sutra class 3

Patanjali’s definition of yoga, as yogaś citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ, is the basis of the practice of Ashtanga Yoga. Guruji used to say, if you cannot control the mind, you need to practice step-by-step Ashtanga Yoga for mental and physical purification.

We have looked at a few different perspectives on how the human being is constituted. According to yoga philosophy we are in essence Sat Chit Ananda – truth, pure consciousness and bliss.

Yogis have described the human being as having five bodies or sheaths, which fit one within the other – first, the body of food (annamaya kosha), second, the pranamaya kosha, the body of prana, the body of vital energy. Manomaya kosha is the third, the body of discursive, lower or animal mind and sense organs. vijnanamaya kosha is the fourth, which is the body of intellect, the body of knowledge and decision-making. And the anadamaya kosha, which is called the body of bliss or causal body is the fifth - it also contains the samskaras or karmas, which cause future reincarnation. The food body and the prana body taken together are called the physical body, the manomaya and vijnanamaya koshas together are known as the subtle body (or body of mind) and the anandamaya kosha is known as the causal body (it contains the material cause for all manifestations of our experience).

This Sat Chit Ananda, consciousness, or true identity of the human being, is thought of as being completely pure, untouched by the experiences that we have in this physical incarnation. The Self is the “light” of consciousness and the subtlest aspect of mind has the capacity to reflect this light. In a certain sense you could say that the higher mind is like a mirror and through receiving this light and energy, it animates what we experience as mind and body. According to yoga, our sense organs, our thinking, our intellectualizing, our remembering, all these take place because of the connection with the Self - the Self is the energy, the electricity or current, which allows these processes to happen. Just as electricity causes a light bulb to glow, so the Self animates the bodies. When the filament of the bulb burns out, the current ceases to flow.

We conceive of these two elements: matter (prakriti) and spirit (purusha), as being of a completely different nature. Through being incarnated into a physical body, our experience as purusha is dulled down, diminished. It is as if a blanket of darkness, known as tamas has covered the light of the Self.

But, in addition to his physical body, man has a mental body (manas) connected to the sense organs and the organs of action, and this body is governed by the quality of rajas – movement. Tamas covers the essence. As a result we feel lost and disconnected from the source. But in its act of covering/veiling, tamas creates a screen onto which rajas then projects sense impressions, thoughts, feelings, desires etc. The screen can be seen both as internal and external: when we perceive an object we only see its superficial form and we project metadata based on past experience to complete our understanding which would otherwise be only partial. When we look internally we only see the mind/body sheaths which cover the Self – so we erroneously superimpose thoughts of I and mine on the mental states and activities.

A third element – buddhi or higher mind, the faculty of cognizing, remembering and decision making is predominantly sattvic in nature, however it is often obscured or diminished by the activity of rajas or the dullness of tamas. By purifying and transforming the physical and lower mental states we allow buddhi and sattva to manifest more strongly.

What happens, if we think about it quite concretely? You are sitting here looking at me, listening to me. But what is actually happening? Light is reflected from my face into your eyes and sound vibrations travel through the air and enter your ears.

Then, once these impressions have been received by the sense organs, they are transformed into electrical impulses, which transmit information through a nerve into the brain, and somehow these are processed and projected onto a screen inside the mind so that I can see, Felice, and Alex, sitting there. But I do not actually experience them directly, my experience is mediated by the environment (through which sense data has to travel), my sense organs and my own mind, which gives particular form by way of recognition to what I perceive.

To further illustrate how we are removed from “reality” we can consider that light takes time to travel as does sound. Our perceptions are thus always of a past moment and never of the present. Our experiences are always mediated and never direct. As we associate our past experiences with what we (almost) presently experience, we find ourselves stuck in our conditioning. And so, lost in ignorance, we project our hopes and fears onto what we perceive as reality and claim ownership of the mind as the Self.

What we experience on this movie screen of the mind is called Chittavritti. Consciousness is called Chit. But as this consciousness and light is reflected in the mind, we call it chitta, because it goes through transformation. And vritti means movement, the movement of chitta, the activity of the mind..

