The case for Hatha yoga in healing, awakening, and “culturing” the mind.
Utthita Trikonasana, San Diego, 2005
“In modern intellectual terms, we take buddhi to be a monolithic entity. This is unhelpful when trying to understand its true role in our lives and in our yogic practice. Let us first separate it from “mind”, whose function is to receive sensory information to think and to act.
Intellect is more subtle than mind, it is concerned with the knowledge of facts and reasoning faculties, and becomes discernible only through its inherent quality, intelligence, which is closer to consciousness than to the mind/thought process. Intelligence is inherent in every aspect of our being from the physical to the blissful. It is, however, non-manifest in the atman/purusa: the core of being.
The quality of intelligence is inherent but dormant [to humans] so our first step must be to awaken it. The practice of asana brings intelligence to the surface of the cellular body through stretching, and to the physiological body by maintaining the pose. Once awakened, intelligence can reveal its dynamic aspect: its ability to discriminate. Then we strive for equal extensions to achieve a balanced, stable pose; measuring upper arm stretch against lower, right leg against left, inner against outer, etc. This precise, thorough process of measuring and discriminating is the apprenticeship or culturing of intelligence; and it is pursued in the internal sheaths by pranayama, pratyahara, and the further stages of yoga.
We can thus see that discrimination is a weighing process belonging to the world of duality. When what is wrong is discarded, what is left must be correct.
When discrimination has been cultivated and intelligence is full and bright, ego and mind retreat, and *citta* becomes bright and clear. But spiritual intelligence, which is true wisdom, dawns only when discrimination ends. Wisdom does not function in duality. It perceives only oneness. It does not discard the wrong, it sees only the right. Wisdom is not mingled with nature and is indeed unsuitable for the problems of life in a dualistic world. It would be of no use to a politician, for example, however high his motives, for he must choose and decide in the relative and temporal world. Spiritual wisdom does not decide, it *knows*. It is beyond time.
However, the progressive refinement of intelligence is essential in the search for freedom. The discriminating intellect should be used to “defuse” [digest, metabolize, circulate, or ameliorate] the negative impact of memory, which links us in psychological time to the world of sensory pleasure and pain.
All matter, from rocks to human cells, contains its own inherent intelligence, but only man has the capacity to awaken, culture, and finally transcend intelligence. Just as the totally pure *citta*, free from sensory entanglements gravitates towards the atman, so, once intelligence has achieved the highest knowledge of nature, it is drawn inwards towards the soul (4.26). Buddhi has the capacity to perceive itself: its innate virtue is honesty (1.49)”
~ BKS Iyengar,
Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali,
Commentary on sutra 1.7
