Who are you anyway? Yoga has the answer!

By Barbara Girijananda Hess

The first sutra in the Shiva Sutras  answers this question, Who are you anyway? This sutra explains who you are deeply inside yourself at your deepest dimension. This sutra is pivotal in Svaroopa® Yoga, the yogic sciences I teach from.

Shiva Sutra 1:1 Chaitanyam-aatmaa: The Self is Consciousness-itself

Key Sanskrit terms:

Chaitanyam – Consciousness, alive, vibrating, enlivened

Aatmaa – Self

What is consciousness?   

Consciousness is inherent beingness, the pure beingness that has always existed, and existed before anything existed. This goes back to the big bang.  Have you ever thought about what banged?  Yoga calls this Consciousness or SELF with a capital S.

Consciousness,  primordial reality contracts concentrating himself  into the form of the individual without ever loosing himself; Let me repeat that another way.

Consciousness concentrates himself into an extraordinary form of itself which is you. Consciousness is inherent in you. You are the whole of Consciousness in an individual form.

Inherent means existing in something as permanent and essential. Sutras deliver personal teachings. This sutra says you are the whole of Consciousness-Itself. Consciousness is your inherent divinity. You can take that very personally!

In this sutra 2 words are used to name this source, Aatmaa and Chaitanyam.

In essence both these words; Chaitanyam and Atmaa mean the same thing – your own Divine Self. However, they have been put together here in the one sutra for a reason so we will look at that.

Chaitanyam is the name given to Consciousness concentrating itself into a fully embodied, unique and individual form. You.  Chaitanyam is enlivened embodied Consciousness. And you are that.

What does enlivened embodied Consciousness mean?

Chaitanyam is a conjugation of the word Chit or Chiti. Chiti has a number of translations but in this context it means Consciousness and in this context certain qualities of Consciousness are being emphasized. These are the qualities of vastness, all knowingness and all pervasiveness. 

Chaitanyam, the conjugated term for consciousness is emphasizing the quality of Self knowingness. 

This lets us know that as the Whole of Consciousness Itself, we have the capacity of knowing we are Consciousness-Itself. Self-knowingness. The essence of this sutra teaches us that we are the ONE REALITY, which is the source of all that exists and we have the capacity to know this. This is unique to human beings. We are the only form of the formless that has the ability to know that we know. Self-knowingness is so important. It allows us to grow our awareness of this ever-expanding energy of the universe, Consciousness-itself, within ourselves.

You contain the divinity of the entire world and you have the capacity to know this, seeing it in yourself and everyone and everything else.

Like water contracts to become ice, Consciousness contracts to become you. Consciousness is what you are made of. Ice is water inside and out. You are Consciousness inside and out.

Water is still water if it freezes and becomes ice or heats and becomes steam. It is still water in different forms. Consciousness concentrates and takes different forms. The Self is Consciousness concentrated taking form in uniqueness and individuality. There are different forms of consciousness just as water can have the different forms of ice and steam – they are still water.

So, us humans are concentrated Consciousness –our essence is not different from one another.

Kashmiri Shaivism is a tantric path meaning you recognize that everything is Consciousness, that everything is divine. You see the divinity in everyone and everything including your own self. 

One way you can know this is through yoga meditation.

The purpose of yoga meditation is to help you come to know, experientially, who you are. The style of meditation I use  and am authorized to teach is named Svaroopa® Vidya Meditation. It is based in Kashmiri Shaivism. The name of this meditation itself describes the purpose. It is the gateway to the experiential knowing of your inherent divinity, your own Self as Consciousness Itself.

Shiva Sutras 1.1 Chaitanyam-aatmaa:  The Self is Consciousness-itself