So Patanjali says yogaś citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ, tada drashtuh.., vriti…. (YS 1.2-1.4) Yoga means stopping the fluctuations of the mind. It also means eliminating the tamasic vrittis, which don’t seem like fluctuations, but the experience of dullness or inertia. And by restraining these thoughts, feelings and experiences, the Self is naturally experienced as our underlying nature. It is the substratum of our experience but is obscured by the noise and dirt of the mind. The mind has to become completely tranquil and clear, otherwise, we do not experience the Self, we experience identification with the vrittis.

Patanjali says that the vrittis are klishta or a-klishta - that means they are either afflicted or un-afflicted. Vrittis, which are supportive of yoga and Self-realization, are non-afflicted but other vrittis lead to further suffering.

According to yoga, every time you have a perception, thought or experience, an impression is made on the mind and this impression then sinks into the unconscious. This latent impression, or samskara is charged, conditioned by our associated past experiences, thoughts etc.. When another similar experience arises, the samskara is re-awoken and the associated thoughts and feelings are provoked once again. This is a continuous cycle. Samskaras combine with each other into what are called vasana, vasana means tendencies, or particular characteristics.

Many of these charged memories and tendencies of character are unwelcome in the practice of yoga. So part of the process is to uproot these samskaras, which are considered to be a little bit like seeds, which are planted in the mind. And each time one has a pertinent perception, this waters that little seed, and it sprouts up and presents itself and says hello. So, part of the process of yoga is to progressively take these seeds and remove them, or burn them, eliminate them.

Samskaras and vasanas combine to create karma: whatever we think or speak, and whatever acts we perform have consequences. If we don’t resolve those consequences in this life, we will experience them in future lives. There is an absolute cause and effect.

The vrittis can be klishta or aklishta, they can be afflicted or un-afflicted. The vrittis that do not cause suffering are promoting us on the path of yoga. The ones that cause pain continue to re-enforce the cycles of suffering.

Patanjali talks about five different types of klesha (afflictions), but there is actually only one, which is avidya (not knowing), the source of all suffering. Number one equals avidya, ignorance. Number two is ego, 3 and 4 desire and aversion, and the fifth one is the fear of death. Of the causes of suffering, ignorance is the foundation, but the two aspects that continue to cause immediate suffering for most people on a day-to-day basis are desire and ego.

What does Patanjali mean by avidya? The fundamental cause of all suffering is that we are unable to see, understand or know ourselves. In the absence of clarity we project values onto what we perceive and experience which do not belong there, this is the darkness of ignorance.

According to yogis what we really desire is samadhi, we are desiring the highest bliss and happiness. But because we do not know where to look for it, we are seeking it through the pleasures of the senses. And for a little while we may feel happy through obtaining a coveted object or experience, however this is always short lived. The stress on the modern mind, leads us to find different avenues for releasing, and when the stress of the mind is released, we experience a little bliss or at least some relaxation. It doesn’t last very long because the happiness is not a result of obtaining the object, the happiness is the result of relaxing the mind from its stress. So a new object must be obtained to get more mental relief. But true happiness comes from knowing the Self.

Ego, asmita, is really at the crux, at the center of this error. Bhuddi, or intellect, is called the power of seeing. It is the faculty, the means by which the Self is able to perceive. The Self has no activity whatsoever. It is completely passive, completely receptive. Asmita is the feeling that the mind is actually the author, is actually the identity, is actually the real person, actually the soul. But according to yoga this is just a projection, the mind is a tool, an instrument or limitation of the Self.

If you take a bucket of water and put it out in the sun, if you look at the reflection of the sun in the water, you know it is just a reflection. The light of the Self, reflected in the imperfect mind of man appears as a distortion. This is taken for real, or for the complete and accurate picture. As the mind is purified it becomes a better and better reflector of the Self, and by reducing identification with the mind we reduce the projection of ego.

One could say that our experience of life functions a bit like a movie theater: images are projected on the screen of the mind using a light source (the Self). When we enjoy a movie, we identify with the characters, and when the hero is in danger, we feel in danger, when the hero is happy or successful, we feel happy or successful. In a similar way we identify with our experience and suffer or enjoy as a result. But yoga reveals that this identification is the cause of bondage and represents an error in our understanding. And the way to overcome this mistake is to end the conjunction between who is seeing (the Self) and by what means an object is being seen (the mind). How it is being seen is the way the mind is acting, and the one who is seeing is detached from the mind, a separate entity – our true identity.

