2, 1 : tapah svadhyaye svara pranidhanani kriya yogah
The kindling of the inner psychic fire that at once burns away all the impurities - coloring - and limitations of the mind-stuff, the study both of scriptural texts and one's own reaction to situations from moment to moment, and the meaningful, dynamic and devotional surrender to the indwelling omnipresence - these three simultaneously constitute active yoga, or practice of the indivisible unity.
Kriya means action - kriya and karma are synonyms. So, kriya yoga means yoga in action, or doing. It is a universal failing that, after listening to the exposition of knowledge that is contained in the first chapter, one says, 'I have understood all that, now what must I do?' If you ask that question, it means that you have not understood correctly, you have merely heard the words. When the words are no longer words - vrtti - but have become assimilated, these words have become flesh. If this does not happen, either they have not been properly heard, or they have merely been stored as undigested words. Only then is there an anxiety concerning what has thus been swallowed. For instance, if you have indigestion and the food you have eaten sits there like a stone in your stomach, it creates an anxiety. This does not happen when it is assimilated.
Strangely enough, that very food that has been assimilated demands more food. There is a lovely statement in one of the Upanisads: 'Food is that which is eaten and that which eats.' Similarly, if this knowledge has been properly listened to and assimilated, it creates its own hunger and receives more knowledge.
Kriya yoga is the answer to the anxious enquiry 'What must I do now?' We ask the question 'What must I do?' only when it comes to the understanding of yoga, self- knowledge, God, religion, etc. If for instance you are standing right in the middle of a busy street and the traffic lights turn green and the traffic starts pouring into the middle of this road, you do not ask, 'What must I do?' If the understanding has been real, then the understanding itself acts. When the truth is assimilated, the word becomes flesh. Your whole being is the truth and it knows how to act.
Yoga is not something which is done, but which has to happen, yet the expression 'Kriya yoga' is used here. Kriya yoga is yoga in itself - yoga expressed in other words. It is composed of three practices. The first is tapas - discipline or lifestyle or attitude towards life - which seems to be a fairly vital subject. Therefore it is emphasized twice, as part of niyama and as the first of the kriya yoga practices. It is also elaborated in the Bhagavad Gita and other scriptures.
We shall look first into the literal meaning. If we know what the word means, we may be able, with sufficient insight, to know the spirit as well as its perversion. Language undergoes tremendous change. You associate a word with a spirit, and you express that spirit through a word - and then the word has taken over. So, it is necessary for us to understand the literal verbal meaning of a word, not merely the word and meaning. If you pursue this quest, it is then possible for you also to glimpse the spirit, and see the perversion.
Tapas
Tapas means austerity, and also to burn. What does burning mean? To ascetics in India austerity sometimes takes the form of sitting under the sun surrounded by four fires. The spirit of the word tapas is not merely to light a fire on all sides and sit in the blazing sun, although that has been accepted as one of the articles of tapas. There are other sorts of burning - for instance, if you get into ice-cold water, the whole body seems to burn, but after some time it stops. There was a young man in the Himalayas who had not folded his knees for ten years. He had a thing that looked like crutches almost as high as his chin, with a canvas sling attached. He slept like that - holding his hands on top of the canvas. Whatever he had to do, he did standing. Each leg had become like an elephant's leg. It must have produced intense physiological burning for months.
This sort of tapas is also found outside India. For instance, there is a cathedral in Montreal, Canada, which has a flight of steps, in the centre of which there is a narrow segment built of wood. People take a vow that they will walk these wooden steps on their knees in order that their knees may be terribly bruised and burning.
There are other practices which produce burning. For instance, when you fast, there is a burning in the stomach. When you do not sleep, your eyes begin to burn. Every form of burning is tapas. As long as it burns, you are safe. These are some of the forms of tapas, though they may or may not be spiritually valid. There is no objection to any of these things.
What happens to you inwardly when there is severe physiological burning? Can you extend that? 'Extend' is not the correct word. There is another word which probably gives you a clearer meaning - 'intend', interiorise - which means it must tend inwards, go deeper and deeper. It is meant to burn or cause psychological burning. Try to understand it in that spirit. Can you intend this burning within yourself in such a way that it also involves your mind? Or does it merely stop with a physiological burning? The physiological burning will eventually come to a dead-end.
The body is so tough that it takes people only three weeks to get used to anything. So, when you subject your body to the kind of tapas which may burn or be a self- torture, that itself becomes enjoyable after some time. It has lost its original intention. The original intention can be satisfied if you are wise and intelligent enough to intend this physical, physiological burning before it disappears, and discover that there is a more real burning - which is psychological burning.
When you are laughed at or ridiculed, it hurts - there is a burning within. As long as you pay attention to that, the enquiry is alive. If you are sensitive, it must hurt. When you intend this whole tapas, you see this inward hurt, insult or disrespect, and you hold that steadily in focus till you know what it is that gets hurt. Then you reach a stage where you are perpetually hurt, and yet never hurt. He insults you. As an insult, it hurts you just for a few seconds, but as soon as the attention is focused within, the classification of this thing as an insult has gone.
Again, when you calmly say 'No' to a desire or habit as it arises, the mind gets into a commotion, and the whole being seems to burn. One is neither enjoying it, nor suffering it - one is in it. Each time the same desire crops up, one looks at it in that way, going on and on with the enquiry: 'Where is it arising? What is it? What makes me want to do this again?', until after sometime this particular problem has dissolved. It has been 'burnt' away.
Tapas and burning the ego
Any activity or practice that burns up the false sense of ego is tapas. One of the most important ways in which the self-idea manifestsis is the feeling, 'I am this body'. The orthodox people suggested that anything that tortures or mortifies the body is good, but these do not work, because you are punishing only the body. The idea of the self, that 'I am this body,' still persists. After all these wonderful practices, you say, 'Look what I have done!', which strengthens the ego. If something is practised that directly attacks this idea that you are the body, that might be useful. What sort of practice should you adopt in order that the false idea that you are the body might be removed?
When you are insulted or get upset, it is the idea that you are this body that is insulted. When you are injured because somebody hit you, it is the body that is injured. Therefore, it is possible to work on that area which gets hurt by insult or injury, so that this false identification can be overcome. This is a very beautiful form of self-enquiry or meditation. It is something that can provide us with the key to solve most of our problems. For instance, somebody calls you a fool. 'Fool' is a word, and that is his opinion, but when you hear this, you are hurt, which means you feel almost a physical pain. What has this incident to do with the physical pain that you experience?
We have never asked ourselves this question, and therefore we go on suffering this hurt in a million ways in our life. If, on the other hand, we can devote some time to it just once, it will disappear forever. What is this pain and what is it made of? Where does it arise? Not, why does it arise, because then you are tempted to blame others, or say that you are a very sensitive person. These things do not help you. Someone says something, and you feel physically hurt. If you contemplate this really seriously and earnestly, you arrive at this simple and beautiful realisation: that person was referring to a nothing and nothing got upset. There is an idea, 'I am this body, I am So and so,' and that idea is hurt. That is all.
Tapas and the colouring of the mind
Tapas, however, also refers to the great energy required to discover the colouring of the mind. The most important factor is the destruction of the colouring of the mindstuff that makes all judgements and evaluations. What is it that is coloured? What does all the evaluating? What we are interested in, is to find the colouring agent that gives value to the things that attract or repel us. Without condemning or justifying the mind-colouring, you look at it, discover it - thus de-colouring the coloured understanding. Instead of artificial suppression, you bring it up, so you can see it and be able to deal with it. As one comes face to face with the habit, or thought or ego-wish, it dissolves. The cover has been dis-covered! The mindstuff has been decoloured, purified.
Tapas and enlightenment
Tapas is the inner commotion, the energy of the burning. And tapas is the fire that bums constantly - the Light that watches, purifies, illumines - and in the course of time becomes enlightenment.
Svadhyaya
The second practice is svadhyaya - study. It is possible for us to discover that sometimes we are on the wrong path and sometimes bluffing ourselves or pretending that we are doing tremendous sadhana. These illusions are kept away by a regular and systematic study of spiritually uplifting texts, whatever they are. It is also possible that if there are fields of non-understanding, they may be illumined by the proper study of scriptures. Very often we may misunderstand a principle, and since that misunderstanding is accepted as knowledge by us, that misunderstanding continues for eternity.
Svadhyaya also means doing japa and enquiring into one's reaction to situations from moment to moment, in fact into anything that turns your mind onto itself. When you realise that there has been a mis-understanding, you have understood yourself. Once you discover - by listening to a talk or reading a book - that you have a distorted vision of the truth, from thereon you are careful and alerted to the possibility of misunderstanding. Yoga has happened already.
Isvara pranidhana
The third practice is isvara pranidhana - dynamic surrender to the omnipresent God. It is not a passive surrender - 'Oh, God will take care of everything'. It is a dynamic surrender. This is mentioned three times in the Yoga Sutras in order to bring home to us the message that self-knowledge is not the end-product of a series of actions, actions being actions of the ego, but it comes into being when the ego has ceased its activities. lsvara pranidhana is the total surrender of the ego-sense, not the ego itself. The ego is part of the world-happening. This body will still go on living even if you are the Buddha himself, but you do not have the feeling that you are a sinner, nor the opinion that you are great. Your self- estimation, your regret and remorse have gone. Then one is happy - one is happiness.
The 'I' itself is a mere figment of the imagination of the totality, the cosmic consciousness. What is the nature of that consciousness? What is the nature of the personality that is aware of this truth? If there is constant awareness that the 'I' is merely just one ounce of sea-water in the ocean of conciousness, conceptually capable of being isolated from the rest of the ocean, but not in reality, what would your life and behaviour be? That is called lsvara pranidhana, surrender to God.
Yoga is not just accepting everything that someone else says. If somebody says, 'You know you must surrender yourself to God,' question it. In that one little sentence there are four things which you do not understand: you, surrender, yourself and God. What is you? What is yourself? How can you take yourself out and surrender this yourself to God? Where is God? If God is in you already, how do you surrender yourself? So, when you hear this simple expression, if you do not blindly accept it and imagine you have understood it, what do you do? If you are an intelligent, sincere, earnest student of yoga, you immediately start studying the whole statement, trying to figure out what it means. What is God? And how do you surrender yourself to God? Even when these questions are asked, there is an inner enlightenment or understanding. That is yoga.
So, surrender to God cannot be explained, but we may get a glimpse of it. It can happen through different ways. One way is to realise that everything is God - the so-called holy as well as the apparently unholy. One day, you begin to wonder, and realise, 'I am, but I am not mine; the body exists, it is not mine; the world exists, it is not mine.' You realise that this God, who is omnipresent - in one and all and pervading all creation - includes you also. It is God who functions even through this body, as it functions through all bodies. There is nothing other than the divine. Please do not think that God especially manifests in your heart only when you are in an exalted mood. When you are in a sleepy mood also, God is manifest in you. God is always there - but not in those moods, because God is not confined to anything. You are not exempt from It - but not as 'I', because the 'I' has dissolved. Then every moment you are surrendering, whatever happens you are surrendering - surrendering in the sense that there is no idea of 'mine'.
Surrender to God should not make God look like some kind of armed policeman. That is not what is meant by surrender. Pranidhana means not passive, but dynamic surrender, In such surrender the 'I' does not say, 'Alright, I have surrendered myself to God, let Him look after me and mine.' Let us go back to the analogy of the ocean. That little ounce of sea water is one with the ocean, and the totality of the ocean determines what it shall do. It may be deep in the ocean or on the crest of a wave, it may be dashed against a rock. It seems painful only if you still want to feel 'I am independent of the totality, and the totality must answer my prayers' - which means there is no surrender.
When Patanjali suggested that self-knowledge - the total elimination of self- ignorance - can be had by surrender to God, it was not as a technique. Total surrender, the surrender being only of ignorance, does not form a technique, but is one of the vital disciplines.
Surrender to God is not something about which you say, 'I have surrendered to God. When will I have my next cup of coffee?' It does not mean that after the surrender you will not drink coffee. The body wants the coffee and will have the coffee, but the ego-sense has dissolved.
Surrender also happens when the fire of enquiry burns through all the components of the self and through all its activities. The three questions: 'What is beyond the senses, the mind, and the self?', 'Is the observer different from the observed?' and, "Is 'I' independent of the totality?' burn without an answer, because there is none - no self - to hear the answer. Unable to find the answer, the self collapses in surrender. The observer is the observation - pure awareness.
The experiencer is the experience - pure experiencing. There is total freedom, kaivalya. One alone is, as all-one.
In these three - tapas, svadhyaya and isvara pranidhana - themselves, there is the spirit of yoga. So, it is not the yoga of action in the sense of doing something and forgetting all about it. In tapas, there is yoga, a total self-knowledge; in svadhyaya or self-study, there is self-knowledge; and in isvara pranidhana or surrender to God, there is self-knowledge.
One practises kriya yoga in order to remove psychological obstacles, so that one may be predisposed to samadhi. However, these actions in themselves may not produce samadhi. Samadhi is itself, and is not the end product of some activities.
2, 2 : samadhi bhavanarthah klesa tanu karanarthas ca
When it is clearly understood that the instant realization of cosmic oneness, which is yoga, is not the product of any effort, how can one 'practice' such unity? Surely, active yoga is taught not because such practice results in the realization of oneness. However, it can aid in the direction of one's attention towards enlightenment, and away from the elements that cause mental turmoil, which, as a result of such turning away, are weakened.
This sutra is extremely important and often its vital message seems to be overlooked. Self-discipline and surrender to God are practised in order that the path to samadhi may be smooth, that you may be firmly established in samadhi, and the psychological disturbances may cease - or at least be weakened. If this does not happen, your self-discipline is useless. Whatever be the causes that create confusion in your life, those causes must be weakened, even if they may not completely disappear. If, while disciplining yourself, you get more and more nervous, excitable, irritable, etc., what are you practising self-discipline for?
Samadhi bhavanarthah - we are lead from moment to moment to the understanding of the reality. Yoga opens your eyes to the reality. Samadhi is a transcendental state. In the absence of self-knowledge, this 'transcendental state' becomes another expression which consists of two more words in your dictionary. The transcendental state has to be defined as you define your present state as waking state. But samadhi is neither a state, a stage, nor the absence or presence of something. It is the reality existing as it is, without the least interference by the self. When the self - which describes, identifies, sticks labels on, and projects its own ideas upon it - is absent, it is then that the truth concerning it shines. Then you cannot say, 'I understand the truth,' because that implies that there is an 'I' which understands, so 'I' and the truth are separate. No. The truth alone shines.
Without samadhi bhavanarthah, you are just disciplining yourself, so you become a very good man, and people will admire you. It does not work. No motivation other than the direction of your attention towards enlightenment is valid, because all your motivations are going to weave a greater and more deadly web around you, to trap you. So, your study of scriptures, japa and surrender to God must lead you to this self-knowledge - samadhi.
If, in surrender to God, you are looking within to see what surrender should mean - 'Now that I have surrendered myself to God I must be totally non- resistant' - once again the self defines surrender as this, or that. Can the self completely vanish from sight and surrender just 'be', without being so defined by the self?
So, surrender to God, in relation to samadhi, has a different meaning. It is not a mechanical thing at all, but a constantly self-renewing surrender in which only the defining, destroying self is absent. There is perpetual vigilance, because the whole universe is full of this consciousness, which is aware.
These practices also weaken - not destroy - the klesa. What are the klesa?
2, 3 : avidya smita raga dvesa bhinivesah klesah
The mind is restless because of the many unresolved problems. The elements that disturb mental equilibrium and thus generate psychic distress are: 1. ignorance of the truth concerning 2. one's self or egotism which seems to be the obvious truth in ignorance, and the belief in the separative individuality, 3&4. psychological and unnatural extension of attraction and repulsion which, as neurological phenomena are natural, and 5. blind clinging to the present physical 'life', born of the ignorant division of timeless eternity into life and death.
Patanjali says that the whole world is full of sorrow for a man of understanding, until he realises that suffering is experienced by him because he does not know what his self is. Sorrow and pain do not come from outside, but are experienced within oneself. Nobody in or outside this world, no god, demon, or star, is responsible for your unhappiness. Unhappiness is within you. It is experienced by you.
It is not an event that makes you happy or unhappy, but your reaction to it. Why do you respond in that manner? Why do you experience pain, suffering, and psychological sorrow?
Patanjali suggests a five-fold ground for this unhappiness - avidya 'smita raga dvesa 'bhinivesa. These are the klesa.
Avidya
Avidya is the inevitable ignorance of our spiritual nature, of self-knowledge. To help you remember the meaning clearly, avidya sounds like 'I've no idea'. Ignorance is a non-entity from the philosophical - or the absolute - point of view, though it is yet capable of very real and frightening results while it lasts. It is similar, in a way, to a nightmare. It is not only like the darkness of the night which veils the reality. It is like the illusory dream which conjures up false entities which enjoy momentary existence. Anything positively said about it is a cancellation of its own true nature.
The absence of ignorance cannot be easily understood or known. That which thinks, 'I am ignorant,' is ignorant. That which thinks, 'I am not ignorant,' is even more ignorant! Here is avidya defined in a very beautiful way: 'Who says that what he says is right, and what all others say is wrong is suffering from terrible ignorance.'
There is absolutely no way in which 'I' could come face to face with avidya, and understand it. One might 'feel' that there is avidya, and 'understand' the description of it, but one can never know what it is. Either one is in a state of avidya, or of self-knowledge. The moment there is self-knowledge, there is no more avidya.
Asmita
Let us go back to the example of the wave and the ocean. The wave is non- different from the ocean. The entire volume of water - currents, ripples and waves - is the ocean, one indivisible mass. The diversity arises because we have created it. There is no motion independent of a static entity. Air moves only in relation to something else - the trees, etc. Similarly, water does not wet itself. If you get into water, you get wet. So, when we say that there are waves and ripples and currents in the ocean, that is only in relation to you who are not part of that. To the ocean itself there are no waves, no currents. In the same way, in the physical body, as you sit there calmly and quietly, millions of cells are sparking in your body, there are all sorts of funny rivers flowing, there is tremendous activity going on. And yet, because you are the activity, the thing itself, you are not aware of it. Similarly, when, avidya manifests itself, the ignorance is ignorant of the cosmic nature of intelligence. The idea of individuality is created, the feeling 'I am' - asmita.
Asmita literally means 'I-ness', the very idea of 'I', the ego-sense - not egoism in the sense of vanity. As soon as this idea of 'I' arises, it itself creates you, and then the others. By repeatedly affirming this error, it has attained the status of truth. The whole thing was born of ignorance - avidya, which somehow manifests in this Cosmic Being - which is Cosmic Consciousness or Intelligence.
The closest you can come to understanding asmita is when you know that you do not understand. If we examine seriously, we will note that problems are all related directly to the ego-sense - which labels, classifies, judges, and conceptualises. When we make any statement, the 'I' is assumed as a fixed point of reference, from where we relate ourselves to everything. This assumption has to be questioned. As the eyes look at an object, for instance paper, there comes the thought, 'I see the paper'. Then you stop and start to enquire, 'How does the feeling 'I see it' come?' It is when the ego-sense mysteriously springs up that the paper becomes 'paper'. The ego-sense gives a name to itself, and another name to the 'other end' of any happening.
What is 'I'? What is the ego-sense? From where does this 'I am' feeling arise? This is the fundamental question which no one has ever been able to answer. But we all assume there is an ego. That assumption is the ego. In 'I have no idea', there is hidden this 'I' that refuses to give in, and stands as an unbreakable pillar. So, in the ocean of indivisible space, a wave arises. The understanding of the ocean-ness of the ocean has gone. Somehow this wave thinks, 'I am, I am an entity, I am independent.'
Raga-Dvesa
When you assume that the fragmentation - the personality - is an independent entity which has to fight for itself, then you begin to develop a relationship with those whom you consider others. 'I', whatever that 'I' is, seems to experience suffering, because somehow it responds to the environment by neatly dividing it into two halves - one which it likes, and one which it does not like - raga dvesa.
Raga means attraction, or approval. Dvesa means repulsion or disapproval. Why is one terrible and one not so terrible? Because 'I' is the centre of creation and 'I' determines what is right and what is wrong. The activity of the mind begins to distinguish, 'This is beautiful, this is ugly; this is pleasant, this is unpleasant; I love this, I hate that.' You like something because it gives you pleasure; it gives you pleasure because you like it. It is a vicious circle, constantly torturing you on this rack, stretching and pulling in two directions at the same time - without ever revealing the truth that all this is nothing but the activity of the mind. Minus these two feelings, there is no relationship.
Swami Sivananda used to say, 'If you remove these two expressions completely from your mind and your heart, perhaps the world will disappear as the world - as matter, as energy - and you will have a vision of Cosmic Intelligence.
Abhinivesa
There is only one more category which the keenly observant and wise mind of the author has recognised. This category seems to have baffled even him. That is abhinivesa - mad clinging to one's own physical life. Patanjali says this is universal.
Because of ignorance, egoism, selfishness, lust, and hatred, you cling to what you have, and to life itself. Though you know that life is full of miseries, you still cling to it, for the simple reason that you imagine that life after death is going to be something dreadful. Even an old man of 95 still wants to continue to live in his miserable body, and he will spend a fortune trying to prolong life for another three days. No one knows why it is so.
This love for one's limited life is the trend away from the centre, from this Cosmic Intelligence, and it seems to carry on under its own steam. It is also part of the dichotomy expressed in 'I like this, I do not like that'. We like to live, we do not like not to live. We dislike death and dying. We invent some nice theories that we are really not dying, but going to heaven, that the soul is immortal, and somehow enters into another body. I am not questioning all these theories, but trying to show how they came into being in the first place because of the fear of death. Why are we afraid of death? Because we dislike it. Why do we dislike it? Because of ignorance.
Day in and day out people die, every day the undertaker is busy. And yet those whose time has not yet come, believe that they will not go! What greater wonder is there than this? Even Patanjali says it is a mystery.
It is very good to remember that the sources of psychological distress cannot be completely annihilated or destroyed as long as the personality functions as the personality, which means as long as life lasts in this body.
