YOG AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT AND THE MEANING OF 108 *** Jai Maharaj posts

Subject:	YOG AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT AND THE MEANING OF 108 *** Jai Maharaj posts
Date:	Thu, 21 Jan 2010 04:37:27 GMT

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.

- Linda Johnsen

Source: http://www.yimag.org

More at:
http://www.lovearth.net/108.htm

Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti

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