Patanjali describes a process called viveka khyateh. Viveka means discrimination, this is discrimination between what in my experience is essentially me, truly me, my true Self, my true spirit and what in my consciousness is an element of mind - an element which is produced by this life experience, or a previous life experience. And this is another way we can view the whole process of yoga - as discrimination between Self and not-Self. And this is to be achieved through practice of the eight angas of Ashtanga Yoga.

This is another of Guruji’s favorite quotes:
yogāṅgānuṣṭhānād aśuddhikśaye jñānadīptir āvivekakhyāteḥ - YS 2.28

Through the practice of the limbs of yoga, there is a diminishing of the impurities and cultivation of the light of discriminating wisdom (between Purusa and Prakriti)

The vrittis are reduced by abhyasa and vairagya. Abhyasa means practice, and raga means desire, this is one of the klesha (afflictions). Vairagya means to move away from desire, to redirect our attachments to external objects towards an internal object (the Self). Passion is translated into something different, it becomes a passion for the divine, a passion for truth. So we shift the focus away from the external towards the internal. You cannot eradicate desire, you have to re-select the target.

They often say in India that the mind is like a caterpillar that will not detach its hind legs until it has attached its front legs to something new. The mind has to attach somewhere before it will leave its attachments to other things. So the process by which we go through transformation, by which we are able to move towards vairagya, is progressively to attach ourselves to objects that further our evolution and thus remove them from objects or activities that we know are dragging us down.

We can see an example from practicing asanas - once you start doing asana practice, many things naturally start to change: our desires for certain types of foods start to diminish naturally etc. Naturally they move away from what causes suffering.

According to Patanajali abhyasa means the effort to establish steadiness (of the mind) – tatra sthitau yatno'bhyāsaḥ YS 1.13 - in other words to make the mind fit for Samadhi.

Guruji used to say you have to practice for a long time, a very long time. Patanjali says you have to practice for a long time without interruption with the purpose of understanding and manifesting the truth (satkārāsevito YS 1.14) - without this purpose in mind you cannot really call it practice as per Patanajali or Guruji.

Question: Can you talk a little about the 6 poisons and purification, I know practice helps, but how do you move away from anger and greed and….

Guy: The Self, which is said to reside in the cave within the mind which is located in the center of the heart is of the nature of light, but this light is obscured by six poisons – greed, envy, sensual desire, laziness, anger and delusion – these poisons need to be eliminated through following the four external limbs – then, as Patanjali says the covering over the light (of the Self) is diminished.

There are a number of ways to help directly; one is by changing diet. The impact of certain foods is far more profound than people generally understand. Changing the diet may reduce negative thoughts, words and actions. Recognizing negative thoughts when they arise and trying to identify from where they arise, tracing them back to their source. This helps to reduce the incidence of compulsive thoughts and actions. Patanjali says

vitarkabādhane pratipakśabhāvanam YS 2.33

which means to eliminate unwanted vrittis, cultivate the opposite. So, if you are prone to anger, cultivate love and compassion. If you are prone to jealousy cultivate generosity.

As we change our basic perspective on life, our values start to eliminate these poisons. These impurities are based on personal thoughts about oneself, in relation to others or in relation to the world, so transforming the way you think about life will change these things also.

Felice: When you say change the way you think about life, what do you mean by that?

Guy: Well, it is a natural process, I think, when you become involved in yoga practice and studying these kinds of philosophies. We start moving from a belief that its all about getting as much as you can out of life and screw everybody else, and thoughts like that. Changing the way you eat, how you think about the environment, how you think about other people: are they there to serve you, or are you honored that they are there for your communication, or do you feel like they owe you this or owe you that?

As the Yama and Niyama become perfected in social relations, this will change the way we see things. It is just a natural part of the process if you are on the spiritual path - I am sure everyone has seen these changes happening. For many people, of course, they will just be stuck in their way of being. My first teacher was not a yoga teacher, he was a western philosopher, I was very influenced by him in many ways. He said, for every step of progress in your spiritual path you have to make 3 steps in your external behavior. Because we can think, oh we are progressing very well in yoga practice, but unless you start to change your life and really make those concrete steps in the external life, the internal progress is still far off.

Elise: can you talk more about the idea of being a householder but also following the elements of the yoga sutras, because they don’t necessarily go hand in hand.

