PART 4 Philosophy: The Yoga Sutra
Chapter II: On Practice
II.1 The Yoga of Action consists of austerity, self-study, and surrender to the Supreme Being.
After addressing the first chapter of the Yoga Sutra to a very advanced student who was capable of focusing the mind, Patanjali addresses the second chapter to a novice student who has a distracted mind and suggests the Yoga of Action (Kriya Yoga). This yoga is called “active” as opposed to the advanced yoga, which appears to be inactive from the outside because it consists mainly of meditation.
In Hatha Yoga the term kriya has a different connotation. Here it refers to the shatkarmas, the six actions, which are purificatory exercises for the body. In Tantra Yoga kriya describes purification exercises for the subtle body, which combine visualization, mantra, and breath.
In Patanjali’s yoga, Kriya Yoga consists of austerity, self-study, and surrender to the Supreme Being. The term “austerity” (tapas) evokes pictures of people sitting on beds of nails or standing on one leg for ten years. These are extremes. In sutra IV.1 Patanjali lists tapas as one of the ways to gain supernatural powers (siddhis). If that is the reason tapas is practiced, and usually it is, it has to take these extreme forms. Patanjali is critical about the powers: they are considered a distraction in yoga. As well, the Bhagavad Gita criticizes tapas if it takes the form of self-torture.
In yoga “austerity” means simplicity. Behind the term “simplicity” lies my acceptance of the truth that to be happy I need nothing but to know who I truly am. By living a simple life without extremes and without constantly yielding to my desires, my mind is concentrated and focused. On the other hand, if I follow the call of this world to “spoil yourself,” “treat yourself,” and “pamper yourself,” I communicate to my mind that I am not in charge of my life. Rather, I cement the belief that a constant stream of external stimulation and sensory satisfaction has to occur for me to keep my mental equilibrium — which means I am not in charge of my life but am a slave to my needs and desires.
To wake up to the truth that I need nothing at all to be internally happy, that in fact constantly following external stimuli separates me from myself, is tapas. Austerity will make us strong, whereas gluttony and decadence weaken. The more we believe we need certain things, the more we will be dependent on them. The simpler we can be, the freer we will be. Simplicity makes the body strong and healthy and the mind calm and focused. It is the foundation of self-knowledge, since it means giving up the lie that anything but self-knowledge can make us permanently happy.
A great example of mental focus through austerity was Mahatma Gandhi. By denying himself food and by being imprisoned, his conviction and concentration grew only stronger. Austerity does not mean that we have to live like beggars: some of the greatest yogis of India were emperors and kings. We can enjoy what rightfully belongs to us, after a certain percentage is given to charity, as long as we abide by the ethical rules.
The term tapas is formed from the root tap, which means to cook. Through simplicity and practice inner heat is generated, which is needed for purification on the physical and mental levels, emotions being a category of mind. Austerity means to be able to perform practice even in adverse situations. The mere fact of performing one’s vinyasa practice every morning before work is to perform tapas.
The second of the three actions (kriyas) is svadhyaya, which means self-study or study of the self. Meant here is not self-inquiry as practiced in Jnana Yoga: this highest form of yoga is recommended only to students who have fully developed their intellect. Kriya Yoga, however, is preparatory yoga. A beginner cannot come to the right conclusion regarding the self through direct inquiry. In Kriya Yoga self-study means study of the sacred scriptures. These are divided into shruti and smrti. Shruti means that which has been heard, and it applies to revealed scriptures, namely the Vedas1 and Upanishads, which are understood to be of divine origin. Smrti means that which has been memorized. The word is applied to scriptures that are based on the revealed scriptures and explain them further, such as theBhagavad Gita, the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, the Brahma Sutra, and the Yoga Sutra.
The study of these scriptures aids in removing the veil from the light of knowledge. It achieves that in several ways. First, the repeated hearing of the truth makes one realize that truth in daily life. Second, the contemplation of the heard truth makes the intellect sattvic. Georg Feuerstein says that “the purpose of svadhyaya [study of ancient scriptures] is not intellectual learning: it is absorption into ancient wisdom. It is the meditative pondering of truths revealed by seers and sages who have traversed those remote regions where the mind cannot follow and only the heart receives and is changed.”2
The other traditionally recommended way to meditate on the self is repetition of OM. As the Upanishads frequently state, OM is Brahman (infinite consciousness). For more information on OM see sutras I.27–29.
The third and final aspect of Kriya Yoga is ishvara pranidhana, acceptance of the existence of a Supreme Being. One of the problems of yoga is that it bestows great powers. These powers are bound to be abused if, as a yogi, you believe that the world is circulating around you, that it is there to satisfy your whims. Sadly this is exactly what modern society trains us to believe. We are taught that life is about fulfilling our dreams and desires, which consist mainly of consuming, owning, and exercising power. To keep our greed and lust for power under control, Patanjali suggests not placing ourselves in the center of the universe but accepting that this place is taken by the Supreme Being. The yogi then places himself in the service of this Being. To do this, one need not be a member of a particular religion; members of all religions would qualify. This brings us to another question: do I have to believe in the Supreme Being to do yoga?
Any belief, whatever it is, is counterproductive in the context of the practice of yoga. One holds a belief instead of knowing. For example you wouldn’t say you believe in your right ear: since you know your ear, no belief is required. Believing always excludes knowing. When jnana (supreme knowledge) comes through the practice of yoga, you will know. Do not be satisfied with believing.
Once one has recognized oneself as consciousness, the question whether one believes in God or rebirth has become as meaningless as whether one believes in one’s right ear. Patanjali’s insistence in the present sutra on accepting the existence of the Supreme Being is not belief. It is a working hypothesis. It is like accepting 0 (zero) when we use mathematics. Arab mathematicians introduced 0, but nobody has ever seen it, nobody can prove its existence. But when we use it, it opens previously unknown horizons to us.
Acceptance is the opposite of skepticism. Skepticism is not the same as doubt. To surrender to the Supreme Being is a condition of entry into higher Yoga. One may practice Samkhya (meditative inquiry into the order of the universe) without ishvara pranidhana, since this inquiry does not bestow powers. The powers (siddhis) that come with yoga make it necessary to accept this condition of entry. A Buddhist would call surrendering one’s powers to the Supreme Being acting “for the good of all beings.”
Without this attitude we will be tempted to use our powers to satisfy our personal egoistic tendencies. This is black magic. The white and the black magician use the same methods and the same powers, but the black magician worships his or her own ego, whereas the white magician serves the Supreme Being. For more information on the role of the Supreme Being in yoga, see sutras I.23–29.
II.2 Kriya Yoga is done for the purpose of moving closer toward samadhi and for reducing the afflictions (kleshas).
Patanjali explains the purpose of Kriya Yoga. The novice is advised to steer away from what is damaging and aspire to what is helpful. Afflictions (kleshas) are the forms of suffering. They are unwanted states that surround us and fill us with darkness. There are five forms of suffering, and Patanjali will define them in the following sutras.
One of the problems when we begin yoga is that, while we might have a sincere wish to engage in practice, afflictions in the form of negative habits, addictions, feelings of futility, bad influences, and hindering emotions have such a strong grip on us that we commit negative actions that produce more negative results. This is the vicious circle of karma. If somebody is in a downward spiral, it is often not enough to tell them to change their behavior. Their subconscious, which is conditioned by the past, compels them to act in a certain way.
Vyasa, however, writes in his commentary on this sutra that Kriya Yoga, if engaged in properly, will parch the afflictions so that they cannot produce future suffering. Like seeds that have been roasted, they cannot sprout anymore. If Kriya Yoga is done for some time, the modes of suffering will loosen their grip on us, so that at some point we can practice higher yoga.
However, the roasted seeds, although incapable of germinating, continue to exist. It has been observed that many great sages had to go through a lot of suffering before they reached liberation. Some masters and even deities died violent deaths. Buddha, Milarepa, and Socrates were poisoned; Jesus was crucified; an arrow killed Krishna; Vishnu’s head was snapped off while he was leaning on his own bow. J. Krishnamurti, Ramakrishna, Ramana Maharshi and the sixteenth Karmapa died from cancer. Mogallana, one of the two principal students of Buddha, was hacked to death by robbers.
This posed a great problem for Buddhist scholars, who asked, “Why, if he was such a great saint, did he attract such violence?” The answer is simple. Once the afflictions (kleshas) have been rendered infertile by the fire of knowledge, they cannot produce new ignorance. However, the karma that had been accumulated prior to that and is bearing fruit already (prarabda karma) cannot be changed anymore and has to be endured. In Mogallana’s case this means the actions that led to him being murdered were performed long before he met the Buddha. But the results of those actions had started to fructify and therefore could not be intercepted anymore, not even by his liberation.
We can learn from this that the setbacks we suffer, although we have practiced for some time, shouldn’t dishearten us. They have been caused by actions we performed in the past. Our actions today will determine who we will be in the future.
II.3 Ignorance, egoism, desire, aversion, and fear of death are the afflictions.
In sutra II.2 Patanjali suggested the practice of Kriya Yoga to reduce afflictions (kleshas). In this sutra he explains what exactly it is that we are reducing. The five different types of affliction are ignorance, egoism, desire, aversion, and fear of death.
Avidya (ignorance) is the opposite of vidya, which is true knowledge or science. The term brahma vidya means science of Brahman, while bharata vidya (science of India) is used to describe all of India’s ancient wisdom. Avidya has been translated as ignorance, nescience, nonscience, or misapprehension. The term asmita we know from the first chapter. It can be called sense-of-I, I-am-ness, or egoism.
Desire (raga) and aversion (dvesha) are the two forms of suffering that Buddha recognized. He taught that suffering comes from desiring something that is separate from us (attraction) or rejecting something that is in contact with us (aversion). Both forms of suffering can exist only, he taught, because we do not recognize Mind as space. I write mind with a capital M here to distinguish it from the yogic notion of mind. Buddha took the upanishadic concept of consciousness (Brahman) and renamed it Mind. This idea of mind is very different from the yogic concept, which sees mind either as the thinking agent (manas) or as the sum total of thinking agent, ego, and intellect (chitta).
According to Buddha, if we recognized Mind (the upanishadic Brahman) as the container that contains the world and all beings, we would realize that we are always united with whatever we desire. At the same time it becomes clear that it is futile to reject anything, because we are connected to everything through Mind.
The last affliction is abhiniveshah. It can be translated as fear of death or desire for continuity.
Vyasa says in his commentary that the afflictions are the five forms of wrong cognition (viparyaya). Let us recall that wrong cognition is one of five fluctuations of the mind (chitta vrtti). Vyasa explains further that the five afflictions, when activated, increase the work of the gunas. The gunas, the three qualities or strands of nature, increase their activity the more we move away from equilibrium, from the center of the cyclone. They draw us deeper into creation and further away from consciousness. Vyasa continues then by saying that this increase of the gunas opens up the current of cause and effect and produces the fruition of karma. It is this chain of cause and effect and production of karma that our bondage consists of. It will lead to further negative thought, negative action, and mental slavery.
Vachaspati Mishra confirms in his subcommentary that the afflictions should be destroyed because they are the cause of the round of rebirths.3 In his subcommentary Shankara adds that freedom from the impurity of the kleshas comes from the absence of wrong cognition.4
Concluding, we can say that the five afflictions produce further karma, which keeps us from becoming free. They arise out of wrong cognition (viparyaya). If this wrong knowledge is replaced with correct knowledge, they will cease and no more karma will be produced. The chain of cause and effect will be broken by the knowledge that we are in fact consciousness and not what we identify with.
The next five sutras will describe the individual afflictions, and we will verify Vyasa’s claim that they arise out of wrong cognition. These connections are not just dry philosophy; they need to be pondered well. The shastras (sacred scriptures) say that a complete yogi needs to hear about the mechanics of bondage only once to break free. One near completion needs only frequent reflection to realize the truth. Most of us, however, will have to contemplate the subject regularly until clarity is achieved.
II.4 Ignorance is the origin of the others, whether dormant, attenuated, interrupted, or active.
Vyasa likens ignorance to a field that provides the breeding-ground for the other four afflictions, which are egoism, desire, repulsion, and fear of death. These can occur in four different states: dormant, attenuated (thinned), interrupted, and active. They are described to remind us that, just because we are not fully in the grip of an affliction, it doesn’t mean the affliction is not present.
DORMANT STATE
For example, we may not be aware that fear of death is present in us, because we have never had to fear for our life. But if the appropriate stimulus — a life-threatening situation — is presented, the fear will surface. Thus the affliction, fear of death, was in the dormant state. A dormant affliction will awaken once its object is presented. If the affliction does not surface at all, even in a life-threatening situation, it is not present, even in a dormant form.
ATTENUATED (THINNED) STATE
If, for example, we are in a life-threatening situation and we react relatively calmly because, through study of the Bhagavad Gita, we have understood that we are not the body, but rather that which cannot be burned by fire, drowned by water, pierced by thorns, or cut by blades, the affliction is said to be attenuated or thinned by Kriya Yoga — in this case through the second aspect of Kriya Yoga, which issvadhyaya, the study of sacred scripture.
INTERRUPTED STATE
If an even stronger affliction cancels out a present affliction, that affliction is said to be interrupted. For example, let us say we are committing a bank robbery, and so eager to get our hands on a bag full of dollars that we have no fear of getting harmed. In this case fear is interrupted by greed. It is not that fear is not present, but it is interrupted or suppressed by the stronger notion of greed or desire.
ACTIVE STATE
If the object is presented and we are fully in the grip of the affliction, it is called active. This is the only state in which the effects of the affliction are fully displayed. It is important to realize this: it means that, from our total portfolio of afflictions, only about as much is visible as of the iceberg that sank the Titanic.
There is a fifth state of affliction that Patanjali does not count because it occurs only in the yogi. Once the yogi has gained discriminative knowledge (the knowledge that one is not the appearances, but the consciousness in which they appear) then and only then the seeds of the afflictions cannot propagate anymore. The seeds are then said to be roasted in the fire of knowledge, which destroys their potency to sprout. This roasted state is also called the fifth state, which is different from the dormant state of the affliction. If a suitable object is presented, the affliction will not arise.
II.5 Ignorance is to see the transient as eternal, the impure as pure, pain as pleasure, and the nonself as the self.
Ignorance, which is wrong knowledge, is not only the absence of correct knowledge. It is the opposite of, and prevents perception of, right knowledge. So says Vyasa.
To explain this mechanism, the story of the rope and the snake is often quoted, as it has been already in this text. On his way along a path at dusk a man sees a rope lying on the path and mistakes it for a snake. Afraid, he runs away. The wrong notion of a snake leads to ignorance of the fact that it is a rope. In his village he encounters a man who walked the same path in broad daylight and remembers a rope lying on the ground. He takes him back and wakens him to the fact that the object is actually a rope, not a snake. Once the rope is cognized, the wrong knowledge (avidya) is replaced with correct knowledge (vidya) and ignorance is gone.
Every human seems to be endowed with a desire to become happy. True happiness, however, can only be had by abiding in the true self (purusha). Since we have a vague remembrance of the bliss of consciousness recognizing itself, we cannot be happy in the animalistic, robotlike existence that we live now. We long for recognizing ourselves, but, since we are deluded about our own nature, we constantly reach for secondary satisfactions. These are bound eventually to become stale and fail, for we know deep down that permanent freedom can only be found in what is eternal and pure. Although the blissful state can be found only by recognizing ourselves as consciousness, still we seek to realize ourselves through wealth, power, relationships, sex, drugs, and so on, which are all short-lived.
At the core of ignorance is the idea that my nation, my tribe, my personality, my property, my family, my children, my partner, my emotions, my body, my thoughts is me. But all of that is transitory, even if it lasts for a lifetime or a few lifetimes: all empires fall eventually. The only thing that really is me is the consciousness that contains all those notions, the self that witnesses all that. If I stay with that, ignorance (avidya) has been replaced with vidya, correct knowledge. Then the afflictions (kleshas) no longer have a breeding-ground and will disappear.
The Buddhists recommend staying with the nature of all that arises. What is the true nature of everything that arises in the mind? What is at the core of anger, happiness, hatred, love, fear, boredom, despair, confusion? Not at the surface, but at the very center of it? It is what the Buddhists call shunyata, emptiness. The Buddhist technique leads to the same result as the advaitic5 method of asking who it is that is watching the world, which is the true self. If this true essence is realized, ignorance has come to an end.
How does ignorance lead to the other afflictions? Taking the nonself as the self leads to egoism (asmita). Aversion (dvesha) is a negative sentiment. Nevertheless those in its grip usually “enjoy” it, are self-righteous about it, and believe it to be a perfectly healthy reaction. If the impure is experienced as pure, desire (raga) is produced. Perceiving the impermanent (the body) as permanent (the self) leads to fear of death (abhiniveshah).6
II.6 I-am-ness (asmita) is to perceive the seer and seeing as one.
Understanding this sutra is of the greatest importance. Here is anticipated what Patanjali says in sutra II.17: The cause of suffering is the false union of the seer with the seen. This is the exact opposite of what the common contemporary misconception (also called New Age philosophy) tells us.
According to this common understanding, the key to happiness is to become completely one with whatever we do or perceive. Another beautiful phrase is: yoga is the union of body, mind, and soul. Phrases like these are easy to sell since they meet the expectations of gullible audiences. But the yogic truth is heartbreakingly different. The sutra says that when the seer, which is consciousness (purusha), is identified with seeing, that is egoism (asmita). Seeing here refers to the function of the instruments of cognition. The instruments of cognition are the senses, the mind (manas), and intelligence (buddhi). They have no awareness of themselves but only reflect the light of consciousness (purusha) as the moon reflects the light of the sun. They gather information, process and modify it (that is the problem), and then present it to consciousness (purusha) to be seen.
Because of the property of the instruments of cognition to modify what is seen, yogic philosophy does not regard them as being able to perceive the truth. The truth pertaining to knowables (objects) is defined as the essence of an object (dharmin) or the object-as-such. Perceiving it is called wisdom (prajna). This wisdom can only be perceived in objective samadhi (nirvichara samapatti), in which the intellect attains identity with the object under circumnavigation of the mind (manas) and the senses. The even higher truth pertaining to the knower can only be gained by abiding in consciousness directly, through the mystical state (objectless samadhi).
The modification of information through the instruments of cognition was discussed under sutra I.7 using the example of the eye — how the brain converts the inverted image on the retina to an upright image and how it fills in the retinal blind spot. This is how our entire cognition process works. All incoming information is constantly compared with the information already in store. Conflicting data is either deleted or, over time, slowly integrated.
We have thus a constant changing simulation of reality but never a true reproduction of reality in that moment. This makes a great system for navigating a physical body within a space/time continuum, but for experiencing what is called deep reality — the cause of all causes — it leads invariably to sheer nonsense. That is why we have to shortcut the mind in what is called the mystical experience to see reality directly.
Vyasa summarizes the sutra as follows: Purusha is pure awareness; buddhi (intellect or intelligence) is the perceiving instrument. Taking the two completely separate units for one and the same thing is defined as the affliction I-am-ness or egoism (asmita). When the true nature of these separate entities is recognized, that is freedom (kaivalya).
II.7 Desire (raga) is clinging to pleasure.
This third affliction works in three steps. First there is an experience of pleasure. During this experience a subconscious imprint (samskara) is formed. The pleasurable experience is remembered and a hankering after it develops. Either one tries to repeat it, which calls for constant repetition and sets off an addictive pattern, or one suffers because the repetition is not possible.
The important fact to see here is that the pleasurable experience in itself is not the problem. If we were fulfilled by experiencing it once and could let it go, there would be no desire to repeat it. We could also, whenever the same experience occurred again, enter it with the same innocent freshness as when we had it the first time. This would happen in the case of the jnanin (one who has knowledge). Because a jnanin is fulfilled by abiding in consciousness, there is no void that needs to be filled up with experiences of pleasure. Pleasure-seeking is really engaged in to get an experience of oneself — for example, driving a car at 185 miles per hour, bungie jumping, or any danger sport. Once the light of the self is seen, these activities do not leave any new samskara and therefore do not ask for repetition.
During an experience of pleasure there is an impression of happiness that fills the void left by not knowing oneself. Later, during a moment when there is no strong impression in the mind, this happiness is remembered. One then repeats the experience only to find that it doesn’t bring about the same happiness anymore. The happiness was caused by the mind being momentarily overwhelmed by the new experience, and it therefore blanked out for a short time. With the mind blanked out, we noticed the shining sun of the self, possibly only for a second or two.
Because the mind is prepared when the experience is repeated, it will not be overwhelmed anymore, but will wrap up the experience in a nice parcel and interpret it. We then increase the strength of the experience to get to the same state. This is the reason people go to extreme lengths to have an experience of themselves — drug users constantly up the dosage, billionaires build huge business empires, and dictators invade yet another country. The mind can never get enough.
