Essential Concepts
Let’s try to look at laya yoga today in its traditional, classic approach, in a form that always invariably begins with practicing the principles of YAMAH and NIYAMAH.
The term LAYA derives from the verb LAY, which means “to go”, “to move”. The word LAYAH carries such meanings as “touching”, “oneness”, “adherence”, “attachment”, “affixing”, “clinging”, “belonging”. This shows the important process that a person following the LAYA path goes through in their spiritual development. To “go”, one must connect with the path, cling to it, and even belong in the sense of oneness, identification. LAYAH also means certain behaviours and activities hidden under this name, such as “squeezing”, “embracing” and “hugging”. It can be said more broadly that it is also “taking someone into the heart,” “containing someone in yourself,” “all-encompassing embracing.”
The next group of meanings is “hiding”, “lurking” or “vigilant lying in wait, crouching”. It describes the inner work, and in particular all that remains to be done through the process of seclusion, somehow secretly, in hiding.
The third group of meanings of the term LAYAH is “fusion”, “merging”, “melting”, “dissolving”, “re-melting” in the way that gold is melted, “dissolving giving all solutions”. It shows the whole alchemical process of change and transformation.
The last group of meanings is the crown and the essence of the whole Layah process. Here is the “disappearance”, “annihilation”, “vanishing”, “extinction”, “erasure”. In its spirit that is śaivic aspect of the transformation of the human soul. The phrase LAYAM YAA means “to be dissolved” or “to be annihilated”. Of course, this with regard to a false, material personality also called a low ego.
In a more inner meaning, the term LAYAH is used in the sense of “absorption” or “absorbing the mind,” “exclusive devotion” (pranidhana), also “deep concentration.” The state of LAYAH is also “loosening the mind,” “inactivity of the mind.” One could say that it is the process of absorbing the mind in deep concentration or loosing it in a deep concentration. PRALAYA is a “rest” and “place of rest” at the same time, “seat” or “place of residence”, a place of rest. This is the place where concentration leads, satkara.
OM LAYANAM
The term LAYANAM is used firstly, in the meaning of clinging and belonging. It strengthens affiliation, makes you stick together, means adhering to and grasping something. It is affixing to something or someone.
Secondly, in the sense of ‘rest’, ‘respite’, ‘peace’, ‘support’ or ‘base’. So LAYANAM is a “rest in the base of a peaceful place”, as well as “rest in peace” or “calm lying down”. Hence a good number of practices in the lying meditation asana (posture).
Thirdly, LAYANAM is a “place of rest” also called “HOME”. So from the very meaning of the word we can learn everything hidden behind the process of practicing this form of yoga.
Lay, lay, lay, lay, lay, lay, lay, lay!
Lay, lay, lay, lay, lay, lay, lay!
Follow Your Heavenly Home.
Follow, follow, follow!
Just as the verb LAY means to go, follow, the same word-forming mantric core LI means “dissolving”, “absorbing”, “disintegrating”. The root syllable LAH is the attribute of Lord Indra, the King of the Heavens of the Air (Powers, Rulers, Reigns), means the all-dissolving negation. This syllable in mantric language gives success, develops glory, dignity and gives all-self-sustainability. It is the vibrational name of the elemental earth and the name of the master of the sense of smell.
Core syllable YAH is the vibrational name of the element of air (sky), and also the name of the master of the sense of touch (feeling, intuition). It symbolizes the archetype of PILGRIM, meaning someone who walks, follows. It also defines a car or vehicle (yana) for pilgrimage, following. As an attribute, it develops all-pervading, intuitive and insightful, also splendour of clarity or radiance – light. As a result, work oriented towards the LIGHT is the basis of laya yoga.
AS INSIDE SO OUTSIDE
The basic two terms develop into the greatest truth about the entire universe and reality. VYASHTI is the term that defines the microcosm, the smallest and its structure. SAMASHTI is the term that defines the macrocosm, which is what is huge and what is great. The relationship of VYASHTI – SAMASHTI is mutual interaction, such as man – environment, planet – solar system, atom – matter. Small is vyashti, and large samashti. The mind is vyashti, and the reality is samashti. By studying one or the other, we achieve the same knowledge about everything. The whole is like a mutual transformation of vyashti and samashti.
The principle of “as inside so outside” is a great spiritual law called the principle of analogy, or the law of similarity. Vyashti is the point, drop and compaction process, it is a bindhu. Samashti is a circle, a wheel, a chakra and a process of extension, expansion. The image of a circle with a point in the centre shows us the idea contained in both of these terms: The macrocosm and the microcosm are interrelated based on the law of analogy and can mutually transform into each other.
