THE YOGA OF SOCIAL CHANGE A one line response to the word "yoga" is usually something like "Duh, yeah, stretching into weird positions" Putting Yoga together with social change gets stuff like "Did you stretch for social change?!" from the highly educated half-wits There is a difference between this practiced ignorance and the response from people who have learned enough to realise how little they know of what there is to know. I practice such ignorance with many things until it becomes obvious that several million people are already adept in such-and-such a field Maybe that's human nature too. It can happen with learning computers, finance, social skills, community organising, increasing one's awareness and touching Infinity. Consider the following: * There is in the living being a thirst for limitlessness. * Self-sacrifice and service to humanity. * Capitalism makes humans beggars; Communism makes the beggar a beast. The first difficulty in bringing these together may be that spirituality and politics or spirituality and economic systems don't meet at any point. The practice of Tantra Yoga can be the base from which to bring about progressive change in all spheres. The Body's Eternal Song The spiritual energy, called kulakundalinii in Sam’ skrta, lies quiet at the base of the spine. It's like a coiled snake, poised to rise. Also along the spine are 3 psychic channels, the 'ida', 'pingula' and 'susumna'. These 3 carry the kulakundalinii~ as they spiral upwards along the spine they cross and form what are called 'chakras'. Each nexus point or chakra is a sub-station of the mind and has a number of mental propensities linked to it. The lower chakras control the basest aspects of existence - eating, fear, survival, lust, greed, etc.- and the higher aspects of life are expressed through the upper chakras, like dignity, service, respect, love. Each of these propensities has a distinct sound, the vibrational essence of its existence. There are 50 separate propensities, called vrttis, and 50 sounds. These sounds are the 50 letters in the Sanskrit alphabet. When it is pronounced correctly, certain words and combinations actually vibrate the chakras, strengthening the vrttis attached. This is the basis for much of the emphasis on the use of Sanskrit words in the lessons of Tantra. Capitalism and Communism There is a natural law, like the law of gravity or childbirth, that governs the social cycle. It recognises four distinct groups within human society and explains how they each have their turn at the helm. It also sheds light on what symptoms and behaviour wil be evident as the next phase of the cycle approaches. The four groups are labourers, warriors, intellectuals and acquisitors (merchants). The first phase has the labourers, including farmers and workers, surviving and maintaining the land and families. From this social pattern rose the warriors, the strongest and ablest fighters, who became tribal heads and kings. They began to dominate the people, ordering society to enrich and empower themselves through the exploitation of the labourers. The warriors, in turn, found themselves needing the intellectuals to keep order and govern their territory. Intellectuals, usually in the form of a priesthood or at least with complex theories that the warriors give obedience to, became indispensable to government. .. so much so that the warriors became only figureheads with the real power inherent in the prime minister/president/first citizen and their bureaucracy. As the power of ideas begins to wane, ever more complex theories are evolved, but those merchants/ acquisitors are hard at work to enrich themselves and make both the intellectuals and warriors subservient to them, to aid them in worsening the exploitation of ordinary people. In this phase, more and more intellectuals and warriors find themselves working as labourers, unable to maintain themselves or their families in the face of the greed and grubbing of the acquisitors. Communism was and is the phase of the intellectuals; capitalism is the phase of the acquisitors. Communism in the Soviet Union is fast moving to the next phase, becoming as degenerate as the worst of western capitalist society in a short time. The next phase is that of a revolution, with people rising up against the extreme exploitation of the acquisitors and changing the rules of human interaction. It is knowing that this revolution is inevitable and coming. that has the practice of Tantra Yoga and work on holistic social change forming what must be an inalienable concomitance. We are in a state of war. This time the weapons are unemployment, poverty, drugs, economic exploitation, trade deals ("free" trade, NAFTA , GATT) and the acquisitors are passing laws, gutting social programs (like medicare, pensions, unemployment insurance, education and social assistance) equipping police and armies and getting tax laws passed in their constant attempts to make their time at the top permanent. Sorry, but natural law is on our side. Our duty is to act in all ways opposing the greed and power of such acqusitors. The alternative is what's usually called 'common sense.’ By PAULR TAYLOR
↧