There are two prerequisites for the mechanistic pattern to develop. I call it “mechanistic” here to make clear that it is a robotic behavior, whereas the common sense of our society is that to follow one’s desires means to truly become oneself. For desire to develop there needs to be an experience of pleasure and it needs to be had by someone who is inclined to it. There can be various reasons for lack of inclination. If the experiencer knows himself or herself as consciousness, no desire will develop. If the experiencer’s inclination is toward hatred or fear, desire cannot develop. In that case the affliction called aversion overpowers or interrupts the one called desire. Characters absorbed in malice are often rather ascetic and not inclined to pleasure. Adolf Hitler fits into this category.
It is important here to realize that desire (raga), and with it all addictions, is a clear form of misapprehension or ignorance (avidya). A drug addict might say, “I just can’t help it; I need the drug!” In this statement, the needing of the drug, which is the hankering after a remembered pleasure, is consciously connected with the faculty of I. But the real I, the true self, has no connection whatsoever with the subconscious impression of pleasure, since it is pure awareness without memory. Yoga defines as ignorance the experience of pure awareness or consciousness bound up with experiences like pleasure.
The senses, the mind, and the intellect — in short, the instruments of cognition — produce the experience of pleasure such as the repeating of a drug experience. I, however, am only the onlooking awareness/consciousness, which is completely separate from the experience. I need to permanently deny my true nature as consciousness and insist on identification with the instruments of cognition to be able to say “I need a drug (or wealth, sex, power, fame, or proficiency in asana practice).” That leads us to the conclusion that addiction or any form of desire is a case of egoism/I-am-ness (asmita), since in this statement the “I” is wrongly identified with the instruments of cognition and not with the true self.
Once the self/consciousness is realized, all addiction will drop away by itself, since egoism (asmita) is destroyed and desire will loosen its grip.
To summarize, the affliction called desire (raga) creates suffering by producing a craving for repeated pleasure due to subconscious impressions formed when it occurred originally.
II.8 The affliction that results from memorized suffering is called aversion (dvesha).
In the case of this affliction the same mechanism is working as in the previous one. The only difference is the experience on which it is based. The last affliction was based on past pleasure, this one on past suffering.
If for example we went to the dentist and suffered a lot of pain, the experience would be stored in the form of a subconscious imprint (samskara) of pain. Whenever we had to go to the dentist again, the memorized suffering would produce an aversion. We then might go through a period of suffering, possibly only to find that our teeth are okay this time and no new pain will ensue. In this case we would have suffered on the basis of a past experience, whereas the present situation does not hold pain for us. This form of anticipated suffering is called aversion (dvesha) in yoga.
Sexism, racism, and nationalism are forms of aversion derived from the same mechanism. We notice some individuals acting in a particular way, which produces aversion in us. From that we infer that the entire group to which the individuals belong will act in the same way. Our aversion is then extended to cover the entire group.
Jealousy is another popular form of aversion. Some people display very strong symptoms of jealousy to the extent that they spy on their partners or do not allow them to leave home after dark, even though they are completely faithful. In this case the jealous partner might have been cheated on in a previous relationship, or might have abandonment issues originating from not getting enough attention from a parent. In both cases the cause is past suffering, erroneously projected onto a present situation.
Aversion, like desire, makes it impossible to experience the present, but lets us act according to a past conditioning. In extreme cases we walk through life like a robot. This is reflected in the term “conditioned existence” (samsara — do not mistake this for samskara). The opposite of conditioned existence is when we experience every moment with freshness, as if for the first time.
Aversion is a form of wrong cognition (viparyaya) — again, like desire. Because I identify the self or pure consciousness as being bound up with subconscious impressions of pain, I can say, “I am jealous.” This means I identify myself with the negative emotion; I have become it. If I say instead, “I, the observer, which is pure unstainable, immutable consciousness, cognize a memorized feeling of past neglect,” then I do not emote the past but can choose to feel what is present, for example the love for my partner.
Like desire, so also is aversion destroyed by discriminative knowledge (viveka khyateh).
II.9 Fear of death (abhinivesha), felt even by the wise, arises from the desire to sustain one’s existence.
The last affliction is fear — particularly fear of death, which is the root of all fears. Again, it is a form of wrong cognition (viparyaya). Because we wrongly perceive the body as the self, fear arises. Knowing the body will come to an end, we take its death to mean our destruction. Abiding in the true self, which is uncreated and therefore indestructible, will end this fear. Or should end it by all means.
But, as Patanjali writes, fear of death is felt even by the wise. Shankara comments on the use of the word “even” thus: “The force of the word even is, that fear of death is logical only in the ignorant, who think of the self as destructible. It is illogical in those of right vision, who think that the self is indestructible.”7 Vyasa points out that this means even people who should know better still think thoughts like “Let me never be nonexistent; may I always live.”
The affliction fear of death follows the same mechanism as the previous two. For example we might walk alone along a dark street and get mugged. This triggers in us an immense fear that produces a subconscious imprint of fear. Whenever in the future the appropriate situation is presented, in this case walking in a dark street, the same fear may surface again although no one is threatening us. Again, as with the previous afflictions, it is not the present situation that is the problem (walking down a dark street alone) but the remembrance of a previous condition that makes us act as a programmed robot would.
Vyasa deduces from the fact that all beings are afraid of death that they have experienced death and thus life before. The intensity with which all beings cling to life can only be explained through accepting that we all have experienced death as a process to be avoided at all costs.8 Shankara elaborates on Vyasa’s argument thus: “Unless happiness (pleasure) had been experienced no one would pray for it. Without past experience of pain, there would be no desire to avoid it. Similarly, though the pangs of death have not been (in this life) experienced by a man either directly or by inference, the fact of his lust for life points to experience of death previously, just as there can be no experience of birth unless there has been a birth.”9
Western science would deny the claim by saying that the urge to sustain one’s life is determined by instinct. Yoga rejects this explanation because nobody can explain how instinct works unless (a) it is a form of memory (this is the way yoga explains instinct, and it leads to an inference about past lives, as shown above), or (b) it operates through the existence of a collective mind or subconscious that is independent and located outside the individual. But the latter is also rejected by Western science, which believes that mind is nothing but bioelectrical impulses provoked through external stimuli. To prove their point, scientists argued that individuals would fall asleep if deprived of external stimuli such as sight, hearing, and the force of gravity.
This was proved wrong by the neurologist Dr. John Lilly, who in the 1960s invented the isolation tank. In this device one floats on a strong saline solution, which cancels out any awareness of gravitation. At the same time the isolation tank is sound- and light-proof, so that one experiences no sensory input whatsoever. Lilly found that, rather than falling asleep, he was lifted into a meditative experience. The isolation tank works like a pratyahara (sense withdrawal) device. Once the fuel of the senses is withheld, the mind is stilled and therefore meditation becomes possible.
It is the constant influx of sensory impressions that distracts us from recognizing the underlying deep reality. As sutra I.4 says, “When we cannot perceive our true nature we will identify with the contents of the mind.”
II.10 The subtle states of the afflictions are destroyed with the dissolution of the mind.
This sutra is misunderstood in some modern explanations. Often it is interpreted as providing a technique for destruction of the subtle state of the afflictions. The sutra would then suggest destroying the subtle state of the afflictions by destroying one’s mind. It is such incorrect interpretations that have given yoga the reputation of being somewhat similar to a bizarre self-annihilation cult. They are invalid for the following reasons:
• To destroy one’s mind is a form of violence (himsa), which is not acceptable in yoga.
• If the mind nevertheless was destroyed, it would render the practitioner a vegetable. Yoga is, however, a superconscious state and not an unconscious one.
• To destroy and torture one’s mind is as wrong as torturing one’s body. In the Bhagavad Gita Lord Krishna says, “Those who torture the body outrage me, the indweller of the body.” The same is to be said for torturing one’s mind.
• Mind is eternal, says Vyasa. It is without beginning and end; it is beyond destruction.
• Ramana Maharshi has rightly pointed out that to control one’s mind one needs to create a second mind. The same is the case when one tries to destroy the mind: a second mind would be needed to destroy the first mind.
• Torturing the body and destroying the mind will have only one effect: the increase of one’s ego.
To get clear about the real content of this sutra we have to look into Vyasa’s commentary. He explains that the “subtle state of the affliction” means that state in which the power of the affliction to propagate (its seed) has been parched or scorched. In other words the seed has no power left to make new afflictions sprout.
This means that, once the afflictions have been made subtle, the yogi has to take no further action, since the affliction is sterilized. To settle the matter completely we have to look in Vachaspati Mishra’s subcommentary: “That which is in the scope of the exertions of man [the dormant, alienated, interrupted, or fully active state] has been described [in the previous sutras]. But the subtle [the fifth state] is not within the scope of man’s exertion that he might escape it.”10
Shankara says, in his commentary Vivarana, “So they [the subtle states of the afflictions] do not need any practice of meditation [since they are scorched already]. No fire is needed for what is already burnt, nor any grinding for what is powdered.”11
When we take into account this information, the sutra reads as follows: The afflictions, after having reached the subtle state, need no extra meditation technique to destroy them. They are parched already and cannot sprout anymore. They (the subtle ones) will eventually be destroyed with the disappearance of the mind of the yogi.
The disappearance of the mind is beyond the exertions of man (!) It will naturally dissolve into nature (prakrti) only when the practitioner dies his or her last death.12 When yogis have become liberated they do not endeavor to destroy the body, nor do they endeavor to destroy the mind. After the natural span of this last life has come to an end, body and mind and, with them, the seed state of the afflictions will dissolve without any reappearance.
II.11 Mental processes arising from the afflictions are to be counteracted by meditation.
Vyasa writes in his commentary that the afflictions dealt with in this sutra are those in their manifest form, as opposed to the last sutra, where we were dealing with afflictions in their subtle form. Referring to Vachaspati Mishra’s comment for the last sutra, now we are “within the scope of exertions of man.” This means that we can and should do something to change the manifest state of the afflictions.
The present sutra recommends counteracting the manifest form of the affliction, also called its gross state, by contemplation and meditation. Let us recall sutra II.4, which states that an affliction can be dormant, attenuated, interrupted, or fully active. All of those four phases, representing the gross state of the afflictions, have to be counteracted by meditation until they have been made subtle. Then no further action is required.
The reduction of afflictions is divided into three stages:
1. Thinning or attenuating by Kriya Yoga.
2. Reduction by meditative insight, which is the stage that this sutra is referring to. The affliction is said to be reduced by meditating on discriminative knowledge (prasamkhyana) — the ability to discriminate what is self and what is not self.13
3. The third stage of the reduction of the afflictions is their total disappearance, which is covered in the previous sutra. The afflictions will only completely disappear at the moment the mind is dissolved. Within our scope are the first two stages, Kriya Yoga and prasamkhyana. About their relationship Vyasa says Kriya Yoga is like removing coarse dirt from a garment by brushing, and meditative insight is like removing finer impurities like a grease stain, which are washed away with care and effort.
What does prasamkhyana mean on the practical side? If I experience the affliction fear, for example,
I am to contemplate the source of fear. The source of fear is the wrong notion that the body is the true self, that I am the body. Meditating on discriminative knowledge means meditating on what I am as opposed to what I am not. Fear disappears once correct knowledge is acquired, the knowledge that I am really the self and not the body.
If I experience the affliction aversion, which is clinging to pain, then I am to meditate on the source of aversion. The source of aversion is experiencing one’s true self as bound up with the subconscious imprints (samskaras) of pain. The experience of pain is held in the subconscious, which is part of the mind, and neither of them has anything to do with the true self. Meditation here also leads to the insight that, whereas I may have experienced pain in the past, I have only witnessed it, but not become it. The witnessing entity, the consciousness, is completely unstainable; it does not mutate at all in the process of witnessing. This means that pain is a transitory sensation that does not mix with our true nature, which is eternal. Since the consciousness therefore emerges completely pure out of every situation, aversion is not necessary.
II.12 As long as our actions are based on afflictions, karma will sprout from them now and in the future.
This means that the karma, which is stored in the mind, has to be experienced in this life or in future lives, and it is rooted in the afflictions. Whenever we have an experience it will leave imprints in the subconscious (samskaras). When imprints are based on true knowledge or correct perception, they are said to be unafflicted. This means that they do not cause future suffering. Most imprints, however, arise out of ignorance and egoism, such as the notion “I am the body” and the idea that the purpose of life consists in the accumulation of material possessions. Those imprints do pose a problem. Being rooted in afflictions, they will produce karma, which will manifest in the form of new suffering.
There are subconscious imprints of varying intensity. If the intention that has produced the imprint was very strong, it will bear results immediately. So can an act of great villainy result in an immediate repercussion. The same is to be said about an act of great virtue or wisdom — the spontaneous realization of the truth can result in immediate liberation.
Most acts, however, whether vicious or virtuous, are performed with a mellower intention. Even if we do harm others, this was often not our intention, but rather it was lack of care or alertness that was the cause. When we perform good actions, our intention may often be to get more comfortable rather than to break through to a state of pure being. All those acts, which are performed with moderate intensity, will not produce immediate fruition. Rather, they accumulate and build up a store of karma in the mind, called a karmic storehouse or karmic deposit (karmashaya).
If impressions are accumulated in the karmic storehouse, the feeling may arise that they will not bear fruit, since the result is not imminent. The present sutra assures us, however, that all karma will eventually produce results that have to be experienced, whether in this life or in future lives. If the original actions that produced the imprints were based on afflictions (such as ignorance, egoism, desire), then those results will again manifest in afflictive form, meaning they will lead to suffering.
The subconscious imprints (samskaras) produce and crystallize a corresponding mind-set or conditioning (vasana). The difference between subconscious imprints and conditioning is important to understand. Repeated subconscious imprints of the same type will eventually produce a certain conditioning. If I allow myself to react violently and abusively in a certain situation, this will leave an imprint. After the first time I might still have a choice how to react. After repeated imprints my reaction will become more and more automatic. The imprints now enforce each other to produce a tendency called conditioning (vasana). Once an affliction-based conditioning is in place, I will always display a robotic tendency to create more suffering. Although even such a conditioning can be changed, it is much easier to intercept if we are only in the imprint stage.
Every time we become aware that we are acting on the basis of an affliction, such as past egoism, pain, desire, or fear, we need to make a conscious choice to let go of this tendency. This sutra reminds us that all suffering we inflict will return to us eventually.
Shankara explains in his subcommentary why some actions take a long time to yield results while others have their effects immediately. He gives the analogy that in agriculture some seeds sown in the fields germinate quickly, while others take a long time to sprout, depending on the quality and type of seed. Similarly the seed of karmic imprint in the mind will sprout fast or slowly depending on its quality, meaning the intensity of the action that produced it.
II.13 As long as this root of the afflictions, the karmic storehouse, exists, it will bear fruit in the form of types of birth, span of life, and experience [of pleasure and pain].
The root of the afflictions (kleshamula) is the storehouse of karma. As long as this root exists, it will always sprout into new embodiments. The type of karma being stored determines our species, class and circumstance of birth, the length of our life span, and the amount and quality of experience therein. Shyam Gosh describes the mechanism of rebirth in the following way: “The situation driving future embodiments must provide necessary opportunity to consume one’s karma through suitable experiences of pleasure and pain.”14
Vyasa points out that the seeds of the afflictions will continue to sprout as long as they are not scorched by meditation. Because our meditation did not succeed in our last life, we accumulated newkarma, which resulted in our present embodiment and its accompanying suffering. It is necessary to point out that the type, span, and experience of our next birth cannot be predicted. It is not dependent on our experience right now but on the predominant type of karma in the storehouse. If we have exhausted the good karma from our present embodiment, we could have a couple of low births coming up, which makes for a very insecure situation. We must therefore now, in this life, being in the fortunate position that all this knowledge is presented to us, make every effort to break through to freedom. Every life as a human being that is not spent in pursuit of liberation is a waste of a good chance.
According to the scriptures there are many types of rebirths apart from the human kind. Embodied as an animal, one is too unconscious to strive for liberation. Embodiment as a demon or a celestial being is infinitely more powerful than a human one, but they are too absorbed either in their wrath and malice (demons) or in their pleasure and beauty (celestials) to worry too much about freedom. Only human birth provides the right mix of pleasure and pain for the individual to still remain reflective while wanting to break free from enslavement to the mind.
Vyasa also points out another important aspect of karmic deposit (karmashaya). Karma that has not come to fruition yet can be destroyed before it sprouts. There are certain things in our lives that we cannot change because they fall under the category of karma that is bearing fruit already (prarabda karma). The seeds of this karma have sprouted and must be accepted as ordained and therefore endured, according to Vyasa. However, the entire storehouse of dormant karma that is waiting to fructify in some life to come can and must be intercepted now.
In many ways a new embodiment is like a game of dice: one can never predict how it will turn out. Some sages went on to an animal rebirth because, although they had performed great deeds, the strongest idea present in their subconscious at death was coincidentally an animalistic one. On the other hand great evildoers have gone on to become great liberated sages in the same lifetime. In his youth, the Tibetan master Milarepa murdered thirty-five people through black magic, yet went on to become one of the greatest mystics. This became possible because he worked harder on his liberation than possibly any other human being has ever done. Driven by the knowledge of the terrible destiny that awaited him should he die before attaining liberation, he meditated for twenty years naked in a Himalayan cave, without food and surrounded by ice. Such extreme forms of practice are not necessary if we have not been involved in such negative actions.
II.14 Their fruit is pleasurable or painful, depending on the merit or demerit of their cause.
Here is the reason for strict ethics in yoga. It is not that the masters want to take the fun out of life; it is just that, by our actions yesterday, we created who we are today. Similarly, our actions today will determine who we will be tomorrow. The body will necessarily hurt during morning practice if we become intoxicated the night before. We might not even be able to face practice at all, depending on how intense the indulgence was.
If there is any form of pain in our lives, we need to analyze the cause, which is demeritorious action, and eliminate it. If no cause is apparent, then according to yogic philosophy it is hidden in a past life. Those consequences must be endured, since the cause has been completed and has started to fructify, and for those reasons cannot be changed. Apart from our not taking responsibility for the fact that we have, in the past, brought about today’s suffering, there is another dangerous tendency to be looked at in this context.
Often we are too superficial in analyzing the cause of our suffering, which could be faulty practice. We then happily escape into apathy and the feeling that “yoga is meant to hurt,” whereas we are actually too lazy to research more deeply or are too stuck in our ways to change.
If we have managed to maneuver ourselves into a fortunate position through meritorious actions in the past, we would do well not to rest on it. The merit will surely become exhausted, and then we’ll stand the chance of backsliding. Ideally a pleasant situation will be used for practice and study. In short, this is the time for doing things that will lead to our awakening; they are much harder to tackle when the water is up to our necks. Since the entire world is in constant flux, hard times can be around the next corner, even if it looks as though we have everything under control.
These attitudes will lead to the detachment that will enable us to meet the pain to come. Yoga advises us never to rely on the continuation of pleasure. You may enjoy it while it lasts as long as there is no attachment to it. If attachment develops, you will depend on the continuation of those particular pleasures to sustain your happiness and freedom. Remember: there is nothing permanent apart from consciousness.
We also need to look at the fact that pleasure and pain are still part of the pair of opposites that Patanjali15 and the Bhagavad Gita suggest we escape from. The Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu says in theTao Te Ching, “Define beauty and you create ugliness. Create right and you define wrong. Better to return into the ocean of Tao.” Tao is here the Chinese equivalent of the Brahman.
If we look at this group of sutras that deal with karma, we could easily gain the impression that yoga is a simplistic “do good and shun evil” type of spirituality. This is far from the reality. In yoga, liberation is reached through the mystical experience. Ethics are the groundwork, the base camp from which we climb to the summit. They are important because they keep our life simple and straightforward. Without them we would become entangled in the mesh of conditioned existence (samsara), so that the mystical experience would become unlikely.
THE IMPORTANCE OF ETHICS
Swami Agehananda Bharati made the attempt to disconnect ethics entirely from liberation.16 He claimed that the mystical experience was entirely free of value, since it did not lead to a particular code of ethics. The swami overlooked the fact that any malice, any ill will toward a fellow being, comes out of not knowing oneself. If knowledge is gained, one knows one’s own self as the self of all beings, and therefore hurting someone else is like hurting oneself.
Furthermore people act unethically for personal gain. When one realizes one’s self, one knows oneself not only as the self that shines on one’s personal life but as the self that shines light on existence in its entirety. After that, no more personal gain is possible: there is nothing that is separate from one’s self any more. At this point ethics are not anymore imposed from the outside but come naturally from within.
Ethics are part of the life of a mystic, but, if they are used to replace samadhi and mystical practice, they are overemphasized and the system we are looking at is not true yoga anymore. Not only are ethics alone a highly ineffective tool to attain freedom, they can be used to enslave humans further. Placing more and more and stricter rules on people often leads to the rules being grudgingly adhered to and then secretly broken. Or it leads to communicating to practitioners that they can never be good enough however hard they try (a problem for monks in some orders who are expected to adhere to as many as five hundred rules). Some members of the Jain religion drink water and breathe through a filter so as not to ingest and thereby kill micro-organisms; they also constantly sweep the path in front of them to avoid stepping on and killing small insects.
