This question has been coming up for me lately. And today I was reading lesson 94 and came across this again:
“What we are doing in all our practices is giving our nervous system
the opportunity to clear out the old accumulated obstructions that
block the ongoing experience of our inner truth, which is bliss,
bliss, bliss!”
The definition for the nervous system is:
The system of cells, tissues, and organs that regulates the body’s responses to internal and external stimuli. In vertebrates it consists of the brain, spinal cord, nerves, ganglia, and parts of the receptor and effector organs.
http://www.answers.com/nervous+system&r=67
I suspect that the yogic definition may wary from the mainstream definition. But I still want to ask, what are the obstructions that block our nervous system? Is there a scientific name for such obstructions? Are there yogic names? And also, what causes these obstructions?
Not sure if I’m making sense so all kinds of answers are welcome.
This is a perfect question, Chiron.
In my opinion, an obstruction is when a group of neurons are firing in an inefficient manner. There isn’t really a physical obstruction per say…like a build up of toxins.
Anyway, here is something…when you touch a hot stove, the electrical impulse is sent through sensory neurons to your CNS, and it goes back through your motor neurons to initiate a response from the muscles. If there were an obstruction there, it would mean that a group of neurons were doing nothing useful for this action. They would recieve the sensory information, and send it somewhere useless…like the elbow. And the elbow doesn’t know what to do with this…so that info is just stopped there. An obstruction is a useless firing of neurons.
You know the brain is made up of neurons? If someone is scattered mentally (if they seem like they can’t think straight), they will also be scattered neurologically for this very reason. The frontal lobe, as an example, communicates with the occipital lobe for very specific things (don’t ask me what things). But despite this specificity, there are also tons of misfirings. You know how they say on average we only use 10% of our brain? This is because the brain is made up of 90% misfiring, or else useless, neurons.
So when the frontal lobe is saying “Hey what’s up?” to the occipital lobe, but some neurons are taking that information and sending it to the hypothalamus, the hypothalamus says “get away from me we aren’t friends” and it creates neurons to stand in the way of the thalamus saying “hey what’s up?”…well then there are many useless pathways being created there.
Imagine what happens neurologically when you have believed something all your life and you find it to be absolutely untrue. A new pathway would have to be blazed through the thick brush of the old useless ones. This is why some people say “get em while they’re young!” Because belief is easy to establish in a fairly blank mind. If someone were actually to assimilate a new Earth shattering belief, proving their old beliefs to be absolutely false, they would need to pass through tons of other unconscious behaviors and emotions. Finding the truth can sometimes become a living hell.
Imagine when you are constantly second guessing yourself. There will be pathways going this way and that, making a dense forest of neurons. It’s fairly easy to see why simplicity and honesty are recommended in yoga.
In my opinion, when yoga is practiced properly, a person’s memory will increase. There won’t be useless pathways blocking the remembered things. A yogi should be able to quickly pick up a new concept or action, and also recall old ones.
If anything is unclear, or there are more questions feel free to ask.
Thanks for the reply Scott. Your post sent me off on a little read about neurons and neurological processes (all new stuff for me).
I ended up on Wiki reading about Chemical synapses:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synaptic_transmission
So the younger the nervous system, the easier it is for interconnected neural circuits to form because of the relative abundance of chemical synapses. I wonder if yoga practice halts the decline of chemical synapses, or increases their number ?
If an obstruction is a useless firing of neurons, what causes it? Is it something most of us are born with? Or is it the food we eat? Alcohol, drugs? Maybe specific negative behaviour? Or all of the above?
Lots of questions and lots of neuron misfirings here hahaha.
Thats a very good explanation scott
Hi Chiron,
The nervous system spoken of in yoga is the subtle nervous system through which the kundalini energy flows. The obstructions are the blocks that prevent the free flow of this divine energy. In the average human being this power is coiled up at the bottom of spine lying dormant. As the obstructions dissolve the energy flows up the spine and later all over the body through the subtle nervous system.
