One of the last assignments for my Yoga Teachertraining at Svaha I'm studying the yoga sutras of Patanjali. this means that i'm reading different translations but above all looking at my own life and building my own practice. Yesterday Gosta offered a class where he spoke about Kriya yoga. This gave me new clear insight on the path and the essence of kriya yoga.
Patanjali reminds us that yoga is basically a simple proces:
'All we have to do is work really hard and be devote to the goal of knowing God'.
The path to realization or sadhana, is of no use unless we travel it. Action or kriya is required for most of us to reach samadhi. Yogic action has three components:
- discipline or tapas (provides energy)
- selfstudy or svadhyaya (serves as a roadmap)
- orientation towards the ideal of pure awareness (isvara the destination).
I recognize this. I was truely aware of my longing to be free, truely free 4 years ago and only now my way of living becomes more focused and consistent (though it may not look like that on the outside).
The supreme goal of kriya yoga is to recognize that a transcendent, timeless awareness underlies all phenomenal experience. To disarm the causes of suffering and achieve integration.
Patanjali says that our spiritual practices should transform us in the flames of their difficulty and light a fire within us that burns away selfishness. The main impurity is ignorance of the higher Self or avidya. What is offered into the fire is the ego or lower self. (I have a reminder of this on my shoulder: in 2000 I got a sign on my shoulder which amongst other means be aware of the lower self and go for the higher Self.
Tapas or Purification
Sadhana is tapasic when we practice consistently over a long period of time. In Patanjali's formulation of yogic action one enforces yoking through many levels of human experience. In daily life this means placing realization at the center of your priorities. Not only by practising constantly and with complete engagement to enter the stilling proces (nirodha) through daily meditation, but also by bringing every aspect of your work and relationships into alignment with the awakening process.
In the stilling proces tapas is the energy fueling both the persistent returning to focus (abhyasa) and the willingness to see all experience with clarity instead of reaction (vairagya) AANVULLEN MET PERSOONLIJKE ERVARING.
At physiological and energetic levels tapas is both the heat that rises from the fires of bodily purification (tantric technologies a hatha yoga and the heat of surrender).
Each time we can observe without reacting as an impulse to think or act out according to conditioned and patterns of suffering arises, we are in effect practicing a small but significant austerity that unlocks immeasurable energy.
And only by dying to what we thought we were we can enter the sublime realm of of what truly is.
Svadhyaya or study of the higher Self
The principal method of study of the higher Self is reading the scriptures. These provide guideliness for ethical, righteous, yogic action in the world. Chanting the names of God is another form of svadyaya.PERSOONLIJKE ERVARING VERTELLEN.
Ishvara Pranidhana or Devotion of God
Ishvara is the Lord: God in a form that can be visualised and to which we can offer our devotion. Pran is vitality or life energy. Dhana means to give direct energy. Without this devotion, yoga practices become self-serving and binding. Patanjali recommends that you offer each thought, word and deed to God or pure awareness (I prefer the neutral definition of God like this as people make so much of the word God. As an example my girlfriend hates everything around the God thing because her family history around 'believe'is very painful.
Study of the Self involves determining where need ends and greed begins. We can make the determination only by experimenting with our body and mind until we figure out how to remove clutter and confusion. (MY MAIN CONCERN RIGHT NOW). Clutter means no space! We have all sort of clutter in our head. From the moment we arrived in the body, we have been accumulating habits, attitudes, prejudices, likes and dislikes, affectations and characteristics.
That clutter we are used to and its all contained in your name. That's why 'spiritual warriors' are often given a new name by their master.
I'm not supposed to give myself a new name but if I could it would be: Satya. Satya or Sathya is a Sanskrit word that loosely translates into English as "truth" or "correct".
Satya is the second of the yamas and brings whatever is willed: For one who increasingly practices honesty or truthfulness in actions, speech, and thoughts, his or her will is naturally fulfilled.
The accepted interpretation however, is "the Truth which equals love." This concept of truth is not merely a synonym of fact or correctness, but is more metaphysical, like the difference between brain and mind. This 'bigger picture' notion of truth implies a higher order, a higher principle or a higher knowledge. Satya is what one becomes aware of upon becoming a Bodhi (enlightened or awakened person).
Five vrittis or patterns of consciousness
According to Patanjali, five different thought patterns or vrittis characterize ordinary mental states. Vrittis are the activity of ego-based consciousness.
