YOGA AND SCIENCE PART I: WAYS OF KNOWING BY SIEGFRIED BLEHER AND JARVIS CHEN Siegfried Bleher
Jarvis Chen Photo: Travis L. Kelley
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ntermediate Junior III Iyengar Yoga teachers Jarvis Chen and Siegfried Bleher recently arranged to have an informal conversation about yoga and science. Jarvis is a public health scientist, a social epidemiologist who studies the effect of the social environment on health. Siegried teaches physics and studies nonlinear (chaotic) systems and their application to lowtemperature plasmas. The following is a portion of the conversation that took place Feb. 13, 2015. The intention of their
conversation was to inquire into the role science can or does play in the study and experience of yoga. The conversation will be presented in three parts: Part I: Ways of Knowing, Part II: Layers of Utthita Trikonasana, and Part III: Science and Samadhi. Siegfried Bleher: My deepest interest in talking about yoga
deeper interest? I have a deeper inquiry in mind. For example, I
and science is related to ways of knowing, but it is in the
have been drawn to physics and science out of a sense of
limits of knowing.
curiosity, but the more I understand, the more I am guided by a deeper drive to know. I am very much interested in, for
Jarvis Chen: I think that would be a fruitful way to frame it—
example, news about the Big Bang not being well-founded: If I
about the limits of the ways of knowing.
went into the state of samadhi, would I get any insights into such questions as the Big Bang? What intrigues me is the cross-
SB: I am not clear about your background…
over between Samkhya cosmology—cosmology informed by subjective experience—and scientific cosmology.
JC: Because my background is epidemiology, clearly the scientific project of proving the efficacy of yoga is something I
JC: It is interesting about Samkhya cosmology—are the
am familiar with—those techniques and how such studies are
assertions of Samkhya cosmology testable?
designed. And I have some ideas about critiquing what has been done so far, how it’s being approached by the scientific
SB: Well, here we go! They are the product of deep subjective
community. There is a set of contradictions between the way
experience. As such, they satisfy certain criteria for validation.
clinical science would prove the efficacy of yogic techniques
But are they testable in the usual scientific way? That is the
with the way we would approach yoga as a healing technique. I
question we are trying to address. That is, is the question well-
am also interested in the question “how do we know?” because
posed? And I don’t have answers for that.
the scientist part of me is interested in things like objective knowledge and replicability, and at the same time, I read the
JC: When people pose the question of testability, when people
Yoga Sutras and know that the highest forms of correct
conceive of their subjective experience of being-ness and
knowledge, of pramana, are direct experience, inference, and
tattvas (primary substances) that are articulated in Samhkya
testimony. But they are more subjective ways of knowing. To me
philosophy, are they articulating it as subjective experience or
that’s part of the essential way of framing different ways of
are they making assertions about the material reality of that
knowing: yoga as science and the scientific method as science.
subjective experience?
SB: I have been interested over the years in work by Ken Wilber,
SB: That is a great question! What I understand is that these
who has written about the “eyes of knowing,” which are
are assertions about objective truth, about objective reality.
numerous, but the simplest way of formulating this is as the physical eyes, eyes of the mind, and the eyes of spirit. Each is
JC: For me the question, “Is it well-posed?” hinges a little on the
valid, but deals with different kinds of information and so
relationship between the being that knows, or the process of
requires different ways of validating information. In a sense, we
knowing, and the prakritic world around us. When people say
could address the question of ways of knowing from this sort of
they have a subjective experience of something, what is that as
framework.
a way of knowing, exactly? What is the process by which a subjective experience becomes an assertion about the nature of
I am also wondering about giving our discussion a personal
material reality?
take: What is it that we are ultimately “pulled by”? What is our
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Yoga Samachar Spring /Summer 2015
