Vedanta Center of Atlanta. Br. Shankara. What Patanjali Means by Power and Freedom July 22, 2018

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1 Vedanta Center of Atlanta Br. Shankara What Patanjali Means by Power and Freedom July 22, 2018 GOOD MORNING ANNOUNCEMENTS Center will be closed during August: there will be no classes and no Sunday talks. Evening Arati will continue as usual, and the Chandi hymns will be chanted here in the Chapel, in Sanskrit, on the morning of Sat August 4th. Otherwise, the Chapel will be closed for cleaning and renovations. September: Holy Mother s Helping Hands food and clothing for the less fortunate. This will become an ongoing program, and may be joined by other community service activities. More as soon as plans are finalized. Swamis Yogatmananda and Atmarupananda will be visiting with us in the Fall. Dates and times TBA as they are known. CHANT SONG WELCOME TOPIC July is a month for study of Raja Yoga, a spiritual path often called the yoga of meditation. As a raja yogi, you use ancient, proven spiritual techniques to quiet your mind and gain control of your attention. Patanjali: Power & Freedom Page 1 of 10 July 22, 2018

2 Regular daily practice of Raja Yoga increases your ability to concentrate, and may lead to meditation. This can unite you with the Divine Presence, the source of your being, and liberate you from the cycle of rebirth and death. What Patanjali Means by Power and Freedom When we read to the end of Chapter 3 of Patajali s Yoga Sutras, we find some astounding assertions about what a yogi can achieve. These unambiguous declarations let us know how limited our notions of power and freedom truly are. Films often portray extraordinary feats of personal power. Yoda, a character in the Star Wars series, easily lifts a full-size fighter plane from the depths of a swamp. His only tool is mastery of what Yoda calls The Force. In Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, a warrior sword-fights with a woman while they leap from branch to branch among the slender, swaying tops of a bamboo forest. How can they do this? As the young woman s martial arts master taught her, Listen with your mind. There is no limit to the power of the human mind, wrote Swami Vivekananda in his introduction to Raja Yoga. Patanjali: Power & Freedom Page 2 of 10 July 22, 2018

3 That book is the swami s translation of and commentary on Patanjali s Yoga Sutras. By power the swami meant much more than a filmmaker s demonstration of mind over matter no matter how dramatic! There are many levels of yogic power. Students of hatha yoga learn asanas and other practices that give them better control of their bodies and minds. Regular practice of this yoga yields improved health and a longer life, physical and mental flexibility and poise, and grace. Few yogis go beyond this level. Those who do may study the great sage Patanjali in depth. His teachings can lead to manifestation of far greater power, and total freedom. That s what we will discuss this morning. Vivekananda: Six Lessons on Raja Yoga Yoga teaches us to make matter our slave, as it ought to be. Yoga means "yoke", "to join", that is, to join the soul of man with the supreme Soul or God. The mind acts in and under consciousness. What we call consciousness is only one link in the infinite chain that is our nature. Patanjali: Power & Freedom Page 3 of 10 July 22, 2018

4 This "I" of ours covers just a little consciousness and a vast amount of unconsciousness, while over it, and mostly unknown to it, is the superconscious plane. Through faithful practice, layer after layer of the mind opens before us, and each reveals new facts to us. We see, as it were, new worlds created before us, new powers are put into our hands, but we must not stop by the way or allow ourselves to be dazzled by these "beads of glass" when the mine of diamonds lies before us. God alone is our goal. Failing to reach God, we die. (Expound) Patanjali wrote (Yoga Sutras, Ch. 3, Sutra 50): By making Samyama on the discrimination between the Sattva and the Purusha, come omnipotence and omniscience. Can this be so? Will an advanced yogi truly become all-powerful and all-knowing? Are these not the attributes of the Creator? Yes. Yet, this exalted state of being is still short of Raja Yoga s goal. Patanjali continues in Sutra 51, By giving up even these powers comes the destruction of the very seed of evil, which leads to Kaivalya. Patanjali: Power & Freedom Page 4 of 10 July 22, 2018

5 Swami Vivekananda comments, (The Yogi) attains independence, and becomes free. When one gives up even the ideas of omnipotence and omniscience, there comes entire rejection of enjoyment, of temptations. When the Yogi has seen all these wonderful powers, and rejected them, he reaches the goal Some of the words used in these last paragraphs may need definition: Samyama is the simultaneous practice and experience of: Dharana - one-pointed focus of the mind, deep concentration Dhyana - prolonged meditation, which may lead to Samadhi - loss of selfhood in union with the Divine (Shankara: hailstone ) Discrimination is a spiritual aspirant s ability to see clearly the difference between the impermanent and the eternal. After long practice a yogi begins to experience the subtlety of this difference. (In Sanskrit the term is viveka, the root word for Swami Vivekananda s name.) Sattva is one of the three gunas. Patanjali: Power & Freedom Page 5 of 10 July 22, 2018

