1, 1 : atha yoga 'nusasanam
Now, when a sincere seeker approaches an enlightened teacher, with the right attitude of discipleship - free of preconceived notions and prejudices, and full of intelligent faith and receptivity - and with the right spirit of inquiry, at the right time and the right place, communication of yoga takes place.
Atha yoga nusasanam - here Patanjali says, 'I am merely giving you instruction in yoga.' Yoga teaching cannot be applied. It has to grow out of you, as flesh grows out of you and make you what you are, just as the bread and tomato you eat becomes assimilated. It is no longer bread and tomato, it becomes 'as similar' to you. The teaching must be assimilated so that it is no longer a foreign body, it has become you. This cannot be forced upon anyone.
Here the procedure is exactly the same as consuming food. The food for the stomach enters through the mouth, and the food for the antahkarana - the subtle inner being - enters through the ears and the eyes. You can see the distinction between the ears and the eyes. Only sound waves can enter through the ears, only visual impressions can enter through the eyes, though both these may be coordinated and consumed by the spirit. In the same way, the mouth consumes one form of nourishment and the eyes and ears consume other forms of nourishment, but all of them have to be processed in a similar way. Food should not be swallowed without chewing. If you try to swallow something without chewing it, since the stomach does not have teeth, it will throw it up or quickly eliminate it - either through the right channel or the wrong channel. Even so, un- chewed spiritual food is a menace. If what you see, read or hear is gulped down without being chewed, it also comes out of your mouth or through the other ear. If you like to be a lecturer, you hear and you read, and as soon as the idea enters, it immediately comes out through the mouth, and then its circuit is over. Even you do not remember later on what you read, heard or said.
Because of our anxiety to 'put things into practice', we hear something and we feel we must apply if to our lives. But applying the teaching does not work. The teaching has to be heard - sravana.The next stage is manana - reflection. You reflect upon what you have heard. In order to reflect efficiently, the surface of the mirror should be clean and held steady so that the teaching you have heard is reflected. In order that the mind may reflect the teaching without distortion, it must be efficient, steady and free from distortion and dirt. All these are taught in yoga.
Listen to the teaching, and let it be reflected in you. Then it is assimilated - nididhyasana - so that the teaching that you heard becomes you, and from there on the truth itself acts. If you try to act in accordance with the instruction - just as some people try to learn to cook from a cookery book - you make a mess of your life.For instance, if you want to make some coffee, the cookery book says, 'Put a pot of milk on the stove'. When it is coming to the boil, you must see what the book says. But before you can come back to the stove, there is no milk there! So, that does not work. You must become the cookery book - which is what most Indian women do. They do not know how to give you a recipe in the manner of the cookery book, but say, 'Take a little bit of salt and a little bit of ghee and keep it on the stove for some time ... ' How little is little, how much is much, how long is some time? Their cooking comes from their own sensitivity, not from the scales or the thermometer.
So, here is instruction in yoga. Listen to it. Let it be reflected in your heart and be assimilated by you. Later, let this instruction itself act.
The author of the Yoga Sutras does not claim to be the authority, nor does he impose the teaching upon anyone. It is only anusasanam - a piece of wholesome advice. So, here there is no compulsion or coercion, because when there is coercion, there is no action at all. For instance, if you tell someone to speak the truth always, and they say they will, that is already the first lie! The mind immediately wants to find ways and means of satisfying itself without violating the letter of the commandment. So anusasanam means 'optional' teaching'. The choice is entirely yours. This must be very clearly understood, otherwise the whole Scripture is misunderstood.
Yoga is defined as:
1, 2 : yogas citta vrtti nirodhah
Yoga happens when there is stilling - in the sense of continual and vigilant watchfulness - of the movement of thought - without expression or suppression - in the indivisible intelligence in which there is no movement.
The words citta vrtti and nirodha are almost impossible of direct translation. Citta has been translated into 'mind stuff' - unconscious mind, conscious mind, super-conscious mind, cosmic mind, individual mind and cosmic intelligence, all put together. So, citta is the consciousness that is indivisible, undivided. It is the totality of the mind, the mind-stuff, the totality of the intelligence which is indivisible, incapable of being partitioned - like space.
The next word is vrtti, which is equally difficult to translate. It has been rendered into thought wave, mental modification, or the ripples on the mind lake. The more words you use, the more obscure the meaning becomes.
If vrtti is understood, the whole thing is understood. What citta is, is not for the intellect to understand, for the simple reason that the intellect can only produce vrttis. So, a vrtti cannot understand what citta means. However much a limited, conditioned individual may try, he cannot grasp the infinite.
When the intellect begins to function, it creates space; beyond that space it creates an object for itself to know. With what can the subject be known? If the subject becomes the known, it becomes an object, which is impossible. Therefore, when the intellect is forced to do it, the intellect creates an image - the object, calling it a subject. So, when a person says, 'I know God,' that God becomes an object, not a subject. When a person says, 'I have understood what the infinite means,' he has only understood what the word infinite is.Can the infinite be known? What do you mean by that? You cannot deal with the infinite, the infinite deals with you. There is only one way in which you can deal with the infinite, and that is to surrender yourself - see I. 23.
Vrttis are the apparent modifications of the mind - thoughts, emotions, feelings, memories, etc. They are changing all the time. For instance, you meet a friend and in your heart, there is happiness. You experience that happiness, and you become aware that that happiness is in you. Your mind itself has assumed the form of that happiness, there is nothing else. Then you go to town for an important appointment and, as you walk towards the railway platform, you see the train pulling out. There is disappointment and anxiety. The anxiety is in you. Your mind itself has now assumed the form of that anxiety, and for the moment there is nothing else, you are swallowed up in it. Luckily for you it is not the totality of the mind, because the mind was there before the anxiety arose and it will probably survive this anxiety. The yogi directly sees that this thing called anxiety is but a small, temporary fragment of the mind.
Suddenly you realise that that which was happiness then, that itself is anxiety now. It has not changed. The apparent modification does not modify the mind, and therefore the mind - or the intelligence, awareness or consciousness - is forever indivisible. It does not undergo a permanent change, either for the better or the worse - that is why it is possible for yoga to be practised. The same mind- stuff, which was happiness at one stage, has undergone a temporary change which now appears to be anxiety. This mind-stuff is citta and the apparent modifications - of happiness or anxiety - are the vrttis.
Vrttis are there, not because you created them, but because the potentiality of vrtti formation is there in the mind. Why are they there? So that you may be vigilant. Why has God created a thief? So that you may lock your door, not hate the thief.Swami Sivananda always exemplified this in His life. He did not want His disciples to catch and kill the rats which came into the rooms and started to chew on their books and clothes. He said, 'If you value your books, clothes and manuscripts, put them in a proper cupboard and lock them up. Why leave them carelessly around and then go catch all the rats that are nibbling at them and throw them in the Ganges? The rats are there to teach you caution.' It is a beautiful way of looking at it. Everything has a meaning, and it is up to this intelligence to discover that meaning.
The relationship between what have been called the states of the mind - vrttis - and the reality of the mind - citta - is like the relationship between the content of a wave and the ocean. Right here it is good to remember that it is not necessary for the waves, whirlpools, ripples and the currents to cease in order that the ocean may continue to be ocean - ocean is always ocean, water is always water. Just because two different words are used, it is dangerous to assume that these are two different existential facts. You use the words 'ocean' and 'wave'; these are not two different things. It does not mean that you take a big broom and sweep all the waves away and have only pure ocean - that is ridiculous. To be able to look there and see it is water, never mind what shape it is, that is yoga.
In Sanskrit there is a lovely word - artha - which is taken to mean 'meaning'. The dictionary meaning is quit different from what is meant by the word artha, because the dictionary gives synonyms or paraphrases which imply an explanation. In Sanskrit it implies the thing itself. For instance, if the word 'shirt' in Sanskrit is used, and we are asked to give the artha, we are asked to give a shirt. So, artha means the object itself.
When the words citta and vrtti are used, what is the object they stand for? Here is a tape recorder - but what is the ciita, what is the vrtti? We do not want explanations. That is why Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, a small little text, is almost like an atom bomb!
Vrttis can be understood, can be known. Even to understand vrtti it needs great steadiness of mind and concentration, because only that which is stable and unmoving can really and truly study that which is moving. It is important that vrttis be understood and not turned into another concept. If it becomes another concept, it is possible for you to think that you understand. You make an image of it and that destroys the whole meditation. Then we begin to project that image, and think about the state or stage when the vrtti is not there.
Using modern psychological language, vrttis can be approximately described as 'learned knowledge'. Any learned knowledge is vrtti. To learned knowledge I might also add what is called instinct. It may be thought that instinct is not learned knowledge, but one can see again that it is a conditioning brought forward at birth.
Unlearned knowledge is what can be called natural knowledge, or intuitive knowledge. Intuitive knowledge is 'untutored knowledge'. A vrtti cannot look at that untutored knowledge.
At one point all these vrttis are seen by the observer as nothing other than intelligence, the same mind.
Can you observe the following within yourself? A memory, imagination or something else comes up - seeming to have its own independent existence. It seems to subside when you observe it; and it becomes nothing more and nothing less than the mind. That is called nirodha. While looking absolutely steadily within yourself, you see it as the citta, as the mind itself. Vasistha describes this very beautifully in the Yoga Vasistha. 'The indivisibility of the citta is realised as water mixing with water.' The vrtti and the citta, being made of the same stuff, become one - as water becomes one with water.
The word nirodha is very difficult to translate. It has been rendered into suppression or restraint. This has given rise to all sorts of misunderstandings - people justifying suppression of thought, etc. How do you suppress thought? How do you suppress that which you do not even know and which you do not even see? Then you create something within yourself - 'I am thinking of that ring now. I am going to suppress that thought.' What are you doing? You are not thinking. Which means you are thinking you are not thinking. What about the thought which says 'I am not thinking'? If you are not going to suppress the act of breathing and the pumping of your heart, why must you suppress another natural faculty called thought?
When you say that the content of the wave is water, what happens to the wave? Have you suppressed it, restrained it, abolished it? If you are still looking at the wave as a wave, you are not looking at the water. If you are looking at the whole thing as water, something has taken place within you, and that is called nirodha. So the word 'understanding' explains it better than the words 'suppression' or 'restraint'. The yogi is not interested in either expressing or suppressing, nor does he say that this alone is the truth or that alone is the truth.
Nirodha also means control, as in control of the car. Thought can be guided, attention can be focused - but that is not all. Unless you can come face to face with the thing called vrtti and the thing called citta, your efforts at controlling or directing them are bound to be futile, if not dangerous.
Try to figure out the answer to this question, 'What is the content of the wave?', and then transplant the whole process within yourself to your own psychological being - for instance by visualising the mind as the ocean. Just as a wave arises in the ocean, similarly the vrtti of anxiety arises in the mind, the citta. Is this anxiety a completely different thing, or is it the same as your mind? What are these thoughts, feelings and emotions? They cannot be got rid of by either expressing them or suppressing them. Try just keeping them there. You blink and you see the ocean, you blink again and see the many waves. Which is real? This or that? This is one point of view, that is another point of view. But, what is the truth?
Nirodha is what happens to you when you sincerely, seriously and intelligently ask yourself this question. It is not control, elimination of anxiety, or suppression of anxiety, because you are no longer anxious. When you are observing the mind and intelligently asking yourself this question, you are neither afraid of this anxiety, anxious about it, nor eager to get rid of it. What is there to get rid of? And when you are intelligently studying this phenomenon called anxiety, then you are in a state of yoga.
When you look at the ocean, you see the water and you see the waves. The content of the wave is water, the content of the ocean is water. If you can see merely water, that is the state of yoga. Something inexpressible but of tremendous importance takes place within you. It is not possible to make it an object of understanding, but it is something - and that is yoga. It is as if the totality called the ocean is looking at the wave. It is as if the totality of the mind, looking at this silly little anxiety, is not anxious about the anxiety any more. It is possible for the very simple reason that the mind is nothing but pure intelligence. That pure intelligence somehow confuses this small, temporary, insignificant fragment called a passing thought, or experience, with the whole of the mind. When this confusion somehow arises in the mind, there is trouble; but when the totality of the mind - which is intelligence - observes this fragment called anxiety, what happens within you is called nirodha. It is controlled, but not controlled in the ordinary sense of the word; it is transcended, but not in the ordinary sense of the word; it is suppressed, but not in the ordinary sense of the word. A mysterious 'something' takes place within you which I might call understanding, knowledge or self-knowledge.
In that self-knowledge, sorrow, physical and psychological pain and suffering come to an end without seeking to alter the physical reality. Nothing is altered except the understanding, which undergoes a tremendous transformation. Sorrow is not looked upon as sorrow any more, whatever be the external condition in which we are placed.
When the vrttis are controlled, it means that you are living with such intense awareness and care that in all these changes you are really unaffected. You are watching - intensely, immediately; and so, here and now, you are living with great alertness and vigilance. Suddenly, like a flash of lightning, you begin to understand that these changes happen, but there is an unchanging witness throughout. That which is aware of these changing moods is itself not changing. Waves roll on the surface of the ocean, but underneath the ground is still. But here the analogy is defective, because we are talking about two completely different things - the sea-bed and the water. In the case of the mind, or the consciousness or the intelligence, the whole thing takes place in one substance. It is the intelligence that, in its unmodified state, is able to watch all the modifications that take place on its own surface. The whole thing is citta, just as the waves, the currents, the streams and the unmoving substratum are the ocean. The movement takes place only in relation to an observer. The river flows only in relation to a person standing on its bank; but if you are the river, there is no motion, no change. You are the whole thing, you are the totality.
It is only when you separate yourself from any one of these experiences that it is seen as a movement; but when you are the total experience, the total intelligence, there is no movement. When you are the total consciousness, all changes that take place within the total consciousness are part of the total consciousness. For instance, when you look at the small fragments of your own physical body - your heart, etc. - you find tremendous activity going on in every department of your physical being; but when you view the whole thing, it is one - steady, stable and peaceful. There are no changes at all. That is citta vrtti nirodha. What is, is what is, without distortion or limitation. That is the realisation of the truth.
Raja Yoga can be practised wherever you are, whatever you are doing. It does not interfere with your life style, your religious belief or disbelief, with whatever you are or your station in life. Therefore, it is possible for all of us; and it is meant for all of us. It is not something which can be practised for half an hour in the morning and ten minutes in the afternoon. It is something which encompasses the whole of life.
Once this new vision is gained, then all division in life disappears - in exactly the same way as there seems to be a distance between two waves; but that wave, this wave, and the space in between, are all the one indivisible ocean. The distance has disappeared.
When you understand the content of these thoughts - fear, anxiety, etc., you realise - not as a thought or object of psychological experience, but from within - that they are nothing but experiencing, and all words are but sounds. Language was not invented for the expression of this truth of divisionless oneness. When there is no division in one's vision - which is enlightenment - who are you going to talk to, and about what? Here is something which is not capable of being communicated, and need not be communicated. When you and I - two waves - somehow realise that we are both made of the same water, then there is heart to heart communication. It is beyond the realm of communication.
Can you understand the totality of the mind-stuff - the ocean, the intelligence, without particularising a concept, and blessing that concept with the distinction of being a thing in itself? Can you become aware of the totality of existence, of the indivisibility of intelligence, without according a concept or an idea the distinction of being an independent entity in itself? That is the only thing that yoga asks of us.
1, 3 : tada drastuh svarupe 'vasthanam
In the light of non-volitional, non-moving and therefore spontaneous and choice-less awareness, the undivided intelligence with its apparent and passing modifications or movements of thought within itself is not confused with nor confined to any of these. Then - when yoga thus happens, the see-er - or the homogenous intelligence which is ignorantly regarded as the separate experiencer of sensations and emotions, and the separate performer of actions - is not split up into one or the other of the states or modifications of the mind, and exists by itself and as itself.
When yogas citta vrtti nirodhah has been achieved, then the see-er - or the experiencer - rests in himself in an unmodified state; he remains pure and unsullied, just as an experiencer.
Here sight is given as a thing to cover perception by all the senses, as well as psychological perception. 'Drastuh' is one who sees, who experiences. Please note that at this stage the first person singular 'I' is not used.
There is nothing wrong with seeing or with sight, there is nothing wrong with things seen, and in the same way, there is absolutely nothing wrong with anything that happens to you - neither what is called pleasure nor what is called pain - as long as you do not call it anything and can just be that, without creating a division.
You go on seeing and, in the intensity of that vision, suddenly there is an understanding that seeing alone is true, observation alone is true, pure experiencing alone is true. What is considered the ego is nothing but the pure experiencing, wanting as it were to experience its own experience. There is suddenly the awareness that consciousness is all the time, and all experiencing is made possible in that consciousness by that consciousness. Consciousness rests, without a division, as the totality.
The see-er, or sight, remains as the pure experiencing, just as the ocean constantly remains the ocean. The waves may be breaking on the shore, but the ocean is not diminished thereby; the waves may be rolling back into the sea, but the ocean is not increased. In that pure experiencing, there is no sorrow. Because this is unusual, the mind suggests that it is probably not true. But if you examine the state of sleep, you see that there is no sorrow there, because there is not a division of the experience of sleep and the experiencer of sleep. You do not sleep; sleep sleeps you, or sleep sleeps itself and you are merely involved in it.
Any experience of a similar nature, in which there is no divided experience, is pure. In it there is no sin and no suffering. Such is the state of a yogi.
There, the see-er, the observer of all this, the experiencer of all experiences, remains in his own state of perfection, unmodified by vrttis, samskaras, ego- sense or mind. He neither undergoes modification nor creates a division between the object and the experience. So, self-knowledge is not the absolute negation of any point of view, but the subtle transcendence of all individual points of view so that the totality may be realised. Therefore, there is neither repression, suppression, nor anything that we can discuss. There is nothing that the mind can grasp and hold. Because it is total, it is cosmic in its dimensions. It is the infinite.That infinite is the see-er, the experiencer of all experiences. That 'is', and therefore all else 'is'. It is because it exists that everything else shines. And yet, strangely enough, even though that self continues to exist in all these states and continues to be the substratum of all these points of view, the observer remains forever unmodified. The self itself does not undergo modification. This state of yoga can be called deep meditation or super-conscious state. When you are in that state of yoga, it is there within you, and it is accessible.
In the state of yoga, intelligence functions naturally in its own natural form - or formlessness.
We do not suffer from our nature at all. I am a human being and it does not create any problem at all in my life, or cause me the least unhappiness. I am a man and it does not create any problem at all in my life. It does not bother me. That which is natural is free. The intelligence that is built into me sees the naturalness of it and therefore does not reject it, sees the naturalness of something passing and does not desire it. It is important to remember this.
That which is natural does not create any problem and is permanent, it does not change. If we talk of nature and the needlessness of the change in nature, then somebody or other gets the wrong idea, 'Oh, I am a man of vicious nature. I do not have to change my vicious nature.' The viciousness is not part of your nature, it is a modification that comes in later, a change in the mood of the mind. If you say it is human nature to be violent sometimes, it cannot be sometimes; if you say there is violence in human nature, you must be violent from morning till night, and night till morning. You are a human being twenty four hours of the day. You were born a human being and will die as a human being.
I do not accept that violence is part of human nature - it is not so. I have a rather unorthodox way of explaining it. You cannot get angry at will. Try now! Anger is a change that takes place occasionally. So, it is not part of your nature. It seems to possess you temporarily and then leave you.
So, what is natural and therefore permanent, does not cause any problem in our lives.