If ethics rule the life of humanity through guilt and shame, they are just another tool used by the mind to increase its tyranny over us. They need to come from inside; then they are liberating. Another great danger with ethics is that those imposing them on others often themselves fail to live up to them. It is interesting how many priests, gurus, and so-called saints in the last fifty years have preached celibacy (brahmacharya) and then been found to have had illegitimate sexual relationships, often with children and/or multiple partners.
A strict set of ethics, once mastered, can also be used to boost one’s ego and assert one’s superiority over others. There was a man who got up every day at 4 AM, was a vegetarian, and neither smoked nor drank. He had no sex. The man claimed to be a messiah, and many believed in him. His name was Adolf Hitler.
Inner freedom can never be attained by following a set of rules, a formula. Freedom is awareness. Any set of rules will be used by the mind and ego to build a new prison. The rejection of all rules, however, is just a new formula. The way out is, rather than through creating yet another set of rules, turning around and becoming aware of that which needs no regulation, that which breathes life into everything and therefore cannot be opposed to life. When that is seen, great compassion for all living beings arises spontaneously from the heart and does not have to be imposed by the mind. Then we become living ethics, whereas before we tried to simulate life through a dead set of rules.
Ethics can never replace mystical insight, but they clear the way to getting there.
II.15 To the discerning one, all is but pain due to the conflict of the fluctuating gunas, anguish through change, and the pain caused by subconscious impression.
Every experience in which we fall short of realizing our true nature as infinite consciousness leads in the end to suffering. The reason we are not aware of this right now is that, due to our past experience of pain, we have become numb and insensitive.
The apparently pleasurable poses a different problem. Whereas outright pain might drive us to seek for what is eternal (consciousness), pleasure has the tendency to strengthen the bond with what is impermanent (the body). The more pleasure we experience, the more we identify with the vehicle through which we experience — the body, the senses and the mind.
At one point in our lives we realize that the body will fall apart, making pleasure inaccessible, and we react with fear. We start hunting for more pleasure to cover up this fear. Often we expect pleasure and are unhappy because it doesn’t come. Or we remember pleasure and can therefore not enjoy what the present moment has to offer. Pleasure tends to draw our thoughts into the past (to pleasure we once had) or into the future (to anticipated pleasure). Both will lead us away from the present.
Please do not understand yoga wrongly here: yoga does not want to spoil your pleasure. But if you are on the quest for freedom (kaivalya) and bliss (ananda), you have to understand that nothing transitory will get you there. Along with wealth, pleasure has become the god of Western society. Our society had to take on these deities because we have lost all knowledge of our true nature. The Buddha taught that all pleasure is pain, because inevitably we will lose everything pleasant that we have attached ourselves to. Then we will experience pain.
In Western society we are promised that pleasure-seeking is the way to happiness, and we most admire those who are most driven to fulfilling their desires. The Indian idea of happiness is the absence of hankering after enjoyment, which is contentment. Think about it. Giving up the idea that we have to reach out for satisfaction allows us to realize the happiness that is already here. Being deep within us, it doesn’t rely on external stimuli. Pleasure-seeking will in fact lead to pain, according to yoga.
This mechanism is realized by the discerning one (vivekinah) — a person who discerns between self and not-self. For one who has seen the light of the self, pleasures are no match for abiding in limitless freedom. Once you have seen the ocean, the pond in your backyard is no big deal anymore. The pond in this simile is conditioned existence (samsara), the cycle of rebirth. This conditioned existence is painful compared to the ecstasy of becoming one with the ocean of infinite consciousness (Brahman).
What causes this samsaric pain, the pain that occurs in conditioned existence? Patanjali lists three causes of pain the discerning one is aware of, that brought about by subconscious imprint (samskara) being the most personal. For example a girl who has had an abusive, violent father will carry subconscious imprints from the experience. These imprints will tend to draw her into relationships with abusive, violent partners when she is grown up. Every experience leaves an imprint that calls for its repetition. Some (but not all) forms of psychotherapy do not reconcile well with yoga, insofar as they embrace the idea that traumas stored deep within should be brought to the surface, relived, and then (so the theory goes) let go. According to yoga, reliving the trauma will strengthen the grip it has on us and actually create new imprints that call forth further traumatic experience.
In other words, the reliving of a trauma makes it less likely that we can let go of it. New Age-like expressions such as “I’ve had a lot of stuff coming up” or “I’m going through an intense process at the moment” are really a sign of deeper and deeper enmeshing in conditioning, leading to further experience of pain.
An interesting current in contemporary Western culture has it that emotions are somehow closer to the truth than thought. Having suppressed emotion for a long time, we now try to make up for lost time. In yoga, emotions are seen only as another form of mind, no less robotic than thought. Emotions are really only feelings based on past situations. If I am feeling lonely, for example, this feeling relates only to the present moment. If, however, the absence of loved ones triggers in me an overall experience of rejection, cut-off-ness from others, and my inability to communicate, then I should properly say I am “emoting” loneliness. The loneliness is a past experience that “comes up” in present time, a general tendency in the mind that awakens when its object (absence of loved ones) is presented.
Being emotional is therefore opposed to being in the present moment. From the yogic viewpoint it merely amounts to thinking about the past or longing for past sensations. Emotions are clearly not our true nature. The power that is aware of emotions, that presence to which emotions arise, is our true nature (consciousness).
The person who sees this difference is the discerning one (vivekinah). To him or her even the opposite of trauma is still pain, since it is a reaction to pain. Only being in the self is one forever free.
After noting subconscious imprinting as the internal cause of pain, Patanjali enumerates two external causes. The first is the constant flux of the qualities (gunas) of nature. I use the English term “nature” here for prakrti, but let us remember that it has nothing to do with saving the whales or the rainforest, noble causes though these are. Prakrti is the origin of the cosmic intelligence that is the blueprint for the DNA code, the structure of molecules and the movement of galaxies around each other. This origin of cosmic intelligence or nature manifests the world through its three strands or qualities: rajas, tamas, and sattva. They are thought to make up, in different and changing proportions, everything in the world — excluding consciousness, which is not of the world.
Vyasa points out that, since one guna cannot make anything of itself, all objects consist of combinations of mass-stuff (tamas), energy-stuff (rajas), and intelligence-stuff (sattva).17
The attractiveness and enjoyability of an object will change considerably with perspective, observer, and time. The advertising industry worships the beauty of the female form as the perfect advertising tool, and many consumers are duped, even though we know how the body will change in just a few decades. From a different viewpoint the body might look much less enticing. As one sutra commentator has observed, “The girl that you married at twenty might have looked like an angel to you. At thirty she might look like a demon to you and possibly like an angel to somebody else.” This is how the perspective of the observer might change without the object necessarily changing much.
This brings us to the third and last form of suffering, the anguish through constant transformation or change. Our natural tendency is to create system-like relationships: family, homes, circles of friends, company, neighborhoods, clubs, communities, societies, estates, cultures, nations, and empires, which give us a frame in which to settle down and get cosy. But all systems contain entropy, which constantly changes them until they break down.
Entropy manifests in the form of the death of the human body, the break-up of relationships and families, the bankruptcy of companies, the destruction of neighborhoods through racial unrest, terrorist attacks or bombing, the destruction of nations through war and civil war, and the fall of empires through decadence and idiocy. All such changes bring about anguish in the people who experience them. Even if the change doesn’t mean we are worse off, the insecurity of having to change engenders fear.
For these three reasons the discerning one looks at the world and experience as painful. We can make this judgment because we know the only state that is not painful. This is the ecstasy and freedom of the natural state, which is the true state of yoga.
II.16 The pain that is yet to come is to be avoided.
All experiences based on afflictions are painful, says sutra II.15. The affliction-based experiences fill up the karmic storehouse, which leads to new suffering.
We can distinguish three forms of karma. First there is the karma that we have created in the past and has come to fruition already. This karma has produced our current body, with a certain frame of life span, type of birth and death, and type of experience. Within that frame, which we have to accept to a certain extent, there is still a lot we can change. But even if we do everything right we shouldn’t be discouraged by setbacks but accept them as results of our own previous ignorance rather than looking to others to take responsibility for them.
The second type is the karma that has been created but not yet come to fruition. Its fruition has been intercepted by the karma that has given us our present body. We do not know what this karma has in store for us, and it must be interrupted. It could be that we have exhausted our good karma with this existence and might fall back into lower forms of embodiment. This has to be avoided. The Yoga Vashishta, which contains the teachings of the great Rishi Vasishta, claims that any karma can be intercepted and there is no karmic destiny for one of true self-effort. Indeed, there is evidence that destiny is modified with an increase in effort. If you believe you can change your destiny, your chances of doing so are improved. Let us make a firm resolve to intercept karma that is still in residue mode, karmathat has not sprouted yet.
The third type is the karma we are producing now. This karma will, as we have learned already, produce immediate results if it is strong; otherwise it will accumulate in the karmic storehouse. In both cases it will produce new suffering, as shown in the last sutra. The only way to avoid future suffering is to awaken now.
Many people entertain the belief that death will somehow cure all our troubles automatically. Some hope that a deity will transport us to some elusive abode of bliss, whereas the materialists hope death will take care of our problems by switching us off. However, the belief that death solves our spiritual problems is, according to I. K. Taimni, an absurdity comparable to the belief that night solves our economic problems.18 Just because it is dark and you can’t see the unpaid bills on the table anymore, they don’t go away. Similarly, just because the light of your embodiment has been switched off, your karmic responsibilities haven’t gone away.
Materialism gave rise to the illusion that we can act according to our liking without the need to feel any responsibility. Many materialists literally behave as if there is no tomorrow. According to their belief, whatever crimes one has committed, at the end of one’s life one is simply released into the all-forgetting and all-erasing embrace of death. Why then should one go through all the effort to evolve?
Yoga says we will come back to harvest the fruit of our actions. If we do not want to harvest the fruit of pain, then we are not to sow its seed. The next sutras will explain how future pain is intercepted.
II.17 The cause of that which is to be avoided [pain] is the union of the seer and the seen.
There are many popular misconceptions about yoga, especially in New Age circles. Yoga is called the union of body, mind, and soul, and books suggest to us that happiness lies in the complete union of the doer and the doing. “Become one with all that is” is another popular phrase. Patanjali brushes all of these concepts away with the statement that the cause of suffering is that very union of seer and seen. Exactly the union that contemporary misconception tells us to seek, the ancient teachers identified as the root cause of all suffering.
Vyasa says that, like a treatise on medicine, which is divided in four parts — disease, cause of disease, the healthy state, and the remedy — so also yoga has four parts. The disease is conditioned existence (samsara); the cause of the disease is the false union of the seer and the seen, perceived through ignorance; the healthy state is freedom (kaivalya), which we can also translate as transcendental aloneness, because consciousness stands free and untouched by the world. The remedy to reach this healthy state is discriminative knowledge (viveka khyateh) or knowledge of the difference between the seer and the seen.
Vyasa also points out that the self/consciousness cannot be acquired and cannot be avoided, which destroys the notion of a spiritual path, because there is nowhere to go. It also destroys the notions of progress and process. Being eternal, uncreated, and immutable, consciousness cannot be attained. It observes, sheds light on the attempt to attain it, but does not change in the process.
The system that deals with this realization is the Vedanta. It is the most direct path to freedom, but many people cannot understand that they are free already. The yoga system is designed for those who are somewhat more ignorant. They need the illusion of going somewhere in order eventually to awaken to the realization that they never were separate from their goal. In other words it is a very down-to-earth, forgiving approach compared to the lofty heights of Vedanta, which is an intellectually more advanced way.
In the previous sutras Patanjali explained the five afflictions, concluding with the statement that, to the discerning one, all conditioned existence is pain. Conditioned existence is described here as the first part of the medical system, the disease. Now he focuses on the second aspect of medicine, its cause. His diagnosis is that the cause is the false union of the seer and the seen. The seer is consciousness (purusha), which is awareness. The seen is not only the entire world of objects but also the inner instrument (antahkarana), consisting of intellect, mind, and ego.
Imagine sitting in front of a screen and watching a horror movie. If you identify with the characters on the screen, if you are sucked into the film, suffering the horror will become real. You may start to sweat and your heart may beat faster. The way out of this suffering is to realize that it is not your life that is being enacted on the screen: you are just observing it. In the same way yoga says that we — consciousness — are not the agent, not the acting principle in the world. Rather, we are the pure awareness to which body, mind, ego arise. The egoic body/mind is seen as part of the environment (prakrti) and not as our true nature (purusha). The same idea is stated in the Bhagavad Gita at stanza II.27: “Actions are done in all cases by the gunas of prakrti. He whose mind is deluded through egoism thinks, I am the doer.”19
Let us recall that in sutra II.6 Patanjali defines egoism as combining the two powers of seer and seeing into a single entity. Here, in II.17, he gives a more universal statement, with the seen also encompassing seeing, which is the cognitive principle. The two sutras state that we are neither the seeing (mind) nor the seen (world), but the consciousness. To identify our self (which is pure, content-less, limit-less, quality-less, infinite consciousness) with our mind, our ego or its contents is defined here as the cause of suffering.
II.18 The seen is made up of the qualities light, action, and inertia, and of the elements and sense organs. It exists for the purpose of experience and liberation.
Patanjali describes here the seen, the world. He uses the terms prakasha, kriya, and sthiti, but their meaning is exactly the same as the Samkhya words sattva (light/wisdom), rajas (movement/activity), andtamas (dullness/inertia), the three strands of nature (prakrti) that form, in various intertwinings, all phenomena.
The objects of the macrocosm (world) exist in the form of the five elements: ether, air, fire, water, and earth. In the microcosm (the human being) they exist in the form of the inner instrument, which consists of intellect, ego, and mind, and the outer instrument (body), which consists of the five sense functions and the five functions of action. The gunas, the elements and the inner and outer instrument together form the seen. Different from that is the seer, consciousness (purusha).
Important here is that, according to Patanjali, the seen does not operate without a purpose. Rather it acts to provide us with an opportunity to experience and then to liberate ourselves. The world, according to Yoga, is like a stage on which will be enacted the lessons that we need in order to realize ourselves as consciousness. These lessons — we call them experiences — are not predominantly pleasant, but they have the right mixture of pleasure and pain to help us eventually to go beyond both. According to Patanjali, the world does not exist out of itself but only for the need to realize consciousness. In Samkhya Karika V.58 it is said that, even as people engage in actions for the sake of desires, so also does prakrti manifest itself for the sake of purusha.
This manifesting for the sake of consciousness results in experience and liberation. Experience means experience of pleasure and pain, which is also called bondage. After we have had a certain amount of experience, we recognize we are different from all that is experienced and therefore transitory. We then recognize ourselves as the only category of existence that is eternal and unchangeable, the consciousness.
The relationship between consciousness and the world can be likened to that between the sun and a flower. When the sun rises, the flower turns toward it and opens. When the sun describes its path in the sky, the flower traces its movement. When finally the sun sets, the flower closes. Throughout this entire process the sun is completely unchanged.
It would perform exactly the same movement if no flower were present. The flower, on the other hand, is completely dependent on the sun. Without the light of the sun the flower cannot exist.
As the flower needs the sun, so the world needs the consciousness. When the consciousness shines its light of awareness, the flower of prakrti turns toward it and opens. The world follows the path of the sun of consciousness until it sets, when the end of a world age has come and the world becomes unmanifest. As the sun is completely unchanged during the night, so also the sun of consciousness does not undergo any change whatsoever during the manifold transformations of the world. Like the sun, the consciousness is completely free, existing only out of itself. Like the flower, the world is dependent on the light of consciousness.
II.19 The gunas have four states: gross, subtle, manifest, and unmanifest.
Before the world arises, the three gunas are in equilibrium, and nature (prakrti) exists only in its unmanifest form. This can be likened to the state of the universe before the Big Bang. You could say it didn’t exist, but really it did exist as a potential, as a seed state. Vyasa explains that the unmanifest (alinga) state of prakrti is neither existing nor nonexisting, neither real nor unreal. We can understand this only if we leave behind the tenets of Aristotelian logic, which formed the bedrock of Greek philosophy and all Western philosophy after it. Western logic says that if A is right and B is wrong, A cannot be equal to B. This is the logic of the mind.
Eastern or paradox logic we can call the logic of consciousness. Consciousness is the container that brings forth all possibilities. All possibilities therefore need to be included in the logic of consciousness. According to paradox logic, if A is right and B is wrong, then A and B can be identical, nonidentical, both identical and nonidentical at the same time, or neither of the two. All these possibilities appear in consciousness, but they do not appear to the limited simplistic human mind.
The second state of the gunas is the manifest state. According to the Rishi Vyasa, cosmic intellect or intelligence arises out of the unmanifest prakrti. Intellect is for this reason called the first evolute ofprakrti. When we practice meditation (involute), intellect then obviously is the last thing to become unmanifest. Out of the manifest arises the subtle state of the gunas. This produces ego and the subtle essences (tanmatras). First ego emerges; then ego or cosmic I-maker (ahamkara) casts the notion of I on whatever the intelligence perceives. Ego owns phenomena; without ego no world could arise. After ego arise the five subtle essences of the elements, which have also been called infra-atomic potentials. We have to understand them as the deep essences or physical laws of the elements according to which all phenomena and occurrences develop. They are essences of sound, touch, form, taste, and smell.
The last state of the gunas lets the sixteen gross categories arise. From the five subtle essences (tanmatras) arise the five gross elements (mahabhutas). From essence of sound arises space. From essence of touch arises air, from essence of form arises fire, essence of taste produces water, and essence of smell produces the element earth. The difficulty in understanding these concepts lies in the difficulty of translating the terms into English. They are only properly understood once they are seen in meditation.
From ego then arises the group of eleven. This comprises the five sense functions (hearing, touching, seeing, tasting, smelling) and the five functions of action (speech, grasping, locomotion, excretion, procreation). The eleventh and last is the mind (manas).
It is interesting to see that the three constituents or divisions of the inner instrument (chitta) emerge over three transmutations of the gunas. This might explain why they have such extremely different functions. The manifest gunas produce the intellect; the gunas in their subtle state develop ego; finally, from the gunas in their gross state emerges mind. The process of the gunas moving from unmanifest to gross is called evolution. In this process the world is projected out. The process of the gunas moving from gross to unmanifest is called involution. This is the process of yoga, and here spiritual ecstasy and freedom are attained.
The term “evolution” in Western thinking includes the notion of progress. In Indian philosophy there is no progress, since infinite consciousness (Brahman) is beyond time. Nothing is created; everything is eternal. Evolution therefore means a movement down and outward, from intelligence toward the earth element. The process of yoga is called involution, which is inward and up toward consciousness.
II.20 The seer is pure consciousness. Although it appears to take on the forms of the phenomena that it merely observes, it really stays unaffected.
Vyasa explains that the intellect (buddhi) is changeable in the way that it either knows or does not know about an object. The seer (purusha) is unchangeable because it is ever aware of what the intellect presents. It cannot look away and ignore it. Therefore it is immutable awareness. If we remember the space nature of consciousness, we know that all phenomena arise within it. Consciousness cannot decide to exclude and reject certain objects and it cannot hanker after or desire others because by nature it forever contains everything. Whoever has understood, contemplated, and experienced this is a knower, and forever free.
The difference between intellect and consciousness is that the intellect cognizes and interprets sensory input pretty much in the way that a computer does. Like a computer it is totally unconscious. On the other hand the seer — the consciousness — does not modify sensory input at all: it merely witnesses. The Rishi Panchasikha explains that the seer (consciousness) follows the modifications of the intellect.20 On the one hand this makes the intellect appear to be conscious; on the other hand consciousness appears to modify sensory input.
When we start on the path of meditation we need first to choose gross objects because they are easy to contemplate. In the Ashtanga Vinyasa system we start by meditating on the moving human body, which is a gross object. It includes also the outer or anatomical breath. This stage is called asana. Once we have achieved that, without losing our focus during the practice we start focusing on the movement of the inner breath (prana), which is a subtle object. This stage is called pranayama.
After we are firmly established in our subtle focus, we start contemplating the senses, the process of perception, which is yet subtler. This stage is called pratyahara. Subtilizing our focus even more, we contemplate the mind, which is the master sense and collector of sensory input. This is dharana. Once we can hold our focus there, we start to meditate on pure I-sense, dhyana. The highest form of meditation is to meditate on the difference between the intellect (buddhi) and consciousness (purusha). This is objective (samprajnata) samadhi. After one has established the difference and abides in consciousness, it is called objectless (asamprajnata) samadhi.
In this state of right knowledge the false appearance, according to which the seer takes on the forms of the phenomena, which it only observes, is dispersed. Then the self is rightfully seen as unaffected. The Armenian mystic Georg I. Gurdjieff called this “self-remembrance,” a term that is infinitely more elegant than “self-realization.” The self has always been real; we haven’t. The self, as the Rishi Ramana affirms, is reality itself; in fact he goes so far as to say it is the only reality.21 We, having attributed the light of consciousness to our mind, accepted the changing content of the mind as our nature. For this reason we have to remember ourselves as our self, the unchangeable, infinite consciousness.