Vritti literally means 'turning'and the particular way that the patterns of consciousness make reality feel - namely a field of objects observed by a subject- is imparted by their motion. When our experience is shaped by this motion, our view of things is incomplete and we suffer. When our citta-vritti turns us towards stillness, consciousness begins to feel more transparent and mirrorlike, providing a less distorted view (analogy with a lake)
Vrittis arise successively, endowing our perceptual life with a feeling of continuity. These are the vrittis or whirls, the “fluctuations of consciousness” which yoga aims to suspend. The five vrittis are:
1. valid-cognition
2. misconception
3. imagination
4. sleep
5. memory
1. Valid Cognition
Valid-cognition depends upon accurate sense experience.
It has three forms:
- direct perception (closest to sensory experience)
- inference
- reliable testimony
This is the thought pattern of correct knowledge. From direct perception one bites into a fruit and knows through direct sensory contact that it is an apple. Correct knowledge can also derive from inference or the accurate testimony of others. With these, sensory experience is second hand, but still the ultimate source of the valid-cognition.
2. Misconception
In misconception all this misfires and the result is incorrect knowledge. One incorrectly interprets a sense experience, makes false inference or relies on false testimony. This is the vritti of false knowledge.
3. Imagination
With the 3rd whirl, imagination, the process moves inwards to subtler forms of vibration. Here the mind fluctuates with pure conceptualisation, spinning images and fantasies that have no basis in direct sense experience but depend rather upon language.
4. Sleep
In sleep, the 4th whirl, the process continues with even less connection to direct sense experience. In deep sleep, the mind appears empty, but the experience upon awakening of having slept well or poorly clearly relates to some kind of vritti that had been active during sleep, albeit very subtly.
5. Memory
In the 5th whirl, memory, the mind taps into the vasanas or karmic deposits. Of all the vrittis, memory is closest to the unconscious. The store of past actions (from this and maybe even previous lives) feeds the processes of dream, daydream and imagination, supplying raw material in the form of images. Yet memory in itself remains most subtle and deep. These are the whirls most difficult to suspend.
Through meditation, the yogi strives to modify, control or suspend these five types of vrittis. If this state can be maintained, it leads to samprajnata samadhi, the lower form of samadhi, known as object-oriented bliss. It is called “object-oriented” because some vrittis remain.
Not until asamprajnata samadhi, which is “objectless” or without vrittis of any kind, is the goal of yoga reached. However, in the lower states of samadhi, sattvic mind can make for a very blissful existence.
Though vrittis still occur, they are no longer afflicted. It is these non-afflicted vrittis that provide the yogi with the momentum to reach full samadhi. These positive thought waves have great benefit, as they facilitate the process of yoga.
It is through the mind that the mind is set free. The sattvic vrittis of samprajnata samadhi enhance the desire for total liberation. And right action follows, the kind of behaviour that leads towards the ultimate transcendence of all vrittis. It is important to distinguish between afflicted and non-afflicted vrittis.
And each of the five types of vrittis, in principle, can be either afflicted or non-afflicted. Afflicted vrittis perpetuate the wheel of samsara. Non-afflicted vrittis contain the seeds for the transcendence of all vrittis. They infuse everyday life with a high degree of sattvic energy and culminate in their own cessation.
So what causes the ordinary vrittis of the mind? What are the factors that keep one bound in conditioned existence? Here in a sense is the heart of Patanjali’s psychology.
Human suffering arises out of ordinary consciousness itself, Patanjali explains, where attachment to the forms of prakriti obscures the true reality: purusha. Patanjali identifies five qualities of mind that create and maintain these vrittis of ordinary consciousness. They are called the five kleshas or sources of affliction. They are the root cause of the “misidentification with the modifications of the mind” which yoga practice aims to eradicate.
The five kleshas
Avidya is the first klesha. It is the source of all the others. Translated often as ignorance, but implying much more, avidya is the opposite of vidya, which means seeing. True sight sees the truth, and that is vidya.
True sight means realizing Ultimate Reality. Its opposite, avidya, is thus a most severe type of blindness. Avidya is spiritual ignorance, the greatest and most fundamental cause of suffering. All the other sources of affliction derive from avidya.
Yoga practice aims to transform avidya into vidya. This is what “yoga chittas vrittis nirodha” indicates.
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