1, 4 : vrtti sarupyam itaratra
At other times, when yoga does not happen and when the mind is busily occupied with the movement, there is a cloud of confusion in the undivided, homogeneous intelligence. In the shadow of that cloud, there arises false identification or cognition of the movement of the mind-fragment and hence distorted understanding. The single concept or idea or the single movement of thought is mistaken as the totality.
The definition is difficult to understand, the goal and the landmark are difficult to understand, but when it comes to this Sutra, we can understand. If yoga does not happen, then we recognise this landmark, because we are in that state. The mind is nothing but the prevailing vrtti. My guru, Swami Sivananda, often used to ask, 'Do you know what vrtti is operating in your mind?'
We often use the expressions, 'I think this is right, I think this is wrong'. Do we ever know anything other than 'I think'? Whether it is explicitly said or implied, this 'I think' seems to form part of all our concepts, statements and experiences. That is interesting.
For instance, you think there is a pain in your stomach. What is this pain? It is a sensation. It is the manner in which the nerves behave and convey the message to your brain. When, how and why is it called pain? Because you think it is pain. At the time of experiencing this pain, the experience is real; but since you have conditioned yourself to thinking this is painful, you experience pain. In pleasure it is the same. Something that is painful according to you is pleasure to somebody else, or what is pleasure at one time is pain at another, depending upon what you think.
I will give you an example. A young lady is sitting in the audience. She feels somebody tickling her from behind. That is pure and simple experiencing - neither pleasurable nor painful. She looks back and sees her husband. She smiles - it is delightful. If it is not the husband but somebody else, she becomes angry. The experience - tickling - was the same, but in one case the mind says this is pleasure and enjoys it, and in the other case the mind says it is pain, and therefore it suffers pain. The purity of experiencing is lost and the prevailing thought becomes your experience. This is almost totally unrelated to the experiencing itself, which may be totally neutral.
Our whole life is made up of thinking it is pain and experiencing pain, thinking it is pleasure and experiencing pleasure. This is because we have not understood at all what citta is, what vrtti is, and what we do with the citta and vrtti. When the understanding is not there, we go round and round in circles, endlessly creating our own pain and our own pleasure, running away from self-created pain and running after self-created pleasure.
Yoga is a clear understanding of the relationship between mind and thought. If this understanding is not there, you mistake one single thought, feeling or emotion for the totality. This one little emotion becomes magnified to such an extent that it engulfs you. Thoughts and feelings that prevail in your mind determine the world around you, and you are ruled by the prevailing mood of the mind.
You can see that successively changing moods of mind create problems in your life, causing a lot of sorrow, suffering and unhappiness. Then you begin to watch your mind and the problems that the mind creates in your life, and to see them happen, and how these changes take place.
You were asleep and when you woke up you realised that you slept like a log. You knew nothing. That is one state. That is not natural to you because you are not sleeping all the time. That mood passed away. Then you are in a new mood. You sit down to meditate. Your thoughts are all angelic, you are uplifted, elevated. Maybe you go to the celestial spheres and have a cup of tea with some of these celestial gods and goddesses. Then, after 45 minutes or so you leave the meditation seat. You are still in an exalted mood. You want to have a cup of coffee. You put the milk on the stove, and then the milk boils over. The exalted mood and the peace have gone. You are agitated. Just then your little baby comes in calling, 'Mummy I want...' You shout, 'Go away!'
How did this happen? A few minutes ago you were in the celestial spheres, and now you are so terribly agitated and anxious that you are slapping your own child!
When each one of these moods prevails, you are that mood. You hardly remember what it was like to be peaceful, and when you are peaceful you hardly remember what it was like to be agitated. If you are able to remember, you think you must be mad. 'How could I ever do that?'
You try to tell yourself that, next time the milk boils over, you will not lose your temper or become nervous; but the next time the milk usually boils over when you are not looking. That is why it boils over! The next time it happens, you are as mad, at least, as you were before, because this changed mood becomes you - there is no part of you left to control this.
Is there a way in which you can modify this? It does not look like it, because every time the mood changes, the whole of you changes. You tend to identify yourself with each mood so thoroughly that nothing else seems to exist. Your consciousness clings to one little point of view, thinking that that is real. The yogi does not say that it is unreal; he merely says that that is not the totality, but a mere passing mood.
The self itself seems to undergo modification. You are what you think you are from moment to moment. Now you think you are a swami; when you are dreaming that a tiger is about to attack you, you are a frightened man; when you are asleep, you are stupid. It may be relevant to ask, 'Which one is me?' Are you the stupid man, the frightened man or the yogi? How come you can be all three rolled into one? It does not seem to make any sense at all. In other words, experience seems to modify the self - or the experiencer. But does the experience that you are undergoing at the moment bring about a complete and irreversible transformation in the self? You thought you were somebody, and that somebody was going to be that somebody until the body is dropped. But it is not so. When you go to sleep or when you dream, there is not an irreversible change, because you wake up. So it seems as though these modifications are not irreversible - which means they are apparent. That is what they mean when they call it illusion - maya.
The yogi is not motivated by happiness or unhappiness because, if there is a longing for happiness, that is already unhappiness. He is merely interested in the knowledge, the pure experiencing, which is the same in all cases.
We may consider ourselves enlightened, clever and wise, but that only amounts to 'we think we are clever and wise.' All the time we only think. As long as this mental activity continues, we are still in confusion, we are fooling ourselves. When there is division, in this vision there is self-limitation; and that limitation, whatever one may think oneself to be, is still limited.
1, 5 : vrttayah pancatayyah klista 'klistah
These apparent movements or states or moods of the mind, which are concepts, ideas or images in it, can all be grouped under five categories, irrespective of whether they are experienced as painful or not-painful, and whether or not they are covertly or clearly tainted by the five-fold afflictions described later.
All vrttis, regardless of whether they are painful or not-painful, can be grouped under five categories. They are the only basis for the changes that the mind undergoes.
These changes sometimes cause pleasant and sometimes unpleasant reactions. They are successive. You do not know of a state other than these because, as long as you are awake, you are thinking, and you are a slave to these thoughts. You do not know if there is an 'I' apart from these changing moods of the mind.It is important for us to grasp this. At this stage, there is not even a hope of overcoming this; you are merely studying it because you feel trapped in these changing moods of the mind and it does not feel good.
When you see that there is no possibility of you getting away from this, nor can you ever be reconciled to it, it is then that you are intensely and immediately caught up in this problem which is with you till it is finally solved.Intensely means without a tense - without a past, present and a future, without separation in time; and immediately means without a mediator, without separation in space.You cannot rebel against it because it is within you.
1, 6 : pramanaviparyaya vikalpa nidra smrtayah
These five categories of apparent movements of the mind are: (1) proven theory, which is often assumed to have been reliably proved and therefore to constitute right knowledge; or, rationalisation of the movement of thought; (2) unsound thinking or wrong knowledge, assumptions, presumptions, beliefs - deductions and inference may be included here; or verbal condemnation of the movement of thought as wrong; (3) fancy or hallucination or imagination totally unrelated to any proven or assumed theories, which may also include the delusion that one is already out of the movement of thought; (4) a state of dullness or sleep; or succumbing to the movement of thought, feeling it is impossible to go beyond it; (5) memory, or the recollection of a teaching or an experience which gives rise to the notion that it is possible to go beyond the movement of thought; such a notion forms an image.
Whether you call them pleasant or unpleasant - right knowledge, wrong knowledge, imagination, sleep and memory are the five vrttis or categories of mental and psychological limitation; but on account of our ignorance we take each one to be the total reality.For instance, you are happy at meeting a friend and there is nothing but happiness in you. Then you just miss the train you needed to catch and you are frustrated and ready to fight with anybody at that time. Since you are touching frustration and frustration is touching you, during that period you create frustration. When that has gone you become something else; and therefore this 'becoming' continues to change. You change from one to the other, imagining during that period that either the whole world is heaven or the whole world is hell. The mistaking of that partial experience for the totality or your whole being is the error.
Raja Yoga is meant to enable us to understand the whole business of life - of experiencing and expression. When energy enters the personality, it is the experience; and the same energy, when it leaves the personality, is the expression. It is the personality which interprets it as right knowledge, wrong knowledge, right action, indifferent action, wrong action, imagination, etc. Neither the flow of energy, nor the consciousness which is everywhere all the time, is affected by any of these. The energy that is constantly moving, passes through you. It is not affected by anything that you do. Knowing that we are related to this life and to this world of experiencing and expression, a clear understanding of what a vrtti is, immediately enables us to understand the truth concerning the nature of both experience and expression.
The 'I am' is a vrtti, and this vrtti assumes from there on that what is happening everywhere is 'my' experience. For instance, when there is a cool breeze, it flows everywhere, but you feel it on your back and so that becomes an experience to you. When you start to sneeze, that becomes an expression. At first, it is an experience of cold, and then it is an expression of sneezing.
If you know that even this 'I am' has not got an independent reality, but is one ripple in the totality, then there is no problem at all. It is not you experiencing any more, it is not you doing. 'I' is not the doer any more. Consciousness is there everywhere. That cannot be destroyed. It knows what to do, because it is intelligent. It is only as long as the I feels itself to be the doer, when the action springs from the vrtti, that there is the need for it to classify its action as right action, wrong action, etc.
Right knowledge
Even in what we have agreed to call the truth there is a lot of frustration, which is dreadfully obvious in the case of religion.You are quite definite that this is the truth, but someone else does not accept it as the truth. How is it that you cannot make him understand? So, even in what is called right knowledge - if you assume responsibility for that and if your attitude and relationship towards him are based on what you are convinced is right knowledge - there is sorrow and the area around you is miserable.
Wrong knowledge
At other times, the expression, as it passes through the 'I am', is interpreted by the 'I am' in a wrong manner. If your actions and behaviour spring from wrong knowledge, they can lead into all sorts of difficulties, and are fraught with danger.
Imagination
Then there is imagination, where the same energy is flowing through the 'I am'. It is just thoughts flowing through. These thoughts have nothing whatsoever to do with the 'I am', which is itself a movement of energy in consciousness. If this 'I am' says a certain young lady is not a human being at all, but a goddess, that is imagination. Imagination gets a rude shock sooner or later. Here your actions and behaviour spring from that imagination, and any action that springs from imagination is foolish, stupid and is bound to - hopefully - bring some trouble or difficulty.
Memory
The flow of energy through this personality naturally leaves some trace, which is called the memory - vasana or samskara. Action springing from that is fraught with danger. Any action which is based on memory is defective or inappropriate action. The world has been changing, but your action is based upon something which does not exist now, in the present. First of all, the memory itself is a bit tricky, and if you assume the memory to be correct, it can already lead you astray. Even if the memory does not play tricks with you, any action that springs from that memory is defective and inappropriate, because the action is in the now, but it springs from the past. The memory being a thing of the past, the past had better bury it. It has no relevance now at all, it is a distracting force.
Sleep
Sleep is not a complete non-existence of the self - if it is so, then it is moksa, liberation.Sleep is probably the best part of our life. If you add up all the hours that a person sleeps from birth till death, it is at least half! In sleep, the self thinks, 'I do not think.' It can also be shutting one's mind away.
Sleep also includes dreaming, and a lot of imagination and probably revival of memory also.
So, these five are not completely water-tight and separate activities. One interferes with the other and involves the other. There are permutations and combinations. These five can also be interpreted in another way. For example, you see that your whole life is ruined by these vrtti, and you must find out what they are. Who it is that finds out, is another vrtti. The 'I know' is just as disastrous as the 'I do not know'.
What you have read in Indian scriptures or some of Buddha's teachings is not your knowledge, but what you think is right knowledge; and all dogmas are made up of what you think. That is totally wrong knowledge. If you believe in this, once again you are caught - there is no freedom. You get reconciled to it, until the next blow comes along. As soon as the next blow strikes, you are awakened, disillusioned and you imagine that you are out of it.
Who is thinking? The vrtti. The vrtti is not outside all this.
Sometimes you are granted an experience of having transcended the vrtti - and you say, 'That's it!' That is not it. It is not a thing which can be caught and stored in memory, but somehow you think you can recall that experience in memory. So, if in retrospect you remember having transcended the vrtti, that is of no use to you now, and you cannot go back to that. When a remembered experience makes you feel, in the present, that you have transcended the vrtti, this is considered the most subtle and intractable obstacle in Raja Yoga and meditation too.
So, right knowledge, wrong knowledge, imagination, sleep and memory are the five forms of the vrtti state within us, and all of them suffer from one universal characteristic - limitation. The enlightened person is able to look into that experience - or concept - and see the reality - which is intelligence. When that pure intelligence is ignored and these begin to rule you, there is no state of yoga.
These five cover our entire life. It is possible for us, if we are some sort of specialists, to take one of these and go to the root; but then, unless your concentration is extremely strong, there is a risk of the self's activity being carried on in other spheres. If the concentration is strong you can dispel the idea of the self, but if it is not strong, then it is possible that while you are working on one aspect, the other aspects are flourishing.
The self can go on thinking, creating thoughts and concepts, and of course think they are right and logical. It might even think absurd thoughts and think that they are also right. It can register impressions or experiences as memory and occasionally revive that memory. It can indulge in imagination. And when it does not want to do any of these, it can go to sleep. This is the endless activity of the self. The self or the understander cannot be understood. But when these five activities are observed, through them one can go right up to this understander, find the understander. When the understander is understood in awakened intelligence, then the psychological disturbance - which is pain or sorrow in life - is removed.
Must the vrtti disappear in a state of yoga? Perhaps yes, perhaps no. One has to approach that a bit cautiously. What was regarded as the object - whether the knowledge concerning it was valid or not valid, right or wrong - will continue to exist. You may have good or bad thoughts about a certain person; when you are spiritually awakened, something happens within you, but he does not disappear.
It is a very tricky game from there. It is not right to say that, when there is enlightenment, these vrtti will subside. They will not subside, as such - just as the waves, as such, do not subside - but your perception of the waves as something different, distinct and separate from the ocean has gone. What it is, is inexpressible: a vision of the totality without the particulars being destroyed, and yet a vision in which there is no division. That is the state of yoga.
1, 7 : pratyaksa 'numana 'gamah pramanani
What are proven theories? Theories are said to derive their proof from one or the other of the following sources: (1) direct perception, sense experience, or intuition; (2) deduction or extension of direct perception and sense-experience or beliefs; in the absence of direct proof or experience, indirect proof is deduced from the right or wrong application of principles of logic chosen by oneself, which often lead to vague generalisations or presumptions that 'since the theory comes from a usually reliable source, it must be correct'; (3) scriptural or other trustworthy testimony or authority - where, again, one accepts as proof the statements of those whom one has accepted as the authority, such acceptance being blind and fanatic.
Pramana - right knowledge means proof, logical reasoning or measuring. Reasoning is a form of measuring. For instance, if your arguments are measuring up to his expectations, then to him you are reasonable and correct. It is scientific. As long as your argument satisfies his measure, you are right; which means that you must talk in his language or instance; if he is a physicist, you must talk to him in the physicist's language. The same argument towards a psychologist is not acceptable. He will not understand, because he has a psychological measure; but if you talk to him in his language, he is quite pleased. Then the theologians do not agree. So, each of us has some measure which keeps on measuring everything.
Measuring also involves the dualistic principles of 'this is beautiful', 'this is not beautiful'. You say that something is beautiful because it satisfies your measure. There is absolutely no reason - but this is called reason.
When we use the word pramana - proven theories or right knowledge in the context of yoga or vedanta, it is right knowledge according to tradition, to one's own belief; but these are vrttis, fragments, and a fragment is not the whole truth. What is fragmentary is false - not in the sense that it does not exist. For instance, you cannot say that the true ocean is a waveless ocean; but when the mind says it is a wave apart from the ocean, that is the mistake.
From where do we derive this right knowledge?Firstly, what has been seen - pratyaksa - is right knowledge. For instance, that this is a book is right knowledge.The grounding of our knowledge is arbitrary. For instance, when teaching geometry the schoolmaster puts a mark on the blackboard with a thick piece of chalk, and says, 'This is a point.', it isn't, it is a big circle. We have to go on these axioms and never question the teacher. If you advance in mathematics you will learn that a point is only a concept in your mind and that there is no such thing as a straight line. So, because our sight is limited, right knowledge is also limited.
Aumana is inference. Because the body that you cut up in the medical school had a heart on the left side of the chest, each person must also have a heart in that place. That is inference.
Agama is the word of an expert. Your grandfather was breathing and suddenly the breathing stopped. You get a death certificate from the doctor, who wrote, 'He died of heart failure.' You do not question a doctor, because he is an expert.
What has been cognised by the senses, inference, and the word of an expert, are the three sources of right knowledge.
1, 8 : viparyayo mithya-jnanam atad rupa pratistham
Unsound thinking or wrong knowledge is based on error, on mistaken identity, where the cognition is unreal and faulty and hence the knowledge is faulty too; and where there is no agreement between the expression and the experience, between the substance and the description.
After this comes viparyaya - wrong knowledge. You do not want to accept something, so you create your own ideas. I will give you an interesting and humorous example of wrong knowledge.
A friend of mine, who was a doctor working for the World Health Organization as a malaria expert, went to Boston about 40 years ago and was invited to talk to a wonderful group about Indian culture and philosophy. At question time one lady asked, 'Is it true that in India, even today, as soon as a female child is born it is choked to death?' The doctor was a very good man and did not want to offend the people by being rude to them, so he replied very politely, 'Yes madam, I guess so. And you see in front of you an Indian born of two fathers!' Her knowledge is a perfect example of wrong knowledge.
So, wrong knowledge is when you think that an object is what it is not. Children think that the earth is covered by a blue glass dome - the sky. You know it is wrong.
In our scriptures there are some standard examples where a description does not tally with any existent thing, e.g. in the dark a rope appears to be a snake, or when you walk through a desert a mirage appears to be water. But you know it is wrong knowledge.
Wrong knowledge is based on error, where the knowledge is faulty and there is no agreement between the substance and the description.
1, 9 : sabda jnana 'nupati vastu-sunyo vikalpah
Fanciful or hallucinatory expressions and even experiences or imaginations are 'sound without substance', empty words and phrases or descriptions which have no corresponding reality, however realistic or inspiring or satisfying they may appear to be; hence they are the most deceptive and least trustworthy.
Even what you call knowledge, theory, or doctrine, are born from ignorance, whether they are accepted as right or wrong knowledge; a kind of confusion of all this is what is called imagination - vikalpa.
Imagination ruins our lives in a million ways. All of us are subject to this. The stronger the imagination, the more real it appears to be, and nothing that we do can enable us to jump out of it. Here is something which we can neither confirm nor deny, which can neither be proved nor disproved, and it keeps tearing at our vitals. Almost eighty to ninety percent of our miseries are born of imagination.
What is imagination? Imagination is an image created in. It is in you, nowhere else. It is merely a thought, and it has no independent reality.
One must acquire the faculty of distinguishing between imagination and the reality. If imagination grips you, it is very difficult to get out of it, and it is continuous sorrow. Even if your imagination presents a very pleasant picture, it is sorrow, because at the same time the imagination stretches a little more and is worried about the loss of the thing which you wish for.
In imagination one can see that the understander or the ego functions totally irrationally. When it comes to relationship, it is even more complicated. No two people see another person exactly alike. If you really contemplate this, you might become frightened - or enlightened!
But, imagination as imagination is alright. For instance, if you are sitting in what is called a meditation exercise, and you imagine a figure of your guru, that is all right, because you know it is imagination. But when you imagine something and go about as if that imaginary object or happening itself is real, then you are trapped. This happens to all of us all the time. You give the imagination more value and more reality than it need have.
