Shiva Sutras
Āsanasthaḥ sukhaṁ hrade nimajjati
Seated in that real posture,
the real Asana,
the Yogi effortlessly dives
in the ocean of nectar.
OK. So a little bit uh from Lakshman Joo
and then let's explore from a postmodern point of view as well.
So Lakshman Joo
says, the real Asana
actually exists when you're truly residing in this state of absolute awareness,
the awareness of the self.
In other words,
awareness of awareness.
He goes on to say this is why the word
sukhaṁ
in the sutra
is used because it means effortlessly
without exerting any effort in respect to breathing or yogic exercise
or contemplation or meditation.
Once one is aware of being aware,
then every posture,
every action,
every thought, every
decision
comes from the state of uh
ultimate reality,
the reality of the embodiment of awareness.
And without any effort, there is spontaneous fulfillment of desire
from the ocean of awareness, everything arises. So the Yogi
uh
whether his eyes or her eyes are closed or open, acting or non acting,
all sensations, all images, all feelings, all thoughts
are actually
uh grounded in being.
Once the world is seen as
pure
awareness
and everything as a construct
in that awareness, then every manifestation is possible.
OK.
So uh let's go a little more into this.
So there are two things uh
that I would like to introduce here. One is that in the philosophy of sāṅkhya,
there is definitely
dualistic thinking, dualistic means there's puruṣa,
and there's prakṛti
there is pure consciousness and its fluctuations
which we call shakti.
And the two are
in a way different as experiences.
But
Ājīvika
non duality um goes deeper. And
Shiva
Sutras are actually
non dual
and says that the
shakti itself is a fluctuation of pure consciousness.
Now, in the sāṅkhya
system
that there are 23 tattvas,
tattvas are qualities we might even call them
23 tattvas.
And all these tattvas
are fluctuations of pure consciousness.
So let's uh go over them.
The first three. Mind, intellect and ego.
So mind is where we experience feelings and thoughts intellect is
where we uh where we express discernment and
rationality maybe.
But remember, rationality is based on the magical lights of perception.
In any case, the intellect is
something we use to make decisions and discernment. And then there's ego,
which is our self image personality.
So those are the first three
and then there are five
uh other uh instruments
uh which are called jñānendriya,
these are
actually the five senses of perception, which of course, you know, are
are influenced by the conditioned mind, by the first three mind, intellect,
and ego.
So every perception is colored by the mind, intellect, and ego.
And that perceptions are in five areas, sound, touch, sight, taste and smell.
But these perceptions are not reflective of
ultimate reality. They are reflective of the
conditioned mind,
intellect, and ego.
Five sensory perceptions,
jñānendriya.
Then there are five
karmendriyas.
Karmendriyas are instruments of activity,
instruments of activity. So there are also sensations
uh
the feet, the hands and vocal cords and then
the uh reproductive
organs of evacuation. So, bile
and bladder.
that there are five
instruments of action, but we experience them again as sensations,
uh five jñānendriyas
and
perception, five uh
in the
uh uh actions of uh
awareness um which result in motor activity.
And then there are five elements that are actually
constructs
of the five senses,
literally constructs of the five senses, space, air, fire, water and earth
or what we call matter in its
uh un manifest form space,
um air as a subtle sensation and then fire as transformation,
metabolism.
And then taste,
and smell
we get the experience of water and, and earth through those five elements.
And then there are five than,
than
tanmātra are subtle senses.
So if I ask you to close your eyes and imagine you're listening to your favorite song,
that's the tanmātra
of sound.
If I ask you to close your eyes and imagine uh snow Flagg mountains, that's the
tanmātra of
sight. Similarly in your,
in your imagination, you can create any experience, sensation,
image, feeling, thought, these are all tantra.
So when you add these up mind, intellect and ego, the five jñānendriyas
and
the five karmendriyas,
the five elements and the five tanmātras
you realize that these are all fluctuations of consciousness.
And that's how we conceive, construct, govern and become everything
that we call perceived and conceptualized reality.
These perceived and conceptualized realities of finite modifications
of the infinite pure awareness of Shiva.
And prakriti
is uh or Shakti
is
just uh the fluctuations of Shiva.
And what uh the Shiva
Sutra is saying is that when we have meta cognition,
when we are resting in the Self, when we are aware of being aware
in every
experience,
then uh that is the ultimate arsenal, the seat of awareness and every other arsenal,
which means every other position, every other posture, every other movement
then is
um impregnated by pure consciousness.
And that today we would call meta cognition.
So um Krishnamurti call that the highest intelligence,
the ability to observe yourself without judging yourself.
And when you do that, there's insight and that is actually ultimate with
personal
insight means inner
vision in our sight that gives us access
to truth.
And once we have access to truth with the capital T,
then uh we will see
uh how this leads ultimately
to the spontaneous fulfillment of desire or what we call spontaneous, right
action, spontaneous, right thinking,
spontaneous, right feeling spontaneous right speech, spontaneous right
action.
Uh this is
uh Kriyā.
Kriyā
Kriyā means action
without karmic bondage and therefore action in freedom
and uh
action and freedom allows infinite manifestations.
Um But we'll go there uh in the next Sutra
In the meanwhile, here's a little,
a little exercise. OK. Look at my hand.
And so let's call this
matter
a material
or manifest. And let's call this space un-manifest or invisible
and un-manifest and invisible
and
uh the invisible and the visible go together.
You can't have an experience of the visible without
what we call the invisible of the formless.
You can't have form without the formless.
But the form itself is
the density or contraction
of the formless. OK.
The form
and this form uh is an expression
of this formless but this formless
is all formless.
The space between this, the space between you and me, the space between objects,
the space between breath, the space between
uh thought, the space between every fluctuation mind intellect and ego
is
the infinite formless. And it's the same. The space between this extends all the way
to the cosmic horizon,
which currently is believed to be some 48 billion light years away from where we are.
So this
is eternal, timeless, formless,
modifying itself into every form and phenomenon. The form itself is a phenomenon
and the phenomenon is a
fluctuation
and it's a fluctuation of pure consciousness.
So
pure consciousness is the source of all experience.
This is almost like the subjective version of the String theory. Every conceivable
uh possibilities is contained in the formless, including
meta verses and infinite verses.
So onward, with the Shiva
Sutras.