Extracts from Yoga Scotland Magazine September 2010

The Cosmos — A Third Eye’s View for a Bird’s Eye View

By Alex Beddoe

Krishna points out in the Bhagavad Gita, Oh IX (translation by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood), ‘I am the cosmos revealed and its germ that lies hidden’. Similarly, sages and mystics have long since declared that consciousness and cosmos are of the same form. Now, modern conceptual science of cosmos and mind also seems to offer some agreement.

Peeping into the universe, and considering it from the time perspective, it emerged from a big bang with a starting centre and expanding circumference. Between the centre and circumference of the universe there exists an extending line of time (within which our mortal minds participate in multiplicity). However, the expansion of the universe is accelerating. Given this, the circumference must, ultimately, reach a relative (to the centre) recessional velocity of the speed of light. At the speed of light time stands still. Thus, centre and circumference must, somewhere in the eternal universe, exist at a meeting point where all that has happened in the line of time is compressed into the same moment in time. One must, conclude that the universe expands and its time runs on, yet at the same time is instantaneous, complete and eternal.

So where, within the mortal mind, might reside this

immortal ‘...germ that lies hidden. Well, curiously enough, neurological science has now established that the left hemisphere of the brain is a linear processor (more logic and reason related) while the right hemisphere is a parallel processor (more art and spirit related). Conclusion from one hemisphere can fall into disagreement with those from the other hemisphere. Likewise, conclusions from litiear time between cosmic centre and circumference and those drawn from a synchronising, or parallel, process might be mutually exclusive; (for those of a more scientific bent, we may be touching on wave-particle duality here). Is one right and the other wrong? Not necessarily; for what Hamlet referred to as ‘mighty opposites’ is most fruitfully addressed by the concept of Yin-Yang whereby opposites mutually exclude each other, yet somehow vitally and creatively fructify each other.

It is the third eye that lies between the mighty opposites of the two alternatively processing cerebral hemispheres. So, deducing from the relationship between time and the speed of time, that the linearity of time periodically gets paralleled, might it not be fair to conclude that the third eye is that which negotiates between time and eternity?

Perhaps within the meeting of opposites, within the third eye, there lies the secret of the participation of the mind’s unfolding into enfolded stillness within that of the cosmos. And so, therein, lies a knowledge of the mind as a key ingredient, the ‘germ that lies hidden’ in the recipe for the much sought after Ultimate Laws of Nature, or Grand Unified Theory, in other words the ‘cosmos revealed’.

Only one way to find out. Ask it. Or, perhaps better put, rest the active mind and let the third eye ask itself.

Fluid Movement and Essential Breath

There was movement, there was fluidity and there was essential breath throughout all of the teaching Amanda Latchmore did at our St Andrews Annual Seminar.

Amanda’s teaching, and experimentation, led her to study with Donna Farhi and qualify in an impressive, and connected,

array of teaching and therapy styles.

Re-connecting with our pre-vertebrate development through trying to sense our cellular breath was a fascinating experience. Linking yoga practice with our most elementary beginnings isn’t something that everyone immediately feels comfortable with. Letting go of all our learned and regularly practiced postures to writhe and wriggle on a slippery blanket, imagining ourselves swimming in primordial soup (OK that was maybe just me!), was not only physically liberating but actually very enjoyable.

For anyone who missed this ‘amoeba’ experience with Amanda check out her website www.harrogateyoga.com or Facebook page — Harrogate Yoga.