Nātha as a manifestation of the nāda

The following definition of the term nātha is given in Gorakṣa-siddhānta-samgraha:

नाकारो नादरूपं च थाकारः स्थाप्यते सदा |

भुवनत्रयोवैकः श्रीगोरक्ष नमोऽस्तु ते ||

Reverence to Gorakṣanāth, the Nātha, who is one in the three worlds, he as a syllable “nā” – means “nāda”, and “tha” – manifested (in the three worlds).

The other part also says that nāth is one who realises the nāda or the source of own origin. In the subtle form nāda is manifested in the form of the praṇava OM, which is known as Mahāgāyatrī, and in the gross form it is known as Brahmagāyatrī; all Navanāthas, Caurashi Siddhas, Deities, Vedas, grammar (vyākaraṇa), Purāṇa, Itihāsas, etc. are manifestations of this particular Nātha-yoga.

Indeed, practices related to nāda play a fundamental role in the Nāth Tradition.

From Dattātreya-yoga-śāstra

Here is an interesting śloka from Dattātreya-yoga-śāstra:

ब्राह्मणः श्रमणो वा बौद्धो वाप्यार्हतोऽथवा।
कापालिको वा चार्वाकः श्रद्धया सहितः सुधीः।
योगाभ्यासोऽतो नित्यं सर्वसिद्धिमवाप्नुयात्॥३८॥

brāhmaṇaḥ śramaṇo vā bauddho vāpyārhato’thavā |
kāpāliko vā cārvākaḥ śraddhayā sahitaḥ sudhīḥ |
yogābhyāso’to nityaṁ sarvasiddhimavāpnuyāt || 38 ||

Whether he is brāhmaṇa, śramaṇa (ascetic) or follower of Buddhism, jain, kāpālika or (even) cārvāka (materialist). If he is constantly practicing yoga with full faith, he will obtain all siddhis.

It is interesting that even cārvākas are mentioned, although I referred to such an opportunity many years ago, that aroused bewilderment in many. My opinion is very simple, the yogic worldview is plain, therefore it is flexible: if you like the doctrine with a complex metaphysics and theological concept – you can follow it, if you like a simple one – the same. I got my first mystical experience when I was living in an atheistic country, I did not have any books about the Śhiva’s omnipresence. You can call it anything, but there is something higher that regulates everything. And through what we discover it for ourselves, would it be sincere faith in God or sincere atheism, no one knows. Ideologies can sometimes serve as tools for understanding the yogic experience, that lies behind their formal images.

 

Yoga and death experience

I think that for most people any information about death is virtually almost irrelevant until it is more and more correlating with the subject. On the Internet, we can see the information about catastrophes, wars, hunger occurred somewhere, but even death happened next to you is not necessarily significant for some people. There are plenty of people who like to speak about death by repetitively savouring trivial phrases, introduced by some wise men, but still it is the experience only of wise men, but not a repeater. That’s why yoga is, first of all, an experimental research of oneself, of something we don’t know, or barely know, or have forgotten. We know nothing of afterlife, we have no proof of rebirth or other things except for only sayings of some people and different religions.

And what is yoga for? Yoga proposes to study death on practice. Actually, yoga is a gradual immersion into the experience of death, not external, but your own. If we refer to the states of death, described in Vedanta, Tantras, Yoga texts, all of them – from jāgrat to turya or turyatita – illustrate a gradual transition from objective self-awareness to more and more subjective one. If you correlate yourself with your dreams in svapna, then in suṣupti you correlate yourself with a reality beyond mental constructions. In turya, you realise yourself beyond all the three stages, and use this experience to study yourself as their witness, where all of them serve as supporting instruments of self-awareness. You are Nirālamba Śhiva (Unsupported Shiva) and do not need any of these instruments in turiyatita. In yoga, you slow down the process of breathing by practicing prāṇāyāma, thereby you can gain a more thorough insight into the dimension, revealing itself from the experience, which is usually seen as death.

In India, death is usually divided into two categories: natural and unnatural. Unnatural death is sudden, for instance, from accident, when a person abruptly falls into the unconscious. Natural death, even if it is not strongly perceivable, has at least a more or less smooth transition. Yoga sets the goal to make that process as smooth and conscious as possible, and, at the same time, to get the knowledge of something, which goes beyond what we usually see as life. As I see it, to a greater extent it is connected with the accomplished prāṇāyāma practice.

First of all, yoga offers a self-study of our own unconscious, which is the fundamental goal of a human being. It transcends him from the human to the yogiс level. Some say about stages of videha-mukti (liberation attained by a person after death), some – about sadeha-mukti (liberation while still in the body), however, I see it as a combination of both. Yoga is nothing more than laying a bridge between two realities, and only by this experience we can comprehend and see for ourselves: is there rebirth or not, is there a soul or not, is there God or not. I think that the true knowledge (jñāna), is contained in the yogic experience in particular, none any over-prestigious traditions, nor Gurus, books or theories will give you this knowledge, until you reveal it yourself. Of course, there are huge benefits in traditions, but the true value can be gained only when you are fully correlated with it, otherwise a tradition is worth no more than a visit to a pub. A person can try on a tradition as many times as they want, even not accepting the fact that it remains something secondary for them, after a favourite pub, the Internet, McDonalds or anything else. Do you fully correlate with it or not, that is what you need to think of.

Different terms with the same meaning

It seems to me that between such a Vedic or Vedantic principle as नेति नेति (neti-neti – «neither this nor that») has much in common with द्वैताद्वैत विलक्षण (dvaitādvaita vilakṣaṇa) in the Nātha Tradition. The second is often found in the Sanskrit texts of Nāthas. In the later Nātha text in Hindi, Gorakh Sabadi, this principle is represented as अलख (alakh) – from the Sanskrit अलक्ष अ-लक्ष (a-lakṣa, i.e. «transcendence beyond the limits of symbols»).