The Wisdom of Yoga Explained for Atheists.

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are a philosophical explanation of the logical fallacies and cognitive biases that prevent the individual from being in relationship with reality.  In our life time we have a false sense of who we are reified in us through out the course of our lives.  This false sense of self is the Ego.  Life Characterizes us to our self, thus we develop a self image that is an illusion in so far as it distracts us from knowing our true inner self.  Neural myelination is created every time a pattern is repeated.  This essentially hard wires the brain into certain patterns and instincts and habits which are hard to break, and some people do not have the strength or self discipline either to be aware of themselves and the patterns the create, repeating them like a crazy person and expecting a different result.  I refer to humans as organic computers because they are much more predictable than people think.

Imagine if you will that neural myelination is like a dirt road in an old west town, when it rains, mud is created, and when a carriage is drawn through the town it makes grooves in the road, the natural weight of the carriage, drops it into the grooves and the course the carriage takes is almost exactly like that of every other carriage.  This instinct prevents creativity in changing times.  It prevents people from reacting correctly to what is happening right now.  Eventually people are in relationship with a non reality because they are in relationship with the way things were or are supposed to be and not in relationship with the moment, the present.  They are, in all effect, delusional.

Some of you know that I am a linguistic philosopher.  I do subscribe somewhat to the theory of linguistic determinism.  The patterns that the vast majority of people are capable of creating are based on their vocabulary which is their thought tool set as it were.  Most people do not personally create their own patterns or break pattern without permission because Authority has been extracted from most people in order to make them civil and controllable.  Society tells us what the correct response is and the correct action is, even when people do break pattern from the social norm often times they do not do so in a beneficial or constructive way.  People that can think new thoughts, come up with new arguments, look at things in a way no one has ever looked at them before are few and far between.  The rest of humans are copy cats.  Only when they see another person create a pattern are they then able to copy that pattern, but if they had never seen it they never would have come to that action of their own accord.  This has been referred to as the acquisitively mimetic behavior of humans.

The word Yoga, is the origin of the word Yoke, which essentially means to make one.

“The light of thy body is thy eye. If thy eye be single, thy whole body will be lightsome: but if it be evil, thy body also will be darksome.” Luke 11: 34

The word here translated as single is sometimes translated as healthy, which has the connotation of whole, or holy, perfect or complete.  Some of you know that I have done a lot of work in pointing out the similarities between what Jesus taught and the ancient Saraswati cults of India.  This statement is a rhetorical tautology of the third eye chakra.

10The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?”

11He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. 12Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. 13This is why I speak to them in parables: “Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand. 14In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: “ ‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding;  you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.  15For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears,and they have closed their eyes.  Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.’^a

I am not preaching any particular branch of yoga, and I am not trying to push christianity on anybody, I am merely describing and explaining.

heal (v.)Old English hælan “cure; save; make whole, sound and well,” from Proto-Germanic *hailjan (cognates: Old Saxon helian, Old Norse heila, Old Frisian hela, Dutch helen, German heilen, Gothic ga-hailjan “to heal, cure”), literally “to make whole” (see health). Related: Healed; healing.  http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=heal

holy (adj.)Old English halig “holy, consecrated, sacred, godly,” from Proto-Germanic *hailaga- (cognates: Old Norse heilagr, Old Frisian helich “holy,” Old Saxon helag, Middle Dutch helich, Old High German heilag, German heilig, Gothic hailags “holy”). Adopted at conversion for Latin sanctus.