Imagination is one of the favourite activities of the mind, and it leads to endless difficulties and problems. Therefore a yogi is cautious not to allow it to interfere in his life.
1, 10 : abhava pratyaya 'lambana vrttir nidra
When nothingness or void is the content of the mind, when the idea of nothingness alone prevails, or when the mind thinks that it does not think at all, there is sleep, which is a state of mental or psychic inertia.
Patanjali also includes sleep - nidra as a vrtti, as another of these fragmented experiences, because we regard sleep as only a temporary feature of our life. You are not asleep now. The rest of the time the sleep experience is contradicted, and therefore sleep is also a form of limitation.
When a man thinks he is asleep, and does not know anything at all, and thinks he does not think at all, that single thought is sleep. I am using the word 'thought' in a very loose and vague sense. Sleep is not the total annihilation of the mind substance, of the latent impressions formed by the conditioning that has been brought about in the mind, of the vrtti that are there; but the whole thing has been blanketed.
In sleep there is whatever there is - plus an ignorance of whatever there is. The purest of experiencing and of happiness itself were there; but in that state of sleep even that experience was not experienced.
However, sleep is not non-experience. Sleep is experiencing a thing called nothing. Normally you think 'now I am wide awake, when I am tired I dream, and then I sleep' and that these three are distinct and different states, one following the other; that is, when the waking state comes to an end dreaming starts, and when dreaming ends sleep starts. But there is a commentary written on the Mandukya Upanisad where the author says that these three exist all the time. When you think you are awake, you are already dreaming and sleeping at the same time. For instance, when you are absorbed in a lecture or conversation, you have temporarily forgotten where you are - that there is a carpet underfoot and that your friend is sitting next to you. Therefore you have been asleep to everything around you. But you have also been dreaming. Every word stirred up an image in you, so that, as you are listening, the mind is also displaying its own pictures. That is already a dream. When you are dreaming, you are also awake. Similarly, when you are fast asleep, you are also in another world called the sleep world, where you are experiencing another type of experience comparable to the dream state and to the experience of waking.
So, right now there are three worlds: the world of ignorance, the world of dream, and the world of the waking state. The three together is the reality. In and through all these there is something which remains undivided and indivisible. That is the reality, that is the truth. Once the truth concerning the awareness that exists even during sleep is clearly understood, then one realises that there is an unbroken awareness in waking, sleeping, and dreaming.
When that becomes a realisation, you are free. That is what is called enlightenment, samadhi, satori, etc. All these words denote one thing - a direct awareness of this simple and fundamental truth that there is no division between what is called waking and dream, and between these two and sleep.
1, 11 : anubhuta visaya 'sampramosah smrtih
Memory is the non-abandonment of the impression created by past experiences, which is revived with much the same impact on the mind-stuff as at the time of the original experience, but with or without the original details and emotional response.
Smrti is memory. Right knowledge, wrong knowledge and imagination are gathered together, registered, accumulated, preserved, and remembered, and therefore there is memory.
Memory is past experience. The impression created by a past experience has not been completely lost. You can recall the memory, the impression or experience left on the mind stuff, and observe it; but it is not the experience. It does not have the same emotional impact; and yet it can create great sorrow.
Yoga says let the mind be mind. Past experiences float in, but let them not colour the.mind. We do not retain the memory. The memory is always there. Even memory does not jump up of its own accord. The attention scans, looks at memory, and picks it up.
So, when do memories interrupt the flow and when do they not? Memory in itself does not go about inviting or rejecting experiences. It is like plain glass, which is absolutely transparent. It does not discriminate at all, it is just memory. When a memory is coloured, it evokes emotional responses. Memory itself does not colour. Colouring involves memory, but it also involves a lot more than memory. It cuts a groove which invites the memory to flow there.
Every time there is a strong memory you are almost possessed by it. Depending upon the intensity of the past experience, sometimes it seems to invoke emotional responses and sometimes it is just a matter of revival of thought. The experience is gone, and yet you can revive the impression of that past experience and suffer as if you are undergoing the experience now. Many of us indulge in this pastime. My guru, Swami Sivananda, was the only person I have seen who was totally free from this, especially if it was an unpleasant experience.
When there is doubt and confusion, you look to authority for its removal. 'Someone told me; I read somewhere; I heard somewhere,' are all stored in the memory bank and you draw upon that in order to drive doubts away. It does not help, because in that memory bank are stored not only these ideas but contrary ideas. When you want to join with me you pick up that, when you want to argue against me, you pick up something else. It does not help.
Memory is mixed up with imagination. In course of time the distinction between what is real and what is unreal becomes blurred, because all the time imagination is distorting that memory.
Memory is just past conditioning. It may have its own uses, but when it is allowed to generate action, it spoils life. When you have a family and a firm circle of friendship, you probably understand how little things add up in memory and become a big thing. If memory is not allowed to interfere in our relationships, they will be most wonderful.
1, 12 : abhyasa vairagyabhyam tan nirodhah
The right understanding and the realisation of the real nature of these five categories of mental states is gained by (1) right exertion, and (2) the simultaneous, effortless and wise avoidance of the distracting influences. The latter includes the non-arousal of cravings and attractions that compound one's confusion, and the steady perception in the inner Light that the mistaking of the mental states for the undivided intelligence, is both the cause and the effect of the clouding of the Light. Such perception is sufficiently strong and wise to know that the intelligence is forever uncoloured by ignorant waywardness.
There are several different interpretations of abhyasa, vairagya and nirodha.
Abhyasa
Traditionally, abhyasa means repeated practice which does not become repetitive and dull. This practice can either augment the inner light or put it out. The same agent can have two opposite effects; just as if you blow a spark too hard, it goes out; but if the breath is rightly applied, it makes the spark glow. So, abhyasa can either lead to more and more vigilance and alertness - or dullness and sleep. If the mind is dull, there is no zeal in it, and such a mind should not have taken up yoga.
What is practice? Whatever enables us to be steadily rooted in enquiry, in vigilance. Unless this is borne in mind, you may start doing something which might lead you astray, instead of helping you. One must ensure that at every step there is some light, otherwise there is something wrong with your practice. If you are proceeding towards enlightenment, every step you take must result immediately in some form of minor enlightenment; and from there on it must gradually spread to your whole being. Doubt must lessen in intensity, grief must disappear, confusion must clear, and occasionally you must get a glimpse of the truth. Only then are you proceeding in the right direction. If, as you go on practising this yoga you become more and more moody, more and more morose and dull, stupid, confused, grief-stricken, with a long face, then there is something wrong with that practice.
Mahatma Gandhi said that hatha yoga asanas, pranayama, study and japa all come under abhyasa. That is the traditional meaning. It does not matter what practice we undertake, as long as it has some relevance to our life.Yoga means joining. But it is a tragedy that often our yoga has no relevance to our life at all. It seems to be completely disjointed, disconnected. Why not be a part of the life stream, and live such a life as would be in strict accordance with the spirit of yoga? Then you become a yogi, never mind your appearance.
Practice implies a certain repetition. The need for repetition arises because the understanding is still not there. It is not possible to try to develop this understanding.
Why must a thing be repeated? You have a second piece of toast for breakfast because the first piece was not adequate. If the first piece of toast was adequate, you would not have to repeat it. In a manner of speaking, abhyasa means both repetition and not repetition. Your hunger is not satisfied with the first piece of toast - only the second piece really satisfies your hunger. You may say, with sufficient reasoning and logic, that it was because the first one lay in the stomach that the second piece was satisfying. But you can see that there can be at least two points of view to this argument.Does abhyasa mean that every time you attempt to meditate you are making some progress, or does it mean that no progress is made until actual progress is made? If you want to jump over a well ten feet in diameter, the ability to jump six feet or eight is of precisely the same value - anything less than ten is useless. Similarly, death can be looked upon as an instantaneous phenomenon or as a gradual phenomenon. As a man gradually gets old, you notice that the symptoms of death are ever present in him, gradually increasing in severity and spreading from one part to all the other parts of the body. But until he is dead he is still alive. This is one way of looking at it.There are others who say that as you go on with your practice, you are gradually rubbing out impurities little by little - as long as you refrain from adding further impurities to those that existed already. So, one can look at this phenomenon called abhyasa or practice from different sides, but it does imply repeated practice. It looks like an effort, but it is not; it looks like an attempt, but it is not. It may take time or it may not.
Vairagya
The word vairagya has about a page full of meanings. It is the opposite of raga, which means anything that promotes your pleasure instinct - for instance, what music is to the ear and what colour is to the eye. Anything that pleases the senses is raga, and the result is also raga. When there is infatuation or inordinate, irrational affection, that is also raga. Its opposite is vairagya.
So, vairagya has two essential meanings - one being the absence of all attraction, passion or infatuation, the other being the absence of mental colouring, which inevitably goes with attraction. First, the mind considers something as pleasure, and that object or experience is thenceforth coloured with that evaluation. If you wear coloured glasses when you look at a man, you are not seeing him as he is. The absence of such colouring is vairdgya.
Vairagya is not a commandment to run away from truth, but to discard colouring. If the coloured glasses are thrown away, then you see him as he is, irrespective of whether he wants to please you or harm you. Can you see another person without distortion? Can you break the mask that you are wearing of yourself and come face to face with him? To do that is vairagya.
The essential thing is to uncolour the mind. In order to do this you must become aware that the craving that arises in you for a certain object is because of that colouring. The eyes looked at that object, but the mind registered it, and took a picture. Now the mind is coloured by that picture and that keeps on recurring and creating a desire, a craving. That must somehow be undone.
The craving arises even when the object is not present. Is it possible for you to realise at that point that what you are craving for is not here? For instance, you have a scripture in front of you which you want to read, but this face jumps on to that page. Can you at that moment say, 'No, what I have in front of me is this book.' It is simple logic at that moment. You want to read the book, and that thing which you crave for is not here. This is step number one. If the mind is reminded of this a few times, it stops worrying you in this way. This is of tremendous importance to those who wish to meditate seriously. When you sit for your meditation and the same object of pleasure comes in front of your mind, tell the mind, 'This is not the time. The object is not here. We will see when the time comes.' Then this tyranny of memory is gone. The colouring is still there, but it does not bother you at odd hours. Each time you do this successfully you are stronger.
The need to love and be loved are part of life, but in neither of these is there a mad, agitated craving. For instance, you have a piece of chocolate in front of you. Look at it. Is it necessary or not? If it is natural and necessary, you will have it. If the intelligence decided that it is not natural, that you are not hungry, then you do not have the chocolate. It is the inner intelligence shining through the mental conditioning that considers this an object of enjoyment and wants it, and in this there is no 'me' at all. The chocolate still tastes good, but there is no longer a craving for it. This includes pleasures which the sight or the ears enjoy, as well as the taste. The pleasure is still there, but it is had, because it is in a way necessary. As the contact is renewed, watch how the impression is formed. The yogi sees directly, 'Do I really like this, or is it simply that the impression left on the mind by a past experience demands a repetition?'
When temptation arises, immediately turn it in on itself. Is there an 'I', an ego that demands this pleasure, or is it merely the memory of the past experiences that demands this repetition? In the light of that observation it is clearly seen that it is nothing but memory. What is the stuff of memory? The same intelligence. That intelligence is totally free of impressionability. Being eternal, unpollutable, it does not take an impression any more than you can write on water, nor does it hold an impression. There is an impression, but it is lost immediately.
It is only when you turn the light of enquiry away that you once again see the shadow on the wall. The yogi's light shines constantly on this shadow, and therefore the shadow is not seen, only the reality behind the shadow is seen - the cosmic intelligence.
One who has developed vairagya - the ability to turn all temptation upon itself - finds that there is no obstacle at all to the practice of yoga, wherever one may be. But unless practice is accompanied by vairagya it is likely to bump into a million obstacles.
Nirodha
Traditionally, nirodha is understood as control or suppression. These explanations may be valid, depending upon the point of view from which it is examined.
Here we can look at it from another dimension:
Nirodha means 'when the whole is seen, when the totality sees itself'. If this is so, how is this nirodha effected?. It is not the 'I' who controls this. Here the control or the restraint is directed at the 'I' itself, and here vigilance is necessary.
Abhyasa Vairagya
The traditional meaning of abhyasa is practice, and of vairagya - dispassion. Another meaning of abhyasa is 'standing steady, unmoving, and observing the changing moods of the mind'; and of vairagya 'not being distracted from this stand by temptations'. Vigilance - which was considered the best translation of nirodha - can be achieved by abhyasa and vairagya.
Yet another meaning is that vairagya is uncolouring and abhyasa is remaining steady in that uncoloured state. It seems to be very simple when it is explained, but if it is realised that it is the total abandoning of all this conditioning and colouring, then it does not seem to be very easy. But the constant practice to remain in this uncoloured state of mind is the only way in which the nature of the mind can be understood.
What we call sorrow has no existence apart from cosmic intelligence. Yet, in ignorance it comes to be seen as if it were an independent entity. Abhyasa - vairagya is a twofold process by which this ignorance is enlightened. Ignorance itself is illumined by throwing light on it, in order to see the background.
There is another interesting feature. It looks as though abhyasa is one thing and vairagya another. They are not two, but one. When it is seen that the action does not spring from the 'me', when it is seen to be a pure movement in consciousness, that is abhyasa. Abhyasa is related to expression and vairagya to experience. When it is seen that the action does not spring from the 'me', the vrtti, when it is seen to be a pure movement in consciousness, that is abhyasa. The realisation that the experience does not relate to the me is vairagya, the me itself being part of this experiencing - just one little ripple or wave in this ocean of cosmic consciousness.
What is it that gives something a psychological value - that it is pleasant or dangerous? Hearsay has so coloured the mind that it regards something as pleasure. No habit has pleasure built into it.
There is no desire to suppress these actions or to promote them. To say 'no' is as good or as bad as to say 'yes'.
A very old man in the Himalayas once said, 'Abhyasa means to remain established in God. Vairagya means never to let the thought of the world arise in your mind.' Marvelous - but almost impossible!
My guru Swami Sivananda used to say, 'If you want to be firmly established in vairagya before beginning to practise abhyasa, you can postpone it for at least the next three lifetimes!' So, try both of these side by side.
The two things to be borne in mind whatever be the practice you undertake are one, the spirit of yoga should not be forgotten at any stage, and two, that practice should have immediate relevance to your life - otherwise it is not yoga.
What is needed here is zeal, urgency. Very few of us have the urgency. It cannot be learned from somebody - it must develop from within oneself.
1, 13 : tatra sthitau yatno 'bhyasah
Any steady and continuous or persistent and vigilant endeavour to stand firm in the understanding of the truth of the indivisibility of cosmic intelligence is known as spiritual practice - right exertion.
Abhyasa is to stand firm. When one's foothold on this step is firm, a vision devoid of division becomes dear.
The beauty of the yoga philosophy is that it does not restrict you to a certain set of practices, techniques, or methods. Whatever is going to lead you on to establishment in this Cosmic Consciousness is abhyasa, no matter what practice is adopted, but in order to get established in Cosmic Consciousness, you should continuously persist in that practice for a considerable length of time. The need for repetition arises because the understanding is still not there. It is not possible to try to develop this understanding.
Practice is to enable us to realise the real to be real. Then all actions spring from the totality. If you touch the truth once, you are instantly liberated. The effort to stand firm in that understanding belongs to the movement of energy in consciousness. That steady effort to remain established in that consciousness is abhyasa.
Abhyasa, therefore, means when the entire life is offered to God and given a single direction.
1, 14 : sa tu dirgha kala nairantarya satkara 'sevito drdhabhumih.
But, when is one said to be well grounded in practice? When this spontaneous awareness or cosmic consciousness continues without interruption, for a long time, and one is devoted to it with all ones being, in all sincerity and earnestness.
It becomes firmly established when you continue this repeated practice of reminding yourself that God is omnipresent. Repeated practice becomes necessary when the practice is interrupted by samskaras - tendencies, doubts and physical and psychological habits. When they interfere, there seems to be a need for practice again and again. You do not have to do this repeatedly if it has been really and truly done once. The trouble is that we are only thinking that we are thinking about God. Even thinking about God is a very difficult thing. Usually we are only thinking that we are thinking about thinking about God. It is three or four times removed. So, go on repeatedly, till it sinks in. You see the ocean and you see the wave - you see them as different. You blink - no, it is one. Ah! ... but it is gone! Once again you struggle and struggle and try to reach that point where confusion arises in the mind. This goes on for some time.
Once you have clearly seen the ocean as water and the waves as water, theoretically the doubt concerning their identity or identification or names should not arise at all. When there is doubt, it means that the vision is not clear. Therefore there is both understanding and misunderstanding. When this happens, keep repeating it.
This is where the student of yoga may appear to be leading a double life. Life has not been totally and completely integrated. There are moments of awakening, moments of dullness, moments of alertness, moments of non-vigilance. By persistent practice - abhyasa - these moments of intelligence stretch further and further and, as this happens, ignorance is eliminated.
This self-awareness or awareness of the search for the self must be unbroken. If it is broken, in that period it regains its mischief. Patanjali does not say that it can manifest itself only after a long period of time. In the Yoga Sutras he says that you can enter into this unconditioned state - samadhi - instantly, but you may not really be established in it until you have been in it for a long time. He merely suggests that you have this delight and remain in it, with your heart and soul completely surrendered to it with all sincerity and earnestness, for a long period of time, without losing it. Then you are firmly established in it, and it is not possible to disturb it.
1, 15 : drsta 'nusravika visaya vitrsnasya vasikara samjiia vairagyam
How does one avoid distracting influences, without being distracted by such effort? When the consciousness functions in a masterly way so that the compulsive and overpowering craving for objects seen or heard of, suppression or expression, inhibition or indulgence, turned upon itself - there arises an intense and consuming quest in quest of the what, how, and where of the craving itself that is known as uncolouredness or dispassion.
When there is craving for some experience or object, the whole attention seems to be moving out towards it. When you ask yourself, 'Where does this feeling arise that this is an object of pleasure, or pain, etc.?', the attention that was flowing outwards suddenly begins to flow towards yourself. That is called vasikara - which means that it comes under your control. That is control of a very different kind. There is neither expression nor suppression, but intense self-awareness.
When in the light of self-awareness the mental colouring is seen, and the object is then seen not to have that value, simultaneously the craving disappears. If you are constantly aware of the play of the mind and the ego, then there is no craving - craving does not arise. And if you are constantly watchful every moment that this craving arises, and observe the craving, self-awareness also increases.
So, it is only by self-awareness, by looking straight into the mind, and becoming aware of its content, that you are going to achieve total uncolouring of the mind. This is not achieved by merely changing the colour. If, for instance, you are watching a movie at a drive-in theatre, you do not see the screen at all. When another car is driven in behind you and the headlights flash on the screen, suddenly you see nothing but the white screen. Where have the images gone? In exactly the same way, where is that which you call pleasure, pain, sorrow, jealousy, hatred, love, affection, infatuation etc.? When you suddenly become aware that the brain has become polluted by what you see, hear and feel, in that moment, the contamination has been washed away. It is only when the powerful beam of inner light is flashed on it that the whole colouring disappears. When that is gone, the truth is seen.
This continues until the totality is realised as the only reality. Then there is no effort or struggle - no restraint as restraint - at all. All action is naturally restrained. When there is no individuality, no conflict, division or contact between the 'me' and the other, when one alone exists, there is no effort, no craving, no rejection. Alone means all one. When it is realised that all is one, one is alone.