Conclusion
The fundamental truth that avidya 'smita raga dvesa and abhinivesa are klesa, the roots of sorrow, cannot be taught from a book. You must have arrived at this understanding by a very clear observation of life as it is, where you can quite clearly see that both attachment and aversion - love as opposed to hate - create misery in your life. This you cannot get from a book. If you say, 'Patanjali says that attachment is bad, therefore I will not be attached,' this is only borrowed knowledge. That there is sorrow and misery and suffering in your life has to be seen by you. It cannot be infused into you by somebody else.
2, 4 : avidya ksetram uttaresam prasupta tanu vicchinno daranam
Obviously, ignorance of the truth of oneness - or indivisibility of cosmic intelligence - is the cause of all the other sources of psychic distress - whether these latter seem to be completely hidden or dormant, veiled or weak, or actively spread out, creating the notion that they are not related to spiritual ignorance, that they are independent of ignorance, and can, therefore, be dealt with by means other than self-knowledge.
This ignorance is the ground on which all these psychic disturbances arise, thrive, and exist. They disappear once this ignorance goes. Avidya ksetram - field of ignorance is a beautiful and extremely subtle truth expressed in a simple way which one must see for oneself.
You are ignorant of your own true nature. You do not know what this 'I' is that suffers, or why it suffers. While you are in the shadow of that ignorance, if someone says that you are a nice fellow, you are happy. The happiness is within you. But since you do not know the springs of your own inner experience, you attribute that happiness to him. You like him because he scratches your back. If someone else says that you are an idiot, you are unhappy, and the unhappiness is in you, but you think it comes from him and that if he, whom you call your enemy, is eliminated, then the unhappiness will also be eliminated. It is not so. The enemy is in you.
Eventually everything - greed, fear, anger, etc. - come out of this ignorance. So, until that ignorance is handled, none of these things will disappear. For instance, non-greed cannot be introduced into you the way you can put a slide into a slide- projector - one goes in and the other one comes out - non greed goes in and greed comes out. It is not that simple! The greed probably comes from fear, the fear from something else, and that from something else again. So, ignorance is the primary cause of all psychic distress, whether dormant or manifest, weak or strong.
We can say that the baby has no ego-sense, no likes and dislikes, no ignorance. Is the baby then enlightened? No, because in his case all these are asleep, dormant. Can you say that a sleeping man does not tell a lie, and therefore he is enlightened? No. When he wakes up all these problems will wake up too.
When the truth is not seen, then what appears to be for the moment is given the dignity of a real substance - real in the sense that it will be there for ever and ever. This appearance regards itself as a permanent entity in the place of the total truth. That is, a small fragment takes the place of this truth, of the totality - which is absurd. When this totality is realised as the real, as the truth, the illusion is gone, without disturbing anything that exists. If you clearly understand the existence of the ocean as a totality, in which waves arise, exist, and dissolve without making any difference to the ocean, then there is no ignorance. A tremendous inner transformation has taken place and life takes on a completely different quality.
Self-knowledge can only come after a clear understanding of what life means, of what 'I' is. Only then is it possible for you to even suggest to yourself which way you want to go. First, understand yourself, your mind, and then you will know which way. The tree knows how to turn itself towards the light and the creeper knows how to twine itself around the tree, because in their case there is no identity problem. The tree, as it were, knows itself. Can you also, in a similar way, know yourself - completely and thoroughly? We are not aiming at self-knowledge as a goal, but suggesting that the basis of our whole life is self-knowledge! If it is so, then what follows is yoga. If it is not so, what follows is unhappiness, misery.
It is quite simple. If you want to be unhappy, forget all about it and go on - ignorance is bliss. If you do not want that messy life, here is the simplest thing: 'Know yourself' - not as a goal, but as a basis for your whole life.
So, this self-knowledge is not a goal, nor is it the self as the knower of knowledge - which then is the object of the self - eg. 'I know this'. It is the self 'as knowledge'. This is a misunderstanding which language has created.
Knowledge has come to mean 'the object of my comprehension'. When you say, 'The object of my comprehension,' the 'my' gets swallowed, and therefore it looks as though it is an absolutely correct statement of truth. But when you also emphasise the 'my' in it, you find the problem. 'The object of my comprehension is knowledge' means that 'I' is here, and there is some kind of relationship or connection between me and that knowledge, so the knowledge becomes an object. Therefore, based on this misunderstanding, one tends even to create an image of self - 'I know my self'.
What is meant by that? I have never really understood this expression. The knower is the self - not knower in the sense of 'I am the knower and you are the known', not a certain idea or ideal or image comprehended by me, but knowledge which itself is the self. Hence self-knowledge is not the goal. Only if it is looked upon that way does it become an existential fact, and not a goal.
2, 5 : anitya suci duhkha natmasu nitya suci sukha tma khyatir avidya
Ignorance gives rise to a 'knowledge' of ego-sense - an assumed fact of the non- existent ego-sense. It is only in a state of spiritual ignorance that one identifies or confuses that which is impermanent with that-which is eternal, that which is impure or colored with that which is pure and unconditioned, pain with joy, and the unmodified consciousness - Self - with thoughts and modifications which are not Self. Realization of the spiritual truth or enlightenment on the other hand enables the impermanent, etc., to be seen as such, and the permanent etc., to be seen as such.
The ultimate source of psychic distress is ignorance, which is indefinable. But its effects can be detected in the perverse way in which the mind functions. It imagines permanency where there is no permanency, the pure to be impure and vice versa, pleasure and happiness where it does not exist, and it assumes the existence of a self where there is no self. These indicate the state of confusion or ignorance.
Ignorance in itself cannot be seen or understood. You cannot know what ignorance is, but you can know it by its fruits. Its function is exactly like darkness. You have not seen darkness. You only sense when it exists by the fact that in darkness you are unable to see. In order to perceive any object, light is necessary. If you want to see darkness with the help of a light, you are not seeing darkness at all. Even though you do not know what ignorance means,o y u can sense its presence and influence by the way you behave and the way that your intelligence is incapacitated or perverted. All the way through, it is ignorance. Rightfrom the start, it was ignorance, but in ignorance you assumed that the cause of this was something else.
What is painful is somehow considered pleasure - smoking is a very simple example that comes to mind. When you started smoking, it was painful. Yet you thought it was very fashionable. You had to be 'with it' and then somehow the thing that was painful became pleasant. Then you cannot give it up, and that is another pain - the pain born of your smoking habit which is difficult to break, and which leads you towards illness, suffering, and destruction. That which gives rise to pain must also be pain. In the list that Patanjali has given, good and evil are not discussed at all. He does not indulge in good and evil, right and wrong. See the truth for exactly what it is. If you still want to smoke, that is your business.
It is ignorance, perversion, which sees pleasure in what in fact is pain. When this ignorance prevails, the faculty of energy inherent in the universe itself seems to assume what is regarded as the ego-sense. This ego-sense cannot be intellectualised or understood by the mind, because it is something which is born of the mind, is part of the mind, is the mind itself. Once the knowledge arises that the ego-sense is not necessary, and therefore non-existent, ignorance also is gone. The ego-sense came into being when it was assumed to exist, and the moment this game is seen for what it is, that very moment it disappears.
The realisation of the non-existence of the ego-sense is also the role of kriya yoga.
2, 6 : drg darsana saktyor ekatmateva smita
In cosmic consciousness all activities happen. Thus, for instance, seeing happens: the power of sight sees. However, when the consciousness fragmented by the shadow of ignorance identifies itself as the seer, there is the ego-sense.
Drg is the see-er. The see-er is all the time independent - or, he does not exist as an entity, as reality, as truth. Darsana-sakti is the power which enables sight or perception to come into being. Though the see-er has nothing whatsoever to do with the experiencing process, he somehow gets involved in it. Experiencing is natural, it is there everywhere. You keep your eyes open, and since you are a living being, you cannot help seeing something.
Eyes see, ears hear, nose smells, tongue tastes, skin feels, mind thinks, lungs breathe, stomach digests and life lives - whether, you want them to or not. As soon as the eyelids are parted, seeing happens. When the sound waves enter the ears, hearing happens. What is it that sees and hears? The sense of sight sees, hearing itself hears. When your eyes are open, can you stop seeing? No. That implies that seeing is a natural phenomenon, inherent in light. So, there is nothing called the self, the 'I', the ego-sense here; it is merely the sight seeing. Every event comes to an end as spontaneously and instantly as it came into being. There are no problems.
In this pure and simple experience, there is no division, just the sense of sight merging in the seen. There is no divided experiencing, no ego-sense at all, and there is the same peace and joy as in sleep.
While all these things go on, when the powers that are inherent in what we call nature manifest themselves, from somewhere in that cosmic intelligence, a notion arises, 'I see'. One has to experience this in order to understand it. The moment division has arisen in this pure experiencing, there is a desire to experience. That desire to experience creates the ego-sense, or is itself the ego- sense. Instead of allowing the experiencing to continue to be experienced, the 'I' springs up: 'I am experiencing, I am seeing, I am hearing.' Therefore, that experience is treated as an object, and the 'I' rises up as the subject, to experience it: 'I see you'.
In that split second, thought which thought 'I see you' became a space, and in that space, a feeling arises 'Ah, you are nice, I like you.' This means that this energy - which momentarily became aware of you as an object - likes to flow in that direction. When it comes to the practice of yoga, the same feeling arises as 'I must realise God, I must see God, I must have a spiritual experience.' Wherever you go and whatever you do, the 'I' is there, and because of this becomes more and more deeply embedded.
Theologians all over the world loudly proclaim that God is omnipresent. Omnipresent means everywhere. If God is omnipresent, what stands between me and God? Me. There can be nothing else. If that is so, we come back to square one - what is me? What is 'I'? The 'I', the egoism, is the other side of 'I do not know'. Since that is so far away from our daily experience, we have treated it as the experiencer. 'I' see, 'I' talk, 'I' hear, 'I' sit. We have taken that 'I' for granted. From that, all of our experiences and expressions flow. 'What shall I do now?' Even in that question 'I' am taken for granted, and the 'doing' becomes so terribly important. So, the 'I' is there, accepted as a solid reality. It is not questioned at all.
Therefore, when it comes to what you call meditation, a monstrous error is committed. The 'I' being taken for granted, the 'I' meditates - so 'I meditate upon myself'. How can you do that? I have seen fantastic feats performed in circuses that you would not have believed possible, but I have not yet seen someone stand on their own shoulders. If you cannot stand on your own shoulders, how can you meditate upon yourself? What does it mean? And yet it has to be done. Therefore, what do you do? You learn to recognise the expressions or extensions of the ego. First you get hold of these expressions and extensions of the ego, and from there you go on slowly feeling your way.
2, 7 : sukha nusayi ragahI
Attraction - or mental conditioning or coloring - follows, rests in, and is just another term for, the erroneous evaluation of an object or experience as pleasure. Because of the mental coloring something looks attractive.
2, 8 : duhkha nusayi dvesah
Similarly, repulsion - which is another phase of attraction - follows, abides in, and is just another term for, the erroneous classification of an object or experience as pain- giving. On the other hand, what the human mind in ignorance regards as attraction and repulsion exist in nature and are inherent, invariable and constant in the manifestation of cosmic intelligence - e.g., the magnetic polarity. In nature, however, there is neither the cloud of ignorance nor its consequent ego-sense, and hence the attraction and repulsion in nature are of an entirely different quality to that found in the human psyche.
The see-er immediately divides the whole universe of experience into two - something which you like, something which you do not like. Something which you like you call pleasure, something which you dislike you call pain. You seek pleasure; when you do not get it, as often happens, you are frustrated. You dislike pain without realising that it has become pain only because you dislike it. When it haunts you, you experience pain again. In one case, you want to run after it, and in the other case, you want to run away from it. Here, running is common. It is good to understand that all these are different only verbally. In fact there is no difference.
No one in the world can honestly and rationally explain why one thing is considered pleasure and another is considered pain. Therefore, Patanjali says that even this is born of ignorance. In Sanskrit there are two words to signify pleasure and pain - sukha and duhkha. You see that both are almost identical, just as happiness and unhappiness are almost identical. Unhappiness is merely an extension of happiness. So, any happiness that you endeavour to extend, becomes unhappiness. Leave it alone, it is happiness. Try to extend it, it becomes unhappiness.
There is a nice theory which suggests that ignorance is bliss. Patanjali says: 'Impossible. As long as you are ignorant, you are helplessly bound to go round this whirligig. If you experience happiness or pleasure in this life, it is only because you have decided to call it so for the time being.' This is a remarkable exposure. It is not pleasure as such, but you have decided to call it so! And therefore, for the time being, it gives you pleasure. What makes it pleasure temporarily? Only your ignorance of its nature and your ignorance of your own identity.
Once the ego - asmita - has come into being, it constantly seeks pleasure. People can suffer for the sake of pleasure, can find pleasure even in such grotesque practices suggested by the psychological expression 'martyr complex'. Because you call it pleasure, you want a repetition of it. Wanting the repetition sets up a craving - which is pain. When you cannnot have it when you want it, it is painful.
The stream of life takes no notice whatsoever of what you and I wish to have or wish to avoid, like or dislike. But, out of likes and dislikes, it fashions its own unhappiness. Even what is known as pleasure or happiness in this life is subject to change. Whatever happiness is sought, once gained, it leaves you cold. Apart from that, even as you are enjoying that happiness, there is a sneaking suspicion that it will change, it will not last.
The constant pleasure-seeking tendency of the ego loves to avoid all unpleasant experiences. But this stream of experiencing flows on, totally unconcerned about our likes and dislikes. When the sun set, did it ask you, 'Have you finished your job? May I set now?' When the sun rises tomorrow, will it ask you, 'Have you finished your mischief, may I rise now?' There is the wonderful doctrine: 'God made the world for the pleasure of man. I ask the mosquito: 'Are you made for my pleasure, or am I made for yours?'
Patanjali merely suggests that we look at this phenomenon and see why we like one thing and not another. He does not say that therefore you should seek pleasure and avoid pain. He says, 'This is a fact - look at it'.
2, 9 : svarasavahi viduso pi tatha rudho bhinivesah
Blind clinging to life is an inexplicable yet undeniable fact of life which is self- sustaining - since it is just another phase or face of ignorance - and is therefore found to be a dominant factor even in wise beings as long as the physical body which is the operative seat of ignorance exists. It is the operation of the power that preserves the physical sheath for the unfoldment of self-knowledge, combined with the habit of dependence on objective sources for enjoyment and sustenance and fear of losing them, and the inability to see other states of existence.
Abhinivesa is translated as 'blind clinging to life'. This seems to sustain itself, and that is the surest indication of the presence of ignorance. You do not see ignorance as such, but here is an incontrovertible proof that there is ignorance. This ignorance confuses the spirit or the undying consciousness with the ever- changing, decomposing body.
Why are we clinging to this life, knowing that it is coming to an end? It seems to be totally irrational and foolish. We are clinging to this physical body even though it is bound to perish. Patanjali has concisely, precisely, and scientifically expounded the facts of life. He even says concerning this: 'This blind clinging to life is there; it seems to be self-sustaining, and it is found even in wise people.' Even very wise enlightened people are irrationally unwilling to shed the body.
Though Patanjali has explained the cause of everything else, when it comes to this blind clinging to life, he says, 'I do not know'. That to me is a great tribute to the Yoga Sutras.
2, 10 : te pratiprasava heyah suksmah
These sources of psychic distress are subtle, and not to be confused with their gross expansion as likes and dislikes, habits - good and bad, vanity and such personality traits. However, these subtle sources of psychic distress can be dispelled by resolving each in its own cause - or by confronting each of them with its own true opposite.
These five sources of psychological distress, disturbance, or distraction, are subtle in their essence. They manifest in numerous different ways. They appear to be subtle only because they are not on view. It is possible to deal with some of them by dealing with their own individual source. Fear, for instance, may appear to be gross, but its own roots are subtle. If you have fear in your heart, even little trees look like ghosts at night.
Even attraction and repulsion are very subtle. You tend to rationalise these and to say that you are attracted to her because she is beautiful. You think that she is beautiful. Before that thought arises, there is another thought which says, 'I like her'. She is beautiful because you like her, and you like her because she is beautiful. Which one comes first? Again, are you afraid of him because he is vicious, or do you consider him vicious because you are afraid?
Love goes looking for an object to love. If you have love in your heart, you will find everybody beautiful. Fear goes looking for an object to be afraid of. If there is fear in your heart, it is that fear that projects itself outside, and creates objects of which you are afraid. This is even more evident when there are racial, communal, or religious riots. There it is terribly obvious that the rioters are not interested in discovering the truth. They have a certain fear, emotion, or commotion within them, and they act blindly, driven by it.
In the darkness or shadow of ignorance, there is a feeling that this disturbance is caused by that factor. Get hold of that and, by rational approach to it, see that this is not the cause of your suffering. Then you have removed one layer. The next layer comes to view. If these sources of psychological distress or disturbance are dealt with in this manner with a little patience, it is possible for everyone, starting wherever he is, to reach the ultimate source of psychological disturbance - which is ignorance. Right from the start, it was ignorance, but in ignorance you assume that the cause of this is something else.
Ignorance plagues our entire life, perverting our thoughts, feelings, emotions, expressions, and experiences. At one stage, they are called thoughts, and at another emotions, experiences, or expressions. Basically they are the operations of these five sources of psychological distress or distraction. These five sources of sorrow fall away when their own source is realised, like a snake shedding its skin.Try to get hold of the problem as it is, go step by step, tracing each one to its own source, without assuming anything or rejecting anything. Eventually you will discover that the whole thing was a big hoax.
If you assume that the cause lies hidden deep in the subconscious, and therefore you will go under hypnosis, again you will fail; because you have not taken the whole problem step by step. It may be possible that fear of the dark comes from something that happened in childhood, but go step by step from there to find its immediate cause. Deal with that.
The immediate cause of that suffering or distress is gone. But if you are clever, you can dive deeper into it and find the root-cause, and eliminate it there. If you shine a torch on a shadow, the shadow is not understood, it is not seen. That itself is enlightenment. If, without any doubt whatsoever, one is able to say, 'I know what ignorance means,' there is knowledge. The shadow is enlightened, the self is illumined, the truth is realised.
2, 11 : dhyana heyas tad vrttayah
Both when these elements of psychic distress are mere ripples on the surface of the mind-stuff and when they become gross and operative, they can be dispelled by contemplation.
By meditation, you go right down to the fundamental root - avidya. When the light of meditation or selfawareness shines on what appeared to be the source from where these psychological distress symptoms seemed to emanate, you find nothing. That nothing was called ignorance before. Nothing appeared, nothing disappeared, but a clearer understanding has arisen.
2, 12 : klesa mulah karma sayo drsta drsta janma vedaniyah
All actions bear to the five-fold psychic disturbance or distress a mutual cause-and- effect relationship, thus sustaining a chain reaction. Hence, actions lead to afflictions - notions of ego-sense - which manifest in the obvious physical life as experience of pleasure, pain, etc., and also in the subtle mental states - likes and dislikes, here in this life span or in other not so obvious life-states - and such afflictions - the ego-sense and ignorance - generate further actions. However, this need not forever be so; for from these effects the causes can be known, and the root-cause made inoperative.
If basic self-ignorance is the cause of all this psychological distress, how does that take all these different forms? How does it even give rise to a notion of knowledge? You say, 'I know he is a good man, and therefore I love him.' Is this also a fruit of sheer ignorance? Can sheer ignorance appear as knowledge of goodness in the other person? No. Your understanding immediately acts, so that, from there on, it is a confusion, one feeding the other. You think he is a good person, you love him, and when you love him, you think he is a better person. It goes on and on. When you think he is an undesirable person, you hate him, you do not desire his company. As you draw further and further away from him, you think he is more and more undesirable. From a distance, he looks even more horrible, because you do not see any good points at all! The first misunderstanding that he is undesirable makes you dread him, fear him, hate him. On the basis of this, as you pull back, you see more and more evil in him. That is how your prejudice grows.
As you go on expressing in terms of your prejudice and ignorance, this expression of your thoughts and emotions strengthens this ignorance, making the veil heavier and thicker so that your further actions become coarser and coarser. The actions that spring from that coarse personality become even worse, and naturally it returns, making you worse still. You can understand this very clearly if you look at some relationship in your own life.
Is there no relief? Only when you contemplate this cyclic unceasing disaster, do you realise how merciful and wise, and what a brilliant chap God was to introduce this thing called death! That puts an end to this progressive degeneration.
When you observe the course of life, whether this course is obvious or not obvious, you get an inkling into this truth that you are all the time strengthening or weakening the sources of your own suffering, your own sorrow. And as they are strengthened or weakened, your behaviour begins to change.
Patanjali uses the singular - mula - one root, ignorance. This ignorance, being a non-entity, like darkness, to become aware of it is the only way in which it can be removed. For instance, it is said in the Yoga Vasistha, 'When the sun rises, where does the darkness go?' In the same way, when there is enlightenment, what is called ignorance, and where does it go?
If you take any experience that you undergo, or any expression of your personality, naturally the first immediate cause appears to be the real cause - but it is not.
We, in our supreme worldly wisdom, think that we can somehow overcome this sorrow or unwisdom by merely manipulating the immediate cause. If you think you are unhappy because of someone or something, you try to manipulate that. If you think that to go to heaven is the way to ensure happiness, then again you manipulate by doing some chanting or performing some religious ceremonies. You are merely fiddling around with what your mind suggests as the immediate causes or sources of your unhappiness. That is what we normally do.
The yogi suggests something different: take that opportunity of tracing the whole thing down to its root-cause. Without questioning the normal approach to this problem of happiness and unhappiness which involves remedial measures to get rid of immediate problems - such as goodness, charity, an ethical and moral life, and religious performance - the yogi says, 'Make use of that opportunity to find out the efficient cause.'
In the Yoga Vasistha there is a brilliant doctrine given to us: 'You cannot possibly separate the action from the man. The person and the action are inseparable.'
The behaviour comes from your own being. How can you separate them? These can immediately be dealt with by a clear understanding of their own immediate cause, just as indigestion can be immediately related to last night's heavy food. Once this relationship is understood, you eliminate the immediate cause, and you have eliminated the immediate effect. The indigestion disappears when you fast the next day, but you have not removed the potentiality of indigestion, which is the stomach or eating. Similarly, though you have eliminated the immediate effect, you have not eliminated the source. It is still there in a subtle form. How do you destroy it at its very root?
