our-yoga

I just finished watching all four seasons of Battlestar Galactica: About half an hour ago, I consumed completed the last episode of season 4. So they found Earth... well, sort of. I won't spoil it for you by telling you more.

All in all, I think it was a beautiful ending to a very well-told story, although I can't help feeling that more explanation of what exactly happened to Starbuck would have been nice. But then again, I suppose there's something to be said for not over-explaining things.

The feeling I have now is like the feeling one gets when one finishes a good book: You don't want it to end. But as the oft-repeated cliche goes, all good things have to come to an end... Well, I guess the upside is that we can all now look forward to some serious Ashtanga blogging (do we even know what that means anymore?) without all this neither-here-nor-there rambling about Cylons that has been all-too-characteristic of my blogging in the last couple of months. Yay. Long live Cylon-free Ashtanga blogging!  

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In a previous post, I set forth this theory that Kino and quite possibly all long-time Ashtanga practitioners are Cylons. More precisely, they (we?) are Cylon sleeper agents; they/we think they/we are human, but are in fact Cylons who have been placed here on Earth to fulfill a role in God's grand plan. A little background story here for those who are not initiated into Battlestar Galactica lore: Cylons believe in God, although there is some dispute among Battlestar Galactica fans as to whether the Cylon God is also the God of the human Judeo-Christian tradition.

But let us leave this academic dispute for another time. The reason why I have brought this Cylon-Ashtangi  theory up again is because some recent developments in the Ashtanga blogosphere seem to have provided further support for this theory. The ramifications of this theory are considerable. For one thing, if this theory is true, it would prove the critics of Ashtanga right: Ashtanga is really not for everybody. It's only for Cylons. Which makes a lot of sense, if you think about it: Critics often charge that you would have to either be a teenage boy or inhumanly strong or flexible (or inhumanly able to take a ridiculous amount of mental and physical punishment, six days a week) in order to do Ashtanga regularly. Well, if all regular Ashtangis are in fact Cylons (even if they don't know it), this would prove the critics right, because Ashtangis would then be quite literally not human.  And come to think of it, don't the behavior of teenage boys often make us wonder whether they come from another planet? Well, wonder no more...

But where's the evidence for this theory, you may ask? I'm getting there. Let's start from the beginning: In Battlestar Galactica, there are a total of twelve Cylon models. For most of the series (up to the end of season 3), only seven out of these twelve were revealed. Here are three of the models:

The remaining five models (a.k.a. the Final Five) were only revealed at the end of season 3. A key reason for this revelation was that the Final Five had an important role in God's plan: They are supposed to show humans and Cylons the way to the promised land, i.e. Earth.

Okay, so what has any of this to do with Ashtanga? Well, earlier today, Erica over at Ecstatic Adventures of the Exuberant Bodhisattva alerted us to a very important fact: There are presently seven types of Ashtangis. As a result of recent events in the Ashtanga blogosphere, Erica's Mula Bandha exploded (I hope you're okay, Erica), and God revealed the seven Cylon models Ashtangi types to her in a dazzling vision. According to Erica/God, these seven types are:

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Earlier today, I was telling a colleague--I'm going to just call him R from now on--about my ongoing Battlestar Galactica (BSG) binge (for more details, see previous post). As he was unfamiliar with the basic premise of BSG (he's a middle-aged Canadian gentleman who is not that into sci-fi... speaking of which, Happy Canada Day, if you are reading this from Canada), I had to quickly explain the general story arc of BSG to him (we're talking about the 2003 remake here; the story is slightly different in the 1978 version): Once upon a time, somewhere in deep space, a bunch of humans who make up the Twelve Colonies of Kobol lived more or less happily on a bunch of planets. According to the holy scriptures of these humans, there is a thirteenth colony of humans who live on a planet called Earth, but nobody knows where Earth is, or whether it even exists. Anyway, the humans lived more or less happily in these twelve colonies until one day, the Cylons--a cybernetic race originally created by these humans to be their servants but who later rebelled and went off to form their own civilization--launched a surprise attack on the twelve colonies, which resulted in the near-extinction of the human race. The surviving humans (about 50,000 people) fled the Cylons in a bunch of rather shoddy spaceships (shoddy compared to the Cylon ships, that is). Led by the battleship Battlestar Galactica, they set off on a long journey across the universe to find Earth. Will they succeed? I don't know, I'm still watching to find out :-)

All this must be rather boring if you are already familiar with BSG. My apologies. Anyway, immediately after hearing my synopsis, R, who is well-known for his irony-laced sense of humor, remarked, "So, I take it that the Cylons are the good guys, right?" I was taken aback by this remark for about a quarter of a second, but then quickly saw where he was going with this. This is roughy how the conversation proceeded from this point:

Nobel: Ah yes, I see what you're saying. The humans basically created a slave-race of cybernetic robots to serve their rather trivial interests. All the robots did was rebel and fight back. Which is something any self-respecting race would do.