Life goes on. The need to love and be loved are part of life, but in neither of these is there a mad, agitated craving. The natural enjoyments of life will still continue and they will be pure, fresh and un-contaminated by hopes and fears. We should not go to the other extreme of asceticism, because such an attitude, first of all, might mean pure suppression, which might lead to some kind of reaction, and, even more than that, at the same time might give a big boost to the ego. That is not yoga, because you get so dreadfully committed to the vrtti called control. Yoga has slipped through your fingers.
The craving wants to possess the object. Vairagya - uncolouredness or wisdom - merely means possessing the craving - embracing it so tightly that it does not function independent of wisdom. Possessing the object of enjoyment is the nature of craving. Wisdom says, 'I will possess this craving so that it does not get out of hand.' It behaves as wisdom wants it to behave. That wisdom in you may want to eat a chocolate cake - go ahead. There is no need to suppress it. But then craving does not eat the cake, the wisdom eats it. A big difference!
If you understand the difference, you have understood what is called moderation. Wisdom knows moderation. Craving is completely mad. This is what we saw in Swami Sivananda. He could do everything in moderation. Whereas craving leads you completely astray, wisdom allows you to graze, but neatly tethered by restraint - always at the end of a leash, never loose. When all the desires and cravings re-enter oneself, return to the source, there is true vairagya, true dispassion, the direct opposite of craving.
1, 16 : tat param purusakhyater guna vaitrsnyam
Whereas in the earlier stages of yoga-practice, this 'turning craving upon itself' may be (i) blind suppression, or (ii) an act of self-sacrifice with a reward in view, or (iii) at best an active expression of unquestioning faith in accepted authority - the spiritual quest transcends such qualified self-discipline, when 'that' which is 'beyond' the conditioned and therefore fragmented inner personality is directly seen to be free of all craving.
When the inner light shines, the practice becomes different. This light is not a physical light, but a light which shines within you all the time, that is awake even when you are asleep, that knows for instance that your right leg is exposed to the chilly wind, and draws it under the blanket. Although the yogi undergoes the same experiences that you and I undergo, in his case, from moment to moment, he sees the screen even though he sees the colouring on top. Because he sees that, essentially that intelligence is free from colouring and therefore free from attraction and repulsion. Experiencing still continues, but attraction and repulsion, likes and dislikes, are greatly weakened. Life and death or night and day are not contradictory, but complementary; the content is one. There is nothing contradictory in this world.
You are looking at the truth of what was previously seen as the two sides of the coin. What were seen as opposites have become complementary, have blended into a whole. One does not exist without the other, simply because there is no other. When that truth is seen, it is called para vairagya - supreme dispassion. Supreme jnana - wisdom, supreme renunciation, and supreme delight are all the same; they all merge in the absolute. Then there is supreme non-attraction and supreme non-hate; there is love which is not the antithesis of hate, but which is indescribable, a mere 'experience-expression-put-together' of oneness. All experiences blend. There is nothing called pleasure and nothing called pain, there is just pure experiencing. The experiencing consciousness is the same - it is 'I' that feels tickled, it is 'I' that feels pinched. When the body is subjected to what is called a pleasurable experience, the nerves twitch; when the body is subjected to a painful experience, the nerves also twitch; the twitching of the nerves being the common factor. When there is anger, the facial muscles react; when there is love or happiness, the facial muscles react. It is all the same movement of energy.
How does one sustain this? Is there a method by which this supreme dispassion can be reached? The next Sutra suggests a few steps to make this possible.
1, 17 : arka vacara nanda smita nugamat samprajnatah
The realization of the unconditioned being is at times associated with logical reasoning or examination, deep a-rational enquiry, an experience of bliss? or of pure I-am-ness. Yet, even at those times, there is consciousness of the subject-object relationship, and knowledge of the physiological and psychological states, experiences, and deeds.
This Sutra has been interpreted by some commentators as signifying three or four different types of samadhi. I do not know if there are different types of samadhi. The same technique or procedure seems to lead us from one to the other.
Vitarka means logic. In order to treat this pain as a blessing, you may have to use logic to reach the logical conclusion. A logical conclusion means neither you nor reason can answer this question. You know that when you have sincerely and honestly applied this reasoning and taken it to its own logical conclusion, not before. So, we begin with logic. For instance, you are disappointed because your wife left you and ran away. That is her business - but why are you disappointed? Can you see logically that it is 'your appointment' or expectation that led to disappointment and despair? You expected something, and when that expectation did not eventuate, you were disappointed. So, the disappointment is related to the expectation. If there was no hope, there would be no disappointment. Why should a man entertain hope? What kind of logic is there that can answer that question? You shrug your shoulders - that is a logical conclusion. Logic comes to an end there.
Again it may appear to you that your unhappiness comes from an outside agency, but you realise that you are the one who is suffering. If you accept that you are all right, but everything in life is hostile to you and that is why you are suffering, even then the yogi's logic leads to two wonderful steps:
1. Even if the whole world is hostile, you are part of this world, one with this world; so you are also responsible for that.
2. Never mind who causes the pain; know that it is you that is hurt.
A little bit of logic, of reasoning, is used in this way - neither by imagining pain or sorrow, nor by imagining a proper source for it, either inside or outside.
Vitarka does not mean analysis. When you are examining fear, jealousy, anxiety, etc. it is better not to enter into an analysis at all. It often leads us nowhere. Finding the psychological cause of fear or jealousy is almost a waste of time, because if you observe very carefully within yourself, you see that fear is there and that fear goes looking for a cause. The tendency to be jealous manifests as jealousy, and also goes looking for a cause. You can always find some cause! The serious student of yoga does not indulge in analysis, because then the attention is taken away. If you are sitting with this fear or jealousy, and you are not able to look at it and see what it is, how can you look at why you are jealous? So, no such self-deception is allowed.
You must be able ruthlessly to cut down all thoughts with counter thoughts. We are not discriminating here between good thoughts and bad thoughts. This cutting of thoughts must be ruthlessly done with the tool of vitarka. Then you see the fear and the jealousy directly, without any reasoning or logic.
When you try to meditate, the first thing is that the mind throws up all kinds of arguments - pro and con. As this happens, you confront these arguments with counter arguments. So, argument and counter argumentation is the first stage in this meditation. This goes on for some time until the mind reaches its own barrier, which is the rational barrier. The intellect does not function beyond ratiocination, the logic barrier, and logic comes to its own conclusion. You have no logic or rationalising intellect now, so you begin to watch and look - not inquiring in the sense of using the mind, because that vitarka stage is past. Now you see no argument at all for or against the existence of this indwelling intelligence, you see no reason for or against the truth or the falsity of the ego. The intellect is helpless and so it stops functioning there. When this happens, the intelligence which is reflected within you begins to function. You cannot rationally diover this intelligence. Now you can only look - vicara.
Vicara starts when you feel trapped, you experience bondage, unhappiness. Vicara has no proper translation in English, though it has been translated into 'enquiry', which has unfortunately been misunderstood to be intellectual pursuit. It is not enquiry in the sense of asking questions, etc. You may ask once, 'What is happening in me, who is repeating the mantra?', but once that asking has been done, it is merely looking at it. If that is the meaning of the English word 'enquiry', marvellous! If it is not, the proper meaning has to be discovered. It is merely looking without thought, without thinking.
'Car' in sanskrit means movement, and 'vicara' means to move efficiently. Without vicara there is no spirit in yoga practice. In vicara there is neither argument nor rationalisation. There is no anxiety to get rid of unhappiness - then you avert your gaze from the unhappiness and you cannot understand what it is, nor is there a desire to grin and bear it - again you are not looking at it. There is a third alternative - to look within to discover where this unhappiness is.
The question of 'what' is the essence of vicara. Here one merely looks at it and enquires 'What is this sorrow?', not 'Why is it there?', or 'How did it arise?' There is no 'my' sorrow and 'your' sorrow, there is just sorrow. You must be able to extricate this phenomenon of suffering or sorrow - which is independent of the personality and the circumstances, and see the phenomenon as it is.
Here tremendous concentration is needed, so that you can focus your whole attention upon this phenomenon of suffering and let the energy of the mind flow in that single direction. Then you have forgotten why you are unhappy, you are only aware of sorrow. It is in you.
If you are aware of sorrow, are 'you' and the 'sorrow' two different entities, or are they the same? When you use a mantra in meditation and mentally repeat it, you can hear it. Who is saying it, and who is hearing it? Suddenly you realise that you are also there, you are watching both these. The sound is emanating from somewhere. Someone is saying this mantra, someone is listening to it, and someone is watching both these fellows! Similarly, here you are merely observing this phenomenon of sorrow, and you say, 'I am aware of sorrow'.
Try this. Stand in front of your electric stove. You can see that the water is boiling in the kettle, but you do not have to boil, do you? No. So similarly, you can see sorrow, observe sorrow and become aware of that sorrow. You observe that you are aware of sorrow. As you are becoming more and more intensely aware of sorrow, you suddenly become one with that sorrow. You are not sorry any more, you are not suffering any more, you are sorrow. The fire itself does not feel hot, it is hot. So that, if you are sorrow, you do not feel sorrow any more. You are free.
So, vicara is a movement in consciousness. It is pure attention. It does not proceed from what is called 'me' towards the other, but is a direct observation within. You can focus it on sorrow, pain, fear, hate or anything you like. Unless there is a feeling that the attention is moving within towards the centre, these words have no meaning. There is pure observation, and that observation itself discovers the true nature of experience. 'Discovers' is meant in its almost literal sense - you had covered that pure experiencing with a big label called 'sorrow', and when this light of observation shone on it, it dis-covered or peeled that label off. That is discovery - 'un-covery'. There is an endeavour to merely observe the reality or the content of that experience. This is like flashing a torch on the shadow on the wall. When the shadow is illumined, its background or substratum is seen. In that observation there is great stillness, and the object of observation alone exists.
Because of the extreme importance of vicara, let us look at another example - of pain, for instance. Pain, sorrow and suffering are really a blessing. But in ignorance we turn them into a sorrow by blaming someone or something else - the psychologist blames one's childhood and the oriental religious man blames one's previous birth, for instance. Instead of listening to these ideas, if you look at the pain immediately, you may be able to deal with it. A wise man need be hurt only once.
What is pain, what is it made of? When you begin to inquire seriously, the first thing you notice is that the mind is absolutely calm and quiet. You have pulled away from the pain, and therefore the pain is not terribly painful. You are observing it, inquiring into it, and in the meantime the body takes care of the pain, or whatever it is. There is no pain, only the mind-stuff. In the light of that observation, it becomes absolutely clear that there is only the wall - the screen; there is no shadow at all, just the background. There is no wave, there is only the water.
The observation still continues, it does not come to an end, because there is one question which we have not answered. We are using such expressions as 'I observe the mind', 'I am meditating', knowing that all these are mental modifications. Even if these statements are the fruits of direct observation, there are still these questions, 'What is I. Who is the experiencer or observer? Is the observer a totally independent entity, independent of the experience? Is I a completely different and independent being standing apart from the mind-stuff?' I do not know.
The whole area of observation has narrowed down completely. The object has gone, the experience has gone, the only thing left now is the observer. If this pure observation asks this question and gets the answer 'I do not know', then 'I' and 'do not know' are the only things left, and these are not two completely different factors, but two sides of the same thing. Here, there is no logic and no observation, there is total stillness.
Vicara is essential in the practice of Raja Yoga and meditation. Meditation helps the vicara and vicara helps the meditation, because vicara needs one-pointedness and introversion of the mind. The mind must be introverted so that both during the practice of meditation and at other times the yogi must be aware of the thoughts and the emotions that arise in him. That makes it very clear that the yogi is not looking for a blank mind and an emotionless heart!
The Buddha said, 'Live in this world as you would if you were living in a room with a deadly cobra.' As soon as you become aware of it, you begin to observe - not thinking about it, knowing that your thinking or not thinking does not alter the situation. You are wide awake and full of energy, perfectly concentrated. You may panic for a couple of minutes, but once you realise that you are caught in it, the mind is absolutely calm and alert, looking actively but passively. All this is involved in that single instruction of living with the cobra.
If you can dramatise the whole thing within yourself for five minutes, you have learnt all about meditation and vicara. You know what it is to enquire into, to look into, to observe. In the same way, if you are able to observe pain, either physical or psychological, and you have pulled yourself away from it, there is this inner feeling, 'I am here, I am not affected by this.' It is not verbal, and you are not trying to bluff yourself. The pain seems to go away, because you are acting as an observer now, you do not really experience the pain that the body is experiencing. But this does not last long. Once this observation comes to an end, you get caught up in the pain again.
If you are serious about this enquiry, if your mind, heart, emotions and life itself all come together and 'functionise' vicara, then you have tremendous energy which is derived from the non-dissipation of the mind. There is nothing that you cannot achieve.
Use whatever pleasure and pain life brings you every day for your enquiry, and if you are sincere and earnest about it, then there is not a single moment in your life when this enquiry need be really absent. For example, when you are singing, can you forget about everybody else and listen to your voice? How and where does it originate? How does it feel inside? Even as you are listening you, can look at the process of listening - not the anatomical and physiological aspects, but how listening takes place. If, while you are singing, you are merely observing the singing, neither thinking about it, analysing it nor examining it, it is a beautiful sensation. So, whatever the experience - singing, walking, driving, eating or having a shower - you can utilise it for pure awareness or vicara.
It is definite that whatever path you may take, and wherever the observation or enquiry leads you, when that 'awareness' is functioning, when all your mental disturbances drop, and all the things that are torturing you have gone, there is momentarily a sense of great joy and happiness. Pain ceases to be tormenting and pleasure ceases to be tantalising, and there is an experience of a sort of happiness which is not the absence of unhappiness. Patanjali describes it as ananda - bliss. There is a feeling 'I am experiencing this bliss'. This bliss is completely different from pleasure, and even different from what we normally call happiness.
Here there is only one snag - in spite of this ananda there is also asmita or individuality - 'I' am aware of sorrow; 'I' have become one with sorrow; 'I' am fire itself, there is nothing burning 'me'; 'I' am ice itself, there is nothing making 'me' cold. When you get to this stage, there is bliss. But, you are experiencing this bliss, the 'I' the individuality is still there. Up to this you can reach unaided, there is no God necessary here.
From there all division of me and the thought, me and the feeling, seems to melt away and 'I' - asmita alone remains. There is a state of homogeneity within.
You ask yourself, 'Who is it that enjoys this bliss?', and you get the answer, 'I am'. There you have reached your limit. This is a very high state of samadhi or consciousness which can help you in real life. But even this is subject to being lost, because as long as the feeling 'I am' or a belief in the existence of the egotism is there, so long the veil of ignorance is also there. You have not completely discovered the inner indwelling omnipresent intelligence. Therefore there is the ever-present danger of falling from that height.
Beyond that, it is difficult for the unaided human being to go, and that is where we need the Grace of God. That grace manifests itself when you knock. While knocking at this door called 'I do not know', helplessly you fall down - and the door opens. That is called divine Grace, or whatever you wish to call it. When you collapse, the egotism and the ignorance also collapse. There is enlightenment.
Did you achieve it? No. Did you not achieve it? Yes. No questions can be answered rationally from there on. This approach needs a certain psychological, mental or inner discipline. This may not suit some people, in fact it may sound ridiculous to them.
Vicara, especially, needs tremendous psychological discipline to keep the mind from straying. If we do not succeed, we end up in a beautiful vicious circle - if you cannot control the mind you cannot do vicara, and if you cannot do vicdra you cannot control the mind.
There is a different type of inner psychological equipment in different people. In other words, if you are emotional, if your heart rules your head, the vicara approach may be difficult. If heart and head are perfectly balanced, it is all right; but if - as in the case of most of us - either the head rules or the heart rules, then there arises a slight difficulty. Either the whole technique - if it can be called so - is rejected by the heart as dry, or it is seen as just emotionalism.
Some people do not like any of these. They like hands and feet to be put to work. In their case, neither this nor that is of any use. They must be doing something, working. So you have to look within and gauge for yourself whether you should adopt the method of vicara, the method of surrender, or the method we will discuss later - astanga yoga.
If vicara is appealing to you, that is all that you need to worry about. Raja yoga is over. You do not have to practise asanas or pranayama, or anything at all. If surrender to God - isvara pranidhana (see I. 23) is appealing to you, that is enough!
On the other hand, if neither vicara nor isvara pranidhana suit you, and there is a lot of physical energy which has to be channeled one way or the other, then there are other practises. Other difficulties and other problems have to be solved with other measures.
How does one know? You are going to say that you must look within and see which one is good. That is precisely the problem! You cannot look within yourself. You do not know what is going on. You may prefer to think that you are like Ramana Maharsi, or the Buddha, just waiting for enlightenment. You close your eyes, enter into deep sleep and think that that is meditation. How do you know what is going on?
This is where the guidance of a teacher or a guru may become useful - at least to enunciate the rules of the game. The guru is not going to play the game for you - then it is his game, not yours. For instance you might read one little thing in Ramana Maharsi' s book - that in samadhi the head is erect and in sleep the head is down. This may or may not be the total answer, the perfect answer, but it gives you some guidance. You know that there is some difference between samadhi and sleep. So, after two hours of tremendous, fantastic meditation, if you find your head is upright, maybe it was meditation, if it was down - next time.
1, 18 : viram pratyaya bhyasa purvah samskara seso nyah
Different from this is the practice that is based on cessation of all effort, even at meditating - this practice leads spontaneously to tranquillity. In that, only the impressions or memories remain - of such impressions is the 'me' constituted.
Effortlessness does not drop from heaven. To begin with, you may have to make use of some of the aids described in previous Sutras which imply the application of some effort. It is the effort that keeps all the mental activity awake, that disturbs enlightenment. At that point, the effort seems to be useless and so it drops away. Just the memory of past experiences is still left, because the 'I' is there, the samskaras are there, and it is that which takes body after body, until that is given up in total enlightenment. The master suggests that, as long as this effort is in the right direction, you have not reached the goal, but you are safe.
Samskaras can be vaguely translated as latent tendencies, predispositions, or psychological conditioning.
This is very different from memory. Memory is something you can see, samskara is something which sees, which picks up the memory. Memory is a thought, samskara is the thing that thinks, that registered the memory in the first place. The difference must be dearly understood.
Samskara to the yogi is a much greater problem than memory. Every action and every experience we pass through in life leaves an impression. You do something once, or several times, and it becomes a memory - which is outside you, so you can look at it and feel it. At one stage - heaven knows when this happens - it is no longer a memory, it has taken hold of you so that you do not even knew of its existence. It is no longer something which you can see and handle, it has become you. Every time you become passionate, angry, agitated or kind, for instance, the samskaras of passion, anger, agitation or kindness become stronger, and the grooves become deeper. All these grooves put together is the 'me'. So there is basically no difference between the samskaras and what is known as 'I', the ego, or the 'me'.
In spite of all the yoga and meditation you do, samskaras are something which remain dormant in sleep, and they are there even in the state usually called samadhi.
Unless we come to grips with this samskara, we have done nothing at all in yoga - we are only experts in bringing about a change in the bookshelf. You can re- organise your life - which is outside. you can re-organise the thought pattern - also outside, you can re-organise your memory by saying, I will not remember this, I will remember only that. If you have very carefully followed the ground that we have covered so far, it looks terribly easy to re-organise that part of it. But how does one bring about a change in the samskara - not in the memory bank, thoughts or pattern of thinking, but in the thinker, the one who thinks. Samskara is the cell of your cell, the soul of your soul, the very spirit which has been assimilated into you, become you. Therefore, it is so strong that it is almost impossible to alter it; and unless it is altered there is no yoga!