Guy: Last week I spoke about the different ashramas -the different stages of life. It is traditionally thought that a young person up until the age about 28-30 who is not married and doesn’t necessarily have work responsibilities, can do intense practice and be totally involved in it. This stage is called the brahmachari stage. Afterwards, once you get married and have children, then your responsibilities are especially to your immediate family. Then you become a grandparent and have further responsibilities towards society as you get older. Then once those responsibilities are over, it was traditional to withdraw into the forest usually with one’s husband or wife and just follow a complete spiritual practice. So if you are talking about following the spiritual path as an exclusive agenda, those two periods of life, youth and old age, are times you could completely devote yourself.

But you have to take care of your karmas, your responsibilities and we have to live pragmatically, we cannot follow ahimsa perfectly. Even outside of family life you cannot follow ahimsa perfectly, there is always going to be some impact through your words or actions. The more spiritualized your thoughts, words and actions become, there’s a greater and greater chance that any harm you cause to other living creatures, will not impact them so much. If you have the chance of realization, it is said they will actually be carried with you. So by having consumed or harmed them, they will get liberated with you.

We have to have an intention, a goal, somewhere we are going towards, but we can’t do it 100% today. You can’t always be truthful. When you have children, sometimes you have to be a little deceptive to get them to do something. This is completely practical, and likewise sometimes when you communicate, there is a danger you will cause more suffering, so it is better not to say things in such a way that is not supportive and maybe you have to lie to do that in special cases.

Family provides enormous opportunities for understanding the yama and niyama. It is also a very fertile field for seeing anger, jealously and all those other poisons arise.

But there are many things we can do to help ourselves come closer to experiencing the higher states of yoga. One is to choose times of day for practice, where sattva is dominant, which is the half hour before sunrise and before sunset. Nighttime is a time in which tamas, the force of inertia is at its strongest. We fall asleep, we feel heavy. Daytime, when the sun is rising, and reaches a peak at midday, is a time of rajas, a time of work and activity. And the two sandhis, dawn and dusk (there are actually 4 sandhis, midnight and midday as well) are also considered special times for meditation and pranayama. And if we sit at those times of day, it is taking favorable conditions of nature into consideration, to support our meditation practice.

Other ways in which we support ourselves is using the right food, having the right diet. We are not only concerned about the physical process of digestion and assimilating food, but also about how that food impacts the mind, which is actually much more powerful than we generally understand. So we are looking for foods, which produce a tranquil peaceful state of mind, foods which support asana, pranayama and meditation practice. 

Ashtanga Yoga Darshana - Sutra Class 1

There was no transcription of the first sutra class. What follows covers the subject discussed:

“It is very important to understand yoga philosophy; without philosophy, practice is not good, and yoga practice is the starting place for yoga philosophy. Mixing both is actually the best.” - Jois & Anderson, Yoga International, Jan/Feb 1994

Pattabhi Jois was influenced by two philosophical/spiritual traditions: the tradition of yoga and the tradition of Advaita Vedanta. Two paths: one that starts from the dualistic experience of being in the body (yoga), the other, a non-dualistic (advaita) contemplation of divinity and the oneness of creation. The path of yoga starts in the dualistic realm of relativity of the physical and culminates in the non-dual experience of the essential Self, which is the purview of Advaita Vedanta. Hence they are not separate but conjoin at a certain point where yoga becomes an internal experience. The most important teacher in the lineage of Advaita Vedanta is Sri Shankaracharya. Shankaracharya, in addition to being an important saint in the advaita lineage was also a strong advocate of yoga. The main inspiration for advaita philosophy is the Upanishads.


We can see from the many interpretations that have been made of the sutras over the years, that the essential meaning and intention of Patanjali has many different nuances and no one can say with authority which is correct. In fact it is the nature of such spiritual texts that they should convey something essential to each individual based on his/her individual samskaras. Since Guruji’s perspective was that of Shankaracharya’s Advaita Vedanta, it would seem to make most sense to take this point of view while interpreting the sutras in accordance with Guruji’s philosophy.


Ashtanga Yoga, according to Pattabhi Jois, is Patanjali Yoga as described in the Yoga Sutra.

What is yoga?

Yoga is the complete control of the mind involving the restraint of all fluctuations or modifications. When the mind is controlled we experience the Self (our true identity) in its completeness.

