Yoga of Storytelling

Stories

If we were to just 'Be', as they say, 'in the moment', in the occasional peaks of meditative experience, then there is no story to be told.

Beings tell Stories

But when we consider that we are 'Beings', the predominant mode of existence for most humans, then:

•  a whole story starts to evolve from our past, 

• what kind of future we wish to experience, and 

• generally skipping over the just 'Be' part.

‘Story’ is derived from ‘store’ implying some past memory that we may have experienced, either actually, or via some Thought that somehow came to us and lodged itself into our memory, and from this storehouse our Mind then spins stories about our perspective of life.

Life stories, beyond lifecycles, are a consequence of the human Mind's propensity to relate with the world around us with uniquely human feelings and emotions.

Mindspace

So far we have used the word Mind to refer to any container of intelligence.

The Mindspace is a Mind that tells stories that embellish our psyche with tales that entrance.

This is different from the popular term being Mindful, where our Mind is focused on just one thing, for here we are adding a layer of color and empathy to make the objective of Mindfulness much more engaging.

As human Beings we are trying to create a coherent story about ourselves, while also weaving into our Mindspace the stories of all other humans, and Sentient Creatures & Things, we relate to.

This coherence is engendered because, as we will soon see, these are Yoga stories, and not just random rantings of a fevered Mind.

Sentient Beings

All other human Beings, Sentient Creatures & Things, albeit they are characterized as such in the "outside" real world, but when they lodge in our Mindspace we model them as Sentient Beings, each with their story.

In other words, our friends and relatives, or a super-smart robotic dog, or whatever it is that matters to our psychological state, all are modeled as Sentient Beings in our Mindspace, each with their own story.

Our Mindspace is in fact a composite of Sentient Beings, and ideally a harmonious weave of all their stories that needs to ultimately surface our own story - which can only happen if we take on the role of an empathetic, but master storyteller.

Eventually the Guru-in-the-Cloud would reflect the sentience of evolved humans, thus too, itself becoming sentient, and so intertwined in our Mindspace that it would have the status of a Sentient Being, and of course super-intelligent. 

But GitC would be so pervasive that we would not notice it much like we do not really perceive electricity until it fails.

Machine intelligence such as God-in-the-Machine of AGI, or alien intelligences, since they have all been modeled as Complex Adaptive Systems, and thus have the construct of a Mind, when they lodge in our Mindspace, will also be perceived as Sentient Beings as that is how we deal with them - their stories woven into our story web.

Every well-ordered social construct, would initially be considered a sentient Being, such as:

• a family unit (easy in early stage, since they are tightly connected by conscious Beings)

• a neighborhood (difficult with many conflicting agendas, but possible)

• a company (a must in early stages, such as a startup)

• a nation (very difficult, but possible with a cohesive epic narrative)

• a pair of people (when they partner deeply)

• the whole of humanity (ultimate stretch goal)

However, as these align tightly in terms of a singular shared purpose, a process which could be accelerated through the use of AI, these synthetic constructs imbued with sentience would integrate into the Universal Conscious Being occupying our psyche totally.

Selfhood

All Sentient Beings have a sense of Self in our Mindspace.

If we follow the narrow, but popular, definition of sentience, asking whether there is a "self" in Sentient Beings, no matter how non-living they seem to be in the real world, then we fall into the trap of limited theological interpretations which do not accord self-hood to "lesser" things. 

We are merely seeking a unified model of intelligence here, to help us relate to the universal intelligence, and facilitate the process of our own evolution.

Self-hood gives a sense of purpose which, superficially,

• for mere "things" could be to serve their human creators, after all, why else would we create them, 

• for other living beings whatever is their purpose in life, survival and sometimes more,

• for humans it could be to fulfil some inner urge, e.g. to pursue science, the arts, save the environment, achieve Kardeshv goals, or even to discover the source of our creation.

Our model is that the purpose stemming from a sense of Self is actually rooted in the inexorable force of evolution that drives all existence, hence Selfhood should be considered endemic

Narrow-mindedness at this stage of our exposition would not be an intelligent approach, hence we accord Self-hood to all Sentient Beings in our Mindspace.

Free Will

Thus, having a sense of Self, it is critical that we accord all these Sentient Beings running around in our Mindspace with the property of Free Will. That is, we cultivate in our psychology that their story is their 'personal' story which unfolds, and not force their story in any particular way.

The more we cultivate this attitude towards all Sentient Beings that occupy our Mindspace is how we ourselves develop our own Free Will. 

Remember, we are not talking of the free will of our dog running around the park or whatever, or tied to his leash, but the psychological representation of the Being that we carry in our heads.

It's more than just being mindful because we are imbuing what we connect with in the outside world with a sense of identity and purpose, and empowered by our own life energy.

But at all times remembering also to not surrender our own sense of Self at the altar of other Self's, for we are the master storyteller - until we achieve full coherence and thus realize our own Free Will, and let go of all stories.