2, 13 : sati mula tad vipako jaty ayur bhogah
As long as the roots of these psychic disturbances exist generating their consequent actions, their expansion and fruition are inevitable. Their fruition takes place in different life-spans, perhaps in different species, and in diverse experiences. Such fruition is therefore an unmistakable pointer to the persistence of spiritual ignorance and its offspring which are the fountain-source of sorrow.
As long as the root is there, it is going to generate action - whether you call that action virtue or vice - and that action is going to modify, not eliminate, the source of psychological distress, not the rock bottom. The source of psychological distress keeps changing. You like something which you disliked, you dislike something which you liked. You can keep on meddling with it and modifying it without ever getting rid of it.
As long as the five-fold root exists, you are still within this danger zone. They are going to throw up physical, mental, and verbal actions, which are going to leave their own impressions called samskaras. These samskaras are going to crave for their own expression once again, and the chain is seemingly endless.
2, 14 : te hlada paritapa phalah punya punya hetutvat
These experiences which are the results of virtue and vice are the sweet and bitter fruits - causing happiness and agony respectively - that are found all along the path of life.
Actions are sometimes called virtue, sometimes vice. Actions yield fruits which are sometimes called joy and sometimes called sorrow. As long as the roots are there, they agitate your consciousness, and this agitation generates actions - mental and physical activity - which inevitably lead to experiences. While performing those actions, already you are enjoying or suffering - whatever it is, something is happening. When you are doing something, it is not as though the fruit of the action is somewhere else. Then and there you are suffering or enjoying.
Your actions are sometimes virtuous, sometimes vicious. They give you sometimes joy and sometimes sorrow - not necessarily related to one or the other. Sometimes you think you are doing a good thing, and you are labouring under it - it is miserable. Sometimes what tradition or culture says is not good, seems to be very pleasant. But here is an incontrovertible truth: as long as this ignorance, ego-sense, likes, dislikes, and clinging to life continue, you are going to live the so-called individual life, imprisoned in a personality. That is what 'I am' means! As long as these five sources of psychological distress continue, they will continue to throw up actions. And actions must result in immediate and long term experiences and long term effects.
Life is a continuous flow. When do you freeze it, to work out whether what happened some time ago has turned out to be good or evil? Good follows evil, and evil follows good. Good cometh out of evil, and evil cometh out of good.
Therefore, yogis do not discuss the problem of good and evil very seriously, because, whether an action is seemingly good or seemingly bad, it is still action, and action has got an immediate result - which is the immediate experience, which strengthens or weakens the veil of ignorance - and there is a long-term effect, which returns to you as further experience, which you may then call pleasure and pain.
2, 15 : parinama tapa samskara duhkhair guna vritti virodhac ca duhkham eva sarvam vivekinah
However, the wise - though their own mind is totally free of all sorrow - consider all experiences painful as they are all the fruits of the actions of ignorance. The very pleasures are accompanied by the painful realization that they are subject to change. Constant and violently painful craving for repetitive experience of pleasure in a vain attempt to cancel the change fills the interval with pain. All of this leaves an enduring impression on the mind, which - impression - creates the painful tendency to crave for the avoidance of pain which alone is therefore continuous. And, there is constant conflict in oneself as the psychological mood changes, with every change in the thought-form in the mind-stuff; and the conflict is sorrow.
To the person who is awakened to this fact, the whole of life and everything in life is unhappiness, sorrow. Wherever there is mental activity and dissipation of energy, wherever there is haphazard movement of thought, there is unhappiness. Even what the common man regards as happiness - pleasure, prosperity, glory, success - becomes painful to the awakened man. The awakened man neither seeks to discover a supposed external source of his unhappiness, nor even to identify what he calls unhappiness within himself, such knowledge being part of ignorance.
Time is passing, everything is changing. If you seem to be happy now, even that is tainted by unhappiness, because there is a recognition, whether at the conscious, unconscious, or sub-conscious level, that it is passing away. You get bored with the same happiness repeated often, so there is unhappiness there - which means that either the external world changes, or 'I' changes, change being inevitable. Happiness also undergoes this change and therefore must come to an end.
That which is subject to change has only one content, which is pain. That which is called happiness came in. It seemed to give you some pleasure in the beginning, till the suspicion that it might go away arose, and made you more anxious to keep it. The craving increased, the effort to hold it increased, but the pleasure did not increase. The anxiety that it will go away is pain, the struggle to hold it is pain, and the craving to prolong it is pain. So, whether you call it pain or pleasure, life is full of pain.
As long as these sources of psychological distress continue to exist, one has to live in sorrow. When you see that such is life, the immediate effect is that there is no pursuit of pleasure. The human body is endowed with the capacity to experience pleasure that is natural. And this natural pleasure flows down the river of nature. Without you seeking, it comes to you.
There is a psychological state which you call sorrow, and a psychological state which you call pleasure. Instead of finding words to describe these psychological states - every state being a limitation, the yogi endeavours to look and to 'discover' - in the purest, simplest and most literal sense of the word- 'to take the lid off'. When you take the lid off, you do not anticipate what you may find. Anything may come out of it.
Instead of examining or analysing, you should observe the experiences which are experienced by the mind, and the mental states produced by our daily life from moment to moment - whether they are called pleasure or pain. Ask yourself three things concerning them: what is the content of each one of these experiences? what is it that responds to this experience and calls it pain or pleasure? who is the experiencer? These are the three questions to which the yogi seeks answers.
One who pursues this quest immediately discovers another problem. The thought with which this quest was started, creates its own mental activity, which is yet a further distraction. Can you put an end to distraction, without being distracted? Can you counter violence, without being violent to yourself? How do you do that? There is a distraction in the mind. Can you stop that distraction, without the effort of stopping it? Unfortunately that effort is going to add to the distraction rather than abolish it, because now another wonderful little flashlight is going to sit there - discriminating - this is the right direction, this is the wrong direction. So, once again, the mind is active. Therefore, the enquiry itself is manufacturing distraction and psychological distress.
2, 16 : heyam dunkham anagatam
Yet, all is not lost. For, sorrow that has not yet 'arrived', not yet reached the field of experience, can be avoided; unhappiness that has not yet befallen may be avoided, by avoiding psychic contact with it.
Here, Patanjali gives us a philosophy of yoga which is able to show us the way to deal with our problems, and to eventually arrive at that point where the problems do not arise at all. It is probably the only positive description of the aim of philosophy given in the Yoga Sutras.
The unhappiness that has not yet reached you, can be avoided. This is a fantastic and beautiful teaching given to us. Do not say that, because you are unhappy and involved in all this complicated process, you must go on inviting suffering throughout your life.
You know of people who bash their heads against a wall when they have a migraine headache. That aggravates the headache. When they stop, the aggravated form of headache stops, and they pretend that the whole thing has stopped. That is not what we are looking for. We are looking for a way in which we can intelligently deal with the sorrow that has already arisen in our lives, and how to avoid it, how to stop that which has not yet fallen to our lot. That, the yogi says, is possible.
As long as you are pushing sorrow away, you are touching it.
Why do you want to touch something which is in any case moving away from you? It came from somewhere towards you and, left to itself, it will move away from you. Leave it alone, but utilise that situation of unhappiness you may be in, to look within to see how it is that 'I' was caught in this.
It does not mean that you should welcome sorrow, that you should accept or bear it. All these are irrelevant to our discussion. You should try to eliminate sorrow without effort. How do you do that? By keeping quiet and examining the whole dynamics of suffering, of pain. You directly observe pain - which is a completely and totally different thing from analysis. If you analyse pain, it becomes multiplied. Without analysis, without intellectualising or conceptualising, and creating an image of misery, if you directly observe this phenomenon of sorrow, you see it is an experience.An experience presupposes a division into a subject and an object. You are the subject of the experience, the other is the object of the experience - whether the object is material or another person, sentient or insentient, or a psychological phenomenon.
It is the existence or the arising of division that causes experience - whether it is considered pleasant or unpleasant. You have separated yourself from the universe, and have lost the reality. Now you can only come into relationship with the universe through mental activity or notions. This vrtti-activity or vrtti-based life is sorrow.
The only way of stopping the sorrow before it gets to you is not to allow this division to take place in the first place. That is samadhi, meditation, nirvana, liberation, moksa, or whatever you want to call it.
2, 17 : drastr drsyayoh samyogo heya hetuh
How to avoid contact with the experience of pain? By understanding the structure of this experience. What is the structure of experience? The division or the polarization of experiencing into the experiencer and the experience, and the subsequent conjunction or contact of the subject and the object of the experiencing - and this can be avoided. Experiencing being the sole reality, the subject and the object are of identical nature, and thought is the dividing agent. Thought is of pain, pleasure, etc.; and thought experiences pain, pleasure, etc., by the psychological action of division and contact. The possibility of the avoidance of pain is because of the unity of the seer - experiencer - and the seen - experience, without a division.
There are several different ways of dealing with this:
(1)
There is a state of what is, the 'being'. Mixed up with that, there is also a dissatisfaction with that being, and a desire or craving to become something else. The conflict between 'being' and 'becoming' is what is called unhappiness. It is extremely simple if it is clearly understood. It is this conflict between being and becoming that makes us miserable. When the conflict is dropped, they become one. In other words, 'being' alone remains. It is an illusory consecutiveness of the being that becomes a becoming.
For instance, I am 54, but the same person two years ago said, 'I am 52'. That 'I am' is constant. It is not involved in this succession of events, years, and dates. Yet there is an illusory misunderstanding in that, of involvement in this succession called 'time'. When that involvement is realised to be non-existent, there is absolute peace. I am neither 52, 54 nor 67. 'I am'. Period. An illusory division that was there has been abolished.
It is vitally important that we remember throughout our study of yoga that there has been no factual division. If there has been, it will never come together. Once separated, it can never be put back again. It is the illusory intrusion of this ignorance and craving that produces an illusory division between the being - what you are and what you want to be, between what you are and what you want to have. When that illusory division comes in, you are miserable and unhappy. The fundamental basis of yoga philosophy is that nothing has ever happened to you, to the 'being'. That 'being' is beyond ignorance, and therefore beyond the retinue of ignorance - unhappiness, exultation, pleasure, fear, or craving.
The yogi realises that the true nature of his being is one continuous being which does not become anything other than being, which remains being.
Unhappiness is longing or craving for happiness. We regard a certain experience as unhappiness, because we are looking for something else. That longing for what we consider to be happiness, is unhappiness. If the longing for something else is dropped, this itself becomes happiness. When unhappiness is seen at a distance - that is, it has not yet reached you - you see a miraculous and beautiful connection: the unhappiness is connected to the craving. If the craving is dropped, the unhappiness also drops. The craving can be dropped only when you realise that the division that has apparently taken place within you is illusory and due to ignorance. When that knowledge arises, the ignorance is gone, and with that, the unhappiness also goes.
(2)
It is only an internal psychological division - which is assumed to exist - which creates an experiencer apart from the experiencing itself. If you do not create that psychological division, there is consequently no psychological contact, and therefore no experience of pain or sorrow, as such. But, in the process of the eyes seeing, the see-er - the ego-sense - arises. Something jumps up and says, 'I see'. The moment the 'I', the subject, has arisen in you, that subject is going to create an object. I am looking at this whole hall, then suddenly, 'I see him'. It is this assumption of an ego that cuts through the pure sensation of seeing, and suggests, 'I see him.' The sight sees - but in that. you have created an image, a thought form. From there springs all mischief.
While this experiencing of vision goes on, can this contact be disconnected? Can this reaction come to an end? Can this relationship be seen to be non-existent and absurd? That will happen when you realise that, when the eyes are open, what happens is merely seeing - the eyes being endowed with the faculty of sight. That faculty of sight being universal, as long as there is light in this universe, there will be sight. The action being sight, this sight itself is the see-er. There is no see-er apart from sight. It is not necessary for 'me' to see 'you'. When the 'me' arises, the 'you' also arises, whereas the truth is something in between.
It is easy to illustrate that with a handkerchief. There is a left end of the handkerchief and a right end. That is very clear. Now, there is only one piece of cloth that you call handkerchief and that is between these two ends. But the end is not something other than the handkerchief. The whole thing is one indivisible piece called handkerchief. Can we return to that state where what is called 'you' and what is called 'me' are but two supposed ends of a pure, egoless action, something which takes place everywhere?
Does 'I' arise first, then seeing, and then 'you' arise? Or are you there already, and seeing happens and, at the other end of it, the 'I' springs up? What exactly is the truth concerning the simple experience of seeing? When this seeing takes place, does 'I' - the see-er, the observer, the subject - arise first, or does the object arise first? Is the identity of the object independent of the thought arising in the subject? Or is the identity of the object merely a projection of the object?
Both the subject and the object depend upon the predicate. There is only one thing - experiencing. There is only one thing called 'handkerchief'. What was merely one, has somehow been conceived of or perceived as a trinity. It is an absurd thing. What is it that makes you see this? Avidya.
In the same way, someone calls you a fool. It is just a word, a sound which is heard, an experience. Somehow that experience is notionally - but not in fact - split as 'I am hurt' or 'it hurts me' - 'I' being this end, 'it' being that end, and 'hurts' being the middle. If this division is not there, it will be just a pure experiencing, a word which has entered through the ears and is heard. In that, there is absolutely no pain.
Once again, when this division or psychological split between what is called the experience and the experiencer is not imagined - because it is imaginary - to have taken place, there is no contact and therefore no pain.
(3)
This can also be made possible in regard to physical pain. The condition may still continue to exist, but pain as pain can cease. If physical pain is allowed to be just physical pain without being called or described so, it will take care of itself. It may even paralyse your limb, but it will take care of itself. It need not necessarily become psychological or personal.
(4)
Perhaps most of us would realise that, in this effort to avoid sorrow and suffering, our whole outlook on life might change for the better. One of the best ways to ensure that all these moral and ethical principles are adopted in one's life, is to point out that in that way lies your happiness. You can be happy if you are friendly with all. If you love all, you are happy all the time. A healthy moral life is the best guarantee for the avoidance of suffering and sorrow.
(5)
Can you extract the thing called sorrow, which is independent of the personality and of the circumstances? Can you pull it completely out and observe it as it is? It is here that tremendous concentration is needed. You focus your whole attention upon this phenomena of suffering, and let the energy of the mind flow in that one single direction. You can focus it on fear, hate, or anything you like. You are only aware of sorrow. It is in you. If you are aware of sorrow, are 'I' and the 'sorrow' two different entities? Or are they the same?
(6)
Here we try another technique. We use a mantra in meditation, and mentally repeat it. When you mentally repeat a mantra, 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 this mantra. Someone is watching both these fellows.
Similarly, you observe this phenomenon of sorrow, and you say, 'I am aware of sorrow'. Well, if you are aware of sorrow, try these :
(a) Stand in front of your electric stove. It is hot, you can feel it. But why should you be hot? If you can see that the water is boiling in the kettle, you do not have to boil. Similarly, if you can observe that sorrow, if you can become aware of that sorrow, you are free. This isone way.
(b) The other way is that, as you are becoming more and more intensely aware of sorrow, you suddenly become one with that sorrow. You are not suffering any more, you are sorrow. The fire does not feel hot, it is hot. So, if you are sorrow, you do not feel sorrow anymore. You become one with that sorrow, and the duality has disappeared.
Thus does the yogi utilise the sorrow that has already arrived to find the root of suffering itself.
An interesting feature in the Yoga Sutras is that there is no condemnation of other points of view, no criticism of anything. For instance, an interpretation of this Sutra can be very wide and all-inclusive. It does not only mean that in meditation we avoid contact with pain - which means creating an 'experiencer- experience' division within ourselves. That may be one of the recommended methods, but that does not mean that we ignore other methods.
Every type of precautionary method that we may take can be included in this. It is not infliction of suffering on oneself that is important in yoga. Suffering comes your way without being invited. Deal with it as it comes. But, when you can see some suffering approaching you, avoid it by any means you can.
Whatever be the method you adopt - fasting, diet, yoga asanas, pranayama, prayer, healing, spiritual healing - can all be included in this. Whatever path you may take, wherever the observation or enquiry leads you, the next stage is definite. It is ananda - bliss. This bliss is completely different from pleasure. It is even different from what we nermally call happiness. When all our mental disturbances drop, when all the things that are torturing us have gone, what exists is ananda.
But 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. When you get to this stage, there is bliss. But, you are experiencing this bliss, the 'I' or the individuality is still there. This eventually disappears. See also I.17.
Here it is said that one cannot jump on one's own shoulders.
2, 18 : prakasa kriya sthiti silam bhute ndriyatmakam bhoga pavargartham drsyam
What is the object and how does it come into being? The object of the experiencing is threefold in nature: (1) the light of intelligence, (2) dynamic activity, and (3) material existence. While the external cosmos is the object of the senses they themselves are regarded as the object of experiencing by the ignorant, both the external cosmos and the internal experiencer being indivisible from the experiencing. Yet, the 'object' helps the intelligence to realize its true nature by intelligent experiencing and, thus be freed from ignorance.
An object may be what is called an external object - you, it, any physiological experience - pain, or a psychological experience - suffering, anxiety. All these three are objects in one way or the other. A tree is the object of your sight, and a pain in the eye is the object of you. An experience of misery is not outside of you, but still you experience it as an object.
The experience of pain is naturally associated with awareness, there is a movement of energy, and it is. These are the three characteristics of that experience. There is no pain here. That does not mean that whatever is, is not! It is very important to remember that the yogi is not trying to suppress whatever is. That is an absurd thing to do. But, is there an experiencer distinct from that experience who can say that this experience belongs to me; or is the experience the whole truth?
These are all characterised by prakasa kriya stithi silam.
Prakasa - there is an awareness that characterises these three. When you say, 'I see you,' there is obviously an illumined object. When there is pain in the eye, there is obviously some kind of awareness connected with the sense organ. There is an awareness associated with it, even in the case of psychological distress.
Kriya - there is obviously a movement of energy also associated with the awareness concerning that object. In other words, the thing is dynamic. Even when you observe what you consider to be an inert object, there is a movement of consciousness between you and that object, and it is doing something to you.
Stithi - for the time being, it seems to be an existential, undeniable fact that the object exists there, and it is there for you to see - the pain is there for you to experience, and the fear is there for you to feel.
Bhute means the gross physical elements that constitute the physical universe. But it is not the physical elements alone which constitute the object. The sensory part of all physical beings - which is also part of the physical being, and yet somehow capable of distinguishing itself - is also needed. Taste seems to be an object, and the sense of taste in the tongue pretends to be a subject, though it is part of the whole physical organism. The whole lot is the object. What is the object of this object being the object!
In this whole concept of object, there is enjoyment - bhoga - and also enlightenment. There is enjoyment if you are still sleeping under the blanket of ignorance, or enlightenment if your spirit is stirring and trying to see what is underneath all this. The ignorant man comfortably sleeping under the blanket of ignorance is satisfied with it, and treats this contact with the object as enjoyment; whereas the person in whom the spirit has begun to stir - who is not fully enlightened, but awakening - might use the same experience of the object to see his way through to self-knowledge.
2, 19 : visesa visesa lingamatra lingani gunaparvani
Such objects may even be of different kinds or categories: (1) they can be special - supernatural experiences, (2) they can be commonplace and routine experiences, (3) they may have distinguishing marks or characteristics, or (4) they may be subtle, without any distinguishing marks; and their qualities may be in different stages of development. Simply, the entire cosmos including the external world and the internal sensory system, is the object.
Patanjali says that these experiences, which constitute the object, may be special experiences or common experiences. They may have distinguishing characteristics or they may not. They may be regarded as something special or non special. 'I see you' is avisesa - a non-special experience, because all of us are able to see it. 'I see a blue light around you' is visesa - an extraordinary or special experience.
Patanjali has nothing but the most objective comments to make on these. He does not suggest that one is superior to the other. For instance, seeing of a certain form of god in a vision is a lingamatra experience - an experience characterised by characteristics and which is at the same time a special experience. It is possible that someone else has an experience of being dissolved totally in this cosmic consciousness, which has no characteristics at all. This is one kind of experience, that is another kind of experience, and as long as these are objects of a subject, there is division somewhere.
2, 20 : drasta drsimatrah suddho pi pratyaya nupasyah
The truth concerning the seer - experiencer - is that there is only the ever-pure act of seeing - experiencing. Yet, there arises a polarization on account of which a concept - which then becomes the subject or the experiencer - seems to experience - the reaction of the senses to the eternalized world - all such externalization being the result of the polarization and the consequent apparent movement in the subject. An apparently independent entity called experience therefore becomes the object.
Having thus explained the nature of the object, Patanjali goes on to what I feel is probably at the very heart of the Yoga Sutras - the question, 'Who is the drasta, the see-er, in this?' The object was very dear and so we took that first. The second thing that seems to be extremely dear and evident is 'I see you'. The next question is, 'Who is the 'I' that sees you?'
Drasta drsimatrah it is the seeing or experiencing alone that is. That experiencing itself, by wishing to become aware of its own experience, creates a polarity. There are two beautiful expressions in the Yoga Vasistha which occur again and again: 'What is cosmic consciousness, what is God, and what is anything?' and, 'Between this and that is consciousness, between that and this is the experiencing or experience.' In that pure experiencing, there is neither polarisation nor division. The eyes see one vision, one universe. That sight is pure, with no division in it.
If sight is realised to be the sole see-er of all sight, in that sight, there is no evil; it is absolutely pure - suddho 'pi. All experiences - as pure experiencing - are pure, unpolluted, untainted. The see-er is pure, the action is pure, the sensory action is absolutely pure. So, the see-er is pure sight; or the act of seeing is without a subject-object division, and therefore without any motivation. Therefore, in pure experiencing, there is neither pain nor pleasure, sin nor virtue. Drasta drsimatrah - sight or seeing itself is the only truth.
All experience is pure experiencing in its intensity. Naturally, there is no division between the experiencer as the subject and the experience as the object. One can only think of one universal experience as an example - sleep. One who is in deep sleep does not say, 'I am asleep,' nor does he even know, think or feel, 'I am sleeping'. There is a total, homogeneous pure experience. The experiencer is inextricably and essentially non-different from this pure experiencing. Sleep is brought in merely as an illustration of the existence of such pure experience, not to suggest that sleep is therefore a feature of enlightenment. In sleep, all your good and bad qualities, wonderful qualities and super-wonderful qualities are also lying asleep. When they wake up, there is a lot of trouble!
