Yoga Stories

Yoga Stories

Yoga Stories

The process of understanding & resolving psychological issues, and psychological evolution itself, should happen with ease.

Hence, Yoga stories, are crafted inspire a sense of wonder in the listener, and open our hearts to the legends of heroes and gods.

Interestingly, what makes Life is breath, which is indicated by inspiration. 

Thus, inspirational Stories are not just in name, but in actual form, bring life energy to us, powering our neuropsychological processes, such as, "that took my breath away", "gasping with joy", "holding my breath to the end", etc.

When we contemplate such Yoga stories we can see that our own life journeys are reflected in them, as the hero has to battle and overcome tremendous odds, to achieve their Life goal, or in Sanskrit, to realize their Sva-Dharma.

Yoga stories are thus imbibed deeply in an engaging way, rather than through pedantic preaching, which helps bring about an easy coherence within the nervous system and consequently in our life journey.

And as we fully empathize with the stories of these legendary idealized characters, we become increasingly Conscious Beings, our psyche, no longer a complicated mess, but instead, a complex adaptive system capable of generating novelty, and adaptable to Black Swans in life.

Coevolution with Yoga stories

These idealized characters from Yoga stories are: 

• instilled within us in Seed form, initially as but mental concepts, then 

• we Nourish their growth by mapping our life characters into them, thus giving mental concepts the Prana to make them feel alive, and finally,

• we lead them to a Flourishing finish of their life story.

This Seed, Nourish, Flourish process is exactly what we had identified in natural Coevolution.

Thus both us and our idealized characters are liberated - we from the psychological baggage that would otherwise hold us back, and they from their evolving story being held back in an otherwise unfulfilled host. 

It is particularly important to note that in these Yoga stories, there is a definite end date to these characters so that after their story is complete, we let go of these idealized characters, for they have served their purpose and could become unwanted guests if they overstay their welcome, fossilized into mentalized philosophies, or worse yet, ideologies such as religion.

In any event there could be other interesting stories to take us further. Until of course, there are no more 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

• Rebirth Punarjanma

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.

Karma

Karma = 

• Kar (action as in “cr-eate”) 

• Ma (as in mine), 

i.e. action that stems from the limited psychological Self is Karma.

Sources

Psychic viruses are the source of negative Karma.

Psychic intelligences are the source of near-term positive Karma, but eventually, being subject to entropy and thus not staying well-organized and colliding in their actions, also become negative in effect.

Reactive Action

In simpler words, Karma is those actions that cause a reaction, in that what goes around comes around, and typically subjecting us to being continually in reactive mode.

Karma creates Kārmic impressions in the psyche, called Samskāras, that 

• generate reactive action 

• which perpetuates more Karma

which in the interest of not being too pedantic we refer too also as just Karma.

Thus we are trapped into reacting to situations mindlessly, laying the seeds for the same situation to arise in the future and are caught in a Kārmic cycle, unable to evolve beyond our limited sense of self.

Understanding

In the psychological realm it can be hard to understand the root cause of a reaction because :

• there can be significant time delays, and 

• the reaction may manifest in a form that is not immediately obvious as to its cause, 

unless we detect the patterns underfoot - which is why Patanjali states his primary injunction in PYS  1.2.

Rebirth

Punarjanma

Puna = repeated

Janma = note the English cognate for Gene - that is to generate a birth.

Biological

Karma and Self are heavily associated with “rebirth” in the literature but it’s all done very mystically because at present 

We really have no way to scientifically prove that it is Karma in one life causes future rebirth for the exact same individual Self.

In a general sense, nurture & nature could conspire :

• Past lives can be viewed as our inherited DNA programs and learned familial/societal cultural memory.

• Future lives can be viewed as our DNA being passed on to offspring, and propagating cultural memories.

Factoid

Interestingly, the literature attests to the Self having the potential to go through 8.4 Million rebirths, and there is also scientific evidence of 8.4 Million species on Earth, which from an All is Mind perspective could indicate that :

• • At each moment we could embody a certain behavior that corresponds to any of these life species, e.g. we could be “greedy as a pig”, “wise as an owl”, “sturdy as an Oak tree”, “all embracing as a Banyan tree”, etc. 

Conscious

However, from the perspective of the conscious Being we have a plausible explanation of Rebirth which suffices for the purpose of ridding ourselves of Karma in this lifetime itself.

Since All is Mind, each Being we encounter can be considered a reflection of a facet of our own parallel life.

Thus each significant interaction with another Being, that causes a deep impact on us, should be considered as an opportunity for a rebirth, for example, when they trigger any kind of reaction in us, or judgement from us, and we utilize that for personal change.

From the perspective of Yoga, this is sufficient explanation of Rebirth so we don’t get caught up in needless speculation on what is rebirth after the death of the human body.

Non-Judgemental

In the psychological world, being a Judge of someone's Karma is same as being the Executioner, since our Thoughts have impact!

And of course, if we execute, we create Karma - so to stop the execution, don't judge anyone in the psychological world.

The more we judge Karma of any individual, the more we stay entangled with their psychic energy fields, for if we judge them :

• negatively, they suck on our Prāna and become stronger at our expense, and

• positively, then their Prāna grows and ours does too

If, for example, we :

• plot to “kill” a Rākhasa for ridding of pain so that we can be happy in the future, the psychological seeds of the virus still stay embedded within and the psychic virus will reform, literally taking rebirth when similar stressful circumstances recurm - but if we consciously transform it into a Deva all will be well.

• misuse a Deva and curtail their freedom, such as hoarding them, recall Patanjali's Yama's, then they turn into a Rākhasa, but if we engage with a Deva consciously, letting it maintain its freedom, then there is no Karma - hence Patanjali's Ishwara is so significant.

• plan to destroy an Asura, so that we are finally free from social bondage, then it will let loose a host of fossilized Rākhasa's of which it is formed, and which now will spread like zombie hordes, but if we engage with the Asura in a societal-level Deva extraction process then we would have properly spiritualized the most challenging virus.

It is not that any particular individual is actually a Rākhasa or a Deva, or an Asura - it is that they are possessed by the particular spirit of such an energy. 

And just by re-cognizing it, that is it lives within us & in others, it feels heard as to its role in life, and that we would become proper coevolutionary partners.

But ignoring it is not a solution, so if we are unwilling or unable to recognize this beast for our own selfish reasons, and keep feeding its Ahamkār, its accumulated Identity, then the force of Karma will haunt us at some point.

Moksha is freedom from all Karma, and the way to get there is give all these psychic beings their own Moksha - freeing them from the cage of our own psychic self.