When last we met, we were starting to get meta-physical with the Siddhis, or what I will call at this point, "powerful skills" rather than "mystical powers," as they are obtained, not magically gifted, which is an extremely important distinction to make here because as we shall see, these can become major pitfalls for the Yogi/ni...
In the previous sutras, we saw that performing intensive meditations, or the samyama of Dhãranã-Dhyãna-Samãdhi, upon the evolutions (parinãma) of things, we can gain knowledge of the Past and the Future (things not yet manifest, so to be more precise, the possible Future) of these things. In other words, intensive observations can lead to informed ideas about where things came from and where they may go to...Not quite the hocus-pocus that the Siddhis are often collectively taken as, but rather, right in line with Probability and Quantum Mechanics...
Likewise, 3.17 is just a treasure trove of possibilities and one that touches upon many questions we are still asking about language, meaning and understanding. As this one sutra pretty much involves all of my favorite things to think about: Yoga, language, communication, interpretation, and so forth, I am ready to Geek out on it. So, let's begin:
shabda-artha-pratyayãnãm-itaretara-adhyãsãt-samkaras-tat-pravibhãga-samyamãt-sarva-bhUta-ruta-jñãnam 3.17
Or,
Because of mutual layerings of sounds, meaning and objects, confusion arises and by intensive meditation upon their separation, knowledge of the sounds of all creatures is gained.
So, what to do, what to do. Essentially, this is the unravelling of the Tower of Babel and beyond. It suggests that the Yogi/ni can not only gain knowledge or understanding of humans, but of ALL creatures great and small! No small feat, no menial skill to have, to be sure.
How?
By performing samyama on the distinctions between sounds, meanings and objects. Essentially, this is a classical definition of hermeneutics (will explain shortly) and is the biggest question in modern language studies, namely: can we ever understand one another?
I have spent the better portion of my entire life contemplating this question, so, I think it is time to pause here and reflect on this sutra if you can indulge my digressions for a moment for the sake of clarity.
Hermeneutics is the study within Philology (study of languages as languages) as the process of trying to fully understand a text, usually in an ancient language, by studying this exact composition of factors: sounds/words, meaning/semantics and objects. The challenge is to know what exactly a word "means" by figuring out what it truly "refers" to. This becomes tricky with the big words such as "Truth" "Love" and "Understanding" in various language, inter alia. Hermeneutics is then a method to try and re-create the word in its context and Time as well as original language in order to come closer to its meaning. The word comes from Hermes, who is the messenger God between Humans and Deities and the sense here is whether or not we as humans can ever de-code the message of the Universe, whether it be at the hand of a god or goddess or Science...Science, Religion, Translation and Art are all seeking to find the answer to the question of "Why?"
Do we have the language to answer that at all? While I was in Graduate School, part of my training was in Literary Theory. At the time (early 90's) Semantics was all the rage, and the big questions were whether we could know the true relationship between the signifier and the signified. In other words, could we ever understand what another person says/writes/sings... Or, is the a perennial disjunct in the delivery of the message, even if it is a nanosecond of Time? Has there been corruption in the delivery of the package? Does the message ever arrive? De Saussure, Derrida, Foucault and Kristeva were a few of the names on everyone's lips, and although I enjoy reading each one of them in their own right, this was not a new thing.
One day for an on-line forum with other Grad Students in the program, I posted an "anonymous" Literary Theory text about the quest for finding the true meaning of words and whether names and words themselves are arbitrary, or do they have an intrinsic connection with the object they describe?
Everyone was all a-flutter with this "new" theorist...which, of course, I revealed to be Socrates in Plato's dialogue "Cratylus," which is about the origin of language and the relationship of words to their objects...Had I been studying the Yoga Sutras as intently as I am now, I would have posted Patañjali 3.17 for even greater shock value because he says it is possible to gain this incredibly powerful skill of understanding not only each other, but all creatures.
As Scooby-Doo would say, "Zikes!" or Robin might exclaim "Holy Deflated Deconstructionism, BatMan!" Yeah, or something like that. Told you I was going to Geek out.
3.17 brings to mind Saint Francis as well, who when no one else would listen to his "crazy wisdom," he went and preached to the forest critters as they could understand the message of Divine Love better than humans and their preoccupation with commercial materialism and Spiritual Materialism (as we saw last time with Chögyam Trungpa's concept of this).
So, how far-fetched then is Patañjali's 3.17 in this context? Not so much actually. What 3.17 is suggesting is that by dis-entangling the "noise" and "chatter" of things, we can finally start to listen rather than merely hear the sounds, and from that profound state of listening...we gain understanding...Hmmm...give it a thought and let that sink in for a moment. Stop the noise, and it creates space for true understanding...
Moving along to 3.18, we read:
samskãra-sãkshãt-karanãt pUrvajãti-jñãnam 3.18
Giving us,
By making (samyama) manifest by being directly aware of samskãras/mental filters, we can gain knowledge of previous births. 3.18
In other words, if we perform samyama on the samskãras (which along with parinãmas is proving to be one of the most important words in Sanskrit...), we can gain knowledge of previous lives.
We can take this literally, as I am confident it was in Patañjali's time with the belief of reincarnation, or we can also take this literarily, so to speak, in that we live multiple lives within one lifetime, something I am a major advocate/believer of, ...using my experience of Grad School for one, as that was truly another lifetime, and one that yielded a book on the hermeneutics of Death and Memory in the works of James Joyce...meaning, that was ME, but it was a "different" ME...and if I meditate upon the samskãras of that "other" ME, then I can know about that past life. What were some? Interests in language, meaning and communication to name a few, but with a focus on James Joyce.
Similar, but different.
Pirandello has a great book called Uno, nessuno e centomile/One, No one and One Hundred Thousand, in which he posits we are multitudes unto ourselves and to others and those different "lives" never really mesh with others, but are tangential at best. But, by self-analysis, as the protagonist does in the book, we can approximate those "other" lives, even if they are our own. In other words, how do other people see us? Even a perfect reflection in the mirror is not enough, it is still reversed. I have a major scar on the left side of my forehead that I will NEVER see as everyone else in my life will see it...I will always see it on the right side in the mirror...
[Side thought to all of this: what a different world it would be if we would actually hold ourselves up to the standards that we impose upon others...]
So, with 3.18, we can gain knowledge of those past lives...and, is it such as stretch that if reincarnation is true, that samayama on the samskãras that carry over would yield the same effect? However, we have to then ask whether jñãnam means knowledge, or does it also mean "understanding," which is completely different question, and one which Patañjali already anticipates with 3.19-20:
pratyayasya para-citta-jñãnam 3.19
na ca tat-sãlambanam-tasya-avishayI-bhUta-tvãt 3.20
[I put these together as I have a hunch they were originally considered to be one Sutra.]
Or,
Knowledge of the minds of others comes from samyama of an idea, but not the essence of it because the state of being is not accessible...
This is tricky because it does imply that knowledge and true understanding are mutually exclusive, something I tend to agree with, and which Kant made a distinction with between Vernunft and Verstand, or mental capability versus true understanding. Reason, words and knowledge can only get us so far. We can only read so many books, have so many words, and espouse so many theories, but do we truly "know" the object of inquiry, whether it be a flower, a person or a poem...?
On that note...
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