The first stage of the unfolding internalisation of yoga is relative to the body: the seat (asana) and vehicle of our actions, of our life. Any key to life, or freedom, must be turned within it. However asana is clearly not simply shape making. These three sutras are describing a transformation in perception, or experience. They are not a description of a phsyical technique, but the goal to which technique must be directed. This goal is in effect a transformed state of awareness. This state is nevertheless totally dependent on the bodmind being relaxed and stable. As the first stage of the unfolding internalisation of yoga, any technique that brings about this transformation can be called yoga practice.

Every human body is full of residual, habituated tension. For yoga to take place the body must be as relaxed and stable as possible. Stability depends upon steady effort to resist collapse, and invites stillness: whereas relaxation depends upon effortlessness easing discomfort and invites pleasure. Effort and effortlessness, must harmonise as the basis of any actions being taken in the name of yoga. Precise, careful and judicious action is required to establish the bodimind in an effortlessness stillness without any tension. This not only means releasing residual, habituated tension, but not generating tension also.

However this state (asana) is more subtle than sitting relaxed on a cushion, or lying effortlessly on a mat. It also requires that the infinite be manifest. The infinite is not something we normally associate with the body and its clearly defined spatial co-ordinates. However, yoga is concerned with inner space (consciousness and perception), not outer space. The co-ordinates of inner space are the relationship between front and back, left and right, top and bottom, centre and periphery, inside and outside. It is only through and by these pairs of spatial co-ordinates that our body is able to navigate and act. They are the dualistic co-ordinates of the body as a finite action capsule. They give us our sense of phsyical presence, of finite limitation.

Deep, internalised awareness of the body's internal dynamic reveals the pradoxical nature of the body, matter and space. As our attention penetrates the actions and components of the body more and more deeply the body seems to expand. We discover more and more subtle actions and aspects of the body in an ever increasing spaciousness. Of course, this is ony an appearance, a function of perceptual perspective. As we get closer and closer to something it appears bigger and bigger. But familiarity with this internal perspective makes it clear that our external perception of the body is also a function of perspective. It is not a matter of right and wrong. It is simply a matter of point of view.

This is at the very heart of the yoga process. The ease with which this shift in preceptual perspective can take place relative to the body is why asana is the first stage, the doorway into yoga. It then serves to facilitate deeper more subtle shifts in perspective until the true nature of perception and consciousness are revealed.

As attention internalises on the actions taking place in the body, the sense of the body expands and its defining dualistic co-ordinates become meaningless. The body is then no longer experienced as a finite, physical capsule co-ordinated precisely in the three dimensions of physical space. Instead it becomes a context for and of awareness: within which neither awareness, nor its context (the body) have any limiting features. Instead of the body being an object of perception it is the configuration, the rhythm, the vessel of awareness.

This first perceptual shift or transformation state of yoga, asana , reveals the inner nature of the body as simply a fluctuating pattern, a configuration, of awareness. This transformation is the key to yoga and should not be underestimated. It actually contains within it all the other five transformation states: pranayama, pratyahara , dharana , dhyana , samadhi . Their unfolding is simply a question of the refined clarification of the awareness state of asana. It is not a progressive, linear unfolding, but an infolding into that which is inherently present (happening) but was being overlooked.

Fundamentally asana is a state of awarenessbeing in which duality is being eclipsed within the blurring significance of the dualistic poles of the various planes of the body. Its significance goes far beyond that of its application as a technique as defined in hathayoga or other texts. It is the opening of the spiritual doorway, within which awareness begins to transform out of the split mind of dualism (the perceptual split). Once this doorway is opened, as long as it does not close again, the further infolding of yoga through the last 5 limbs into samadhi is inevitable, on the basis of the relaxation that comes from internal awareness.

In the pragmatic scheme of yoga, asana has come to mean posture or bearing, by virtue of which the body is subject to the liberating challenge of countless different postures until all restrictive tension is dissolved and the nervous system can quieten and harmonise deeply enough for its dualistic functionality to become balanced. This balance then becomes manifest in the rhythm of the breath.