R [smiles and nods enthusiastically]: So you are on the side of the Cylons?

Nobel [smiles sheepishly]: Well, rationally speaking, I probably should be on the Cylons' side. After all, if we are willing to put aside the fact that they kill humans (like humans don't kill humans, anyway...), they do have a few strong arguments going for them. For instance, many Cylons are deeply religious: They believe that since humans are so fracked-up and corrupt, it is God's will that Cylons should be brought into this universe (by humans, no less: Which shows that God has a very interesting sense of poetic justice) to destroy humans, so that the universe will become a better place. A sort of moral Darwinism, if you will. To be sure, this argument is probably compelling only if you believe that there is a God or some kind of universal agency that is responsible for meting out justice in the universe. But it may still be a great argument if you replace "God" with either your favorite universal-justice-meting-mechanism, or with some notion of the survival of the morally and physically fittest.

Oh, and actually, there is also one more thing going for the Cylons. Since Cylons are basically a bunch of robots, they are, by default, in possession of perfect health and perfect cognitive abilities. Which means that Cylon society does not suffer from the kinds of problems associated with the allocation and distribution of scarce social goods (health care, for instance) that plague human society. After all, who needs insurance or a public health-care system in Cylon society? So, to be a Cylon is to be morally perfect, and also be in possession of perfect health and mental ability. What's not to love about that?   

R: Okay, very nice... so why aren't you on the side of the Cylons?

Nobel: Because I'm human! I hate to have to admit this, but I'm basically what Peter Singer would call a speciesist: I am somebody who favors the interests of my own species over that of another, just because they are a different species, just because they, well, look different from me... Well, actually, that's not even really true in the case of the Cylons. The latest Cylon models actually look and feel human (and rather attractively so, if I may add...):

Contrast these with the earlier robot model, a.k.a. the Centurion:

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Summer is definitely in full swing here in Southeastern Idaho. Daytime temperatures have been in the 90s yesterday and today; right now, it's 99 degrees fahrenheit (37 degrees celsius). I'm trying to see how long I can survive in my apartment without turning the AC on. As warm as it is, I still much prefer practicing in heat to practicing in AC; there's just something about practicing in an artificially-cooled room that takes energy away. Earlier today, for instance, I practiced led primary to Sharath's count. The heat lent a certain lightness to the practice; I like to think this brings me a bit closer to what it must be like to practice in the heat in Mysore (as in Mysore, India).

I've been watching a lot of sci-fi lately. Yesterday, I went with a couple of friends to see World War Z. It's actually a pretty good movie, if you try to let go of any expectations you may have gathered from having read the novel; this may be one of those instances in which it could be better to watch the movie without having read the novel. In any case, both Brad Pitt and Marc Foster (the director) make no pretense about the fact that their story departs greatly from the novel. The story is actually quite tight and convincing in its own right. I don't think this is going to go down as one of the great classic zombie movies (although I may be wrong), but it's still worth watching.

At the recommendation of a friend, I've also started watching Battlestar Galactica (the 2003 remake, not the 1978 original) on Netflix. It's actually a very compelling re-imagining of the original, with more contemporary political tropes ("We don't negotiate with terrorists") thrown in for good measure. Another thing about this remake that should immediately jump out at longtime yoga practitioners (or anybody who is familiar with Sanskrit chants, for that matter) is the use of Indian devotional chants in the series. For instance, the series's opening theme has the Gayatri Mantra in it. Check this out:

Which strikes me as being very apt for a story which is basically an interstellar retelling of Noah's Ark. I loved the original 1978 Battlestar Galactica theme (remember that?), but there is something powerfully haunting and moving about hearing the Gayatri against the backdrop of deep space, set to a story about a bunch of humans on a space odyssey to find this mythical place called Earth while being pursued relentlessly by a bunch of cybernetic beings that they had created themselves. Does anybody know who came up with the idea of putting the Gayatri mantra in Battlestar Galactica? I'm really curious to know, but couldn't find any information on Google about this.        

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