A note before you read: This essay was originally written in Marathi in April 2020, during the lockdown in India, and published on Medium shortly after. What follows is an English translation, faithful to the original. The Sanskrit terms have been kept where the meaning would be diminished by an English substitute. The companion essay from earlier that month — The Blind Indian Who Wears Glasses — is the political and personal counterpart to this one’s metaphysical thread.
Spirituality (Adhyatma)
Spirituality is a broad concept, and there are many ways to come to it. In its most general form, it is the sense of being connected to something larger than yourself, and the attempt to find meaning in the life you have been given. It is, in that sense, a universal human experience — one that touches all of us, regardless of where we come from. People describe spiritual experience as sacred, as transcendent, as a feeling of aliveness, as the perception that everything is somehow connected.
Some find their spiritual life inside the walls of a temple, mosque, church, or another holy place. Others stay home and pray, or quietly worship their God. Others still find it in nature, or in art. Our personal definition of spirituality shifts over a lifetime — shaped by our goals, our experiences, and our relationships.
The existence of spirituality lies in a unique, unbreakable relationship between the heart and the mind. This inner harmony gives us strength to endure even the most distressing circumstances. Even when we are without material wealth or physical freedom, this connection remains within each of us — and it is what allows us to look at other people with compassion and empathy.
Spirituality is an inner sanctuary, free of the rules and expectations of the physical world. It is the place where, without anxiety, without striving, without desire, without jealousy, without effort — even when we are subject to death — we can rest properly.
As long as we are free to think for ourselves, spirituality keeps liberating us through knowledge. As long as that freedom exists, we will continue to influence other people’s lives — through love, through kindness — and that, I have no doubt about.
The relationship between heart and mind is a deeply rooted understanding that explains our very existence. It is what dissolves the constant compulsions weighing on us — the demand to comprehend something, the unrelenting expectations, the pressure to succeed.
In the hands of spirituality, the comprehension of life’s transient nature brings relief. It does not matter who we are or where we came from — we are all part of one shared, interdependent, enduring life.
How does this begin? How does the search for spirituality even start? Let me try to put it simply. What is the meaning of this life I have been given? What is my existence? What is the joy and the sorrow inside my life, and what is it for? What is my relationship with the universe around me — with everything that is living, and everything that is not? Do the things that happen to me happen for a reason? What are they for? In the journey from birth to death, can I live as a good person? What is my connection to the energy in this universe, and how does it work? When countless questions like these begin to arise, that is where it all begins. And the journey that a person sets out on to find the answers — that is what I call spirituality.
Gautam Buddha said it directly:
“He who experiences the unity of life sees his own Self in all beings, and all beings in his own Self, and looks on everything with an impartial eye.”
“Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.”
“All know the Way, but few actually walk it.”
— Gautam Buddha
In those lines, the Buddha makes it plain how essential a pillar spirituality is in the life of every human being.
To undertake a journey as vast as spirituality, two tools sit in front of us. The first is Yoga. The second is Aghora. Both point at the same destination — enlightenment (atma-jnana, the becoming of prabuddha) and liberation (moksha, the becoming of mukta) — only their roads are different.
This essay is about the first one. The wanderer who sets out on the spiritual road needs a tool called Yoga.
Yoga
Yoga is a Sanskrit word, and its root is in the Sanskrit yuj. The word yuj means “to attach, to join, to harness, to yoke” — to bring two things into one. Yoga therefore means union, meeting, joining together. The practice of yoga is undertaken to unite many things — to integrate joy and knowledge within ourselves, to convert the I into the we, to join the energy inside us with an energy larger than us.
There is one large twist in this, however: all of those things are already one. They already exist as a union. We just don’t know it, because we aren’t sufficiently awake, attentive, alert, or aware. We are not conscious of the consciousness we already carry. And to wake up to that consciousness is precisely why we study and practice the science of yoga.
That much should be enough. I’m not going to recount the long history here, because for our purpose, the history is not what we need.
Yoga is the journey of the self, through the self, to the self.
Yoga has four principal kinds:
1. Karma Yoga: the path of service through selfless action for the welfare of others. The Karma Yogi Mother Teresa walked this path by serving the poor as her form of compassion for humanity. Sant Gadge Baba walked it by going village to village, cleaning, and serving people. Even today, in many mathas and ashramas, selfless service is a living tradition. Many yoga teachers ask trainee teachers to practice Karma Yoga by cooking, cleaning, or volunteering for others as part of their training.