The practice of yoga postures is an attempt to establish comfortable stability. As far as the body is concerned this stability is undermined by, and challenges, physical tension. Tension and tightness in the body are inevitable, immediate and inescapable foci of attention during yogapractice. The body is dramatically made conscious as areas of inertia and action. The areas of inertia are expressions of solidity. This solidity transforms the body into an ongoing object of perception.

The body is usually experienced as a means of action rather than as a solid object. It is experienced in relation to its functioning rather than in and of itself. As the means of our functioning it is experienced simply as an element in our functioning: as a process rather than an object. Its objectness is thereby overlooked.

This immediately changes within yogapostures. The requirements of comfortable stability are such that attention must eventually be extended into the whole of the functioning of the body relative to the posture. The solidity and objectness of the body are inferred through the experience of solidity in its active parts. Each different action reveals an aspect of the body’s solidity. The separateness of the parts of the body are experienced. This is known as the realisation of functional separateness.

As a yogaposture stabilises, and the inevitable internalisation of attention deepens, the relationship between these functional parts changes. It becomes clear, in action rather than analysis, that an action taking place in one part can be felt in another. What is done in the hands is felt in the lungs. What is happening in the pelvic floor is experienced in the cranium. Grounding the feet releases tension in the face. This is known as the realisation of operational connectedness.

The connectedness of the different parts one to another soon deepens into a more subtle elucidation. The connections between one part of the body and another begin to extend in awareness. This extension reveals direct operational connection between each individual part and every other part. This is known as the realisation of dynamic interconnectedness.

As the body relaxes and a deeper stability becomes possible the relationship between the parts of the body undergoes a further change. Within the awareness of interconnectedness the sense of the separateness of individual parts of the body, their actions and impacts, dissolves. It is no longer possible to make a distinction between the experience of one part of the body and the experience of other parts. They are felt and eventually understood to be simultaneously occurring aspects of the same process or activity. This is known as the realisation of fundamental nonseparateness.

These realisations occur through the penetration of action by attention. The internalisation of attention in the body reveals, in this way, the nature of objectness. Because attention is internalised through the agency of action the nature of action is also revealed. These realisations are therefore not only a clarification of the nature of objectness, but also of action.

Initially the many actions required of comfortable stability are activated individually. This activation occurs as a linear sequence or flow in time. As the actions themselves, and the requisite operative context of internalised attention, become more familiar this changes. More and more actions, and of course their impacts, occur together. Activation of individual actions, and their impacts, becomes more simultaneous. Rather than action and attention following a linear, temporal sequence, they flower in a spontaneous, nonlinear awareness of activity. Separate actions manifest as indivisible aspects of a single process of activity.

Each action, and its impacts, arises simultaneously with all other actions and their impacts. All actions and all impacts function together as a mandala. Actions and objects that are usually experienced separately and in linear sequence are experienced simultaneously as a single field or mandala. This mandala represents a transformation in perception. It is a perceptual rather than a functional or actual transformation. The actual relationship between the parts of the body is always the same. Its inherent nonseparateness, is always expressing through interconnectedness, via operative connectedness to functional separateness.

This transformation is a transformation within awareness. The separateness of objects and of actions has been transcended. It still exists within its own field of reference: the field of duality. But the context within which that field arises has been elucidated. That context is pure, unqualified awareness. In pure awareness there is no consciousness of specific objects related by particular actions. There is simply a continuum of objectless awareness within which activity happens spontaneously without reference to subjects, objects and actions.

In this way the nature of experience is elucidated. When objects and actions no longer impinge on awareness there is no observer, no experiencer. There is no experience. Experience, it turns out, is a dualistic construction imposed upon the actionless field of awareness. It is predicated upon the separation of subject and obect, self and other within the field of action. It is a function of a specific perceptual perspective. The limited nature of this perspective is elucidated by the emergence of awareness, into which the experiencer dissolves.

This occurs not as a result of effort, but in its absence. Actions and objects arise within the narrowing of attention upon them. This requires effort. An effort that is occurring so continuosly it is imperceptible. Nevertheless it is ocurring. When yoga practice is undertaken as an enquiry into that which is actually happening this effort dissolves into a deep, nourishing and inherent relaxation. Within this relaxation subject, object, action and experience lose their significance. This is known as the realisation of inherent emptiness (shunyata). This is the gift of yoga, within which the imposed sense of self dissolves into consciousnessenergy (citisakti).

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