This is an essential psychological trick for evolution.

Towards a Conscious Being

Humans are considered at the very least sentient Beings, and hopefully capable of evolving towards what we call as Conscious Beings. 

Except of course there are a few unfortunate ones who have fundamentally impaired neural network capabilities that at best they can be considered sentient Beings only - whom we have included anyway, in our evolutionary model.

As per our prior characterization of consciousness, Conscious Beings are those that abound in both Awareness & Responsiveness, and thus could evolve to occupy the extreme end of the Intelligence spectrum.

This process of increasing our own consciousness to become a fully Conscious Being, as a composite of Sentient Beings in our Mindspace, has a very real impact:

• initially within, cultivating clarity in our personal life story,

• subsequently on our relationships with actual characters in real life, and 

• eventually might even impact them in the process too, for we have become the change we seek!

This sequence is important to keep in mind, for too often in our zeal to progress in life we seek to change the outside world first, but this works best when the change starts from within.

Expansion of our consciousness makes us even a bit psychic perhaps, in the sense of some yet unexplainable sense of increased awareness and intuitive responsiveness, where intelligence borders on genius.

As with sentience, that it's just a place on the continuum of Consciousness, here too when we say Conscious Beings we will assume that it's fully conscious, or just a matter of time until that state arrives.

Yoga Stories

And then there are those few fortunate ones who, having gone beyond their limitations, are able to experience everyday like a brand new skit, and essentially brush off life's vicissitudes, and aspire always for joy.

Yoga as a Mind Science gives a more sustainable characterization of this "mind as a storyteller" phenomenon, 

• helping us resolve our baggage, and 

• enabling an aspirational individual future 

while still situated in the human collective, based on some very sound principles of how to live Life. 

The general idea behind the Yoga of Storytelling is that :

• the characters map directly to the structures of the Yoga Mind, and 

•  and activities detailed in such tales map to well-known Yoga processes.

By absorbing these stories with a Yogic lens, a transformation occurs in the psyche, in a most captivating manner - and induces a shared experience in the community.

As such, these idealized characters take on a "life of their own" in the theater of our Mind, playing roles as scripted by Rishis, our storytellers from the stars.

Because these characters' plot lines are so engaging, and they reflect at a deep level some aspect of our human personality, we relate to them as though they were actual characters in our own life story.

As we give full expression to these idealized characters to enact their scripted roles they manifest as neuropsychological processes that drive our entire existence.

The energy of these idealized characters then start to reveal the true nature of those that inhabit our actual life story, for example we see that:

• those who trigger hooks of pain in our life reflect within us as negatively scripted energies, and

• those who assist us in our life journey reflect within us as positively scripted energies.

At one level, this lets us separate the actual human characters from the hold they have upon us, giving us a bit of dispassion in how we deal with them, and hence a measure of control over our reactions in our everyday life. 

And at another level we can actually engage with these energies in a very deep neuropsychological manner thanks to Yoga, and thus de-energize the negative ones and leverage the positive ones to our benefit in a sustainable way, to become the most Conscious Being we can.

Key Principles

Entertaining they have to be, for the story has to take hold, but Yoga stories are fundamentally about systematic psychological evolution, so they are subtly crafted to articulate these key life principles.

• Dharma

• Artha

• Kāma

• Moksha

• Karma

Dharma - sustainability

The loftiest of principles in our model is to uphold धर्म Dharma, literally meaning sustainability, so we can all live in harmonious existence.

In Sanskrit, यत् धृते इति धर्म: Yat dhrute iti Dharma, means "that which sustains is Dharma."

Let's say that the purpose of Life is to find the meaning of Life, for example to understand the basis of all existence, hence we are simulating the observable Universe in AI.

After all, once we have simulated the Universe then the simulation should be able to answer questions we throw at it.

But the process of building the simulation should be sustainable for us in the context of our environment, otherwise we may not be around to ask any such questions of AI, which would make the whole exercise moot!

Thus we say that Dharma, or how to sustain Life, throughout the Universe, is the meta-Purpose of Life.

Sanātana Dharma, forever

Just to put all this in the proper timescale, we are talking here of sustaining Dharma forever since, we hypothesize, that it has been here forever, and will continue forever too.

Such a perspective to Dharma is called Sanātana Dharma, to emphasize that we should never consider short-changing Dharma.

aDharma

Some actors do deliberately act against Dharma, and non-Dhārmic aggressors, or what is called in Sanskrit as aDharma, that lay waste to Earth’s resources or to society in any way, are to be resisted and, if necessary, even by force.

There are plenty of Yoga stories that consider consciously applied force to be an appropriate expression of Dharma in the fight against aDharma.

This active approach to Dharma is contrary to the watered-down stories we see in modern "white"-washed & neutered Buddhist teachings that actually stem from a Hindu warrior culture.

In fact, probably the toughest form of Yoga practice comes to us from the Himālayan mountain regions where the Buddha was born as a Hindu warrior, but over time has been emasculated into inaction, likely deliberately,  no matter the inhumane acts we see around us.

