Patanjali Yoga Sutras

http://www.dailyreadings.com/sutras_1.htm

 

I. 1.

atha yoga 'nusasanam


Now, when a sincere seeker approaches an enlightened teacher, with the right attitude of discipleship (viz. ,free of preconceived notions and prejudices, and full of intelligent faith and receptivity) and with the right spirit of inquiry, at the right time and the right place, communication of yoga takes place.



I. 2.

yoga citta vritti nirodaha

see notes If you are having difficulty with CHOPPY AUDIO, then click here and download the entire 7MB selection, and it will start to play with Real Audio.
Yoga happens when there is stilling (in the sense of continual and vigilant watchfulness) of the movement of thought - without which there is no movement.

(Audio Clip Part 2)

I. 3.

tada drasthuh svarupe 'vasthanam

In the light of non-volitional, non-moving and therefore spontaneous and choiceless awareness the undivided intelligence with its apparent and passing modifications or movements of thought within itself is not confused with nor confined to any of these. Then (when yoga thus happens), the seer or the homogeneous intelligence which is ignorantly regarded as the separate experiences of sensations and emotions, and the separate performer of actions, is not split up into one or the other of the states or modifications of the mind, and exists by itself and as itself.




I.4.

vritti sarupyam itaratra
At other times, when yoga does not happen and when the mind is busily occupied with the movement, there is a cloud of confusion in the undivided, homogeneous intelligence. In the shadow of that cloud, there arises false identification or cognition of the movement of the mind-fragment and hence distorted understanding .The single concept or idea or the single movement of thought is mistaken as the totality.

I. 5.

vrttayah pancatayyah klista 'klistah


These apparent movements or states or moods of the mind, which are concepts, ideas or images in it, can all be grouped under five categories, irrespective of whether they are experienced as painful or not-painful, and whether or not they are covertly or clearly tainted by the five-fold afflictions described later.

I. 6.

These five categories of apparent movements of the mind are:

1. proven theory, which is often assumed to have been reliably proved and therefore to constitute right knowledge; (or, rationalization of the movement of thought .)
2. unsound thinking or wrong knowledge, assumptions, presumptions, beliefs (deductions and inference may also be included here); (or verbal condemnation of the movement of thought as wrong.)
3. (fancy or hallucination or imagination totally unrelated to any proven or assumed theories, which may also include the delusion that one is already out of the movement of thought .
4. a state of dullness or sleep; or succumbing to the movement of thought, feeling it is impossible to go beyond it;
5. memory, or the recollection of a teaching or an experience which gives rise to the notion that it is possible to go beyond the movement of thought; such a notion forms an image.



I. 7.

pratyaksha 'numanah'gamah pramanah

What are proven theories?

Theories are said to derive their proof from one or the other of the following sources:

(1) direct perception, sense-experience, or intuition,

(2) deduction or extension of direct perception and sense-experience or beliefs: in the absence of direct proof or experience, indirect proof is deduced from the right or wrong application of principles of logic chosen by oneself, which often lead to vague generalizations or presumptions that " since the theory comes from a usually reliable source, it must be correct. "

(3) scriptural or other trustworthy testimony or authority - where, again, one accepts as proof the statements of those whom one has accepted as THE authority, such acceptance being blind and fanatic.



1. 8.

Unsound thinking or wrong knowledge is based on error, on mistaken identity, where the cognition is unreal and faulty and hence the knowledge is faulty, too, and where there is no agreement between the expression and the experience, between the substance and the description .

I. 9.

Fanciful or hallucinatory expressions and even experiences or imaginations are "sound without substance", empty words and phrases or descriptions which have no corresponding reality, however realistic or inspiring or satisfying they may appear to be: hence they are the most deceptive and least trustworthy. .

I. 10.

When nothingness or void is the content of the mind, when the idea of nothingness alone prevails, or when the mind thinks that it does not think at all, there is sleep, which is a state of mental or psychic inertia.

 

YO SOME COMMENTS WILL BE APPRECIATED>.. god.. I post this here and no one even cares for good old patanjali.

 

Jedi...I read yesterday. I was familiar with Patanjali's Yoga Sutras many yrs ago but been so long, I remembered it simply as treatise on physical hatha-yoga.


What you posted is interesting...a clear and concise description of the workings of the mind and transcendental consciousness, very scientific.

 

arty: Thank you spook!

 

Patanjali is worth a read.


'How to know God' trans. Isherwood/Prabhavanada is a good version.
I think that's where the quote on the last track of George Harrison's 'Brainwashed' album is taken from....(in my edition it's a different page number though:H )

It's good that you post stuff here Jedi - there are only a few who keep this forum going at all.

 

Sounds very familiar...that must be the version of Patanjali I read around 1970.

I recently finished Isherwood's The Guru and His Disciple, about his 30-year relationship with Prabhavananda...good read.

Molly...Good Pic! It's true, BG As It Is is the kickass version.

 

Yeah it is...I saw in the book store and I remembered...so I went and opened it up to page 130...and the quote wasn't there! I flipped to the previous page and there it was: The soul does not love, it is love itself. It does not exist, it is existence itself. It does not know, it is knowledge itself. ....but I guess "How to Know God, Page 129" didn't sound as good as "page 130" hehehe

 

Patanjali mentions 'light containing herbs' as a method for getting beyond the movements of the mind.....interesting, given the disagreements that have cropped up here in the recent past.....I can't give you the quote as my copy seems to have gone walkabout.

 

The attainments listed in the previous section are not only the fruits of the threefold inner discipline, but they arecongenital in some, and in others they may follow the right and intelligent use of certain medicinalherbsor of certain mantras (mystic formulae or advice) or they may follow the kindling of the psychic fire.
​

That's the translation from Jedi's link.

 

Use it in context BBB, they did not know what types of problems people will face using such "Right" medicinal herbs. Vaishnavas however disagree and say that mere physical ways of getting these "attainments" are just other ways of deluding oneself.

 

It isn't using right herbs, it is using herbs rightly, Jedi. In my experience, it is typical of many misguided vaishnava sects to be so closeminded as to dismiss anything that does not fit in with their worldview.

 

Maybe the vaishnavas are close minded or maybe "spiritual drug users" need to understand that they are only fooling themselves.

 

I've met my share of drug using Vaishnavas over the years.

They're in a kind of self-contradictory position obviously, as they stick to some of what SP said, and disregard other bits.
Same as Patanjali - he says clearly enough that 'light giving herbs' can lead to spiritual experiences, but some choose to disregard that and only look at other things he said.

I'm not saying that on the basis of Patanjali's statement you should rush out to score - just pointing out that attitudes can vary towards these things. Currently, there is a kind of negative campaign against chemical consciousness change - we can see from Patanjali that a different culture viewed this very differently, and perhaps more sensibly and even scientifically than we do today.

 

By your above statements BBB, you are guilty of "choosing" to refer to what you want and discarding what you don't want.
Ideally, we want no contradictions between what we do and what we say, and we want to be staunch followers of one correct philosophy with no contradictions.... but really practically, this is impossible. That is what it means to be a human, IMHO.

 

Hardly, as I'm not a Vaishnava or a follower of Patanjali.
I'm only pointing out that there is a contradiction in saying on one hand all drug use is bad, and on the other holding up Patanjali as a sage.

When I look at the ex SP followers I mentioned above, I seriously have to wonder, because actually for all the 'staunch philosophy' some are using very harmful substances like cocaine, but still adopt this self-righteous attitude, and even try to preach to people like me about SP.

 

And maybe there are more colors than black and white.

 

Like purple.

 

green too....