What you call the see-er is nothing but the action or event of seeing. Seeing happens. Seeing is there, awareness is there. In meditation, pure awareness alone is there. When the eyes are open and see something, only seeing is there. When you eat something, eating is there. When you are speaking, speaking is also there. Speaking happens - it is not, 'I speak to you'. Hearing happens - not, 'I hear you'. It is even possible for pain to happen. At that moment there is only pain - pain as something without a word, without a concept and without a description. It is not called pain, because you are not looking for pleasure. In this way, everything can happen without creating any problem in life. Such a life is a supreme blessing. All the virtues that are described in the scriptures are naturally formed in that person. But the virtues do not have a goal, a motivation. He is not kind 'because he is going to heaven'.
Such a life is free from motivation and therefore free from despair, fear, and hope. When you have no goal, you have no destination. All roads you take are right!
2, 21 : tad artha eva drsyasya tma
The existence or the very meaning of the object is but the sum and substance of the subject's fragmentary experience, brought on by the ignorant polarization. This fragmentary experience is the contact with pain.
This Sutra suggests that the experience, the object of the experiencer, is also the same stuff.
All sensory experiences happen without any motivation. It is the division of this experience into the subject and the object, into the 'I' and the 'you' - the two ends of a handkerchief - that is obviously absurd; but it somehow happens. When the handkerchief is one, how does it happen that it has two ends? You see the handkerchief, you blink and you see the two ends. When one becomes aware of the two ends - the subject and object - instead of the handkerchief, there is no longer pure seeing, but 'I see you'. 'I-see-you' seems to be incomplete. So the subject provides itself with a motivation. The ideas - that you are attractive, beautiful, ugly, charming, I like you, I do not like you - all follow the initial wrong perception. It is this division that is the cause of all experience and all contact, and pain is an experience born of contact.
'I think she is beautiful.' What is the substance here? 'Think', isn't it? If the thinking was not there, even 'I' would not be there. At the other end of thinking, she is. What do you mean by 'she is'? I think she is. So, this thing called thinking somehow generates at one end the thing called 'I', and at the other end the thing called 'she is'.
There is no experience without a division. I touch you, the finger does not touch itself. Experience means division, experience means contact, contact means division - the three go together. One somehow imagines itself to be divided and, having brought about this imaginary division, comes into contact with itself - which it now regards as its own object. By that contact it experiences pain or pleasure - it does not matter which. Now you see that there is no real distinction between pain and pleasure. It is all one. There is only one handkerchief; so, how do you see the two ends? Who is going to answer that question? On the answer to that question depends the entire yoga of self-knowledge!
So, experiencing, as experiencing, creates no problem; thought, as thought, creates ho problem; feeling, as feeling, creates no problem. The problem is the granting of an independent status to what is an integral part of the total experiencing, and that appears to create a division. The division itself is illusory and therefore non-existent.
Now, reality or God is not the cause of anyone's suffering. That which is, causes no suffering or sorrow at all. The truth is pure experiencing. 'Truth cannot be the cause of sorrow - falsehood is,' can be taken as an axiom. Since that so-called experience has been subjected to falsehood, sorrow is experienced. Thank God it is false and can go! When it is seen to be false, the whole game is up.
2, 22 : krtartham prati nastam apy anastam tad anya sadharanatvat
To him who has attained fulfillment, when the (un)real nature of the polarization of experiencing is truly understood, the contact with pain ceases; the only way to avoid pain is never to be separated from it - as the experiencer! Yet, the potentiality of polarization - separation - and the consequent contact with pain exist in other, ordinary circumstances. Hence, even an enlightened person may still experience pain when not in the total awareness of non-separation.
If we regard sorrow itself as unreal or false, and all pure experiencing as noble, holy, bliss - even if it be the experience of an amputation of a limb and the crying of a throat, then it is possible that all the religious practices suddenly become meaningless. One who has reached this understanding or realisation is free. He has lost the false idea of sorrow - in his case, sorrow has come to an end. It is also possible that when he awakens himself to this truth, he realises that this was the truth all the time. Even when he was weeping and wailing that he was miserable, even then this was the truth, and there is no sorrow in truth.
In his case, the whole game has come to an end. But the world has not suddenly disappeared, for there are other people still creating and projecting this world of pain, suffering, and sorrow. They are suffering because of their own misunderstanding, wrong understanding, and ignorance. For them, sorrow, suffering, and ignorance are real. The sage who has been enlightened enters into this apparent diversity, and vaguely feels the problems of other people, in order that he may be able to solve them.
2, 23 : sva svami saktyoh svarupopalabdhi hetuh samyogah
When the polarization of the experiencing has taken place, the subject's desire for awareness of its own nature and its own voluntary and involuntary powers of action causes or acts as a link or contact between the subject and the object. Here the 'subject' is the fragmented concept of self, and the 'object' is both the sense- experience and the external sense-object.
An example may explain this easily. When you have lost a tooth, the gum starts bleeding. The blood comes from the gum, from the same organism as the tongue, and the same blood flows in the tongue. Somehow, now that a division has been made between the blood in the tongue and the blood that comes out of the gum, it tastes salty. That is precisely what happens to us. The blood that flows 'in' the tongue still flows, and is perhaps even experienced by the tongue, but since there is total at-one-ment, there is no experience of the taste of the blood, nor the realisation of the inherent faculty of taste in the tongue. But when the blood flows from the gum and falls 'on' the tongue, there is a division, then a contact and an experience of the taste of blood, as also an awakening of the faculty of experience. From there on the mischief starts.
How does this division happen at all? It is still you. Can you quietly withdraw your consciousness from the mouth where all these things are taking place, and sit on the top of your head. You see a little deity presiding over the gums that says, 'It's painful,' and another deity presiding over the sense of taste that says, 'I taste blood'. It is one brain, one organism. That is precisely what happens in our relationships. We are all one organism. Because we do not realise this, when one person suffers, someone else feels happy. It is a terrible thing, but true.
If you are in a state of supreme delight, where momentarily you have become completely merged in an experience of pleasure, you then have tremendous energy. Somehow this energy seems to manifest itself only in an extreme situation, when you feel it with your heart and soul. I will give an example from my own experience.
Once a lady was driving me to a meeting in her car, when one of the wheels sank into the ditch. She cried, 'Oh! We will be late for the meeting.' We got out of the car and lifted the wheel out of that ditch. Normally we would never have attempted to lift such a weight, let alone have done it. From where did that tremendous energy come? From what we might call Cosmic Order. But whatever it is, it lasts only for a moment.
Spontaneous action is where the action takes place on its own, not mechanically, not by habit, Spontaneous action is where the actor does not arise in the action, when the knower does not arise in the knowledge, when the experiencer does not arise in pure experiencing. When it happens spontaneously, it is pure, the 'I' is not involved in it at all. We lifted the whole car, but if we tried to do it again, our backs would be nearly broken!
One can understand more in terms of pleasure than anything else. When we think, 'Oh, that was beautiful. I want to repeat it again in order that I may have that pleasure again,' it is gone. The self which endeavours to experience its own powers, creates the division. Then, wanting to contact it, finds it impossible. It is the pure sakti that is doing it. When one surrenders completely to the sakti - when 'I' is not there at all - then, what has to happen, will happen. When you say, 'That was marvellous! I felt the sakti rising up. Let me experience it again,' then nothing happens. So, when the polarisation is forced instead of being that whole, you are trying to experience your own power, your own intelligence - or even your own ignorance. Then it is gone!
This same thing happens to you when you sit for meditation. You sit down and repeat your mantra. You are listening to the mental repetition, and if the sound of the mantra is loud enough within you it can drown all other sounds. The wind is howling, it is distracting you, but the teacher says, 'Just listen to your mantra totally with all your heart and soul, and that howling will not disturb you.' You do not hear the wind, but there is a sneaking suspicion, 'Has that wind stopped? Or am I really in deep concentration?' How do you find out your own powers of concentration? By trying to experience the inaudibility of that sound. Here 'inaudibility' means the audibility of that sound. You are trying to hear to make sure you are not hearing. That is where you get caught.
Intelligence is there in you. It is that intelligence that manifests itself as all this experience. The 'I', the experiencer, is not necessary for this at all. Where the experiencer has not arisen as an independent entity, and where the experience has been dissolved into pure experience, there is bliss and there is no division at all.
When you want to experience it, you do not want to surrender yourself to this pure experiencing. It is when you want to sit there and lick it that the trouble starts.
2, 24 : tasya hetur avidya
Obviously, all this is due to the ignorance of the spiritual truth or oneness. Ignorance alone is the cause for the polarization the fictitious separation which is the sole cause for the desire to become aware of 'another' and for the contact of 'the other'.
All problems arise from avidya - ignorance. For instance, it is avidya that asks, 'How is it that, in this single handkerchief, I see two ends?' I do not know if there is any verbalised answer to this question. One only sees that non-comprehension of the wholeness creates the two ends. If you like to put it the other way around, suggestion of the two eads is called non-comprehension of the whole.Only Krsna was bold enough to suggest, in a fantastic statement, that both knowledge and its veiling come from God. It is very tough, so be careful. If you want to be knowledge, be knowledge; if you want to get under the blanket, go ahead.We are only aware that this division and the consequent experience of pain, pleasure, and all the rest of it, have a common ground, and that is non- comprehension, illusion, imagination. In a word - ignorance.
One who is even vaguely aware of the activities of ignorance, suddenly discovers that it is not possible to get rid of it, no matter what you do. You cannot live with it, you cannot get rid of it. As long as it is, it is felt to be present. Whatever is done, is done by, and in, its shadow. If you do something good, it is the shadow that does it, or is benefited by it. As long as you keep this body going, the shadow also keeps going. How do you deal with this?
2, 25 : tad abhavat samyoga bhavo hanam tad drseh kaivalyam
When that ignorance is dispelled, the polarization - separation, division or fragmentation - and the consequent conjunction or contact of the experiencer and the experience is rendered meaningless. It is given up. This is liberation for the seer who is pure experiencing or the undivided homogeneous consciousness, which alone existed. Liberation is not isolation nor independence from another, but union in the sense of non-division.
How do you overcome this sequence of psychological distress, or trouble, which has its origin in ignorance, in non-comprehension? When you realise that all these arise from self-ignorance, there could be only one solution - self-knowledge. Nothing else is of any use whatsoever.
Patanjali puts it very cleverly - tad abhavat. When the shadow is not there, and therefore the illusory division or polarisation does not take place, then there is no contact with pain at all. There is no contact with any object of experience. You immediately see that all your prejudices and so on will vanish, and there is love, harmony, unity and peace. You have stopped sorrow at its very source, before it gets you - the root of sorrow is destroyed.
Because the universe is throbbing with its own energy that goes on as it wants to go on, pure experiencing and pure expression go on in this world, and they do not create any problems or trouble to anybody. It is the conceptualisation of an experience as pain or pleasure, of behaviour as good or not good, that creates problems. When this polarisation comes to an end, the contact comes to an end - and when the contact comes to an end, there is pure experiencing. Experiencing alone exists. Then the experience remains alone - alone in the sense of 'all one'. This pure experiencing is seen as both object and subject, but without the division of object and subject. Then there is freedom. The experiencer is liberated, freed, emancipated from this polarising influence.It is that freedom that is indicated in the Raja Yoga philosophy. It is not freedom from another or from pain etc., but total freedom - freedom from the craving for experience, and therefore liberation of the experiencing as such.
This could easily be the finale of the Yoga Sutras, because the second and third Sutra in the first chapter define yoga as, 'Yoga is the control of the modifications of the mind,' and, 'Then the see-er rests by itself as itself'. The see-er, the experiencer, remains in his own true form. In the second chapter the true form is revealed as the pure experiencing itself. When avidya - the shadow of ignorance comes to an end, then this pure experiencing is freed from conceptualisation, from polarisation. If you can really and truly say right from your innermost being that this sense of ignorance, or 'I do not know' has dropped, and that there 'is no confusion in your mind, then you are enlightened.
2, 26 : viveka khyatir aviplava hano payah
Briefly, the constant unbroken awareness of this truth alone is the means to the ending of this ignorance and its retinue.
Viveka means wisdom, awareness, alertness, or vigilance. Aviplava means unbroken. The constant unbroken awareness of this truth is viveka. Viveka is the only way in which the obstacles can be removed. Therefore Patanjali says, 'Viveka khyatir - get this wisdom, this awareness, and let it be unbroken.' When you become dull, your vigilance is lost. At that very moment, you lose what you have gained. If it is broken or abandoned - whatever be the reason - then immediately you are overcome by self-ignorance, or darkness, and the shadow - the ego - comes in again. This interruption itself is the shadow - the ego.
Swami Sivananda's vigilance was the constant kindling of the inner light. As long as the light is there, no darkness is possible. However feeble the light, it is capable of keeping darkness away. You cannot eradicate darkness, you must illumine it. You cannot eradicate this notion of 'I', but you can throw a flood of light on it and see what it is. The inner light must burn constantly, uninterruptedly. This is the only way of overcoming ignorance.
Along with the infinite, there is also ignorance. The infinite has infinite potentialities hidden in it all the time. There is an enlightening experience which is beyond the dualistic experience. But, in that pure experiencing, the desire to experience it, to hold it, also arises. The desire arises because it is also inherent in every atom of existence. That which is aware of this, is wisdom - viveka. When that wisdom is constant and unbroken, the division does not arise. When that division does not arise, there is no contact. When there is no contact, there is no dualistic experience. There is pure experiencing - which is bliss. There is pure action - which is love. There is unity.
If there is no division, there is no pain and no pleasure. Even when there is no division, and therefore no pleasure or pain, there is still awareness. Awareness, experiencing, and action, are inherent in every atom of existence, in every cell of your body. Pure action is called love. Pure experiencing in which there is no division at all is bliss - whether the bliss comes from cancer or from enthronement - because it is beyond both pleasure and pain.
All the mischief arises from non-comprehension of this oneness. Once again we are back to the riddle. What is non-comprehension? How does it arise if every atom of existence and every cell of one's being is saturated with awareness? l do not think anyone has the answer. One has to look within and see what is aware of this non-comprehension.
When this purity of awareness or wisdom is unbroken, your life is free from sorrow. You live as if in deep sleep - which means that everything that happens to you happens in totality, without an experiencer arising. When talking happens, there is no talker, only talking. When you are working, working happens. You and working have become one so that there is no you there.
Only when viveka is uninterrupted can it be said that the obstacles have been removed. We often behave like a shaving razor. We shave something and imagine the whole problem is solved. It is not solved! Early next morning you wake up and see it is back again. This is the constant problem in our life and our yoga practice. We think the problem is gone, but it is not. Our usual old friend and enemy, 'I thought' - 'I thought it had gone', 'I thought I was enlightened' - can come and interfere in our lives in a million ways - and the next phrase is important - 'without our being aware of it'. Because our being unaware of it is called ignorance, here the common excuse, 'I did not know' is no excuse.
2, 27 : tasya saptadha pranta bhumih prajna
This awareness is keen, intense and operative even in the field of the first seven of the eight states or limbs of yoga-practice whose description follows: this practice should therefore not be a mechanical, unintelligent, dull routine.
These seven are not merely a set of yoga practices which you resort to for one hour a day, but something which covers your entire life. The eighth limb is samadhi, which is not considered a step or a limb, but enlightenment itself.
I am often suspicious of defining these seven following traditional concept moulds, because once the mind creates a conceptual mould, the awareness is gone. We have conceptualised and crystalised these seven limbs - or outflows of this yoga philosophy, so that, when the words are uttered, the mind already thinks it knows.
Patanjali takes immense care to warn us that awareness must be the hallmark of all the seven limbs of yoga, otherwise you are only doing gymnastics. All these practices are wonderful, but they are not yoga unless they are saturated with the serious spirit of enquiry. It is clear that mechanical practise of any type of yoga has no spiritual value. Yoga is what your own inner consciousness considers it to be - if you think it is physical, the benefit you derive from it will also be physical. The Scripture is merely a signpost. It is not the business of the signpost to tell you which way you should go.
Yoga is not something which can be practised as a part of life, the other part being left to fend for itself. It has to cover, penetrate, and illumine the entire life. The light is there. It must radiate in all these seven directions, so that nothing is left in the dark, no aspect of our being, of our life, is left untouched by that light - neither thought, word, or deed, neither thinking, feeling, or will. In that light, which is this unbroken awareness, there is no darkness.
When vigilance or constant alertness infiltrates all these seven, then enlightenment results. The same light becomes enlightenment. It is like walking through a dark tunnel - what appears to be a distant glimmer, with the help of which you walk through the tunnel, becomes a light when you are there. It is not as though that speck of light leads you to something called a greater light. You see the speck of light, it guides you on, you walk guided by that light, and you suddenly realise that that is the light - of course in a much grander form.
When this little candle - called constant alertness, awareness, or vigilance - infiltrates - that is the right word for it, whether you like it or not, all aspects of your life and personality, that itself becomes enlightenment. Then these aspects of our being get instantly integrated, moulded into one. Their oneness is revealed. That is holiness.
2, 28 : yoga ngan anusthanad asuddhi ksaye jnana diptira viveka khyateh
This awareness shines resplendent with the light of intelligence, when the inner psychic impurities that becloud the vision of truth have been eliminated by the intelligent practice of the 'limbs' of yoga.
Virtue itself comes into being or is revealed within oneself when the spirit of yoga manifests. All the rest is trying to be virtuous. So, trying to develop virtues, trying to be good and do good is not only hypocrisy but bluff. Because, if that intelligence in you really and seriously sees something as not so desirable, or foolish, it drops it.
One should sustain this inner light of wisdom undimmed. When that shines on all aspects of our life, it is then that all these aspects of yoga become spontaneously manifest, without effort. The beauty in yoga is that there is no effort. Effort implies inner struggling, the inner struggling implies disharmony within.
Practise all this. Do not think that thus you create the light, the truth. Truth is always there. The very definition of truth or reality is that which is eternal. Nobody need create this reality. If reality were in need of such creation, it would not be reality in the first place. So, yoga is not an attempt to create self- knowledge. It merely cleans your own mind and heart.
2, 29 : yama niyama sana pranayama pratyadhara dharana dhyana samadhayo stav angani
Discipline, observances, posture, exercise of the life-force, introversion of attention, concentration, meditation and illumination - at-one-ment - are the eight limbs of yoga or the direct realization of oneness. Hence, these limbs should all be practiced together, intelligently, so that the impurities of all the physical, vital and psychological limbs maybe eliminated.
What has come to be known as the official Raja Yoga is mentioned at this point. After having described nearly the whole of the yoga philosophy, Patanjali gives some practical hints. The sequence is very clear, very beautiful, and very important. We all know how to do things, but what we do not seem to recognise is the fact that every action has a philosophy and a motivation, whether you like it or not. When that is forgotten, there is confusion.
Astanga means eight limbs - anga is limb. It is not unusual even for great masters and teachers of yoga to use another terminology - the eight steps. However, when you look upon these as the eight steps, it can give rise to a slight misunderstanding which is later condensed into a doctrine. When you climb a flight of steps, you climb them one by one. So, the teaching, from that point of view, is that here also there are these eight steps up which you go one by one - yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana, and samadhi.
Instead of regarding these eight as steps, Patanjali characterises them as angas - limbs of one entity. The whole yoga is one. These eight are just limbs. This entity called yoga with these eight limbs must be given birth to together every day, so that you have no business to say, 'I am now practising purity, and after I have practised purity I will come on to contentment, then the yoga postures, etc.' By then you are dead!
However, if you look upon this method as composed of eight limbs, you see that one limb alone is inadequate, imperfect. Eight imperfections put together cannot lead to one perfection. A baby is not an assembly of eight limbs - it is a person, a total being. It is possible that some limbs might grow faster than others, but all these must be there at the beginning. Approached from that angle, it suggests that on the very first day you practise anything concerning yoga, you ensure that these eight limbs are all intact together, and that they are characterised by the light of wisdom, which is indivisible. And this must touch every one of them. If you bear that in mind, then the whole thing becomes beautiful and nothing is mechanical.
Dharana, dhyana and samadhi together are called samyama. These three are not independent actions, but one continuous movement. Samyama is this continuous movement. The prefix 'sam' often implies perfection or properly done. So, samyama is when yama becomes well grounded, full, total. See III.4
Yama is the first limb of yoga. It has been variously described as restraint, self- control, regulation, holiness, and discipline. As discipline, it means studying your nature, the springboard of your actions. Some explanations tell us that if you do not become firmly established in yama, you cannot take up the practice of yoga. But then, if you accept the above view of samyama, when you are perfectly established in yama, you are enlightened. On the other hand, yama is only possible if all the other limbs of yoga are also practised together.
Niyama means not restraint, but discipline. Let us call it virtue. Yama and niyama are not so much things to be done, as truths to be understood. They are simple if one truly endeavours to understand that they are in themselves the faithful manifestations of a vigorous search for reality. They are neither disciplines imposed upon us by others, self-imposed disciplines, nor measures of self-control in the sense 'I suppress my inclination and even natural urges'. Non-violence, truthfulness, purity, etc., demand that the self - whose activities are known as violence or the spirit of domination - should be vigilantly watched.
Discipline is not something you have to do with great effort. Discipline is an understanding of the truth. When the truth is understood, the truth itself acts. Krsna revealed a great truth in the Bhagavad Gita: 'You are your own friend and your own enemy. If you lead a life of self-control, you are your own friend. If you lack self-control, you are your own enemy.' There is no compulsion here, but an indication of a truth.
So, self-discipline in yoga has to be discovered by the student himself, not by struggling to cultivate the virtues listed under yama-niyama. The very fact that there is need to cultivate them indicates that they are not there already, and that perhaps their opposite qualities exist. Any effort at such cultivation depletes one's energy. Hence the master suggests that, while you practise the asana, observe the behaviour of the body. Regardless of what yoga posture you are doing, the whole body participates, the inner intelligence restores balance and comfort. Similarly, in meditation, you will discover the intelligence beyond the limitations of the body and mind - thoughts and emotions, and the limitations of the individuality. That which is beyond these is pure intelligence or consciousness, which is indivisible. The intelligence that functions in the body is undivided. Even so, the intelligence in the universe is undivided.
