bahir akalpitā vṛttir mahā-videhā tataḥ prakāśāvaraṇa-kṣayaḥ
bahir akalpitā vṛttiḥ mahā-videhā tataḥ prakāśa-āvaraṇa-kṣayaḥ
“A non-imaginary perception of the external is the great out-of-body state. From this, the covering of the light is destroyed.”

The point of focus (deśa)  in the last two sūtras has been subtle–where and how the ear meets space (III.42) and where and how the body meets space (III.43). Today’s focus is perhaps even more refined–beyond the body and the senses.

Bahir means outer, external, that is, what is external to ourselves. This could be the experience of others, or happenings, places, worlds we have not seen. In an ordinary way, I can imagine things beyond myself. I can hear a story, form a picture in my mind, feel my way into another’s experience. But Patañjali describes here a power to perceive what is external that is not ordinary at all–a non-imagined, direct perception outside the body and senses, which he says is Mahā Videhā, the great out-of-body state (mahā, “great,” and vi-, “out,” + deha, “body”).

The commentators generally agree that Patañjali refers to a psychic ability to leave the body. Rohit Mehta, in contrast, understands Mahā Videhā, which he translates as the Great Death, to be the death of the mind, and by that he means the death of the patternings of the mind, the conditioning that life and experience and the “accumulation of the past” brings. (This is close to Patañjali’s definition of yoga at the start of Chapter One: yogaś citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ.)

In either interpretation, Mahā Videhā is a profound experience that, like the mystical fourth prāṇāyāma (a state beyond perception of external and internal, see II.51), destroys the covering of “the light” (II.52).

Light is light. It is the sun. The source of life. But what, in our human experience, covers it up? Sāṁkhya master Hariharānanda writes that the belief “I am my body” prevents us from feeling the light. Rohit Mehta describes the conditionings of the mind as the barrier.

I appreciate the writings of B.K.S. Iyengar that treat the body as the vehicle to light rather than itself the obstacle. Chapter Three, this Book of Marvels, takes our attention to the body again and again–from the energy centers, to the vital winds, to the senses. Saṁyama, the refinement of awareness, demands integration and strengthening of the body.

As I have written elsewhere, dissociation from the body has been a formidable obstacle for me. I have been healed of painful mental states–which I would describe as self-harming patterns–not by further separation from the body nor by intellectual activity but by a physical and energetic shift. The mind is part of the body, as far as I can tell, and a hallmark of citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ–the removal of old patterns of reactivity–is a greater attunement to body and to the world around me. A more acute, alive experience of the body and senses brings a calmer, more accurate perception of what is.

Today’s sūtra on Mahā Videhā, the great disembodiment, is poignant. I recently had a birthday, and I am feeling myself moving to a later stage of life. Signs of aging are vivid–changes in skin, bone, and hair. There is a work proper to this time, it seems to me: to feel gratitude, to find purpose, to reflect on death. Novelist Jeanette Winterson has written of her own birthday in a recent essay:

I am in the last quarter of my life now, even if things turn out well. Most of my life is behind me. That doesn’t feel like loss; it feels like the harvest. I can go to my apple store, my grain barns, my jars of preserves, and these things are there to remind me that I have done something with my life. That helps me when I am low in spirit.

Winterson contemplates, What if you feel you have wasted your life? It is never too late, she says, to do some good. And what would the good be?

Brought up religious, helping others was instilled in me as God’s Will. Given how much bloodshed happens in the name of God (any God) and is supposed to be this all-powerful Male Will (yuck) I think the least we can do is to offer a different approach, the one all religions claim to be based on. Love. Forgiveness. Compassion. I know. It’s always a shock to recall, isn’t it? Love. Forgiveness. Compassion.

She describes the great reward for her, the goodness, that is in teaching:

Time to talk about what makes life worthwhile is not time wasted. Time taken to discuss bullying and selfishness, versus kindness and compassion is not time wasted. I try to build these things in to the MA I teach on at the University of Manchester. They come thinking they will learn how to write fiction. I want them to learn how to tap into the wells of humanity.

–Jeanette Winterson, “Happy Birthday,” https://open.substack.com/pub/jeanettewinterson/p/happy-birthday?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=9dln0

In one of her last books, Mary Oliver wrote beautifully about aging:

There is something you can tell people over and over, and with feeling and eloquence, and still never say it well enough for it to be more than news from abroad–people have no readiness for it, no empathy. It is the news of personal aging–of climbing, and knowing it, to some unrepeatable pitch and coming forth on the other side, which is pleasant still but which is, unarguably, different–which is the beginning of descent. It is the news that no one is singular, that no argument will change the course, that one’s time is more gone than not, and what is left waits to be spent gracefully and attentively, if not quite so actively. –Mary Oliver, Upstream,  p. 165

Mary Oliver and Jeannette Winterson articulate how contemplating dissolution, ending, can be clarifying–can bring a distillation of values. Whether those values are kindness, care, or attention–the hard times, the ending times, can lift them up, reveal the light within.

—–

“The state of Videha is freedom from bodily enclosure. But here Patañjali speaks of Mahāvideha which may be called the Great Death. It is not the death of the body but of the mind. … The sūtra says that in this mindless state or the condition of Mahāvideha all obstructions to the shining of the light are removed. The screen that prevents the light from coming in is the accumulation of the past.” –Rohit Mehta, Yoga, the Art of Integration, p. 364

“At times it is fashionable to despise the body as something non-spiritual. Yet none can afford to neglect it. At other times it is fashionable to indulge the body and to despise what is not physical. Yet none can deny that there is more to life than mere physical pleasure and pain. … If you say you are your body, you are wrong. If you say you are not your body, you are also wrong. The truth is that although body is born, lives, and dies, you cannot catch a glimpse of the divine except through your body.” –B.K.S. Iyengar, Light on Life, p. 26

“This siddhi is a further attainment derived from saṁyama on the relationship between the body and space, when the individual experiences the physical borders of the body beginning to blend or expand into the infinite ether around it. The ego-sense begins to experience itself as unfettered to a particular place….We come to experience the mind as omnipresent and understand that it exists and functions outside the body as well as within it.” –The Reverend Jaganath Carrera, Inside the Yoga Sūtras, commentary on III.44

“When the mind is felt to be both inside the body and outside, it is called imagined fixity. When the mind, being freed of the body, gains fixity outside, it is called Mahāvideha fixity. Thereby is attained the removal of the veil referred to in the commentary. The feeling ‘I am the body’ is the grossest of the veils over knowledge.” — Swāmi Hariharānanda Āraṇya, Yoga Philosophy of Patañjali (translated by P.N. Mukerji), commentary on III.44

Questions:
• How does your state of mind (happy, sad, calm, disturbed) shape your perceptions? What role does your past and long-established patterns (saṁskāras) play?
• Does your imagination help you understand people and things? Are there times when it leads you wrong?
• Have you experienced an out-of-body state?
• What is the light, for you? What practices reveal light? What brings meaning?