Interlocked Triangles The Symbol of Yoga

Yoga studios are everywhere, even in countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia, where they have been introduced through the backdoor via the Ministry of Sports. A few months ago, I heard a thoughtful lecture by Nouf Marwaai, Saudi Arabia’s first certified yoga instructor, and met others who had the most heartening stories to tell of yoga in Iran. And of course, June 21 is celebrated as the International Day of Yoga and promoted by the United Nations as a celebration of global health, harmony and peace.

Yoga initially appeals for it is good for physical health. But very soon, the practitioner realizes that the asanas have an influence on the mind, and as the mind calms and the practitioner become more reflective, the question of who the individual is comes to the fore. Yoga is not just the yoking of mind and body as is often claimed, but, more deeply, it is the yoking of the mind and the self. The body is merely the first step in this ladder of gradual ascent. [1]

 The journey to the center of being does not proceed the same way and with the same speed for all. For those whose mind is stuck in physicality, perhaps the benefits of yoga are limited. But for others it is a path of astonishing self-transformation and access to capacities one did not know one possessed.

Shiva-Shakti yantra

Most practitioners of yoga are familiar with its symbol of two interlocked triangles, but they generally don’t know the deeper meaning of the symbol. Many see them erroneously as nothing but the joining of the feminine and the masculine principles.background:white'>At a deeper level, the downward pointing triangle is the symbol of transformative energy (embodied by Nature, Shakti) whereas the triangle pointing upwards is the spirit or consciousness (शिवŚiva, the experiencing Self).

An elaborated Shiva-Shakti yantra

But a system of oppositions obscures as much as it reveals. How do the opposites engage with each other? And is the engagement two-sided?background:white'>Also what does consciousness mean? To the individual it is the contents of the mind and of all the things that are happening in the universe what sticks in the mind depends on one’s life-history and the nature of the cognitions, and the quality of the experience depends of mood and attention. So the experience of consciousness is a complicated matter which depends on a variety of things. At the deepest level, it is not the contents but rather the light of awareness that shines on things.

One way to look at the mind-body interaction is in terms of the physical and psychological elements. If one only looked at the physical elements, one must consider earth, water, fire, air, and akasha (ākāśa आकाश, ether). These are not to be taken literally. Earth is solidity, water is flow, fire is sublimation, air is movement, and akasha is ether, the manifold representing contact between mind and body.

In the elemental meaning of the yantra, the downward triangle represents water (आपः), whereas the upward triangle represents fire (तेजस् or अग्नि). The intersection of the two is in a dynamic interplay that may be viewed at different planes.

The circle around the triangles represents movement which stands for the action of the element air (vāyuवायु).background:white'>The square is the exterior limit of the yantra and symbolically, it represents the element earth (पृथिवी), where the four sides are the four cardinal directions.

The lotus is both a symbol of purity and variety and it is the emanation of light out of akasha (आकाश). When we speak of purity, we mean the Self, which is not stained by its interaction with materiality, because it is not in time and space.

At the center of the yantra, is an invisible dot (बिन्दु), from where the construction begins that ends with the outer square. At the grandest scale, this is the process of cosmic evolution, starting from the subtle and ending with embodiment.background:white'>Other deities along with their consorts may be identified with the two triangles as in the yantra below where the deities are Krishna and Radha.

Krishna and Radha yantra

Interaction between matter and consciousness


The interlocked triangles don’t tell you whether the spirit itself arises out of the material ground (as is commonly assumed in modern science) or if the spirit is different from matter (in which case you need to confront the paradox of how two unrelated categories can interact). These diverging positions are responsible for a lot of misunderstanding of yoga amongst laypersons and scholars alike.


Within the yoga tradition, there is no confusion. The tradition has a very subtle understanding of the interaction between matter and consciousness [2].


The Śrī-yantra is a further elaboration of the interlocked-triangles symbol that represents the cosmos both at the cosmic and the personal levels [3]. As one of the most famous symbols of esoteric spiritual knowledge, it needs much insider knowledge to appreciate all its deeper meaning. In it, consciousness (Śiva) is shown as an infinitesimal dot in the middle.


The interaction between matter and consciousness is postulated in terms of an observation process called dṛṣṭi-sṛṣṭi (creation through observation), which is consistent with a world governed by laws [4]. A meditation on the symbol of yoga opens doorways to universal spiritual knowledge (सनातन धर्म).



1 The Yoga system is complementary to other ways of obtaining knowledge, but it is the pre-eminent way for obtaining spiritual knowledge. See my books Mind and Self and Matter and Mind where this point is further elaborated.

2 S. Kak, Play of consciousness

3 For further information on the Śrī-yantra, see my essay The Great Goddess Lalitā and the Śrī CakraBrahmavidya: The Adyar Library Bulletin, 72–73: 155–172, 2008–2009.

4 For further information on the interaction between mind and matter read Artificial intelligence, consciousness, and the self by author. 

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Also read

1 Sri Vidya Mantra: Unravelling the Cosmos

2 The Tibetan Sand Mandala

3 From Yog to Yoga

4 Zero and Decimal invented to explain the structure of the universe by Yogis

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