The question that defines the yogic journey is, "What am I?" The key to the answer, for a yogi, is that it must be directly experienced as an embodied epiphany. So, the journey to that epiphany begins.
Curious Primates
The human being is a uniquely curious creation. It's easy to imagine, the ambiguous form of some generic ape-like ancestor, strong and wild, squatting by the ashes of some dwindling, prehistoric prairie fire. Its leathery long-fingered hand, more paw and thumb than human, hovers over the pulsing glow of red embers, desperate to make contact beyond the translucent trails of smoke and edge-bending waves of heat. The heat bites back and it grunts but impulsively stays despite its fear, determined to make sense of the embers, ashes, and quieting flames.
Then in one small moment, such a paw learned that embers are far too hot to hold and moved one with an available branch, wielding fire for the first time. This is just one highly probable and recurrent instance of our species' substantial and innate curiosity.
In the blink of an eye, 2 million years went by, and countless hidden essences of the world around our ancestors were discovered one by one. Our minds like eager children. The world and its secrets like wrapped gifts. There were blades and cutting tools wrapped inside stones. There were melodies wrapped inside conch shells, carved bones, and hollowed branches. Clothing, shelters, and pouches were wrapped inside cut and sewn furs and skins. We unwrapped pigments for dying clothes from crushed berries, soil, and mud. We unwrapped medicines from plants. The Laws of physics were wrapped inside matter. Frequencies were wrapped in sound. Spectrums were wrapped in light. As our ancestors and predecessors looked closer, the world opened in unprecedented ways, revealing to our kin that life is more than just the circumstances of reality in which we find ourselves reactively existing. It's also an incomprehensibly large set of objects to "unwrap", understand, manipulate, and utilize for the greater good.
For the human being, as an animal doing its best to survive the bountiful boobytrap that is reality, reality became a toolbox more than 2 million years ago because, at the core, humans and our inquisitive ancestors have long known two things 1) there is good and there is better and 2) life is extremely supportive, generously helping us pursue our concepts of "better" when we follow our curiosity and decide to investigate the details of the world around us.
The yogi is human, still driven by these two core beliefs. To them, the better is something within themselves and life has provided them with the tool of their body and mind to discover what that better is.
The Body-Mind Connection
This primate's greatest tool
The philosophies of yoga make it very clear that the greatest tool available to a human being is the unified experience of the human body and mind. We'll call it the body-mind connection (BMC). The study of the body-mind connection, BMC, led to personal revelations that "The self is all and all is self." This was and still is the most profound epiphany of the yogic path. Now, in this era of information where we're entrenched in data, this yogic truth can feel underwhelming, coming off as somewhat cliche, and obvious in a "when you stop to think about it...of course" way. The reality is that most humans don't see the body-mind connection, BMC, explicitly as a tool, let alone a tool for self-realization. Even if some do, nothing utilizes the tool of the BMC for self-realization quite like traditional, ancient yoga.
The duet of the body and mind encompasses all physical actions, sensations, and experiences that come from the body as well as all thoughts and emotions that come from the mind. When the BMC is "caught" as Bodhidharma, the Father of Zen, famously said, it's seen to be truly absolute. To catch in this context means to become aware of the BMC but because of its scale and influence, it’s surprisingly difficult for humans to achieve.
Think of yoga as a way of creating mental distance to catch the full vision of the BMC. If life were a mountain, for example, to see the mountain fully, someone would have to step far back, miles back. Too close, let's say inches away, and the mountain is unrecognizable and blurry.
The BMC is essentially that mountain and many people are so enmeshed in it and its thoughts that the BMC can't be seen clearly and is, therefore, difficult to manage well. The sutras of Patanjali, a yogic sage's commentary on yoga and the BMC, explain this relationship with the mind succinctly from the perspective of the person experiencing it. When thoughts are controlled individuals become their true form; the force that controls thoughts. When they aren't controlling their thoughts or the BMC, these people become their thoughts or in other words associate with or identify as their thoughts, emotions, and sensations (BMC).
Another way to conceptualize this idea is understanding that there has never been a single moment, not a shred of a mili-second in the entire history of our species, where any one person wasn't purely experiencing their own personal BMC. Never has there been a moment where any one of us has experienced a spec of someone else's BMC. The personal body-mind connection is all that can be known. While an objective, true world does exist beyond the interpretations of an individual’s body-mind connection, that unfiltered, unfettered world is forever out of reach.
Humanity has never seen, touched, smelt, heard, or tasted any piece of life accurately or completely. Humanity has only experienced its interpretations of life. What distinguishes the yogi is their awareness that the world around them is a completely refabricated interpretation of the BMC.
