yogasana becomes effortless, with the natural beauty of molten gold
being poured from a vat.
To reach the Infinite, we have to use finite means, as does the ar
chitect, even if he is building a cathedral or a temple. And, like the ar
chitect, yoga science says that you have to align your inner and outer
bodies, so that they run parallel and are in communication with each
other. Without correct alignment, a building falls down. Gaudi sought
to express the sublime through the physical. It is the same for the yoga
practitioner. Alignment creates an intercommunicating structure that,
like a cathedral, is an offering to God. That is why for me alignment is
a metaphysical word. Correct alignment creates correct space, as in a
well-constructed building. A building without a spacious interior is a
lump of stone-a megalith. Can you imagine a body like that? It would
be both inert and uninhabitable.
According to Indian philosophy, art is of two types. One is called
bhogakala, the art of appeasing the pleasure of the body and mind. The
other is yogakala, the art of auspicious performance to please the spiri
tual heart of the soul. All arts have science (sastra) and art (kala). Bliss
(ananda) is experienced and expressed when the goal is to bring order
out of chaos, wisdom out of ignorance, divinity out of aesthetics. Do you
wonder that I become angry when my students throw away their God
given talents on bhoga yoga, look good, feel good but do no good yoga?
The drive within Nature is to express itself through evolution.
That is especially obvious to anyone living in a tropical country like
India. Nature wants to occupy every space. That is mirrored in our lan
guage when we say that "Nature abhors a vacuum." Nature sees its
role as expressing itself in more and more variety, and often, to our
eyes, in more and more beauty, but not always in beauty. Nature can
overwhelm us. Why did yogis go to the Himalayas? Was it to find
space, an outer space to reflect an inner?
Earlier I related air to touch and to intelligence. I said we both in
hale and bathe in it. Space is even more intimate, more pervasive, since
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