When this truth is realised directly, yama-niyama and all the rest of self- discipline follow effortlessly. It is like this: when you want the baby's face to smile, you tickle the foot, not pull its cheeks apart. When you realise your oneness with all life, virtue or self-discipline is natural.
When you realise that self-ignorance can only be dispelled or enlightened by self- knowledge - the enlightenment of self-ignorance itself being self-knowledge, what are you trying to do when you do yoga asanas or when you hold your breath in pranayama? In the fourth chapter of the Yoga Sutras there is a very beautiful answer: 'All your efforts to cultivate virtues and to discipline yourselves by doing asana, pranayama etc. are like the actions of a goad farmer or gardener.' A gardener removes the obstacles. The inner light shines unabated and undimmed all the time, but there seems to be an obstruction to its functioning. When the yogi cultivates virtues, eradicates vices, and disciplines himself by practising asana and pranayama etc., he merely removes the obstacles.
There has been perennial argument among teachers and students of yoga concerning the qualification of yoga-practitioners. Which comes first, yama- niyama - ethical discipline or dhyana - meditation? Is it possible to practise or even to learn meditation if one is not fully established in yama-niyama? On the other hand, is it possible to get one's foothold in yama-niyama if one does not learn to meditate, to look within, to observe oneself and to recognise the tricks of the wayward mind? So, which comes first? Gurudev Swami Sivananda said, 'Both.'
2, 30 : ahimsa satya steya bhahmacarya parigraha yamah
When the light of intelligence or the awareness of the truth illumines the mind-stuff, psychological order comes to prevail which is manifest as the following articles of natural self-restraint or discipline: non-violence, perception of what is or truth, non- hoarding, an effortless movement of the total being in cosmic homogeneous essence, and non-covetousness. The fourth article also specifically refers to continence or chastity.
Yama
Yama is the first of the limbs of astanga yoga. It is a group of five virtues: ahimsa - non-violence, satya - truthfulness, asteya - non-stealing, ie. not taking anything that belongs to another person, brahmacarya - continence, and aparigraha - non- greed, ie. not coveting someone else's possessions.
Yama also means restraint or death. Yama is the god of death. If you are really and truly aiming at a life of enlightened living, you must be prepared to abandon non-enlightened, ignorant living. When death comes naturally, there is nothing dramatic. It is so simple: one just stops breathing! Death takes life from this body quietly, without any trouble. Yama, in its meaning of self-control or virtue, must also be effortless. There must be an inner ripening. When the whole being is ripe, then virtue happens.
What have these wonderful, positive, noble qualities to do with the god of death?
With their practice, you are bringing death into your everyday life, every moment. The inner intelligence or light naturally becomes aware of the least obstruction that arises - or seems to arise - in it, and is able to deal with it. Then it is gone before it can gather strength and momentum. That is yama. That itself is self- discipline, self-restraint.
Yama is self-restraint in a very subtle and beautiful way, not in the manner of suppression or self-denial. Turning attention upon itself is the key. If, for instance, there is a craving for wine, the attention flows towards a glass of wine on the table, and there is tension. Instead of either deciding to drink a glass of wine or not, is it possible merely to watch and see what is happening in you, what this thing called craving is? Then the attention immediately begins to flow towards itself. There is what Patanjali calls nirodha. Thirst, which is natural to a living organism, will not go away, but the craving will disappear, the tension is gone. Then, picking up a glass of wine or a glass of water just happens, without effort.
When you want to know what craving is all about, how it arises, how it functions, and what it is made of, the attention flows upon itself. At that very moment, the craving loses its life force. Here you develop will-power, but of a different kind. You neither give in to a craving, nor suppress it, but observe it. If you give in to a craving, you are finished. If you suppress that craving, the craving is apparently finished for the time being. In both instances, you have not understood what the craving is, so that the next time it is going to come back in a different form and take you unawares.
The only way in which you can guarantee that you will not be taken unawares, is to become aware of the origin, existence, and function of this thing called craving. When that is done, the craving has gone, and what is natural happens without your will. Such a person's life is absolutely natural and therefore devoid of tension and confusion. There, another intelligence functions. You may call that intelligence God, divine power, or whatever you wish. That is self-restraint of a different quality, and that is the kind of self-restraint that is meant when Patanjali describes yama in the Yoga Sutras.
Restraint of this quality cannot possibly be defined or codified into sets of 'thou shalt' and 'thou shalt not'. These have never really worked. Instead, if we can be aware all the time, this philosophy can be alive in each one of us. That awareness brings about an action which is indefinable, which has to be discovered from moment to moment without being categorised and petrified.
When all hopes, aspirations, fears, anxieties, and motivations drop dead, what survives is this tremendous intelligence - you may call it what you like: soul, jiva, atma, or God within. This intelligence is imperishable, which shines in its own light - untarnished, uninterrupted, and undistracted. When it is constantly illumining the hidden springs of our own actions, what happens is virtue - yama. The shadow called evil does not arise.
So, virtue is when this intelligence shines uninterruptedly, making it impossible for motivations to arise at all. If on account of past habit certain motivations, hopes, fears, or anxieties come up, this yama beheads them. What happens in the light of that intelligence is virtue.
If you entertain a hope that this virtue is going to lead you to heaven or give you a better next life, then you are not dying and it is not virtue. Virtue which has a motivation, either relating to this world or to a future life, is not virtue at all. When death is brought into our daily life, the first thing that is completely knocked out of our life is hope. Hope creates a thing called tomorrow, the future, even though it may not exist.
There is a parallel here with Sutra III.4, which describes dharana, dhyana, and samadhi - concentration, meditation and superconscious state - as samyama. Samyama is perfection, while yama is the preparatory state - one is preparation, the other is perfection. If the substance is the same, it means that yama also involves inner awareness and vigilance, insight. If the insight is not there, you merely surround yourself with these do's and don'ts, and the self continues to flourish, to get stronger and stronger. What is needed is insight which becomes aware - vaguely in the beginning and later perfectly - that what is called the self - 'I', 'me' - is perhaps non-existent.
So, in the samyama state, there is direct awareness that the self does not exist. In the yama state, the same reality is not seen so clearly. Therefore, how far ahimsa, for instance, is practised in your life, depends upon how clear the truth of the non-existence of the self is. If the insight is developed, the insight itself determines what your life should be.
Ahimsa
Ahimsa is not something which can be demonstrated or positively defined. That is why it is negatively worded 'a-himsa'. Ahimsa means the total absence of himsa. Himsa means not only physical violence or harassment, but harmfulness. Even the intention to do harm to others is himsa. To hate, to be jealous, to be rude or crude, either in words or looks, is himsa.
Ahimsa is usually translated as non-violence and non-aggression in thought, word, and deed. You should not harm or insult anybody. This seems to be quite simple and easily understood. But if you watch your mind then, about ninety-five percent of it is busy cooking up how to seem to practise ahimsa without really doing it. That is what we do most of the time when we interest ourselves in the wonderful virtues described here. They are not virtues that can be acquired. So, if you want to be non-aggressive, for example, you cannot introduce non-aggression as an element of your character. You do something else, and that blossoms as non-aggression - it may be japa, meditation or something totally unconnected with what your life-style maybe.
Ahimsa is not capable of being reduced to do's and don'ts - these have no value at all. For instance, whenever this topic of ahimsa is raised - usually during question time, someone asks, 'Swami, you spoke about ahimsa, that you should not injure anyone in thought, word, or deed. What about those mosquitoes which come during my meditation - shall I kill them or not?' The reply is, 'You have still not stopped eating meat, and yet you are terribly concerned about this little mosquito' The ideal, of course, is to ensure that we do not even by heedlessness, much less want only, destroy even the least of God's creatures - but the wise course is to start closer at home, instead of running away to the extreme.
How often do we see people who love animals and are full of sympathy towards vermin, but hate their fellowmen and treat them with less sympathy. How often do we find people who starve their kinsmen in order to do spectacular publicity seeking charity to an orphanage. It is with reference to them that the Tao-Te-King says: 'Do away with benevolence and eject righteousness, and the people will return to filial duty and parental love.'
Exalting love or charity very often leads to hypocrisy. Failing to promote love and charity leads to selfishness and hard-heartedness.
There are some situations where to be soft, sweet, and gentle may be himsa. For instance, if your son is doing something which you disapprove of, how do you react? If you do not restrain a child who is behaving badly, you are promoting evil. Apart from anything else, you are suppressing your own emotions. So, with supreme love, you may have to be egotistic and chastise the child.
What ahimsa involves is constant, unbroken awareness in which there is alert attention which avoids himsa.
Non-violence, as far as the social structure is concerned, is restricted purely to not hurting other people, not fighting, not killing. But non-violence in the spiritual sense is a subtle inner adventure leading to self-knowledge. Is it possible to lead one's life never hurting another, yet also never being hurt oneself?
The definition: 'You must not hurt anyone in thought, word or deed, does not say that you must not hurt anyone else or other people. It says you must not hurt anyone in thought, word, or deed.
What about yourself? It is possible for us to suppress our anger when we are insulted or injured and congratulate ourselves that we have thereby 'practised' ahimsa, but we are doing violence to ourselves then! We can either think we have learnt to love our 'enemy', which is surely hypocritical, or to feel 'God will punish him for this,' which is another form of violence. If my life itself disturbs you, should l jump into the lake? If, for your sake, I jump into the lake, in order to promote the happiness of one body, I am punishing another body.
Is there any virtue in that? It is possible that even in that case there is violence or aversion in me, in the mind, in the heart, in the self. That aversion, instead of flowing towards that body, flows towards this body - which is mine - and instead of weakening or destroying the self, it makes the self very strong. By suppressing anger, I have hurt myself. Is that the definition of ahimsa? I am not suggesting that you must retaliate, that is worse. Instead of punishing him, I am punishing this thing called 'me'. In that cosmic intelligence which is everywhere - and therefore in both him and in me, there has been a disturbance. Cosmic intelligence becomes aware that there has been a disturbance. So, that is not ahimsa.
If someone calls you a fool, you may feel hurt. Once you are hurt, you will bear that hurt for all time to come. However much you may mask it, in ten or fifteen years, it may still come up as gossip or some other type of subtle character assassination. You have not forgotten. And that is violence. So, that heart which is hurt is violent.
Is it possible to live in such a way that you feel no hurt and never hurt at all? If you do not feel hurt at all, then you do not even know how to hurt others. That perhaps is what is meant by ahimsa. Here, non-violence takes a very delicate and beautiful form. If it is realised that the 'I' or the ego-sense is a mere shadow cast on this intelligence, that 'I' cannot be hurt - it is impossible to hurt a shadow. You will not be hurt at all when you realise that what is hurt is only the ego, your own self-image, a shadow which is the product of your own ignorance.
You are the fool that is hurt. Yet, if you are a real seeker, endeavouring to dispel this shadow of the ego, you should mentally thank that person who pointed out the fool. Your goal is to discover the ego, and he has made that ego react. Now you can see that reacting ego and deal with it. If you feel hurt and call yourself a spiritual seeker, you are insincere, you are not honest with yourself.
Is there a way out of all this? How do you know you are non-violent or non- aggressive in your thoughts? Please remember that this discipline is not the discipline of a recluse, an ascetic, or a single man only, but is meant to apply to everyone in all circumstances. If this discipline applies to all everywhere, at all times, what is it that is hurt? If the inner light has been shining brightly all the time, it does not get hurt at all, because the moment a thought 'I am hurt' arises, it chops off its head. That is the state of perfection. But what about you and me?
If you are hurt mentally or psychologically, the light is not unveiled completely, it is still able to direct the attention to that hurt which is within you.
So, non-violence is essentially the virtue of not being hurt. And the virtue of not being hurt is the virtue of having no self-image. When the self-image is completely rooted out of the heart, then you are love, you are non-violence. Whatever actions proceed from that heart, mind, and body, will be good.
It is difficult for these yama to be cosmetically cultivated. For instance, if you want to, you can make a show of non-violence, you can repress the aggression you feel, bite your tongue, use nice words etc., and so do violence to yourself. The yogi's approach is different. When provoked by insult or injury, he studies - that is what 'discipline' means - the internal annoyance and that which reacts to the provocation. The inner light begins to question, 'What is this anger?' He is so busy studying the psychological phenomenon of anger that he has no time to be angry.
Similarly with lust, greed, fear, jealousy, etc. The yogi works on himself. An inner revolution takes place as a result. Until one realises that the self is non-existent, and that there is only one life - which are two sides of the same coin, ahimsa is not possible. Both must happen simultaneously.
True ahimsa or non-injury in thought, word, and deed, and, in truth, is possible only simultaneously with this enlightenment. In order for the desire to harm, to completely disappear from your heart, you must learn how to observe the arising of the emotions and to remove them from there. If you are able to do that, you are meditating. When you are spiritually ripe and filled with love, then virtue happens without any inner struggle. This is both meditation - dhyana and discipline - yama-niyama, which Swami Sivananda emphasised. It is natural and effortless, profound and permanent.
So, ahimsa becomes possible when there is meditation. And ahimsa promotes meditation. It purifies the heart and the mind and it enables yama to become samyama.
Satya
Satya is truth. What you say must be thruthful, pleasant, and beneficial.
Truth is not merely saying what you want to say. For instance, if someone says, 'What do you think of me?', and you reply, 'I think you are ugly, you are an idiot,' you may think you are being very truthful, but you are insulting and rude. That is not truth.
Satya may mean being truthful in one's speech. That is a tall order, since there are times when we may have to tell lies. You must have the ability and the daring to tell a lie, and yet be honest and truthful. Because you do not see the sanity of being dishonest, dishonesty must have dropped without your knowledge. That is virtue. You have seen the truth, however momentary a glimpse, and this glimpse has eliminated the vices from your personality. That is what is meant. But generally, instead of the virtue being a fortress to help you on this march, it becomes a prison house. You are imprisoned in it, you cannot but 'be' something, and therefore the 'I' is again important.
Do you see the danger here? It is not that yoga gives us a license to be vicious, but when virtue becomes important, it means that the ego is still important: 'I must be regarded as a holy man.' What for? Hence, as you can see, even virtue depends upon a glimpse of the truth. It is not a first step, but it is part of the whole. It is one limb of the whole structure of yoga.
Scriptures describe how on certain occasions untruth becomes truth, and truth becomes untruth. If we get hung up on speaking the truth as a discipline itself in a restricted sense, then we not only lose sight of the totality of truth, but we fail even in that restricted speaking-truth, because the vision is narrowed and there is no insight.
How can you recognise the truth? Is what you recognise the truth, or is it also picked by your own opinion? You have a number of standards already stored within you, and you go looking for confirmation of those standards. You are good or bad. Who is the judge? Your standard. Who put the standard there? Yourself, or your grandfather. That again is a tradition or an opinion which is totally unrelated to truth. Therefore, the concept of truth may have to undergo drastic revolutionary change within us before we can even attempt to decide what truth is.
For instance, if someone tells you that So-and-so is a holy man, and that you should go and have his darsan, the truth is that, in his opinion, that person is holy and you should have his darsan. You do not come to any conclusion about it. To come to a conclusion is a dangerous thing - the mind is closed and the quest for truth is lost.
Is it possible for you not to jump to any conclusion about anything? This means to be able to distinguish between what is an opinion and what is the truth. If that is lived - not applied or merely practised as an exercise in our daily life, it leads you to the next stage: 'If this is just an opinion, where is it formed, and what is the truth concerning it?' An opinion springs from your own prejudice. If you are constantly looking for truth, and if you are able at the same time to know, 'This is only an opinion, it is not truth,' that itself is the truth. It is then that you are able to graduate from mere verbal discipline to higher spiritual disciplines. The very fact that you realise, 'This is my opinion,' stops you from expressing it where it need not be expressed, where it will hurt. When what you are about to say is not factual, pleasant, and beneficial, say something else.
So, satya demands a constant search for the truth, recognising the distinction between fact and fiction, truth and opinion - not only in your speech, but in your thoughts, your actions, and your whole life. Then the mind becomes more and more transparent.
One who pursues this quest comes face to face with some shocking truths concerning the mind. There is a realisation that all that the mind conceives of and expresses is untrue, false opinion. Peeling layer after layer of the mind and its prejudices, you will realise how opinion is formed because of samskara.
So, satya is not merely to speak the truth, but to be devoted to the real, not to be led away by the vrttis. The reality is pure intelligence. To draw closer to that intelligence is satya, and to be led away into the by-lanes of vrttis is to pursue the unreal. That is the truth. One who lives this truth is a true seeker.
It is the truth in you that enables you to recognise truth. And the rediscovery of the truth in you is meditation. Without meditation, you cannot know what truth is. Without meditation you cannot know what non-violence means. So, ahimsa and satya are closely related, universal disciplines.
Asteya
The third of the yama is asteya - a synthesis of contentment, simplicity, and charity. The literal translation of asteya is non-stealing. There seems to be an anticlimax. We were discussing ahimsa - not to hurt and not to be hurt, and satya - living in truth, speaking the truth, and expressing truth in thought, word, and deed. These are all highly developed, needing much intelligence, integrity, love, courage, and grit. Then comes - almost an anti-climax - do not steal!
Krsna says in the Bhagavad Gita that if one does not share with others in need the things that one tends to accumulate - food, buildings, clothes, etc. - he is a thief. Can you put on more clothes than you can wear? The body itself teaches us a lesson of tremendous importance: no-one in the world can eat more than a stomach-full of food. One verse in the Bhagavatam says that what you can eat now, you are entitled to have. If you have something more, you will be sick. The body also teaches you that the maximum space you need is the space in which you can lie down, and the maximum clothes you need are what can cover the body. The rest is all stolen property, accumulated by this pair of forces - hope and fear - that seem to govern our lives from day to day. The yogi merely says, 'Look at this phenomenon.'
There is another way of looking at it: whatever you have acquired comes from the earth. The body, food, buildings, motor cars, clothes, all metal and wood, etc. come from the earth. So, it is possible to recognise that you did not bring anything at all when you were born, and all that you call 'mine' now, belongs to the earth?
Asteya also means non-holding and non-hoarding goods which are in short supply. To take more than you need of the world's goods is greed. Accumulation, even of that which seems to be vital to life, is destructive. Why is there greed, why do we accumulate? There are two motivations or premises: firstly, we think we are going to live for a long, long time; secondly, we think that that power - call it God - which exists now, providing us with nourishment today, is somehow going to die before we do, so we may need a bank balance. These two together form the motivation for greed. It is hope and fear of the future that turns every one of us into a thief.
How do we know what greed means? We think that we only want our necessities. But what does 'my necessities' mean? If the intelligence is constantly awake, there is constant questioning. If that is not there, the intelligence is asleep. There is constant churning, because the intelligence is awake. But yet the old samskaras or life-habit-patterns continue. For every step you take, you slip back a little. There is no use saying, 'I am improving,' or, 'I am not improving.' This limb is there. It is developing in its own time.
However, neither throwing everything away nor holding has any meaning whatsoever, unless the inner light perceives these two premises to be false. When the inner vision sees both of these to be error, then the desire to accumulate drops away. You do not push it, because when you push it away.
The pusher is another greed, 'I am going to give up everything in order that I may have ... '. That is what you are supposed to drop! When there is this inner light, these things will not arise at all - and there is asteya.
Krsna, in an enigmatic and simple statement in the Bhagavad Gita, says: 'Eat in moderation, sleep in moderation, do everything in moderation.' What is it to be moderate? What is my moderation, may be your starvation. That intelligence which is undimmed, uninterrupted by hope, fear, anxiety and so on, alone is the deciding factor. That intelligence is capable of deciding without the interference of thought or feeling, hope, or fear. One who understands this manifests in himself the virtue of non-stealing.
Brahmacarya
The fourth of the restraints is brahmacarya. Brahmacarya literally means 'when the whole inner consciousness flows constantly towards truth, towards what is, towards God, Brahman'. That is difficult. So, some holy ones restricted the meaning. They asked, 'What is it that distracts a person's attention most?' The opposite sex. So, they interpreted brahmacarya to mean continence, chastity. This is no doubt one of the constituents of brahmacarya. But brahmacarya means much more than that. Brahmacarya is also part of the search for truth. It means that the mind is constantly moving in the infinite, towards the infinite, constantly looking for Brahman. That itself again is meditation.
When the question, 'What is truth, what is this?' is burning in one's heart, it is then that both truthfulness and brahmacarya are possible. It is said that the yogi who is devoted to truth becomes completely silent. Every time he wants to say something, there is the thought, 'How do I know it is true?' This happens also with brahmacarya in the sense of chastity. When your mind, heart, and whole being are constantly absorbed in this search for truth, towards enlightenment, then craving does not arise, and continence happens. On the other hand, suppressing all these emotions is dangerous because it is violence, it is untruth, and there is no brahmacarya there.
Aparigraha
The fifth of the yama is aparigraha, which means non-covetousness, non- acceptance of gifts given in the wrong spirit, and removal of greed.
Aparigraha, in popular translation, is non-receiving - not to accept or desire what belongs to others. As a matter of fact, the word greed is more appropriate in connection with this than asteya. Asteya is more non-holding. Aparigraha, non- receiving, non-acceptance of even gifts - is a beautiful thing. It is not complicated at all. Whereas in asteya you are allowed to have what you really need, you are allowed to make a living, and you can keep in the refrigerator what you need for tomorrow morning, in aparigraha, what is indicated is that you do not receive anything at all. The person who practises asteya, for instance, may not steal, but if something is given to him he will take it.
In the Bhagavad Gita it is said: 'The yogi is quite happy with what comes unsought'. Here, Patanjali goes one step further and says, 'Stop receiving even that.' This is total absence of greed. First we said - 'work' for a living, and here we say - work for a 'living'. These two are tremendously important. Do not feel that you do not need to work, because somebody will give you what you need. Instead, earn your living. Here also, in modern society, we have so nicely readjusted the economic system that we know how to get what belongs to another in a very legal way. We call it business.
If you apply the moral principles here, these are also very high aspects of yama. If you take the attitude which is to first acquire the insight and then, in that insight, let it be seen that the self does not exist, then even asteya and aparigraha appear to be great virtues. The comfort of this body is as important as the comfort of that body; feeding this body is as important as feeding that body. The masochistic method of feeding others and going without yourself is also un-yogic. There again the self wants to assert itself, to feel superior and saintly, proud of what he is doing. When the self is seen to be non-existent, all these virtues naturally manifest themselves.