2. Bhakti Yoga: devotion cultivated through divine feeling and love. This path takes the form of regular prayer, jaap (chanting), singing, dancing, ceremony, and festival. Among its exemplars are Bhakti Yogi Sant Tukaram — the celebrated kirtankaar, singer, and spiritual saint — and, in our time, Krishna Das.
3. Jnana Yoga: the path of intellect and wisdom. Its components are the study of sacred texts, intellectual debate, philosophical discussion, and self-inquiry. Modern-era yoga scholars like David Frawley and Ravi Ravindra are walking this path.
4. Raja Yoga: the “royal road” — a journey toward personal awakening. This path involves balancing the three previous yogas — Karma, Bhakti, and Jnana — while integrating all eight limbs of yoga. Hatha Yoga is understood as the combination of the third and fourth limbs of Raja Yoga — that is, Asana and Pranayama. The greatest exemplar of Raja Yoga is Swami Vivekananda.
“The chief helps in this liberation are Abhyasa and Vairagya. Vairagya is non-attachment to life, because it is the will to enjoy that brings all this bondage in its train; and Abhyasa is constant practice of any one of the Yogas.”
“You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.”
“Through practice comes Yoga, through Yoga comes knowledge, through knowledge love, and through love bliss.”
— Swami Vivekananda
Ashtanga Yoga — The Eight Limbs
Think of the eight limbs of yoga as parts of a great tree. Every limb attaches to the trunk; the trunk is nourished and grown by deep, ancient roots. Each limb carries leaves that express the life of that limb — those leaves are the techniques of that limb’s practice. The eight limbs were laid out by the sage Patanjali in his Yoga Sutras, written somewhere between 300 and 200 BCE.
1. Yama — five guiding principles for social-moral conduct
- Ahimsa (non-violence) — Not to harm any living being through word, thought, or action — and not even to wish such harm.
- Satya (truthfulness) — Truth in word, in thought, and in action. To remain established in the highest truth.
- Asteya (non-stealing) — No thief’s instinct in word, in thought, or in action. No desire to take what is not yours.
- Brahmacharya (continence / moderation) — To anchor consciousness in the knowledge of Brahman. Restraint over the sensory pleasures and over the senses themselves. Sexual self-control.
- Aparigraha (non-possessiveness) — Not to want more than what has been received. Not to crave what others have. To hold what you have with the feeling of tyaga — willingness to let go.
2. Niyama — five guiding principles for personal-moral conduct
- Shaucha (cleanliness) — Body and mind kept pure.
- Santosha (contentment) — To remain content and cheerful.
- Tapa (austerity) — Self-discipline.
- Svadhyaya (self-study) — Continuous self-inquiry.
- Ishvara-Pranidhana (surrender to a higher power / higher energy) — Complete dedication to Ishvara. Total faith in God.
3. Asana — posture
Control over the body through yogasana. The capacity to sit with a straight spine, in the posture, for a long duration.
4. Pranayama — control over life force
Control over the prana through specific breathing techniques. Pranayama is control over the energy in the body. If we can control our energy, we can withdraw from external sensations and from the spine — and through that, chetana (consciousness) expands. Traditionally, pranayama is practiced to control the breath, but in truth, it controls energy within the body through the breath.
5. Pratyahara — withdrawal of the senses
Pratyahara is the turning inward of attention, of the senses, and of thought. To withdraw the mind and the senses from the impressions of the sense organs.
6. Dharana — focused concentration
To become one-pointed. To bring full attention to a single place, a single object, or a single idea — one-pointed concentration. Dharana is the ability to bring the mind to a single point of focus, and to keep it there. In true Dharana, all body-consciousness and all restless thought cease, so that attention rests undistracted on the object of meditation.
7. Dhyana — meditative absorption
Continuous, unbroken meditation. Dhyana is the act of bringing stability onto the divine, the higher Self, or onto energy itself. Dhyana is the capacity to dissolve into the object on which we are concentrated. For instance, if we can reach the state of Dharana, we can fully focus on a flame during meditation. And if we have truly reached Dhyana, it appears as though we are in the light — as though we have melted into it.
8. Samadhi — enlightenment
Samadhi is the union, the merger, of infinite energy with our own energy. Literally, it is the experience of oneness. The perfect integration of the individual soul with the infinite soul. A state of unity; complete oneness. Samadhi — whose literal sense is “to bring together as one” — is the state in which the yogi recognizes his own soul as the Self. Within it lies the experience of divine joy and of the highest consciousness; the soul knows the whole universe. In other words, the individual consciousness becomes one with the cosmic consciousness.