II.21 By its very nature the seen exists only for the purpose of the seer.
This statement is in accordance with the Samkhya Karika, which says the world is brought forth by prakrti for the purpose of liberation of purusha.22 It has no other purpose than to provide experience for consciousness (purusha), which will eventually lead to liberation.
Consciousness is forever inactive; it only witnesses. One of the few words we can use to describe consciousness is awareness. Shankara in his sub-commentary rightly points out, however, that it is only aware as long as an object is presented.23 That means the quality of awareness pertains to the relationship between the subject consciousness and the object presented to it to be aware of. This is crucial to our understanding, as it offers the reason for the arising of the world. It takes the arising of the world for consciousness to display awareness.
For the practitioner of physical yoga it is important to remember that the human body is not an end in itself. Its only reason to exist is to be a vehicle of action for consciousness. We need not get too attached, therefore, to performing hundreds of fancy postures, which are of little use by themselves. They perform a purpose only if they point toward liberation, which they do if done in the right context. They are an obstacle to true yoga if they are engaged in to boost the ego or for the purpose of self-gratification. Since by nature the seen exists only for the purpose of consciousness, once this purpose is fulfilled it rightfully ceases to be manifest. The purpose of the world is to provide experience and liberation; once this is achieved, the world and the body cease to be manifest.
This cessation, though, is not complete. It only means that the gunas fold back from the gross, through the subtle and manifest, into the unmanifest (alinga) state of nature (prakrti). Why is this the case? Why does prakrti not cease altogether? The next sutra will explain.
II.22 Although the seen ceases to be manifest as far as a liberated purusha is concerned, it may continue to manifest for others, which are still in bondage.
Let us look at the Shaivite24 universe of creation. Brahman, the infinite consciousness, here has two poles. They are Shiva, which represents the Samkhya principle of consciousness, and Shakti, which represents Samkhya’s nature. Shiva rests in the crown chakra, which is represented on earth by Mount Kailash. Shakti condenses and crystallizes through void, intellect, ego, ether, air, fire, water, and earth, and eventually rests as the serpent power (variously called Shakti or kundalini) coiled in the base chakra.
The important fact is that when Shakti rests in the base chakra self-awareness is lost and the world arises. This is the process of evolution. When we start the process of yoga we help Shakti to subtilize and reascend through the chakras and elements until she is reunited with her lover consciousness, Shiva. At this point self-consciousness is gained and awareness of the world ceases. The system here described is Kashmir Shaivism, created by the Masters Vasugupta and Abhinavagupta. Their work formed the foundation of tantric philosophy.
Tantric schools use the same categories as Patanjali and the original Samkhya. The difference is that they personalize them and clothe them in a sexual metaphor, the unification of Shiva and Shakti. At the time of the rise of Tantra, many people experienced the older schools as too intellectually abstract. Giving the Samkhya categories a human face and sexual identity proved successful. It also provided a beautiful explanation for why the world loses any relevance for an awakened one. We have to remember, though, that it is not something entirely new but a reinterpretation of ancient wisdom.
Shaivism is a devotional path with personal deities, and yet it comes to the same conclusion as the analytical Samkhya approach. Advaitic25 sages such as Ramana Maharshi also testify that awareness of the world ceases for one who sees the light of the self.
There is an important misunderstanding here to be aware of. Some modern authors, often inspired by Vedanta and Buddhism, have described yoga as a cult of self-annihilation. This view shows a lack of understanding of Patanjali’s system. The sutra here clearly states that, for the liberated yogi, awareness of the world ceases and not awareness of the true self. This means that, after freedom is achieved, we are permanently established in awareness of consciousness. This is a state entirely different from annihilation; it is, rather, limitless freedom and ecstasy. That which could limit — the world of appearances — is lost out of sight, since it has served its purpose.
However, although the world has lost any significance for the liberated one, it continues to provide its service for those who still need it. Luckily so: otherwise each world would provide service only for one liberated individual. But since nature performs her service “selflessly”26 for the sake of all purushas, she continues to work for all others. We see here already the motherly quality of nature, which was later elaborated into the concept of the mother goddess Shakti.
When we compare such different approaches as Patanjali’s Yoga of Concentration, the Advaita (nondualistic) approach of reflection, and the Bhakti approach of surrender, we notice that they sometimes differ very much in terms of philosophy. For a scholar it makes a big difference whether a system is dualistic or monistic, qualified monistic, or unqualified monistic. For the mystic these categories are of no importance: the systems are different roads to the same place. One road might go along the beach, another over the mountains, a third through the jungle. Which road one takes is only a matter of individual preference; it’s not that one is better than the other. All systems are but simulations of reality, each one better suited to a particular type of personality. None of them can be a complete representation of reality, since they are creations of the mind and by nature the mind is incapable of reproducing reality as it truly is.
The millennia-old squabble of scholars about who has the better system merely amounts to discussing who has the right personality. Since all the philosophical systems based on the Upanishads describe the path to the mystical experience for different personality types, each of them works for that particular personality. It might not work for another. All of them therefore exist in their own right only as far as they are capable of leading people to liberation. If a system is logically more sound than another, but cannot free people, it is worthless and must be discarded.
On the path to liberation one must also free oneself from the categories of the mind such as logic. After all, reality itself is paradoxical and all-including, not logical, analytical, and exclusive. The mind is only a tool that we use like a muscle. If the mind gets control of us and uses us, it is called bondage. The result of the tyranny of the mind can be seen in five thousand years of warfare and atrocities.
To illustrate the conflict between systems, let us look at the Samkhya concept of purusha (consciousness), of which Samkhya says there are many.
This seems to be opposed to the Vedanta concept of atman, of which there is only one. A similar conflict existed in physics when light was described as either being a particle or a wave. There was supporting evidence for both views, and each view excluded the other and proved the other wrong. But both schools of thought were helpful if applied in certain situations. Eventually physicists agreed to say that under certain circumstances light displays wave characteristics and under different circumstances it has particle characteristics. After the opponents got over who was right or wrong, they managed to find a description that could help all.
The same is the case with consciousness. It is neither Samkhyite nor Vedantic nor Buddhist. Under certain circumstances it behaves like Samkhya’s purusha, and to use the purusha concept will help us then to understand what consciousness is. In a different situation, from another viewpoint, it behaves like the vedantic atman, and then this view is helpful. In a third situation it will be more helpful to work with the Buddhist notion of emptiness (shunyata). We will then realize that consciousness is (a) many, (b) one, (c) both and, (d) none of them. This is necessarily so, since consciousness contains everything. If we were to observe something that does not embrace (a)–(d), then that by definition could not be consciousness.
We must use the upanishadic systems to realize ourselves as consciousness without getting attached to one of them. Otherwise we will develop an agenda, which means we’ll attempt to stake out intellectual territory. The focus is then on not whether I abide in truth but whether I’m right and somebody else is wrong. Then we have fallen again into the traps of the mind, taking a concept for reality. The systems are important because they can help us become ourselves. But after that, when deep reality (Brahman) is seen, they have no more importance.
II.23 The meeting [of the seer and seen] causes the understanding of the nature of the two powers of owner and the owned.
Patanjali describes an important paradox here. Why, scholars have asked, does consciousness entangle itself in the world? Why does it become bound only to be liberated again? Why does it not remain pure consciousness in the first place, without letting a world come into being?
These are typical useless questions of the mind. To become preoccupied with answering them will lead to an increase of the rule of the mind over us. The world is here and we are part of it. Or more precisely we are the containing matrix in which it arises. And since this matrix is all-encompassing, every world that can arise will arise in it. This matrix, Brahman, is the womb of everything and has unlimited potential. Just as a mother, when the time has come to give birth, can’t run away and refuse to have it happen, so consciousness has to be aware of whatever is presented to it. To make a judgment is not within the capacity of consciousness, since it is formless.
The sutra says that the meeting of subject and object brings about understanding of the nature of the two. If the meeting did not happen, the subject would never become a seer or owner because there would be nothing to see. Consciousness would never be realized as limitless space, since space is only significant when objects and sentient beings occur within it. In other words it takes the occurrence of the world, the seen, to bring out the space nature of consciousness. It takes the arising of the seen for the seer to experience itself as the seer.
In other words, if the seer doesn’t see anything, he or she is not a seer after all. Consciousness that is not presented with objects (the world) to be aware of cannot develop its quality of awareness.
Shankara uses the metaphor of a mirror and a face reflected in it. Only through the meeting of both and the subsequent depiction of one in the other can the nature of both be apprehended. Consciousness works in a very similar way to the mirror. The nature of both can only be experienced when objects are presented. In both cases one will be drawn first to enjoy and perceive the objects arising in them. After consecutive representations of objects, one is then drawn to the mirror/consciousness quality of faithfully representing what appears in them without interfering or modifying it at all. This is the quality of consciousness: it does not act.
The mind can be likened to an artist who paints our image. The painter will represent his perspective, his impression of us, and his mood; in fact his entire past will collaborate to produce his representation of us. This might possibly be much more flattering than looking in the mirror, but, as Patanjali says in sutra II.20, “The seer only sees, having no intention at all.” And this is exactly how the mirror sees: without any intention of making things more beautiful or more ugly. Presenting an object causes no change in the mirror (well, unless it’s a hammer or brick presented with great force). Looking at this quality, we can understand the immutability of consciousness, which is untouched by any occurrence.
Vyasa explains in his commentary that the seer meets the seen for the purpose of seeing. From that seeing arises knowledge of the nature of the world, which is called experience or bondage. After enough bondage is experienced, there arises from it knowledge of the nature of the seer, which is liberation. This is the yogic view in a nutshell. But, continues Vyasa, experience of the world is not the cause of liberation, since liberation is the end or absence of bondage. Bondage is caused by misapprehension, whereas liberation is caused by discrimination. It appears that we have to go through a process of misapprehension before we can discriminate. This process is called samsara, conditioned existence.
II.24 The cause of this meeting is ignorance.
Ignorance (avidya), the master affliction, has already been described in sutra II.5. Ignorance is the belief system that results from false knowledge (viparyaya).
This false knowledge makes us believe that we are the body, that we are our emotions and thoughts. Viparyaya is defined in sutra I.8 as wrong knowledge without foundation in reality. Reality is that which is permanent. Returning to the metaphor of the TV screen, we can note that, however many pictures are displayed on the screen, none will ever stick to it. New pictures will always replace them. Once the film is over, the screen will be empty. The only thing permanent here is the screen, which means the screen is the reality, whereas the pictures are only fleeting images superimposed on the screen. Although there exists a certain proximity between screen and image, both will remain forever separate. The screen won’t take on the qualities of the images, nor will it alter them.
Similar is the case with the seer and the seen. There is a certain proximity between our true nature as the immutable consciousness and the constantly changing seen, which is the body, emotions, thoughts, and so on. However, in reality they touch as little as do a screen and the images displayed on it. This wrong knowledge, according to which we are body and mind, results in subconscious imprints (samskaras) in which we appear to be bound up with external, constantly changing things. These imprints eventually densify to a field that is called conditioning (vasana). In this case the imprints born from wrong perception (viparyaya) lead to the conditioning of ignorance. From this ignorance sprout all the afflictions, the different forms of suffering.
The concept of ignorance (avidya) as the cause of the commingling of consciousness and world developed in later centuries into the elaborate concept of maya, the veil of illusion.
II.25 From the absence of ignorance the commingling of the seer and the seen ceases. This state is called liberation (kaivalya), the independence from the seen.
The state of kaivalya, which is the goal of yoga, is described here. In the four steps of the medical system, kaivalya represents the healthy state. It is therefore also called the natural state. For yoga does not create through exertion some remote aloof paradise for the few: it merely re-establishes us in the truth of who we are, which is the natural state to be in.
Unfortunately the natural state is not normal anymore. Kaivalya can be translated as independence, freedom, aloneness, or “transcendental aloneness.”27 It can also mean liberation, since it is the opposite of bondage or mental slavery.
It is interesting to look at what the word “aloneness” means. It is somewhat similar to loneliness but yet entirely different. Loneliness is the state in which one yearns or longs for the company of another but is deprived of it. It is a lack of something that makes it impossible to enjoy the mere absence of company. The blues singer Janis Joplin said, “On stage I give love for 50,000 people but at home Mr. Loneliness awaits me.” She died soon afterward from an overdose of drugs. It is interesting that she described loneliness as the absence of love. Also significant is her attempt to fill the gap left by this absence through the intake of an enormous amount of drugs.
Aloneness is the exact opposite of that. It is the drawing together of the words all-one-ness. To be aware of all-one-ness is to see Brahman, which is deep reality or truth. On the deepest level everything is an expression of the one reality, infinite consciousness.
One who has realized this is alone or all-one: all-one because once one has seen the space nature of consciousness one knows that one is forever united with all living things. The very same consciousness contains us all. The very one self is looking out through all creatures’ eyes. According to the Bhagavad Gita, “He who sees the supreme Lord abiding equally in all beings, . . . he sees indeed.”28 All-one-ness means to have recognized that at the deepest level all sentient beings are one consciousness. Such a person is called alone since one has found in one’s heart the heart of all beings. No external contact like company is needed to experience happiness. In that state the deep wound called loneliness is healed. In fact company cannot heal loneliness because it cannot be ongoing: one day we, or our friends before us, will die. Then the wound — which has only been covered up — will break open again.
The wound is healed only when one has found in one’s heart the self, which is the self of all beings. This self the Gita calls the Supreme Lord, the Upanishads call Brahman, and Buddha calls nirvana. Once this self is found, one does not approach others anymore out of need but because one wants to give. Because the mystic does not need others, but can choose freely to be with others, he or she is said to be alone. It is a state of freedom. If one is lonely, one needs to seek others. In truth, however, one is not interested in them but only in their capacity to soothe one’s loneliness. There is no choice: one has to go about seeking others to relieve one’s pain.
For this reason the mystic is called the true friend. Since the mystic has realized him- or herself as the container that contains the world and all beings, mystics have no further agenda in this world. They have no point to prove. They do not need others for company, entertainment, or pain relief, but see in others that reality they have found in themselves. That person is our real friend who truly sees our innermost self, which is free, independent, uncreated, unstained, and free of all that changes and becomes.
II.26 The means to liberation is permanent discriminative knowledge.
Because this true meaning of the word “aloneness” has been lost, the term “transcendental aloneness” has been introduced to translate kaivalya. But why did Patanjali use the word “aloneness” to describe what is called in most scriptures liberation (moksha)?
Bondage is created by the illusory commingling of self and world. Although this togetherness of the eternal separate entities is based on wrong perception, it nevertheless is taken to be true and creates suffering. When, through correct perception, the eternally untouchable, unstainable nature of the self is recognized (which like the mirror can reflect so many objects though they never stick to it), that is called the independence or aloneness of the self.
If we remove an object after the mirror has reflected it, no trace of object-ness is left in the mirror. Similarly, whatever thought, emotion, or memory is witnessed by our consciousness cannot leave a stain on it, cannot be bound up with it. Because consciousness/self is forever untouched by the seen, it is said to be alone.
Ignorance makes it appear as if impressions of past identification, pleasure, pain, anger, or fear are bound up with the screen on which they appear. Ignorance commingles the phenomena with the awareness to which they arise. When ignorance ceases, awareness is seen as standing alone. Awareness is the only thing that never changes. It simply observes, witnesses, without ever taking on the constantly fluctuating qualities of the observed object, the world.
II.26 The means to liberation is permanent discriminative knowledge.
After having described the forms of suffering, their causes, and the healthy state, Patanjali now describes the remedy. This is the permanent ability to discriminate between what is eternal, pure, free, and essential on the one hand and transitory, impure, bound, and nonessential on the other.
Let us go back to looking at consciousness/self as the TV screen on which all images are displayed — or, better, the containing space/time matrix in which the phenomena appear. The matrix is more realistic since it is four-dimensional; the TV screen is easier to understand because we can see it. The pictures on the screen in the course of an evening will constantly change while the screen remains the same. Likewise the self is permanent, and body, mind, and all objects superimposed on it are transitory.
Since subconscious imprints, formed through past experience, will be bound up with and stick to body, mind, and objects, they are called impure. When we watch a movie we realize that in its course our impression of its characters changes as they are stained or tainted by the action. In a similar way, all produced objects are stained by our subconscious imprints, which are based on ignorance, egoism, desire, pain, and fear. The only pure unstained thing at the end of the movie is the screen to which impression attaches. Likewise the self is said to be pure and the phenomena are impure.
During a movie we realize that all the characters act according to previous set conditions. Western psychology attributes this conditioning to early childhood; Eastern mysticism attributes it to previous incarnations. Whichever way, the characters on the screen don’t act freely but in a conditioned way. They are bound by their past. The only free “object” is consciousness, which appears beyond space/time; in fact space/time occurs within it. No image or phenomenon can leave a conditioning imprint on consciousness. Body, mind, and objects are said to be bound and consciousness is said to be free.
When we spend an evening watching TV we may see the news, advertisements, a comedy, a thriller, a documentary, and a movie about animals. During that evening no single element would have appeared in all the movies; nothing would have been essential but the screen. Likewise the objects displayed to the self are nonessential, and the self is essential.
The ability to discern between the real and unreal or essential and nonessential is called discriminative knowledge. This knowledge needs to be there permanently; only then will it provide the means for liberation. We may attain a partial knowledge with relapses into ignorance, or the discriminative knowledge may appear in glimpses only. This is not sufficient: it needs to be permanent. Let us remember the story of the snake and the rope. The wrong perception of a piece of rope lying on the path at dusk led to the wrong cognition of a snake. This illusory knowledge (viparyaya) led to the right knowledge (pramana) not being cognized. After being shown the rope, the observer gains right knowledge, after which the wrong knowledge is destroyed.
This discriminative knowledge between real and unreal, between rope and snake, between self and nonself, needs to be permanent. Otherwise we will again hallucinate a snake in the darkness when we see a rope — or experience ourselves as the changing body/mind when in reality we are the eternal, immutable self.
II.27 For him who is gaining discriminative knowledge, this ultimate insight comes in seven stages.
This sutra cannot be understood without consulting Vyasa’s commentary. He explains the seven stages as follows:
1. The yogi gains insight of what is painful, what is suffering, and therefore what needs to be avoided.
2. The light of knowledge destroys the accumulated karma, and the afflictions (kleshas) are dried up.
3. Samapatti, the state of mind during objective samadhi, has been experienced, the mind is stilled and the desire to attain further insight ceases. This is an important step. All desire to penetrate more deeply into the mystery from this point on is an obstacle.
4. Discriminative knowledge is acquired, and one lets go of all effort to become more proficient in yoga. All that can become more proficient in yoga is by definition body, mind, and ego. The consciousness/self, since it is by nature eternal and unchangeable, cannot ever become more proficient or less proficient. Consciousness is the permanent and true state of yoga. Once we have realized the difference between self and nonself, we know that all that grows, develops, deepens, matures, and becomes more proficient is impermanent and therefore not the self. At this point practice can become a means to bolster one’s ego and may be discarded. Any unnatural effort has to cease.
These first four stages are called “freedom from doing.” Once they are completed, the remaining steps cannot be performed or achieved; doing can get one only up to here. From this point surrender, nondoing, cessation, and grace continue the process.
There is an important tantric Buddhist treatise about this experience called The Song of Mahamudra, composed by the Siddha Tilopa. In it Tilopa addresses his student Naropa, who later became the author of the Six Yogas of Naropa, some of which Krishnamacharya learned from his master Ramamohan Brahmachary in Tibet.
In his song Tilopa says, “Without making an effort, but remaining loose and natural, one can break the yoke thus gaining liberation.”29 The abandoning of effort is explained here to be a necessary prerequisite of freedom. A little further along Tilopa says, “For if the mind when filled with some desire should seek a goal, it only hides the light.”30 Tilopa tells Naropa here that, at this stage of his education, he has even to give up the desire for liberation because this, like any desire, clouds the mind.
Contemporary teachers have frequently commented on The Song of Mahamudra and some have suggested following Tilopa’s advice without the student practicing beforehand. They fail to mention that the student Naropa, when he heard these words, had already undergone one of the severest twenty-year-long trainings ever suffered at the hand of a master. Only after such training was completed was the student deemed ready to hear the highest truth. In fact treatises revealing the highest truth were kept secret over centuries, being confined to the memory of just a few masters. They would be recited only when the student was ready to handle their truth.
In the Yoga Vashishta, for example, it is said that deities were only created for those who cannot worship their own consciousness/self directly, but to disclose this information to the uninitiated attracted the death penalty in the old days. Those teachings were kept absolutely secret because it was understood that only one steeped in practice and discipline could handle them. Today we can download all this information from the Internet. Spiritual life has not become easier through that, possibly more difficult. Often we encounter such a hodgepodge of teachings and half-realized untruths that they become completely unintelligible and do more harm than good. Again, if one mixes several systems, one might be seduced into combining the aspects that suit one’s limitations and omit the challenging elements.
