Latest / Wisdom of the Ages Library / 05 - Book Two, Sutras 1-27 - The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
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- Book two Sutras one to twenty seven Sutra one. The practices which make for union with the soul are fervent aspiration, spiritual reading, and complete obedience to the Master. The word which I have rendered fervent aspiration, means primarily fire, and in the Eastern teaching it means the fire which gives life and light, and at the same time the fire which purifies. We have therefore as our first practice, as the first of the means of spiritual growth, that fiery quality of the will, which enkindles and illumines, and at the same time the steady practice of purification, the burning away of all known impurities. Spiritual reading is so universally accepted and understood that it needs no comments. The very study of Potangali Sutras is an exercise in spiritual reading, and a very effective one, And so with all other books of the soul. Obedience to the Master means that we shall make the will of the Master our will, and shall conform in all ways to the will of the Divine, setting aside the wills of self, which are but psychic distortions of the one divine will. The constant effort to obey in all the ways we know and understand will reveal new ways and new tasks, the evidence of new growth of the soul. Nothing will do more for the spiritual man in us than this, for there is no such regenerating power as the awakening spiritual will. Sutre two. Their aim is to bring soul vision and to wear away hindrances. The aim of fervor, spiritual reading and obedience to the Master is to bring soul vision and to wear away hindrances, or to use the phrase we have already adopted. The aim of these practices is to help the spiritual man to own in his eyes, to help him also to throw aside the veils and disguises, the enmeshing psychic nets which surround him, tying his hands, as it were, and bandaging his eyes. And this, as all teachers testify, is a long and arduous task, a steady up pill fight, demanding fine courage and persistent toil. Fervor. The fire of the spiritual will is, as we said twofold. It illumines, and so helps the spiritual man to see. And it also burns up the nets and meshes which ensnare the spiritual man. So would the other means spiritual reading and obedience. Each in its action is twofold, wearing away the psychical and upbuilding the spiritual man. Sutra three. These are the hindrances, the darkness of unwisdom, self assertion, lust, hate, attachment. Let us try to translate this into terms of the psychical and spiritual man. The darkness of unwisdom is primarily the self absorption of the psychical man, his complete preoccupation with his own hopes and fears, plans and purposes, sensations and desires, so that he fails to see or refuses to see, that there is a spiritual man, and so doggedly resists all efforts of the spiritual man to cast off his psychic tyrant and set himself free. This is the real darkness. And all those who deny the immortality of the soul, or deny the soul's existence, and so lay out their lives wholly for the psychical mortal man and his ambitions are under the power of darkness. Born of this darkness, this psychic self absorption is the dogged conviction that the psychic personal man has separate, exclusive interests which he can follow for himself alone. And this conviction, when put into practice in our life, leads to contest with other personalities, and so to hate. This hate again makes against the spiritual man, since it hinders the revelation of the high harmony between the spiritual man and his other selves, a harmony to be revealed only through the practice of love, that perfect love which casts out fear. In like manner, lust is the psychic man's craving for the stimulus of sensation, the din of which smothers the voice of the spiritual man, as in Shakespeare's phrase, the cackling geese would drown the song of the nightingale. And this craving for stimulus is the fruit of weakness, coming from the failure to find strength in the primal life of the spiritual man. Attachment is but another name for psychic self absorption, for we are absorbed not in outward things, but rather in their images within our minds. Our inner eyes are fixed on them, our inner desires brood over them, and we blind ourselves to the presence of the prisoner, the enmeshed and fettered spiritual man. Sutraphor the darkness of unwisdom, is the field of the others. These hindrances may be dormant or worn thin, or suspended or expanded. Here we have really two sutras in one. The first has been explained already. In the darkness of unwisdom grow the parasites, hate, lust, attachments. They are all outgrowths of the self absorption of the psychical self. Next, we are told that these barriers may be either dormant or suspended, or expanded or worn thin. Faults which are dormant will be brought out through the pressure of life or through the pressure of strong aspiration. Thus expanded, they must be fought and conquered, or, as potently a quaintly says, they must be worn thin as a veil might, or the links of anacals Sutra five. The darkness of ignorance is holding that which is unenduring, impure, full of pain, not the soul, to be eternal, pure, full of joy, the soul. This we have really considered already. The psychic man is unenduring, impure, full of pain, not the soul, not the real self. The spiritual man is enduring, pure, full of joy, the real self. The darkness of un wisdom is therefore the self absorption of the psychical personal man to the exclusion of the spiritual man. It is the belief carried into action that the personal man is the real man, the man for whom we should toil, for whom we should build, for whom we should live. This is that psychical man, of whom it is said, he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption. Sutra six. Self assertion comes from thinking of the seer and the instrument of vision as forming one's self. This is the fundamental idea of the Sanchia philosophy, of which yoga is avowedly the practical side. To translate this into our terms, we may say that the seer is the spiritual man, the instrument of vision is the psychical man, through which the spiritual man gains experience of the outer world. But we turn the servants into the master. We attribute to the psychical man the personal self, a reality which really belongs to the spiritual man alone. And so, thinking of the quality of the spiritual man