Obstructions are the ones that prevent us from realizing our true self. Do you feel possessive of your partner? Can you be the same person when you are alone and when you are in a group of people? When you play a game, does your performance remain the same with a stronger and a weaker opponent? Can you just display & use your anger but never feel it? Do we have control over our emotions? Can we live in the now without thinking about either future or past for a few minutes? Lets get to something very basic…can you do unto others what you want to be done to you?
The things that prevent us from doing all the above are the obstructions in our nervous system.
-Near
Yes, these obstructions are called ‘Samskaras’. They are mental patterns or concentrated thoughts that are embedded along the sushumna (the subtle central energy path that runs slong the spinal cord). They are embedded there over ions of time through all our lifetimes including this one.
In meditation, these samskaras get dissolved by spiritual energy, a process which is sometimes described as ‘purifying’ or ‘cleansing’. It’s why some meditations are full of agitated thoughts or intense feelings. All the old patterns or samskaras are getting shaken up and cleaned out.
Hope this helps:-)
Babaly
I think the sanskrit word is Grathi. It is often translated as knot. In the sanskrit texts there are three major knots going up the sushumna nadi, a vertical energy line going up the centre of the body just in front of the spine and rising several feet above the head. There are also many minor grathis. They do not exist in the physical body, but rather in the pranakosha, or subtle body. This is why there is no scientific word for them. Science is just beginning to discover other dimensions, but does not yet have any working knowledge of how these other dimensions apply to humans, or to human evolution. The human physical nervous system is closely related to the subtle body, so changes in the subtle body will often have a direct effect on the physical nervous system. But I do not think we should form too strong a correlation between the subtle nervous system and the physical nervous system. Changes in the subtle body also have a strong effect on our emotions (as you rightly pointed out Near). But I think we should also be carefull here again about identifying the two.
It is nice for someone with a western mind to think of yoga in terms of having effects on the physical and emotional bodies only. This is because we have grown up in a scientifically dominated paradigm, which has reduced the world to nothing more than a physical phenomena. Now it is looking like the scientists are going to start having to eat their words, and try and explain to everyone why they got it so wrong, for so long.
Christi
All,
On the other hand, I think the “subtle body” is created entirely by the physical realm. In my opinion, there is nothing BUT the physical realm! Saying something is subtle is simply saying it’s hard to measure in certain ways. Subtle doesn’t translate to - “not physical”!
I think science can definitely explain mystical experiences, if more scientific minded types explore these experiences. Science goes quite deep objectively. If there is a limit to how far science can go at any certain time, it’s only because of the limited range of insight that those scientists have.
If the physical processes behind the experiences can’t be accepted by a yogi, I personally think it shows there are some more grathis which need untying in that yogi…perhaps there is an attachment to over-mystifying things. But it is not my work to untie another’s knots…that is their own job.
I for one am not satisfied with mere sanskrit terminology, or theories of different dimensions of existence. All “dimensions” or levels are connected…which means there is ONE existence showing itself in different ways.
All sanskrit terms can mean something in basic English. Terms like “samskaras” or “grathis” are for beginners, in my opinion. They are simplifying the process too much. Same with saying “subtle body”. It’s like telling a child that a stork delivers babies. There’s nothing useful in that knowledge. On the other hand, if you tell that child that mom and dad have sex and a baby is formed inside of the mother, then there can be application of knowledge (although most of the time, parents wouldn’t want their kids experimenting)!
We all know that it’s not so necessary to be “looking under the hood” as long as we have good practices…so all in all, this understanding is not entirely necessary. You can have mystical experiences without knowing why. Yet, for the spiritual scientist, it IS entirely necessary. And someone asking these questions is definitely a spiritual scientist in my view.
