S3E3 Immobilization

This episode focuses on the period that follows preparation and purification, which for Siddha based practices is known as immobilization. It turns out that the subtle sexual essences humans produce are also homologs of breath and mind. Breath, Mind, and Seed tend to evaporate and disperse quickly and must be caught and held in one place in order for the transformational process to proceed. The classic techniques of asana, pranayama, bandha, mudra etc are discussed as the means that drive this process.

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Episode Transcript

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Welcome everyone. Let's start with a review. In the last episode, we talked about the methods of preparation and purification involved in Siddha based practices, we saw that these methods themselves were patterned on the Vedic ritual, and we illustrated that in the story of pro jobpati or purushas rejuvenation via his son Agni, when his son piles a Fire Altar, reconstitutes his body, makes a fire sacrifice, and he's filled up again with his essence, or His rasa. Though, in that sacrificial ritual, the great cosmic rhythm that goes between manifestation and non manifestation, or what the Tantrics later call emission and resorption, is made whole. Again, we see these preparatory and purificatory practices in Hatha Yoga and alchemy and in Tantra, for sure, in Siddha practice, sometimes it's called Preparing the field, kshetric, Karana, and sometimes in tantric ritual, it's called purification of the elements, Bucha. So those two methods, preparing the field and purification of the elements are the ways that the Siddhas employed to prepare the body and to purify it so that it is ready to reabsorb the subtle substances that it creates, and then therefore for it to be reabsorbed into the higher in a certain way that will confer immortality and power. So after purification, the next step is immobilization. So if we're considering what it means to immobilize, then immediately we can notice that we're looking at the creation of stillness, the the stopping of motion. I think that is so obviously as a an idea and a method tied to yoga writ large, that people who don't see it are really missing the point. So if, if yoga is yoking, David Gordon White said, yoking is concerned with impeding movement, with the immobilization of all that is mobile in the body. He goes on to say, the ideal thus becomes one of fettering, that modality of the yogic or alchemical subject which has a tendency to volatilize. So this is important. I want to talk about this word, fettering. And then I want to talk about volatilization, the the act of evaporating so fettering means, in the most literal sense, I think, to actually put chains on something, and therefore to bind it in one place. So this is just the kind of imagery, the kind of strong imagery that tends to circulate throughout Siddha based practice, the what is being fettered here, what is being bound from the outside through various visualizations, techniques we'll talk about those later, Is the modality of the yogic or alchemical subject, which has a tendency to volatilize. Now we've spent enough time since the time of the Veda talking about soma and that changing to rasa, and we've already come now forward many hundreds of years to the place where the alchemists are now saying, Yes, we see, of course, the essence of all things, the sexual essence of all things, and we see it as the middle in the earth. We know that we're talking about that essence in some way. We're talking about it being conserved. We're talking about it being created, redirected and used for other ends. So notice that White says that modality, and I think that modality is, is externalization. Whatever it is that we're doing that would tend to externalize us in a certain way, burns up and uses this essence that is created by all things from the universe. Down to the earth, to humans and so on. So there's a way to behave where we're burning up more of it and at a faster rate than we're making and so those modalities, those externalizing modalities, all motion in that sense, is going to be bound so that we can take that energy that would be used in those postures and so on, and turn it to this alchemical work of transmuting our essence by reversing the flow or intervening subtly in this rhythm that's going on. Hatha, as I said, you saw the word fettering is a is forceful because it involves intentional physical restraint. You can see the postures that way, the kumbakas That way, the the band is that way, the mudras that way, everything into this intentional stillness that is brought or this intentional, quote, unquote, fettering right of motion, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika is one of the most commonly referred to texts on hatha yoga. Talks about immobilization as a process that happens in stages. And I think we'll all see the gross to subtle movement here. It's very important to pay attention to that. Here's what it says. Quote, the postures, the various methods of breath control, leading to kumbhakas. The practice is called mudra. Then the practice is concentrating on hearing the Nada. This is the sequence to be observed in Hatha Yoga, and that's from chapter one, verse 46 or sloka 46 so here's the sequence. Let me say something about that last part. Real quick. The practice is concentrating on hearing the Nada. Nada are subtle sounds that can only be heard at certain levels of absorption, or