Tilopa suggested to Naropa, after the latter had practiced fiercely under his guidance for twenty years, that he now discard all practice and become spontaneous, relaxed, and natural. Of course it was only after Naropa had mastered all previous stages that the time had come for him to become free from doing. Some modern teachers have used Tilopa’s advice to suggest to their students that they discard practice and discipline altogether and live according to their whims right from the beginning. Such a message will obviously sell really well. It is what human society has done all along; what is new is that it is sold to us as being “spiritual.”
Students who have a tendency to spontaneity and find discipline difficult will jump at the suggestion that they stop practicing. Spontaneity based on a subconscious tendency is really only avoidance, reflecting an inability to keep the mind focused. Some students become bored after having done the Primary Series a thousand or two thousand times. However, any sign of boredom tells us only that the mind is not resting in the present moment. Simply sitting and watching one’s breath is, from the standpoint of the mind, boring. If, however, one surrenders into the experience, it can reveal a majestic beauty that is difficult to rival by any sensory input.
Yes, the practice may be discarded one day by one who has attained discriminative knowledge, but not before. It is this knowledge that lets one know whether the discarding is just another trick of the mind or is born from the stillness of the heart.
As the first four steps of the sevenfold insight are called freedom from doing, so are the next three steps called “freedom from the mind.”
5. The mind and its constituent cause, the ego or I-principle, having fulfilled their purpose, are released and return to their causal state.31 Shankara’s phrase “returning to the causal state” has created some confusion. It does not mean they cease to exist: it means they lose their grip on the yogi and are consulted only when necessary. Just as one uses one’s hands when driving a car, but at other times they may rest in the lap, so the mind should only work when necessary. A muscle that does not cease effort when no action is to be performed is said to be in spasm; similarly we may say the human condition is to suffer from mental spasm. If the mind goes on simulating reality even if there is absolutely no reason for it to do so, then it is in control of its owner rather than vice versa.
6. One gives up one’s conditioning. Once it has been given up, and has released its grip on the observer, it will never again return. The observer now spontaneously rests in the present moment, without any limiting past conditioning. This spontaneous freedom, though, has nothing of the randomness that ego and mind in their normal states attribute to it.
7. The self is finally shown to be self-illuminated. As the sun is self-illuminated and the moon only reflects the light of the sun, so the self shines forth the sun of awareness and the intellect only reflects it onto objects. In this stage the gunas, the qualities or strands of creation, detach themselves or, better, appear to detach themselves from the self, which really is eternally untouched and pure. It is only our illusory identification with the impermanent that makes us seem attached to phenomena. With this insight of the untouchability of consciousness, the self finally is seen as standing alone. This is the insight of freedom (kaivalya), which still falls short of kaivalya itself. Kaivalya goes beyond any insight and wisdom, and is inexpressible.
II.28 From practicing the various limbs of yoga the impurities are removed, uncovering the light of knowledge and discernment.
This is the pivotal stanza in the entire Yoga Sutra. Up to this point Patanjali has explained why we practice and defined all the terms involved. First he described samadhi to create an interest in the practitioner. Then he showed that we shouldn’t be satisfied with our present situation, since it is suffering and darkness. After that he showed how the suffering comes to be and, finally, what removes it.
The bulk of the remaining sutras Patanjali dedicates to the methods and techniques of yoga. And it is here that his Yoga earns its claim of being an independent system of philosophy (darshana). While its cosmology is 95 percent identical with Samkhya’s, and its goal can hardly be distinguished from that of Vedanta, its methods are absolutely unique. Samkhya and Vedanta rely principally on reflection, contemplation, and intellectual analysis; Yoga, however, has a far more comprehensive catalogue of methods and techniques.
It is suggested that all limbs be practiced in some form, starting with the lower ones to ensure harmonious development. The first four limbs provide a solid base and firmly establish one for what is to come. To ignore them and go straight to advanced meditation practice can lead, in an extreme case, to schizophrenia. A schizophrenic person, from the yogic viewpoint, is not mad, but sees too much and cannot integrate it. On an energetic level that means one or all of the three higher chakras are open, while one or all of the four lower chakras are closed (excluding the base chakra, which deals with survival: closing it leads to death).
Especially the opening of the sixth (third eye) and the seventh (crown) chakras can lead to perception of things so powerful that it can be like the opening of Pandora’s box. To stay on the safe side we first have to become a fully integrated and mature human being, which is achieved by opening chakras two, three, and four. Especially opening the fourth, the heart chakra, enables us to relate to others and ourselves from a position of love. Not to open these chakras is like building the walls and roof of a house without putting in the foundations first. It is prescribed therefore that one does the groundwork first, establishing oneself in the lower four limbs, which has a solidifying effect.
There are certain problems associated with the other end of the ladder, though. For example the practice of asana bestows certain powers, which can lead to an increase of I-am-ness or ego (ahamkara). Practicing to look good in the postures, to be better than others, to increase self worth, or to gain the approval of the teacher are all egoic reasons. Egoity (asmita) increases by maintaining identification with the body. In due time egoity must be reduced by practice of the higher limbs, which has a transcending effect. In other words they teach that I am not the body and the ego. If one develops a powerful practice of asana and pranayama only, one can easily, seduced by the arising powers, become an egomaniac and even more deeply enmeshed in conditioned existence. To counteract this egoic tendency, the higher limbs need to be included from a certain point onward. The combined practice of all the limbs will remove the impurities, and all shortfalls like schizophrenia and egomania will be avoided.
What are the impurities? They are chiefly the afflictions, which are ignorance, egoism, desire, aversion, and fear. Removed together with them are subconscious imprints, their resulting conditioning, wrong perception of reality, and karma resulting from past actions. These impurities cover the light of knowledge, and once they are removed it shines like a lamp that was previously covered by a veil. The highest expression of the light of knowledge is discernment (viveka): the ability to discern between what is real and unreal, self and nonself, permanent and transitory.
Patanjali has thus explained the entire whys of the practice. He will now turn to the hows.
II.29 Restraints, observances, postures, control of the inner breath, sense withdrawal, concentration, meditation, and samadhi are the eight limbs.
Patanjali lists eight limbs. The Rishis Vyasa (Mahabharata), Yajnavalkya (Yoga Yajnavalkya), and Vasishta (Vasishta Samhita) mention the same number. Some sources, for example the Saptanga Yoga of Rishi Gheranda, note six or seven limbs.32 These numbers have been reached by omitting the first two limbs, the ethics. Since we are asked to practice ethics in all life situations, later teachers argued that they were not exclusive to yoga and for this reason did not need to be mentioned as a limb of yoga.
Another argument brought forward was that the ethics shouldn’t be included since they do not directly contribute to samadhi. However, in sutra II.45 Patanjali states that samadhi is produced by surrender to the Supreme Being. Since surrender to the Supreme Being (ishvara pranidhana) is the last of the ten ethical rules, it is established that ethics not only contribute to samadhi but are also one of its fundamental tributaries.
It is mainly the medieval Hatha texts that abolished the ethics. This coincided with a general relaxation of ethical standards, which led to the situation that women were not allowed to leave their homes without applying the red dot to their third eye. Yogis had been using their accumulated power to hypnotize women and obtain sexual favors. Hypnotism targets the third eye (Ajna chakra), and the red dot was thought to shield one from such attacks. By the end of the eighteenth century lawlessness among yogis was so widespread that in many rural areas of India the terms “yogi” and “scoundrel” had become interchangeable. Some orthodox circles in India still reject yogis today as people who are seeking occult powers, although historically this is degeneration. Sadly enough it is often this nonauthentic side of yoga that attracts Westerners.
The eight limbs are to be practiced by beginners sequentially, so one starts with yama and not with samadhi. Eventually, as one matures in the various forms of practice, the limbs are practiced simultaneously.
II.30 Nonviolence, truthfulness, nonstealing, sexual restraint, and nongreed are the restraints.
We are now looking at the five forms of restraint. Himsa means violence, ahimsa is nonviolence. It is the first and foremost of all yamas. The Buddhists suggest counteracting any urge to viciousness by contemplating the fact that the cycle of rebirths has gone on for such a long time that all beings at one point have been our mothers. For this reason we need to appreciate all others and not harm anybody. If we recognize that it is the same consciousness that looks out of every eye, we understand that, with every person we harm, we really hurt only ourselves. Every being is on a quest for happiness of some form or another; others are not so different from us that we need to violate them. The wish to hurt is usually born from not acknowledging that what we see in them is ourselves.
The idea of restraint is to enable us to live in harmony with the community around us. If we do not stick to those rules we create conflict. In an atmosphere of conflict it is difficult to practice yoga. Not only are harmful actions toward others based on afflictions such as ignorance, egoism, and aversion, but they also produce new subconscious imprints of violence. For example, if we abuse somebody once, it becomes easier for us to do it again. The hurdle for repetition has been lowered. If we have initiated a domestic fight with our partner, we have laid, via imprint, the foundation for its repetition. It is more likely now that it will happen again. A serial killer, having gotten away with murder once, is likely to repeat the action in decreasing time intervals.
To violate others is based on wrong perception (viparyaya). We violate others in an effort to dominate them. We try to dominate because we believe that, in their subdued state, others pose no threat to our security. We feel our security is at risk because we are in conflict with ourselves. We identify with the notion of conflict because we believe we have to become somebody, to get somewhere, to develop, to follow a path, to complete a search. In short, conflict arises out of the desire to become, rather than accepting what is now.
That which becomes, gets somewhere, grows, and develops is body, mind, ego, intellect. These are all part of creation (prakrti). It may sound strange, but the notion of a spiritual path creates conflict. To see oneself as that which is at peace already — the immutable, eternal, and infinite consciousness — is correct perception (pramana). Once this is accepted and reflected upon, the need for conflict drops away and the quest for security is surrendered. Security cannot be attained as long as we hold the belief that we are transitory. Once we know ourselves, fear will drop away and with it the urge to dominate others. Violence is of no use anymore. This is the reason behind accounts of animals abandoning all hostility in the presence of a jnanin (one who has knowledge of the self). Since a jnanin has found peace within, animals feel completely unthreatened.
The second yama is satya (truthfulness). The yogi needs to be truthful in word, thought, and action. There is an important reason for truthfulness being mentioned after nonviolence, and that is that our truth should not compromise our nonviolence. In other words, nonviolence overrides truth. We should never use truthfulness to harm or violate others.
In this context, though, we come across one of the most tragic misunderstandings in the history of Indian thought. The Chandogya Upanishad states, “A truth uttered should never harm.” This has been misinterpreted to mean, “A truth uttered should never be unpleasant,” which encourages flattery and sweet talk. The result is still observable in India today. When we ask for directions in the street, people who hesitate to utter the truth (“Sorry, I don’t know”), because that would be unpleasant, often send us in the wrong direction. We find out the truth ten minutes later when we arrive in the wrong place. This is much more unpleasant.
At the core of the problem is a famous passage in the Mahabharata epic. Yudishthira, the rightful emperor of India, is deprived of his empire by his evil cousin Duryodhana in a deceitful game of dice. Although he has many opportunities to talk straight with his cousin, he does not do so because he is the mythical son of Lord Dharma, the God of right action. He believes it is not right to be unpleasant to Duryodhana and tell him the truth of what sort of a person he is. In the course of the game of dice Yudishthira loses also his wife, the empress of India, Draupadi, a very passionate woman. Brothers of the evil Duryodhana drag Draupadi by her hair as a slave before the assembled court and attempt to disrobe and dishonor her. Yudishthira and his brothers do not interfere, because they believe it would be unpleasant to tell Duryodhana what every truthful husband would tell anybody who dragged his wife by her hair and attempted to disrobe her.
But, because the unpleasant truth is not uttered, the greatest catastrophe in Indian history takes its course, one from which India has never recovered. It weakened its defenses so much that it was eventually taken over by Buddhists, Muslims, and Christians, after which it broke into pieces.
Observing the scene of Draupadi’s dishonoring are the spiritual elders, the preceptors Bhishma and Drona. Although they dislike Duryodhana, neither of them steps in and utters the unpleasant truth about his character. Bhishma and Drona are held in high regard, and when they remain silent everybody assumes that Duryodhana is right in what he does. Duryodhana sentences Yudishthira and his brothers and Draupadi to twelve years of exile. They have to live like beggars for twelve years in the forest and a thirteenth year in disguise. After thirteen years they will have the right to get everything back. However, as we can imagine, after thirteen years Duryodhana has become comfortable in his wealth and power, and laughs at the five brothers when they demand their empire back.
Again, the five brothers find it unpleasant to confront Duryodhana, who is untruthful. At this point Draupadi cannot bear it any longer. Screaming and cursing, she breaks down and exposes the untruthfulness of the five brothers, who have done nothing to save her honor. We can assume the situation would have been very unpleasant for our five heroes.
But the unpleasantness doesn’t end there. Draupadi’s best friend, or maybe her only friend, incidentally is the Supreme Being, manifested in the form of Lord Krishna, who by chance is also present. Krishna, in place of the five brothers, takes the terrible oath that he will destroy everybody who was present on that fateful day and did not intervene when Draupadi was dragged before the court by her hair. And not only that, he vows to destroy anybody who takes the side of the evildoers.
The remaining chapters of the Mahabharata let us witness how Krishna keeps his promise. The greatest military force ever assembled arrives on the battle-field and a total of 2.5 million warriors enter the crushing jaws of death. In fact almost the entire Indian warrior caste and aristocracy were eradicated during those days, with the effect that India could not defend herself anymore and became easy prey for foreign invaders. The foreign invasions into India destroyed arguably the richest cultural heritage in the world. The Nalanda University alone, which had probably the biggest library on the planet, was destroyed during the Mogul invasion. It burned for eight months until it was reduced to rubble.
All of that happened just because a handful of people had a wrong notion of truth having to be pleasant. If Yudishthira, Bhishma, and Drona had honestly communicated to Duryodhana what they thought of him, he would have had an unpleasant time at first, but possibly he would have seen his shortcomings and changed his course of action. Most likely the majority of Duryodhana’s supporters, such as his weak father, the King Drtharashtra, would have fallen away from him and only the diehards such as his best friend Karna would have remained loyal. Without Drtharashtra they would not have been strong enough to create so much havoc, and the entire course of Indian history would have been different.
The idea that truth needs to be pleasant is wrong perception, and needs to be abandoned. The original idea is that truthfulness should not be used to harm and violate others, but to withhold the truth just because it is unpleasant can be even more harmful, as we have seen in Duryodhana’s case. Honest feedback might be unpleasant at first, and even invoke a crisis, but then it can give rise to healing.
For example if a child is torturing animals or other children, we expect the parents to correct the actions of their child. This correction may be unpleasant for the child, but it is better for the animals, the surrounding community, and in the long run for the child also. Negative actions will leave subconscious imprints (samskaras), which fill the karmic storehouse (karmashaya) of the child and lead to more suffering and more negative actions. The truth must be spoken in such a way as to avoid harm, but it is bound to be unpleasant sometimes.
The third yama is nonstealing (asteya). This means not only refraining from taking what belongs to others, but also not desiring their wealth. Desiring somebody else’s property is another result of not realizing the space nature of consciousness. Since we are the container in which objects appear, we can neither reject nor accumulate any of them.
The fourth yama is sexual restraint (brahmacharya). The Rishi Vasishta explains: “Sexual restraint for householders means to have intercourse only with their lawful partners.”33 Householders are people who live in society and typically have a job and a family. Opposed to them are monks and recluses, for whom is prescribed no sex at all. The majority of yogis always had families and participated in society. An Imperial Census for India in 1931 revealed that more than a million yogis lived in India.34 Almost half of them were women and many had family. This should also dispel the myth that only males practiced yoga.
When K. Pattabhi Jois was asked for the meaning of brahmacharya, he used to say it means to have one partner only. The yogic view of a relationship is not to consume another person like an object but to recognize divinity in one’s partner.
The Rishi Yajnavalkya expresses it in the Brhad Aranyaka Upanishad thus: “The husband is not to be seen as the physical form, but as the immortal consciousness (atman). The wife is not to be looked at as the body, but to be recognized as the immortal consciousness.” Partnership is used in yoga to recognize the inherent divinity in the other. This does exclude casual sex. The problem here is that usually one of the partners (often the female) looks for more than just sex. This partner will be hurt when being abandoned. Casual sex in this case is a form of violence.
Let us look at the case of two consenting partners engaging in casual sex. There is no violence involved here, one may say. The following, however, must be considered: Sexual intercourse is in many scriptures described as karma mudra, the seal of karma. It seals a strong karmic bond between the partners, even if we have become so desensitized that we can’t feel that anymore. This karmic bond is formed through a connection of the subtle bodies of the two partners. In popular language we call this connection “heartstrings.” It can be felt even long after two partners have separated. When this connection is formed we have a certain karmic duty toward the other, especially in nurturing and supporting them emotionally and making them feel loved. Swami Shivananda went as far as to say that, for every affair we have, we will be reborn to satisfy that person throughout a marital life. Whether that’s true or not, if we keep “breaking hearts” it will get back to us sooner or later.
In the Upanishads the term brahmacharya has a different connotation. According to the Mundaka Upanishad, “The true self is attained only through truth, discipline, knowledge and brahmacharya.” Contemporary orthodox authors want to read celibacy into this passage, but this does not hold up, since the most self-attained people in India’s history, the ancient rishis, often had several wives and in some cases more than a hundred children. Brahmacharya in the upanishadic context means absorption in Brahman (consciousness). It is this absorption that leads to attainment of the self. We know, however, that Patanjali does not use the word brahmacharya with this meaning since he, as a true Samkhyite, never uses the word “Brahman” to mean consciousness.
The last yama is nongreed. Our focus should not be on accumulating things. Others should not suffer shortage through our accumulations. One should not be dependent on objects. We can enjoy what is rightfully ours, but should not get attached to our belongings. If through some misfortune we lose what we have — let’s say the share market drops — we shouldn’t hanker after it, but let it go. We should not accept any gifts that are given to manipulate us, such as bribes.
II.31 The five restraints practiced universally, uncompromised by type of birth, place, time, and circumstance, constitute the great vow.
Many people observe the restraints in a compromised form. Somebody who is born into a tribe or family of hunters or farmers might observe nonviolence but still kill animals related to their profession. This is referred to as compromised through type of birth. If somebody refrains from killing or lying or stealing as long as they are in a sacred location like a church, then the yama is said to be compromised by type of place. If a person refrains from beating his or her children only because it is Christmas or Easter, but not on other days, then the restraint is said to be compromised by time. If somebody adheres to non-violence, but compromises this stance for example during war or acts of terrorism, the restraint is said to be compromised by circumstance.
The commentator H. Aranya gives us an example of nonviolence compromised by duty.35 Arjuna, the hero of the Bhagavad Gita, had the duty to fight, since he was a member of the warrior caste. Aranya points out that yogis practice noninjury everywhere and always, and therefore discounts Arjuna’s status as a yogi.
Patanjali states that if the five restraints are practiced uncompromisingly, meaning universally in all situations, then and only then do they constitute the great vow (maha vrata). It has been mentioned before that Yoga never went as far with nonviolence as Jainism, with its extreme concern for the lives of tiny creatures.
We know that the lymphocytes of our immune system continuously massacre millions of organisms that try to invade our body. The pus in a wound is nothing but dead lymphocytes, which died by “heroically” defending their mother country (our body). There is no way to be absolutely nonviolent as long as we are alive. Even to commit suicide — which would be the only way to stop constantly killing other organisms — is seen as the absolute act of violence and an insult to God. Nonviolence in many ways is a privilege of the rich, as with certain saints who have servants to sweep the path in front of them. A farmer will kill millions of organisms while plowing a field, but without his work we all would starve. A shoemaker is regarded as a low-life in India since his hands touch leather, which is taken from a cow. At the same time, everybody uses his services and, ironically, they can touch their leather shoes because, it is believed, the shoemaker has absorbed the impurity.
Milk is considered the purest food in India, and the cow gives it freely without us having to harm her. But she has to have a calf to give milk, and 50 percent of the calves are bull calves. These are sold by Brahmins to supposedly “impure” Muslims, outcasts, and Christians, who slaughter and eat them and therefore become impure through violence. The Brahmin who has cashed in on the bull calf stays pure because impurity can’t transfer through money! Sadly enough, philosophy is used here to distribute demerit from the educated and privileged (the Brahmins) to the uninformed and poor (the low castes). We are to remember here that Yoga needs to be a tool in the service of humankind and not vice versa. Yoga started by promising that it can reduce human suffering; if it cannot deliver on the promise, we had better look for something else.
Let us note, however, that Patanjali does accept certain compromises of the great vow. For example, he does not hesitate to compromise truth if it would hurt somebody. So also the great vow is a relative one.
II.32 Cleanliness, contentment, austerity, self-study, and devotion to the Supreme Being are the observances.