So, if one is to look under the hood, they should know that there is one engine, and not multiple subtle ones which function in different ways…when they can only see with their eyes the physical engine, and can only feel the workings of that engine while driving and not looking at it. There is one engine functioning! They should know that the gas which makes the engine go isn’t special in any way. There isn’t “spiritual” gas. We have western terminology for the different types of gasoline - like E80, diesel…etc. But defining these things in the already determined ways sometimes isn’t helpful at all! “Eastern” or “Western”. Sometimes it’s better to experience for ourselves and then describe the things that happen in our own way…which may be more accurate than the already determined ways!
So to sum it up - I have beef with telling someone terminology which can be read out of a book instead of gained from personal experience. If you tell someone to look for their grathis, they will be perplexed…because there is nothing useful in a simple term. The only time it’s really useful is when you’re translating a word out of a yogic text for better understanding. And then it’s translated to your own language…there is no need to continue using the meaningless term. I don’t see why this kind of borrowing from other languages continues…it just confuses all beginners.
My major malfunction here is that people get caught up in different cultures and mysticism sometimes. For the person seeking the truth of the matter, this should be avoided. A lot of people are interested in yoga simply because it’s a different flavor…I have a suspicion that’s why many people take yoga classes. They like being able to say “pranayama” and thinking they have mastered a technique just because they know how to pronounce a word in a different language (most of the time incorrectly anyway). They like to hear the soft spoken words of the asana instructor…thinking they’re onto something great and new. I think this type of attachment was probably why I got into yoga in the first place, years ago. I hope to see others avoid it, at least here at AYP. Yogani has created a good way of explaining things. “Ecstatic conductivity” for example, is a good evolution of terminology.
I do like Babaly saying that these obstructions are mental patterns. That is an example of something helpful to the questioner. They can come to certain conclusions from that about what the process is doing to them.
Chiron,
I wonder too. I hadn’t heard that adults lose their chemical synapses before…that’s interesting.
Definitely all of the above. I am not a person who believes in reincarnation. I believe the traits we are born with are mostly from our parents and environment, and not from being naughty in a previous life. Of course people will have different views on this. And I don’t know everything, so perhaps there is some movement of a person’s essence into new bodies going on…but it seems unlikely for a number of reasons which could be discussed in another topic.
Thanks Scott! I’m glad you said that! You saved me about 20 minutes of typing! 
I want to cast a few other lights on the whole thing.
Impurities to me are only inadequacies, and what is adequate is relative. There is no impure substance, just a configuration of forms that in certain circumstances aren’t what they might well be improved to be.
Therefore, as we evolve, impurities are by definition really just, that which we must leave behind. They are patterns which manifest inadequate intelligence (in the broad sense of the word, not just IQ).
What is not known by science is that the body has certain inbuilt ‘evolutionary’ mechanisms. I don’t necessarily mean ‘evolutionary’ in a Darwinian sense, and I certainly don’t mean it in a mystical sense. But rather that the body has some general mechanisms that could be termed a psychic kidney, the action of which ‘purifies’ the mind-body. I mean to speak by analogy here: I don’t literally mean one single system.
There are processes of organic growth and increase in ‘purity’ which are native to the body. Sleep is part of them. These processes are more active in children but start to become overwhelmed by the ‘stresses’ or ‘impurities’ of life.
I believe that ‘strong’ yogis are just people in whom these processes are more accessible. Yoga is a practical system for activating them.
I believe it will be discovered in time that strong yogis are actually activating processes that normally stop in early childhood, and therefore their nervous systems are able to continue to grow even in late adulthood.
Also, strong yogis ‘past life memories’ may actually be memories of early-life yogic experiences.