Ordinarily this true identity is drowned under the deluge of impressions, which continuously flood through the mind. No longer being aware of the true Self, we misguidedly become identified with the content of the mind. YS I 2-4

But what is the Self?

The Self sees everything but is not seen by anything. It gives light to the intellect and ego but is not enlightened by them. It pervades the universe and by its light all this insentient universe is illumined, but the universe does not pervade it even to the slightest extent. 

That inner Self, as the primeval spirit, eternal, ever effulgent, full of infinite bliss, single, indivisible, whole and living, shines in everyone as the witnessing awareness. 

That Self in its splendor, shining in the cavity of the heart as the subtle, pervasive yet un-manifest ether, illumines this universe like the sun. It is aware of the modifications of the mind and ego, of the actions of the body, sense organs and life-breath. It takes their form as fire does that of a heated ball of iron; yet it undergoes no change in doing so. 

This Self is neither born nor dies, it neither grows nor decays, nor does it suffer any change. When a pot is broken the space inside it is not, and similarly, when the body dies, the Self in it remains eternal. 

It is pure knowledge. It illumines Being and non-being alike and is without attributes. It is the witness of the intellect in the waking, dream, and deep sleep states.

 - Sri Shankaracharya -Vivekachudamani

But what is our actual experience of ourselves? Do we experience ourselves as “effulgent” or “full of bliss” do we experience ourselves as eternal beings? No. Although we chase after pleasures and experience enjoyment, we also experience darkness and depression, anxiety, stress and we anticipate and fear death. We experience ourselves as limited by our biology or genetics, our education, familial and social conditioning, our work, children, spouses and so on.

We have become sick mentally and physically due to the pressures and conveniences of modern life. We have lost our connection with nature, we no longer know how to feed ourselves or even how to give birth, these most fundamental of human actions. We identify with our careers, political persuasion, sexual orientations and other socially constructed ideas and no longer know who we are and as a result experience confusion, doubt and uncertainty.

The Self sees everything but is not seen by anything. It gives light to the intellect and ego but is not enlightened by them. It pervades the universe and by its light all this insentient universe is illumined, but the universe does not pervade it even to the slightest extent. 

The Self is the source of all. In the yoga sutra, Patanjali uses the expression “seer” – the one who sees or witnesses. The witness is not changed by seeing. The witness observes the modifications of the mind, which are external to it but it is not affected by its observation.

We now understand through quantum science that the physical world is one continuum – atoms are not discrete entities but bond and exchange particles with other atoms, so our physical bodies have no discrete boundary. Our bodies are in a continuous process of transformation, we are exchanging fluids and gasses with the environment and the cells of our body are constantly being replaced. The body is in a continuous state of flux and is intimately integrated into its environment.

Beneath any structure there must be a blueprint, something that brings it into configuration, an essence that gives form to substance. While it can be said that the physical universe is truly one discrete (continuous or contiguous) entity, yoga suggests that underlying all phenomena is a similarly uniformly spread principle, which could be called spirit. Just as we can say all matter distributed through the universe is a structured on the same essential building blocks, so we can suggest that underlying all phenomena is an energy and logic which is essentially the same. The essence of the Self is not different from the essence that sustains the universe, just as the substance of the physical body is not different from the substance of the universe it finds itself in.

According to yoga there are effectively three aspects to the mind. The lower mind, manas, which is connected to the sense organs and the organs of action, the higher mind or buddhi, the faculty of knowing, remembering and decision making, and the sense of self or ego.

The lower mind, manas, is mechanical in nature. It processes and categorizes impressions received through the senses. Each impression made on the mind leaves a trace, known as samskara. As the impression fades and a new one arises, the samskara sinks into the unconscious retaining whatever emotional “charge” was experienced with the thought or impression. When a similar thought or impression arises again, the samskara is re-awakened to be re-experienced and perhaps increased in potency before it re-submerges into the unconscious again. This is a continuous process – one of recycling the samskaras. As the mind is stimulated by the arising of samskaras into awareness it also acts out its desires according to five organs of action: The organs of speech, grasping (with hands), locomotion (with legs), digestion/excretion and sex.

The more unrestrained, unhealthy or undeveloped the lower mind, the more strongly is the sense of ego or self associated with it and consequently the more ignorance and suffering will be experienced. But the mind can be trained. It may be trained to a certain extent through good parenting and education, but to transcend its compulsive nature a higher training is required, a training such as yoga.