While the restraints are directed outward and create harmony with our surroundings, the observances (niyamas) are directed inward and form the bedrock of practice. Cleanliness (shaucha) refers to cleanliness of body and mind. Cleanliness of the body is achieved through hygiene, eating of pure, natural food, and abstaining from intoxication. Cleanliness of the mind is practiced through abstaining from thoughts and emotions of greed, jealousy, envy, hatred, anger, and so on, and to know what such thoughts lead to.
Contentment (santosha), the second observance, is a very interesting concept. In contemporary use in India, the term santosha is synonymous with happiness. Millennia of education have deeply engrained in the Indian mind the notion that happiness is the opposite of desire, and only when one lets go of all hankering and is utterly content can happiness enter.
How different this is from the Western concept. We are taught to visualize our dreams, which usually involve a yacht, a private plane, a sports-car collection, several mansions in different climatic zones, designer dresses worth $50,000, and so on and on. All of that is imagined as being washed down with an endless stream of champagne. After this process of visualizing our dreams is complete, we are supposed to motivate ourselves. Yes, we do have the will and the power to change. Yes, we have the capacity and the intelligence and the capability to do whatever it takes. And nothing can stop us.
After this process of motivation is activated, we create a plan for how the goal is to be achieved. Then we swing into action with such zeal that everything between us and our goal gets bullied out of the way or bulldozed over, whether opponents, competitors, rival companies, foreign governments and cultures, indigenous tribes, untouched landscapes, or rare species of plants and animals.
It is exactly this attitude that has enabled our Western culture to overrun and vandalize almost every country in the world and gobble it up. Have we become happy in the process? Hardly: rather, more greedy. If we were to recognize that all the happiness we are looking for is already in our hearts, we wouldn’t have to search and destroy the entire world for it. Peace starts with contentment. Only if we are content with the now can we become silent enough to hear what needs doing. Otherwise this silent voice is overpowered by the yelling and shouting of our exaggerated and imagined needs.
The following three observances have been mentioned already under the heading Kriya Yoga, the yoga of action. As they have been described in sutra II.1, a brief outline will suffice here. Austerity (tapas) is the ability to face adversity. Even when facing hardship in our practice, we are asked not to give up. Successful practitioners might enter into periods of hardship that can last for years. It is in the face of such hardship that a real researcher of yoga arises or one remains a shallow good-weather practitioner. We need to ask ourselves at this point what we are ready to give to become free. We have to expect that, when we practice, certain things will happen that will test us. The purificatory effects of the practice can be temporarily unpleasant, depending on our past actions.
The fourth observance is self-study (svadhyaya), which according to Vyasa is chanting the sacred syllable OM. It is chanted first aloud and then silently, then it is heard. The other aspect of self-study, according to Vyasa, is study of moksha shastra, scripture dealing with liberation. Principally this means the Upanishads and all systems stemming from them, such as Samkhya, Yoga, and Vedanta.
The last observance is devotion to the Supreme Being (ishvara pranidhana). Whether we devote ourselves to formless infinite consciousness (nirguna brahman) or to a form such as Krishna, the Christian God, or the Mother Goddess (saguna brahman) depends on the personality of the practitioner. All forms and the formless are valid. Devotion means that one surrenders all one’s actions to the Supreme Being. That this surrender is not an unimportant ancillary technique is attested in sutra I.29, where Patanjali says that from surrender to the Supreme Being come samadhi and the nonarising of the nine obstacles of yoga.
II.33 If conflicting thought obstructs those restraints and observances, the opposite should be contemplated.
If one feels plagued by thoughts of hatred, for example, it is suggested that we think of what such thoughts will lead to. After all, we carry this brain, we feed it, we protect it, we keep it warm, we rest it, so we should be entitled to tell it what to think. We own the brain and not vice versa.
If we allow ourselves thoughts of hatred, in due time they can turn into violent behavior. This will produce a karmic backlash and more violent thoughts. Once the community around us wants to pay us back for our negative actions, it will be difficult to practice. We need to understand that those thoughts and actions will be detrimental to us in the long run.
Through the method of contemplating the opposite, further harm is avoided for now. But once we are established in practice and have recognized that our neighbors are expressions of the same infinite consciousness as we are, it doesn’t make any sense to be at their throats. Once we have gained knowledge (jnana) we will be compassionate toward others. Until then we should adhere to the code of ethics; otherwise we will enmesh ourselves further in conditioned existence, which in turn will make jnana even more inaccessible. The theme is further elaborated in the next sutra.
II.34 Obstructing thoughts like violence and others, done, caused, or approved of, stemming from greed, anger, or infatuation, whether they are mild, moderate, or intense, will result in more pain and ignorance. For to realize that is to cultivate the opposite.
Obstructing thoughts in this case are all those that pose an obstacle to adhering to the restraints and observances of yoga. They cloud our perception of truth and therefore result in ignorance. For this reason they will produce suffering in the future.
In reality those obstructing thoughts, although we sometimes may think they are an expression of our spontaneity, freedom, individuality, or creativity, stem from nothing but greed, anger, or infatuation.
For example we wake up one day and say, “Today I’m not going to practice.” To practice daily, even if it is sometimes hard to do so, is tapas (austerity), the third niyama. But instead of realizing thatwe are violating the observance, we confuse ourselves into believing that not to practice is an expression of our freedom, spontaneity, individuality, and creativity. But this belief is nothing but infatuation. Being infatuated with our ego and our grandeur, we believe that abstaining from practice shows our freedom and the slavery of those who practice daily. If we really are free, then we are free to practice rather than being slaves to the mind, which supplies us with reasons not to practice.
Another cause of failing to sustain tapas is anger. We may experience anger and frustration in our lives due to our constant habit of identifying with what is impermanent. Instead of becoming free by letting go of the anger, we carry it into our practice, making practice difficult. Then we claim that practice is hard and no fun, and therefore we don’t want to do it. The practice in itself is free, spontaneous, individual, and creative; it is we who make it a chore and a drag.
Especially when we are motivated by greed, if we want to get through the practice, get better, get powerful, get impressive, get recognition, then the practice can become an arduous duty rather than an exhilarating journey into freedom. In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna suggests surrendering the fruit of one’s actions. In our case that means we forget about the gain, the goal, and the benefit and do the practice just because it is there, we are there, and the mat is there. Just because the world exists, we live. Just because we live, we practice. No further reason is required. This is to practice with an empty heart.
Another reason we may find for violating our tapas is boredom. We claim that the practice is boring us, but what is underlying boredom is nothing but anger. Because we fail to acknowledge our anger and let it go, we cannot tell ourselves the truth. Failing to tell the truth to ourselves (which brings us back in the present moment), our attention has to wander now into the past or the future. With our attention straying from the present moment, we are no longer present in our practice, which becomes boring. In this way anger leads to boredom. Whenever we are bored in our life and practice, we have to look where the anger is hiding. Every second of our existence, even if we are merely breathing, can be a revelation of beauty. Boredom merely shows that we don’t allow ourselves to be present.
We know now how thoughts that obstruct the yamas and niyamas arise from greed, anger, and infatuation. These thoughts will lead to future suffering and ignorance. In this context it is not significant whether violence or thoughts of violence are mild, moderate, or intense. In any case they will bear fruit. Also whether we commit such thoughts or actions ourselves, cause others to do them, or approve of them is of no significance. They will still bear the same fruit.
In this context it is interesting to look at another popular misconception about nonviolence. Eggs are sneered at as food in India. Although they are not fertilized and therefore are not alive, to eat them is considered violence. Different is the case with milk, which we looked at in sutra II.31. As Patanjali points out, acts of violence will cause pain and ignorance whether carried out, caused, or approved of. The Hindu notion of milk-drinking being nonviolent is therefore discredited.
Nevertheless we have to let go of the idea that complete nonviolence is possible. A Hare Krishna community that kept its own dairy cows found this out the hard way. After they realized their bull calves would be slaughtered if they sold them, they decided to keep them. This way their ahimsa (non-violence) would stay intact. Following the principle “What can go wrong will go wrong,” the cows of the community gave birth to eleven bull calves in a row. We might suspect Lord Krishna had a helping hand there, to make his point.
The community then decided not only to keep the growing bulls but also not to have them castrated, which also would constitute violence. For this reason the eleven bulls could be put to no practical use whatsoever, because bulls are too aggressive to pull carts or to plow. Oxen are used for this. Furthermore the eleven bulls had to be kept in eleven rather large individual paddocks so they did not kill each other. When the author visited the community in 1995 it had given up its milk production and turned into a bull sanatorium. Milk was purchased on the commercial market, tainted by violence, but better than no milk at all.
Having become realistic about how far we can take nonviolence, it is still important that we adhere to the ethics as much as possible. If we do not do our best, we will indeed experience suffering and ignorance in the future. To accept the thought that violating ethics will cause future suffering constitutes meditation on the opposite — so claim Vachaspati Mishra and Shankaracharya in their respective subcommentaries.
II.35 In the presence of one established in nonviolence, all hostility ceases.
In the next eleven sutras Patanjali describes the effects that the restraints and observances have when mastered. In this sutra Patanjali says that those firmly established in nonviolence are so nonthreatening that man and beast alike can in their presence let their defenses down and become peaceful. Aggression is often based on fear and can be relinquished once we see there is no reason to fear.
This insight reverberates in the story of Buddha and Angulimala. On his wanderings, the Buddha once came to a village that formed the entrance to a vast forest. When he entered the village begging for alms, people advised him not to go any farther. Living in the forest was a serial killer who had vowed to slay a hundred people, cut their fingers off, and wear them as a necklace. His name, Angulimala, in fact meant finger necklace. He had already killed ninety-nine people and was waiting for his last victim in order to fulfill his oath. Buddha was not disturbed by the story and told the villagers there was nothing that could stop him from walking his path. If he was supposed to serve as the hundredth victim in this way, at least he would relieve Angulimala of his terrible oath. He was not concerned at all. After much crying and despair, the villagers eventually had to let Buddha go into the forest.
After he had walked for some time he encountered Angulimala sitting in a clearing, easily recognizable by his necklace of fingers. “What are you doing here?,” he shouted. “Don’t you know this is my forest? I am Angulimala.” It did not escape his eye that there was something special about the Buddha. The grace with which he strode and the atmosphere of peace that surrounded him presented a completely new experience. Buddha now stood right in front of him.
Angulimala saw the stillness and the serenity in his eyes: this was a man such as he had never encountered before. He was touched by the stranger and didn’t want to kill him, but had to uphold his reputation. “Go back to where you came from,” he said. “I can’t let you through. I have taken a vow to kill a hundred people and wear their fingers around my neck. If you don’t turn around you force me to kill you.’’ Buddha replied, “Nothing can turn me away from my path, not even death. I have decided to take this path and nothing can change my decision. If that is unacceptable to you, you may kill me.”
Angulimala couldn’t believe this. The entire world was in fear of him, and here was a man who didn’t care a bit. “I will kill you in a moment, but let me ask you one thing. Are you not afraid?” Buddha just shook his head and stood there in complete surrender. At the same time Angulimala saw in his eyes that this man had come home, that he had found something that he, Angulimala, could not take from him whatever he did — he had found peace and did not know fear.
Angulimala knew then that he had found his teacher. He broke down crying and asked to be initiated as his student.
This story beautifully illustrates how complete harmlessness can instill a similar feeling in others. This does not mean, however, that nonviolence ensues in all situations. The Buddha himself was poisoned by a man who disliked the community of monks; Milarepa was poisoned for a similar reason; robbers chopped to death Buddha’s greatest student, Mogallana. When Jesus Christ was sentenced to death, the Roman magistrate Pontius Pilate, like Angulimala, realized the man before him was a saint. He did not want to be responsible for killing him, so he ruled that the people of Jerusalem could ask for one person to receive amnesty. What did they do? They asked for the murderer Barabbas to be released and Jesus to be killed. If there was anybody firmly established in nonviolence, that person was Jesus.
Robbers looting his ashram beat up the Indian saint Ramana Maharshi. Shams I. Tabriz, the master of the Sufi poet Rumi, was murdered by people who were jealous of his influence on Rumi. The two main protagonists of nonviolence in the twentieth century, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, were both assassinated. The Indian epics Ramayana and Mahabharata are full of stories of saints being harassed by demons. Most prominent is the Rishi Vishvamitra, who couldn’t complete a sacrifice because the sacred location was constantly being desecrated. There are even demons in the epics that openly admit they get more pleasure by devouring pious, righteous people than sinners. When the Mogul army invaded India, the inhabitants of several Buddhist cities left their homes and lay down in front of the approaching army. This was meant to stop the invaders from raiding the town. But the Mogul commanders let their army ride over the peaceful protesters and killed them all.
There is anecdotal evidence suggesting that through our nonviolence we can make others peaceful, but at the same time other evidence suggests the opposite. Why does Patanjali then generalize that “all hostility ceases” if we are established in nonviolence? He does it to incite us to practice. It is a common trait of Indian masters to overstate the effects of the practice to make sure that students take it up. We know from Vyasa and Shankaracharya that it is the responsibility of the teacher to explain the practice in such a way that we take it up and stick to it. Some aspects described in an idealized way can help in that regard.
II.36 When one is established in truthfulness, actions and their fruit will correspond with one’s words.
This sutra refers to another great power that was acquired by the ancient rishis. Through their intense austerity (tapas) they acquired the ability to change the course of events with their words. Since they were completely truthful, the future had to change, if necessary, to accommodate their words. They used this power mainly through their weapon, the curse. In a curse, the rishi made a certain statement about the future and, since he was never untruthful, the future had to unfold according to his words. This change of the future, though, used up a lot of the merit he had accumulated through long tapas. It made him vulnerable.
According to mythology, gods and demons sometimes used third persons to provoke the wrath of a rishi. The subsequent curse would then use up his power and weaken him. Indra, the king of heaven, used heavenly nymphs (apsaras) to reduce the accumulated tapas of the Rishi Vishvamitra.
As Patanjali will explain later, such powers form an obstacle on the path of yoga. They are dangled there like a carrot in front of us to convince us to practice. Later we are asked to abandon these powers, since they prevent samadhi. Let us abandon the quest for power right from the outset, since it is a dead-end street. This is in accordance with the Bhagavad Gita, where we are asked simply to act without asking for profit.
II.37 When established in nonstealing, all is but jewels.
We are asked here to look at a piece of gold in the same way as a lump of clay. If we give up our preconceived ideas about appearances, suddenly the preciousness of every moment reveals itself. By looking at the world without seeking to benefit or profit from it, all its beauty is revealed. From wanting to get something out of every situation, we close ourselves to the many gifts that we receive every moment.
The traditional understanding of the sutra is that if one does not care at all about riches, they will start to care about us. According to popular belief the celestial diamond-spewing mongoose will appear before us and shower us with jewels once we are established in nonstealing.
For the modern practitioner it is important to realize that the road to riches might lead over stock-tracking software or real-estate seminars but not over meditation. Time spent meditating is completely wasted if you are in the pursuit of wealth. To become rich, one needs an urge for wealth and a strong competitive edge. Meditation reduces such urges, and it is detrimental to one’s competitive edge. If you meditate you might find you can’t be bothered any more to run after money beyond what’s necessary — especially if meditation has led you to recognize the space nature of consciousness, according to which things can be neither gained nor lost. No material gain whatsoever ensues from the mystical experience. Many mystics lived in poverty, though this is not a requirement.
II.38 When established in sexual restraint, vitality is gained.
The Indian idea is that the energy usually wasted through sex is transformed and can be used for higher purposes. Sexual energy is seen as capital that can lift us into the divine dominion if used properly. Sexual restraint is thought to increase intelligence and memory function.
True sexual restraint is rare, however. It is said that in each age there can be only one who masters it. That one was Hanuman in the Treta Yuga (the age in which Rama appeared) and Bhishma, Arjuna’s foster grandfather, in the Dvapara Yuga (the age in which Krishna appeared). The ancient rishis did not practice complete sexual restraint: they all fathered many children.
The ability to transform and use is the key. If sexual energy is simply suppressed and bottled up, it can turn into hatred and become very dangerous. Some political leaders have known about this and used their knowledge to further their aims. That is how the Nazis managed to unleash a terrible force, as Wilhelm Reich explains in his book The Mass Psychology in Fascism. The mere suppression of sexuality does not lead anywhere if one does not know what to do with the energy.
II.39 One established in nongreed attains knowledge of past and future births.
Greed arises through attachment and identification with the body and all objects that it enjoys. Once we know the eternal self, we continue to respect the body as the vehicle to liberation and tend to its needs, but we are not preoccupied by its needs anymore. We realize that the objects of enjoyment cannot liberate us; they have, rather, a peculiar tendency to bind us, although this tendency lies in our subconscious conditioning and not in the objects themselves. For one that is permanently established in self knowledge, the objects of enjoyment have lost any grip. That does not mean such a person has to live like an ascetic. In fact the fanatical avoidance of pleasure by an ascetic shows that he is still under the spell of pleasure.
The jnanin (knower) is indifferent. “If pleasure comes, good; if no pleasure comes, also good.” This attitude is aparigraha — nongreed. One does not hanker after any objects whatsoever. How can it be that such a person knows about past and future?
The person who is firmly established in the self exists beyond time, since the self is timeless and permanent. Whereas the body, the mind, the ego, and the intellect exist within time, time exists within the self. In other words, time appears on the screen of the self. All phenomena that exist within time, whether past, present, or future, are witnessed by the self. Since the quality of the self is awareness, it cannot do any other than witness; and since it is permanent it is aware of everything that occurs within time. Therefore the self is aware of our entire evolutionary past, beginning with the microbe and ending with the great dissolution (pralaya). As well, the self is witness to the ever-unfolding world ages (kalpas). Beyond that, the self is witness to the deep reality that never unfolded, that never dissolves — the reality that gives birth to all appearance without ever being affected (Brahman).
One established in nongreed can therefore download knowledge of past and future. Many great masters, however, have shunned the notion of doing so. From the perspective of the self, attachment to knowledge about one’s past and future is as insignificant as attachment to sense objects. It is a power that one can use to impress others, but the things one sees in the past and future are as significant as things seen on the TV screen. Sages usually did not bother to develop this power.
A man once came to the Buddha and asked, “How often do I have to be reborn?” The Buddha looked up to the sky and said, “As many as the stars in the sky, that often will you be reborn!” The man went away in horror, because his life was a drag. Another man asked Buddha, “How often will I come back?” The Buddha pointed to a huge banyan tree and said, “As many as the leaves on that tree, that often will you be reborn!” The man jumped up and danced around in great happiness because he really loved his life — and he became liberated on the spot. Since the man became liberated we can assume he did not come back for future embodiments. Did the Buddha err, then, when he predicted that his questioner would come back as many times as there were leaves on the banyan?
No, he saw the potential of this person to have that many more lives. But the man took the opportunity we all have in every second of our lives — to become free right now. The future lives that the Buddha saw do still exist, but they don’t exist anymore in regard to that man. He dis-identified with and liberated himself from his own future. For a true jnanin all residual karma is interrupted. Residualkarma is karma that has not come to fruition yet; its interruption produces freedom. For that reason any look into the future is uninteresting. The future that is foreseeable is the future we want to become free of.
The orthodox Indian idea is that all beings go through a cycle of thirty trillion lives and then become liberated. Yoga does not accept this destiny but attempts to liberate us now. As the Rishi Vasishta said, “For one of true self-effort there is no destiny.”
II.40 From cleanliness arises protection for one’s own body and non-contamination by others.
Cleanliness of body and mind creates a protective shield around the body. Although hygiene protects the body from infectious disease, the cleanliness referred to here is predominantly abstention from thoughts of hatred, greed, and infatuation. Such thoughts will manifest as actions of hatred and the like, and these will lead to damaging of the body. Another implication of negative action needs to be considered. In the early stages of yoga practice students may be quite fragile and easily distracted from their path.
During those early days it is important to protect one’s enthusiasm and interest in the practice.
There is a physical law that energy always flows from the higher to the lower potential. A novice student can easily lose the yogic merit he or she has accumulated, through keeping bad company. One can readily pick up negative attitudes and emotions from others, especially when one is open to them. Such contamination is said to be counteracted through cleanliness. With the use of the term “non-contamination” I am following Georg Feuerstein, who says that Patanjali’s term jugupsa “conveys the idea of being on one’s guard with respect to the body, of having a detached attitude towards our mortal frame.”36
This use of “noncontamination” is opposed to the unfortunate term “disgust,” which some commentators use. Some religious authorities, Christian and Hindu, view the body as disgusting. Materialistic people, on the other hand, are completely absorbed by the body and its needs. Yoga takes a neutral stance here. The body is seen as potentially that by which the spirit is bound,37 but on the other hand it is acknowledged as a tool for achieving liberation.38
However, the feeling of disgust toward one’s own or anyone else’s body creates nothing but a new obstacle to yoga. Disgust falls into the category of repulsion (dvesha), which is one of the five afflictions (sutra II.8).