Or they could be actually past life memories. For me, reincarnation is an inherent part of my philosophy. And so is the concept of universal justice. In my short life I have experienced that what goes around truly does come around. But if reincarnation is a false concept… where is the justice in someone being born a cripple and another being born perfectly healthy? Where is the justice in someone being born in a poor african village and another being born to billionaires in New York? I can’t explain the injustices of this world without reincarnation. I have enough evidence to believe in the concept, whether I will prove it to myself remains to be seen…
In my opinion, there is nothing BUT the spiritual realm! Matter has not been proven to exist, because the smallest particle has not been found. You see the chair you are sitting on? Its not actually there. We percieve it to be a solid object because our senses are limited and are unable to see the energy in motion, or the vibrations of consciousness. The particles (which are made up of more particles) are in constant motion. Maybe someday science will meet spirituality and it will be proven once and for all that we are inside infinity and infinity is inside of us, and that all is Spirit.
I think the best question would be… are we always One with all?
For me the answer is no. So I know there are obstructions which prevent my consciousness from going back to the source to experience the Oneness. But my question is, what are the obstructions, and what causes them? If I want to remove them then I have to know what they are and what caused them.
If I have a desire to live in a certain house, is that desire an obstruction? If I am already all of it, if I am One, then how can I desire the house? So I guess meditation centered on rooting out such a desire (line of thinking/useless neuron path) would remove an obstruction, wouldn’t it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samskara
So by this definition when we are removing obstructions, we are removing past impressions/biases? Or “letting our unborn act”, as Adyashanti said in one of his videos… hmm makes sense.
http://www.chakrayoga.com/victoria/manual.htm
Some more about Granthis here if anyone’s interested: http://kaalpurush.tripod.com/id35.html
Thank you Christi and Babaly for the terms.
Hi Chiron:
It is also spelled granthi(s). Here is an AYP lesson on it: http://www.aypsite.org/276.html
All the best!
The guru is in you.
I found an article a few minutes later and edited that post. But thank you Yogani!
Scott: In my opinion, there is nothing BUT the physical realm!
Chiron: In my opinion, there is nothing BUT the spiritual realm!
Don’t let the human language-system confuse you anyone – if either of above is true, they are both indistinct in meaning!!! 
Chiron,
I’m of the opinion that we should find these things out for ourselves before building a way of life, or our personality, around them.
You could be absolutely right…I have no idea.
I think we are essentially saying the same thing. I prefer not to use terms like “spiritual” because they make people think of something “not here”.
Hi Chiron,
Hi Scott and David,
I hope it wasn’t my post above which produced such a dramatic response, but then, I guess it probably contributed somewhat 
. I apologise if I upset anyone, I certainly had no intentions of doing so.
In my defence (if I need one), I was trying to answer part of Chiron’s original question, about whether the yogic definition of the nervous system differs from the mainstream definition, and if there are scientific and yogic names for the obstructions in this nervous system.
I don’t think my reply was too out of line with conventional yogic wisdom. When yogis normally speak about obstructions in the nervous system, which need to be removed by spiritual practice, they are not normally (if ever) talking about the physical nervous system. They are talking about a different kind of nervous system. A diagram of it would look considerably different to a diagram
of the physical nervous system. Yogani has aluded to this in his writings. I was trying to explain why scientists (physicists) don’t have a word to describe blockages in this system of invisible energy circuits… because they haven’t been discovered yet (oficially by western science).
Should we talk about multiple dimensions? The yogis have been talking about multiple dimensions for thousands of years. They call other dimensions Lokas (lit. worlds). I don’t see how we can understand the changes that happen (the evolution of our consciousness) during the practice of yoga, unless we use the concept of lokas (dimensions). Just as quantum physicists cannot explain string theory except by assuming that there are 29 space-time dimensions, or explain superstring theory by assuming there are 10 space-time dimensions.
Of course, the quantum physicists are working with theories, and mathematics. For the yogi, it is experiential. My consciousness moves between dimensions. Sometimes I wake up and the physical world isn’t there. At all. When that happens, I need a broader paradigm in order to explain my universe, or maybe, our universe.
Maybe the physical universe is all there is, or maybe the spiritual universe is all there is. The thing is, I need a working model, in order to understand my experience of reality, and I think many practitioners of yoga do. And for thousands of years that working model, for most yogis, has included multiple dimensions (Lokas). This is why people talk about subtle bodies and subtle nervous systems so much in yoga.
