kāyākāśayoḥ sambandha-saṁyamāl laghu-tūla-samāpatteś cākāśa-gamanam
kāya-ākāśayoḥ sambandha-saṁyamāt laghu-tūla-samāpatteḥ ca ākāśa-gamanam
“From saṁyama on the union of the body and space, and by assuming the lightness of cotton fiber–movement as though weightless.”

In the last sūtra (III.42), Patañjali challenges us to place our attention on how the ear meets space, on how we listen. Here, he shifts focus to the whole body (kāya). How does the body meet space? How do we feel ourselves in space, feel the space in us? How do we move?

Consider the lightness (laghu) of cotton fiber (tūla). Assume that lightness. Move as though weightless (ākāśa-gamanam, literally, “sky-walking”).

To move with lightness is to be a sky-walker. It is to feel, as Mr. Iyengar puts it, the vast space within us, the emptiness between the particles of matter that seem so solid. It does not surprise me that Mr. Iyengar writes so eloquently about the body in space, because he had such an acute sense of learning through and with his body. It is a surprise to learn that a heavy jump from legs together to legs apart can become light–from imagination and intention. I choose to jump lightly, to make no sound, as light as cotton fiber. And I do! It is an alchemy that is a delight of our physical existence.

I live near the mountains, and I recently took a hike that follows a stream about three miles up to a lookout. Halfway up, I met a ranger, who was hanging a sign that said the trail was closed. A storm a few days earlier had washed it out, creating a deep ditch and other obstacles. I continued on with curiosity (the ranger seemed to accept a lot of hikers would do that) and what I saw was truly awesome. The storm had gouged a three-foot trench, had leveled bushes and trees, and had, almost inconceivably, cast stones down the mountain as though they were water. Fields of stone lay like they had been splashed there. How is that? How can water move rock? The wonder of it hit me.

Later, at home, I read about the phenomenon. It is called debris flow. When enough water falls over a short, concentrated time, power is unleashed. Earth trembles, rocks tumble, solids become like water. They are fluid. In a general sense, the things we think fixed are–in geologic time–moving. We are part of that movement. As Patañjali earlier referenced in III.40 (on udāna vayu), gravity acts upon us but our energy also acts upon gravity.

What do we think is solid? What do we think is immovable? This is a vital question in the current political catastrophe we are in. Upheaval is happening right now–government agencies dismantled, rights denied, legal precedents overturned, people kidnapped off the streets by government agents.

We may not feel much agency in the face of this. Writer and activist Rebecca Solnit offers guidance in a recent essay:

Don’t let what you do be limited by what you assume is possible – what you do has to be governed by common sense and wisdom but those sometimes tell us to not assume we know the limits. The first rule of the future is that no one quite knows what it will be, and major changes not uncommonly emerge from players who were not long before invisible, dismissed, derided. –Rebecca Solnit, “On Not Surrendering in Advance or During or at Any Point Thereafter,” Meditations in an Emergency 

Yes. What are the limits? What is solid? What is moveable? Our common sense often tells us that what is today will continue, that the rules for how we organize society or the economy are fixed, solid like rock. We see, in this storm of upheaval, that things are not so fixed. It is important, though, that we also envision what is possible, what we can make.

Bill McKibben, founder of Third Act and authority on climate change, has been working to spread the word about the revolution in energy production that has occurred in just the last three years. (Check out Sun Day, a celebration of the advances and possibilities of renewable technology, happening on this year’s fall equinox, Sept. 21, and see interview with Chris Hayes). Solar panels are now so inexpensive–thanks largely to China’s stepped-up production–and electric appliances so efficient that we can heat and cool our homes, drive our cars and electric bikes, light our cities, at far less cost than we can with oil furnaces, gas stoves, combustion engines, and coal power plants.

The age of fossil fuel dominance is ending. Though the U.S. political system is still under the sway of the fossil fuel industry, burning things to create energy will–sometime in the not-so-distant future–be a thing of the past. It turns out, in Bill McKibben’s words, to be much cheaper to point a piece of glass toward the sun–the great nuclear reactor in the sky–than to create energy in any other way. And, this form of energy is, by its nature, more egalitarian than fossil fuels. The sun shines everywhere. Solar (and wind) energy work against concentrated accumulations of wealth.

The energy revolution has happened, and we do not yet know it. There is a great lesson here.

David Graeber (see III.26) died five years ago this month.  He has had a profound influence on many  who work for social change. He taught us to imagine, to move lightly, to create. “The ultimate hidden truth of the world,” he said, “is that it is something we make and could just as easily make differently.” Gratitude to David Graeber. Let’s make things differently.

Photo: David Graeber Institute

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“Space [ākāśa], sometimes translated as ether, is not the ether of the modern chemist. It is taken in its old sense as being the space permeating the emptiness between particles of matter….To reach the Infinite, we have to use finite means, as does the architect, even if he is building a cathedral or a temple. And, like the architect, yoga science says that you have to align your inner and outer bodies, so that they run parallel and are in communication with each other….Alignment creates an intercommunicating structure that, like a cathedral, is an offering to God. That is why for me alignment is a metaphysical word. Correct alignment creates correct space, as in a well-constructed building.” –B.K.S. Iyengar, Light on Life, p.202-204

“By knowing the relationship between the body and ether, the yogi transforms his body and mind so that they become as light as cotton fibre. He can then levitate in space. … This is one of the supernatural powers called laghimā, or becoming as light as cotton. In the purāṇas, it is said that Lord Hanumān (son of the Wind God) jumped up to the sky to fetch the sun, which he thought was an apple. There is also the story from the Rāmāyaṇa that he leaped to the Himālayās to fetch the elixir of life, called sañjīvanī, to save the life of Lord Rāma’s brother who was wounded in a fight with Rāvaṇa’s son.” –B.K.S. Iyengar, Light on the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali, commentary on III.43

“The feeling of heaviness inhibits; the feeling of lightness confers great freedom to travel, move about, and make the changes and transformations that are indispensable to life.” –Bernard Bouanchaud, The Essence of Yoga, commentary on III.43

Questions:
• Do you tend toward heaviness or lightness? In your practice, do you seek more grounding or more lightness?
• What poses ground you? What poses help you feel “light as cotton fiber”?
• If you could wave a magic wand, what change would you like to see in your neighborhood, in your town, in your country?
• What, in your lifetime, was an impossible thing that became possible?