Repulsion is based on a negative imprint (samskara) that will condition one’s actions and lead to future suffering and ignorance. As we have learned in sutra II.8, it is a form of wrong cognition (viparyaya) in which one erroneously perceives one’s consciousness as being bound up with egoic notions such as disgust. The body cannot disgust the self, since the self does not judge at all. The ego can, however, and will happily do so, since it will trigger the previously described mechanism and thus an increase of ego. To look at one’s body with disgust is therefore not a yogic teaching at all.
II.41 From purification of the mind arise joy, one-pointedness, mastery of the senses, and readiness for knowing the self.
Now the effects of mental cleanliness are discussed. Mental cleanliness means to cease to identify with thoughts or emotions of hatred, greed, envy, jealousy, pride, and so on. Once these are abandoned, the original sattva quality of the intellect shines forth, which is joy. Out of this joy develops one-pointedness, according to Vyasa. This is easy to understand: how can the mind be one-pointed if it is still distracted by misery, malice, and its own problems? All these take energy away from our contemplation.
Once we are established in mental cleanliness, we experience joy because we know that freedom is near. The joy that develops gives us the freedom to devote ourselves exclusively to our discipline (sadhana). This is called one-pointedness. From one-pointedness develops mastery of the senses.
So far our happiness has depended on external stimulation. To remain happy we require an endless supply of power, money, sex, drugs, excitement, and consumption. First, the senses reach out to these stimuli. They draw the mind after them to organize the impressions collected. Then the ego reaches out to own them, and finally the intellect gets clouded and we lose sight of our true nature. This development is intercepted by mastery of the senses. This means that the next time an object of desire floats past we stop the senses from reaching out and embracing it. Then things will just be as they are, without us clinging to them.
From mastery of the senses we necessarily become ready for self-knowledge. As long as we constantly reach out for happiness we cannot see that it is already there, inside. First we have to abandon the attempt to “go for what we want.” Only then can awareness turn around and find that everything is there already. This is readiness for knowing the self.
II.42 From contentment results unsurpassed joy.
Vyasa explains by quoting from the Puranas: whatever joy there can be through sexual pleasure, whatever joy there can be had in heaven, is not even a sixteenth of the joy that is experienced when one’s desires cease.
When in the process of evolution we forget our true nature as infinite consciousness, we still have a faint memory of the fulfillment we once had — fulfillment we experienced through the love affair with our own heart,39 the first and foremost of all loves. Expelled from the Garden of Eden, we wander through life and project our longing onto the outer world. We are disappointed over and over again, however, because the joys of heaven and earth taste stale compared to recognizing ourselves as consciousness. What we call joy is nothing but a temporary covering of the disappointment, a soothing of the pain created by us losing ourselves in the jungle of conditioned existence. We cover the wound by experiencing some short-lived joy, which wears off quickly. Feeling the pain again, we need stimulus.
We have to realize that the wound will not heal unless we accept the medicine. The medicine is letting go of the idea that any form of external stimulus will help. With the letting go of this idea comes contentment. For the first time we can just sit and be, and not try to do something to get better. Out of sitting and being eventually arises the joy of pure being, which surpasses any joy dependent on the presentation of earthly or heavenly objects.
II.43 Austerity (tapas) destroys the impurities and thus brings perfection of the body and the sense organs.
Tapas, like yoga, is a system of psycho-technology, but it is even older than yoga. It developed out of shamanism. The tapasvin practices extreme forms of asceticism to achieve supernatural powers (siddhis), which are also called perfections. Perfections of the body are abilities like traveling through space and time and walking on water. Perfections of the senses are clairvoyance, the ability to read other people’s thoughts, the divine ear, the magic touch, and so on. We are told here that the practice of tapas will produce such powers.
For the yogi, however, the powers are not an end in themselves, as is the case also for many tapasvins (those who exclusively practice tapas and not yoga). After the veil of the impurities (greed, envy, hatred, and so on) has been removed, the yogi uses the strength gained to obtain self-knowledge and thus become liberated from bondage. To desire super-powers will lead to bondage just as does the desire for wealth, status, and the like.
In yoga, tapas has not the same connotation as when it is practiced exclusively, outside of the yogic context. In yoga, it refers to the ability to sustain our practice in the face of hardship. From this ability great power arises. This is especially true in the case of the Ashtanga Vinyasa method. However, we need to be careful how we use this power. From a yogic viewpoint the reason to practice tapas is only to remove the veil of the impurities to prepare us for the revelation of the light of the self. Any attachment to powers would cover the light with a new veil of ignorance.
II.44 From establishment in self-study (svadhyaya) results communion with one’s chosen deity.
Svadhyaya means study of sacred texts. These texts contain the testimonies of the ancient masters. Since the intellectual condition of humankind has progressively worsened with the advance of time, testimonies of contemporaries are to be viewed with suspicion. In the present dark age (Kali Yuga), teachers who are not corrupted are extremely rare. We have therefore to rely on the study of the ancient scriptures such as the Upanishads. Svadhyaya also refers to repetition of a mantra, such as the sacred syllable OM. To one established in these practices, one’s chosen deity or meditation deity is revealed.
Which deity that is is not specified. The practice of yoga is open to all faiths. According to yogic teachings, all deities are but representations of the one Supreme Being. Because there is only one, they cannot be representations of somebody else. The Supreme Being is a projection of the formless absolute. Because that is difficult to comprehend, it is acceptable to project an image onto the Supreme Being. This image is one’s ishtadevata, one’s meditation deity. The meditation deity will enable us to develop a close personal relationship with the Supreme Being. However, as the Bhagavad Gita states, “Whatever deity you worship, you always worship me.”
It has been common in the past to judge others because we think our ishtadevata is superior to theirs. This has given rise to hatred, warfare, and genocide. An attitude of tolerance is important. Even if we do not understand what our neighbour worships, we should not allow that to produce feelings of superiority because we think ours is a better God.
II.45 From devotion to the Supreme Being comes the attainment of samadhi.
Patanjali has been criticized by theistic philosophers such as Ramanuja for underestimating the importance of the Supreme Being. On the other side, Samkhya teachers like Ishavarakrishna do not mention the Supreme Being. Like the Buddha, they accepted worship of the gods and maintenance of temples and customs, but they denied that this contributes to our liberation. The masters Ramanuja and Madhva, on the other hand, taught that we can do nothing whatsoever toward our liberation but to ask for the grace of the Supreme Being.
Patanjali treads the middle ground. He includes the path of action, which means doing the work ourselves, but he also includes the path of surrender to the Supreme Being. From the mystic’s point of view, the samadhi of the different schools is the same, and it doesn’t matter which technique we employ. This is very much Patanjali’s position.
Whether we approach the Supreme Being, which is nothing but infinite consciousness, from an emotional Bhakti angle or from an analytical Advaita perspective is only a question of individual constitution. The subcommentator Vachaspati Mishra explains that the other seven limbs (those other than samadhi) are there to support devotion to the Supreme Being, which according to him is the only way of attaining samadhi. That Patanjali wanted to describe devotion as the only path to samadhi appears inconclusive from the context of the Yoga Sutra: in other passages of the sutra he appears to be very open to other possibilities.
Krishnamacharya, as a follower of Ramanuja, taught that the Yoga Sutra accommodates three levels of practitioners: beginning, intermediate, and advanced yogis. On all three levels, however, surrender to the Supreme Being needs to be practiced.
According to Krishnamacharya, sutra II.1 prescribes surrender to the Supreme Being for beginners (kriya yogis), sutra II.32 prescribes it for intermediate yogis (ashtanga yogis), while the present sutra (II.45) enshrines it for advanced yogis (called simply yogis). According to Krishnamacharya, a true yogi is one who can surrender directly. From this surrender, samadhi proceeds without any detraction due to inferior forms of practice.
II.46 Posture must have the two qualities of firmness and ease.
With the effects of the restraints (yamas) and observances (niyamas) given, Patanjali concludes his description of the first two limbs. He has described these two limbs only briefly. His descriptions of the first five limbs are in fact very concise, hinting at the fact that the Yoga Sutra addresses the more or less established student.
He will now cover the third limb, asana, in three stanzas. That doesn’t mean posture is unimportant. Had that been the case, Patanjali would not have declared asana to be one of the eight major aspects of yoga. He will cover pranayama in only five stanzas and pratyahara in just two.
Most of the Yoga Sutra deals with samadhi and its effects. It is here that Patanjali’s main interest lies. Teachers such as Svatmarama and Gheranda devoted themselves almost exclusively to the first four or five limbs, which does not mean they regarded samadhi as an inessential form of practice.
Patanjali uses two qualities that are diametrically opposed to describe posture: firmness and ease. If the posture is to be firm, effort will be required — contraction of muscles that will arrest the body in space without wavering. Ease on the other hand implies relaxation, softness, and no effort. Patanjali shows here already that posture cannot be achieved unless we simultaneously reach into these opposing directions. These directions are firmness, which is inner strength, and the direction of ease, which brings relaxedness.
Vyasa gives a list of postures in his commentary to show that yogic posture (yogasana) according to yoga shastra (scripture) is meant here, and not just keeping one’s spine, neck, and head in one line. He also says that the postures become yoga asanas only when they can be held comfortably. Before that they are only attempts at yoga asana.
Shankara elaborates further to say that, in yoga asana, mind and body become firm and no pain is experienced. The firmness is needed to block out distractions since, after asana has been perfected, we want to go on to pranayama, concentration, and so on.
Mention of the absence of pain is interesting. If the field of perception is filled with pain, the mind will be distracted. Patanjali’s definition of posture as ease automatically eliminates that which causes pain. If you are in a posture and experience pain you will not be at ease.
The widespread tendency in modern yoga to practice the postures in such a way that they hurt leads to being preoccupied with the body. This is by defi-nition not yoga asana.
According to scripture, in asana the limbs have to be placed in a pleasant and steady positioning so as not to interfere with the yogi’s concentration. The inner breath (prana) is then arrested and moved into the central channel (sushumna). Sushumna will eat time, and the fluctuations (vrtti) of the mind will be arrested. Meditation on Brahman will then arise.
Asana is thus a preparation for samadhi, whereas practices that lead to pain will increase the bond between the phenomenal self (jiva) and the body, which in itself is the yogic definition of suffering. Those practices might be gymnastics, they possibly could even be healthy, but they are not yoga, which is recognizing the false union (samyoga) of the seer (drashtar) and the seen (drshyam).40
II.47 Posture is then when effort ceases and meditation on infinity occurs.
The sutra is similar to verse 114 in Shankaracharya’s Aparokshanubhuti: “True posture is that which leads to meditation on Brahman spontaneously and ceaselessly and not what leads to suffering.”41 Here again it is implied that as long as we are involved in effort we are not in the true posture. It is the preparatory stage to the posture that is signified by effort and discomfort. When, through training of proprioceptive awareness, the limbs arrive in the correct position, effort suddenly ceases.
The cessation of effort has already been described in sutra II.27. Freedom from doing is there listed as a prerequisite to higher yoga. All effort and intent are finally surrendered in complete detachment (paravairagya), described in sutra I.16. The prana then flows calmly and the disturbing movements of the mind cease. Then occurs meditation on infinity, in which body and mind are experienced as emptiness. This meditation will happen spontaneously, as Shankara says, without any further artificial effort. This is because, once the emptiness nature of body and mind is perceived, the obstacle to meditation on infinity (ananta) is removed.
How do we practice meditation on emptiness? Patanjali does not talk about the infinity of space here, which is an unrewarding meditation object. The infinity of space can be understood through mental reflection; meditation is not required. Patanjali suggests here to meditate on the infinity of consciousness. The Taittiriya Upanishad states, “satyam jnanam anantam brahma”42 — Brahman is reality, knowledge, and infinity. Infinity is here listed as an attribute of Brahman. Patanjali does not use the term “Brahman,” because it implies reducing his separate categories purusha and prakrti to one. However, he uses ananta to refer to the infinity of consciousness, against which the infinity of space is insignificant. He will state exactly this in sutra IV.31.
It is significant, though, that Patanjali uses the term ananta instead of Brahman, which is Shankara’s choice, to denote infinity. Ananta is another name for the divine serpent Adishesha, which is invoked in the “Vande gurunam” chant. One of Ananta’s duties was to provide a bed on which Lord Vishnu could sleep. The Lord had a very weighty appearance at times. When he vanquished the demon king Bali he assumed a form so huge that he strode across the three worlds in three steps (trivikrama). With the third he pushed Bali back into the nether world.
In the Bhagavad Gita,43 the revelation of the universal form of Vishnu (Vishvarupa) is described thus: “Then the son of Pandu [Arjuna] saw the entire universe with its manifold divisions united there, in the body of the God of gods.”44 Three stanzas later Arjuna exclaims, “I see you with many eyes, hands, bellies, mouths, possessing infinite forms on every side; O Lord of the universe, O you of universal form, I see, however, neither your end nor your middle nor your beginning.”45
Vishnu is described as the God of infinity and vastness. As we have seen, when it was time to provide a sofa for his sleep, Ananta, the personified infinity, was called. The sofa needed to have two opposing qualities: it needed to be infinitely firm to uphold the vastness of the Lord; on the other hand it needed to be infinitely soft to provide the best of all beds for Vishnu. For this reason Ananta is seen as the ideal yogi, uniting the opposing qualities of firmness (sthira) and softness (sukham), which makes all of his movements true posture.
One may think this a steep call for the third limb only, but Vyasa affirms, “When the mind is in samadhi on the infinite, then the posture is perfected.” We need also to understand that the Lord Vishnu is nobody but our own self, as the Yoga Vashishta states. Whereas then the mythological serpent of infinity provides a perfect bed for the God who represents our innermost self, on an individual level, if our body is held in perfect posture, embracing the qualities of softness and firmness, then we see that very self effortless and spontaneous. In this way asana, although much sneered at by scholars, is an expression of the divine if practiced from such a high perspective. Otherwise it is sport only.
The view that Patanjali gives of asana is that of a frame or base for the two highest yogic practices, which are complete surrender (paravairagya) and objectless (asamprajnata) samadhi. Asana is engaged in to create a frame for these practices, its purpose being fulfilled only when we abide in these states. On the other hand, surrender and samadhi occur within asana. As we progress we don’t abandon the lower limbs, but they occur naturally and spontaneously to provide the base for the higher limbs.
II.48 In asana there is no assault from the pairs of opposites.
This stanza refers to the state where true posture is achieved and not the preparatory stage where effort and discomfort prevail.
The first pair of opposites we encountered was firmness versus ease. By simultaneously integrating both extremes, we rest, effortless and free in the core. Then meditation on Brahman is possible. Now Patanjali defines true posture as that in which we rest free from any assault of opposites. The opposites are the extremes to which the mind tries to attach itself. For example, before I meditate I need to gain mastery over hundreds of different yoga postures. This is an extreme, and the mind might claim it in order to understand yoga, which by definition the mind is not capable of doing.
The opposite is the attitude that meditation needs no preparation whatsoever. Here the mind dupes us into believing that no posture and no level of proficiency are necessary for meditation. In between these extremes is the state of pure being, where one just exists unaffected by the chatter of the mind. The mind is constantly trying to figure out what is going on out there. It develops a model of reality and then presents it to the path of cognition — ego, intelligence, consciousness. If we reach out and identify ourselves with any of those models that are here called “extremes” or “pairs of opposites,” then we are returning to conditioned existence and are strictly speaking only attempting yoga. Seeing that we are practicing yoga, the mind gets interested in understanding what yoga is. It might say Ashtanga is the right way; other styles are wrong. Or it might say Mysore-style classes are right; talk-through classes are wrong. It also likes to come up with notions such as Hindus are good, Christians and Muslims are bad, or vice versa.
Nowhere is this principle better explored than in the posture itself. We might be in a handstand and the mind might say handstand means pushing the floor away from you. Having attached ourselves to one pair of the opposite we fail to own the other side, which is to reach down into the floor and to draw the heart down into the floor. We have been struck by the assault of the opposites, which means to fall for one extreme and thereby lose our center.
Let us take backbending as an example: The mind says backbending means contracting the back of the body. But if we ignore the mind and stay unassailed by the extremes, we realize that we have to lengthen the back, because a shortened back cannot arch. If we are in Pashimottanasana the mind might first grasp this posture as “thrusting the head to the knee.” A year later the mind might have modified this to “pulling the heart to the feet” — which is much better but still an extreme. Then eventually we stop listening to the mind and arrive there, where every cell of the body awakens and participates in the posture.
If we are then asked, “What is Pashimottanasana?” we really couldn’t say anymore. Any new concept would be just another set of opposites and extremes. Instead of reaching out and becoming one with concepts and extremes, we abide at the core and spontaneously just exist.
Some commentators erroneously claim that Patanjali is speaking here about a type of anesthesia, a numbness that arises if we have endured the pain of the posture long enough. This numbness will surely arrive if one promotes it, and in fact many yogis have gone down that avenue. Yoga, however, is a path to pure being that leads to greater sensitivity rather than numbness.
In his commentary on sutra II.15, Vyasa explains that the vivekinah, the discerning one, is like an eyeball sensitive even to the touch of a cobweb, whereas the average person is like any other part of the body, which is numb to the cobweb. The vivekinah is therefore more sensitive to pain and not numb. Nevertheless he stays free, since he knows he is not the pain: he only witnesses it.
Identifying yoga with numbness is a sad development. It robs us of such pristine moments as when we observe the sun rising and the first rays of light piercing a crystal-clear dewdrop on a leaf, and for the first time we observe pure being revealing itself without it being commented upon by our mentation. Then we know that the sun of knowledge has risen within — and no amount of anesthetic will make that happen.
II.49 When posture is accomplished, pranayama is then practiced, which is removing agitation from inhalation and exhalation.
The Sanskrit “tasmin sati” means when the previous limb (asana) has been accomplished. Vyasa affirms that mastery of asana is necessary before pranayama is practiced, as does the Hatha Yoga Pradipika also.46 But it is nowhere stated what exactly “accomplished” or “mastery” means. Contemporary India seems to have a rather laidback attitude toward what perfection of asana means — but definitely not gymnastic or contortionist performance. And the yoga master T. Krishnamacharya is known to have taught pranayama to students who were too sick to practice asana.
Pranayama is a compound noun consisting of prana and ayama. On the subtle plane it refers to extension or expansion of vital force. In sutra I.31 the disturbed inhalation and exhalation that accompany obstacles of the mind are mentioned. In this context — on the gross plane — pranayama is understood to be regulation of the breathing process. Both definitions have in common the notion that a calm flow of prana and a smooth and even flow of anatomical breath are necessary as a prerequisite for meditation.
A third meaning is described in A. G. Mohan’s translation of Yoga Yajnavalkya.47 Here prana is said to extend twelve angulas (finger widths) over the surface of the body, which corresponds to a scattered state of mind. Yajnavalkya teaches the drawing in of prana to the body to make the pranic body and gross body equal in size. This corresponds to a calm mind. In this context we can callpranayama contraction or concentration of prana. A contraction is also described in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, which suggests forcing prana into the central energy channel, said to be one-thousandth of a hair’s breadth.
Patanjali will give yet another definition of pranayama in the next sutra, were it is taken to mean breath retention (kumbhaka). This is an advanced stage of pranayama, undertaken only after the present stage, the calming of the flow of prana, is achieved. This first stage is practiced through simple techniques such as Ujjayi and alternate nostril breathing (nadi shodana) without kumbhaka.
Usually the term pranayama implies that we are working with the pranamaya kosha, the subtle sheet or subtle body. By directing the movements of the outer or anatomical breath, we influence the movements of prana, the inner breath or life force. The movements of prana are parallel with the movements of vrtti, which are the fluctuations or modifications of the mind. Thus, if the movement ofprana can be calmed and smoothed, the same will apply to the mind’s fluctuations.
In Western circles pranayama consists mainly of simple breathing exercises. However, when I studied pranayama in India, I was asked after a few months of introduction to spend a considerable part of the day in retention (kumbhaka). This is based on the following idea: small animals that breathe quickly have a short life span; animals with a medium breath count have a medium life span; the animal that breathes the slowest, the maritime turtle, lives up to eight hundred years. To breathe fast means to accelerate time; to breathe slowly means to slow down the passage of time. When no breath at all is there, such as in kumbhaka, time for the yogi stands still. All time spent in kumbhaka is, according to yogic teaching, added on to one’s life expectancy as predetermined by one’s karma. The pranayama practicethat was suggested to me consisted of eighty kumbhakas with a duration of sixty-four matras each (approximately sixty-four seconds) four times a day. This adds up to 5.7 hours per day spent inkumbhaka, during which time one doesn’t age. Thus, following this regime on a daily basis would add an additional 25 percent to the remainder of one’s life span.