certain level levels in the alchemical transformation process, or certain union of the male and the female in the mostly tantric process, the subtilization, if I may, of awareness, of consciousness, of sensation, and so on during that process of preparation and purification and now stillness, things are perceivable that haven't been perceivable before. So when the NADA are heard, that means that things have become really, really subtle in the process. So notice that first this gross to subtle motion is the opposite of externalization, because externalization ends up in a particular body, a particular coagulation, and that process then is reabsorbed, right in this cosmic rhythm we're looking at the resorption phase, at intervening in such a way that externalization stops. And so the first thing to be immobilized is the body, the most external thing, according to the view where mind is prominent, and that's the universe we're in. So immobilization of the body, it says, happens through postures, the postures, then the next subtle level is the breath. That's kumbhakas, and I believe that's retention of inhalation. We're going to have a another passage from the pretty talking specifically about kumbhakas and going deeper into it. So then the practice is Mudra, and that practice is said to work at the level of seed. And so the essence itself, after the breath comes to stillness, then the essence is brought into immobilization as externalization ceases, and then finally, the mind will be immobilized. So this process of immobilizing from gross to subtle is the instantiation, or the ritualistic embodiment, of the resorption phase of the cosmic rhythm. Here's a long passage from the Hatha Yoga Pradipika that begins essentially at the level of kumbaka. So we would assume here that the first level of immobilization, which is the level of body, had happened and now pranayama, right is being is being engaged here actively in order to immobilize. This is what the pretty pika says about that process and what results from it. Quote, The yogin first draws breath in through the left nostril, and thereby the lunar channel, having retained it for as long as possible in the abdomen in. He exhales it via the solar channel and through the right nostril. He then inhales through the right nostril, retains the breath in the abdomen as before, and releases it via the lunar channel out of the left nostril by continuing this process, pumping the outer knotties, quote, like a blacksmith bellows. The yogins diaphragm will at a certain point remain filled with air, the pressure of which will force open the orifice known as the door of Brahman of the medial channel. The subsequent in rush of air into the medial channel causes the two peripheral nadis to empty, deflated. In this way, they are called swooned murcha. And indeed, one of the eight types of kumbhaka is called murucha, quote, because it causes the normally volatile mind to swoon, ie, to become one pointed in concentration. So there are a lot of things in this passage. Obviously, I want to point out the cliff notes and then go further into the notion of how the citizens cita based traditions understood this swooning. So first of all, we're binding the breath immobilizing. In other words, the breath inside the Nostrils, first in through the left and out through the right, then in through the right and out through the left. Number one, they get breath gets placed in each nostril in a regular or even rhythm, basically. And that in itself, is very odd in relation to our normal lives, where our breath is just adjusting in the most subtle, crazy, undetectable ways, to our emotional responses, to our physical postures, to our metabolic output so on, our levels of concentration. Now it begins to traverse right and left, and in those right and left traversals, I think it's safe to imagine the brain lighting up on either side, on the active phase of that, which is the inhale and the the brain then shutting down on a particular side. Via the passive phase. It you see that the stimulation becomes very, very regular and a flow is instantiated, a focused flow. So second this, this action is actually described in physical and strong physical terms, pumping as if using a bellows for a fire. And so the the references to alchemy, the references to Agni, the references to the sacrifice. Here, it's obvious, right, that that is coming out. You can see this all the way going back. But in addition, I think that given that we are in this erotic, mystical universe of Tantra, where the homologies between divine sexual fluids and the metals in the earth and the human essence, where that's the focus. I think this pumping action is also, in some ways, a sexual connotation. Now, when this happens enough and the breath is held. Remember that the breath goes down into the abdomen close to the door of the central channel, which is in the base in the Root Chakra. As most of you will will think, the breath goes down is held, and eventually the nadis themselves swoon. That means the right and left nostrils deflate. Breath leaves that place. That means the outer consciousness has has gone inward in a profound way. The breath literally has gone in. But this going in is a swooning, and you'll know that initially as fainting, but what you should see is that it's a fall, that it is a certain motion, and that that motion is very, very polyvalent in the senses that are brought to it by the city traditions. So swoon literally means something like loss of consciousness. It