Human consciousness ordinarily lives under relativity, under dualistic experience. Samadhi is the state in which experience becomes whole, infinite, and singular.
This is the eighth and final stage on the path of yoga as described by Patanjali. Samadhi can be reached through deep, unbroken, properly conducted meditation. In this state, the three aspects of meditation — the meditator, the act of meditation, and the highest energy that is recognized as God — finally fuse into one. As the waves of the ocean dissolve back into the ocean, so the soul of a human being becomes one with the Paramatma.
“We claim that concentrating the powers of the mind is the only way to knowledge. In external science, concentration of mind is — putting it on something external; and in internal science, it is — drawing towards one’s Self. We call this concentration of mind Yoga… The Yogis claim a good deal. They claim that by concentration of the mind every truth in the universe becomes evident to the mind, both external and internal truth.”
“The utility of this science (Yoga) is to bring out the perfect man, and not let him wait and wait for ages, just a plaything in the hands of the physical world, like a log of drift-wood carried from wave to wave and tossing about in the ocean. This science wants you to be strong, to take the work in your own hand, instead of leaving it in the hands of nature, and get beyond this little life. That is the great idea.”
“Anything that is secret and mysterious in these systems of Yoga should be at once rejected. The best guide in life is strength. In religion, as in all other matters, discard everything that weakens you, have nothing to do with it. Mystery-mongering weakens the human brain. It has well-nigh destroyed Yoga — one of the grandest of sciences. From the time it was discovered, more than four thousand years ago, Yoga was perfectly delineated, formulated, and preached in India. It is a striking fact that the more modern the commentator the greater the mistakes he makes, while the more ancient the writer the more rational he is. Most of the modern writers talk of all sorts of mystery. Thus Yoga fell into the hands of a few persons who made it a secret, instead of letting the full blaze of daylight and reason fall upon it. They did so that they might have the powers to themselves.”
— Swami Vivekananda
Hatha Yoga
Hatha Yoga is the form most commonly practiced in modern — and especially Western — society. The word hatha is generally translated from Sanskrit as “sun and moon,” with ha representing the sun’s energy and tha representing the moon’s energy. The ultimate aim of Hatha Yoga practice is to balance the active energy of the sun with the cooling energy of the moon.
Hatha has also been translated as “forceful,” and the Hatha Yoga Pradipika uses the word in that sense. Some experienced physicians have noted that this translation is also valid, because Hatha Yoga requires significant physical effort. Symbolically and physically alike, hatha is the balancing of energies, the balancing of forces.
Many people have contributed to modern Hatha Yoga. Different teachers have given different names to their lineages. Iyengar Yoga — from B.K.S. Iyengar — and Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga — from K. Pattabhi Jois — are two of the most well-known. Both teachers studied under the same guru: Sri Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, who is widely called the father of modern yoga.
As I mentioned earlier, Hatha Yoga is essentially the combined practice of the third limb (Asana) and the fourth limb (Pranayama) of Ashtanga Yoga.
Science
Most people fail to grasp how much energy sits inside the things in front of them. The nucleus of any atom is a furnace of intensely radiating particles, and when we open the furnace door, that energy escapes — often in violent forms. Yet beyond this, there is a further property of matter that, for years, the scientists kept somewhat hidden from us.
Through Albert Einstein’s brilliance, we have been able to fully understand the relationship between mass and energy:
E = mc2
That simple algebraic formula expresses the energy equivalence of any given amount of mass. Most people have heard it. Most people do not understand it. Most people do not know how much energy is contained within matter.
So for the next few minutes, let me try to bring across the magnitude of your own personal potential energy equivalence.
The following is a thought experiment by Joshua Carroll, which makes this concrete in a way I have never seen anyone else manage. I am quoting him at length because I cannot improve on it.
First, we must break down this equation. What do each of the letters mean? What are their values? Let’s break it down from left to right:
E represents the energy, which we measure in Joules. Joules is an SI measurement for energy and is measured as kilograms x meters squared per seconds squared [kg x m²/s²]. All this essentially means is that a Joule of energy is equal to the force used to move a specific object 1 meter in the same direction as the force.
m represents the mass of the specified object. For this equation, we measure mass in Kilograms (or 1000 grams).
c represents the speed of light. In a vacuum, light moves at 186,282 miles per second. However in science we utilize the SI (International System of Units), therefore we use measurements of meters and kilometers as opposed to feet and miles. So whenever we do our calculations for light, we use 3.00 × 10⁸ m/s, or rather 300,000,000 meters per second.
