Sinister superimposition (and snakes)

the yoga of wisdom, the magic of science

Nestled on the north side of Paradise Island in the Bahamas is a quaint cluster of almost buildings, a bustle of orange and yellow clad devotees, and a surprising Hebrew-tinted version of English, French, and Sanskrit language wafting on the breeze. I arrived in this other world just days after hurricane season ended with my own silent inner tempests swirling. For sixty days I endured a wholly bizarre cultural mashup on a tropical paradise surrounded by equal parts poverty and gluttony. Many of the buildings and roadways on the main island crumbled as the colonizers had vacated 30 years prior, leaving European architecture that was built without much care for tropical storms or salty sea breezes. To the east of the Ashram is something far worse - lavish late stage capitalism, with a revolving door of visitors from the Jersey Shore there to blow a year’s worth of savings on a combination of vices over the course of week-long stints.

The Ashram itself had a dozen year-round resident staff, another dozen full-time karma yogis, and an eclectic blend of vacationers from Europe and Canada, along with a few Americans - both north and south. A unique division of the Sivananda family of ashrams, it shared supervision with the ashram in Israel, and so the vast majority of the staff were Israeli, often conversing in Hebrew over walkie talkies, and coloring their teachings with a vaguely Germanic accent and a penchant for prescriptive discipline.

If you’ve been a latte reader for awhile, you’ve no doubt encountered my adorable complaining about the austerity of the ashram - two daily meals, insufficient hours of sleep, and an asana practice unlike anything I’d ever experienced. While the two month stay was terribly painful for both the body and the ego, it did a fantastic job of steeping me in the philosophy of yoga - the Vedanta - the yoga of wisdom, which I attempted to swat away like spiderwebs, but which have stayed with me thusly.

First, I’ll say, I found it terribly boring. I won’t try to convince you that I am better than I am - I hated learning about Vedanta because I felt like it was twisting and turning labyrinths of logic that made no sense to my calorie starved, sleep deprived mind. We were talking about snakes and ropes, men and poles, and the fact that nothing is real. How desperately I want to brag about how I relished it, when indeed I did not.

But I do remember it.

A the beginning of the yoga of wisdom, you must first learn that nothing is real. As in. Everything you think you know about everything is simply meaning you have superimposed on the actual nature of things (which is perfect and - irritatingly - unknowable). Because that sound quite a lot like horse poop nonsense, Vedanta comes with a lot of little ways to think about and remember concepts. Adhyaroopa. Superimposition is often taught with the adorable parable of the snake and the rope. Imagine you walk into your dark shed and live in India (or Golden!) and you see a snake!! So you jump, and turn on a light, only to see that the thing you once saw as a snake is actually just a rope.