It is not the samskaras or the actions in themselves that matter, but the experiencer and the doer of action that mysteriously springs up when the samskaras are there. Even to recognise their existence is already a big step. The only way to deal with them is through eternal vigilance. If one is alert and vigilant, all experiences - whether they are called pleasure or pain - can be used to trigger self-observation or meditation. When the process of meditation we have been discussing is applied to these samskaras, there is a serious curiosity. Why do I behave in this manner? Why is it that someone else behaves in a different way? What is it that predisposes me to this conduct, whether that conduct is socially acceptable or unacceptable?
Here you are directly observing not only the samskaras but the bed, the source, the field in which they grow, as it were. The rays of the mind, which were flowing away from the centre, seem to tum upon their own source. During that process, there is a stillness and a dropping of effort. The mind, the attention, and awareness, are still there, and there is this sudden movement, which is not movement, but a tremendous dynamic stillness. It is comparable to the candle flame which is steady, although we know that every moment millions of sparks flow along that flame.
In that dynamic stillness there is very dear awareness of observation itself, without an observer. There is tremendous inner stillness and peace. You may call it bliss, God, or consciousness - whatever you wish. When this happens, the coloring of the mind, and the play of the latent predispositions or samskaras are seen. In this there is no effort. The effort ceases, because the moment you make an effort, the effort becomes the doer, who says, I practise meditation. In the state where there is no effort, there is not even the feeling that you are practising meditation.
When the process of meditation we have been discussing is applied to these samskaras, there is a serious curiosity. Why do I behave in this manner? Why is it that someone else behaves in a different way? What is it that predisposes me to this conduct, whether that conduct is socially acceptable or unacceptable. That is what we want to know. Here you are directly observing not only the samskaras, but the bed, the fountain source, the field in which these samskdras grow as it were.
So, the yogi looks at the thoughts, feelings, and emotions, with some sort of wonder, and suddenly realises that they are all composed of the one substance. What is the content of any of your thoughts? Thought! Can this observation without an observer - which is meditation - see through all this, right down to the bed of samskaras, the content of the thoughts and emotions? At that level, the samskaras cease to be. A thought ceases to be a thought, and emotions cease to be emotions, because you have crossed the level of these labels.
1, 19 : bhava pratyayo videha prakrtilayanam
When such impressions remain, one retains the possibility - and the cause - of birth again, even after being freed from the present body, and after becoming integrated with one's own, or the cosmic nature. For, such impressions or memories nurture and perpetuate the awareness of continued personal existence.
The self is the bed of samskaras, of all the tendencies and predispositions put together. When the samskaras form in the mind, what is it that claims, 'I experience this, I am good, bad, an Indian, etc.?' Why does one say that these impressions belong to 'me', or 'I have these bad habits'? There seems to be a cohesive force - the conditioning or limitation - that keeps all these latent tendencies together, so that this infinite consciousness seems somehow to think, 'These belong to me. I am made up of these.' The single thought that all these ideas and ideologies, notions and concepts, samskaras and vasanas, etc. form part of me, belong to me, and I to them, is another conditioning.
When the present body drops, and the elements of which it is composed are returned to nature, the next embodiment and the next world are determined by whatever be the condition in which the consciousness - which thinks it is limited to this body - finds itself. It creates its own space, its own world, and it becomes what the nature of that consciousness deserved to become at that moment - or, what determines that is the nature of this conditioning at the time the embodiment is dropped. It goes on and on until the conditioning is completely abandoned. How long is anybody's guess.
We have no choice but to go on practising, because as long as this conditioning lasts, every time this body falls - videha - and the components are reabsorbed into nature tprakrtilayanam, there is an inner change, a new notion or concept is formed.
Only when the colouring has dropped away and consciousness has become completely cleared of the concepts we have fed into it - including the notions 'I am' and 'This is my mind, my consciousness' - is there liberation.
1, 20 : sraddha virya smrti samadhi prajna purvaka itaresam
In the case of others, when such spontaneous realization of the unconditioned does not happen, such realization is preceded by, and proceeds from faith or one-pointed devotion, great energy and use of will-power, constant remembrance of teachings, one's own experience, the practice of samadhi - the state of inner harmony, and a knowledge or discernment of such harmony, all of which lead one gradually on to that state of yoga.
Yoga is the whole of life. God is not a sort of king or a ruler, or a great grandfather sitting on a throne somewhere, governing the whole universe. God is the indivisible cosmic existence, the indwelling omnipresent intelligence. It is omnipresent and therefore indwelling. At that indwelling point, the omnipresence is easily reached. That is yoga!
So, it is not difficult to see how all our faculties and all that is happening in this world have to be seen as an integral part of yoga. We need faith in, and remembrance of, the teachings of yoga. We need to hold on to the feeling of harmony attained in the practice of meditation.
What is most important is that we need to have zeal in our practice. We need to put forward the maximum self-effort we are capable of.Usually we are luke-warm, because we are lazy. There is a limitation to what your brain can do. Go up to that, because until you go up to that, there is no vitality, no zeal.
Have you ever prayed for a loaf of bread, for food? No. Because you have never felt hungry. The prayer of a man who is starving and all he wants is a loaf of bread, is a living prayer. If some kind of implement could be invented to measure the intensity of prayer, you would find that that man's prayer is far more intense than the prayer of all of us put together. Our prayer becomes luke-warm, because the urgency is not there. That sense of urgency, of zeal, must be there in our practice of yoga. Put forth all the effort you are capable of.
1, 21 : tivra samveganam asannah
However, lest it should be misconstrued that such gradual evolution implies cosmological or psychological distance to be covered, it should be added that the state of yoga or the unconditioned intelligence is close at hand, irrespective of the approach followed by the seekers - if they are full of intense zeal, enthusiasm, energy and sincerity, and are thus able speedily to overcome obstacles.
When one's zeal is intense and total, that total intensity brings this unconditioned state of being here and now.
1, 22 : mrdu madhya dhimatratvat
Yet, again, it is possible to see a distinction between mild, middling, and intense zeal, energy and effort, although yoga - which is spontaneous realization of oneness - and effort - which implies duality - are contradiction in terms.
It is possible that some are ardent in their devotion to yoga and may be able to reach this soon. Some are not so ardent and so they may take a little more time. Some are a little bit dull, but never mind, they will eventually reach this point.
1, 23 : isvara pranidhanad va
Or, the state of yoga is attained by complete, instant, dynamic, energetic and vigilant surrender, of the ego-principle, to the omnipresent ever-existent reality or God. This is instant realization of God as the only reality, when the - ego's? - quest of self-knowledge meets its counterpart, ignorance, and stands bewildered in choiceless encounter, and when the ego-ignorance phantom instantly collapses.
How does one overcome the vrttis, including the basic and fundamental vrttis of 'I am' - 'I am' as independent? Let us go back to the analogy of the wave and the ocean. The wave as ocean is ocean, not wave; the wave as a concept is a concept. The wave as something in itself is non-existent.
The wave is not unreal. Of course it is there, you can see it! But, while looking at the wave, you are really looking at the ocean, not the wave. The wave as a wave is a concept - a certain formation of the surface of the ocean is called wave. It is a name, a word. In the same way, the vrtti is non-different from the mind.
How do you get rid of the false concept that the vrtti is different from the mind? The method of vicara was given in I.17. Another method to help us get rid of this false concept is isvara pranidhana. This deals with the emotional or devotional approach to the same truth - therefore no thinking, rationalisation, condemnation or criticism is allowed. There is just a pure heart-to-heart relationship.
lsvara is translated as God, and pranidhana means total, dynamic and passionate surrender to lsvara. This is not a dull and passive action. It must be a dynamic, full-blooded, energetic surrender, so that in that surrender there is no withholding. It cannot be partial surrender, because either it is total or it is not at all! So, partial self-surrender is a misnomer.
In the case of self-surrender, quite a few questions arise. But those questions do not arise in one whose heart rules the mind. Ramana Maharsi's teachings of surrender make it look very much like vicara. While talking of self-surrender, he says, "First of all, find out who you are and who God is". If you do that you do not want to surrender anything! If you have that psychological discipline which is described in Sutra I.17, then there is no need for surrender. Surrender just happens.
Isvara pranidhana is slightly different, it is not the same process as vicara. You are unable to discipline the mind and do vicara, because the energy of the mind seems to be incapable of sustained uni-directional motion - which is brahmacarya. This energy seems to be disturbed by emotional states. Then you see that, if the truth is approached through the heart, it is possible to arrive at the same point.
Therefore this method is as effective as the previous method of vicara, and can also be used independent of it. Even though you may have no intellectual equipment for the vicara, by this method also you arrive at the same place - instantly. They are not different in essence, because in vicara one is interested in the theory, but to the one who is engaged in dynamic surrender, it is not theory - it is his practice!
Here isvara pranidhana might mean the whole system of bhakti yoga.
You might take any form of devotional practice that appeals to the heart and moves the heart to offer itself totally to God. Using the approach of vicara, you discover that the division in thought - the anxiety, fear etc. - is unreal, and 'I' alone exists'. Whereas in this emotional approach, you are seriously concerned about who the 'I' is. But you start on a different footing, saying that God alone exists. Only a little bit of intellectual understanding is needed here.
You say, 'This is all God's Grace, God's Will,' because you do not know anything. All you do know is that you do not know anything! So, the devotee takes that step quickly. He does not beat around the bush.
Whatever happens to you, you must be able to say, 'It is God's Will.' Do not be half-hearted - as long as it is comfortable for you, it is God's Will, but if she does something you do not like, it is not God's Will, but her fault! One who is able persistently to say that it is all God's Will, has already pushed the ego sense away. In all these waves and cross currents he is able to see the hand of God.
Here is a lovely story. A king and his minister used to go hunting every weekend. One morning the king was cutting an apple and the royal knife was too sharp and he cut off a bit of his finger. The minister was a philosopher. He said, 'Ah, it is good for you, Your Majesty.' The king became furious. He had him arrested and taken away. As he was being pulled off from the royal presence, he said, This is good for me, it is God's Will. And that was also God's Will.' Not only when things are going right, but even when they are going wrong, you must have the courage to say it is God's Will. Then the surrender is correct.
The king went hunting alone. There were a few bandits in that forest who had taken a vow that if one of their robberies was successful they would offer a human sacrifice to Kali. The robbery was successful and therefore they were looking for a human being to sacrifice. When they saw the king, they got hold of him. He was alone and they were many; so, meekly he walked to the temple. The robbers brought in their priest. Before the sacrifice he had to be bathed ceremoniously, so he was stripped. As the priest was pouring water on his head, he saw the little bandage, and asked, 'What is that?'
'Oh, I cut myself this morning.'
The priest gave him one resounding slap and said, "'Get out. You are unfit to be sacrificed. Something which has already been cut cannot be offered in sacrifice.'
The king said, 'Thank you very much,' jumped on his horse and raced towards his palace. On the way he remembered that his minister had said that the cut was good for him. He thought, 'But for that little accident I might have lost my life today!'
He went straight to the cell and released the minister, saying, 'What you said proved right. But there is one thing which is puzzling me. I had unjustly had you arrested and put in the cell, and you said that it was good for you. Can you justify that also?'
The minister said, 'It is obvious. If you had not locked me up here I would have gone with you!'
What happens in our own life may not be so easy to see, but it is true. If you have that perseverance in seeing the divine in everything that happens, you are liberated.
Isvara is God, but not the kind of God we associate with temples, churches and mosques. lsa and isvara are synonymous terms in sanskrit, and isa is whatever is - not what you think is, not whatever appears to you to be, but what is. What 'is'? Pure experiencing is - not as 'I see you' - that is my thought and my desire to experience, not 'this face is beautiful and that is not beautiful' or 'this is good and that is not good'. That is opinion! What is, is pure experiencing, and experiencing is God.
What is meant by 'surrender'? Does it imply that when somebody threatens to break your jaw you say, 'No, no, I surrender'? Is that how we surrender to God? In that there is desire, fear and hope. Someone wants to hit you; you are afraid. By doing this surrender, you hope to be saved - which means the ego is still very much alive and strong, and it thinks that God is something outside of the me. The outside God is a creation of your own mind.
Surrender also suggests that there is an 'I', and that 'I' has to be taken, nicely gift-wrapped and offered at the feet of God. But surrender is not that. 'I' does not surrender something else. The 'I' itself must surrender.
How does 'I' surrender? What exactly does it mean? Only when there is direct understanding of the truth that God alone is, is there surrender. As a matter of fact, that is what the simple word 'yoga' means. If you can mentally visualise a blackboard and you draw a line with a piece of chalk, that white line seems to have created a division, above here - below there. You take a piece of cloth and wipe it. As you wipe it, you see that that which was above and that which was below are coming together. That is yoga. It was never broken, but on account of a certain colouring it appeared to have been broken. When this understanding arises, what is 'is', and cannot be broken at all. That which appeared to have been broken, appears to come together. Where there was apparent division, that surrender restores oneness. This is the process of surrender.
To help us understand, another example is given. A doll made of salt had the power to think. One day it was standing on the beach and it wondered how big and how deep the ocean is. It jumped into the ocean and it instantly knew the length and the breadth and the depth of the ocean - because when it dissolved it became the ocean. This was possible because the salt-doll was also made of the ocean - salt. Similarly, there is nothing called 'me' which is other than the cosmos. The body is the cosmos, made of earth, water, fire, air, and energy. Air is moving in the body, keeping it alive, and air is also cosmic. There is some intelligence, and that intelligence is also cosmic. What is it that you consider 'me'? An examination of the self in this manner is also called surrender.
At each point, one has to be extremely vigilant and careful that it is not the ego that does all this. When the ego practises yoga there is no yoga. Surrender means the surrender of the ego or, even more appropriately, the realisation of the non- existence of the ego. That is a completely and totally different thing! Neither a desire for God, nor a fear of living is left. It is then that you can really say that surrender 'is'.
You cannot say,'God, I surrender myself completely to you so that I may be healthy, I may be strong.' You surrender yourself to God, comma, so that you will be happy forever after. That is not surrender, but a bargain. It shows that you are a very good business man! For just using the formula: 'God, I surrender. myself to you,' you want to be happy forever hereafter. That is good business! No, there is not even a trace of desire that, on account of this surrender, you must be healthy or prosperous or happy. If those desires arise, that means the self is still functioning. Even in your day-to-day activities, if the whole thing is handed over, life becomes much better. When the mind starts functioning as if it is terribly important, it is then that tension begins.
When the expression 'God is bliss' is uttered, we often get all kinds of romantic ideas - e.g. 'I must abandon this body, I must surrender myself to the God who is in heaven. Then I am going to bliss!' Bliss is here - in the very touch of the carpet, in the touch of the breeze, in the smile of a child, in the sunrise, in the sunset, in the way the gum trees sway in the wind. Can that 'be' - without a desire or a craving arising to experience that as though it were something different from you? Can that be? If it 'is', that is surrender.
One who has really and truly surrendered does not even know. His life has been sacrificed or made sacred - which means that the whole personality - including the ego sense if there is one - has been made sacred. This may help you understand what seems to be mysterious behaviour in saints like Swami Sivananda. If they had an ego-sense, even that had been made sacred, had been touched by the divine fire. If they were cross with you, that is exactly what God's Will was. Take it as a blessing! There is absolutely nothing that is unsacred in that person's personality.
When isvara pranidhana happens, all the labels have dropped away. There is nothing that is called good or evil. That is the exalted state of the yogi.
Thus yoga is not something which is confined to morning or evening meditation, but something which 'is', all the time.
1, 24 : klesa karma vipaka sayair aparamrstah purusa visesa isvarah
Who is God? That unique indwelling omnipresence that is never tainted nor touched by the ground of actions and their reactions, which afflict ignorant individuals; that which is left-over after the ego-ignorance-collapse; that special inner ruler or intelligence which is unconditioned by time, and whose will alone prevails even in the body. In it, there is oneness, never divided. It is therefore beyond ignorance and its progeny.
What does God mean to you, what do you like to regard God to be? What is your concept of God? If you are so big that you can conceive even of God, you are covering that God with your own conceptions.
lsvara, or God, is purusa visesa - a Special Being who is not touched by the fruition of action, which in the case of ordinary people, like us, leads to distress and unhappiness. The ordinary being is that which controls your senses, which enables you to express and experience. Endowed with certain mental and physical faculties, as it goes on expressing and experiencing in this world, it cannot help being tainted and polluted by the residuum of these experiences and expressions.
The ordinary indwelling consciousness - the jiva, the ego-sense, the experiencer who thinks he is subject to pain and pleasure, success and failure - is the one who is sunk in unhappiness.
One step behind, in front, under, below, above - no words make sense at all, there is the Special Being, Who, like space, remains completely and totally unaffected. This Special Being is behind this personality, this ordinary being, different from it, and yet within it - because this Special Being is omnipresent, and that which is omnipresent is everywhere - purusa visesa.
Purusa is the inner ruler, the indweller or 'one who dwells in a city'. Great yogis used to regard the body itself as a city of nine gates and the one who dwells in and rules that nine-gated city is a purusa. That Being is not involved in your karma - your actions and their consequent reactions - and your experiences of pain and pleasure. That which is beyond dualism, and which is therefore the undivided intelligence beyond the ordinary personality, is purusa visesa.
There is another meaning of the word visesa. Sesa means what remains, the residue. How do you find who it is? By seeing what remains after all that is not the reality has been eliminated.
When you peel off all your own notions concerning this isvara, when you have eliminated all that is not the purusa or the inner reality, what remains is the purusa. If you say that the nature of the inner ruler is seen by peeling these things off by the process of 'not this, not this', it means you have already clothed that inner ruler with your own mind substance. You have done it. It is good to remember that God or the reality does not have any clothes on. You are unable or unwilling to see the reality, and therefore you put on the clothes. When you want to see the real nature of God, you take these things away, one by one.
When you have discarded all the samskaras, thoughts and emotions - all of which made you behave in a certain way, when you have seen through them and they do not seem to matter anymore, then there emerges the true purusa the true self, that which is the substratum, the 'is'. This 'is'. All else appeared to be, came into being and came to an end.
For instance, you think that something is pleasure. It arose from a certain experience and it came to an end, but the experiencer is still there. You thought that something else was painful. It arose, it remained for some time and it vanished, but the experiencer is still there. That which remains when all these have been seen through, that ground intelligence, is isvara.
That intelligence which pervades this body, but is not confined or limited to it, connects you and me, and therefore enables communication to take place. You can understand it from the example of space. Before this building was put up, there was space exactly where we are sitting. Now we are calling it the hall. This space was there before, and when this building is pulled down, this space will still be there. Nothing happened to that space; it is unchanged whatever you do in it. Even when walls are erected, the space is neither occupied, cancelled out, consumed nor destroyed. Nothing happens to it. In other words, space cannot be cut up. Therefore, the use of the expression 'this part of space' is absurd.
We discover a new definition - 'anything that cannot be parted can never be a part'. The finger is a part of me because I can part from it. Space cannot be cut up into parts, and therefore there are no parts at all in space, and there is nothing called the space in one room as distinct from the space outside. God is described in yoga texts as akafovat sarvagat nitya - like space, omnipresent, eternal. You can do nothing to it.
