Magic, Science & Poetry: The Alchemy of Yoga

Recently a friend of mine ~ a wonderful artist who spends quite a bit of time working & playing in Hawaii ~ told me the story of spending several months (one summer a couple of years ago) sleeping in an orchard, in Hawaii. The nights were mild, and so this was a very pleasant place to be: warm air, starlight, the scent of blossoming trees. One night, when my friend was particularly relaxed, and feeling spiritually & emotionally “expansive,” there appeared to her (in a dream? on the screen of her third eye?) a group of plant devas ~ fairy-like light-beings ~ who proceeded to describe to her, in great detail, the way that each spring they would hover (like a flock of hummingbirds) among the branches of the orchard trees, creating ~ with the joyful-bright vibration of their wings ~ the energy (of love & delight & celebration) necessary for the trees then to blossom and ~ later ~ bear fruit.

Now this is an explanation (for the blossoming & fruit-bearing capacity of trees) quite different from what I would likely receive from, say, a university-trained horticulturist, yes? My friend’s (or at least the plant-devas’) explanation might be called “magical” or even “miraculous.” The horticultural explanation: decidedly “scientific.” The difference, on first glance, between the two might seem quite clear, quite obvious.

Yet if we look a little more deeply we discover that oftentimes what is called “magical” or “miraculous” are simply those events that lie beyond the current understanding (outside of the conceptual frameworks) of those perceiving them. The other day, in a yoga studio, I noticed a potted plant whose vines were ~ with one exception ~ all growing horizontally along the shelf the pot was resting on, or else draping downward over its edges. There was just a single vine that was growing straight upward, hugging the wall. To me in seemed quite miraculous … like some sort of “magic” was at play, which had been accessed by that one vine, and not the rest.