Teaching of the Tree

This is not an Ashwatta tree but one that remined me of it on the mountain near my house!

Rooted upwards

with branches hanging down

and with leaves as beauteous hymns—

one who experiences this

knows all.

-Krishna’s teaching from Bhagavad Gita

The upside down Ashvatta tree is an ancient invocation of the sacred body that dates back to at least 8-10,000 years in the artefacts from Indus Valley civilisation. In this invocation, the body is experienced as the upside down Ashvatta tree. The enigmatic reversal proposed in this practice is at the heart of body-led spirituality.

The invocation of transformative consciousness is not a mental exercise here but one that requires a material reconfiguration of the body. The Ashvatta tree is a multi-dimensional practice. It is the sacred fig tree of many ancient Goddess-led traditions all over the world. It is also associated with related trees such as the Banyan tree (vata) under which Shiva and Buddha have been seated in meditation.

Invoking Ashvatta in the body is to experience material nonlinearity. Ashvatta has roots from its branches in addition to under the ground. When the body experiences the lower body as the branches that reach out and act in the world, we bring the primeval and elemental nature of our consciousness to colour our minds.

We are invited to then free ourselves from literal associations—in other words allow this inverted tree to open us to the teaching it holds for our embodied life in this reality.

The shackles of the mind are not conceptual, they materially limit the potential of our bodies to fully realise their immanence. The mind can discover its own ancient unity with the primeval movements and sensations of Nature when lead by the sacred movements of the body. Then the secret of how the body becomes the Kshetra, or the site of Divine manifestation, is revealed to us.

The teaching of the tree is a signal of the nature of teaching itself as organic, of the body and Earth and intimate. When we move the tree in us without hierarchy and without our “knowledge” and labels, the Divine is experienced as material and intimate.