Vital energy (prana) is distributed throughout the body via a fine network of channels (nadis). When the lower mind is undeveloped these nadis are polluted with waste due to bad diet and habits. As a result vitality cannot move unhindered through the body or into the mind, the result is pain, dullness and ignorance.

That inner Self, as the primeval spirit, eternal, ever effulgent, full of infinite bliss, single, indivisible, whole and living, shines in everyone as the witnessing awareness. 

If the ego can be employed to train the mind, to transform the mind from being a tyrant which does exactly as it pleases to become a co-operative and faithful servant, then perhaps, through controlling the mind, the Self will be experienced as the essential core of our being.

That Self in its splendor, shining in the cavity of the heart as the subtle, pervasive yet un-manifest ether, illumines this universe like the sun. 

It is aware of the modifications of the mind and ego, of the actions of the body, sense organs and life-breath. It takes their form as fire does that of a heated ball of iron; yet it undergoes no change in doing so. 

The Self is not different in nature from that which sustains and structures the universe, and as such is the energetic underpinning of all material and subtle functions of the human being including the mind.

The Self witnesses the processes of the ego, mind, body and sense organs and through its essential underpinning of all human processes enters into them but does not undergo any change as a result.

This Self is neither born nor dies, it neither grows nor decays, nor does it suffer any change. When a pot is broken the space inside it is not, and similarly, when the body dies, the Self in it remains eternal. 

It is pure knowledge. It illumines Being and non-being alike and is without attributes. It is the witness of the intellect in the waking, dream, and deep sleep states.

According to yoga, something can only be said to be real if it is unchanging. It something changes then you can only describe something that is in process not a discrete entity. The body and mind go through continuous change and as such cannot be considered to be real.

The analogy of the pot is often used. The body, made as it is out of the substance of this universe, returns to it as it decomposes in death and re-merges with the environment. The body is likened to a clay pot. Clay is taken by the potter and made into a pot. The air or space that surrounds the pot is not different from the air that is inside the pot. When the pot is broken (the body dies) nothing happens to the air inside pot, only an apparent boundary, which is now dissolved, separated them. In a similar way, the rishis explain that when the body dies there is no reason to assume the spirit will die also.

Even though we do not feel aware, the Self is always aware. It witnesses everything, even when the mind is totally suppressed by dullness and inertia as in sleep.

Our experience is composed of the qualities of sentience, mutability and inertia - these three are found in the manifested world and are embodied in our sense organs - they serve the purpose of both gaining knowledge of the world and liberation from it. - YS II 22

The mind has three states (gunas), which interact with each other:
1. Prakasha – literally, “radiance” – implying a pure state, also known as sattva.
2. Kriya – activity, also known as rajas
3. Stithi – steadiness, inertia, dullness also known as tamas.

Most of the time we are dominated by the latter two qualities. In deep sleep for instance, tamas is totally dominant, as we start to dream, rajas comes into play, when we awake and get out of bed to start the day, rajas tries to dominate the predominantly tamasic quality of the body. The rajas quality increases with the rising of the sun and then starts to diminish after mid-day. Many factors play into the influence of the gunas, including the food we eat, our work, leisure and exercise habits. Through yoga our attempt is to cultivate the sattva guna to the greatest extent.

Sutra Class 2

Alex kindly transcribed these talks so those who missed a class can hear what was discussed. Unfortunately the first class was not well recorded.

Sutra Class 2 - Jan 2012

I am going to recapitulate what we spoke about last week. In fact every week we will go over the same basic concepts.

Atha yogānuśāsanam

The meaning of this sutra indicates that yoga is not something newly to be expounded upon, this is an exposition of a subject that is already known. The subject is known because it occurs as a natural state in the human being.  It is not an artificial state.

According to the yogis or rishis, there are four different states of human experience. The first one is called the waking state. The second one is the dream state, the third one is the deep sleep state and the fourth one is called Samadhi, or Turiya. In ancient times human beings used to experience all four of these states naturally.

The state of Samadhi has unfortunately been lost for most of us, but it is still accessible. One might have the impression that to attain the state of Samadhi and have the experience of the Self, is a long and arduous task and takes some effort. But in a certain sense this is a mistaken view since the Self is always present, the Self is always the source of who we are. The problem is the mind.

