everything. (primary of consciousness). When there is a division in that consciousness, as in “me” and “outside-of-me”, there has to be a conflict between the two entities. We know that plant, animal and human consciousness, are in this state of duality — we have clear division between “me” and “outside-of-me”. So, there has to be a conflict, and all subtle tensions in life are ultimately rooted in this conflict. If there is inevitable conflict in division, Yoga sees the whole of life to be a march towards a realization of non-division or non-conflict or oneness of the universe. This movement towards oneness is the “law” that consciousness is implementing, through the process of evolution. The whole of evolution from unicellular organism to plant to animal to human being and beyond, is a progressively increasing awareness-of and identification-with the whole. The human community is a larger whole surrounding the human individuals. Gaia is a larger whole encompassing the human and other communities. The universe is a still larger whole encompassing all. It is interesting to see that various progressive social movements asserting human equality, are clearly derivable from the Yoga law. The ethical principles which human society has intuitively and instinctively fought for, perhaps find an ultimate support in Yoga law.

Iam a beginner student of Yoga myself, and obviously the above is just a minute hint on what Yoga is about. Great masters have spoken at length on this subject. See for example, one of my favorites, Swami Krishnananda.

Gaia and Yoga

Earth system (Gaia) is an organic whole in which life plays a significant role in regulating bio-geo-chemical processes. It may be likened to a giant organism (though not conscious as far as we know) consisting of millions of individual species as its ‘cells’. The point of this whole post is, whether in the spirit of Yoga, we might see ourselves as an integral part of this larger whole — Gaia, and that Yoga provides the inspiration to work towards the health of Gaia. In that sense, the environmental movement takes on a whole new meaning — as an integral part of Yoga itself.

The opposite is quite clear: extreme assertion of ones own individuality to the disregard of the whole, is going in opposition to law of Yoga itself. It is bound to create disharmony in the system. Its like our brain cells decide to do their own thing, without regard to the whole human organism. (This is just an analogy. Iam not claiming that brain cells are conscious of their role in a human being ).

So, there we go. Any small action we take towards the big picture — be it donating $1 to social charity or taking a small step in reducing consumption with the larger whole in mind — is a positive step in Yoga direction. Iam starting to believe that all positive steps in life, though they may appear to be different from the outside, have an underlying unifying purpose.

We all have world-views according to which we conduct our lives. Some people may be explicit and conscious of their world-view. While for others the world-view is implicit, and mostly determined by society through a mixture of social-religious-scientific conditions prevailing at that time. To me, the weltanschauung that best explains the world, and provides a coherent basis for action, is Yoga.