Submitted by Victor on
When I look at the myth around the depiction of Patanjali, who was said to have written the yoga sutras, I wonder why his lower body showed the curled-up tail of a snake. The story about his birth tells of a reincarnation of Adisesa, the snake in the ocean of bliss, onto which Vishnu resides and how he fell from the sky into the hands of his devotional mother as a little tiny snake, who then took the human form of Patanjali, asking her to accept him as her son.
One of his famous yoga sutras is about asana: "To be seated effortless and with great comfort within your body".
The oceanic waves and the snake are two depictions of the same"flowing"experience that come about by releasing the deepest levels of any HOLDING. It is only then that the snake can be felt as a blissful movement within a silent and receptive body....
I chose to depict the lower part of a Patanjali as an AUM sign rising out of the ocean and onto the land, for that mantra AUM is also the final sound that is received in total inner silence.
Looking for meanings behind any myth can bring us into contact with the archetypical layers from where we all rise, the source of great wisdom flowing out into a limitless space, bringing about many different messages.