# The Dissolution of the World Answer Key, Class Eight: The Dissolution of the World **1) Master Svatmarama says that, in the state of dissolution, "there is nothing more to do, there is nothing more to think."  Clarify, and compare to the goal of yoga presented in the Yoga Sutra.** It has been a common misperception throughout the centuries that what texts like ours is here describing constitutes some kind of spaced-out, mindless state.  It's doesn’t take more than a moment or two though to realize that this cannot be the description of our ultimate goal, since our Teachers and our heart tell us that within the ultimate goal we will be able to serve, directly, countless living creatures on countless planets.  The real point here is that we reach in the final evolution of the dissolution a state of _kaivalya:  _the spontaneous action of a holy being to save all worlds. This statement can be compared to the definition of the goal of yoga presented in the opening lines of the Yoga Sutra, where it says "We become whole (we reach the goal of yoga) by stopping how the mind turns."  Again this is not simply an attempt to stop the mind from moving or thinking at all, but rather the holy deed of stopping how the mind tends to turn things around the wrong way, convincing us that things are coming from the outside of us when in truth they are flowing from us, from our old karma. **2) Give the Sanskrit word for "dissolution," its root, and some related English words.  Explain what this dissolution refers to, in terms of the central channel.** The Sanskrit word for dissolution here is laya ly, which comes from a root √li lI, meaning to melt into or to adhere to.  Ultimately, the English clay, glue, and gluten come from this root, as does libation (something flowing). In terms of the central channel, as we have seen previously, the experience of the world around us dissolving back into the indestructible drop at our heart is an advanced spiritual stage which ends in the direct perception of emptiness. This experience is similar to one which occurs automatically at death for everyone, even those who have no spiritual training.  As yoginis and yogis we seek to trigger this experience as the inner winds melt within the central channel, the third step in the process of the winds entering, staying, and dissolving into the central channel. **3) The Master describes the dissolution as "cutting off all our desires," and as being "beyond words."  Comment.** The ultimate dissolution, enlightenment itself, is a freedom from all ignorant desires, where we think that things could ever come to us without our providing them to others first.  It is also a freedom from anything but spontaneous desires of an enlightened heart: the unthinking desire to serve and help every living being in the universe.  These last desires though we never lose, and never should lose. The ultimate evolution of the dissolution, enlightenment, and the direct perception of ultimate reality which makes it possible are often described as being "beyond words," or "beyond description."  This means though only that a person who has been through one of these experiences cannot describe it perfectly to another person who has not, in a way that this person will either go into the experience at that point themselves, or from the description alone get a perfect impression of the experience. Obviously though holy beings throughout history have devoted all their efforts and hopes to conveying to others just how they themselves can reach these experiences as quickly and fully as possible.  They are not in this sense indescribable. **4) Explain what it means when we say that "the dissolution and our focus are in the same place; the elements and powers are interlocked with it as well."** The dissolution process takes place at the heart chakra, as all the world which we are projecting comes dissolving back into the place from where the projection takes place: the indestructible drop.  Naturally our focus is also here at the heart chakra, since we need to be concentrating the inner winds here, and we do so partly by moving them there as they ride in tandem with our thoughts. The expression "elements and powers" is a reference to the physical parts of us that here correspond to the mental part represented by our focus.  The point again is that the inner wind or prana, which is a physical thing, will follow wherever we focus our thoughts.  Different forms of prana are interconnected with the different physical senses—feeding for example the physical eyes, so that they can perform their function of seeing—and with the elements of the body: certain winds carrying out the functions of the various elements, heating the body through the fire element, for example. **5) The Master says that we can reach a dissolution which is "free of either sign."  What are the signs being referred to here; and why are there two?** A "sign" here means some suggestion or characteristic which we perceive in an object which leads us to believe that this object is not coming from us.  Think of it as a sign on a highway entrance which has been turned around the wrong way, and is directing us to enter the exit ramp at a fatal speed. These wrong signs are divided into two types: those that apply to ourselves and those that apply to the world around us.  