Ashtanga Yoga - The Intermediate Series. Gregor Maehle

that determine our actions as aspects of ourselves. By meditating on a divine image we invoke its qualities. This process of bringing forth the divine qualities within us is very different from what is depicted in today’s mass media, which continually portray the more demonic aspects of human nature and thereby provoke the audience to enact further demonic behavior.

      Divine forms, of course, are ruled by sattva. However, as our demonic side is not always evil, our divine side is not necessarily always noble. The downfall of divine forms or celestials can be their attachment to pride and pleasure, as has been the downfall of many a noble human being.

      Deities also represent forces of nature. Indra, for example, represents thunder and rain; Varuna represents the ocean; and Agni represents fire. Last but not least, they also often represent celestial bodies, such as Brihaspati representing Jupiter, or Varuna representing Uranus. Divine forms can also be much more than just deities; they can be Brahman with form. This is particularly true of Lord Shiva in his many manifestations, Lord Vishnu and his avataras (incarnations), and Devi, the Goddess.

      Vedic divine images are so complex that we need to admit that we don’t know exactly what they are, and we can only learn more about them as we go along. The list of characteristics given of the phenomenon deva is by no means complete. Everything that I have said so far about the Divine says more about my ignorance than about the Divine.

      The term pasha is derived from the Sanskrit verb root pash, meaning “to bind.” According to the nineteenth-century American linguist William Dwight Whitney, pash is inferable from the noun pashu, which is again listed as one of the thousand names of the Lord Shiva.⁵ Monier Monier-Williams, a nineteenth-century linguist noted for compiling one of the most widely used Sanskrit-English dictionaries, translated pashu as “animal,” but he pointed out that the term can also be applied derogatively to humans who are unevolved in sacred matters. He explained that the Pashupatas (an ancient school of Shiva worshipers) used the term pashu to refer to the individual consciousness or self, distinct from the consciousness of the Supreme Being. Human beings were labeled beasts (pashus) because they were commonly enmeshed in conditioned existence and unaware of their higher divine nature. The Pashupatas professed that those who do not evolve from this conditioned state are still “animals in sacred matters.”⁶

      The Pashupatas called the Supreme Being Pashupati, which is commonly translated as “Lord of the Beasts.” The so-called Pashupati seal, a terracotta seal that was excavated on a site related to the Indus-Sarasvati culture, supplies us with the oldest known archaeological evidence of yoga. The seal depicts an ithyphallic figure with a bovine head, sitting in Siddhasana, surrounded by animals. The figure is thought to represent the Lord Shiva, the bovine head representing his vahana (vehicle), the bull Nandi.

      In Kathmandu, Nepal, an ancient Shiva temple called Pashupati Nath still exists today. Pashupatism is thought by some to be the oldest religion on Earth. Although this religion is generally thought to be extinct, there are still sadhus in India who regard themselves as Pashupatas.

      In the Mahabharata we find numerous references to the term pashupata. Pashupata is an adjective meaning “belonging to Pashupati” (Shiva). It is also the name of the most terrible weapon of the Lord, called the Pashupata missile, the arrow that he unleashed from his bow to destroy the three aerial demon cities, called Tripura.

      The Puranas describe this most destructive of all missiles as having Vishnu (the Supreme in its function as sustainer) as its shaft, Agni (the Supreme in its function as fire) as its tip, and Vayu (the Supreme in its function as wind) as its feathers. The Skanda Purana states that the Pashupata missile was created from the backbone of the Rishi Dadhicha, who also gave his skull for the manufacturing of the vajra, the weapon of the Lord Indra.

      In the Mahabharata, Arjuna realizes that he needs this missile to win his brother’s empire back. He performs austerities in the forest and finally receives the Pashupata missile as a boon from Lord Shiva.

      Similarly, the performance of this first posture in the Intermediate Series must be seen (if the practitioner is of devotional character) as asking a boon of the trident-bearing Lord (Shiva). The boon being requested is, as usual, immortality — not the immortality of the body, however, but that of recognizing oneself as consciousness, which is eternal and uncreated and therefore immortal. The Lord Shiva is a personification of infinite consciousness.

      Pashasana also symbolizes the noose that the Lord throws around the yogi to save him from the fangs of Yama, the Lord of Death. Apart from Lord Varuna, Lord Yama is the other famous carrier of the noose. He is thought to cast the noose at the moment of death to usher the spirit of the departing away.

      KROUNCHASANA (HERON POSTURE)

      Krouncha means “heron.” A pair of herons figure prominently in the incident that not only gave rise to Indian poetry but also triggered the composition of the oldest epic, the Ramayana.

      At the outset of the Ramayana we find sage Valmiki accompanied by his disciple Bharadvaja in the forest.⁷ When Valmiki wants to take a bath, he suddenly becomes aware of two krounchas engaged in love play. Just then a hunter appears and strikes down the male krouncha with an arrow. As the male bird lies on the ground in his blood, the female cries out in agony at the loss of her mate. Valmiki is intensely touched by this tragedy and in the midst of his passion curses the hunter for killing the bird. He then realizes that his outcry was spontaneously forged into metrical quarters, each containing the same number of syllables. Because it was produced by the sentiment grief (shoka), he calls his creation shloka. Later on, Valmiki is visited by Lord Brahma, who explains that what the seer discovered was in fact poetry, and he assigns him to cast into verse the entire tragedy of the life of Rama (the king of Ayodhya and sixth avatara of Lord Vishnu), which today we know as the Ramayana, the first and foremost of all poems.

      Krouncha also refers to a famed asura who is the antagonist in a tale about the Rishi Agastya, who brought the eternal teaching (sanatana dharma) to South India and Indonesia. The story commences with Agastya visiting Mount Kailasha in order to obtain a boon from Lord Shiva. Agastya asks for the boon to install a tirtha (sacred bathing site) in South India. For this purpose, the Lord turns the goddess Kaveri, who is attending him at the time, into a river and places her in Agastya’s water pot (kumbha) for easy transport.

      On his way to South India, Agastya finds a huge mountain obstructing his way. After several attempts to walk around the mountain, which are thwarted by the mountain repositioning itself, Agastya eventually realizes that the mountain is the asura Krouncha. Krouncha wants to prevent Agastya from installing the sacred site, because it would block Krouncha from further defiling the country.

      Agastya curses the asura to forever remain a mountain, called Krouncha Mountain, until a divine force frees him. This divine force would eventually arise in the form of Lord Shiva’s second son, Skanda, the Lord of War, who splits open Mount Krouncha with an arrow.

      Agastya, upon finding the correct location for his sacred site, releases the waters of his vessel, and the River Kaveri is born. This river is still well known today, as it flows through the entire Indian state of Karnataka. The ashrama of the rishi is said to have been located at the source of the Kaveri, in the Western Ghats. The Kaveri is considered so sacred that even the goddess Ganga, whose material manifestation is the River Ganges, bathes there once a year to cleanse herself from the degradation she has to absorb as a bathing site.

      SHALABHASANA (LOCUST POSTURE)

      Shalabha means “locust” or “grasshopper.” The term is derived from the root shal, which is an exclamation denoting suddenness, the kind of movement typical of a locust.

      In