Critical Density
09/2009
“Always present to the reality that he perceives as the play of his own nature, the tantrika is liberated at the very heart of life” ~Yoga Spandakarika (stanza 30 as translated by Daniel Oldier)
I just started reading "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson. I was so inspired by the very first chapter, “how to build a universe.” The fact that everything is just so, that if anything in the making of this mystical thing we call the universe had unfolded any differently we wouldn’t be here, that this seemingly random string of events causing just the right circumstances for life to happen, is beautiful and beyond amazing.
Or, as Bill Bryson says, everything is just right so far. Gravity may, sometime down the road, turn out to be a little too strong, causing the universe to collapse in on itself. Perhaps the opposite will come true, (since we’ve established that the universe is continually expanding) gravity may turn out to be too weak and everything rushes so far apart that ‘there is no chance of material interaction’. The other option is that gravity will maintain it’s ‘just right’ status, or “critical density” as cosmologists call it, allowing things to carry on as they have been for some undetermined length of time.
Critical density is what we strive for in our yoga practice. To balance the inward moving energy, or samana vayu, with the energy that radiates from the center of one’s self to the periphery, or vyana vayu, brings harmony, equilibrium and an overall sense of well being. The Spandakarikas, from which I quoted above, honors the play of inward & outward moving energy as the pulsation, the play of concealment & revelation that is the heart, the very essence of existence. Spanda is synonymous with a kind of quivering, creativity, a sacred tremor. It is from this vibration, this urging, that we authentically express ourselves and live according to our innermost desire, maintaining our own personal critical density.