Then we come to the second sloka: yogaścittavṛttinirodhaḥ

Patanjali says, yoga is the restraint of the fluctuations of consciousness: when the mind is still, the Self naturally shines, it is naturally experienced. But the problem is that the mind, with its activity (rajas) and its dullness (tamas), is what is mostly experienced. We increasingly have become identified with the contents of the mind, and feel that this is us, and we have lost the connection with our true being, our true experience of ourselves. 

Kali Yuga is a period in human evolution, which is characterized by a predominance of tamas, tamas being the guna of heaviness, dullness, inertia, addiction and delusion. This is a period of delusion, deep delusion for people. There were three previous yugas. In the preceding yuga rajas was dominant but in the first period it was purely the sattvic influence which was affecting the human being.

The three qualities, Rajas, Tamas and Sattva.

The Tamasic quality has its source, its roots, in the head and it has a downward movement. So we feel the experience of Tamas as a kind of blanket or covering, which makes us feel totally dull, and feel like we are stuck somehow or sleepy.

The Sattvic element has its source in the muladhara chakra, which is why we stimulate mula bandha. And the Sattvic element has an upward and expansive movement, like the prana. So Sattva moves up, while Tamas moves down, and Rajas, the third element has a horizontal movement. The quality of rajas is connected with the lower, or animal mind (manas) and the senses. You can see that in animals, the spine is horizontal, and the movement of animals in terms of their connection with the senses and their desires, and the fulfillment of their desires, which are completely natural, is horizontal. In the human being, you can see that the spine has become vertical, and this is what allows us to have an increase in the sattvic quality, as sattva wants to move up.

The Tamasic element you can see mainly in the physical body or in plant life. Plant life has little or no capacity for movement, which is the characteristic of rajas, and has no capacity for consciousness, which is the quality of sattva in human beings. So you could say Human beings are predominately sattvic, animals are predominantly rajasic, and plants predominately tamasic. And in a similar way you could say our physical/energetic body is related a little bit to the plant, our emotional body and lower mind is related to the animal, and our consciousness as humans is unique and rises, transcends these other elements of nature.

So in this earlier period, human beings used to experience Samadhi naturally as a fourth state, along with a waking state, a dreaming state, a sleep state. This fourth state was naturally occurring. It is said to engender profound happiness, far greater than anything you could experience through enjoyment of pleasures of the physical world, through the mind and senses. It is said to be thousands of times greater, and therefore it is the goal of human life to experience that happiness, which remains as an unconscious memory and desire.

As human beings began to experience this world, and the pleasures of this world, they became more and more attached to it. And through this attachment and the pleasure-pain cycle which arose, delusion started to grow, and increasingly this experience of who we are was lost and we became more and more deeply immersed in this material world, both the pleasures and pains of this experience.

So although yoga practice requires effort, we are not really requiring effort to achieve the goal, we make effort to eliminate the problems which are there, then the natural state of Samadhi can be experienced at certain times.

Zoe: When Does Kali Yoga end?

Guy: There are different ways of calculating it. Some say 100s of thousands of years, which I don’t think makes sense, others say 10s of thousands, others say Kali Yuga has already ended.

But what does it mean? It does not mean we cannot practice yoga in this time, what it means is that the challenges we experience are intense and the work is that much harder. And your presence as people who are on the evolutionary path is that much more important for others who are in deeper delusion.

Jason: Last week we talked about the exhale being associated with Prana and the inhale being associated with Apana, can you explain?

Guy: Usually, typically, the opposite is said to be the case. The first thing I would suggest is just to observe through experience. Sit straight. What happens when you breathe in, physiologically? What happens is the diaphragm is moving down, a tendon in the abdomen is pulling the diaphragm down. As the lungs expand they apply downward pressure on the abdominal area. So there is a downward movement - this is the movement of Apana, it is downward.  And you will feel that as you exhale and the pressure is released from the abdominal area, the movement is up and out.

When you speak, or chant or if you sing, this is an expression of prana. This is you expressing your prana. When you breathe in and you feel full - in a certain sense what we experience is that we feel ourselves, as physical human beings, embodied with ego. My chest is expanding, my experience of myself is expanding, and so is my body. And when I exhale, I experience moving towards emptiness, and I’m moving towards a higher experience, the sahasrara chakra.