6 These gunas are aspects of the Divine Presence (prakriti) that manifest as our universe the body-mind complex and all other matter, and timespace-causation. Sattva is called the revealing power. The other two gunas are tamas, the concealing power, and rajas, the projecting power. Sattva is experienced by yogis at all levels as purity itself radiant, restful, and inspiring. For a yogi nearing the goal, Patanjali teaches that even sattva must be understood as yet another limited, changing aspect of universe. It is not purusha. Purusha is every living being s True Original Nature, the Self unlimited, unchanging, eternal Consciousness. Purusha cannot be known by the mind or the senses. Yet it is the source of the primal energy that gives rise to the human form and all of creation. Great spiritual teachers say it is our unconscious knowledge of the Self that prompts us to pursue yoga and other spiritual practices. A yogi s realization of purusha, in the superconscious state of samyama, leads to kaivalya. Kaivalya is the yogi s final enlightenment; it is also called moksha (liberation). According to Patanjali, the yogi having rejected even the allure of omnipotence and omniscience Patanjali: Power & Freedom Page 6 of 10 July 22, 2018

7 becomes utterly fearless, free from all attachment and desire, and from all pain and suffering. When the Yoga Sutras promise freedom, this is what they mean! According to Swami Vivekananda, this freedom is the destiny of every human being our eternal birthright. As a friend who has a quirky sense of humor puts it: Yep! We re all doomed to enlightenment! Sooner or later, yes, Swamiji says that is your destiny. Yet, what about now are you deeply moved by the idea of being free of all limitation? Are you inspired enough to make the efforts needed to achieve that goal? If so, what are they? Vivekananda: Six Lessons on Raja Yoga Three things are necessary to the student who wishes to succeed. First. Give up all ideas of enjoyment in this world and the next, care only for God and Truth. We are here to know truth, not for enjoyment. Leave that to (the lower animals) who enjoy as we never can. Man is a thinking being and must struggle on until he conquers death, until he sees the light. He must not spend himself in vain talking that bears no fruit. Patanjali: Power & Freedom Page 7 of 10 July 22, 2018

8 Worship of society and popular opinion is idolatry. The soul has no sex, no country, no place, no time. Second. Intense desire to know Truth and God. Be eager for them, long for them, as a drowning man longs for breath. Want only God, take nothing else, let not "seeming" cheat you any longer. Turn from all and seek only God. Third. The six trainings: First Restraining the mind from going outward. Second Restraining the senses. Third Turning the mind inward. Fourth Suffering everything without murmuring. Fifth Fastening the mind to one idea. Take the subject before you and think it out; never leave it. Do not count time. Sixth Think constantly of your real nature. Get rid of superstition. Do not hypnotise yourself into a belief in your own inferiority. Day and night tell yourself what you really are, until you realise (actually realise) your oneness with God. Without these disciplines, no results can be gained. As is sometimes the case, Swamiji exaggerates for maximum emphasis. Yet, you mustn t think, Oh, I can t do that. There are so many demands on my time! I might try, but I d probably fail Patanjali: Power & Freedom Page 8 of 10 July 22, 2018

9 Sri Krishna speaks very directly to that concern in Ch. 6 of Bhagavad Gita, when Arjuna asks: Suppose a man has faith but does not struggle hard enough? His mind wanders away from the practice of yoga and he fails to reach perfection. What becomes of him then? When a man goes astray from the path to Brahman, he has no support anywhere. Is he not lost, as a broken cloud is lost in the sky? Sri Krishna answers: No, my son. That man is not lost, either in this world or the next. No one who seeks Brahman ever comes to an evil end. Even if a man falls away from the practice of yoga, he will still win the heaven of the doers of good deeds, and dwell there many long years. After that, he will be reborn into the home of pure and prosperous parents He will then regain that spiritual discernment which he acquired in his former body, and will strive harder than ever for perfection. Because of his practices in the previous life, he will be driven on toward union with Brahman, even in spite of himself Patanjali: Power & Freedom Page 9 of 10 July 22, 2018

10 By struggling hard, and cleansing himself of all impurities, that yogi will move gradually toward perfection through many births, and reach the highest goal at last. Who knows where each of us is in this long journey toward complete freedom, independence? In the last few pages of Raj Yoga, Vivekananda wrote his final commentary on a yogi s liberation: (Then) Nature s task is done, this unselfish task which our sweet nurse, nature, has imposed upon herself. She gently took the self-forgetting soul by the hand, as it were, and showed him all the experiences in the universe, all manifestations, bringing him higher and higher through various bodies, till his lost glory came back, and he remembered his own nature. Then the kind mother went back the same way she came, for others who have lost their way in the trackless desert of life. And thus is she working, without beginning and without end. And thus through pleasure and pain, through good and evil, the infinite river of souls is flowing into the ocean of perfection, of self-realisation. Glory to those who have realised their own nature. May their blessings be on us all! CONVERSATION & CLOSING PRAYER Patanjali: Power & Freedom Page 10 of 10 July 22, 2018