as belonging to the psychical we merge the spiritual man in the psychical or, as the text says, we think of the two as forming one's self. Sutra seven lust is the resting in the sense of enjoyment. This has been explained again and again sensation, as for example, the sense of taste is meant to be the guide to action, in this case the choice of wholesome food and the avoidance of poisonous and hurtful things. But if we rest in the sense of taste as a pleasure in itself, rest that is, in the psychical side of taste, we fall into gluttony and live to eat instead of eating to live. So will the other great organic power, the power of reproduction. This lust comes into being through resting in the sensation and looking for pleasure from that sutra eate. Hate is the resting in the sense of pain. Pain comes for the most part from the strife of personalities, the jarring discords between psychic selves, each of which deems itself supreme. A dwelling on this pain breeds hate, which tears the warring cells yet further asunder and puts new enmity between them, thus hindering the harmony of the real. The reconciliation through the soul Suturnine attachment is the desire toward life, even in the wise carried forward by its own energy. The life here desired is the psychic life, the intensely vibrating life of the psychical self. This prevails even in those who have attained much wisdom, so long as it falls short of the wisdom of complete renunciation, complete obedience to each least behest of the spiritual man and of the Master who guards and aids the spiritual man. The desire of sensation, the desire of psychic life, reproduces itself, carried on by its own energy and momentum, and hence comes the circle of death and rebirth. Death and rebirth instead of the liberation of the spiritual man Sutriten. These hindrances, when they have become subtle, are to be removed by a countercurrent. The darkness of unwisdom is to be removed by the light of wisdom, pursued through fervor, spiritual reading of holy teachings and of life itself, and by obedience to the Master. Lust is to be removed by pure aspiration of spiritual life, which, bringing true strength and stability, takes away the void of weakness which we try to fill by the stimulus of sensations. Hate is to be overcome by love. The fear that arises through the sense of separate warring selves is to be stilled by the realization of the one's self, the one soul. In all this realization is the perfect love that casts out fear. The hindrances are said to have become subtle when, by initial efforts they have been located and recognized in the psychic nature Sutra eleven. Their active turnings are to be removed by meditation. Here is, in truth the whole secret of yoga, the science of the soul. The active turnings, the strident vibrations of selfishness, lust, and hate, are to be stilled by meditation by letting heart and mind dwell in spiritual life, by lifting up the heart to the strong, silent life above, which rests in the stillness of eternal love and needs no harsh vibration to convince it of true being. Sutra twelve. The burden of bondage to sorrow has its root in these hindrances. It will be felt in this life or in a life not yet manifested. The burden of bondage to sorrow has its root in the darkness of unwisdom, in selfishness, in lust, in hate, in attachment to sensation. All these are in the last analysis, absorption in the psychical self, and this means sorrow, because it means the sense of separateness, and this means drawing discord and inevitable death. But the psychical self will breed a new psychical self in a new birth, and so new sorrows in a life not yet manifest Sutra thirteen. From this root there grow and ripen the fruits of birth, of the life span of all that is tasted in life. Fully, to comments on this would be to write a treatise on karma and its practical working in detail, whereby the place and time of the next birth, its content and duration are determined. And to do this the present commentator is in no wise fitted. But this much is clearly understood, that through a kind of spiritual gravitation, the incarnating self is drawn to a home and life circle which will give its scope and discipline, And its need of discipline is clearly conditioned by its character, its standing, its accomplishment Sutra fourteen. These bare fruits of rejoicing or of affliction, as they are sprung from holy or unholy works, Since holiness is obedience to divine law to the law of divine harmony, and obedience to harmony strengthens that harmony in the soul, which is the one true joy. Therefore joy comes of holiness comes indeed in no other way. And as unholiness is disobedience, and therefore discord, Therefore unholiness makes for pain. And this twofold law is true, whether the cause take effect in this or in a yet unmanifested birth Suitra fifteen. To him who possesses discernment, all personal life is misery because it ever waxes and wanes, is ever afflicted with restlessness, makes ever new dynamic impresses in the mind, and because all its activities war with each other. The whole life of the psychic self is misery because it ever waxes and wanes, because birth brings inevitable death, because there is no expectation without its shadow fear. The life of the psychic self is misery because it is afflicted with restlessness, so that he who has much finds not satisfaction, but rather the wetted hunger for more. The fire is not quenched by pouring oil on it, so desire is not quenched by the satisfaction of desire. Again, the life of the psychic self is misery because it makes ever new dynamic impresses on the mind. Because a desire satisfied is but the seed from which springs the dea desire to find like satisfaction. Again, the appetite comes in eating, as the proverb says, and grows by what it feeds on. And the psychic self, torn with conflicting desires, is ever the house divided against itself, which must surely fall Sutra sixteen. This pain is to be warded off before it has come. In other words, we cannot cure the pains of life by laying on them any bomb. We must cut the root absorption in the psychical self. So it is said, there is no cure for the misery of longing, but to fix the heart upon the eternal Sutra seventeen. The cause of what is to be warded off is the absorption of the seer in things seen. Here again we have the fundamental idea of the sankia, which is the intellectual counterpart of the yoga system. The cause of what is to be warded off, the root of misery is the absorption