I think we are moving in this direction pretty fast now. And it will be a good thing for everyone .
Christi
Hi Christi,
I’m not upset…just a discussion and nothing personal.
It wasn’t at all. It was very conventional.
I disagree. The endocrine glands line up perfectly with the “chakras”. In my opinion, when the practitioner becomes aware of the chakras “vibrating” or “opening”, it’s due to those glands secreting their hormones.
In my opinion, there aren’t invisible energy circuits. They are very visible - as neurons!
There is not a second nervous system. The subtle experiences are the results of the physical nervous system.
I’ve experienced what others could define as higher dimensions as a result of yoga, and I believe it’s simply a different point of view within physical reality. It’s not as if I’m talking from no experience here, Christi.
I personally don’t care what yogis have been doing for thousands of years if it’s wrong. A lot of people just copy what’s out of books, and claim to have knowledge on the subject. I don’t think their testimony is reliable.
I am not one who believes in such theories. I don’t consider it to be science.
What could be there instead of the physical world? A mental world? I’ve had very vivid hallucinations, as well. Do you take them to be reality? Or perhaps you meant samadhi, by the physical world not being there?
If you want to believe something untrue because it works, that’s fine. It’s different if you’re trying to convince someone else of its validity. Especially someone who likes to look under the hood and understand each of the working components.
The difference between using the lokas idea, and defining multiple dimensions as simply different ways to view the physical world, is like creating an owner’s manual with crayons and cartoon diagrams, versus creating it with type written letter and computer designed diagrams. Which one would the person who needs to repair their own car want to look at?
Hi Scott, and thanks for the reply. I’m glad I didn’t offend you.
This seems to lie at the heart of our disagreement. If you believed that there was a difference between the subtle nervous system and the physical nervous system, and that it cannot be detected by physical instruments, then you might agree that the subtle nervous system must exist in a subtle dimension. And then, it is a logical progression to the idea that if there is one subtle dimension, there may be many.
So… why do I believe that human beings have two nervous systems and not one? From experience.
Yes… there is a strong correlation between some of the endocrine glands in the human body and energy movements that are experienced in the subtle body. This is true for all the major chakras, except perhaps the root chakra. I am not aware of any endocrine gland in the perineum. But, what about the chakras in the palms of the hands, and in the soles of the feet? There are no endocrine glands there? And yes, the sushumna nadi goes up the spine, which carries the physical central nervous systems’ biggest pipeline, but what about the ida and pingala nadis? These spiral, or whip, around the spine in a double helix formation some 6 to 12 inches from the spine. There is nothing in the physical body, which correlates with this. And what about the energy which pours out of the top of the head, falling around us several feet from the body? We don’t have a physical nervous system extending like a fountain out of the top of our head. And what about the blue spiralling energy that comes out of the third eye some 6 inches from the body. And what about the energy that goes from the stomach to the third eye, going out of the physical body and entering it again? What about the energy that goes up through the tongue into the brain? There is no endocrine gland in the tongue, or even any major neuron pathways? How come when I put my hand 4 inches away from someone their chakras open, even if they are blindfolded? What’s up with that? Glands? Neurons? Nothing would be detectable by any scientific instrument. All of this I have experienced myself, not read in books, as well as experiencing myself in other bodies in different worlds, interacting with non-physical beings.
We could say that all of this is just imagination. Or that neurons firing in the physical energy body give the impression of things happening in other parts of the body, which are not really happening. Or, that excretions from the endocrine glands are causing reactions in the brain, which make the brain believe that things are happening which are not. And then we could say, (as you do) that experiences of beings in other worlds, and those worlds themselves, are hallucinations, and not the true reality. But why?