can mean bewilderment, but it can also mean ecstasy. Then it has negative connotations that go with it. It can mean torpor, t o r, p, o r, that is a kind of passive heaviness, a kind of darkness. Sometimes you would see the synonym listlessness. So swooning also has this connotation. And because it has this connotation of torpor, it is connected metaphorically, symbolically, especially in alchemy, to ideas like drunkenness, and therefore also a kind of disorientation that's associated with poisoning. Is. And death. So the we want to go deeper into this idea, the outer has swooned and the breath has fainted. It is passively fallen down to the base. I'll read that last sentence from the quotation again. Indeed, one of the eight types of kumbaka is called muta quote, because it causes the normally volatile mind to swoon, to become one pointed in its concentration. So now we see this falling and this drunken, as if poisoned, state of ecstasy or bewilderment is related to the volatility of the mind, which becomes one pointed in its concentration, So the heaviness and this polyvalent symbolic richness and swooning is again related to the volatility that we talked about, the volatility that we're trying to combat through bringing things into immobilization or through binding them, though the mind is of the essence, And remember in our karma of what we immobilize, first from body, breath, seed and then mind is last we're looking to make the mind not have this tendency to rise and evaporate. I think that fits nicely as a method in alchemical language, if we were going to say what alchemical method does swooning represent, it would be called coagulation. So the the breath becomes heavy and falls and coagulates in stillness, and then the mind becomes subtly heavier, mixed with ecstasy and all these flavors, and it coagulates as one point of concentration. This relationship between breath and mind is important. Always remember this, what happens to the breath happens to the mind? Now, if we were to carry on investigating doing this kind of young amplification of this idea of swooning. Remember, the swooning is what happens to the breath, to the life energy. And now we know that it's something that also happens to the mind. We want to look at that in the specifically alchemical context, in the context of the rasa siddhas, the ones who are dealing with metallurgy and cooking mercury, they're also doing hatha yoga and pranayama and also purification and so on. But I find it fascinating to look and find something that refers directly to swooning in a Tantra called the rasaden of a Tantra. David Gordon white points to a passage in that text that's nearly identical to the Hatha Yoga Pradipika. On this subject, here's what it says. Quote, swooned. Rasa, like the breath drives away diseases killed. It revives itself, bound. It affords the power of flight. So swooning is happening again, and it's already mixed in with metaphors of mortality. It's already mixed in with metaphors of medicine that cures. It's mixed in with metaphors that have to do with binding and also of flight. So we see this richness again, coming on in the passage. In the alchemical context, remember that rasa, which is swooned here like the breath means mercury in Hatha Yoga, we're talking about reproductive tissue, and so swooned rasa like the breath. Okay, so what happens to the breath also happens to the seed. Remember that what happens to the breath happens to the mind? We've seen that, but what happens to the breath happens to the seed, two super important like the breath, the rasa falls here, the seed falls down to the base in a bewildered, drunken ecstasy that resembles the stillness of death. Also. It's been poisoned. It's been killed. Actually, that language is very, very interesting and strong, but like I said, it's classic of the Siddha traditions, which involve the vibe of Hatha to use language that is about binding. And in this case, you can see even killing this connects it to alchemy the world over, in a way that I hope to get to when we finish this section. What happens as a result of the seed being killed is that it revives itself. That means it's resurrected. So this is the trans. Point the complete death turning into the new life. And so the sacrifice has been made at this point in the in the ceremony. Now, reversal of the flow can begin to take place. That seed can be transmuted, because it's now moving in a different direction. Notice also that resurrection. What happens to the rasa after it's resurrected is that it's bound, and that doesn't sound like any progress has been made on the face of it, but when it's bound, it affords the the power of flight. So that's very interesting. That's a reference to a very, very important symbol and metaphor in the Hatha Siddha Tantra alchemical traditions, something called kechari Mudra, where the tongue is placed back at the with the tip of the tongue at the at the soft palate. And it said that the essence in the cranial vault of the subtle body drips down, therefore, onto the tongue and not into the digestive fire. But we can't go into the details of it. It's way too deep and rich. I'm going to do a whole episode on it in a future point. But our freedom that comes after resurrection is a bound freedom that's not the the binding of prison or the binding of ignorance, because this results in flying and so this means we've become something non volatile. We've become something stable at this level, and because of stability, somehow flight is made