of consciousness in the psychical man. And the things which beguile the psychical man. Their cure is liberation. Sutra eighteen. Things seen have as their property manifestation action inertia. They form the basis of the elements and the sense powers they make for experience and for liberation. Here is the whole philosophy of life. Things seen the total of the phenomena possessed as their property, manifestation, action, inertia, the qualities of force and matter in combination. These in their grosser form make the material world. In their finer, more subjective form, they make the psychical world the world of sense impressions and mind images. And through this totality of the phenomenon, the soul gains experience and is prepared for liberation. In other words, the whole outer world exists for the purposes of the soul and finds in this its true reason for being Sutre nineteen. The grades or layers of the three potencies are the defined, the undefined, that with distinctive mark, that without distinctive mark, or as we might say, there are two strata of the physical and two strata of the psychical realms. In each there is the side of form and the side of force. The form side of the physical is here called the defined. The fore side of the physical is the undefined, that which has no boundaries. So in the psychical there is the form side, that with distinctive marks, such as the characteristic features of mind images. And there is the fore side without distinctive marks, such as the forces of desire or fear, which may flow now to this mind image, now to that Sutra twenty The seer is pure vision. Though pure, he looks out through the vesture of the mind. The seer, as always is the spiritual man, whose deepest consciousness is pure vision, the pure life of the eternal. But the spiritual man, as yet unseeing in his proper person, looks out in the world through the eyes of the psychical man, by whom he is enfolded and enmeshed. The task is to set this prisoner free, to clear the dust of ages from this very temple Suitre twenty one. The very essence of things seen is that they exist for the seer. The things of outer life, not only material things, but the psychic man also exist in very deed for the purposes of the seer, the soul, the spiritual man. Disaster comes when the psychical man sets up, so to speak, on his own account, trying to live for himself alone, and taking material things to solace his loneliness Suitre twenty two. Though fallen away from him who has reached the goal, things seen have not altogether fallen away, since they still exist for others. When one of us conquers hate, hate does not thereby cease out of the world, since others still hate and suffer hatred. So with other delusions, which hold us in bondage to material things, and through which we look at all material things. When the colored veil of illusion is gone, the world which saw through it is also gone. For now we see life as it is in the white radiance of eternity. But for others the colored veil remains, and therefore the world thus colored by it remains for them, and will remain till they too conquer delusion Suiture twenty three. The association of the seer with things seen is the cause of the realizing of the nature of things seen, and also of the realizing of the nature of the seer. Life is educative. All life's infinite variety is for discipline for the development of the soul. So passing through many lives. The soul learns the secrets of the world, the august laws that are written in the form of the snow crystal, or the majestic order of the stars. Yet all these laws are but reflections, but projections outward of the laws of the soul. Therefore, in learning these, the soul learns to know itself. All life is but the mirror, wherein the soul learns to know its own face Sutra twenty four. The cause of this association is the darkness of unwisdom. The darkness of unwisdom is the absorption of consciousness in the personal life and the thing seen by the personal life. This is the fall through which comes experience, the learning of the lessons of life. When they are learned, the day of redemption is at hand Sutra twenty five. The bringing of this association to an end, by bringing the darkness of unwisdom to an end is the great liberation. This is the seer's attainment of his own pure being. When the spiritual man has through the psychical, learned all life's lessons, the time has come for him to put off the veil and disguise of the psychical and to stand revealed a king in the house of the Father. So shall he enter into his kingdom and go no more out Suitra twenty six. A discerning, which is carried on without wavering is the means of liberation. Here we come close to the pure Vedanta with the discernment between the eternal and the temporal. Saint Paul, following after Philo and Plato, lays down the same fundamental principle. The things seen are temporal, the things unseen are eternal. Potentially means something more than an intellectual assent, though this too is vital. He has in view a constant discriminating in act as well as thought, of the two ways which present themselves for every deed or choice. Always to choose the higher way, that which makes for the things eternal, honesty rather than roguery, courage and not cowardice, the things of another rather than one's own, sacrifice and not indulgence. This true discernment, carried out constantly makes for liberation Suitor twenty seven. His illumination is sevenfold, rising in successive stages. Potentiali's text does not tell us what the seven stages of this illumination are. The commentator thus describes them first. The danger to be escaped is recognized. It need not to be recognized a second time. Second, the causes of the danger to be escaped are worn away. They need not be worn away a second time. Third, the way of escape is clearly perceived by the contemplation, which checks psychic perturbation. Fourth, the means of escape clear discernment has been developed. This is the fourfold release belonging to insight. The final release from the psychic is threefold, as fifth of the seven degrees. The dominance of its thinking is ended as sixth. Its potencies, like rocks from a precipice, follow themselves once dissolved. They do not grow again. Then, as seventh, freed from these potencies, the spiritual man stands nforth in his own nature as purity and life. Happy is the spiritual man who beholds the sevenfold illumination in its ascending stages. End of Book two, Suitras one to twenty seven.