Primary (pre-Christian) meaning is not possible to determine, but probably it was “that must be preserved whole or intact, that cannot be transgressed or violated,” and connected with Old English hal (see health) and Old High German heil“health, happiness, good luck” (source of the German salutation Heil). Holy water was in Old English. Holy has been used as an intensifying word from 1837; used in expletives since 1880s (such as holy smoke, 1883, holy mackerel, 1876, holy cow, 1914, holy molyetc.), most of them euphemisms for holy Christ or holy Moses.  http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=holy

Yoga essentially means to make one, or to become whole, it is about the marriage of everything with everything, the marrying of the individual to reality, which is a rhetorical tautology of becoming one with god, which in turn means to understand and be wise and to be properly in relationship with the world around you and the people as well.  This means to be correctly in relationship with facts but more than that to have a deep and intimate and correct understanding of the very nature or reality, as god.  The Fruity Spiritualists that don’t really know what Yoga is about or even spirituality for that matter, presuppose a pleasant, non violent, superficial spouting of shibboleths and telling people what they want to hear.  Instead of waking people up to reality, which can be unpleasant, what they do instead is put them asleep to the nature of reality and indoctrinate them into a pleasantly deluded cognitive dissonance, a running away from reality and putting oneself in a trance of artificial pleasantness, this is the opposite of the intention of Yoga.

Advaita (not-two in Sanskrit) refers to the identity of the true Self, Atman, which is pure consciousness^{[note 3]}, and the highest Reality, Brahman, which is also pure consciousness.^{[11][note 4][note 5]} Followers seek liberation/release by acquiring vidyā (knowledge)^[13] of the identity of Atman and Brahman. Attaining this liberation takes a long preparation and training under the guidance of a guru. Advaita thought can also be found in non-orthodox Indian religious traditions, such as the tantric Nath tradition.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Vedanta

Vidya is vitiated knowledge.

vi·ti·ate

ˈviSHēˌāt/

verb

formal

past tense: vitiated; past participle: vitiate, spoil or impair the quality or efficiency of.”development programs have been vitiated by the rise in population destroy or impair the legal validity of.

Vitiated knowledge is partial knowledge.  I refer to them as factoids.  Some people live in a world of facts devoid of understanding or wisdom.  They know that, they don’t know why or how.  They have knowledge but that knowledge is received knowledge, which means somebody else did the work to get it and they gave it to you, but you the individual can’t actually evaluate it, you don’t know if it is correct.  You couldn’t get that information by yourself, and you don’t really understand it or how it is connected with all of the other things that you think you know.  Science is the explanatory art, a person with understanding will be able to explain something over and over in different ways to different people.  Science is predictive, descriptive, and prescriptive.  An actual human being, a wise man, is like god in these aspects being able to explain and describe and predict.  These people have been referred to as prophets, wizards, gurus, shamans, etc.

Ponder if you will the Asian and Indian Influence on early Greek philosophy and the similarity to the statements of the Buddha.

For the Epicureans[edit]

For the Epicureans, ataraxia was synonymous with the only true happiness possible for a person. It signifies the state of robust tranquility that derives from eschewing faith in an afterlife, not fearing the gods because they are distant and unconcerned with us, avoiding politics and vexatious people, surrounding oneself with trustworthy and affectionate friends and, most importantly, being an affectionate, virtuous person, worthy of trust.^{[citation needed]}

For the Pyrrhonists[edit]

For the Pyrrhonists, given that neither the sense impressions nor the intellect, nor both combined, is a sufficient means of knowing and conveying truth, one suspends judgement on dogmatic beliefs or anything non-evident. It is from this suspension of belief ataraxia arises as one realizes one thing is ‘no more’ than that. No more up than down, no more wet than dry, no more hot than cold, no more night than day, “the number of stars one can see in the night sky is no more even than odd”, no more left than right, no more black than white as when Anaxagoras countered the notion that snow is white with the argument “Snow is frozen water, and water is black; therefore snow is also black”, etc. Most important of all, in enunciation of ‘no more’ or ‘I determine nothing’, in uttering these expressions, one is merely stating how things appear to them, at the time and in an undogmatic way, without making any assertion of truth regarding external reality.^[2]

For the Stoics[edit]