It is easier, intellectually, to maintain some awareness that a pen is not coming from where it appears to be, than to maintain the same awareness about ourselves or our thoughts: they very much seem to be our own, or me, in an automatic and undeniable way, rather than shifting constantly in their content due to the shifts in my own karmic seeds. **6) Master Svatmarama describes dissolution as "losing awareness of any object at all, because the mental seeds for them can never arise again."  Explain.** This is a common reference to the idea of mikme, or niralambha in Sanskrit: the point where we "no longer see any object at all."  Here "not seeing anything" has two different meanings.  It does not mean that we reach some place where we are unaware of anything at all.  We are subjects, our minds are subject states, and a subject cannot exist without an object—the very word in India and Tibet for "subject" is "that which holds an object." The first sense of "not seeing anything" is that, when we first reach the direct perception of emptiness, we are focused on ultimate reality, and cannot at the same moment be aware of a single object within normal reality.  That is, we cannot be aware of a sound, or other thoughts, or even of ourselves in those minutes when we are in direct communion with ultimate reality. The second sense of "not seeing anything" is that in the advanced stages of the perception of emptiness we are no longer perceiving any object in the way that we used to: that is, we can no longer "see" around us any single object which is not a projection being spewed forth from the karmic seeds of how we have treated others in the past. The specific karmic seeds mentioned in this verse are those which give rise to our tendency to misperceive ourselves and our world in this way.  At the advanced stages of the dissolution, we are working not just to stop the way we see things wrongly, but crucially we are seeking to stop the karmic seeds which cause this tendency in the first place. **7) Master Svatmarama compares the holiest and most revered writings of ancient India to "common whores," and then says that the seal called the "Bringer of Peace," the _shambhavi mudra, _is like "a virgin maiden of finest family, sheltered in the house."  Comment!** It's extremely important that statements like this one are made by the ancient Masters of wisdom only out of the deepest respect and affection for the great books from which their own Teachers trained them.  The Master certainly means no disrespect for these writings, nor does he in any way believe that they are in any way less than indispensable for our spiritual progress. He is though making several points about these books.  First of all, books are commonly available: anyone can go to a yoga studio and purchase a copy of the very book we are studying, the Light on the Yoga of the Sun and Moon.  The book in itself though cannot convey spiritual experiences to us if we lack a spiritual Master to guide us through it. The actual practices of hatha yoga—and the experiences of the inner channels that we can have if we perform these practices—are kept secret from the world at large: as if they were hidden within a closet at our local yoga studio, and can only be revealed to those who come to the studio on a regular, happy basis to do a disciplined practice.  People like this get amazing experiences within their inner body, much like the untouched bride described in the verse. **8) In describing _shambhavi mudra, _the Master says that we "neither open nor close our eyes," and that "what we see outside is the sign within."  Explain, including a description of the mudra.** What the Master is saying is that we go into our initial experience of dissolution through the performance of the by closing our physical eyes, and focusing both our mind and our eyeballs upwards to the point an inch or two within the skull from a point just above the place between our eyebrows.  This then opens our inner eyes, the third eye of wisdom, associated with the chakra at this place. What this wisdom perceives, what it sees, is that those things which we always thought were there outside of us, whole and complete, are actually only suggestions of things synthesized into a discrete object by our own minds, under the compulsion of our past karma.  We are actually only watching a "sign" or image created within our mind from suggestive parts outside (which are themselves images too, on a different level). **9) Why do you think that the _shambhavi mudra _was given this name?** Shambhavi means Bringer of Peace, and for one thing it's another version of the name Shambhu, the One Who Makes Peace, a title given to Shiva himself.  Then again, it's important to realize that Shiva's role is to destroy the world, or in the case of a yogini or yogi, to trigger the dissolution of the world and the divine form in which we arise from this dissolution. The "peace" that we attain from performing this mudra is, at its first stage, the direct perception of emptiness, or a moment's peace from our continual misperception of the world.  What's happening further along is a point where our perception of this emptiness helps us destroy every one of our negative thoughts, forever: the peace of nirvana. Still further along we attain the peace of an enlightened being: the ability to act, in perfect peace and without any conscious effort at all, on behalf of every suffering creature in the universe. **10) What is our "secret weapon" for attaining success in the _shambhavi mudra?  _Give the Sanskrit too, and explain its roots and related English words.** Our "secret weapon" in attaining success in this mudra is of course the knowledge that we can only do so prasadadguros àsadaÌ‚raes! ; that is, through the kindness of our Teacher. The first word in the Sanskrit here is prasadad, which means through the prasada.  Some of us may already be familiar with this word as prasad, which can refer to the leftovers of offerings at a religious ceremony in India which are distributed to the people as a blessing.  The word can also though mean faith, admiration, or kindness. The Sanskrit Guru (here seen as the possessive guros: kindness of the Guru) comes from an Indo-European root √gwerh, which means to be heavy.  The idea is that our Guru is a heavy karmic object in our life, a real "heavy."  Related English words are gravity, grave (in the sense of serious), and grief (heavy emotion). **11) The Master says that doing the practice of the Bringer of Peace opens us for us the opportunity of meeting the Woman of the Sky, or Khechari.  Explain, using another part of this same verse.** The practice of the Bringer of Peace leads to the direct perception of emptiness in the secret tradition: an experience which is linked with a high form of bliss and is known as the "clear light." One feature of this experience is that we rise up out of the direct experience of emptiness into the body of light of an Angel: a body which is referred to as the "illusory body."  This is the meaning of the verse here when it says "the mind goes into the bliss of the dissolution; and then the mind in emptiness takes on the form of the Lady of Ecstasy."  This divine female form is sometimes known as the "Woman of the Sky": we go through the two steps first of meeting Her, and then becoming Her. **12) Master Svatmarama says that, as we succeed in the Bringer of Peace, "the rays of the sun and moon are led within, merge, and then remain unmoving."  And then this takes us to "suchness, the ultimate foundation of things."  Explain.** The "rays of the sun and moon" here refer to the winds traveling within the channels of the sun and moon.  With the success of this mudra, these winds are led into the central channel, while the two channels in which they've been riding atrophy and die, for winds are no longer moving in them. With this we pass into the direct perception of suchness, or emptiness.  It is here called the "ultimate foundation of things" in the sense that it acts like a blank movie screen, the place upon which we project our reality.  Without the fact that nothing doesn't come from how we have treated others in the past, nothing else can ever happen. **13) What does the Master mean when he says that we should "offer to the lingam within all time, time without day, time without night"?** We most often think of the "lingam" as a phallic symbol which in India is revered as a sculptural representation of the divine, of Shiva.  Here though it refers to the erect spine, the central channel of the body, endowed with an intense inner energy that is related to the very energy of the male and female principles. We want to "make offering" to this particular form of the divine by destroying the distinction between day and night, meaning the channels of the sun and moon.  We want to offer our central channel all the prana which has been wandering off within our side channels all these years, creating all of our suffering.  This will incidentally stop for us the distinction between day and night in the sense of the passage of time—our ticket to immortality, to a being who for all time can reach and serve others. **14) What are at least 5 changes that we can make in our environment which would help us to avoid lung disorders of the inner winds?** Some changes would be— (1) Walk to work, looking at the sky, either the daytime or nighttime sky. (2) Restrict our usage of computers in general, and especially the internet.  Be very strict about taking a break after every 1.5 hours on the computer. (3) Either don't have a phone and email, or set very clear guidelines for ourselves about how much and when we use them. (4) Keep our immediate environment more orderly and neat.  This has a direct effect on the channels, like controlling our breath to control our prana.  We control the outer array of the things in our immediate world to control the array of the winds and channels within. (5) Expose ourselves to less sources of stimulation: restrict or prevent exposure to radio, television, newspapers, news. (6) Restrict our social environment: learn to go deeper with a small number of spiritually-minded friends, rather than flitting around with a great many shallow friends. (7) Try to expose ourselves to quiet environments, such as forest or ocean, on a regular basis.  Avoid noisy environments, both the area where we live and whom we live with. (8) Watch the amount of reading material we expose ourselves to; read only those things which are of actual ultimate benefit. (9) Have a modest, regular job and income.  Keep expenses and desires few, be happy with what we have. (10) Try to avoid talking too much, learn to keep silence, with friends. The Yoga Studies Institute Course VI: Hatha Yoga Pradipika II Pranayama: Breath and the End of Breath