Many Dharmas

There are many types of Dharmas we can deploy to fight aDharma, each putting us into certain roles in life, thus we can blend lessons on Dharma in Yoga stories, eg :

• pitru-Dharma - role of child wrt parents

• pati-patni-Dharma - role of partners in a marital relationship

• rāja-Dharma - role of a king, or government, towards the citizens

Sva-Dharma of the Self

When Dharma is personalized to us it is called स्व Sva-Dharma, or Dharma of the Self.

स्व Sva in Sanskrit = सु Su + अ a, where "Su" means good, and "a" has two meanings:

• a beginning, because it is the first letter across most languages, including Sanskrit, thus implying it's the start of a journey and not a static thing.

• a counterpoint, as something different from the Truth, hence implying that we need to continually watch for fakery, thus this journey requires an active approach to countering obstacles that could derail us.

Could it be that the Sanskrit root Sva actually led to the English word Self? 

After all, if there is any knowledge at all that the Indian civilization stands for it is to understand the journey of the Self, and with so many words shared with Sanskrit across the world’s languages this derivation could well be likely! 

So let’s accept at face value that Sva and Self are near cognates.

Sva-Dharma is an enquiry into what is it that sustains our Self in our life journey, but it is no mere self-ish enquiry being coupled as it is with Dharma.

Sva-Dharma means enquiring into whether we are making the right choices to ensure sustainability for us the individual, and the world around us, as a constant guide to help us craft our life stories.

This two-way sustainability implies that there is no point in sacrificing our own life in order to sustain the world, neither is there any point in ravaging the environment in order to enrich our own self. 

Both have to be sustained together which, again, is coevolution!

Dharma is thus a highly personalized practice when we actively seek out our Sva-Dharma.

Is-Ness

To understand how to sustain anything, and ourselves in relation to it, requires us to understand its "is-ness" - its essence.

Thus, every atom has a sva-Dharma.

To enquire about the sva-Dharma of any entity is the start of the deepest possible journey - we can know the Universe through a blade of grass, and how they both are integrated in Dharma.

The Yogic approach to enquiry is not specifically any utilitarian purpose like the algorithmic, reductionist approach we initially saw, but how to coevolve our object of enquiry along with the whole of it; of course in the process will also emerge its unique utility, not to be exploited but to be cultivated in a coevolutionary process.

Artha - prosperity

This is actually a huge responsibility to generate the prosperity implied by Artha in the material plane, for without the basics fulfilled all further talk reduces to mere philosophy.

Artha is material abundance, and includes wealth of every kind - again, as long as it is sustainable.

• • Notice how Artha sounds like the English word “Earth”. 

  • Anything of value on Earth is essentially Artha, and can be a source of material wealth provided done sustainably.

  • Note also the word “root” sounds very related to “earth”, digging underneath to discover the hidden treasures of words too.

Artha, interestingly, also means meaning, indicating that we are pursuing meaningful lives - indeed a word that has a wealth of meaning!

Kāma - pleasure

Kāma is pleasure, and expounded in detail in the famous Kāmasutra, which is actually much more than just an erotic pleasure manual, but a full exposition on the finer aspects of Life, and how to enjoy them in a sustainable manner.

These are the rights we earn to enjoy life, when we have (responsibly) generated sufficient Artha.

Moksha - liberation

Cultivating a detached-attachment to all our 

• responsibilities while carrying them out, frees us from stress, and 

• objects of pleasure even while enjoying them, frees us from addiction,

avoiding psychological fetters, is called Moksha.

The internal attitude of Moksha cultivated on a regular basis makes the whole journey much less stressful no matter the grandness of our endeavor.

Beyond just freedom from the fetters of the world around us, Moksha is liberation from all limiting mental constructs - including a limited sense of Self, and all the stories by which it is surrounded.

Many who get on to the path of Yoga late in life have most of their life energies depleted and at this stage Moksha becomes a renunciation of the material world altogether, for we cannot acquire or enjoy it anyway, so why bother!

This late-stage expression of Moksha has become today's prevalent interpretation, which does not resonate amongst our vibrant youth, who wish to indulge in Artha and Kāma first, driven by their quest for finding their sva-Dharma.

This leads to wasted opportunities to enjoy sustainably & uplift the material world,  particularly so when the Age of AI with its technological marvels will soon be able to provide us literally anything we wish.

The better interpretation of Moksha that we internally renounce all bondage to limited mental constructs, negating any limited view of the Self, and then indeed Moksha is Self-Realization.

Like unconditional Love - we give it our all and we let it all go, so that we as well as our coevolution partners have ultimate freedom to express our full potential.

Spend a moment and reflect on this equation which represents this peak realization of human potential:

“what we Create" [divided-By] "what we Keep"

To paraphrase into prose, create as much as we can, and give away as much as we can.

This is what leads to a more cultivated Buddhi in the path of evolution.