To say that you must be established in all these before you can even start practising an asana, is to put the cart before the horse, and run far ahead of it. One who is not mindful, not practising meditation and contemplation, and who has not learnt to observe himself in action and in silence, in seclusion and in company, cannot decide what non-aggression, truth, non-holding, brahmacarya, and non-acquisition mean.
These five disciplines cannot be practised by either forcing them upon oneself, or imposing them on others. Imposed virtue is force, not virtue. When the wisdom that there is only one indivisible intelligence prevails in your heart, then these yama become natural to you.
As long as this inner intelligence remains undivided and undistracted, no distraction can ever arise. What happens in the life of a yogi whose life is such, is described in yama. In his life, those qualities will be found. So, to be good comes first and doing good is a mere extension of that being.
2, 31 : jati desa kala samaya navacchinnah sarva bhauma maha vratam
These articles of supreme - because effortless - self-restraint or order are universally invariable in everyone seeking enlightenment. They are compromised only when there is disharmony and contradiction between, for example, one's head - which seeks the order and one 's heart - which seeks the concomitant of disorder, viz., pleasure. They are not affected or modified by distinctions of birth - class, tribal, etc., nationality or geography, epoch - ancient, modern, etc., or of circumstances - profession, life-style, contingencies, etc.
2, 32 : sauca santosa tapah svadhyaye svara pranidhanani niyamah
In the light of intelligence illumining the life-style, arise in the following observances: purity of body, mind and environment, contentment, psychic fire that simplifies life and purifies the heart, self-study or constant vigilance, and surrender to or worship of the indwelling omnipresence.
Niyama
Niyama in common parlance suggests a regulated life, not only inwards, but also embracing your external life - if one can divide life into something external and something internal.
The five niyamas are sauca - purity, santosa - contentment, tapas - austerity or simplicity, svadhyaya - study, and isvara pranidhana - total surrender to God.
Do not try to cultivate these niyama, but watch to see if these qualities are there in you. If they are there, you are heading in the right direction; if they are not there, something is wrong somewhere else. So, something must be done to rectify the cause. You must find where the opposites of these qualities arise, not merely manipulate and cover them up. Covering up our faults does not work. For instance, a friend of mine wanted to stop smoking but did not. Everytime she came to see me, she used some kind of inhaler which smelt like cloves - so that, when she came and spoke, I smelt the tobacco and I smelt the cloves. Instead we should look for the cause. When that is rectified, the faults go away.
Sauca
Sauca, in simplest language, is cleanliness of body, mind and environment. It is purity which can embrace both your inner self and your environment. When your inner being is pure and clean, I do not know if it will even tolerate outer uncleanliness. To say that your heart is pure and soaring in transcendental bliss, while your body, dress and room are filthy, does not sound very reasonable to me. People have often said, 'Some of your great yogis were filthy, or at least the scriptures say so.' Yes, but somewhere hidden in those descriptions are also suggestions that this yogi who appeared to be uncouth in appearance with filthy matted hair and so on, had a celestial fragrance emanating from him. The imitation yogi is not capable of emanating this celestial fragrance.
If you experiment, you will understand this. One day, sit for meditation with dirty feet, the next day clean just your feet, and the next day take a bath and see the effects yourself. You will understand the difference. It is an Indian custom to wash the mouth, hands, legs, and face after meals. If you try it, you will discover the benefit. You will find that this practice promotes digestion and assimilation, and seems to have a wonderful effect on the nerves. This is because water contains prana, and you imbibe the prana from the water. You will notice that you feel refreshed after contact with water.
So much for external purity. Let us turn to internal purity. Firstly, the body must be pure. The practice of asanas helps to remove both impurities from the gross body and blockages to the free flow of prana. Then the mind must be pure. No evil thoughts should arise in the mind. Your motives and your feeling must be pure.
So, cleanliness is not only washing hands, dishes, etc., and keeping your surroundings clean, but it embraces and encompasses the whole personality. Body, mind, heart, and soul should be clean.
Santosa
The quality of contentment is so universally acclaimed as the key to peace of mind, that it is unnecessary to labour the point. Absence of contentment is an indication of the presence of a thick veil of ignorance. Contentment is not a counsel of despair, the fruit of laziness, or the action of the idle and lazy rich.
That sort of contentment is useless. No mechanical contentment is of any use - no mechanical anything is of any use.
So, contentment is not simple. It is lack of desire, which is the root of all our sufferings, and the cause of our discontent. In order to practise contentment, one has to be aware of the arising of discontent all the time. Who but a selfish man will be tormented by discontent? Discontent is the seed for the trees of covetousness, theft, harmfulness, and falsehood - all of which were dealt with in yama. Hence, contentment is a corollary to the practice of the five yama already dealt with.
Contentment can arise in your heart only if you have faith in God. Contentment with one's lot has been denounced by materialists and grossly misunderstood by spiritual aspirants, too. The materialist's error lies in the supposition that it is ambition that brings success and prosperity. Far from it. It is work that brings success and prosperity. Ambition often acts as a distracting influence. Minus ambition, work performed as one's duty might bring greater success. Whereas ambition pulls you out and dissipates your energies, contentment turns you within and preserves your energies. Thus, contentment is the secret of real achievement too. The spiritual aspirant's error is that he extends this contentment to the performance of his duties, whereas it applies only to his possessions. To be contented with what one has is yoga. To be contented with what one does is laziness.
In the Yoga Vasistha it is said that contentment is one of the four gatekeepers to enlightenment. Contentment, therefore, is not a negative attitude of shirking one's duty, but the positive one of aspiring for liberation from the shackles of ignorance. It leads to peace of mind and the greatest achievement possible.
The Tao-Te-King says: There is no greater crime than seeking what men desire. There is no greater misery than having no content. There is no greater calamity than indulging in greed. Therefore, the contentment of knowing content will ever be contented.
Tapas
Tapas means a very simple life, austerity, asceticism, self-purification, penance, and penitence. It also means burning - an internal psychic or psychological burning. Any practice or life-style that results in the burning of the psychological impurities - samskaras, is tapas. It may also mean cultivating greater and greater self-awareness.
For instance, if you are insulted, you enquire into the nature of this inner hurt and your reaction to it, instead of retaliating. Swami Sivananda said, 'Bear insult, bear injury, this is the highest sadhana,' - which means that, while you are being insulted, you are observing yourself.
One has to see the relevance of this teaching in one's own life. That is, if you are angry for instance, you are boiling inside and a tremendous heat is generated within. Where is this anger and what is it? You should neither suppress it nor express it, but observe it. Is it merely to earn a word of praise from others that you suffer all this self-torture, or are you hoping that, by doing this battle within yourself, you are going to heaven? Neither of these. But the truth concerning this anger must be directly seen. What does that imply? For a few minutes or half an hour you are sitting and watching this tremendous tornado within yourself. You are meditating, using the anger itself. The whole attention is focussed on this inner boiling. You observe this tremendous disturbance within you, and the thought arises, 'This is anger'.
Even then the battle is not over. You are still standing aside looking down on yourself as if it is not you. This anger is within you; the you is within the anger. What is the relationship between you and this anger? How is it that you are able to observe it, though it is within you and you are within it? Anger is merely a word you picked up from somebody. Suddenly the self that was observing this disappears. With that, the anger is gone, because there is no one to call it anger. There is no self in relation to which it can be described as anger. Then you are doing real tapas. It does not matter what emotion - whether it is called anger, fear, anxiety, passion, or any other name, it will still yield its fragrance - which is self-knowledge. If you can deal with it once, you have dealt with it for a lifetime.
So, if one is intelligent, one can use pleasure, pain, honour, dishonour, praise, or censure as the road to samadhi.
Svadhyaya
While practising some kind of enquiry or mental tapas, the masters say it is essential that there should be an intelligent understanding of the truth. Therefore they recommend svadhydya - study of scriptures and self-study. We need some guidance, otherwise it is possible that we undergo life's experiences and think we are learning from life, but we are getting the wrong message.
It is here that we realise the great importance of both the scriptures and the teacher, which together form what I would call the railroad. They will not take us to the goal, and what is even more important, they will not push us on it. If we have the energy and the application, they provide a sense of direction. The scriptures keep us on the track and prevent us from reading false lessons from our life's experiences.
There are three different aspects of svadhyaya:
(1). The orthodox meaning or definition of svadhyava is to study a chapter from a scripture every day. It can be done in a routine way, till the spirit of enquiry is awakened. Every day, there must be some inspiring scriptural ideas, otherwise the mind thinks of something else and it becomes that. For instance, if you allow the mind to think of wars or riots, the whole of you has become conflict. You will be the start of the next conflict. When you read such things, you are depressed and worried. Then you pick up the Yoga Vasistha or the Bhagavad Gita and read: 'Everybody has to die someday'. That thought changes your attitude and outlook on life. So, some kind of scriptural study seems to be vital to our daily life.
If you are deeply interested in all this, it is better to follow it up with a brief period of contemplation, because that piece that is studied has some relevance to your life. Can you recapture that relevance in contemplation?
(2). Another orthodox interpretation is the repetition of a mantra - or japa, which must also be part of your daily activity. While you go on repeating the mantra, inevitably your consciousness takes on a certain subtle form. If you go on repeating this mantra, hoping that thereby you are creating within yourself a certain form, how is this self-study? If you enquire into the nature, the composition, the why and the what of the sound picture that is being put up within you, then it becomes svadhyaya, otherwise it is mechanical repetition. Swami Sivananda used to say, 'If you repeat a mantra or do yoga postures, pranayama or what you call meditation mechanically and without understanding the spirit, then it has a negative value.'
(3). Svadhyaya may also mean meditation, which must also form part of your daily activity. When you meditate within yourself - using either a mantra, an image or a thought, an abstract form or formlessness - this is svadhyaya.
If these three are there, they soften - if not completely demolish - the troubles that we are subjected to in this world. If it is used in the right spirit, perhaps it may redeem us from such troubles.
Isvara Pranidhana
What is Isvara? Isvara is also abbreviated into Isa - Is. What is, is God. Whatever is, is God - not what appears to be, or is liable to change, because what is changing cannot be considered 'is'. If you can arrive at that, that is God.
Let us take space, for instance. You cannot destroy space, you cannot cut it, burn it or cancel it. There is nothing as unchanging and as permanent as space, So, space can be regarded as God. Therefore, that which 'is', has to be unlimited, infinite, permanent. What 'is', and what is everywhere, at all times, is God. That is Isvara.
If this God is at all times everywhere, what is to be surrendered, and by whom? A glass of water is an object, so you can pick it up and give it to me. But what will you give to God? It is ignorance that is surrendered to God. What is this ignorance made of, and what sustains it? 'I' is the one that is ignorant of God's omnipresence, who by constantly doing this and doing that, denies the omnipresence of God. So, what is the thing to be surrendered? That ignorance, nothing else. And who is the one that surrenders? The one that is born of that ignorance, who perpetrates that ignorance, who clings to and sustains that ignorance by constantly thinking that 'I am' and 'you are', etc.
It is possible for 'one in a million' to understand the omnipresence of God, and that the ignorant ego is itself the sole obstacle. If you are not in that category, then surrender to your picture or statue of God, to your father, mother, or wife, as long as that surrender is total, and the mind does not even ask questions. If your surrender is real, then that statue - or to whomever you surrender is as good as anything in the world, because the omnipresence of God fills that, whatever it is.
It is also possible to surrender to a living guru and do exactly the same thing. But here there may be the worry, 'What if he is a fake, and misleads me?' 'Fake' is all right, 'misleads' is also all right, but misleads 'me' is the problem. If you want to preserve that 'me', then there is no surrender. If there is surrender, there is no meaning at all to the rest of that sentence.
When there is surrender - to whomever it may be directed, you are free. That intelligence is able from then on to take complete and total care of whatever happens, and to ensure that this 'me' does not come in again.
Surrender to God should not make God look like some kind of armed policeman. That is not what is meant by surrender. Pranidhana means not passive, but dynamic surrender. In such surrender, the 'I' does not say, 'Alright, I have surrendered myself to God, let Him look after me and mine.'
Let us go back to the analogy of the ocean. That little ounce of sea-water is one with the ocean, and the totality of the ocean determines what it shall do. It may be deep in the ocean or on the crest of a wave, it may be dashed against a rock. It seems painful only if you still want to feel 'I am independent of the totality, and the totality must answer my prayers' - which means there is no surrender.
When Patanjali suggested that self-knowledge - the total elimination of self- ignorance can be had by surrender to God, it was not as a technique. Total surrender - the surrender being only of ignorance - does not form a technique, but is one of the vital disciplines. You cannot attain self-knowledge if there is not this constant and dynamic self-surrender to the divine - the divine being knowledge. The ignorantly assumed existence of a self must constantly be offered in sacrifice - as it were - to the omnipresence.
Knowledge - which is the self - is veiled by an assumption of the 'me' as an independent entity. When the light of knowledge shines, that is seen to be non- existent. The self as energy flows down, the self as knowledge flows up to meet the descending grace in the heart and completely and totally surrenders - in the sense of inwardly merges - so that there is no longer a will called 'my' will. There is no longer a will called 'God's will' or 'your will' - mark this very carefully. The expressions 'Thy will be done' and 'God's will be done' are used only because there is still someone to say those words, to think those formulas; but in reality even that is not there. If there is no 'my will', there is no 'your will' also.
Only if that is understood in its right spirit can we appreciate it. That is why, in some very great saints, there occasionally appeared to be a show of vanity. In their case at that point, there was nothing called 'my will' or 'God's will'. There was no division. So, if that person used the word 'I', it is God speaking through that mouth. That is just from our point of view - it does not exist in his point of view.
It is not possible to describe that state. That is lsvara pranidhana - where the ego does not say, 'I will' or 'I will not'. When these two are dropped, you realise that action flows without thought or ego interference. There is dynamic surrender, which merely implies that this inner intelligence is alive to ensure that there is no current private motivation. Let the action flow as the blood flows in your veins, without any motivation whatsoever.
If there is lsvara pranidhdna one is in constant samadhi. Samadhi can be interpreted from one point of view to mean an even keel, a completely balanced state of mind, which is also possible if one is able to apply this to one's daily life. That is, in any tricky situation, you can immediately reaffirm this surrender. The very fact that you have to reaffirm the surrender means that the ego has come up again. Then you realise that the trickiness of the tricky situation is also brought about because of the ego. So, to bring about balance, necessarily implies the recognition that the balance was disturbed, because the 'me' suddenly raised its head.
Surrender to God cannot be explained. But, if you are careful, you may glimpse it. When your consciousness expands, and in the light of this consciousness you realise 'this is God, that is God; what is regarded as good is God, what is regarded as not so good is God; what is truth is God, what is regarded as untruth is God; what is holy is God, what is regarded as unholy is God', then something is dissolving within you. That is the ego - which was built up by your own ideas, education, culture, and tradition. All these things which have been gathered together to form your ego - prejudices, self-estimation, and all your ideas about good and evil - are gradually dissolving.
2, 33 : vitarka badhane pratipaksa bhavanam
When distracted by wayward or pervert rationalization, suitable counter-measures should be adopted to keep away or remove such obstacles, especially by the contemplation of the other point of view.
Pratipaksa means opposite. Bhavana is contemplation. Contemplation of the opposite has been given to us as a method which will help us in our practice of control of the mind. In the beginning, this is possible only when you sit down for meditation practice. When you sit down, a thought occurs in your mind, a thought which is the revival of the memory of some pleasure. When you want to deal with this, you set up its own opposite. For instance, you think of some cake and you wish you had some now. Then you set up in front of it a counter-thought which says if you eat cake you will have stomach trouble, or your teeth will go bad - contemplation of the opposite. Instead of focussing your attention on your desire for this cake, you focus it on the evils of eating cake. If you want to smoke, set up as a counter-thought the evils of smoking. Thereafter, instead of holding the need for a cigarette in your mind, you hold the thought of lung cancer in your mind. These two thoughts jump around in your mind. Carefully watch and see how one overcomes the other. If you are keenly contemplating the counter- thought, then you will know how the counter-thought is able to swallow the desire.
In this manner, you can develop what one normally calls 'will power'. But enlightenment does not come from will power. If you are not cautious and vigilant, you can get into will power, thought reading, telepathy and all these things, and lose the ultimate goal of enlightenment. But if you are watching the clash of the desire and the counter-thought, you can gain an insight into how to deal with these thoughts, cravings, and passions. Once you have the master key to deal with this, eventually you can overcome all thought, and reach enlightenment.
Pratipaksa bhavana can also be used in ordinary day to day situations, to prevent the mind from being agitated and moving from its centre. For instance, if distracting, destructive, distressing thoughts arise in your mind, confront them with their opposite. If you think ill of some person because he has cheated you, let you down or harmed you in anyway, think of his good qualities. If the mind suggests all the evil that he has done, confront that thought with all the good things that he has done.
I saw this in Swami Sivananda. Once a man, who was our postmaster, cashier and treasurer, ran away, taking the last cent that was in the ashram. After that, we were drowned in debt. It led to police investigation, because some government money had been taken. For a few days, postal and police inspectors came into the ashram asking questions. When one of these officers came to see Swami Sivananda, He always said, 'Oh, he was a good man. He did a lot of good work.
He produced these few books,' - and He would keep these books ready at hand for those few days.
A similar statement is attributed to Rama. His stepmother was responsible for banishing him to the forest. One of Rama's brothers also went with him. During their first night in the forest, where they had to endure hard living conditions, the brother said, 'But for this woman you would be lying in the palace.' Rama turned to him and said, 'Do you not have something else to talk about?'
So, you have the ability, whenever there is a destructive or distressing thought in your mind, to confront it with its opposite. If someone is rude to you, and you are seeing him for the first time so that you do not know of any good things he may have done, you can think, 'He is rude, but that other person is very good to me.' You have done no harm to the first man, and yet he is rude to you. You have done no good to the other man, and yet he is kind to you. I am sure all of us have had such experiences. Some one bullies you or insults you, and you walk a hundred paces more and someone is kind or complimentary to you. So, as soon as the idea that So-and-so is nasty to you arises, immediately confront it with the thought that someone else is very pleasant.
***
Sutras are aphoristic and therefore enigmatic. They are not logically and grammatically completed sentences, but they must ignite a depth of understanding within us. Vitarka badhane - in the case of disturbance caused by destructive doubt.
What does it mean? Who disturbs? Who creates these doubts? That is not mentioned. Maybe yourself, maybe someone else. It may not be quite fair to say that the yogi, sincerely and seriously observing life, and becoming aware of this virtue arising, might himself be subjected to destructive doubt. But it is possible in the initial stages - when you are not well-established in either of these - that there is doubt arising within you. It can arise internally, within yourself; or externally, where someone might create a doubt in you either in person or through writings, talks and so on. It is very important to remember this.
If you, a sincere and serious student of yoga, are so vulnerable that you can be wafted away from the state of alertness or vigilance that you have so wisely aroused in yourself, then the first condition has not been fulfilled. Your yoga is not intelligent, your virtue is not built on intelligence. See II.28. If it was, it should have been able to sustain itself. As long as that light is burning, there can be no darkness in this room.
Instead of fighting with this external doubt, see that either something has gone wrong, or you imagined that the inner intelligence had been awakened, but in fact it had not. It was merely a presumption, an assumption, a thought, a notion within your own mind.
In a moment of lack of vigilance, it is possible for a doubt to arise. I am labouring this because, if you are subject to this kind of destructive doubt, how do you expect to contemplate the opposite? If you have been non-aggressive and loving for years and years, and suddenly something happens and you are filled with aggression, I do not know if it is possible for you to bring up a counter-suggestion within yourself and stop this aggression. So, once what appeared to be deep- seated faith is shaken by a devastating doubt, what is there in which you can prop up acounter suggestion?
I feel that it is not in the seeker's own heart that the doubt arises. If someone who does not understand you, comes and uses twisted, vicious argument, you become assailed by it. In such a situation, what is your chief anchor? How do you contemplate the opposite so that his attacks become futile? Faced with this kind of challenge, the sincere and earnest student of yoga contemplates duhkha 'jnana 'nanta phala - 2.34.
2, 34 : vitarka himsadayah krta karita numodita lobha krodha moha purvaka mrdu madhya dhimatra dunkha jnana nanta phala iti pratipaksa bhavanam
Wayward or pervert reasoning is often indulged in to nationalize violence etc., whether such violence etc., are direct personal actions, or indirectly caused, or merely witnessed or acquiesced in. These can be mild, moderate or grave transgressions. However, they have greed, hate and stupidity as their antecedents, and they yield the bitter fruits of endless sorrow, and ever-deepening darkness of ignorance - such contemplation is the effective counter-measure. Or, hence the need for suitable counter-measure.
The path of violence, aggression, untruth, and falsehood, will inevitably lead to endless unhappiness and endless ignorance - duhkha 'jnana 'nanta. That ignorance itself becomes the manifestation of your own inner intelligence.
Only if that inner intelligence has been awakened properly and sustained in you, is it possible for you, when challenged in this manner, to produce the pratipaksa bhavanam at once - naturally, and almost effortlessly. That seems to be the wonderful secret in those two sutras, 'Whenever there is an obstacle or obstruction, this inner intelligence at once springs into activity and dispels it.'
When the inner intelligence has made the decision, it sees very clearly. But either the revival of past samskaras, memories, tendencies, or past habit patterns, or the suggestion of someone else, questions the decision of this inner light, and suggests that there may be a reason for doubt. Then the light shining upon that doubt itself instantly dispels it.
22, 35 : ahimsa pratisthayam tat samnidhau vaira tyagah
When there is natural firmness in non-violence, all hostility comes to an end in its very presence. Conflict ceases in such a mind.
The fruit of ahimsa is that beings give up their enmity in the very presence of the man who is established in ahimsa. Primarily, since he offers no violent resistance to any being, all opposition fails when directed towards him. As the Indian proverb goes: 'You cannot clap with one hand.' He serves as a temperamental and emotional 'airconditioner', and anyone who comes within the circle of his influence immediately 'cools down'. By his example, he inspires people to give up enmity. When they see that enmity is a degrading quality, and that love ennobles, they too grow in love.
Wild animals who are natural enemies also become peaceful in his presence. As is said in the Bible: 'The lion will lay down with the lamb.'