possible. It is the universe of mirrors. It is the universe of paradoxes and transmutation. So one more time, what happens to the seed happens to the breath, and what happens to the seed therefore happens to the mind, and what happens to the seed and the breath and the mind therefore happen to the metal. It's all tied together. So swooning is a really polyvalent, rich symbol. It shows a falling, it shows a fainting, the subjective state of this falling or fainting is ecstatic, but it is also torporous. If that's a word, it's death like it's as if having been poisoned, but it's also as if having been given medicine, because it's associated with the curing of disease. So swooning in this sense, I said the concept connects hatha yoga and the rasa citizen, particularly the alchemists and the Tantrics, to alchemical practice worldwide throughout a lot of time, one of the operations in alchemy that you find in the Arab world and also in the Greek world, and also in, of course, now I'm pointing it out in the Hindu world and also in the Chinese world, is something like swooning, but it's called the mortification Oh, the mortification process. And it refers to cooking, of course, because it's alchemy, and what it means is the initial starting material of the Opus has to be cooked and blackened, and therefore it is often called mortica. Is often called Killing because the material in the beginning is non differentiated. It's also called the masa confuci. That's like our ignorance. It's like everything all the time at once, not a particular thing, because a particular thing would mean that consciousness and attention have begun to focus in a certain way. And so normally, the seed and the mind and the breath are all rising up and evaporating and spreading out so that has to be changed through the cooking process in the alchemical traditions also, well, that's called Killing, or the mortar facade, when you get visions of the King being killed and the queen and the king and the queen dying after they come together, and all kinds of really interesting and fabulous images. So remember that when you're coming across material like this, always look for both the positive and negative valences that come to it, because we've seen that already. Something that's going to come out as we have to talk about alchemy more and more in future episodes, is the idea that the medicine is the poison, and therefore the poison is the medicine, and it's the dosage that makes the difference. If we were to connect this mortification process, I mean, we could, we could talk about it specifically in terms of of metal, metal having to be killed and evaporated and turned into something else and then re coagulated and so on. That's, that's the same initial process. Because we could also talk about it psychologically, in terms of what it feels like to be engaged in a practice of this nature, that the the modus operandi of which is a fire ceremony or a fire sacrifice, where something's being put into the fire in order to transmute it, and what it's like to be engaged in that kind of practice, I think mortification, or the feeling of being killed at times, for whatever reason, is a part of the journey of engaging in something as transformative as yoga, because it makes us very sensitive to things that we normally wouldn't be sensitive To, the Hatha Yoga is the SIDS, the alchemists. They they're deeply aware of this aspect of the process, and they stay set it in a place where it can have deep meaning for us, and also where we evidently can see it as a stage. What would it be psychologically? Then, probably just the the initial response of the conventional ego when it sees the fire. I think it's only responses is, is, is, is a response that is confused, that it is amazement because of the light and the miracle of the fire, but the response is also Oh no, right? It's Agnes going to eat me. It's going to get me, and a fainting I think we could see the conventional ego being cooked in a certain way at this level, and these images giving us a sense of of what that's like, and if that's purposeful, why we might need to actively engage in that, and sometimes endure that, and sometimes so on and so forth, why we'd have to go through that over and over. So in this universe of immobilization, you know that it's about bringing to stillness. Remember David Gordon White said that modality of the yogic body, or the alchemical body, the subtle body that produces evaporation, produces loss of essence. But you can think of what we're doing as being in a universe of fluid, and think of that as Soma, and think of it as retas and Amrita and brasa and so on and so forth. What we're doing is hydraulic in a sense. And when you look to the canon of Hatha Yoga instead of practice, what you see is a set of techniques that are obviously about modulating hydraulic flows, modulating the flow of breath, right? Also, David Gordon White says this body of hydraulic techniques is generally subdivided into quote, hermetic seals, and that would be the mudras that work at the level of seed according to the Hatha Yoga Pradipika text that we just read, examples would be vajrali mudra keturi mudra talked about that. But there are also contractions, or quote locks or bandhas. And I think we'd be remiss in leaving this discussion of immobilization without just glossing the bandhas that most of us have heard about since we started doing practice. I remember first hearing that when I was doing Ashtanga vinyasa yoga that patavi Joy said without