LOGOS IS THE ATOM OF GOD
The term BRAHMANDA means the powerful cosmic life we call solar systems or LOGOS. In fact, every formation of cosmic life is a LOGOS on a macro- or microcosmic scale. Man is BRAHMANDA the same as the hydrogen atom or the planet Jupiter. In particular, stellar systems that have their own planets are Logos. Also the celestial spheres (plains) are self-contained Logos. The so-called LOKA (place, abode) are the realms in the consciousness of angels (deva), i.e. subtle LOGOS.
LOGOS is a gathering of consciousness and in its structure, it is similar to an organization such as the FOREST. So BRAHMANDA is an ecosystem. When we consider a single individual being, which is a part of the LOGOS, then we are talking about the so-called PINDA, which means a unit, a single independent existence. It is similar to TREE in the organizational structure of the FOREST. PINDA is a microcosm within its own self-consciousness. LOGOS is the embodiment of a macrocosm of the harmonically coexisting individual entities.
The awareness of every organ (kidneys, heart etc.) in our body is a separate PINDA with its own individuality and specific functions. Together as a human body, they form a LOGOS that is the body’s consciousness. The entire Spiritual Hierarchy connecting all of the Spiritual Teachers of mankind is the LOGOS of Jagadguru (the Teacher of the World). Each single Guru is an individual element of this organization, that is as if TREE, what is called PINDA. In another way, the element is PINDA, while the set of elements constituting a separate existence is already BRAHMANDA.
Christ as a person living two thousand years ago is PINDA. Christ as a church gathering individuals in Christian consciousness is already LOGOS. A master living in the students’ consciousness is the LOGOS. One Body, one Spirit, one Blood, one Thought.
MEDITATION OF A TREE is to develop individual awareness. It is a work on the development of a unit that constitutes a separate wholeness. There are usually five or seven phases of cycles of changes taking place in the mind of the microcosm of VYASHTI – PINDA. The state of vyashti refers rather to the period in which we may not even be aware of our existence as a separate being. PINDA is a vyashti that is self-aware of its existence and wants to develop and deepen this self-awareness.
BRAHMANDA corresponds to the awareness of ANTHILL, and PINDA is the awareness of ANT. This means that LOGOS conceals universal, common and trans-personal consciousness, capable of containing in itself other, smaller organizational structures that are autonomous units. EXISTENCE, as a single structure, hides individual, personal and own consciousness. Human is a PINDA, Humanity is LOGOS, as long as it co-exists in a harmonious way as one living organism. This is a lesson we must learn before the Golden Age of Truth will reign.
In the Dark Age (Kali Yuga), people generally behave as PINDA, as individuals and personalities. In the Golden Age (Satya Yuga) every human being co-exists in society very consciously as a part of the LOGOS called HUMANITY, and even more as a harmonious particle of the PLANET EARTH, PLANETARY LOGOS in which we live. It is a manifestation of a collective, universal consciousness in which there is no separation, while unification, cooperation and interdependence as the consciousness of LOGOS is dominating. The Golden Age is about rising above the personal consciousness of oneself in own body towards the consciousness of all beings as one living organism with which we identify.
LOGOS of Christian churches, LOGOS of Buddhist churches, LOGOS of Hindu churches – all of them must become one LOGOS of GOD. This rising above the divisions, melting the smaller egoisms in the larger, will cause the awakening of the consciousness of the Golden Age, which will last over ten thousand years (Exactly 4/10 of the Platonic year).
Undoubtedly the greatest LOGOS, the most powerful BRAHMANDA we can imagine, is MAHAAKAŚA – Great Space, Great Spirit, Emptiness, Space, Ether. Countless worlds (read: Logos) in the beginning phase of development, in the middle phase, in full bloom, and also in the declining phase, fill the Great Space of Spirit. This SUPERLOGOS, such that there is no larger from it, we usually call GOD.
Science about LOGOS is usually knowledge (VEDA, GNOSIS) about planetary systems in the universe, about spheres and plans of existence, about the heavens and divine spheres in which angels (devas) live. The science of the highest LOGOS is the REVELATION of GOD. In the terms of laya yoga, the LOGOS of the manifested material world are called bodies or environment, nature. This gives meaning to the notion of VIRAT (living body).
The focal points of certain specific ways of understanding and feeling the Living Body, VIRAT, are called PITHA, which means the place or centre of consiousness. The ordinary consciousness of all humanity in Kali Yuga is focused, located in one of the four areas of PITHAH, as follows: at the base of the torso, between the rectum and the genitals; next inside the abdomen, under the navel; near the solar plexus, in the upper abdomen and in the heart centre under the breastbone, at the level of the cardiac plexus. In essence, these are the central areas of awareness of the four types of people within their bodies, against the background of the VIRAT LOGOS.
That’s it as as part of the introduction to the classic LAYA YOGA as a nine-point vehicle starting from work on five YAMAH and five NIYAMAH, and thus always referring to the ten-petal lotus of the solar plexus.
Hum!
Aćarya Lalit Mohan G.K.
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