The Stoics, too, sought mental tranquility, and saw ataraxia as something to be highly desired and often made use of the term, but for them the analogous state, attained by the Stoic sage, was apatheia or absence of passion.^{[3]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ataraxia#For_the_Pyrrhonists}

IN CLOSING

From the perspective of the Ancients, Yoga was a lifetime commitment and their was no guarantee that the seeker would ever actually attain the fruit of their desire and work.  The individual is born in ignorance and may never get to the point of attaining to non vitiated knowledge, or understanding, or wisdom, but if he does he becomes a jivamukti, he becomes free in his own lifetime, reborn, free from illusion.  Having discovered the One True Self that connects us all and indwells us all the True self, Shiva.  When one comes into union (yoga) with the supreme reality, jiva becomes Shiva.  The individual self becomes, the ONE SELF.

The Advaita school holds the view that the world appearance is owing to Avidya (“ignorance”) that has the power to project i.e. to super-impose, the unreal on the real (Adhyasa), and also the power to conceal the real resulting in the delusion of the Jiva who experiences objects created by his mind and sees difference in this world, he sees difference between the atman (“the individual self”) and Brahman (“the supreme Self”). This delusion caused by ignorance is destroyed when ignorance itself is destroyed by knowledge. When all delusion is removed there remains no awareness of difference. He who sees no difference is said to be a Jivanmukta. Perception of difference leads one from death to death, non-difference can be perceived only by the highly trained intellect, so states the Sruti (Katha Upanishad II.4.11).^{[5]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jivanmukta#Implication}

Advertisements

Sharmouta and Sarmatians, Rabbi Ba’al Shiva

My good buddy from Holland, Oogenhand, recently informed me that the Arabic word “sharmouta” comes from the word “sarmatian”.  I have no reason to doubt this as I myself am a linguist and a philologist.  I did a little investigation and I came up with some interesting information about the Sarmatians.

The Sarmatians (Latin: Sarmatæ or Sauromatæ, Greek: Σαρμάται, Σαυρομάται) were an Iranian people of the classical antiquity period, flourishing from about the 5th century BC to the 4th century AD.^[1][2] They spoke Scythian, an Indo-European language from the Eastern Iranian family.

The Sarmatians declined in the 4th century with the incursions connected to the Migration period (Huns, Goths). The descendants of the Sarmatians became known as the Alans during the Early Middle Ages, and ultimately gave rise to the modern Ossetic ethnic group.^[6]

Like the Scythians, Sarmatians were of a Caucasoid appearance. Sarmatian noblemen often reached 1.70–1.80 m (5 ft 7 in–5 ft 11 in) as measured from skeletons, and they had sturdy bones, long hair and beards.^{[citation needed]}

The Alans who were a group of Sarmatian tribes according to the Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus “Nearly all the Alani are men of great stature and beauty, their hair is somewhat yellow, their eyes are frighteningly fierce”.^[8]

Hippocrates^[14] explicitly classes them as Scythian and describes their warlike women and their customs:

Their women, so long as they are virgins, ride, shoot, throw the javelin while mounted, and fight with their enemies. They do not lay aside their virginity until they have killed three of their enemies, and they do not marry before they have performed the traditional sacred rites. A woman who takes to herself a husband no longer rides, unless she is compelled to do so by a general expedition. They have no right breast; for while they are yet babies their mothers make red-hot a bronze instrument constructed for this very purpose and apply it to the right breast and cauterize it, so that its growth is arrested, and all its strength and bulk are diverted to the rightshoulder and right arm.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarmatians

Now I am going to tell you how I interpret this information, in my terms from my perspective.

The first thing I notice is that we as Caucasians were there, in Persia, long ago.  The word Caucasian comes from the Caucasus mountains which are in Russia.  Not just that but, archaeologists are constantly finding Caucasian mummies all over China.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarim_mummies)

What you find is a decline in the Wandering philosophers that used to come out of India in order to educate people into higher philosophy, maths, and sciences.  With that absence you also find that the financial success and literacy of those locations has also dropped.  Dwindling are the siddhas, saints, and taoists of great reknown in those areas.