A word of caution. The medieval texts abound in warnings of the dangers of pranayama. This is not to be taken lightly. Pranayama can be learned only from a teacher and never unsupervised from books. Pranayama tends to heat and compress the mind to make it concentrated. A tendency to short temper can be increased through pranayama, and the outcome can be an angry personality.48
There have also been cases of yogis cracking their skulls open or even dying from increased pressure in the head.49
Whereas asana, meditation, and self-inquiry can be practiced with an agitated mind, the practice of pranayama will rather worsen this condition. It is difficult to fit into a Western fast-paced lifestyle. One can hardly throw in a pranayama session between the board meeting and picking up the kids from day care.
If, nevertheless, engagement with pranayama is desired, it is advisable to do short breath retentions (kumbhakas) only. If we want to practice the typical retentions that are taught in India, which are in excess of a minute, we need to modify our lifestyle.
A possible way of integrating intense pranayama with a Western lifestyle is to practice it intensely on vacations and retreats in the countryside. Traditionally these intense kumbhakas were not practiced in cities, but outside human habitations. Increased population density can have an adverse effect on intense pranayama due to the accumulated tension of millions of minds packed tightly together in a metropolis. Big cities can have a Faraday-cage-like effect, where mystical insight is distorted or intercepted through the closeness of many agitated minds. Pranayama practiced in polluted metropolitan air is not as beneficial as if it is practiced in clean air. Intense kumbhakas might be better performed where clean air is available.
The hand position used in pranayama is called Shanka (conch) Mudra. In it the right thumb is used to block the right nostril (pingala), while the ring finger and little finger are used to block the left nostril (ida). The pointing and middle finger are folded.
The significance of the shanka mudra is as follows. The thumb represents supreme spirit (Brahman). The pointing finger, which represents self (atman), and middle finger, which represents intelligence (buddhi), are passive, since pranayama does not deal with them. They are folded toward the thumb, symbolizing that they are bowing to supreme spirit. The ring finger, which represents mind (manas), and little finger, which represents body (kaya), have an active role, since pranayama facilitates purification of body and mind.
II.50 There are external retention, internal retention, and midway suspension. By observing space, time, and count, the breath becomes long and subtle.
Patanjali mentions three different ways in which the breath can be retained. Some later scriptures mention many more, but we have to understand that pranayama plays a much greater role in Hatha Yoga, where the focus is to make the body immortal. In Patanjali’s eight-limbed yoga, pranayama is used as a tool to facilitate concentration and meditation, nothing more.
The term pranayama is often used synonymously with kumbhaka. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika states that “Kumbhakas are of eight kinds,” and then lists the names of the pranayama techniques.50
The three techniques mentioned in this stanza are all forms of retention — not inhalation, exhalation, and retention as many modern commentators erroneously claim. Vyasa clearly says in his commentary, “There the external is that which is the cessation of movement after expiration; the internal is the cessation of movement after inspiration; the third is the confined operation where the cessation of both takes place by a single effort.”51
In other words the first technique mentioned is to exhale and then arrest the breath, which is known as external (bahya) kumbhaka. Patanjali has mentioned it already in sutra I.34, where the ability to clarify the mind is ascribed to it.
The second method is inhaling and then arresting the breath, which is called internal (antara) kumbhaka in the Hatha texts. This technique is mainly used to increase vitality through storing prana.
The commentators disagree about the third method. According to Vyasa the cessation of both inhalation and exhalation takes place through a single effort, and it is then called midway suspension. According to H. Aranya,52 Vyasa’s single effort means the simultaneous application of all bandhas, which in Hatha Yoga is called Mahabandha Mudra. Mahavedha Mudra and Khechari Mudra are similar methods. The mudras are not much mentioned in the yoga sutras as their use was secret, to be learned only personally from a teacher.
Patanjali further says that by these three techniques the breath will become long and subtle if space, time, and count are observed. Space refers to the area where the breath ends or begins or the place up to where prana is felt. The inhalation is usually felt to begin at the navel (Nabhi chakra), but with training it can be felt to rise from the base of the spine (Muladhara chakra). The exhalation usually ends in a place called dvadashanta, twelve finger widths (angulas) from the nostrils. It is to this place that the pranic body extends.
Time is the length of time one spends in inhalation, exhalation, and retention. It is measured in matras. In a typical pranayama one would spend for example sixteen matras in puraka (inhalation), sixty-four matras in kumbhaka (retention), and thirty-two matras in rechaka (exhalation). One matra is the time that one needs to circle one’s knee with one’s hand once, or clap one’s hand twice, or blink one’s eye three times. In other words one matra is roughly equivalent to a second. However, the reason why those very subjective parameters are given is that they can and should change with our condition and the condition of our surroundings on that day. On a humid and hot day there is less oxygen available.
The same applies at a great altitude. If we are tired or weak we cannot utilize oxygen and prana as effectively. In all these cases we will automatically speed up our matra count, and it is meant to be that way.
If challenging pranayamas are performed with the stop-clock and we rigidly keep identifying a matra with a second, then damage of lung tissue can occur. Also rajas and tamas will then rise in our mind. However, as the Hatha Yoga Pradipika states, “Pranayama should be performed daily with sattvika buddhi.”53 This means the intellect should be predominantly calm and light, with no agitation or dullness.
The third factor in making the breath long and subtle is count. For example in one method one may exhale through ida (the left or lunar nostril) first, then inhale three times through pingala (the right or solar nostril) followed by retention and exhale, then change back to ida nadi, do three internal retentions, and finally exhale through pingala. The count for this system, which is one of many, is fifteen. All exhales are on an odd number, which makes them eight altogether. The inhalations are here on even numbers, which makes them seven. Every inhalation is followed by a khumbaka, these also totaling seven in number. The term “number” thus relates to the particular techniques we use.
If those three factors — space, time, and number — are observed, the breath becomes long and subtle. Why is this necessary?
Pranayama fulfills the purpose of preparing us for dharana, concentration. Concentration, and with it meditation, are not possible if the mind is agitated. With an agitated mind come an erratic breathing pattern and a disturbed flow of prana. When the movements of breath and prana are made long and subtle through pranayama, the mind will flow calmly and move toward single-pointedness. Concentration and meditation will then be possible.
II.51 When the internal and external spheres are surpassed it is called the fourth [pranayama].
The internal sphere refers to where the origin of the inhalation is observed (Nabhi chakra, Muladhara chakra). Alternatively, the inner sphere can also refer to the heart. The external sphere refers to the point of termination of the exhalation, which is twelve finger widths from the nostrils (dvadashanta).
The observation of the spheres, together with observation of time and count, has to be practiced during the first three types of pranayama until the breath is made long and subtle. When the breath and the retentions have been made long and subtle, the internal and external spheres are said to be surpassed. One then enters into the fourth pranayama, which in other texts is called kevala kumbhaka, spontaneous suspension. This pranayama is not accompanied by supporting aids, just as objectless samadhi is not accompanied anymore by supporting objects.
The fourth is rather a qualitative term than a technique. It is the true pranayama, which occurs effortlessly, like a true posture. The three previous techniques are ways leading to the fourth. Most people have had experiences where, through intense shock, fear, or bliss, the movement of the breath automatically stops. This phenomenon relates to the fourth pranayama, which occurs when samadhi is experienced and the breath or prana spontaneously suspends, since life itself is experienced and there is no more thirst for an outer manifestation of life. Some commentators take this to mean suspension of breath, whereas others hold that only the prana is arrested in sushumna, while breath continues its life-sustaining function. There are confirmed reports of yogis who could stop their heartbeat and respiration for extended periods of time, among them Shri T. Krishnamacharya. However, as Krishnamacharya maintained, this was not an essential feature of yoga and in no way required for reaching its goal.
Another natural movement that suspends in deep meditation is the peristaltic movement of the intestine. This is the reason why yoga and many other spiritual disciplines put an emphasis on diet. If heavy foods are eaten, the peristaltic movement cannot stop spontaneously and, if peristalsis cannot stop, spontaneous suspension of the movements of the mind becomes unlikely — not impossible, but less likely.
It is interesting that, when peristalsis stops, movement of the mind and any sexual desire also stop. The sexual urge and charge are produced through a constant massage of the sex center by the peristaltic movement of the intestine. Thus, extended fasting is an easy way to eliminate constant sexual thoughts, which may be preventing higher states of meditation and pranayama. After four days of fasting, peristaltic movement will stop, and with it sexual desire. Exalted experiences of meditation are easily accessible then: every breath will become a revelation and pranayama will happen by itself. Again, the method of fasting must be learned from a qualified instructor; otherwise it can become a health risk. During the fast, the intestine must be completely emptied and washed daily with an enema. Fasting cannot be combined with vinyasa practice, as the body will not have enough energy reserves. Gentle stretches, however, are very beneficial.
Fasting is not a prerequisite for pranayama. The vinyasa practiced is considered to be strong enough to purify the body without resorting to fasting and the shatkriyas (the six actions, described in medieval Hatha texts, that are designed to correct humoral imbalance). For most practitioners a light diet consisting of fruit, milk, and vegetables will keep the peristaltic movement light.
Sticking to a light diet, and having practiced external and internal retention, we become ready for effortless suspension, which may accompany samadhi. Some texts go as far as defining samadhi as breath retention in excess of 1.5 hours. Patanjali does not say anything about this matter; in fact he does not say retention has to accompany samadhi, but it may.
How is it, then, that the breath stops effortlessly and spontaneously? True pranayama, like true posture, has the qualities of effortlessness and spontaneity. To understand the mechanism we have to go back to the introductory idea of pranayama, which is that breath (prana) and mind waves (vrtti) move together. If one of the two alters its movement, it automatically influences the movement of the other. The importance of pranayama lies in the fact that it is much easier to influence the movement of the breath than to influence the movement of the mind.
If a person in a moment of grace arrests vrtti, then prana will follow spontaneously. If vrtti is arrested for a long period of time, prana will perform only that movement that is necessary to sustain life. If the highest form of samadhi (asamprajnata) is sustained over a long period, no pranic movement whatsoever has any influence on absorption, since true reality is uncreated and indestructible.
II.52 Thus the covering of brightness is removed.
“Thus” means when the practice of asana and pranayama is done in the correct way. The covering refers to the impurities — past karma, affliction-based action, conditioning (vasana), and subconscious imprints (samskaras) — which all collaborate to produce ignorance (avidya).
Ignorance, let us recall, is the inability to tell the permanent from the transitory and the real from the unreal. Once this covering of ignorance is removed, brightness and clarity are revealed, which is a prerequisite for going further in yoga. “Brightness” and “clarity,” which are qualities of the mind, are here used to translate the Sanskrit term prakasha. It can be translated as “light,” but that has led modern authors into the trap of taking it to mean the light of the self. But the light of the self (jnanadiptih) is the goal of yoga, and it is seen only after practicing the higher limbs. Here what is being talked about is clarity of the mind, which is a prerequisite for concentration (dharana).
The proof for this understanding will come in the next sutra.
II.53 Then the mind is fit for concentration.
Patanjali is talking about manas, the mind or thinking principle. Prakasha (brightness) is used to describe the quality of mind that is fit for concentration (dharana). If the last sutra was declaring that the light of the self could be reached through pranayama, then no more concentration of the mind would be necessary.
But Patanjali lets us take one step at a time. This sutra really repeats what sutra I.34 has said already: clarification of mind is possible through exhalation and retention of breath. And this is exactly whatpranayama works on — purification of the mind, not gaining mystical knowledge.
Once the mind has achieved brightness and clarity we are ready for concentration, which is the prerequisite for meditation. In yoga there is great respect for meditation. Most students are considered unfit for spontaneous meditation unless they are prepared. If meditation is done incorrectly it is not beneficial, but in fact detrimental. There are Tibetan Buddhist lamas who say meditation by the uninitiated ends only in one’s backside getting flat and flatter, while some of them go as far as to say that whoever meditates wrongly gets reborn as a fish.
If one sits and becomes dull — which, as we have seen, is sometimes called the “white-wall effect” — one should stop meditation immediately and engage in chanting or japa (repetition of mantra), because sitting in dullness lets tamas (stupidity) rise. If, on the other hand, one sits with an agitated mind, rajas (activity) will rise, leading to renewed attachment (raga). K. Pattabhi Jois also taught that meditation was not a practice for beginners. He observed further that, once one was established in wrong meditation practice, correction was not possible. This is due to the fact that one’s state of meditation cannot be assessed from the outside. In other words the teacher has no way of determining whether the student is doing the right practice. Proper meditation is done in a sattvika state, which is possible with the right preparation. If one is not naturally in that state, asana and pranayama are done as preparation.
II.54 When the mind is withdrawn from the outside then the senses follow and disengage from the sense objects. This is pratyahara.
Pratyahara (sense withdrawal) is described next. In some yogic schools it takes center stage, with many different exercises being practiced and much time allocated to it. Patanjali treats it briefly — two stanzas only. As with asana, pranayama, and mudra, the respective exercises were to be learned from a qualified teacher and not from a book.
When we focus on the Ujjayi sound in the vinyasa practice we do not attend to other environmental sounds, and so the sense of hearing is withdrawn. By gazing toward the prescribed focal points (drishti), the sense of seeing is withdrawn. The tactile sense is withdrawn by engaging the entire surface of the body in asana. In a similar fashion, the olfactory and gustatory senses are also withdrawn. For example, if the smell of cooking wafts into our practice room we actively disengage from the sensation rather than walk into the kitchen and help ourselves to a meal.
Vyasa uses the metaphor of a swarm of bees. As it flies up when the queen bee flies up and settles down when the queen bee settles down, so also when the mind is agitated and unfocused the senses reach out and attach to sense objects. If two partners have had a hard day at work they are more likely to experience a conflict when they come home. This is due to the mind being in a state of conflict and the senses then attaching to a suitable object. If we are in a state of sexual desire it is more likely that we notice somebody attractive.
If the mind is just plainly unfocused, the senses will attach to anything that is presented and the mind will follow the impulse. This mechanism is used in supermarkets. Close to the exit are positioned so-called impulse articles, like sweets. We did not plan to buy them, they were not on the shopping list, but because they are suddenly presented we follow the sudden impulse “Ah yes, let’s have that too.” In such ways we fall into many traps all day long. We might remember there was a moment when there was still choice, and then suddenly we got sucked into the situation and wonder how we ended up there.
If the mind is prepared through the first four limbs, we retain freedom of choice. We are free to be independent of external stimulation.
There are two aspects to pratyahara. The withdrawal from the outer world occurs when we realize that external objects cannot make us happy but rather get us into mire. The second aspect is going inside, when we realize that all we yearned for is within us. In this way pratyahara is the gatekeeper between inner and outer yoga.
Many of us have experienced pratyahara. Whenever we manage to detach ourselves from a strong desire or addiction, that is pratyahara. If, years later, we are again confronted with the same object, we realize that something in us does not reach out anymore and attach itself. This mechanism is consciously used in yogic pratyahara.
II.55 From that comes supreme command over the senses.
Supreme command over the senses is reached when we have become completely independent of external gratification and stimulation. It comes peacefully by itself when we have seen the freedom within. Compared to that freedom, all sensory gratification tastes stale.
There is another way of mastery over the senses. This is where the practitioner, through an act of sheer will, shuts out the entire world and so becomes dead to it. This is a form of cataleptic trance that is necessary on the way to developing superpowers and is similar to the concentration of the magician before he casts a spell. As a state of decreased awareness, cataleptic trance is opposed to the yogic path, since it leads to stupor and a rise of ego, with the powers that come with it. It is the opposite of objectless samadhi, which is supercognitive ecstasy or ecstatic trance. In objectless samadhi one may fall into trance because the view of millions of universes arising simultaneously out of Brahman is so powerful that one might not be able to react if approached. In the same way, a candle cannot be seen if held against the blazing sun.
This highest samadhi is the greatest possible increase in awareness, exactly the opposite of cataleptic or catatonic trance.
It is a tragic error, suggested by some commentators, that freedom might be attained through the childish exercise of completely shutting out the world through willpower. Will is nothing but ego. The world exists, according to sutra II.21, only for the purpose of self-realization, and therefore no shutting out is required. Any act of willpower will only deter us from realizing that the world exists just for us to experience ourselves as infinite consciousness. The world is no trap, but a road to freedom. The body is not filthy, but the vehicle to freedom on that road.
1. The Vedas are the oldest type of revealed scriptures. They were considered so sacred that until about 1900 CE they were not written down — this would have, according to tradition, made them impure — but only consigned to memory.
Originally there was only one Veda, which had to be memorized by every Brahmin priest. At the outset of the Kali Yuga, the Rishi Vyasa foresaw that, due to the degeneration of human mental capacity, people would no longer be able to memorize the entire Veda, so he divided it into four parts — the Rig, Sama, Yajur, and Artharva Veda.
The Vedas contain hymns, rituals, and mantras. Even Western scholars now begin to accept that the early hymns of the Rig Veda date back more than eight thousand years. Tradition holds that the Vedas are eternal and are “heard” at the outset of each world age.
The Upanishads form the concluding portion of the Vedas.
2. G. Feuerstein, The Yoga Tradition, p. 247.
3. J. H. Woods, trans., The Yoga System of Patanjali, Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1914, p. 106.
4. T. Leggett, Shankara on the Yoga Sutras, p. 178.
5. Referring to the system of Advaita (nondualistic) Vedanta.
6. H. Aranya, Yoga Philosophy of Patanjali with Bhasvati, p. 122.
7. T. Leggett, Shankara on the Yoga Sutras, p. 194.
8. H. Aranya, Yoga Philosophy of Patanjali with Bhasvati, p. 126.
9. T. Leggett, Shankara on the Yoga Sutras, p. 194.
10. J. H. Woods, trans., The Yoga System of Patanjali, p. 119.
11. T. Leggett, Shankara on the Yoga Sutras, p. 195.
12. Compare Samkhya Karika, v. 59.
13. It is difficult to translate prasamkhyana. Note that it contains the terms Samkhya and khyateh. Prasamkhyana could be called reasoned knowledge. It means that we use intellect and logic to free ourselves from suffering.
14. Shyam Gosh, The Original Yoga, 2nd rev. ed., Munshiram Manoharlal, New Delhi, 1999, p. 197.
15. Sutra II.48: “tato dvandva anabigatah” — then there is no attack from the pair of opposites.
16. Sw. Agehananda Bharati, The Light at the Center, Ross-Erickson, Santa Barbara, 1976.
17. Terms used by S. Dasgupta in A History of Indian Philosophy.
18. I. K. Taimni, trans. and comm., The Science of Yoga, The Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, 1961, p. 168.
19. Srimad Bhagavad Gita, trans. Sw. Viresvarananda, Sri Ramakrishna Math, Madras p. 79.
20. H. Aranya, Yoga Philosophy of Patanjali with Bhasvati, p. 180.
21. David Godman, ed., Be As You Are — The Teachings of Ramana Maharshi, Penguin Books India, New Delhi, 1985.
22. V. 56.
23. T. Leggett, Sankara on the Yoga Sutra, p. 244.
24. A system in which Shiva is the Supreme Being.
25. Referring to the system of Advaita (nondualistic) Vedanta.
26. Samkhya Karika, v. 60.
27. Leggett uses this term in his Shankara on the Yoga Sutra.
28. Bhagavad Gita 13.27, trans. Sw. Vireswarananda, p. 271.
29. G. C. C. Chang, trans., Teachings and Practice of Tibetan Tantra, Dover Publications, Mineola, New York, 2004, p. 25.
30. Ibid., p. 27.
31. T. Leggett, Shankara on the Yoga Sutra, p. 256.
32. The Gheranda Samhita, trans. R. B. S. Chandra Vasu, Sri Satguru Publications, Delhi, 1986.
33. Vasishta Samhita I.44.
34. G. W. Briggs, Gorakhnath and the Kanpatha Yogis, 1st Indian ed., Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1938, pp. 4–6.
35. H. Aranya, Yoga Philosophy of Patanjali, p. 213.
36. Georg Feuerstein, Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, p. 87.
37. Shvetashvatara Upanishad 5.10
38. Shvetashvatara Upanishad 5.12.
39. In line with Indian terminology, heart (hrdaya) is used here not to mean romantic love but our core, the self.
40. Sutra II.17
41. Aparokshanubhuti of Sri Sankaracharya, trans. Sw. Vimuktananda, Advaita Ashrama, Kolkata, 1938.
42. II.1.1.
43. XI.13.
44. Srimad Bhagavad Gita, trans. Sw. Vireswarananda, Sri Ramakrishna Math, Madras, p. 226.
45. Ibid., p. 228.
46. Stanza II.1.
47. p. 10.
48. For a case study compare Sangharakshita, The Thousand-Petalled Lotus: The Indian Journey of an English Buddhist, Sutton Pub. Ltd., 1988.
49. Ram Das, Miracle of Love, Munshiram Manoharlal, New Delhi, 1999.
50. Hatha Yoga Pradipika, II.44.
51. Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, trans. and comm. J. R. Balantyne, Book Faith India, Delhi, 2000, p. 63.
52. H. Aranya, Yoga Philosophy of Patanjali with Bhasvati, p. 233.
53. Hatha Yoga Pradipika, II.6.