118 yogasūtra 3.0 119 yogasūtra 3.0 ²Plato, Seventh Letter, 4th century BC. As a consequence, we acknowledge that any causal evolution - even if apparently generated by what we call a random event - that assumes the appearance of time that passes is only a limited manner of observing things; indeed, it is only the silhouette through which the original Unity, itself lacking a division, appears to us. Hence all the opposites of the world, which apparently is so stubbornly fragmented, in reality look for each other, influence each other and are, imperceptibly but uninterruptedly, embracing each other. Which is the reason why past and future - in the same way as, needless to say, good and evil, darkness and light, life and death, health and disease - which we distinguish as so diametrically opposed, in some obscure way must be united in a dimension which lacks boundaries of time, and thereupon lose any type of separation to the benefit of a fulfilled, as much as paradoxical, coincidence. In case from here we bring the topic beyond the atmosphere, we notice that no subject can exist that experiences an object, or a witness that certifies a witnessed, or even a Self that is pitted against a non-Self, since everything that exists is One Thing. But nothing new under the sun here, whether in the East or the West: just like Plotinus stated that what he saw was the same as what is seen, in Upanishad, when the master poses the final question «Who are you?», the pupil, if impeccable, must answer: «I am You». In other words, we confide too much in the certainty of being well-defined subjects, with a set name, a last name and date of birth, while the highly idolised individuality is, in reality, only a temporary state of that continuous Unity - which nonetheless manifests itself to us as divided. And, to finally get to the point, the samādhi, intended in its original etymological meaning, can never be implemented with the same logic in the way the pupil follows the master during a yoga session: that is, something that can be achieved through time. In fact, if we accept what we have said so far - despite summarising it and providing a rather nonchalant overview - it must necessarily belong to the inexpressible domain in which all dualities disappear [exactly where, to be fair, a pupil and a master could not even exist...]. So does this maybe mean that any path towards awareness - including the first seven steps of the Ashtanga, or any other type of yoga - is essentially useless? Certainly not, since the 1 turned into the 2, given we ate from the tree; by now, willing or not, we are part of the Time: despite its illusory nature, it is always half of Being, one of its attributes. In other words, it is what we perceive of eternity - which, mark well, should not be considered as an inane length without any end in sight, but rather as the lack of temporal boundaries, just like, as we saw before, the lack of a first which is followed by an after, the correspondence of the first with the after - and, as such, should be anyways pursued. And if Time, the 2, is in the form under which we experience the 1, that means that, just like the 1 - eternity - must be present in every instance of time, in the same way all the world’s antimonies must be present too, being these the direct manifestation of 1. That is the reason why, even though considering only one part of the súmbolon - considering only one side of the world - the ancient populations did not focus themselves exclusively on this, but instead, for its transmission, revoked the force [imperceptible yet tangible] that combined it with the other and which we can define as the 3. Or otherwise, without yet understanding almost anything about this word, Love. An old saying goes that no person is entirely good or entirely bad, although we forget it all the time and are convinced that it is possible to remove all those aspects which we dislike from the world - whether this be the rain on holidays or those people that think differently from us - that, on the contrary, sustain it as much as those aspect that we enjoy. The world reflects [symbol] the 1: this means that nothing can be denied, that any aspect of it is an integral part and that even those events that we would like to avoid are ours just as much as those that we would like to ensure they last. And how will it ever be possible to eliminate from the polar world a part of it, whatever it may be, if polarity itself is a direct emanation of Unity? Every relationship changes, nothing is ever the same, every pole incessantly transforms itself into its opposite, every pole is not against its opposite but rather interacting with it, just like breathing [the fundamental action of our existence and, I would imagine, of any Yoga practice] teaches us: if every inspiration were not followed by an exhalation, we would not be here. Thus, those who believe that they are pursuing good directly at the expense of evil, happiness at the expense of pain, health at the expense of disease, are ultimately being dishonest. They trace the cause [guilt] of what happens to them to the outside, which, as we know by now, does not even exist. Therefore, all the conflicts which we experience are not nuisances to remove but precious carriers of information that indicate which principle of the world - that is, of ourselves - we have not yet reconciled and what we are missing to be complete again. To this purpose, either the āsana or the organic vegetables are barely useful if they are not sustained by a change in consciousness; it is this last notion which needs to be changed, not physical activity or the diet. Alas, this is something that almost no one gladly does, since it requires a lot more effort. Yet, we cannot look away: if the world is the 1, and yet we see it as the 2, then it is us who must change the way we look at it, since the world itself has - and cannot have - nothing wrong with it. Once this is accepted, the process of conscious re-unification of everything that we unconsciously thought should not exist, can begin. Seeing that the dark and icy earth of winter holds the promise of spring, that the shark hidden under the surface provides a thrill to the majestic placidity of the sea, that the suffering of detachment conceals behind it the joy of reunification. And, obviously, vice versa. This is, in the end, the only possible knowledge, the symbol or samādhi: the non-contradictory union of a concept, its opposite and all the infinite shades that lie in the middle. An apple that, irony of fate - the irony, that is, of having to redeem something that is fully already redeemed - we can only pick where everything is most concealed, in that dual world which, while keeping us away from it, continuously displays it, until, maybe and at some point, if we will have been brave, «suddenly, like a light that is lit by the onset of a spark, it comes from the soul and is nourished by it ²».
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