In the same way in this ordinary person, you who reads this - but not limited in any way, untainted, untouched by this person, there is a Special Person, and that Special Person is called lsvara or God.
Klesa karma - God is not influenced or affected by what you, as a limited individual, seem to be affected by - which means fear, sorrow, grief, stupidity, ignorance, etc. All these do not exist in God, and that is why you can approach Him, surrender yourself to Him, and be freed from your own limitations.
God is unlimited, unconditioned, and therefore by surrendering yourself totally, you also become unconditioned - 'I' becomes unconditioned. The wave as a wave is subject to being disturbed by the wind which ruffles the surface of the ocean, but the moment the wave merges in the ocean, it is no longer capable of being ruffled. It is free. 'I' is conditioned, limited, and therefore is subjected to fear, anxiety, jealousy and so on. But Isvara, being the totality, is that which remains after all these conditions have been dropped away, or peeled off - visesa.
This is merely affirmed by the devotee. He does not intellectualise it. He contemplates God, he knows that God is omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient. To that God he surrenders himself. When the 'I' is surrendered to that Omniscient Being, there is instant freedom - as long as the surrender is complete and total!
Since the divine, that is omnipresent and omniscient, is not involved in klesa karma, total surrender to the divine is another way of freeing oneself from the vrttis.
The whole concept of karma and of karma yoga is woven into this klesa karma. How does one overcome karma? It is also mentioned later in the fourth chapter (IV.7). 'In the case of yogis,' says Patanjali in this Sutra, 'karmas or actions are neither black nor white.'
Whatever the yogi does is neither good nor evil, because he does not have the sense of doership. Whatever happens to him, happens by God's Grace. Whatever he is able to do is also by God's Will, God's Grace - completely and totally. There is no ego sense at all, so that what he does has no focal point for the karma to rebound from. The karma rebounds on you only as long as the ego-sense projects it. Otherwise it is lost in infinity. It has no starting point, and therefore it has no point to return to. So, in God there is no karma.
It is only in relation to a finite point that one assumes that there is also a finite goal. But when there is a movement in the cosmos, in the infinite, there is no movement. There is a scientific theory that the solar system is dropping in space - from where to where, and what to what - in relation to an assumed central point, which they call the black hole. Even that is an assumption. A motion is motion only in relation to something else. If that something else is not there, there is no motion.
So, karma is karma only in relation to something else. An action returns as a reaction only as long as the starting point is a stationary point. If action springs from the infinite, it is non-action. Action that is constantly generated in the infinite - if it is generated at all - is no action. So, in God there is neither karma nor klesa.
Klesa is psychological distress, emotional upheaval, or trauma - fear/anxiety, sorrow, grief, unhappiness, misery, life and death. All these things do not affect God. He is not subject to any of these, because of the absence of the ego-sense. Movement of energy in consciousness is interpreted as happiness or un- happiness, pleasure and pain, only by that ego-sense. If that is not there, if you are not standing outside when a freezing cold wind is blowing, there is no one to say it is freezing. Space does not say it is freezing, wind does not say it is freezing.
You call the wind freezing. Therefore there is neither klesa - distress - nor karma - action and reaction - in the infinite. All these are merely interpretations by the ego-sense of the movement of energy in consciousness.
1, 25 : tatra niratisayam sarvajna bijam
In that - God, or surrender to God - there is the source of the highest and most excellent omniscience, for the self limitation, which is ignorance, is dispelled by the removal of the ego-ignorance obstacle. Or, the omniscience in that is natural and arouses no wonder.
Tatra means 'in that' - maybe in that surrender itself, or maybe in God. It is a laconic expression that one has to interpret according to one's own light.
When you surrender yourself to God - Isvara - who is omnipresent and omniscient, in that surrender there is omniscience. Omniscience is not knowledge of the particulars by an individual. You do not have to practise yoga in order to acquire knowledge of particulars; you go to school or university for that. Knowledge of the all by the all as the all is omniscience. Omniscience means knowing not only all things, but the ground of all things at the same time, knowing the reality at the same time - or becoming that reality, instantly. This only means that in that person there is no-confusion.
When this ego-sense, the basic vrtti of 'I am', is totally surrendered and merges in the infinite, all the confusions and divisions brought about by its assumed independence are immediately set at rest. That is all. It is neither omniscience in relation to something else - another event for instance - nor an interpretation. It is an instantaneous dissolution of all confusion, doubt and questioning, and of all quest.
So, in the state of omniscience, there is no doubt concerning the non-existence of the self. That shadow which had been cast and mistaken for a personality with an independent existence, is enlightened. The shadow has not gone, but has been enlightened and therefore surrendered, sacrificed, made sacred. It has become one with the infinite. This is something supremely wonderful. There is no wonder greater than this.
In that omniscience, neither a desire nor a craving arises. When the oneness is realised, the things that are bothering us - delusion, ignorance, sorrow, fear, anxiety, vacillation and doubt - will all go. That state of consciousness in which there is no shadow of doubt is surely omniscient.
The Isavasya Upanisad says, 'When the oneness is realised, delusion is gone, sorrow is gone.' In that state of omniscience, one sees that these have no existence apart from the foolish assumption of an individual, 'I am' - 'afraid' follows the assertion that 'I am'. When this 'I am' is knocked down, fear has no resting place. Similarly, delusion, sorrow, anxiety, and doubt, cease to be, because they have no place to rest.
***
Omniscience is not meant in the sense that you can read others' thoughts. It is supposed to be bad manners to read another person's letter, and the person who reads your thoughts reads your letter before it is written! How can that be moral and glorious?
Should the omniscient yogi, or God, know where you lost your purse? The omnipresent consciousness - which is ever present at the same time in you, in the purse, in the money in the purse, and in the person who took the purse - perhaps does not have the idea that the purso was stolen. When you take your pen from one pocket of your shirt and put it in another pocket of the same shirt, you have no feeling that it has been stolen. If the pen had been transferred from your pocket to another person's pocket, then God, being omniscient and omnipotent, does not feel that it has been stolen. It has simply changed pockets!
In the third chapter of the Yoga Sutras, we are given detailed instructions of how to know certain phenomena. After a lifetime of the practices of dharana, dhyana, and samadhi, are we only interested in knowing how to find a lost purse, or read another's thoughts?
After describing all these practices at great length, Patanjali says that they are distractions, because in all these your individuality is very firmly sustained. You become more and more egoistic, more and more confirmed in your foolishness and ignorance. He says they are wasteful exercises.
1, 26 : purvesam api guruh kalena navacchedat
That omnipresent reality, both in its manifest and in its unmanifest aspects, is the source of inspiration and intuitive enlightening experience of all the sages from beginningless time; for, it is not conditioned - or divided - by time. The inner light is timeless. The enlightening experience is timeless; for, time is thought, and thought is ignorance.
The light that shines in total sacrifice of the self - or self-surrender - is the enlightening experience. That itself is the guru. The word 'guru' can be easily translated as follows: 'gu' is nothing more than the gloom of self-ignorance, and 'ru' is the remover. So, that which removes the darkness, or the shadow of ignorance, is guru. The guru is that enlightening experience. This has been the experience of seekers and students of yoga from time immemorial.
Was there the same guru? Kalena 'navacchedat - the guru is not conditioned by time, because this inner light is not a product of thought. Time is a concept of the mind. So, that which is beyond time is also necessarily beyond thought, and that which is beyond thought is timeless. When thought is suspended, time is also suspended. The two are inter-related. This enlightening experience, being beyond thought, is also beyond time.
God, guru, and what was considered self, seem to be the same. Each of these three words - lsvara - God, guru and atma - self, apparently have a meaning of their own. However, they all denote the one essential indivisible consciousness, indivisible truth. The apparent diversity indicated by the different words is fictitious. When you go to what is called a human guru, perhaps he will simply indicate that what you have so far considered to be yourself, and what you have so far considered to be God, are one and the same. The guru illumines that oneness.
Even the tradition that emphasises the need for a human guru is emphatic that it is that light which appears to the human eyes as a human person. To us Swami Sivananda was a radiant personality who was able to enlighten our intellect and lighten our burden, to shine the light of His wisdom on the dark corners of our own ignorance and craving, and in whose presence we enjoyed peace, happiness, joy, and inexpressible delight. All these are the inseparable characteristics of the enlightening experience which appears in front of us as the guru, but we superimpose human-ness on that enlightening experience. That which walked in front of us, which listened, smiled, laughed and cried was this enlightening experience. Being human and endowed with only human faculties, our human vision perceived only the human body, our human ears heard only the human voice. It was our limitation and not His. He was not responsible for that.
Kalena 'navacchedat - that which is not bound to time or by time, which is beyond concepts and precepts and beyond description, is the truth, the guru. If he appeared to have taken birth and to have passed on, that is an unreal super- imposition which, on account of our ignorance, we super-imposed upon this eternal light. That light is unborn and undying, unconcerned about time.
1, 27 : tasya vacakah pranavah
That indwelling omnipresent sole reality is verbally alluded to as Om, which is the ever-new and eternal cosmic sound that is heard in all natural phenomena - thunderclap, roaring of the ocean, wind rustling trees in the forest, and the conflagration - and even in the reverberations of the musical instruments, the hum of engines, and the distant din of the carnival crowd.
What is God called, so that I may call Him by his proper name? Patanjali says that God has no name, but His presence is indicated by Om. When you listen to any undifferentiated sound - the sound in which your mind does not create a division in terms of vowels and consonants, etc., it is Om. When all these blend into one homogeneous sound; that is Om. That is heard everywhere and all the time. It is not absent from anywhere at any time.
You hear the sound when you put your thumbs in your ears. But if you think it is the sound of the capillary bloodstream, a differentiation, a confusion, has started. One must learn to listen to this sound, feeling that this is the Name of God. Pranava means Om. It is very difficult to translate vacaka. It is a kind of verbal indicator. So we say Om is the verbal indicator of God or Isvara. So, Om is not the Name of God. It is important to understand that though we do say that Om, Siva or Krsna is the name of God, it does not need a name because it is omnipresent and eternal. That which is everywhere does not need to be called anything.
This word Om is extremely interesting. In Tamil it just means 'yes'. It is also used in some of the Upanisads as assent or affirmation. That is the very essence of surrender! When you say 'no', your ego is born, and when you say 'never', it is well established! Shall we then say 'yes' to everything that goes on? Is yes the opposite of no? Being the substratum of all, God is not to be restricted to what we call the pairs of opposites. In It, yes is not the opposite of no, love is not the opposite of hate, like of dislike, peace of restlessness. It is not as though God exists only in love, peace and goodness, me and you. God is the basis, the truth, the reality that underlies all - but not in the sense of the all being several things put together. Truth and falsehood both become truth because the mind or consciousness that conceives of that falsehood is true. So, reality is beyond what you consider true and not true, love and hatred, peace and restlessness. 'Yes' is beyond what you mean by yes and no. Therefore this yes does not mean that hereafter you will not say no at all.
In the direct observation of this tremendous inner reality, you persistently observe within yourself the rising of distractions. You understand them, look through them, without saying either yes or no. You are constantly aware of what is. That 'is', and therefore that is yes. There is an affirmation, a recognition of what 'is'. However, you are not going to say, 'Therefore, if I am angry, I must say yes to anger.' You look into that anger to see that it is nothing more than an outflow of energy against the background of awareness. That 'yes' is different. You are not resisting or rebelling against it, but observing it, and discovering the 'is' even in that.
Even so, the great commandment 'Resist not evil' does not mean co-operate with evil. We have understood only two meanings: either we resist evil, becoming evil; or we co-operate with evil, becoming evil again. There is a lovely saying in some of the Indian languages that if you throw stones into filth, the first person to be splashed is yourself. Therefore you cannot resist evil without being tainted by evil.
We have never tried the third alternative, which is to look through what is called evil or good. In this we have really and truly transcended the evil without being tainted by it. We have become totally good, because evil is no longer evil. We have become truly good without becoming egotistic about it. That is what is called Om. This is beautifully described in the Katha Upanisad: 'That which is beyond all the dualities, that in which all dualities blend - day and night into day, love and hatred into divine love, etc. - and which is therefore indescribable, has to be experienced as the 'Is' or the reality that provides the substratum for all these - that is Om.'
1, 28 : taj japas tad artah bhavanam
How to utilize that Om in the adoration of God? By repeating it, at the same time, inquiring into, contemplating and saturating the whole being with, the substance indicated by it - that is, the reality or God, which is the real 'meaning' of Om.
Artha has quite a number of meanings and one is the word 'meaning'. When the word 'book' is uttered, its artha is this book you are reading. In that sense, what is the artha of Om? The dictionary says, 'It is indicative of Brahman, it is God, it is the Supreme Being, it is itself the infinite, it represents creator, preserver and destroyer.' But what is it - not what it means according to the dictionary? The following hints are merely indicative, because this has to be your own adventure.
Om is breath, life. It is a beautiful humming sound, a sound you hear when you listen to the truck outside, when the wind blows over the roof, when it rains, when there is a fire, the 'roar of an animal, the sound of the factories working, the heavy rush of wind. It is a sound which is found everywhere. That is the meaning, the artha.
The Om sound is produced by the breath coming out of the throat. It is divided into three parts - A U M. It starts from the abdomen with A, continues with U in the throat, and ends in the lips with M. So, it is called a complete monosyllable. When you learn to repeat Om, place your hand at the top of the chest so that you can feel the vibration, close your eyes, take a big breath and make the long sound Ooooooommm, slowly closing your lips as you do so. If you listen carefully you will hear the sound of A at the start, the U sound as the lips start to close, and M as the lips come together. A note in the middle of your register will be correct for you.
If you repeat Om looking for the substance which it represents, the mind will become calm, one-pointed and alert. Added to this, if you are sincerely and seriously looking for the substance, there will be the passion of enquiry. Here the whole-souled acceptance and emotional participation in what you are doing is most important.
Japa means to repeat this Om, without resisting or accepting, to be constantly aware of it. If the first time you say Om you contemplate its meaning, there is no need to say it again. Repetition becomes necessary when the first utterance was ineffectual. You go on repeating this mantra mechanically, semi-mechanically, non-mechanically, so that some time or other the penny may drop and you may see what was meant. Were all the previous repetitions useless? Perhaps yes, perhaps no. If those repetitions had not been there, perhaps you would never have reached this point.
Japa can be done mentally. When you thus repeat Om mentally, it does not make you dull, because you are listening to it keenly, attentively, in order to discover for once and maybe for all what that sound is made of. When you were saying, 'Ooom', you knew there was movement of life-breath etc., but when your throat is silent, you still hear the sound. Where is the sound produced, by what, and who listens to it? When you say that you are doing japa mentally, what is that sound made of? The answer to that question is the artha - the meaning or the reality of Om. All the rest is word-meaning, one word for another word.
When you say you are mentally repeating Om, where is it? If you answer that question, you have answered all questions. Only when you are able to see this thing happening, are you seeing the mind, not when you only think you are seeing. At that point you are not different from the mind, the 'I' is not different from the mind and the 'I' surrenders. It is extremely beautiful, but unfortunately it cannot be put into words. You ask a simple question: 'What does I am mentally repeating a mantra mean?' First of all, how do you know you are repeating the mantra mentally? Because you hear it. But what does it mean? And where does it come from? This question has no verbal answer - or the verbal answer is not the answer - because the verbal answer is also produced by the brain. When it is realised that it is the mind, and at the same time 'I' - which is also the same mind - becomes lost in it, there is surrender.
1, 29 : tatah pratyak cetana dhigamo py antaraya bhavas ca
When one repeats the Om in this manner, then the consciousness which is ordinarily scattered over the diversity, is gathered, concentrated and turned inward. The spirit of inquiry into the substance of the Om dispels all the obstacles or distractions, without necessarily wrestling or struggling with them.
When you repeat Om in this manner, the attention that was distracted and externalised suddenly reverses and begins to flow into itself, so that the scattered ignorance - called knowledge - has begun to fade away and self-knowledge emerges, becoming clearer and clearer. It also becomes clear that the object, as such, has never known the subject - except as a projection of one's own self. Therefore, in a manner of speaking, prior to this we have been living not only in self-ignorance, but in utter ignorance. Now that there is a reversal of the flow of consciousness, the self seems to be more real, sharper, there is a clarity in regard to oneself. Then, based upon that, there is clarity and a better understanding of what were previously regarded as objects, because the projection of ignorant ideas and notions has ceased. Truth is becoming abundantly clear.
Antaraya 'bhavas means that the obstacles do not exist at all. It is not as though they are dispelled, but they are made non-being - which means the obstacles are no longer obstacles. A distracting thought or a feeling of pain is an obstacle, but Patanjali says that, if you repeat Om in this manner and contemplate the reality or the truth concerning it, that obstacle ceases to be an obstacle, because the attention that was contemplating Om with vigilance and alertness, suddenly turns upon the obstacle - which immediately becomes almost a help. It is wrong to say that the obstacle did not arise. Some distraction arose, but somehow ceased to be an obstacle. But does it cease to be an obstacle, or does it cease to be? None of these expressions make any sense at all in the face of the inner experience. That is antaniya 'bhavas.
It is true to say that from there on the yogi experiences no obstacles whatsoever. What appeared to be obstacles before he took up the practice of yoga, and what appear to be obstacles in the mind of others, do still arise in him; but he does not regard them as obstacles. To him they are not obstacles.
From there on, whatever happens - whether it is called pleasure or pain, happiness or unhappiness, honour or dishonour - is fuel to this beautiful and brilliant flame of self-knowledge.
Which ever be the path you may choose, or technique you may adopt, you come to the same goal - if you want to call it such - in just a couple of steps. That is why it is called Raja Yoga.
1, 30 : vyadhi styana samsaya pramadha lasya virati bhranti darsana labdha bhumikatva navasthitatvani citta viksapas te ntarayah
What are the obstacles? (1) Disease, (2) dullness, (3) doubt, (4) carelessness, (5) laziness, (6) inability to turn the attention away - from the obstacles, (7) perverted or distorted vision, (8) inability to find a firm ground for the spiritual investigation, and (9) even when such a ground is found, unsteadiness of mind and attention in the pursuit of the inquiry. These are the obstacles and distractions, for they bring about and constitute the apparent fragmentation of the mind-stuff.
These are obstacles only in the sense that they distract your attention and, whereas the self is shining all the time, you are then unaware of it. Only to the extent that they cause psychological disturbance are they considered obstacles.
Let us take one example, vaddhi - disease or illness. When there is a headache, if you are only thinking of it and of the ways and means to get rid of it, then your attention is not focused on the very source of this experience of pain. The attention flows out, and to that extent it is a distraction. If, on the other hand, you have a headache, or any problem you like, and if it is possible for the undistracted attention to observe the source of this pain - we will still call it pain just for the sake of our discussion - without judging, rationalising, condemning, justifying, or calling it this or that, that little pain may be a tremendous aid to self- knowledge. We can use logic and then go beyond logic to direct observation and so on.
It is the mind or thought that becomes aware of pain. Pain is a thought. Most of us, being conditioned to the basic feeling 'I am the body', and having learned that pain is something undesirable, become aware of this pain as something undesirable. Because it is undesired and undesirable, it is called pain. If it is something desirable, it will not be called pain - such as the boyfriend pinching the girl's cheek. That is a delight, a desired experience.
If it can be reduced to its own reality - neither the opinion nor the diagnosis, but the truth concerning it - which is pure experience - without calling it pain or pleasure, desirable or undesirable, then that pain or illness, etc. becomes a powerful aid to self-knowledge. There is no distraction at all.