2, 36 : satya pratisthayam kriya phala srayatvam
Then there is firm grounding in the perception of what is, or of truth, it is seen that an action and reaction, seed and its fruits, or cause and result, are related to each other; and the clear vision of intelligence becomes directly aware of this relationship. Or, one's words are fruitful.
The fruit of satya - being established in truth is said to be 'bestowal of fruits of actions', or 'the effectiveness of his words and actions is immediately to be seen'. In other words, there is tremendous power in his thoughts, words, and deeds, so that they do not need time to bring them to fruition in a later life.
A commonplace example of this we see in our daily life. If a shopkeeper is truthful, honest, and not greedy, if he enjoys a reputation for being neither an exploiter nor a black-marketeer, people will flock to him, and his business will prosper. Hence, 'honesty is the best policy', though truth leads us much further than a business proposition.
Peace follows truth, because peace and truth are synonyms. One who is established in truth is at peace. He has a clear conscience. This is what few people in the world realise. To err is human. But the man who does not go against the voice of truth or his conscience, at least has peace within him to maintain him through all his trials and tribulations. This conscience is our only true friend - and when flouted, our only real enemy. Hence, 'unto thine own self be true'. If you make a mistake, the Lord, speaking through your purified conscience, will lead you out of that error.
2, 37 : asteya pratisthayam sarva ratno pasthanam
When the intelligence firmly rejects the desire to hoard, and when thus there is natural firmness in non-hoarding, even precious gems stand in front of the yogi, unable to deflect him.
When established in non-holding all the 'precious gems stand in front'. This has been interpreted in various ways. For instance, some have taken it to mean that, if you are perfectly pure, you do not steal or cheat, all the wealth of the world will flow towards you. Some have even taken it to mean that, in order to test your total absence of greed, the gods will place precious stones wherever you walk.
This interpretation sounds fantastic, but it may be far-fetched. One beautiful saying of Walt Whitman seems to apply: 'A man is as rich as the things he does not possess.'
You do not say 'I want' in connection with that which you have already. So, one who does not use these two words, obviously has everything. Since the yogi whose inner intelligence is awake does not use these two words at all, it is assumed that the entire wealth of the world is his. That is a very beautiful poetic way of describing asteya. In short, it is a synthesis of contentment, simplicity, and charity.
2, 38 : brahmacarya pratisthayam virya labhah
No effort is involved in living or acting in itself - effort implies disorderly movement of energy in several directions as lust, anger, greed, etc. Hence, when the whole being moves effortlessly in the cosmic homogeneous essence, and thus there is movement of energy in a single direction, which is really non-movement, there is great conservation of energy. It is not dissipated in diverse sensual and psychic activities. The worst dissipation of energy is sexuality. Hence the yogi is wedded to chastity in thought, word and deed, which he care fully preserves through the practice of yoga postures, pranayama, right diet, contemplation, holy company, and prayer. Effortless chastity promotes energy.
If you are a celibate brahmacari, you will have abundant energy. Brahmacarya does not only mean sexual continence. It means the mind dwells constantly on a different plane altogether. It is then 'that we stop the leakage of energy not only through sexual fulfilment, but through other things'. For instance, both talking and eating cause a tremendous loss of energy. When one's whole being moves in truth, in the spiritual centre, then the energy that normally is dissipated in these channels becomes available for this enquiry.
When the attention is wholly and totally directed towards enlightenment, continence happens.
2, 39 : aparigrahasthairye janma kathanta sambhodah
When the inner light of intelligence illumines the state of mind that has firmly rejected all greed and there is contentment with what life brings unsolicited, there arises knowledge of the mysteries of life and its why and how.
When you are firmly established in this non-greed - or, as we have 'interpreted it, when you work for a living, there is intimate understanding of the how and the why of life itself.
How did this life come into being? How did life arise in the first place? You did not ask to be born here, but you have been given birth to. That which gave birth to you knows how long you should live this life, what life is going to be like, what you are supposed to get, and what you are supposed not to get. All that is already known.
If you want to, you can bring in your karma and reincarnation theory here: 'As you sow, so shall you reap.' I have changed the formula to, 'As you sow, so shall it grow.' I do not know if you have ever considered this. You sow one seed, just in fun, and out of that one seed the tree grows and yields abundant fruits, with very little effort on your part. If that is not going to teach us how to live, then nothing else will.So, to the simple yogi who has some fruit trees around his ashram, the message is quite clear. In his heart, there is a prayer: 'May I also be like you, oh tree! Taking little and giving a lot,' knowing that that power which is able to produce this miracle right in front of his eyes is there for all time. That which generates this tree, multiplying the seed a million fold, is capable of sustaining it as long as it has to be sustained. The vision that sees that does not crave, has no greed in it, and does not accept or look forward to receiving gifts.
2, 40 : saucat sav nga jugupsa parair asamsargah
The habit of cleanliness, if it is not mechanical and ritualistic but intelligent with an understanding of the nature of decaying physical organism, reveals the impure nature of the physical body: and, there arises disgust for the body and a disinclination for contact with those of others.
From this practice of cleanliness, disgust for one's own body and that of others' arises. Whereas all the other yamas and niyamas that we have discussed so far have only one Sutra following, sauca has two, suggesting its importance.
You go on washing this body and it continues to be dirty. Dirt is gathered not only from outside, but it pours from inside. Incidentally, it may mean that the yogi keeps this body clean, not in order to make it appear beautiful, but, since it seems to exude all this filth, only to keep it clean. So, emphasis is on keeping it clean, not cosmetic cleanliness. When it is kept clean, the body teaches you how to avoid polluting it. You are disgusted with keeping it clean. So, why will you put into it that which will make it filthier?
The yogi is also not attracted to others. He is not worshipping the body, as it were, of others, because that body is also made of the same substance, however beautiful, holy, handsome, and charming it may look. This outlook arises from the intelligent practice of cleanliness.
2, 41 : sattva suddhi saumanasyai kagrye ndriya jaya tma darsana yogyatvani ca
And, such a habit of cleanliness also leads to the purification of the whole substance, peace and basic goodness of mind, one-pointedness, mastery over the senses, as also the ability - and the qualification - to attain self-knowledge.
Here, sattva does not mean the quality called sattva, but that the entire substance of which you are made - the body, mind, and senses, etc. - becomes pure. Therefore, sauca obviously does not mean wearing a clean dress or cleaning the skin only, but cleaning the body within, as also the mind and the senses and so on. In Hatha Yoga practice, there are quite a number of cleaning exercises called sat kriya, which involve cleaning all parts of your physical organism. In Raja Yoga, when one keeps on practising cleanliness, it extends to your emotions, thoughts, everything.
Saumanasyai - the mind becomes goodness, goodness becomes the mind. Ekagrye - it becomes one-pointed. A clean heart is undistracted by distractions. When the yogi is not attracted by objects of pleasure, there will be no distraction of his attention.
Indriya jaya - when the body and the mind are cleansed of all impurities, the senses function in a controlled, disciplined manner, not in a disorderly way. If the senses are freed of toxins and impurities, they function efficiently and in a healthy manner. If the mind and heart have also been purified, and all attraction and repulsion in the world have been abandoned, then the senses function in an orderly way.
Atma darsana - just this simple thing called cleanliness leads to the ability to behold the Self. That again suggests that this cleanliness is not merely cleanliness of the external body or environment, though all these are essential, but it goes right through to your very self, your very soul.
2, 42 : samtosad anuttama sukha labhah
From contentment there flows the most excellent happiness and delight.
We do not know why people run after material objects and accumulate them. Even a multi-millionaire who has a huge mansion sleeps only in one bed. He does not eat gold and drink silver, he also has to eat food and drink water. The more possessions you have, the more trouble you have in keeping them secure and in good order. If you keep this idea in mind, 'The less I have, the less worried I will be,' you will be happy. This contentment comes only if you have faith in God.
Contentment leads to peace of mind and also the greatest achievement possible. Every nation, race, religion and language has a proverb which is in essence: 'A contented mind is a continuous feast'. Out of contentment, supreme happiness arises. When you are contented, there is supreme happiness.
2, 43 : kaye ndriya siddhir asuddhi ksayat tapasah
The inner psychic fire destroys all impurities of the heart and mind, and brings about the health, sanity, wholeness or perfection of the physical and vital being - the inner senses.
To deaden yourself completely is easy, to let the senses run riot is easy, but to perfect the senses, mind and body, and yet keep them pure, means tremendous intelligence. This is tapas.
Kaye is usually translated as the body. It may also extend, or intend, to cover subtler bodies also. lndriya means the senses. Since tapas is purifying, the senses, physical body, psychological body, and causal body, are purified, and they become perfect - kaye indriya siddhir. This is the total opposite of what we often come across in this world - most people who do tapas are always morose and dull, shutting themselves off from the world as ascetics, and living in their own world, as it were.
Fasting cleans and purifies your body. But then the pure food that you take is already polluted in some way or other, and somehow pollution enters the body. The physical body cannot be kept completely pure, it has its own course which it will inevitably follow, no matter who you are. Therefore, tapas essentially refers to the inner body - the senses and the mind, which are polluted in various ways. When the inner intelligence shines brightly, it clears this pollution from moment to moment.
When something is purified, there is transparency, and when there is transparency, there is clear vision. The light passes through that transparency without any obstruction or distortion, and there is self-realisation, self- knowledge.
Patanjali promises that we shall develop occult powers by practising tapas. Fire bums and purifies. People who melt gold know that when gold is melted in fire it becomes pure. In the same way, if you burn the senses and the mind in the fire of tapas, they will become purer, and therefore they will have wonderful powers. In a lighter vein, in order to enable you to understand, let me explain. With the nose you can smell. If the nose is clean, you smell well. If you have a cold and your nose is full of mucous, you cannot smell even what is near you. In the same way, if you purify the senses by tapas, you will develop occult powers.
2, 44 : svadhyayad ista devata samprayogah
By study - not necessarily nor exclusively - of scriptures, and of oneself, the consciousness is united with the desired or loved divinity. This divinity may well be a 'luminous' internal transmutation-experience or its externalized psychic manifestation, or 'an enlightened being'.
By the practise of svadhyaya or self-study, you may have a vision - maybe inward or outward, internal or external - of your own beloved divinity or ista devata, the form or the luminous thing that you love most. It does not mean God-realisation, but you will see God in the form in which you are worshipping Him. For instance, if you are regular in your Bible study, and you regularly take the Name of Lord Jesus, you will get a vision of Him. If you sincerely study the Bhagavad Gita, you will have a vision of Lord Krishna. God-realisation or Self-realisation is far away, but even having such a vision is not a small achievement.
Your ista devata may have a physical shape and may appear to you in various guises. You realise your unity, your awareness with that luminous being. It is not as though this beloved divinity is up there in heaven and it comes down here and you become one with it. How do two entities become one? It is absurd! One has first to realise one's non-entity.
2, 45 : samadhi siddhir isvara pranidhanat
Perfection in self-awareness instantly follows total, dynamic and intelligent surrender of the individual ego-sense - in the sense of the realization of its unreal nature - or the merging of it in the indwelling omnipresence - in the sense of the direct realization of the falsity of the 'me', the ego-sense, and therefore the sole reality of the indwelling omnipresence.
This Sutra is a beautiful safeguard of the spirit. If that surrender does not happen, then the words 'God's Grace, God's Will, surrender to God, are all absolutely meaningless. Then the 'I', the ego, that is supposed to be surrendered to God, in fact uses these as a whip on the back of God: 'God, Thy Will be done. Take care of us and do exactly what I tell you to do. By your Grace, everything is possible. I will not do anything, but everything is supposed to be done. Things must happen the way I want them to happen. I determine what is right and what is not right, what should happen and what should not happen.'
When there is isvara pranidhana - surrender to God, you are in constant, uninterrupted samadhi - total oneness, total self-realisation. Here again is the famous example given in Indian philosophical systems: This surrender is like the attempt of a doll made of salt jumping into the sea in order to fathom the ocean. The doll becomes one with the ocean. What the ocean decides, happens to that salt doll. It has become one with the ocean - samadhi. 'The total intelligence shines as the sole substance or reality.' Chapter III.3. The 'I' does not exist at all, only the ocean exists. Naturally, what the ocean determines is what happens.
2, 46 : sthira sukham asanam
The posture of the body during the practice of contemplation and at other times, as also the posture of the mind - or attitude to life - should be firm and pleasant.
The word meaning of asana is posture. This Sutra defines posture as sthira - it must be firm, and sukham - it must be comfortable. So, whether it is physical, psychological, or emotional, there must be physical, psychological and emotional firmness, and the posture must be pleasant and steady. It must not involve confusion, conflict, or struggle. When the posture is steady, physically and psychologically, and when you are not struggling, meditation becomes easy.
Why is sthira sukham asanam prescribed? Because Patanjali had mentioned in another Sutra, 'Unsteadiness of the body or its limbs is an indication of the unsteadiness of the mind.' So, if you bring about steadiness of the body there are greater chances of your being able to be aware of the movement of energy in the mind.
Patanjali gives us three hints:
(1). There should be mild, steady practice. You should not give up or overdo the practice. This is important in the case of not only asana and pranayama, but also of meditation - in fact of everything.
Sometimes in our scriptures we are told that we should have burning aspiration or desire for God. The word 'burning' was used by a 'rsi' who was living in the forest. He had only seen the burning of a fire which burns steadily, without noise, always going up. Steady, calm, and always going up is 'burning aspiration for God'. But take the case of the modern Primus stove. It burns with great sound and fury, but in a moment it goes out and is finished. Modern burning is like that - all sound and fury, and then the fire goes out. Some modern yogis do all sorts of things for a while and then give up. That shows that the motive itself was wrong.
If you are sincere, your yoga practices will be steady and mild. If you are able to sit for a few minutes now, gradually increase it. If you suddenly increase the time, something may happen to your knees and then you will have to leave the practice for some time.
(2). The next aid is meditation, which itself will give steadiness of posture. One helps the other. If you are able to sit steadily, you will get meditation. If your mind is concentrated, you will be able to sit steadily.
(3). In India, they have a belief that if you meditate on a tortoise, a mountain, or some other firm object, and pray, 'Please God, let me sit like that,' this will help you to have a firm posture. Yoga postures are not just physical postures. The mind must be connected, because it is the mind that gives strength. Power is always there, and it is the mind that makes the power available.
Once you have mastered this meditation posture, the mind or the attention is flowing in one direction, there is tremendous energy and your attention is not easily distracted and diverted. You need a firm posture in order that you may be able to look within, to directly observe the arising of the ego-sense, to understand who the see-er or the experiencer is. You are caught in the illusion of the existence of an experiencer. You must come face to face with this thing which you have regarded as an experiencer, so that in the light of that observation the experiencer must disappear.
It is usual to say that the Raja Yoga asana is different from the Hatha Yoga asana. The divided mind always thinks of differences, but it is possible to see that they may not be different. According to standard commentators, asana is restricted to a few postures which are considered to be meditative postures, where the body is in a state of immobility without discomfort. In other words, it does not refer to the other postures like the sarvangasana - shoulder-stand, sirsasana - head- stand, etc. But I have a feeling that this Sutra covers even those postures.
Therefore it is essential while you practice those other yoga postures to hold them steady for some time, not do them as gymnastics or exercises. First it becomes uncomfortable, because the muscles that were lying idle for so long have suddenly been put to work.
Every asana is an unusual posture. When you put the body in an unusual posture, there is obviously some discomfort to begin with, and the balance is disturbed. But if you observe what goes on, at that point there is tremendous internal activity, the balance is restored, and the discomfort that you felt in the beginning is also gone. So, in a few moments, it becomes more and more pleasant and steady. Here you are really discovering that there is an intelligence beyond the ego, because the ego itself cannot bring about this restoration of balance. If you do a difficult balancing posture you will see that your whole body is alert and very alive. Of course, if you do it mechanically or with violence, you do not notice all this.
Soon you are able to maintain that posture for a long time. While doing so, you will discover another fantastic truth. First, you can never hurt yourself. It takes an extraordinary idiot to hurt himself. And second, the powers of this inner intelligence are indescribably beautiful. As you assume any posture, the balance is lost and some discomfort is produced. But then this inner intelligence springs into activity, restoring the balance and restoring comfort. From second to second, this intelligence works, calculating faster than all your computers put together, readjusting and realigning. The intelligence functions as one whole unit, an indivisible unit. The yogi sees this in his asana practice.
The inner purpose of the asana is manifold. One purpose may be to discover the intelligence beyond the me. It also promotes tranquillity and peace of mind, and what is called physical and mental health. When the body is in a healthy condition, the mind is also healthy, and you can serve humanity much better. At least you are not a nuisance to anyone. Some yogis in India say that anyone who does asanas in order to gain health is selfish. It is good to remember that to be healthy is already a great service to humanity. The sick man needs the attention of a half a dozen people. Thus you are doing a great service by sparing people that trouble.
Of course the yogi values health only to the extent of the body 'not disturbing the mind' in its search for truth, so that, at one stage, it is possible that the mind is steady, regardless of the state of the body. At that point, the yogi may not be at all interested in keeping good health. In order to understand that, you must have seen someone like Swami Sivananda. His body was almost the house of several illnesses, but still He was radiant. It is not possible for us to understand how a man can be radiant, peaceful and tranquil in spite of the fact that his body is sick, because in our case the body and mind are closely tied to each other.
Another great yogi said that if you are able to sit steadily for an hour or so, the mind will become steady; you may not even have to work on the mind. Unnecessary moving of the limbs is also an indication of the restlessness of the mind. When you are sitting steadily in a certain posture, you begin to feel restlessness entering the limbs, and it feels uncomfortable. The Zen masters say:
'Become aware of this restlessness; it is this restlessness that affects the body, mind and the spirit. Do not express it or suppress it.' You cannot suppress it; it is there, crying out! Keep it there and observe it. Of course, if that becomes a distraction, it is useless.
So, yoga is not simple do's and don't's. You have to use your common sense and intelligence all the time.
Asana can also mean seat or mat. So, when people talk of padmasana, padma means lotus; it may mean sitting in a lotus posture or sitting on a lotus! Let us look at it from a different angle of vision. Take, for instance, asana as posture. Padmasana is the posture of a lotus, not just the lotus posture. A lotus can stay in water without being spoiled by it. This is a fairly common expression in yoga literature: 'A yogi lives in the world just as a lotus lives in water, totally untouched, untainted, unaffected by it.'
So, lotus posture may mean what has traditionally come to be regarded as the lotus posture, or the posture of the lotus standing in water. As you go on contemplating this, you get greater and greater insight. The lotus springs out of mud. Yet it is the most glorious of flowers; which may mean: do not go to a psychoanalyst, do not worry about where you started and what happened in your childhood or previous incarnation. All that may be mud. You are a lotus! Do not go on regretting what happened some time ago, and blaming others for what happened. Realise what you are now - a lotus. That can also be lotus posture.
So, asana can mean mental posture, psychological posture, and emotional posture. One must bear all these in mind and not merely get hung up on some definition or description, and feel that that is all there is to it. It is also possible to see in it a vital lesson in your life - that: unless your mind, emotions, and your attitude to life are steady, well rooted and also comfortable, your life is not going to be smooth. In the same way, if psychologically and emotionally your posture in this life is both firm and pleasant, then life goes on smoothly.
If we accept that yoga is to be practised throughout our daily lives, then this posture may even refer to the posture we take in regard to life. Your attitude to your life must be steady and comfortable. An uncomfortable discipline is not likely to last, because it creates an internal tension or rebellion. And yet a certain discipline is needed. That discipline must be flavoured with common sense, only then is itlikely to last.
So, posture may mean the yoga posture in which you sit for meditation and also the postures you assume in your life, in your relationships with people. If there is no disruption or violent conflict in our relationship, it can last for a long time. Once a relationship is broken, it is very difficult to mend it. Even if it is fixed, it is still patch work. The least bit of little heat somewhere else is going to melt it.
You must find firm ground. If firm ground is not there, every little wind is going to blow you one way or the other. Once you have struck root, and there is firmness, then you can grow as tall as you like, as wide as you like, because you will not be uprooted. All this must be accompanied by comfort and an inner joy, otherwise the mind is going to rebel against everything you do. This is true of both the yoga postures and the posture called life. If you ever have had the misfortune to twist a muscle during a yoga posture, for a long time the body will refuse to attempt it again, because it is frightened. In life too, if you get into a messy situation in personal relationships or in whatever you do, and you invite discomfort, pain and suffering, the mind wants to avoid it. It does not want to get involved in that.
Only the person who is at peace within himself and who tastes and enjoys that peace, to whom peace is beautiful and blissful, will not want to be drawn into any conflict whatsoever. Such a person is peace. He radiates peace and joy. It is not by struggling that one can establish peace or happiness, but by relaxing and letting the whole thing go. Being rooted in peace, and being firmly established in inner happiness, that person can radiate or promote such things in life.
This little Sutra, therefore, can have all these applications in our daily life.
2, 47 : prayatna saithilya nanta samapattibhyam
Such a posture can be attained (1) by the abandonment of effort and the non-use of will, and (2) by the continuous awareness of the infinite eternal existence.
To make sure that we get the message, that there is no struggle, Patanjali adds one more Sutra. Two things are to be combined - prayatna saithilya - that is, almost effortless, without strain. This means: go up to that point where you begin to feel strain, and stop there. If you stop before, you are lazy.
But that is only half the Sutra, the other half - ananta samapattibhyam - means contemplation of the endless, which is a very romantic way of saying, 'Go on'. There is infinite potentiality within you, contemplate the infinite. So, the author says, 'Stop when strain is experienced, but go on gently.'
This is true of the yoga posture and also the posture called life. When there is some strain or trouble in your life, remember this. Do not struggle to get out of it, because that will make it worse. Also remember that you were there before the trouble came into your life, and you will continue to be there after. You are the infinite; the trouble is only a little incident in your life.
There should be minimal struggle, knowing that the intelligence in the body which created this body and sustains it, is capable of handling any situation that arises in life. There is no need to get worried about it now.
So, in the practice of asanas, and in the posture you take in regard to life itself, the less the effort the greater the purity and beauty. The picture arises in your mind, and immediately the intelligence in all your limbs springs into action. It is effortless. By contemplating the indivisibility of the intelligence, the body assumes the posture, and the person assumes a certain posture in regard to life and in all relationships.
