Aliens and Spiders

Pretty much every day strange thoughts pop into my head at even stranger times. I've learned two things about these thoughts; 1) to never say them out loud when they come into my head - people will give me weird looks, and 2) if I ignore them, they are usually gone as fast as they appeared. Today, however, was a bit different. I was standing in line at Dunkin Donuts (no breakfast food in my house.....what? that's a legitimate excuse) and when the girl at the register asked what I would like the first thing to come to mind was this quote from Men In Black (is this a nerd alert? I feel like it may be...), "1500 years ago, everybody knew that the earth was the center of the universe. 500 years ago, everybody knew that the earth was flat. And 15 minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow."  Fortunately, lesson 1 of 'Stephanie's Pop-up Thoughts' kicked in and I did not say this in the place of, "black coffee, please."  However, this thought didn't leave me. All day long.

I seriously love this quote. And no, not because I think there are aliens among us. I love this quote because it points out an incredibly simple yet profoundly difficult aspect of yoga - transcending the mind. As the great eighteenth century philosopher, Kent, noted, there is a point beyond which our intellect cannot penetrate. "What is the purpose of life? Who am I? Where will I go? Is physical death the end of everything? It can be seen as foolish to search for truth with an instrument as limited as the intellect, to attempt to measure the unknown depth of eternal questions with a finite instrument." The same goes for that which we all take for granted, like what we see around us. Yoga teaches us that this world we see is not real.

When we transcend the mind, the intellect, we discover our Soul within us. In yoga philosophy we talk about the soul being veiled by sheaths, or koshas. I will get into these koshas at another time. For now I would like to share a couple analogies I learned to help explain the unreality of the physical world:

The Spider and the Web
The pure consciousness (Brahman or Siva) is the spider that projects mind and matter, which are the web. The spider is now the subject, and the web is the object. Before the web was projected, it was one with the spider, symbolizing the universe in causal or unmanifest state. When the web is withdrawn by the spider into itself, then there is no subject-object, but a union of the two, known as yoga. The spider is both the efficient cause (the life principle within the spider), and the material cause (its body). The spider's body provides the material from which its web is formed. But, there could be no web without the energy that is necessary to spin the web.

The Movie Screen
The screen is unaffected by the movie projected on it. One sees fires, floods, disasters of all sorts on the screen. Yet the screen remains unaffected by the apparent activity upon it. So, also, the pure consciousness is unaffected by creation, which is projected from itself by its active power of Maya (the cosmic drama, the "world").

Confused?  Don't worry. We'll keep discussing this! And yes, all of this came from one little movie quote. =)