There is another way of looking at it. Illness is an obstacle only to the extent that it distracts your attention. My guru, Swami Sivananda, had diabetes and lumbago in exactly the same way as you have a Cadillac or a lovely big mansion - you are not unhappy about. it! To Him, lumbago, diabetes, etc. were no different from the shirt that He had. When that state is reached, what happens to the body is of no consequence to the spirit. It has its own natural changes; but these changes do not produce psychological or mental distraction. Inwardly, you are not distracted, no matter what is happening. Nothing affects your inner joy, peace and bliss.
Styana means dullness and samsaya means doubt. Doubt produces an inner distraction. It is important to remember that it is harmful as an obstacle only to the extent that it disturbs your inner attention. Faith is another form of doubt. You have faith when you really do not understand what it is all about, and you mechanically do what you are told to do. This effectively prevents you from turning within and understanding the self, because the attention is still flowing out. Blind faith or blind rejection, which is doubt, are non-different. The common factor in both of these is blindness.
We always bring in doubt or 'but' when there is no urgency. I have a rather oversimplified advice: when you are on the horns of a dilemma - 'I doubt if', 'but' - do nothing. This applies to getting married or divorced, starting a business, etc. If you are going to do it, do it with all your heart, mind, soul and being. If something says 'but', leave it alone till the other pressure builds up to such an extent that you do it in spite of yourself; and then there is no regret, because your whole being did it. In most cases we do not experience this urgency, and so we do most of what we do half-heartedly, and experience regret and remorse.
Pramada lasya means carelessness and laziness, and bhranti darsana means we are conditioned to seeing the external world as we have been taught to see it. Bhranti can also mean deluded or perverted vision.
Labdha bhumikatva means contemplating on Om and trying to discover the meaning. Occasionally you seem to stumble upon it and then immediately the attention wanders away, distracted - navasthitatvani. These are obstacles only because they are mental or psychological distractions.
These nine can roughly be accommodated in three categories; one, dullness; two, unsteadiness; and three, ignorance. If you study the entire yoga literature and look at all the methods that have been suggested in the name of yoga - asanas, pranayama, dancing, jumping up and down and singing, worshipping, and so on - you will find that all of them have been evolved by yogis, teachers and masters in response to these nine obstacles.
1, 31 : dunkha daurmanasya ngam ejayatva svasa prasvasa viksepa saha bhuvah
By the presence of the following symptoms can be understood the extent to which the mind is disturbed and distracted: (1) sorrowful mood, (2) psychological despair, (3) the motions of the body, and (4) inhalation and exhalation. By being attentive to these factors, it is possible to arrive at an understanding of the degree of seriousness of the obstacles; for, they co-exist with the distractions of the mind.
Here the yogi has given us a few diagnostic yardsticks in order to recognise when the mind is distracted. If you find these, you can be sure that the mind is not steady. Duhkha or sorrowful mood may be the result of your karma, or it may be nothing more than unsteadiness of attention - because, if there is no psychological distraction and the attention is steady, you must be able to look at the so-called unhappiness and find that there is happiness in it. You are not able to see the obvious truth - that there is happiness in unhappiness - because the mind is distracted, and you are not looking at it at all. So, when there is unhappiness, the mind is not steady.
Daurmanasya means 'bad mind', a distracted mind, full of groans and grumbles, ill will and evil thoughts. Without condemning or rationalising, you merely have to realise that, when the mind is in a bad mood, the attention is distracted. If the attention is not distracted, it should be immediately obvious that, whether it is called good mood or bad mood, it is still a mood. You call it good or bad only because you are not looking within, but somewhere else. Look straight within yourself and then, whether it is called good or bad, the mood must be removed. When this happens, what remains is exactly what there has always been - the mind.
Angam ejayatva means when the body is itchy and restless. If there is shaking of the limbs, the yogi prescribes asana - postures. These are meant to enable you to regain steadiness of the body, so that, without distraction, the attention may be focused upon the phenomenon of experience.
Svasa prasvasa means inhalation and exhalation. Patanjali says that inhalation- exhalation was not meant only to ventilate your lungs, but to indicate the state of distraction of the mind. The less distracted the mind is, the calmer the breathing is - the more distracted, the more violent the breathing is. Watch the quality of your breathing and you know exactly what the quality of your mind is.
Therefore duhkha - unhappiness, sorrow, misery, daurmanasya - distracted mind, angam ejayatva - unnecessary shaking of the body, whether it is pathological or habitual, and svasa prasvasa - disturbed inhalation or exhalation, are the surest indicators of the presence of these distractions. You realise that there is a problem and diagnose it by the way your body behaves. You realise that the attention is not steady, and there is a dark veil of ignorance which prevents self-knowledge. This gives rise to mental distraction in as much as you can only observe the source of what happens to you outside yourself.
1, 32 : tat pratisedhartham ekatattva bhyasah
In order to overcome mental distractions, one should steadily adhere to the practice of one method. Whereas any method will help one overcome distractions, frequent change of the methods adopted in one's practice will aggravate the distractions.
This sutra seems to suggest that, if you want to attain self-knowledge, pick up one of these methods and be totally absorbed and dedicated to it. One-pointedness is irreplaceable. There is a very beautiful expression: 'My mind agrees to it, but I have no heart to do it.' Rationally, intellectually, you accept it, but it does not appeal to your emotion. It is the emotional assent that provides the energy for whatever we do. Therefore, if this wedding of the intellect and the emotion is not there for the yoga you practise, there is no energy and no yoga. The moment the emotional block is removed, there is tremendous enthusiasm and energy.
When a practice has become routine and dull, something new grips your attention. The problem of craving for experience, even for the experience of mental quiescence or peace of mind, is still a craving. If you yield to this craving, you have deliberately created another disturbance within the mind. The master says, 'Stay where you are, there is nothing wrong with what you are doing, except that you are tempted away from it. It is a distraction which could take you from what you are doing to something else, instead of watching that distraction. Here is a golden opportunity to enquire, 'What is it that is being distracted, and why does the new experience tempt me?' Observing it, finding the mischief there and then, is ekatattva 'bhyasah - total dedication to one thing, one factor.
Why do these obstacles manifest in us? Because of lack of one-pointed devotion. The biblical commandment: 'Thou shalt love the Lord with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind, and with all thy strength,' is a beautiful thing. It may apply not only to someone called God, but it is true in everything that we do in our life. If this one-pointed integration exists in our life, and we are able to apply it to whatever we do, that is yoga, the whole life is yoga. The entire message of yoga is contained in this one single commandment.
1, 33 : maitri karuna mudito peksanam sukha duhkha punya punya visayanam bhavanatas citta prasadanam
The following fourfold attitude to life's vicissitudes and in all relationships, being conducive to peace of mind, enables one to overcome the distractions of the mind: 1. friendliness towards pleasure, or those who are pleasantly disposed to oneself - friends, 2. compassion for the sorrowful, and, when one is in a painful condition, self- forgetful sympathy for those who may be in a similar painful condition, 3. rejoicing in the exaltation of the noble or the holy ones, and 4. indifference to unholiness, not being drawn into it nor holding others in contempt for their unholiness.
A yogi who is established in equal vision and whose mind is steady, has these four basic qualities or fourfold attitude to others in the world: maitri, karuna, mudita, upeksa. This is a very important sutra, because we are living in this world and this world is full of these four types of people.
Maitri means friendliness - friendliness towards those who are one's equals. The yogi does not judge them as equals, but the feeling of equality is the spontaneous expression of his inner attitude, of the equanimity in which he is established. He does not strive to be friendly. It is a purely spontaneous outpouring of his inner vision and inner attitude. One who strives to be friendly is not friendly. You do not try to be what you are.
Karuna means compassion. In regard to people who are unhappy, spontaneous compassion flows from the yogi. In Taoist and Zen terminology, they compare this to water. Water spontaneously flows down. It does not want or condescend to go down, but descends spontaneously. Again, the yogi is not trying to be compassionate. One who tries to be compassionate is merely pitying you with a tremendous superiority attitude towards you. So karuna is compassion where there is no pity or superiority at all.
Mudita means joy. When you see something glorious, joyous, or auspicious, or when you come across somebody who is spiritually advanced, again the heart leaps with joy and happiness towards that person. If the heart can feel happy in the happiness, prosperity, and spiritual elevation of others, that is another indication of this equal vision and balanced mind.
To those who are equal to us, we are friendly. Towards those who are suffering, our compassion flows. Towards those who are happy and exalted, our admiration flows. But there is one more group whom we call apunya - not so virtuous. What is the attitude of the yogi towards this last group - drunkards, murderers, thieves and rogues, whatever be the robe in which the rogue may appear? The yogi is not blind to the fact that certain people's conduct is not good. He does recognise this. He neither condemns them, shuns them, nor pities them, nor does he admire them or join them. He does not say, 'You are wicked and I am here to uplift you.' That is a silly superiority complex, totally unworthy of a yogi.
It is possible to argue that a yogi might even come down to the other man's level - watch carefully - in order to uplift him. When you come down to another man's level, he has brought you down. Who is to uplift whom? If you yourself are lost, how are you going to uplift another person? So, there is none of these, for they are all tricks of the same mind that has been tricking us throughout our life. The yogi sees the violence, the wickedness, and the aggression. Perhaps the question arises, ,Why does a human being behave like that?, The honest answer is, 'I do not know.' That is all. There is neither hate, dislike, disgust, nor contempt.
When you say, 'I do not know', honestly, faithfully and sincerely, you are looking within yourself, at that which says, 'I do not know.' The attention is diverted into yourself. What happens then is upeksa - psychological non-contact. It is neither indifference nor detachment - though it is often translated as in-difference - towards those whom we consider as bad or evil. To a yogi, ahimsa - non-violence in thought, word and deed - is one of the cardinal principles of life. When the yogi 'who does not want to hurt anybody and who is full of compassion and love' sees somebody who spills hatred, he is indifferent to that person, he does not even think of him. Why? Because the moment you think of a bad person, he is in you. The more you think of a bad person and his deeds, the worse you will become.
Will you pity that person? There is no sense in it. If you become friendly with him and say, 'Ah, you are my friend, my brother', that is hypocrisy. The yogi is totally free of hypocrisy. If there is hypocrisy, it is good to realise that it means, 'I am something and I want to appear to be something else.' In that you have completely lost your yoga practice - abhyasa, because there is no hypocrisy at all in yoga. When we try to cultivate virtues, it is good to remember that these are not virtues, because virtues are not qualities that can be superimposed upon the personality. The attempt leads to hypocrisy, tension, and depression.
Spiritual growth is something which happens often imperceptibly. You are growing with the spirit. So, it is the spirit that undergoes this transformation, deep within the innermost core of your being, which manifests as friendliness, etc.
When this four-fold attitude is adopted in our daily relationships, all the obstacles that were mentioned earlier are removed and the mind is still - not in a dull, but in a dynamically active way. All relationships continue, because it is relationships that expose our own wickedness to ourselves, that bring the distractability of the mind to the fore, and so are of tremendous help in this quest for self-knowledge.
These are the attitudes of an enlightened person, because His behaviour is not a reaction produced by His prejudice, memory or value judgement. His actions spring from pure consciousness or intelligence that fills His entire being. The intelligence is pure, uncontaminated, unpolluted - and therefore its actions are always pure.
From this little sutra, a whole school of thought - karma yoga - has sprung. This is the essence of karma yoga. If you can constantly watch your own mind to ensure that these are the four attitudes - maitri, karuna, mudita, upeksa - that you have towards all humanity, you are fast progressing towards self-awareness.
1, 34 : pracchardana vidharanabhyam va pranasya
Or, the distractions can be overcome by literally and physically exhaling the breath and holding the lungs empty, or by adopting such other methods like fasting or contemplation of death, etc., by which one symbolically 'expires' and holds the prana or life-force outside, as it were.
Pracchardana does not merely mean exhaling, but vomiting. One does not vomit breath, so we say 'exhale'. Vidharana is to hold, and pranasya is of the prana.
Here, a very powerful pranayama is suggested: exhale and hold. This does not mean exhale, inhale, and hold, but to exhale all the air out, and hold it out. Do not breathe. If you exhale your breath and hold, you will very soon see what your life-force is. In a few seconds, it will stand in front of you and say, 'Please open your nostrils'. You will come fare-to-face with prana, the life-force which springs into action and makes you take the next breath. What makes you take the next breath is prana. No definition can ever show it to you as clearly as one moment's experience will. At least for a few seconds you will feel a completely suspended state. Not only the breath, but everything seems to be suspended. There is no mind, no self.
Please try it some time. You will suddenly discover that the mind becomes absolutely still. During that period you think of nothing except your breath. It has to be done on an empty stomach, because the purity of this practice can be experienced only if you are able to pull the whole abdomen in and push the diaphragm up, to ensure complete and total exhalation. When the lungs are completely empty and you hold them empty even for a few seconds, those few seconds are interpreted by your mind to be about 35.000 years. Suddenly you realise that time is not real at all. It depends upon the mental mood. Death threatens you. What you experience then can also lead to the total absence or avoidance of mental distractions. The hatha yoga explanation of this is that it is the breath - or the movement of prana - that enables your mind to think. So, you suspend that. The mind has lost its fuel, and so it is quiet.
If you are afraid to die, do not try this. But if you want to face the reality and the truth of what life and death mean, then carry on. Exhale completely and hold your breath. You do not want to breathe. See what is going to make you breathe again. Then you will see what prana is. You will not see it as an object, you will not be verbally aware, but you will be aware of it. It is in that one split second, when you are not able to hold your breath any more, that you realise that you could not even die. Something which is beyond the ego which said, 'I am going to hold my breath,' seemed to sweep the ego aside and make you breathe. Then you are totally fearless!
If there is no ego sense, why should there be life in this body at all? What have I got to do with this body? That is what the yogi wants to find out.
If at the same time, you observe what takes place. You will understand what pranayama means - to gather the prana and therefore the rays of the mind together, and focus the whole thing on this one - I do not know what it is.
1, 35 : visayavati va pravrttir utpanna manasah sthiti nibandhani
Or, intense and vigilant attentiveness to the activities aroused within oneself by sense-experiences, can also act as a binding force to prevent mental distractions. Needless to say that one should not get lost in such sense-experiences. Of such is attentiveness to breathing, or to the movement of life-force, or to the 'silent' sound of a mantra mentally uttered, to the subtle vision of the divine presence, or to the experience of 'the space of consciousness' within the heart.
Although yoga is to be practised so that you come face to face with the self - which necessarily implies the avoidance of being caught in material or physical consciousness, because the whole idea is to extricate the mind from the physical world and physical phenomena, here is a rather enigmatic sutra which suggests that even through these you can gain self-knowledge.
Visayavati va pravrttir means when the mind comes into contact with external or non-external objects and there is a certain inner experience of pleasure, pain, etc. If you observe that with tremendous attention, once again your mind is stilled. Pain and pleasure both have validity in relation to meditation. So, two schools arose.
One school of thought says that you can drink wine, and as you are drinking you can feel that you are drinking wine, and it is delicious. But the taste is in your tongue. The taste is not in the wine, it is in you, in the 'me'. Who is 'me'? If, on the other hand, while drinking, wine you get lost, the mind is completely distracted. Similarly, when you are having sexual enjoyment and the mind is completely lost, there is no harm. It is something which happens naturally. The only problem is that the yoga is gone.
Seeing this, the other school went to the other extreme. They said that this is dangerous because, when one drinks, dances, eats meat and enjoys, the mind is distracted. They said, 'Asceticism is the answer! Have a bed of nails and sit on it - the mind does not go anywhere!' Pain has this one great advantage - it is possible for you to become used to pleasure, but you never get used to pain! Every time it is new, every time it is hell.
Not only the yogis of the Orient but even Christian mystics used to punish the body, to whip themselves, etc. That is also right, provided that, while suffering that pain, you can meditate and find the subject or the experiencer. If that is possible, it will have the same effect as pleasure; and a state of divisionless experiencing might result.
You do not need to go out of your way to buy pleasure and pain. Life brings all sorts of experiences. Every day you have some pleasant and some unpleasant experiences - ordinary, normal pleasure and pain, nothing extraordinary. Why do you not use them? Instead of reacting to all those experiences, find the self in them. When there is a little pain, do not endure it or suppress it, but become aware of the whole process. Where there is a little pleasure and you are in the seventh heaven, do not go up in smoke, but become aware of that experience.
The yogi does not suppress his emotions. He does not pretend that he does not suffer physical pain or suggest that he cannot enjoy some pleasure. He is aware of them. In his case, the experience of pleasure is more intense and the experience of pain is devoid of imaginary suffering. When he is enjoying some pleasure, he does not get lost in it. He is aware of the whole mechanism. There is no fear, no hope, no craving, and therefore there is no restlessness. Whatever pleasure is natural, he enjoys to the utmost. In the same way, when it comes to pain, there is still no restlessness in the mind. Because there is absolute absence of restlessness, there is no confusion. The present pain is the present pain unrelated to the past. Therefore, the imaginary suffering that most people are subject to, is absent.
As you see here, the entire process of yoga is nothing but becoming more and more aware of that which is called the self. Whether it is ordinary life or meditative life, it is constantly observing and becoming aware of the arising of something called 'self'.
Possibly tantra was based upon this teaching. In tantrika practices, anything and everything was allowed - dancing, singing, sex, etc. While indulging in all that, the yogi looked within to see the substratum or the content of that experience. By observing these inner experiences, one can once again arrive at the same self- knowledge that is the so-called goal of yoga.
1, 36 : visoka va jyotismati
Or, one may be keenly attentive to an internal - the psychic blissful inner light - or an external person or phenomenon, devoid of sorrow and full of resplendence, and thus overcome distractions of the mind-stuff.
What the master suggests here is that there is an inner light - though not until you discover it - in which there is no sorrow and no mental distraction. If your attention is focused on it and flows towards it, then the mental distractions will cease. Sorrow, being an indicator of distracted attention, if that attention is focused upon the inner light which is free from sorrow, you can be free of mental distraction. In order to do so, you should not create this inner light as if it were an object, and then meditate upon it. That is a useless pastime. Meditating upon any kind of object is a waste of time, it takes you nowhere. It is merely a prop, an external aid for internal vision.
Calmly and with an undistracted mind, observe the light within yourself - which is the self - that shines even when your eyes are closed, revealing your own thoughts, feelings, experiences, memory, and imagination. That inner light is beyond sorrow, just as in the darkness of deep sleep you do not experience any sorrow. By contemplating the inner light that is beyond sorrow, one overcomes all distractions.
1, 37 : vita raga visayam va cittam
Or, the mental distractions can be eliminated by the adoration of the consciousness of one or which is free from conditioning - or the psychological coloring of attachment or passion. To this category belong even divine images, celestial bodies like the sun, and enlightened living beings - or even babies - though surely one should constantly bear in mind that it is their unconditioned nature which entitles them to be thus adored.
That which is beyond this contamination of conditioning is the pure, untainted, uncontaminated mind. If you do not want to call it mind, you may call it the self, God, or anything you like, it does not matter.
If there is no thought-wave on the citta, it is God. That is why Patanjali allows us to meditate upon the citta itself, when there is no thought and no desire in it - vita raga visayam va cittam. It is abstract meditation and difficult, but it can be done. What is your intelligence if there is no desire in it, if there is no thought in it, if there is no attachment in it? It is God. When one contemplates that, one can overcome psychological distractions. Therefore Ramana Maharsi said, 'Find out where this thought arises, where this desire arises. If you go along with it and trace its roots, you will find God.'
