My child, where is that illusion, that disillusion, that light and that shade? They do not exist. Everything is struth only, faultless like the dome of the sky.
~ Avadhuta Gita, I.43
The experience of the human world is suffering. All of the Yoga traditions agree on this much, however much their metaphysics differ. This gets misunderstood quite a lot, with both Western critics and adherents alike believing that Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain forms of Yoga are anti-cosmic and misanthropic.
When we read in the Four Noble Truths or in the Yoga Sutras that the nature of things is suffering, we may immediately recoil, thinking that this is a flat denial of any sort of pleasant experience in life. Clearly there must be an error, because we each have had some good come to us! A common defense of this truth is just that life seems to go in cycles, or that experiences come in dyads, so that for every good experience we have, for any pleasure we receive, some pain must inevitably follow. But this is shallow reasoning on the face of it and may be safely dismissed. Commentaries on Patanjali, I think, get closer to the point when they observe that the yogi is sensitive like a naked eyeball. Many of us are driven to Yoga by an inescapable subjective truth that, at least for us, even pleasurable experiences have pain as their kernel; we are, as a type, built such that we experience pain in every sensation.
Partly, this is because, to borrow from Wordsworth, “the world is too much with us”; we are overwhelmed quite unpleasantly, and at first helplessly! This is especially so of the human world — “world” being from the Old English “weoruld” or “age of man”, so the world is, by definition, the human world. The Cosmos is not the world, and vice versa. The Cosmos is just what is, all that is presently manifest and the seeds of what will manifest, while the world is an artifice of our interpretations of our experiences. Hence we can agree with those who say that the world is māyā, translatable as “illusion” and rooted in ma, to measure, which is the uniquely human function of quantifying, comparing, and defining. Another part is that we become so overwhelmed by the knowledge of the suffering of others, human and non-human, that even our pleasures are tainted by the understanding that others are in great pain and, often, that our pleasures come at the expense of those others. Even when unavoidable, this fact can cause a sort of reflective agony!
There is a famous pauranic story that, prior to the creation of the present world, the devas and asuras came together to churn the ocean of milk to separate from it the nectar of immortality. The devas used the greed of the asuras against them by telling them that they could have any other treasures which arose from the process hoping to distract the asuras, thus allowing the devas to capture the nectar so that the devas could become immortal but the asuras would not. Many hijinks ensued, but they aren’t relevant to the present point. As part of this churning process, before the nectar was produced, first came halāhala. This “world poison”, strong enough to destroy the whole universe, was quickly scooped up so that it could not spread further and was swallowed by Lord Siva so that it could not escape. Panicking (unnecessarily, as Siva is beyond birth and death), Sakti grabbed Siva by the throat so that the poison could not descend further and kill him. Thus suspended in his neck, Siva’s throat became dark blue.
Halāhala can be translated as “great disfigurement” or “great obstruction”. It is also known by the name kālakūta, which can translate as “mass of time”. Another way to understand this is that before the nectar of immortality can be gained, there must first be the experience of time which, in a sense, disfigures experience by dividing it, making it measurable and definable. The ocean of milk is experience itself, or at least the mental substance in which experience occurs. This must be put in motion through the exercise of both good and evil tendencies (the devas and asuras) until the nectar of immortality may be churned out of it. But before immortality is gained, the suffering of time must be gulped to the last drop.
We must participate fully in this myth ourselves to transmute suffering into enlightenment — and we must not allow ourselves to be distracted by the many passing treasures which will arise along the way! Those treasures, many pleasant experiences though they may be, can be appreciated as they come, to be sure, but we can’t allow ourselves to cease the churning or we will have to begin again after much wasted time. Our evil tendencies (the asuras) will chase after the shiny and beautiful peripheral concerns, so we must side with our good tendencies (the devas) and their diligence, required to avoid distraction, and forbearance to accept the halāhala — the constant ticking of the clock, the inevitability of change, of decay, and of death.
But the world poison is not just our own pain, it is also that of others, of the whole world, as it happens. We each do not merely drink our individual pain; as yogis, we must drink up all suffering, we must be able to process the very essence of it found in our every worldly experience.
Mahayana Buddhists say that enlightenment consists of an equal experience of samadhi and of insight. Deep concentration giving way to absorption (samadhi) is necessary because it breaks down our kleshas, the seeds of our own suffering. But without insight, samadhi is dry, the yogi being like a dead log. Spontaneous, acausal insight (prajna) is also essential because it breaks down the seeds of our karmas and our conditioning, but prajna without samadhi tends to devolve into mere sentimentality, such a yogi becoming emotional and unhinged. Both tend toward egotism. The latter identifies with experience itself, one’s own and that of others, thus reifying artificial selves. The former identifies with the intellect and reifies ego-selves through a sense of distinction and superiority.
Different individuals, different civilizations, and different ages tend toward one or another of these extremes. When devotional or bhakta cults predominate, for example, an excess of emotionalism is the inevitable concomitant. When reason and empiricism are at the fore, concentration and intellectualism become excessive and spiritual aridity results. For modern Western occultists, we may take popular witchcraft and Traditionalism as typical. Witchcraft, as a movement, is focused almost entirely on feeling and vague “intuition” with aesthetics and antinomianism dominating; while the practice thereof encourages the development of prajna, it does so one-sidedly. Traditionalism, on the other hand, is based so much on intellectualism, obsessively analyzing religious symbolism and “natural morality” according to particular rules thought to be ancient, unbending, and objective — though, in fact, quite modern, innovative, and rooted in a Moebius strip of value judgments. Traditionalists may therefore develop concentration to a high degree, they are left dry, alienated, and often cruel because of it. Both of these are just different ways of being slain by the world poison dressed up to look exalted.
Each tendency cures the other. And, truly, prajna without samadhi isn’t prajna. At best, it may be empathy or artistry. Similarly, samadhi without prajna is, most optimistically, studious intelligence. Together, however, mere concentration gives way to absorption (samadhi) and base feeling blossoms into gnosis (prajna), wisdom-insight.
It is only by cultivating both of these capacities that we can process the halāhala. By them, Sakti arises and keeps the poison from destroying us — time and suffering do not overwhelm us. Holding it in our throat has great significance. The throat center is not the place of normal speech; it is the place from which we speak with truth. Not only is this normal honesty, it is also expressing Reality by way of our limited language; not just expressing Reality, but embodying it with sound and so changing the manifest world by its upwelling. When we can contain the world poison in our throats, we are able to bring the transformative power of Sakti to bear upon the construct of the human world, and thus to transform suffering from the inside. Moreover, the indigo color of Siva’s halāhala-containing throat corresponds to the fact that the element of space or sky (ākāsha), the most subtle of the great elements, is seated in the throat center. We may only contain the poison safely by realizing the expansiveness of space. This is also how we make ourselves fit for the nectar of immortality; and this nectar arises from the ocean of experience only once we bring together absorption and gnosis realized through the effort of Yoga.