If these monumental statements are considered seriously, then the BMC becomes extremely significant to life and wellbeing.
The BMC's significance is not a new revelation. Ancient India had been studying this connection for millennia through yoga, which was considered ancient in 400 BCE. While the exact beginning of yoga and the perspective that the BMC is humanty’s greatest tool has been lost to prehistory, just like the discovery of fire, there certainly was a first.
The myths of yoga describe its first instance occuring at the beginning of the universe when Mataji, the Goddess, as the female force of nature and the cosmos gave birth to three incarnations of mind, the male force. These 3 forces of mind are the top gods of Hinduism, known as the Trimurti (Tri = three, murti = image); Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Brahma, the creator god, saw the universe that was Mataji and immediately attempted to control her. She being all-powerful humbled Brahma for his arrogance. Vishnu, the god of preservation, saw Mataji and fell in love. Mataji, returned Vishnu's love and they became beloveds. Shiva, the father of yoga, saw Mataji as she was but was more interested in the mystery of his own existence. So, he left the universe to study himself. Mataji was intrigued and impressed by Shiva's confidence and enchanted him. This story reveals the emotional essence of the yogi and their practice. "What am I?" Yoga is a deliberate retreat from everything that isn't seen as the Self and the committed pursuit of everything that is.
As Vishnu, hero of the Bhagavad Gita, often thought of as the Bible of Hinduism, says to Arjuna, a young prince dealing with destiny, "Yoga is a path of the self, through the self, to the self."
In reality, the first person who decided to internalize their curiosity and investigate the BMC with the same sense of study that their peers applied to the embers, stones, and berries around them, in yoga lore is known as the Adiyogi, the first yogi. This is a more feasible idea of yoga's origins. This Adiyoga is still equated to the God Shiva; this time as the ancient Indian psychological pioneer who cultivated their mind like a prehistoric Freud or shamanic Jung. This trendsetter unearthed cutting-edge understandings of themselves and the BMC before anyone else in history. Realistically, this person, who is estimated to have lived at least 5,000 years ago because of clay stamps found in the Indus Valley, committedly sat down, closed their eyes, skillfully calmed their nerves, and then got hooked on whatever adaptive consequences followed. This body-mind study became their way of life and, eventually, gained the interest of a small portion of the population. Following in the footsteps of the Adiyogi, new yogis, curious of the process, also discovered and seemed to ubiquitously agree that the BMC, in reality, was observably all-powerful and "catching it" led to transformative increases in resilience, calmness, harmony with nature, harmony with fate, and, ecstatic moments of euphoric revelation.
Yoga and its epiphany that the BMC was absolute was a sensation in the forests of old Bharat. The epiphany was liberating for the human spirit. Conceptually replacing the world as some complex, eternal, and all-powerful “other” with the personal body-mind made the innate stress of existing more controllable, because it wasn’t the big bad world that was causing suffering, it was the interpretations of the world and the personal BMC that were creating the pain.
So...
"Is it the wind that moves? Is it the flag?"
"Neither, it is the mind."
This Tibetan poem expresses the same sentiment. Mind is all. All is mind. When the mind isn't caught, a person loses their perspective. They lose the distance from the mountain. Too close, they become said wind, said flag, said pain, said interpretation. When the mind is caught and seen for what it is, the self awakens and realizes it is distinct from the mountain.
Yogic proverb; In the world of the sleeping, the yogi is awake.
The ingenious pivot of the yogis in the context of human history as curious, tool-addicted primates was seeing their bodies and minds as the apex technology to crack out of nature. As they followed their curiosity inside and became more familiar with the influence of the BMC, they discovered what they believed to be the fundamental resource of the all-important, absolute, and inescapable BMC. As stones held the resource of arrowheads and small blades, as embers held the discoveries of light, warmth, and cooked food, every tool exists because it serves a particular function and the tool of the BMC, when pushed and manipulated through traditional, ancient yoga, generates the apex experience we'll call wakefulness.
Wakefulness
What the hell is wakefulness?
Whatever these strange forest-dwelling yogis were doing, the Kings of Bharat wanted to know because entwined in their poverty and insanity was stupendous self-control, mental clarity, resilience, and wisdom. It's an extraordinary dynamic from the modern era's perspective; the most powerful, materialistic, and ambitious men in the country were trekking into the forests to seek counsel, instruction, and tutelage from homeless religious mystics.
What the kings of India wanted, although they did not know it, was the wakefulness that made the self-control, mental clarity, resilience, and wisdom achievable in the first place. Unfortunately for them, the catalyst of wakefulness cannot be taken or bought. It can only be earned through effort, practice, and experience.
