– by Kailasam
The Buddha diagnosed the symptoms of the Human Condition ( anxiety over birth, death, old age, and disease) and hypothesized that attachment was the cause. Sage Pathanjali pursues the diagnosis even further and proposes that the root cause is the lack of true knowledge ( agnanam). This lack is at the level of day to day life in the form of misapprehension of the true nature of the phenomenal universe and its activities as well as at the level of not knowing the true nature of our “Self”.
The antidote is, again, at two different levels; a) clearing the mind of biases and prejudices of all kinds to be able to reflect without distortion what is sensed. Ordinarily, we do not have unmediated access to the phenomenal world which includes ourselves. Our knowledge is based on processed and interpreted information. Until and unless the processing and interpreting is curbed, we can not know anything for what it is. b) The Truth and Its Operating Principle ( Satyam/Riti) which is at the core of the beginning, during, and the end of all can be approached and experienced by a clear mind and from that state of experiential knowledge one can become conscious of consciousness itself.
The methodology for the application of the medicine is practice with goodwill, detachment and determination. The motivation is the acceptance of the existence of Purusham animating Prakriti. Although Sage Pathanjali identifies both a faith-based and a secular approach to this state of being conscious of consciousness itself, a close examination shows that one maps onto the other identically and completely. The four levels of consciousness for which AUM ( plus Thuria) is the mnemonic are essentially the same as the steps through savitarka, nirvitarka, savichara, and nirvichara stages at the end of which prasadham shines through to display Purusha.
Modern neuroscience has identified two aspects of consciousness; state of consciousness ( to be seen for example in death, coma, sleep, dream, and being awake) and contents of consciousness as the activities in the brain (awareness and for the most part unawareness concomitant to any behavior). I visualize Samadhi as that brain state in which there is no content except for the abject minimum necessary for the maintenance of vital signs. This state appears to be necessary for the identification with Purusham which is synonymous with consciousness.
Sage Pathanjali is not the first one but he certainly is one of the most powerful ones to strongly maintain that such states are achievable by dint of practice and dedication (with faith). You have to know it exists before you can experience it! For example, a body state in dynamic equilibrium when brain activity and resultant behavioral activity are unnecessary can be achieved ! Use of the highest evolutes of Prakriti to escape from Prakriti to experience what animates Prakriti! This is not a conundrum. Every one of us experiences, in every moment of wakeful life, the lifting up and away of thought from the supporting substratum of material biological life processes. Sage Pathanjali wants to take you to the next level where thought is used to escape from thought. Consider the set of 24 evolutes of Prakriti from the external to the internal. The phenomenal world ( five bhuthams) is apprehended by manipulation by the five karmendriams. The five gnanendriams transmit the information to the five tanmatrams for internal sensations to be perceived, processed, and interpreted by the mind to be presented to the ego for verification and relevance to self interest. The self presents the knowledge to buddhi for discrimination, recommendation for storage, and later recollection for utility. This process is then continuously applied for the creation of and adaptation to the external world by tracing this process in the reverse order. Evidence is collected from the external world for corroboration or discrepency. This is the cycle of ongoing life which we call the practicality of living. This is the process which brings joys and sorrows, pains and pleasures, health and disease, birth and death. Sage Pathanjali exhorts us to escape this cycle to see the forest for the trees.
The subsequent chapters are elaborations on these themes.
Firstly, it has been both helpful and enjoyable to have the yoga sutra study group organized by Subhash to help work through the various sutras. Sometimes just a few words offered by someone: a translation of a Sanskrit word, a simple question, or a personal insight has opened the way to a deeper understanding of the terse, mostly mysterious (to me), sutras.
Chapter 1: Now, the teachings of yoga are reduced to my personal and limited short summary…
Patanjali starts the chapter by defining yoga as the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind stuff. He sees that we confuse the fluctuations of the mind stuff and the transformations of consciousness with the underlying reality that is true and eternal. If we practice the graduated steps of yogic concentration and settle the mind into deeper stillness we will begin to see that all that we normally experience, including our thoughts, concepts, verbalizations, sense of self, intelligence and every single attribute of mind is just part of nature-prakriti and it is not inherently permanent (as nothing in nature is inherently permanent). Patanjali describes the graduated steps of deeper Samadhi whereby we can explore the objects of our mind from gross to subtle and then even beyond that until we see the underlying pure awareness that is beyond nature. Even the mind itself comes and goes with each ripple on the surface of pure awareness. If we practice the yogic techniques of stilling our minds we can calm the vrittis so that we conduct our lives with a less distorted view of reality and therefore will be less prone to create harmful latent impressions and begin to create helpful latent impressions. With this practice of repeatedly aligning ourselves with the present moment in stillness we can thus hope for a life of lessened ignorance and suffering.