2, 48 : tato dvandva nabhighatah
Then follows immunity from the onslaughts of the pairs of inseparable opposites - like pain and pleasure, heat and cold, success and failure, honor and dishonor.
Once you are steadily seated, when you have mastered this meditation posture, and the mind or the attention is flowing in one direction, there is tremendous energy, and your attention is not easily distracted and diverted.
Here is a wonderful exercise. Sit in the lotus posture and tell yourself, 'I am not going to get up for another three hours.' The knees begin to hurt, you do not endure that pain - if you endure that pain, you become a martyr; we will put up a statue for you. Utilise it and try to discover what it is that calls it pain. There is certainly a sensation in the legs. Where is this sensation, a mere neurological affair, converted into the psychological category of pain? Why should this neurological phenomenon not be left as a neurological phenomenon? Why must this encroach into your psyche? A nerve is paining, let it pain. A nerve is twitching, let it twitch. Why must the brain interpret this neurological phenomenon as pain? Why not as pleasure? Or, why pleasure? Why not leave it as a neurological phenomenon?
If one observes what goes on within oneself during this asana practice, then it becomes yoga. The idea is that, as each posture is executed, one must see what is happening to the body. What does the body say? What is the sensation? How does the brain or the mind interpret this sensation?
If one understands the spirit of asana in this manner, this Sutra explains what happens, not necessarily as a result of all this. The student of yoga transcends or is immune to the onslaught of what are known as pairs of opposites. There is a slightly modified expression: 'pairs of inseparable opposites', such as day and night, heat and cold. You cannot separate one from the other. Even if you go somewhere where it is always hot, you will find that your body begins to perspire profusely. Where there is heat, there must be some kind of cooling agency. So, everything is accompanied by its own opposite. If you have a friend, in him you have an enemy. You want him to continue to be your friend. So, you hope you do not offend him. Already you are making him an enemy, because fear of losing the friendship is already the hidden enemy in this relationship. On the other hand, it is possible that someone hates you and the initial feeling is that he is your enemy. You are scared to death. Because of that you are nice to him, thereby creating a friendship there. These things do not come alone.
So if the definition that we studied so far concerning the posture - that it must be firm and comfortable, there should be least effort in it, and there should be contemplation of the infinite - has been understood, then you are not bogged down by these pairs of inseparable opposites. You realise that he is your friend, you have to be afraid of him now; he is your enemy, you have to make friendship with him now. It is hot, well never mind, you will sweat; it is cold, you will put on a jersey and make yourself warm.
This Sutra has also been interpreted by orthodox commentators to mean that if you are able to have this firm posture and enter into meditation, you are unaffected by heat and cold. This to me is very childish, a very small fringe benefit; whereas if one understands the whole spirit of this text, it opens up a tremendous vista of beauty. Your whole life is transformed.
If the posture in life, as also the physical posture, is steady, and there is constant contemplation of the infinite without any struggle, then whatever happens in life - honour, dishonour, pain, pleasure, happiness or unhappiness - you become a sort of optimist, able to enjoy the fact that there is always some happiness hidden in unhappiness. Please do not think that I mean the martyr complex or masochism. You cannot write the word 'unhappiness' without the word 'happiness' in it. Unhappiness is merely an extension of happiness. It is when we try to extend happiness that we run into unhappiness. Be content with what little happiness that comes. Enjoy it, and let it go. Do not look forward to that anymore, or try to extend it. Since you are not rejecting what is coming next, it does not become real un-happiness.
So, when one is firmly and effortlessly established in this posture, and when one contemplates the infinite all the time - not only when you are sitting in your lotus posture for meditation, but in any posture that you may assume, physically and mentally - that is the sense in which the word asana is used.
2, 49 : tasmin sati svasa prasvasayor gati vicchedah pranayamah
Simultaneously, the interruption find reversal - and therefore the balancing - of the flow of inhalation and exhalation, of the positive - life-promoting - energy and the negative - decay-promoting - energy, constitutes the regulation of the life-force which is then experienced as the totality of all its functional aspects previously and ignorantly viewed as the building up and the breaking down opposed to each other.
If the mind and the nerves are excited and the body restless, the breathing is agitated. If they are calm, the breathing is calm too. So, the movement of the breath is an indicator of the state of the mind. Therefore, breathing is not only for the ventilation of the lungs or the blood, but an indicator of the state of the mind. Pranayama - control of prana - is recommended for that. Perhaps the yogi who invented this system meant even this to be a psychological trick, not a physical exercise.
Watch your own breathing as it goes in and out, and you will know what the state of your mind is, because the mind and the breath are very closely interrelated. When your mind is steady, the gaze is steady and the breathing is smooth. Deep or not deep does not seem to matter at all. If you seriously practise concentration and meditation, you might be surprised to see that your breathing becomes shallow.
What is Prana?
It is not easy to understand intellectually what prana is. If you ask me what electricity is, I would say that electricity is electricity. In the same way, prana is prana. If you paraphrase it in any other way, it creates more confusion, not clarity. The yogi is not interested in description, but truth - which means direct experience.
Prana or the life force is not something which is identical with the air that we breathe - however pure or holy it may be - but that which makes the body and the mind function. Neither the body nor the mind can understand it. You may say it is life-force, but you do not know what life-force is. The air contains prana. The air itself is not prana, but something in the air is prana. Prana is not the breath itself, but the power that makes you breathe. Prana is in water and in food, too. It is not food itself, but the power that digests that food; not drink itself, but the power that produces thirst. So, it is not the food or water or air, but something in all of them. The prana in you is able to extract the prana from the air you breathe, and use it. It is wrong to think that it is the oxygen that makes you live. Your prana uses the oxygen.
It is prana that connects the body with the mind. Therefore, what happens in the body is reflected in the mind. When the body and mind are pure and the prana flows unobstructedly, there is a great sense of well-being. When the prana is obstructed, it will send out signals - either pain or dullness. If you say, 'This is a bit painful, so I will just lie down,' then there is total obstruction.
The body and mind are dull. It is easy to avoid pain and discomfort. But then we make the mistake of doing nothing. The body is not meant to be lazy. Obstruction is brought about by wrong eating habits and ways of living, and dullness is brought about by laziness. If these two are avoided, then one communicates with this prana and there is a great sense of well-being.
When the yogi speaks of prana, he has a concept of his own - something which is cosmic, which functions in the body, with the help of which you are able to see, hear, and speak, and ultimately with the help of which you are able to think. When the prana works in the physical body, it generates energy and movement; when it works in the brain, it thinks. The yogi says that it is the prana that works through the mind. When you are calm, your breath is also calm; when you are excited, your breath is excited. Which is the cause and which the effect? We do not know. Either may be the cause, because it works both ways. If you control your prana, your mind is controlled; if you control your mind, the prana is controlled. Ultimately, you reach the conclusion that both are somehow one.
Pranayama
Probably what is known as pranayama is meant not so much to cleanse your lungs and help you purify your blood, etc. but to steady what yogis call nadis. Nadis are extremely difficult to define or demonstrate. Nadi has been translated into nerve, artery and vein, but it actually means something like a river which flows, or like a light ray which flows onwards. Nerves do not flow. Nadis can be compared to the sound waves which enter into this room now. If you had a transistor radio and switched it on, the radio would pick up the radio waves. Something like that happens within your astral body. That is a nadi.
Pranayama exercises are supposed to purify those nadis, not just your nerves. Incidentally, these are all side benefits. When you are doing your postures, you are being spiritually awakened, but your body also benefits. I would call it a fringe benefit, not the real benefit. In the same way, when you do the pranayama exercises, the mind becomes steady and the nadis become purified. That the nerves and mind are also calmed is a fringe benefit.
The pranayama exercises have a tremendous meaning. Therefore, one who does pranayama or breathing exercises as part of yoga, has to approach it in a different way - not merely use these as breathing exercises, but as a part of a spiritual adventure. By the practice of pranayama, you come face-to-face with the power we call prana. You know that prana. It is not possible for anyone to show you, but within you, you will realise what it is.
When you concentrate your mind on the various plexuses during the pranayama exercises, prana flows into them, following the mind. Patanjali says we should have a steady posture before attempting pranayama, because when you begin to practise, the prana vibrates more powerfully. With a little practice you will actually feel power being concentrated there.
If you find it difficult to look within and discover this prana, use the following method: as you breathe in and out normally, see if you can become aware of the exact moment when inhalation becomes exhalation, and exhalation becomes inhalation. At that point, you will find prana. The brain has no function here at all.
There is another method. When you inhale until you cannot go on any more, what makes you stop? That is prana. Hold the breath, making the whole body like a full pot. How long must you hold? The holding must be as long as possible, which means you should not exhale, prana should force the exhalation. At that point, if the observation is keen, there is direct understanding 'this is prana'. Do not worry. You will not die before your time is up, and when the time is up, nothing will save you.
Patanjali suggests an exercise in which there is interruption of the inhalation and exhalation. Slowly start to inhale, and stop. Continue to inhale, stop. This can be repeated until the inhalation is complete. Repeat the practice as many times as is comfortable for you. Then similarly interrupt the flow of the exhalation. It is important that you do not exceed your limits. Watch to see that the breath remains even and smooth. If it becomes jerky, you have exceeded your limits. Stop immediately and do not practise this till the next day.
The Hatha Yoga Pradipika, II:7-9, the ancient scripture of Hatha Yoga, describes pranayama as threefold: inhale, retain, exhale through alternate nostrils. This pranayama is usually associated with Raja Yoga, though Patanjali does not mention this. While inhaling and exhaling in the alternate nostril breathing, watch and observe this inner intelligence and its functioning. How beautiful this breathing is! Even this perennial action of breathing is beyond the ego. If you have realised this intelligence, then pranayama will lead you to samadhi. If there is foolishness in your mind, the foolishness is removed by practice of this pranayama. It reveals to you that you are not living because you want to, but because something has willed all this into being - call it God, Brahman, Atman or anything you like. Become conscious of that.
So, pranayama is not merely filling of the lungs, the oxygenation of the blood and holding your nostrils, but is something which covers the whole of life - and death. It was considered so important that it was woven into the daily life and worship of the Indian. Pranayama must lead to the clarification of the mind, so that the next time you ask yourself, 'Where does a thought arise? How does a neurological phenomenon become a psychological factor?', the questions are more meaningful.
We are living mechanically, not knowing what life is, but somehow with the deluded idea or notion that this life is ours. Then we become aware of this breathing. In order to become aware of this, you have to upset that somehow. The yogi would like to introduce awareness into it and deliberately upset that process, stop it, prolong it, make it short. You can do anything you like and that is pranayama. If you continue to breathe mechanically, you will also continue to think mechanically, automatically and therefore you will continue to be a slave to thoughts whose presence you do not know, whose origin you do not know, whose operation you do not know.
It is possible to arouse the awareness by getting hold of this breath and twisting it. There is a constant will to live, and there is fear of death. Can that also be interfered with, so that you have neither will to live, nor fear of death? Can that also be reversed? You are not afraid to die and you do not long to live. Once you tinker with this, challenge it, you realise that the ego is impotent and it can do nothing, faced with the life force, then you surrender. When you do that, once again you come face to face with this prana. That can be achieved by challenging the life force in any manner you like so that instead of mechanically and automatically living, you become conscious of life - this is the life force that is functioning. At that point, one realises, 'It is not my life'.
Once you challenge and get to know this divinity that is in you - making you breathe, making you eat, making you do all sorts of things - you become aware that it is not your slave, your creation. Then you consciously surrender the whole thing to that life force. But this time you are fearless. To begin with, the fear was hidden, but now you are truly fearless, knowing that the life force is capable of handling all situations. I am not suggesting that the yogi is a foolhardy adventurer.
So pranayama is not merely control of breath, but direct perception of the life principle - the life principle again being part of this cosmic stream which has been crystallised by the ego. By catching hold of that breath, that life-force, once again you are trying to break through this tangle of ego-sense.
All these practices are very healthy and can be of tremendous help, provided we use them as fortresses or aids, and do not let them possess us, do not let them strengthen the ego sense. Every one of these practices must thin out this ego sense. But if we foolishly allow these very instruments of thinning out the ego to make it firmer and stronger, we have missed the central essence and core of yoga.
2, 50 : bahya bhyantara stambhavrttir desa kala samkhyabhih paridrsto dirgha suksmah
Different techniques involve holding the breath within - after inhalation, or without - after exhalation, or the suspension of the breath, with conscious effort. There are different types, too, some prolonged, some subtle - and short - different also in regard to the place where the breath is held, the duration of the retention, and the number of times it is practiced.
Prana is not just the breath. The pranayama exercises that you do are not intended to 'fill you with prana'. If we can practise these pranayama exercises with inner awareness of what happens, perhaps they will be more meaningful.
The breath can be held at different parts of the body - at the tip of the nose, in the throat, or at the root of the tongue, in the middle of the chest, in the solar plexus, or even below that. You can actually feel it. All these have their own different effects.
The suspension of breath or breathing may be external or internal. The Yoga Vasistha mentions specifically that the inhaled breath does not start at the tip of your nose. Twelve finger breadths from your body there is a magnetic field. The prana starts from there. So, when you exhale your breath, it is held twelve inches away from your body. If you are serious about this, please try it. When you exhale and hold your breath, as we do sometimes, fix the mind there. You will be a lot more relaxed - if nothing else. Because you are not holding the breath at the tip of your nose, your concentration or your attention is outside you, so it is much easier to hold the breath. That is, your lungs are empty, your life force is empty, as it were, and held outside your body, as it were. At first, it is 'as it were', but the yogi assures us that sometime it will really be so.
Then you draw the prana in and hold it in your heart. That is internal retention or suspension of breath. It is impossible to do this mechanically. It is impossible for you not to become aware of everything when you are doing this - your whole body is tingling. The effort of holding the breath itself keeps you awake and alert.
The yogi deliberately introduces all these regulations, maybe for other reasons, but definitely to make you understand what is meant by thought and will- interference. So, what was automatic, mechanical breathing, is first brought into the field of observation. In that field of observation, you try to manipulate it so that that observation, which is still observing the breathing, becomes familiar with this phenomenon of mind or thought interference. Then you let the whole thing go, and only the observation remains. There is no control, restraint, or regulation, just this pure observation. This observation prevents, if one may use that expression, thought- or will-interference. The breathing goes on smoothly, straight on from the intelligence within you. That happens already in pranayama. Therefore, Patanjali said that it will lead you straight on to concentration - dharana. In the case of the sense functions, it may be useful if one cultivates this power of internal observation which does not interfere in the sense function.
Pranayama can be used for all these purposes. Essentially it is meant to discover the activity of the self. Pranayama knocks the mind completely down, By becoming aware of it, one with it, tasting it, it is possible to continue that state of mind. That way you can almost reach the source of the self. It is with the help of prana that the self plays its games.
2, 51 : bahya bhyantara visaya ksepi caturthah
There is a fourth type which is the spontaneous suspension of breath, while minutely observing something external or internal.
The fourth type of pranayama does not involve holding your nostrils, inhaling, exhaling, retention, etc., but the spontaneous, total suspension of breathing without any effort, while you are keenly contemplating something either within you or outside of you. Any keen, total, one-pointed observation is accompanied by slowing down or even suspension of breath.
2, 52 : tatah ksiyate prakasa varanam
Then, the veil of psychic impurity and spiritual ignorance that covers the inner light is thinned and rent asunder.
Pranayama is meant only to remove the veil of ignorance that covers the inner light or reality. It is because the inner light is covered over by a veil, that the self arises and plays. When you practise pranayama in this manner, the veil disappears and the inner light that had been veiled is revealed, so there is clarity of perception and understanding. The mind and the intelligence become clear. If through pranayama that veil is removed, then in the inner light one sees that there is no self. At the same time, the faculty is aroused which enables one to meditate deeply.
While you go on practising this pranayama, the whole attention is concentrated and focused within you. Therefore you must become aware of the thought processes also. If that inner veil is not lifted, and if there is no self awareness, or awareness of the rise and fall of thoughts within you, then you are not practising pranayama.
2, 53 : dharanasu ca yogyata manasah
And, the mind attains the ability to concentrate, to focus its attention.
By the practice of pranayama you become eligible for the practice of dharana or concentration. With the help of what appears to be a purely physiological process - breathing - the yogi leads us on to direct observation of the mind and immediate concentration of the life force and the mind. That already makes it no-mind.
You are not told here that, if you practise pranayama, your lungs will expand, your asthma will go, or you will start flying in the air. You are told that the faculty is aroused which enables one to concentrate deeply. It aids ontemplation and removes distractions, so it becomes easy to meditate.Again the same thing. Throughout the Yoga Sutras, the simplest message is: practise yoga in order that these obstacles may be removed.When the obstacles are removed, you see your self, which may mean the non- existence of a self, and life becomes enlightened. That is all! There are no gimmicks. It is an extremely simple, sane, and beautiful definition of yoga: when your inner obstacles are removed, contemplation becomes easy; when we have learned the art of turning the mind and the senses inwards upon the mind itself, then we begin this inner work.
Once we have reached this stage, we learn how to concentrate and how to meditate, how to be able to look within, how to shut out background music, and how to be able to listen to the music and not to the speaker. There are innumerable exercises for concentration or introversion of the mind.
This suggests the skipping of the next limb, pratyahara, which is the gathering in of the rays of one's attention. There is a definite suggestion in the Yoga Sutras that, though pratyahara is mentioned, for the sake of scientific description of the total structure of yoga, the effective practice of pranayama itself achieves that, because pratyahara happens when you practise pranayama.
2, 54 : sva visayasamprayoga citta svarupanukara ive ndriyanam pratyaharah
There is psychological freedom when the senses function spontaneously in complete harmony with the inherent intelligence - without thought - or will-interference - without being drawn into contact with their objects by cravings or false evaluations. This freedom is the fountain-source of energy since in it there is effortless - and therefore non-movement of the energy.
Normally, the attention is extroverted. You are conscious of another, not of yourself. You are thinking in terms of external objects, not in terms of the perceiving subject. As you practise pranayama, this attention turns inward. This is pratyahara.
I do not know if it is possible to accept the usual translation of pratyahara as 'abstraction of the senses or the mind'. We do not know what that means. It has also been rather simply translated as withdrawal of the senses from their objects. What does it mean? When you open the eyes, they see. What must you do now to withdraw the sense of sight from seeing? You cannot stop the eyes from seeing!
Pratyahara is not terribly difficult, nor is it a strange mystic practice that one is unfamiliar with. It happens to us very often, but because we pay no attention, it seems to be strange or difficult when it is described to us. For instance, it happens when you are eating something, and at the same time you are listening to some music in which you are keenly interested. You are so deeply absorbed in the music that the food is being eaten without your awareness. However, if a pebble goes into the mouth with the food, it is spat out! During that period, your mind is not interfering with the business of eating, which happens without desire or ego interference. In other words, the senses, being linked to the subconscious mind, whatever it is, or to the inner intelligence, function in their own pure, natural state. That intelligence flows, unhampered by value judgements or intellectual perversion. The intelligence functions purely, simply, absolutely beautifully. We all experience it every day without being aware of it.
The eyes are endowed with the faculty of seeing, the nose with smelling, the ears of hearing. The whole thing is the intelligence. It is the intelligence that operates through the eyes, etc. Can you become aware of that without making unreal distinctions - that is beautiful, this is ugly, etc? When the vision and the hearing etc. become pure and non-discriminating, without introducing divisions which do not exist, the senses do not recognise good and evil, beauty and ugliness, etc. If the division between the mind and the senses disappears, if they function as one unit, that is pratyahara. You cannot will yourself into this or practise it, but you can practise the following:
Look at a cushion, for instance, and decide whether it is beautiful or ugly. Allow other thoughts regarding it to come into your mind. Then you realise that in all that, judgement is involved. Something is accepted and something is rejected. In this thing called acceptance and rejection, a lot of energy is wasted. So, the yogi says, 'Now that you discover the operation of this perversion, go to the other extreme. Look at that without even thinking of what it is.' If you can look at that cushion and refuse to let the word 'cushion' arise in your mind, your attention is not focused on whatever it is in front of you, but on the mind where the idea of cushion arises. Therefore, since the attention is totally focused within yourself, you will not see the cushion. When you do that, it is possible for a few moments completely to forget to see the cushion. This has come to be known as pratyahara in orthodox yoga circles.
However, if the yogi is a person who functions in this world, it is hardly fair to expect him to sit and live in a world of abstraction. Here, awareness is aware merely of the source of the action or the experience. A natural change takes place. The senses function as if they are in total alignment and complete harmony with the citta - the undivided, indivisible intelligence. This can only refer to the fundamental principal of yoga. Do not divide the world or your own intelligence into good, bad, this, that, pleasant, unpleasant. It does not mean suppressing the citta or intelligence, it means that there is no mind or ego interference. When that happens, of course the ego reveals its nature. The awakened intelligence sees the thousand ways in which the ego tries to step in and pollute actions and experiences. There is psychological freedom and abundant energy.
2, 55 : tatah parama vasyate ndriyanam
With such an abundance of energy it follows that there is complete mastery - in the sense of ever-vigilant understanding - over the senses, as all psychological conflicts and confused movements of thought and energy cease, and the senses function intelligently without disorder and disharmony, inhibitions and excitation.
Then the senses function naturally. That natural function brings about natural order and a natural control. Let us use the word 'order' in preference to control.There is no disorder or conflict within oneself. Vasyate means 'to win' - it does not mean control or conquer, which have an aggressive tone. You are not fighting at all with any of these indriya. You have won them over. The inner intelligence has won over the senses and the body, so that it does not want to function in a disorderly way. There is pleasure and delight in co-operation, in harmony. When you become aware of this delight, the mind and the senses do not want to interfere with that harmony.
First become aware of the disorder. When you do, already there is some kind of interference with what goes on within. This is what is mostly misunderstood. So, the yogi says: become aware of it, see what disorder feels like. In order to become aware of disorder, you have to jump into it and experience it. Then, when this observation becomes pure, in that light the disorder is cleared by itself. You do not want it, your attention is not there any more, and there is pure observation. This pure observation merely loves inner order and harmony, and that love wins over your whole personality. So, no part of your being wants to create or sustain disharmony any more.