This sutra can also mean some person or object which is free from the twin forces of attraction and repulsion. In this category, you can include the great masters who are free from love and hate, passion and anger, who are pure crystals - babies, pictures and statues of any image of God, anything that suggests the divine presence, any natural phenomenon - the sun, moon or stars - in fact, anything that shines but is not contaminated by love or hate. Any person, any thing or your own innermost consciousness in which the taint of likes and dislikes, attraction and repulsion, love and hate does not exist - that consciousness which is unconditioned, uncoloured - is also worth contemplating. By contemplating, these one's mind becomes steady and undisturbed.
1, 38 : svapna nidra jnana lambanam va
Or, the distractions can be removed by holding on to the wisdom gained in dreams, whether they are para-psychological visions or symbolical dreams, as also the wisdom gained by a profound reflection on the 'message' of deep sleep, in which there is total absence of mental distraction, and in which one experiences no diversity at all. In this state, free from obstacles, one 'experiences' peace and happiness, which are 'recollected' on awaking from sleep.
This sutra has been variously interpreted. Some yogis even suggest that, if you have a vision during your dream, you can meditate upon that dream vision, and if you have a mantra given to you in your dream, you can repeat that mantra.
You dream and, on waking up, you realise you were dreaming. It was a very pleasant dream or a very unpleasant nightmare. When you have a nightmare, you are pouring with sweat, and you realise it was unreal. Yet, while you were dreaming, it was real, otherwise you would not sweat.
What is the wisdom concerning a dream? The dream experience teaches you - if you wish to learn - that time, space, and substantiality are not imaginary, but 'dreaminary' - something like what happens in dream.
Look at sleep and dream. In sleep you forget the world; even the I-am-the-body consciousness does not exist. The 'I' experience does not exist in sleep. That is, the sleeping person does not say 'I sleep'. So, time, space, and substantiality are not as real as we take them to be. Sleep and dream teach us not to take things at their face value.
There is another way of looking at it. It is possible that we are all still dreaming, and that it is time to wake up from this long dream. If you begin to meditate upon this wonderful truth - neither accepting it as dogma or inviolable doctrine, nor rejecting it as childish - a tremendous change takes place in you. If, when somebody comes to fight with you, you think, 'Maybe I am just dreaming,' - you may even scream, why not? - you screamed in your dream, you do not react violently or aggressively, and thus promote or perpetuate this conflict. The conflict ends there. At that very moment, your attitude towards life and all its events has undergone a change.
These are the only things that one can really say concerning sleep.
1, 39 : yatha bhimata dhyanad va
Or, the distractions can be overcome by adopting any contemplative technique, using any object of meditation one likes most; for, that which one likes most holds one's attention, and the technique one likes most makes contemplation easy - provided, of course, that neither the object nor the technique itself involves or invites distraction.
Choose any object of experience you like - seeing, listening, imagining, reviving memory, tasting, or touching - but be totally centred on that experience, become totally aware of this phenomenon called experience - though not in order to experience it, because then you are distracted - if you do it with a wish to experience it, you are lost.
Do anything you like, but do something somehow to come to grips with this mental distraction. Use any means whatsoever - whether orthodox means suggested by the various teachers, or something that you invent to suit your own particular needs - to try to discover how the mind and the attention are distracted, how a vrtti arises. Become aware of the phenomenon of experience itself, till the only truth you are left with is 'I experience.' It is never just 'I experience', it is either I see, I know, I taste, I hear, etc. Go on till only that remains as truth.
Then you wonder: where is the experience? In you. What is the distance between you and the experience? What is the relationship between you and the experience? Is there an experience apart from you, or is the experience inseparable from you? If the experience is in you, how do you touch it? How do you come into contact with it at all?
Please remember that all that is your own creation. Whatever you have put together with the help of your mental activity is very nice, a beautiful dream. In that, there is still a division - the seer and the seen, the meditator and the object of meditation, the subject and the object. As long as there is this division, you are sure that ignorance and its consequent ego-sense is also there.
Perfection is there, it has not vacated its omnipresent throne, but you have covered the whole thing with your own mental activity and concepts; you are playing with these creatures of your own mind. All these are related to the ego. That is why, in one of Ramana Maharsi's talks, he says that enquiry into the self alone is the right path, because meditation is based on the ego. It is the ego that does the meditation.
Patanjali' s meditation is intended merely as an exercise to acquire the power of concentration, of entering into oneself. First you learn to concentrate the mind, to focus it upon something which is chosen; but all the time you remember that this is merely an exercise. One must go through this, and come out the other side of ignorance, where there is enlightenment. If that is not remembered, one gets hooked onto a thing called meditation which is nothing but ego-based mental activity and related experiences. You can have all sorts of experiences, but all these are ego-related.
1, 40 : parama nu parama mahattvanto sya vasikarah
The mind or the intelligence, thus freed from distractions, encompasses or comprehends the smallest as also the greatest - for it is free from all conditioning, and from all coloring, and is therefore like the purest crystal.
If the attention is thus undistracted, and if the inner vision is uncoloured, there is a steady concentration of attention.
If, at the same time, the attention is not attracted, not only not distracted, one way or the other, then that mind is able to comprehend the smallest and the greatest. No problem is too great or too small, no truth is too subtle or too great. That attention, freed from all its limitations, is instantly able to bring into itself whatever there is.
Freed from all conditioning, that attention becomes one with the entire universe, and it sees that what was the substratum of 'me' and what was in 'me', is in all and therefore the 'me' is all. There is no limitation, either as an individual or as a cosmic whole. There is no feeling that the self is limited only to me, nor that it is only universal.
What was within me is the self and that self is not only within me, but is within all.
1, 41 : ksina vrtter abhijatasya va maner grhitr grahana grahyesu tatsthatad anjanata samapattih
Lest it should be misunderstood that the intelligence, freed from conditioning and coloring, is dull, inactive, unresponsive and void, it should be remembered that, like a pure crystal, which reflects without distortion or confusion any object that is placed near it, the steady and ever-alert intelligence, too, receives and reflects the color - nature - of the subject, the predicate, and the object in all situations, instantly, spontaneously, and appropriately.
The world outside is not seen in its real form by anybody but the yogi. What you see outside is the projection of your own mind, your own conditioning and fancy. You see the world as you like to see it, as you dislike to see it, or as you are afraid it may be.
When the vrttis are gone, when your thoughts are not governed by your own moods and fancies, then that which is real alone is.
The life of that person is like the purest crystal - he reflects everything as it is. In his case there is neither an expression nor a suppression. He neither says that he will not do this, nor that he wants to do that. He neither restrains himself, nor lets himself go. The crystal merely reflects, without ever intending to do so.
In the abstract, it is almost impossible to understand this. Only if you have met a yogi like Swami Sivananda is it easy to understand. For instance, He hardly ever used words like 'thank you' or 'please' until someone of western culture walked in, and then automatically He said, 'Thank you very much.' As soon as someone of eastern culture appeared, without intending to do so, He folded His palms and said, 'Namaste'. When a child went to Him, His face was a child-like face, the child was reflected there immediately. If there was an unhappy person, that unhappiness was reflected in Him immediately, but always without His intending to do so.
Ksina vrtter abhijatasya - when the vrttis are gone, one becomes a clear crystal. Colouring is taken on, but the crystal is never actually coloured. It seems to reflect the colour, but the colour neither belongs to the crystal, adheres to the crystal, nor stays with the crystal.
This crystalline purity of the self is not a thing that can be acquired by directly aiming at crystalline purity. Most of us go on pretending that we are absolutely pure crystal, and that our whole personality is absolutely divine. But then nothing seems to happen. The mind is not yet absolutely still.
1, 42 : tatra sabda rtha jnana vikalpaih samkirna savitarka samapattih
In the case of the understanding reached through logic or reasoning, there is confusion, on account of the discrepancies that exist between the word - description, meaning - in both connotations as the substance described and as the knowledge of the word-meaning, and imagination or assumption. Hence, it is unclear and uncertain.
As long as logic and reason function and the mind tries to understand, there is the possibility of the taint of misunderstanding, because the mind functions on a dualistic basis. When this happens, understanding and its correlative misunderstanding must both exist. For instance, when I use the expression 'I love you', many things are implied by it. 'I love you' possibly means that I do not love someone else, that I do not hate you, that I did not love you before, or that I may not love you later.
So, understanding or misunderstanding can also be attributed to a confusion that is inherent in thinking and in reasoning. We use a word. The word unfortunately has a load on it which we call 'meaning'. This is one of the most terrible problems that all teachers have to face. The teacher says something, and it is translated by the student into his own idiom. If we do seem to understand one another, usually it is purely accidental.
So, when the rational mind is used, there seems to be an understanding- jnana - and when this manifests in the mind, there seems to be a certain state of inner balance. Even that has the semblance of knowledge, self-knowledge, equanimity, or balance, but it is only a semblance.
Patanjali's approach to all this is extremely scientific, and therefore he does not dismiss even this as worthless. He says that it is there, and that you can use your own logic and come to its conclusion. Beyond this point logic is useless.
When you have reached this point, again there is an inner peace and tranquillity. But the tranquillity is often short-lived, and it is violently disturbed in its reaction. That it can also lead us astray goes without saying.
1, 43 : smrti parisuddhau svarupa sunye va
But, when the mind-stuff is cleansed of memory, the self or personality which was nothing but the fragmentation, the conditioning or the coloring - the impurity - is wiped out as it were; and, the substance or truth alone shines, without distortion, logic or reasoning, which is the function of the limited personality.
Smrti is the load on the brain which we have regarded as reason, intellect, or memory, and which was confused with knowledge. This can be cleaned from the mindstuff by realising that this is only memory, pure conditioning, junk. Every time you respond, you realise that the response comes from memory, from the junk. When you abandon this, the rational intellect has been silenced and has reached its own conclusion. When this happens, the intelligence begins to respond, and therefore there is intelligent responsibility.
When this intelligence moves towards its own centre, there is almost no movement. Svarapa sunye 'va - as if the observer does not exist. When the ego - the 'I', the observer - is absent or as if absent, then meditation happens, otherwise there is simply thinking. In meditation it is not 'I' that is observing it. There is pure observation. In this observation, the observer is still observed, so that there is still some duality. But the observer seems to be nearly gone, and the observed object seems to fill the entire space. There is a movement in intelligence, but that movement is totally within - that is the observed, the object of observation. It is then that one becomes clearly aware of the object, whether it is a person, an experience, or a relationship.
At that point, there is no mental activity or rational 'intellection' at all. There is this pure and simple observation. The observer is still alive, but only just; and the observation or the observed object is shining radiantly. If this can happen, there is likely to be more understanding and less misunderstanding.
1, 44 : etayai va savicara nirvicara ca suksma visaya vyakhyata
Whatever has been said above, also applies to similar distinctions between the other methods already suggested - like the method of enquiry - and spontaneous awareness. Thus, by this, they and all the subtleties involved, have been explained, leaving only the subtlest experiencer of awareness to be dealt with.
In the same way you can understand what is known as savicara. In savicara there is a definite and positive movement towards the observed object. Take the phenomenon of fear as an example. In the first stage, you are merely thinking about it, rationalising it, rejecting it, accepting it, and so on. Once that has come to an end, you make a positive effort towards this observation. For instance, you are definitely making an effort towards observing this phenomenon called fear within yourself. The mind is trying to understand it. The mind continues to call it fear, and that is how it becomes fear. When that labelling is gone, the idea of fear is gone, but there is still some experience of commotion within. In order to observe this commotion, the intelligence turns upon itself. While turning, there is still the commotion within, that is, the intelligence is also in motion - savicara - where you are pushing this intelligence towards that experience. Then, at the end of that, there is nirvicara, where without any movement at all you become aware of the experience - and there is pure and simple ewareness. At that time its definition as fear ceases.
When you observe something that is extremely subtle within yourself, the fear is no longer an emotion, a gross experience. Saksma visaya - what is it that is happening in you? You want neither a name, a definition, some intelligence, movement of prana, a thought, an emotion or a sensation. When you reject all definitions and descriptions, you realise it is neither tangible nor gross, but something very subtle. It is even more subtle than a thought. It is more subtle than you thought it was! Then meditation becomes so very beautiful. It is then that anything that happens to you, at any time in your life, can become meditation.
1, 45 : suksma visayatvam ca linga paryavasanam
When thus the subtle experiencer of the inner awareness is observed without interruption, one arrives at that which has no identification or distinguishing mark, but which is at the same time not a void.
When you go on observing it keenly, with all your heart and soul, the characteristics with which you identify this disappear. When you are afraid, or are shaken by anger, lust, or anxiety, and the heart begins to pump very fast, if you observe the fear that produced this, and you go on doing so, the heart seems to respond in a very beautiful co-operative way. It becomes softer and softer, so
that all the characteristic marks with which you associated fear, or excitement, or anxiety, cease, and there is a state which cannot be described or defined. 'I' is still there observing and experiencing this, but all the distinguishing marks have gone.
1, 46 : ta eva sabijah samadhih
That indeed is the realization of the homogeneous cosmic essence, though even in it there exists the seed of potential fragmentation, which is the consciousness of the individuality or the observer.
That is samadhi, deep contemplation, or total equanimity and equilibrium. But in it there is still the seed of the whole previous commotion. It is like a baby that seems to be totally free of our defects, weaknesses, and prejudices - not because it has solved these problems, but because it has not yet become awake to them.
That is the difference between the baby and the sage. The sage has overcome these problems, the baby has yet to be awakened to them.
1, 47 : nirvicara vaisaradye dhyatma prasadah
Proficiency, in such observation, dispenses with even self-enquiry, on account of the uninterrupted self-awareness being natural; then there is spiritual enlightenment, peace, and bliss.
When you go on practising vicara, turning the intelligence upon itself without mental activity, you have gone beyond the rational intellect - where logic has reached its logical conclusion - and have trained yourself in this pure observation. Here you are observing intensely whatever happens within yourself. First you strive for this - there is certainly an effort to begin with. When you become expert in this exercise, it becomes effortless and natural, and there is pure motionless observation of yourself. You are able to switch on this sell-observation without any effort or strain what-so-ever.
When the 'I' or the observer has totally surrendered itself to its own substratum - which is the cosmic intelligence, that movement comes to an end. There is the Grace of God. That is the only sense in which God's Grace, the Grace of the infinite self, can be rightly used. God's Grace is understandable only in this context, where the whole being has been surrendered.
It is important to remember that self-knowledge is not knowledge acquired by 'I' of myself. The 'I' can never know the self. The 'I' being just a vrtti, a wave, it cannot know the ocean. It is the ocean that knows itself. It is the ocean that knows all the waves and currents that are flowing in it or on it.
The next is a very important and beautiful sutra.
1, 48 : rtambhara tatra prajna
Such enlightenment is saturated with harmony, order, and righteousness.
We have been told by every great teacher that the yogi should be a man of great virtue. You are only filled with virtue when there is total surrender and spontaneous awareness of the content of all experiences and expressions. You do not even strive to be good and to do good, because goodness becomes spontaneous. The inner light banishes all shadow, and therefore there is no darkness within. In that state there is neither suffering nor sin. The whole of your consciousness is saturated with rtam.
The word rtam is very difficult to translate. It is something that makes goodness good, that is at the root of goodness, that is natural to being, that is naturally good. That goodness is called rtam. That order is not what you and I would characterise as order, but something which synthesises and transcends all perfection, which sees death and birth as the same event. It does not make any distinction between good and evil, or pleasure and pain. It is order in which all things exist as all things, and yet as a whole, a totality. It is virtue that is inherent in the soul of being, that need not be taught or imposed. It is natural order, something that is natural to the soul. It is not the goodness that we practise towards each other, but the goodness that is non-different from the infinite God. When Divine Grace has manifested in this life - because the whole of life has been totally surrendered to the infinite being, what happens is rtam, supreme order, supreme good.
Possibly the word rhythm comes from rtam - the rhythm of the universe, where nothing can be isolated and considered good or bad, where there is neither a thing called relative morality, nor absolute morality.
1, 49 : sruta numana prajna bhyam anya visaya viseva rtthatvat
This enlightenment, this understanding, this realization, is quite different from what one has heard about, or deduced from teaching obtained from external sources. Whereas, in the case of the latter, the object of study, investigation and understanding, is outside of the consciousness, the realization arrived at in the former is of a special category.
This rtam or natural order has nothing whatsoever to do with what you have heard and what you have inferred to be good. All these are book-virtues that are found in your books and dictionaries. They are no better than the vices that are also found there. Love and hate are both composed of letters of the alphabet. One is not necessarily better that the other, until you reach this natural order. When this happens, the love which manifests in your heart at that point is completely different from what you heard about love, or what you inferred, or what your own mind suggested to you to be love, or a desirable virtue.
Visesa 'rthatvat can be translated in two different ways. One, this virtue has a special meaning in itself. Two, you have eliminated all the previously learned and loaded definitions of the word virtue, and what remains is pure virtue. You do not regard that as love which someone suggests is love - love of man, love of God, and so on. All that is gone. What remains is love which is beyond any description whatsoever. That is God.
1, 50 : tajjah samskaro nya samskara pratibandhi
This special realization of spontaneous self-awareness completely transmutes the entire being, and there is total change. All other habits and tendencies are overcome by habitual self-awareness.
That virtue is something that can eliminate all samskaras from your life. That vision, that experience of natural order being natural, it eliminates all disorder without creating disorder. If there is violence, can you stop that violence without being violent yourself? If he cheats you, can you put him right without cheating him? Can evil be opposed? Opposition itself is evil - isn't it? If he is fighting with another and you try to restrain him, you are as violent as he is. Can you deal with restlessness, the absence of peace, without losing your own peace of mind?
All this is difficult. But when there is this natural order, it is able to eliminate all disorder from life without becoming disorderly.
1, 51 : tasya pi nirodhe sarva nirodhan nirbijah samadhih
When even that special realization - with the seed of fragmentation still present - is transcended, everything is transcended, and the seeker has, as it were, come one full circle. The seeker is entirely absorbed in the seeking. The reality realizes itself - it is - without the need for the individual, even in his subtlest state. This indeed is the enlightenment in which there is no seed at all for the manifestation of diversity.
When the self has been surrendered, nothing but pure virtue exists. There are neither vrttis nor mental activity. One must be very cautious here. It is not as though the mind must be stilled - floating mental activity may still continue to be, but the one thing that is absent is identification of the self with those mental activities - that also is gone.
Who makes that go? Not 'me'. What is there that can rid the 'me' of a misconception concerning itself? One does not even associate the self with this natural order. Can you pretend that you have understood the basis of this natural order? And can you stand outside it and look at it as if it were an object? The whole thing is absurd. One does not know how this happens. The yogi says that it is God's Grace.
Therefore, Patanjali does not say, 'Stop this identification.' You cannot do that. You have reached a completely transparent situation where there is no identification of the 'me', which seems to exist in a transparent way. How does that come to an end? How does the seed of all thought, of all consciousness, of all experience, come to an end? Who crushes that seed? Not 'me'. And the seed cannot crush itself.
We do not know who crushes that seed. Patanjali says, tasya 'pi nirodha - somehow the seed also comes to an end. When that happens, you are in a state of perfect yoga - not you, but yoga is in a state of perfect yoga. God has realised himself, the infinite has once again become the infinite.
Even that is wrong. If you say, the infinite has once again become the infinite, it means that in the meantime it was not the infinite, which is absurd. Nothing more than that can be said, because even the seed has come to an end - nirbijah samadhi.