So essentially what the equation is saying is that for a specific amount of mass (in kilograms), if you multiply it by the speed of light squared (3.00×10⁸)², you get its energy equivalence (Joules). So, what does this mean? How can I relate to this, and how much energy is in matter? Well, here comes the fun part. We are about to conduct an experiment.
This isn’t one that we need fancy equipment for, nor is it one that we need a large laboratory for. All we need is simple math and our imagination. Now before I go on, I would like to point out that I am utilizing this equation in its most basic form. There are many more complex derivatives of this equation that are used for many different applications. It is also worth mentioning that when two atoms fuse (such as Hydrogen fusing into Helium in the core of our star) only about 0.7% of the mass is converted into total energy. For our purposes we needn’t worry about this, as I am simply illustrating the incredible amounts of energy that constitutes your equivalence in mass, not illustrating the fusion of all of your mass turning into energy.
Let’s begin by collecting the data so that we can input it into our equation. Assume, I weigh roughly 190 pounds. Again, as we use SI units in science, we need to convert this over from pounds to grams. Here is how we do this:
1 Josh = 190lbs 1 lbs = 453.6g So 190lbs × 453.6g/1 lbs = 86,184g So 1 Josh = 86,184g
Since our measurement for E is in Joules, and Joule units of measurement are kilograms x meters squared per seconds squared, I need to convert my mass in grams to my mass in kilograms. We do that this way:
86,184g × 1kg/1000g = 86.18kg.
That looks like this: 7,760,000,000,000,000,000 or roughly 7.8 septillion Joules of energy.
This is an incredibly large amount of energy. However, it still seems very vague. What does that number mean? How much energy is that really? Well, let’s continue this experiment and find something that we can measure this against, to help put this amount of energy into perspective for us.
First, let’s convert our energy into an equivalent measurement. Something we can relate to. How does TNT sound? First, we must identify a common unit of measurement for TNT. The kiloton. Now we find out just how many kilotons of TNT are in 1 Joule. After doing a little searching I found a conversion ratio that will let us do just this:
1 Joule = 2.39 × 10⁻¹³ kilotons of explosives. Meaning that 1 Joule of energy is equal to .000000000000239 kilotons of TNT. That is a very small number. A better way to understand this relationship is to flip that ratio around to see how many Joules of energy is in 1 kiloton of TNT. 1 kiloton of TNT = 4.18 × 10¹² Joules or rather 4,184,000,000,000 Joules.
Now that we have our conversion ratio, let’s do the math.
1 Josh (E) = 7.76 × 10¹⁸ J 7.76 × 10¹⁸ J × 1 kT TNT / 4.18 × 10¹² J = 1,856,459 kilotons of TNT.
Thus, concluding our little mind experiment we find that just one human being is roughly the equivalence of 1.86 MILLION kilotons of TNT worth of energy. Let’s now put that into perspective, just to illuminate the massive amount of power that this equivalence really is.
The bomb that destroyed Nagasaki in Japan during World War II was devastating. It leveled a city in seconds and brought the War in the Pacific to a close. That bomb was approximately 21 kilotons of explosives. So that means that I, 1 human being, have 88,403 times more explosive energy in me than a bomb that destroyed an entire city… and that goes for every human being.
So when you hear someone tell you that you’ve got real potential, just reply that they have no idea…
— Joshua Carroll
To put it simply: there is energy in us too. We can prove it using the formula above. Using the mass of our body and the speed of light, we can measure — and understand — the energy that we are.
But how do we measure the energy of the whole universe? For that, we would need the mass of the whole universe. And our universe is still expanding — which is why scientists distinguish between the universe and the observable universe. They are two different things. We define the boundary of the observable universe by the light that reaches our planet from the most distant places. To capture the light from much farther away, we would need far larger and more powerful telescopes than the ones we currently have. As telescope sizes grow, we will be able to expand the boundary of what we can observe. As science progresses, so will progress on this question. No doubt about it.
Some lines from Albert Einstein himself clarify the rest:
“Everything is energy, and that is all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.”
“Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another.”
“Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter.”
“I like to experience the universe as one harmonious whole. Every cell has life. Matter, too, has life; it is energy solidified. Our bodies are like prisons, and I look forward to be free, but I don’t speculate on what will happen to me. I live here now, and my responsibility is in this world now.”
