According to Patanjali, there are seven "limbs" to yoga, or as we
would say seven steps or stages.
First is asana, which consists of holding a single posture
(usually sitting) for prolonged periods of time. This is an
attempt, in our terminology, to stabilize the bio-survival circuit
by drowning it in monotony. You sit, and sit, and sit, and sit.
Eventually, an "internal peace" is reached, which signifies the
atrophying of all background levels of "unconscious" or unnoticed
bio-survival anxiety.
In other schools, since asana is so monotonous and slowworking
and because war (second-circuit mammalian struggles
over territory) so common among domesticated primates, an
alternative method of stabilizing the bio-survival circuit is used:
martial arts. Akido, judo, karate etc. all emerged from yoga-like
mystic schools, as bio-survival reprogrammers.
The second step in classical yoga, according to Patanjali, is
pranayama. We have already commented on the efficiency of
this breathing technique in quieting and mellowing-out secondcircuit
emotional programs.
(It will already be seen that yoga, like brainwashing, begins
from the bottom up, working on the more primitive and older
circuits first.)
The third step in yoga is dharana or mantra. Dharana consists
of concentrating on a single image, such as a vividly imagined
red triangle, and ruthlessly pushing aside any other images,
verbalizations or impressions that cross the mind's screen. In
practice, this is beyond the powers of most students, so the
majority of yoga teachers substitute mantra, which is concentration
(by repetition) on a single sentence, usually nonsensical,
such as "Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare
Hare" or "Aum Tat Sat Aum" or whatever.
Either practice, dharana or mantra, stops the third-circuit
"internal monologue," if persisted in for long enough periods
each day.
The Western mystical equivalent is Cabala, the most complicated
"Jewish joke" ever invented. Briefly, Cabala exhausts the
third, semantic circuit by setting it to solve intractable numerological
and verbal problems. The Far Eastern equivalent is the
Zen Koan, which serves the same function in a less maniacally
systematic way than Cabala, e.g., "What is the sound of one hand
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clapping?" Zen koans are always combined with zazen (sitting
Zen), which combines the first-circuit-clearing asana with second-
circuit-mellowing breath-counting (a weaker pranayama).
When the student has acquired sufficient detachment from
first-circuit anxieties, second-circuit emotions and third-circuit
reality-maps, by way of asana, pranayama and dharana or
mantra, Patanjali recommends the practice of yama. This
includes, but is not limited to, celibacy. The ultimate of yama is
to lose all interest in both the social and sexual aspects of the
fourth circuit; to cease to care at all about family, tribal or societal
matters. This is accomplished by self-denial, which is easier
for those skilled in asana, pranayama and dharana, but still
requires intense determination.
Some take a short-cut at this point, discovered after Patanjali
or not known to him, by having themselves locked up in caves.
Such isolation, as indicated earlier, helps vastly in bleaching out
all four hominid circuits.
An alternative, for those not attracted to either celibacy or
becoming hermits, is Tantra, invented in northern India around
the time of Patanjali. This simply transmutes the fourth circuit by
ceremonial, physiological arid "magick" (self-hypnotic) explosion
of the (prolonged) sexual act into fifth-circuit neurosomatic
rapture.
For those following the orthodox path of Patanjali, the fifth
circuit is imprinted by niyama, which signifies "super-control" or
"no-control," being the paradoxical state of being spontaneous
deliberately. You cannot be taught niyama; you can only learn it
by personal experience. We hypothesize that the bio-energies
have to discharge somewhere, and then when one has driven
them out of the first circuit by asana, out of the second circuit by
pranayama, out of the third circuit by dharana or mantra, and
out of the fourth circuit by yama, they are driven explosively
upward into fifth-circuit neurosomatic illumination.
The sixth step in yoga, according to Patanjali, is dhyana,
which means "meditation" only in the roughest way. Dhyana
means actually union with the object on the mind's screen, i.e.,
realization of the total meaning of the proposition that mind and
its contents are functionally identical, i.e., opening the metaprogramming
circuit. One can make dhyana on anything; yogis
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talk of making dhyana on a tree or a dog, just as don Juan Matus,
the Mexican shaman, talks of becoming one with a coyote or a
star in the books of Castaneda.
The seventh step in yoga is Samadhi, from sam, (union;
cognate of Greek syn) and Adhis, the Lord (cognate, Hebrew
Adonai, Greek Adonis). Here Patanjali and his successors are in
violent dispute, some claiming there is only one Samadhi, others
claiming two or three or many. Since this corresponds with the
opening and imprinting of the neurogenetic circuit, we must opt
for the opinion that there are many Samadhi, depending on
which or how many of the Godly archetypes of the genetic
archives are imprinted. Catholic mystics make Samadhi on the
Virgin, Sufis on Allah, Aleister Crowley on Pan, etc.; and, above
all this, the eighth circuit cosmic information network can also
be imprinted, making union not just with all sentient beings and
some emblematic archetype of the DNA master program, but
with the inorganic universe as well. It was from this second order
or meta-physiological Samadhi that Gandhi said, "God is in the
rock, too--in the rock!" and pantheists of all sorts, in all traditions,
emphatically agree with Canadian psychiatrist, R.M.
Bucke who said after his own Eighth-Circuit Samadhi that the
universe "is not a dead machine but a living presence."