The Gods of enclosing and obstructing

Photo: Barbie Robinson

The ancient pre-Vedic and Vedic people had sophisticated insight into the movement of Consciousness (as Reality) that is typical of the ancient peoples of many cultures. Their ritual, artistic and creative invocations of Consciousness allowed for Self-inquiry that connected the intimate and the cosmic is wondrous and powerful ways.

One of the examples of this intelligence is the ancient ritual of Indra releasing the cows and horses. This story is of people called Pani who are “thieves pretending to be priests”. They are transactional, self-righteous, and abhor consecration (committed attention without self-interest). Their Gods are Vala (literally meaning bangle) the Encloser, and Vrtra the Obstructer. Between them the Gods steal the cows and horses and imprison them in a hole in the mountain.

The cow is the Body/Earth, the illuminating vision of matter that stabilises and grounds expression and allows its concrete manifestation in Reality. The Earth is the clarifying energy of Consciousness, and as the cow invocation suggests qualities of abundant nourishment, reciprocity, and community. The horse is the nature of energy that infuses expression and action. The horse suggests that energy is grounded, dynamic, swift, and strong.

While Vala encloses the energies of Earth and action, Vrtra supports by covering them up, obstructing any attempts to release them, and clamouring (the mental chatter that distracts). Together these Gods of the Panis fulfill what the Panis seek—comfort, protection from the flow of Reality and Consciousness, and the distraction of words that substitute speaking “about” Reality for body-led experience and expression of Reality. Enclosed in the arms of Vala and Vrtra, the Panis exist in a kind of paralysis, a state devoid of flow and movement.

Indra is the liberator of the cows and horses. Earth/Body and the horse/energies of body-led expression, manifest through flow. Indra is also the great dancer; indeed He is invoked as Dancer/poet/seer in the Vedas more than any other Deity. Indra’s “weaponry” to release the cows and horses is of the nature of “soma”, the pleasure inherent in movement/action. “Soma” is not objective pleasure because of external stimuli, rather it is pleasure that emerges from the body infused in movement.

Flow in dance is thus not an austere practice that is about withdrawal from sensation and body. Rather it is about connecting with the enjoyment inherent in movement and the magical way in which dance connects us to the multi-dimensional nature of Reality.

This balances and brings wisdom to the Pani aspects of our intelligence which seek to separate and protect. In flow, Pani energy finds its rightful and supportive expression. Rather than capture the cow and horse energies, Pani can find their place within the stabilising and materialising energy of Earth (cow) and the dynamic and passionate expression of action (horse).

We may find the Pani exploration quite confronting. When I have invited people I teach to explore the Pani constellation, sometimes we like to other this as “evil”. We may assume that Pani is outside of us—in corporations, governments, in communities to which we do not belong, and in ideologies which we do not support.

Ironically this is the Pani experience—the self-righteous stance that assigns wrongness to anything that contravenes our own ideologies. It brings little intelligence about the nature of ideology, what it serves in terms of our seeking of stability and enclosing, and the truth about our resistance to the unknowability of flow as the essence of Reality.

In inquiry, we are invited to hold the Pani in us with great compassion. Indra’s “soma” filled releasing of the cows and horses signals that brutality is not the approach to a full participation in Reality. It is through beauty, senses, and the creative celebration of our energy of expression, that we find that movement which is flow and which releases stability and movement in the same constellation.

For me the most important invitation in this story of Pani and their Gods is the location of intelligence. It is the most ordinary of Nature’s dimensions that hold teaching for us. The cow and the horse are our teachers. The Goddess/Earth is invoked as “Gurupriya”, the one who loves teachers/teaching. The teaching energy of Nature is the quality of our connection with Earth and our bodies. We do not protect Earth, rather we are in a reciprocal teaching flow with Earth/Nature/Reality. This means that Earth unfolds Her nature as an eternal movement. And we also unfold our expression through the materialising intelligence of our bodies, when we accept Indra’s invitation of dance that is infused with unconditional enjoyment.

In this dance we find ourselves flowing, like the cows and horses on open, green meadows, in a co-creative “allowing” with Nature.