“Matter is energy… energy is light… we are all light beings.”
“It followed from the special theory of relativity that mass and energy are both but different manifestations of the same thing — a somewhat unfamiliar conception for the average mind. Furthermore, the equation E = mc², in which energy is put equal to mass, multiplied by the square of the velocity of light, showed that very small amounts of mass may be converted into a very large amount of energy and vice versa.”
“A human being is a part of the whole, called by us Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty.”
“Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it.”
— Albert Einstein
Conclusion
Our body is made of the five elements: Prithvi (Earth), Aap (Water), Tej (Fire), Vayu (Air), and Akash (Space). Together we call these the Pancha Mahabhutas. Briefly:
Prithvi (Earth) — materiality. Earth gives the body its substance. The human body can be seen with the eyes, its sound can be heard by the ears, it has a particular smell, it can be touched. This sense-based knowability of the body is made possible by the substance the Earth element grants. The same particles of metals and non-metals that make up the Earth element constitute the physical human body. This is why Ayurveda uses the ash of certain metals to make the body healthy and strong.
Aap (Water) — fluidity. Water gives the body its flow. Blood, hormones, water itself, and many other fluids move through the body. They carry the energy and the nutrients extracted from food, distributing them throughout the body so nothing pools in one place. In Ayurveda, these fluids are collectively called kapha. An imbalance in kapha is the sign of a body in illness.
Tej (Fire) — energy and heat. The body’s energy, its warmth, is the very emblem of this agni. The body holds a specific temperature. Ayurveda holds that this same agni governs digestion. Acharyas of Ayurveda refer to this as pitta. For a healthy body, both the temperature and the warmth must remain balanced.
Vayu (Air) — the body’s prana. To say it plainly: we breathe, so the air element is moving inside us. It is well known that oxygen enters the body through breath; oxygen itself is called prana-vayu. Beyond oxygen, many other airs and sub-airs (upavayu) circulate inside the body through the working of the air element. The complete account of all of this is found in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. In Ayurveda, this is called vata.
Akash (Space) — the body’s mind. Among the five elements, Akash alone is non-material. Akash is compared to the human mind. Like the sky, the mind is infinite — no boundary contains it. The sky is filled with infinite energy; the mind is filled with infinite power. The sky sometimes clouds over, sometimes clears, sometimes makes room for a blazing sun. The mind, too, is sometimes joyful and sometimes sorrowful. Sometimes it lives in hope, sometimes it falls into despair. Sometimes it rises in anger like waves in the ocean, and sometimes, like the sky, it becomes still.
And over and above these five elements, there is one more element that governs them — Atma, the soul. As long as a person is alive, the consciousness inside them — their atma — remains awake. Sometimes, even in sleep, this consciousness still works. It governs the entire body.
A human body is itself a kind of tantra — a kind of technology. The coming together of many cells to form the body is a kind of technique. In the technology of the body, four organs are principal: the brain, the spinal cord, the nervous system, and the cells themselves. The respiratory system, the digestive system, the sense organs, the reproductive system — all the bodily functions depend on these four.
The five fingers of the hand represent the five elements. The thumb is Tej. The index finger is Vayu. The middle finger is Akash. The ring finger is Prithvi. The little finger is Jal (water). Through these five fingers, a nameless energy flows continuously.
Just as our body is constituted, every other living being is constituted. The energy that flows through us flows through them too.
The energy in anything — from the smallest atom to the largest object — can be measured using its mass and the speed of light. And using Einstein’s formula, we have already proven that.
But when we shed this body — when, in other words, a person dies — the body made of these same five elements dissolves back into the same earth. What remains is only the energy, which merges into the cosmic energy.
The energy inside us has several names: Atma, Chetana. The cosmic energy has its names too: Paramatma, cosmic consciousness, God.
When the energy or consciousness that lives inside each of our bodies (human consciousness) becomes one with the cosmic energy or consciousness (cosmic consciousness), and one experiences that union while still alive — that is what we call enlightenment (atma-jnana, prabuddha) or liberation (moksha, mukti).
That is what is meant by Brahma-jnana. That is Brahma-satya.
— Abhishek Katyare 24 / 04 / 2020 Nashik
Originally published in Marathi on Medium on April 24, 2020. Read the original here. The companion essay from earlier that month — The Blind Indian Who Wears Glasses — is the political and personal counterpart to this one’s metaphysical thread.