To yogis the human being is called manava; the animal with a mind. The folklore says, among these mind-animals, some are born twice in one life; the twice born. The first birth is from the mother, something all humans do. The second birth, however, isn't guaranteed. This elective step in an individual's development is when a person "births" a lasting wakefulness from within themselves generally via intense yogic practice, but there are many accounts of it arising spontaneously as an act of divine grace.
Wakefulness, awareness, consciousness, sapience; all these terms refer to the universal human experience of existing while simultaneously knowing that they exist. In terms of understanding wakefulness the most closely associated term is salience with a caveat. If I suggest you pay attention to the tip of your nose, you become more aware of your nose, and then your nose is more salient to you. Salience is the feeling of realness that increases only as something is being noticed. Wakefulness in a yogic context is the salient feeling of existing inside and separate from the body-mind connection. This inner self, a new stand-alone identity, is analogous to self-realization.
"Catch the mind," said Bodhidharma.
"To free yourself from it," adds this author.
The next question is, how does wakefulness improve the quality of our lives? In other words, how does feeling separate from our minds and making this disassociated inner identity salient improve our lives? Does identifying too intensely with thought and sensation hinder the quality of life?
An old story about a particular Buddha (there were many) named Prince Five Weapons gives us a clue. Before he became a Buddha, the prince in his youth trained for war. He mastered the bow, the sword, the staff, the club, and the art of physical combat. When he finished his training and earned the name Prince 5 Weapons he made his way back to his father's kingdom. In between was a forest. In the forest was an Ogre named Sticky Hair that would kill any traveler that crossed his path. The prince, unphased, traversed the forest and ran into Sticky Hair. An expected fight ensued. All of the prince's weapons got stuck in the ogre's enchanted hair one by one. After punching and kicking the ogre, the prince could only use his head. He banged his head against the monster fearlessly and it got stuck. The ogre was taken aback by the fearlessness of the prince and asked about the source of such bravery. The prince proclaimed, "I have a lightning bolt in my belly. Eat me and it will be released and kill you!" The ogre now knew why the prince was fearless and for fear of his own death let him go.
Lightning defeats the monster, not the Prince.
Wisdom resolves the problem, not the bearer of wisdom.
When it comes to the unstoppable, inevitable, mysterious, and imminent challenges of life, which Sticky Hair represents, normal weapons or tools will not suffice. Fire, an arrowhead, a knife, clothing, shelter, weapons, money, and technology; all protect us from certain material, external threats but none spare us from the inevitabilities of the existential, universal, and conceptual threats of our interpretations; general suffering, stress, pain, anxiety, depression, loss, aging, disease, and death. These threats often trigger seemingly unavoidable and normal weakness, doubt, and fear, sabotaging not only the ability to rise to the occasion and overcome the ogres in the forest but, also, these normal states of distress shape the BMC to perceive the forest as wicked, dangerous, and cursed instead of beautiful, generous, and welcoming. Sticky Hair was shocked to see Prince Five Weapons latched onto his torso, trapped by the enchanted hair, and brilliantly unafraid. His fearlessness did not come from the conventional arsenal. There's only one way to deal with existential, self-generated suffering, the inner lightning bolt, which is always translated as symbolizing wisdom. What is this wisdom? The applicable wisdom that’s wrapped in this myth is that Sticky Hair is not real. The bolt of wisdom in the Prince’s belly, if released, would shatter the mirage that the ogre is absolutely real and reveal the ogre’s true nature as a figment of the prince’s body-mind connection and, in that, kill it.
“Is it the wind that moves? Is it the flag? Is it Sticky Hair the Ogre?”
“Neither, it is the mind.”
In summary, the essential reframe is this; the primary point of having a body and a mind, to traditional yogis, is to use both in unison as a tool to create the experience of wakefulness because, during moments of extreme wakefulness, when the inner stand-alone identity is salient, the entire body-mind connection is seen to be lesser than both the world it interprets and the self that beholds it. Since beholding the world beyond the BMC is impossible, the only option for the yogi is the self. Beholding that self is, in the words of Ikkyu, the Zen Monk, "the delicacies of delicacies." This internal, psycho-somatic process of identifying and then disassociating from the BMC with a deliberate new identity, which is still obviously part of the BMC, has been proven through millennia of social experimentation and adoption to be highly adaptive for mental health, well-being, and existential strength.
A final quote from Ramana Maharishi to inform you on your journey of yoga, the BMC, and wakefulness; "When the self disappears, the world appears. When the world disappears, the self appears." And at this point, according to this article, we know which direction the yogi goes. They stick their hands into the glowing embers of the self to understand and harness yet another tool to improve the experience of their personal primate reality.