Why go to such extraordinary lengths to try and deny something that seems to be so obviously part of a wider and richer universe? I don’t see how denying the reality of large parts of human experience, makes for a better understanding of existence. There has to come a point where there are simply too many anomalies within an existing belief system for that belief system to remain an effective tool to explain experience. Too many things don’t fit in and need explaining away by less and less plausible theories. As we progress, and our experience of the world digresses further and further from normal human experiences, eventually we need a new roadmap to explain our experiences by. I didn’t invent the roadmap which includes the existence of the subtle nervous system. It has been around as long as yoga has, developed by yogis. I just use it, as most yogis do. I find it explains my experiences better. This is scientific in my opinion. When one theory no longer explains what we are experiencing, we need to drop it in favour of a better theory, which fits better with our experience. Many, many yogis (mainly in India) have been practicing yoga for thousands of years, and have been working on and improving the theory of how the universe is made up, as their experience of it has progressed. It has been a massive project, and today’s roadmap is quite an amazing thing. It goes much further than the existence of subtle dimensions, or a double nervous system in the human body. We can use it as a model if we want to, if it better serves our journey.
I think I would need some very good proof to believe that there is only one nervous system in the human body, and that it is physical, given what I have seen with my own eyes.
[quote]
Scott wrote:
I personally don’t care what yogis have been doing for thousands of years if it’s wrong
[/quote].
I assume you mean here that you don’t care how yogis have been interpreting their experience of reality for thousands of years if it is wrong?
Fair enough. So far I have found nothing in my experience during my practice of yoga to conflict in any way with the way in which yogis generally explain reality. And it explains my reality far better than a material reductionist paradigm does.
I hope this gives you some idea why I see things the way I do.
Christi
Christi,
I think all of the things you listed can be explained by science, at least some day. By the way, the testis or ovaries are what is stimulated by the pressing of the perineum. You should know that there aren’t fixed chakras.
Also, the tongue has nerves in it. The energy is supposed to go downward from the head to the tongue, not upwards. The upward movement is through the brain.
You say you can put your hand close to someone and “open” their “chakras”…same here. There is definitely something going on, but a subtle nervous system certainly isn’t it. I think it could be explained if more was known about how atomic particles function in different parts of the body. You know, even scientificially, the body isn’t limited to its own structure.
About other dimensions…yes I do think those are part of the imagination. A product of the mind. I have experienced them, too. Notice that you can take drugs and get the same sort of effect. Purely physical.
One thing I haven’t experienced is the spiralling of the ida and pingala nadis. I know it’s talked about often.
Perhaps I need to progress more to be able to fully state my opinion. I’m open to the possibility that I’m wrong.
Hi All:
Can a coin be regarded as legal tender without both of its sides?
The guru is in you.
I agree with Scott, Christi. The ancient yogis knew nothing about modern science, and lacked some of its richness.
I believe the word ‘other dimension’ for chakras is either misleading or a mistake, depending on what exactly you mean. A less misleading term might be ‘other schema’ or even ‘other schema dimension’. An electronic engineer can pull out a ‘schematic’ map of a cirtuit, and work on it. However, it may have no apparent similarity to the actual physical circuit you see. It’s re-arranged and simplified down to the relevant to his task. Just like a subway map.
Likewise, I do believe the mind has an ability to take sort of ‘schematic’ snapshots of its own nervous system. It may be entirely within these that the ‘chakras’ are seen. And likewise, all those energies which are subjectively experienced as extending outside the body.
So a view of the chakras may just be a vision of the nervous system in a particular schema.
There are good reasons I believe in having the understanding of the physical view as being, in a sense, the view, the true view from which all others follow. One is that it is proving to be so darned right again and again and again. This doesn’t mean that it is the best view for solving a particular problem.
How come when I put my hand 4 inches away from someone their chakras open, even if they are blindfolded?
What is to say that you are not ‘just seeing them’? If you can demonstrate that you can see this, Randi has a million bucks for you. Various kinds of ‘psychics’ believe all the time that they can see things, but they fail his objective tests.
There is a very objective test for this one.