• Well-retracted male organGolden-hued body

  Four canine teeth pure white

  Eyes dark brown or deep blue

  He has a protruding nose.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_characteristics_of_the_Buddha

Of further interest to me is that compared to surrounding cultures they were rather egalitarian treating men and women as relative equals.  Women fought next to their men, this allowed women to better understand men, as they had equal rights they also had equal responsibilities.

Also you notice the similarity with the Amazons, having a breast removed so that it wouldn’t get in the way of firing a bow.

Lastly, what you will notice is the derision and contempt that has been recorded and passed on down to this time from the perspective of the Arabic culture.  Associating the Sarmatians with whores.  While we were native to these areas, we were pushed out of those areas to either extremity of the continent.  What this tells me is that, while we consider ourselves to be racist and intolerant of other cultures, historically quite the opposite is true.  This is also part of my other theories, which I will eventually delve into more, but what we will find is that this pattern repeats throughout history, we will investigate why this happens and we will see what it has to do with my theories on male and female brains and the evolution of the human mind.  

Meta data, how I generate predictions based on what I see.

In a recurring effort to explain my technique for deconstructing narrative and body language in order to make predictions and to understand what is happening now and what is going to happen I am going to let you take a look at a recent incident through my eyes.  I am going to describe it in my terms and tell you what I know about the behaviors elicited.

Jon Stewart, a very smart man, recently chided president Obama on his handling of the Russian incursion into the Ukraine. I also was bemused by the Presiden’t behavior but not exactly for the same reasons.  I will describe what I saw in that behavior and insert some salient points from Paul Eckman’s technique for determining if a person is lying.

“The most common vocal deception clues are pauses.  The pauses may be too long or too frequent.”  “Speech errors may also be a deception clue.  These include nonwords, such as ‘ah’, ‘aaa’, and ‘uhh’; repetitions, such as ‘I, I, I mean I really…’  and partial words, such as ‘I rea,really liked it.”  “High detection apprehension may cause the prepared liar to stumble for forget her line.”   “Hearing how badly she sounds may make a liar more afraid of being caught, which only increases her pauses and speech errors.”  Paul Eckman, TELLING LIES, Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage.

What I am trying to express to you is that when I see something, I do not see what you see, different meta data is communicated to me.  Obama doesn’t intend to do anything about Russia currently.

More of my Theories on the Female Mind.

I wanted to describe this incident in terms of my theories on the Male and Female minds. According to my theories it is the female mind that takes offense through “superficial Aesthetic Snap decisions”.  http://terminclature.wordpress.com/2013/11/19/superficial-aesthetic-snap-decisions/

This is the mind that sees and hears without understanding, it reacts immediately out of a negative emotional reaction without reasoning.  The female minds instinct is to usurp masculine authority and by that I mean the Authority of Reason, by expanding feminine authority in the form of mercy and charity.    Reason already incorporates as much mercy as is warranted and deserved, the female mind wants to silence the male mind by talking over it, not listening to it, being emotionally abusive to it, and physically violent towards it.  While Sapiential Authority acts on reason, Moral Authority (feminine authority) usurps the Authority of Reason and attempts to increase and expand the authority of Mercy and Charity.  If it isn’t pleasant you can’t say it.  (http://thoughtuncommon.wordpress.com/tag/meritocracy-of-pleasantness/)

Notice too, that there is a flow of acceptable negative emotional data, that the human mind, specifically the Western Mind presupposes.  The weaker and stupider a person is the more aggressive and abusive they are allowed to be towards the thing judged superior to themselves.  The baby can scream at the mommy, mommy can scream at daddy, but the flow of emotional data can’t be reversed without offending the Feminine Bias of the Western mind, unless of course you are a Muslim and then it is part of your culture and the female mind argues for mercy and charity for that too.