Ashtanga Yoga - The Intermediate Series. Gregor Maehle

realizing one’s ishtadevata, or meditation deity. This is because the sacred texts, in relating the many myths, describe in detail the many divine forms from which your ishtadevata may be drawn. The concept of ishtadevata is for those who want to understand the Indian mind, are interested in Indian spirituality, and want to integrate Indian spirituality into their lives.

      The ancient Indian sages recognized that people are very different and that what works for one person does not necessarily work for another. People may have intellectual, devotional, emotional, or physical constitutions. And within these categories we find still many more subdivisions and combinations. Due to this fact, many different meditation images were developed so that there was one to suit each of the many different constitutions. These meditation images have human aspects that we can recognize in ourselves, but they also have divine aspects, which are usually worshiped outside of ourselves.

Meditation deities are derived from the many divine forms called devas. The term deva is often translated as “god,” and as such it has acquired much unfortunate baggage.³ It is best to use the original Sanskrit word, with its far more complex meaning, which has the great advantage of continually reminding us that we may not understand the term completely. The terms divine form and divine image are also acceptable because they are somewhat less loaded than god, although they do not have the richness of deva, with its many nuances.

To understand the significance of the concept of deva, we need to look at the relationship of the many devas (which is a lunar concept born of prana going through the left nostril) to the one Brahman (which is a solar concept born of prana going through the right nostril). The many Indian deities are only aspects of the one Brahman, and thus one is not different from another. The sacred texts that are considered the highest authority (the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Brahma Sutra; collectively referred to as prashthana trayi or the triple canon) all agree that there is only one Supreme Being but that this Supreme Being can be seen or understood in many different ways. For example, in the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna says, “Whichever deva you worship you will always come to me.” The Skanda Purana states, “Vishnu is nobody but Shiva, and he who is called Shiva is but identical with Vishnu.”⁴ The Varaha Purana says that Devi (the Great Goddess), Vishnu, and Shiva are one and the same and warns that those “idiots” who don’t understand this fact will end up in hell.⁵ These are very strong words, but it is obvious for all those who have truly breathed the spiritual air of India that all divine images are nothing but representations and manifestation of the one Brahman, the infinite consciousness and deep reality.

      The Brahman, however, is for most people an abstract and intangible concept that is difficult to grasp. It is much easier to understand deities with forms and particular qualities. Another advantage of representing the Brahman with diverse deities is that it helps counteract dogma. Rather than specifying one correct path for approaching the realization of the Brahman, India accepted all paths as long as they led to divine revelation. How’s that for practicality?

      The Brahman

      Let’s take a closer look now at the term Brahman, which is never to be confused with Lord Brahma, who is only one of many divine images. Brahman is called truth or reality (sat) because it cannot be broken down into smaller constituents. Therefore we can also call it deep reality. Indian thought considers things that can be reduced to smaller parts as mere appearance (which does not necessarily mean they are unreal). Underneath mere appearance is that which is not further reducible to anything — and this is what Indian texts call the Brahman. It is also described as chit, infinite consciousness — infinite both in temporal and spatial senses. Our modern scientific knowledge of physical matter — that atoms are reducible to electrons, neutrons, and protons and that those are reducible to subatomic particles, which are in turn further reducible — makes this principle even more profound.

      Brahman has limitless potential. It is considered to be the state before and after the Big Bang that produced the universe. It continues to exist during the unfolding of the universe because it is touched neither by space nor by time and it gives rise to an infinite number of universes. The realization of Brahman is thought to bestow limitless ecstasy (ananda).

      The Upanishads talk about the Brahman either as nirguna (without quality) or saguna (with quality). This does not mean that there are two different Brahmans but rather that individual human beings will be better able to relate to one view or the other. Neither of the views is right; the only question is, By which view can you realize the Brahman?

      According to the nirguna view, the Brahman is the formless, infinite absolute. Any quality that is projected onto this formless consciousness is already part of the relative world of manifestation. No quality can be eternal, and therefore none can really describe the Brahman. This view is held by most schools of Buddhism (although they don’t call it Brahman) and by Shankara’s school of Advaita Vedanta. Islam can also be said to share this view; it forbids any depicting of the Supreme — or in fact any qualifying of the Supreme whatsoever — because it considers any human representation as a sullying of the infinite.

      Strict adherents of nirguna Brahman reject beingness as a quality of Brahman. They consider the Brahman to be beyond being, beyond nonbeing, both being and nonbeing simultaneously, and none of the above. They wish to express that the Brahman is beyond any categories of the mind while also encompassing all categories the mind can think of and even those that the mind cannot think of. In other words, the followers of the Nirguna School, such as Shankara, consider being-ness as a “relative” category, while the Brahman is absolute.

      For all those who ascribe to the nirguna view, the formless absolute is their ishtadevata, their meditation deity. There can be no other, because they reject the notion that the Brahman has form. This is the path of Jnana Yoga (the yoga of knowledge), which was discussed in chapter 1.

For all those who cannot or do not want to worship the formless absolute — which probably is the majority of modern people — there is the Brahman with form (saguna). If we add form to Brahman we arrive at the Supreme Being, often called Ishvara.⁶ The name Ishvara usually does not imply a particular deity; it is also the name that Patanjali uses for the Supreme Being. He qualifies it as little as possible.⁷ Nevertheless we do learn from Patanjali that the Supreme Being utters the sacred syllable Om, is a form of consciousness different from humans, is all knowing and unlimited by time, and is the author of yoga. This list gives us only a very vague idea of what the Supreme Being is and leaves open the form one should use when meditating on the Supreme.

Let’s now go deeper into the qualities in which Indian thought generally clothes the Supreme Being. In historical times Ishvara was often depicted as Trimurti, the three-faced one. A Trimurti statue will have one head with three faces looking into different directions, the three faces representing Lord Brahma, the creator; Lord Vishnu, the maintainer; and Lord Shiva, the cosmic destroyer.⁸ The idea of the Trimurti is to show that all three are only various faces of the one Supreme Being. Interestingly, however, Lord Brahma is not worshiped at all in India; there is only one temple related to Brahma, and even that temple is devoted to Brahma’s wife and not directly to him.

      The more commonly worshiped three deities, or forms of the Supreme, are Lord Shiva, who stands for the pure consciousness within us; Lord Vishnu, representing the true self; and Devi Shakti, the Mother Goddess, who represents the entire world of creation (prakrti),