Bandha, it's only gymnastics, something like that, being taught by my teacher, long, slow, very detailed breathing practices, lying down on my back and watching the exhalation and inhalation. That stuff was really profound. All of it was connected to this concept of Bandha. I don't see universal agreement across the the traditions and clans of practitioners that that these things are done the same way. I see some court sort of general consensus. So I want to leave out the details and just talk about it in terms of fluid dynamics, like we have just said. So there's three principal bandhas. Most of you will know mula, Bandha, udiyana, Bandha, jalandhara. Bandha, the root lock, the lock of upward flying, and the lock that binds the net. The Jala mula works at the level of the pelvis. I think that's safe to say, no matter what, how you believe it's engaged, or how strong it is, or whatever, udiana we can say, works at the level of the thorax, and Jalandhar at the level of the throat. And in this universe of fluid dynamics, the the purpose that they have is to a. Need the seed, and therefore the breath, and therefore the mind to come to stillness, so that this upward journey through the central channel can happen now, specifically mula bandha draws the apana, which is the downward trending breath, the elimination breath. It draws that upward through the medial channel, so it reverses that upon a flow. And that's an externalization motion. And so right there we're intervening in that externalizing phase that might lose energy. Uddiyana is the upward flying lock, and that draws the prana, the inhalation, into the medial channel. So the prana and the apana now have both been immobilized and drawn into the center. And these two practices and their shapes, the fascinating nature of those shapes is for that purpose. Then jalandhara seals the head off from the torso, and it contracts or restricts the jala, the net of subtle channels that all come together at the level of the throat, there in the subtle body, and that stops the downward drip of nectar or Soma or Amrita, or all this juice that is is stored in the moon, in the head of the subtle body that doesn't drip down and through into the digestive fire anymore, as a result of jalandhara. Now David Gordon White says, quote, The conjoined aim of the three bandas is to gradually constrict the field in which the volatile breath, seed and mind may move, first, forcing them up out of the abdomen. They then lock them in the torso. They next contract them inside the neck and the head, and lastly, they bind them in the head so that the digestive fire, the sun and the lower abdomen. We'll talk about that in the next episode. Can't eat up the essence in externalizing behavior. This idea of Banda because it's a feature of citta practice. Also you find it in the the strongly alchemical based traditions, where Mercury is being worked on or where metallurgy is being done, right? You find the reference to bonda as a specific kind of technique when used in the preparation of mercury. And there are 26 of those techniques, so bonda is one. Let's see what it does. Here's what David Gordon White says through the bandhas Mercury takes on the consistence of a gel, a paste or a solid powder, in which states both its temperature and evaporation and its powers as a transmuting agent are augmented and So lo and behold, in alchemy, we see that Banda serves a very similar purpose, which we have generally called coagulation, guarding against the volatile tendencies of our essence, the tendency for our breath, mind and seed to rise up right and evaporate. So Mercury has that tendency, too, at a certain stage of subtlety, Bonda turns it into a gel, a paste, both of those still subject to evaporation, but at a much slower rate than something that's much more liquidy or and especially something that's very volatile. Then if we go all the way, we get a solid powder which won't evaporate at all. Coagulation, my friends. So let's make a summary, after preparation and purification, the methods of sit a practice begin to immobilize. That means that these practices fetter, they immobilize, they bind, they seal off. They even go so far as to quote, unquote, kill all motion at all levels in the human system, immobilization, we called it swooning, shows characteristics that are both positive and negative. This positive side. Ecstatic absorption definitely shows that, but also torpor and therefore poisoning and dying. So when it's called swooning in the city traditions, it means accomplishing a coagulation that resists volatilization of our subtle substances. Remember, volatilization is rising up and spreading out and diffusing the breath, the seed and the mind have that tendency, swooning means the first break placed on that so that that direction could go in reverse. The classic techniques in situ practice designed to accomplish this stopping of motion at every level of the system are asana, pranayama, bandha and mudra well. Those bring about the catching of the essence, the stopping of it, the killing of it, the cooking of it, such that breath, mind and seed have a chance to not volatilize. Remember that what happens to breath, happens to essence. Remember what happens to essence, happens to breath. Remember what happens to breath. Happens to mind. Remember what happens to mind, happens to essence and breath, breath, mind and essence and I hope this has been interesting. We sure appreciate your listening. God bless you all, and we'll see you next time.