Yoga At The Speed Of Light
And The Meaning Of 108
by Linda Johnsen
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 other coincidences: 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 text 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.
Source: http://www.yimag.org
