Yoga’s Rhizomatic Samadhi

The term “rhizome” comes from Ancient Greek, meaning “roots” or “mass of roots.” The French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari developed a concept in the 1970s called the Rhizome, which was able to articulate and possess multiple meaning without falling into dualism. The rhizome is a philosophical concept that allows for multiple entrances and exits to open up within structures that we may have previously seen as less porous. Think about the idea of Zeitgeist, the “spirit of the time.” The Zeitgeist isn’t announced by a person to another person while that person reveals it to another. People may talk about elements of a Zeitgeist, but they can’t possibly control how the information or the feeling spreads or where or to whom it moves. It’s not a linear transmission. Instead, it spreads like branches, and the branches have roots, so the origin of its birth is unclear. The spirit of the time is never something anyone can put a finger on or say it was the direct effect of some event in history. People like the idea of being able to pinpoint where things come from, and they may even make decent arguments for their hypothesis. But such claims only create the illusion that there is a point of origin.

The way I see it, creation comes from a web of interactions. Power, for example, doesn’t come from one source, one powerful man who decides that he wants a particular gender ideology to govern our lives, or to begin global-wide wars on a religion, or to reinforce socioeconomic hierarchies. These are complex relationships that are formed over lifetimes and generations. People in power may help to perpetuate them, but they can’t do it alone. People may take advantage of certain structures of power, but they are not the source of that power. All structures work this way, from family structures to reproductive norms to sexuality. Anything, anything good, anything insidious, is generated rhizomatically.

The modern Yoga practice is also a rhizomatic practice. It has generated from dozens of forms, philosophies, cultures, and practices over thousands of years, “originating” from Patanjali, sure.. But also from Cosmic Yoga, from . And certainly the many forms of Yoga we practice and deem sacred are rhizomatic creations, providing entrances and exits between the yogi and the world, the yogi and other living and non-living things, the yogi and history, the yogi and energy, the yogi and light and darkness, the yogi and other yogis, the yogi and other sides of him or herself. Asana alone is a rhizomatic experience that has the capability to challenge our conceptions of the self and the other. It has the ability to challenge those categories as altogether distinct from one another.

In Hinduism, Nirvikalpa is a particular type of Samadhi that refers to a similar experience. The term “Nirvikalpa” derives from the Sanskrit prefix meaning “not,” or “without,” while the root word means “other,” or “alternative.” Sometimes, it’s defined as “not admitting an alternative,” or “without an alternative.” But I think this translation is girded with cultural and historical pretense. I prefer the translation, “without an other,” because what is the other if not an alternative? Heinrich Zimmer describes Nirvilkalpa as it is defined in Raja Yoga as “absorption without self-consciousness, … a mergence of the mental activity in the Self, to such a degree, or in such a way, that the distinction of knower, act of knowing, and object known become dissolved—as waves vanish in water, and as foam vanishes into the sea.” Zimmer emphasizes the conflation between subject and object, the erasing of any distinction between knower and known. Nirvikalpa describes an integration between things.

The illusion of the distinction between subject and object has been a very useful one. It helps perpetuate the pretense of individualism, which is necessary for Democracy and the illusion of Democracy, after all, is necessary for Capitalism to exist. Capitalism isn’t the only reason why our cultural discourse allowed for the cultivation of “the individual” in the modern sense. However, our particular notion of the individual really began to emerge with a force during the Industrial Revolution. Through the 17th Century in the West, the modern notion of the individual didn’t exist. Instead, “I” was understood as more embedded in its environment through the structure and physiology of the Galenic humors. (I know less of the development of the Self in Eastern cultures, but I can say that in the Bhagavad Gita and in Tantric writings, the Self is absolutely not centralized or set up as dualistic in nature, like the modern self. A topic for another post.) So the modern notion of the individual is exactly that—a modern invention.

Nirvikalpa doesn’t completely discount the Self. On the contrary, the Self is much bigger because it does not exist as this tiny part separate and distinct from all matter, the way we might imagine. It exists as a part of the known--the known is the knower and the knower is embedded in all living and non-living things. It is decentered, not easily contained by the boundaries of the body or the “mind,” and yet it is very physical, very real. It is both itself and an-other. It is universal and distinct.

Flow Yoga is one articulation of this idea of subject/object conflation. When we practice Vinyasa, we are representing the dynamic movement, interaction between all things. Our bodies are art mimicking the universe, mimicking the constant and inevitable interaction between knower and known to the point that it becomes clear they are parts of the same. Flow Yoga, or any kind of Yoga for that matter, is constant motion in space, interaction, interconnectedness, non-stasis. It is constant movement. Yoga asana is the physical manifestation of universal interconnectedness. Mantra, likewise, is the manifestation of our Selves as Other through sound. It is all rhizomatic motion, rhizomatic sensuality.

In 14. 23-26 of the Bhagavad Gita, the author writes, “He who is unattached, who is no disturbed by the gunas, who is firmly rooted and knows that only the gunas are acting. who is equally self-contained in pain or pleasure, in happiness or sorrow, who is content with whatever happens, who see dirt, rocks, and gold as equal, who is unperturbed amid praise or blame of himself, indifferent to honor and to disgrace, serene in success and failure, impartial to friend and foe, unattached to action –that man has gone beyond the three gunas, he who faithfully serves me with the yoga of devotion, going beyond the three gunas, is ready to attain the ultimate freedom.” This passage expresses the notion that all things are parts of a larger whole and are aware that we not only place value on objects in the world, but that value is the very thing that creates distinction. This passage also implies that the “ultimate freedom” is a state that is quite immobile or static. But I think that if we look closer, we see that if the gunas are the doer, then we are no longer attached to the idea of being bound to body or to singular mind. Instead, we can be “firmly rooted,” while still expanding beyond the conceptions that we thought were what made us who we thought we were. And those roots are not static. They also grow, change shape, and alter the landscape of humanity and divinity.

Tantric Yoga and the philosophy behind it possess concepts that are compatible with this idea of a universal rhizomatic motion. Tantra derives from the verbal roots tan and tra, and the root words tanoti, which means “extend” or “expand,” and trayati, which means “liberation." I suppose this could be understood then, as “expanding liberation” or “liberated expansion,” both echoing the ideas I’ve discussed here. The second translation emphasizes movement, while the first translation emphasizes freedom. Understanding one’s relationship to the rest of the world as one that is unbound to the centralized Self is absolutely liberating. It is also creative, because it allows for new relationships, new ideas, new loves, new Samadhis, to constantly be created through this dynamic interaction. So, Tantra, even at its most literal, means a “creative freedom of movement.” And Yoga is a form of creative movement. It creates. Through the practice of asana, mantra, pranayama, and ethical observances, we are growing roots that generate relationships, ideas, understanding, empathy and love. Yoga is the embodiment of rhizomatic creation.

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