You will immensely enjoy reading this very absorbing email forward.
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
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 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 yojan as 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 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 al
ign 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 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. I t gradually coalesced into our
world, but will perish some day billions of years hence when the sun
expands to many times its 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 si
ddhas, 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 Incas!!!
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. -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 (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 vi ew."
Perhaps the ancient sages didn't need advanced astronomical
instruments. After all, they had yoga.
>
Rajendra.Deshpande.
Trainer.
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