This is what I understand from my study with teachers in India. Actually both inhale and exhale are governed by prana, it is one energy which gets categorized according to its function in the body. Usually, even BKS Iyengar, talks about prana being inhale.

But I think this may be part of the mistaken way that we think about energy in the context of yoga in modern times. When the yogis say you want to increase your energy, what do we think? Oh I can work harder, I can make love for an extra period of time, I can have the capacity to do all these things in the physical world and fulfill all the pleasures that I have. This is the antithesis of yoga, completely the opposite direction. This is rajasic energy – energy that moves. What we want is sattvic energy. The yogic direction is to find peace, to find tranquility, to find serenity, to find emptiness. When the mind is quiet and the mental noise is eliminated then the Self is experienced. So we are aiming to experience Self, which is not what they call Prakriti.

According to the yogis, there is a division between what is physical (Prakriti) and what is spiritual (Purusha) and the physical also encompasses your mind. All the elements of consciousness we normally experience are part of what is called Prakriti, the material element. And the soul, true spirit, is completely non-physical in nature. Any thoughts you have, any ripples you have in consciousness any fullness of experience, is in a certain sense you experiencing yourself in the limitation of mind, and not in being. Because actually, what happens in the Samadhi experience is you go out. You are not aware of anything, its like sleep but more profound. Only when you wake up from the Samadhi do you experience this incredible bliss, as a kind of memory, just as after you wake up from sleep you have this experience, mmmm I slept well. This is the reason why, according to Patanjali, he calls even sleep a vritti.

There are five different types of vrittis, which will be described in the next few sutras. And of the five different types of vritti, one is sleep, as well as memory, correct knowing, incorrect understanding and abstract knowledge or fantasy. These are the five different types of Vrittis Patanjali says you have to control. But the point is, you experience the pleasure of sleep only afterwards, not during. During sleep, you experience just being out. But when you wake up, you have this delicious experience, delicious memory, a feeling that it was good. I feel good. I feel refreshed. I slept well. In a similar way with Samadhi, after Samadhi experience, when you wake up, then you experience the bliss. But during the experience you’re completely out, somewhere else.

The Third  Sutra, tadā draṣṭuḥ svarūpe'vasthānamaḥ.

Then the Self is established in its true form. Patanjali uses the word draṣṭuḥ, which means the seer, the one who is seeing but when he says seeing, he also means hearing, tasting, touching – Drashtuh has these experiences without in the slightest way being effected by them.

So when the Vrittis are controlled, then the Self is established in its true form. Otherwise: vṛttisārūpyamaḥ itaratra

Otherwise there is self-identification with the vrttis. This is our normal experience - I am sitting and talking to you, and my vrttis, which are my thoughts and words which are being expressed by me, my identification with what I’m expressing, your identification with what you are hearing and how your assimilating what you hear, whether you are judging it to be correct or incorrect, or if you have some question, or are you are relating what I say to your own personal experience – all of this is chitta vritti. And in the absence of a solid feeling of Self, we become identified with these vrittis. So the purpose of yoga practice is to eliminate the mental chatter and hopefully we’ll get an experience of the Self.

What we experience as mind/body is not just activity (rajas), it also has a quality of tamas, which means dullness. Sleep is the experience of complete domination of tamas - so heavy that you can only remember afterwards having had the experience. It is so heavy and so dull that the mind is completely inert. There are other experiences we can have during the day time where that’s partially the case. We may feel very tired or we may feel very passionate about something. When we are angry or have strong feelings, this has the affect of reducing your mental capacity, your feeling of clarity, feeling of being in touch with yourself.

In truth, Tamas, Rajas and Sattva are always intermixed - all three are always present but as yoga practitioners we are looking towards cultivating that which is predominately sattvic. Sattvic foods will also include elements of rajas and tamas, but sattva will dominate. When you are meditating, rajas, tamas and sattva work together: elevating your thoughts and sitting and using your higher mind, Buddhi, which is predominantly sattvic requires also Rajas and Tamas: it requires the activity of Rajas to keep your thoughts continuously coming back to the same point and the steadiness of tamas to keep it fixed there. But sattva has to strongly dominate otherwise the mind will not be able to resist the disturbance of Rajas or sleep inducing tamas.

These forces form the architecture of our minds, which we cannot escape. But we are looking towards generating as much of the sattvic energy as possible. So when you try to meditate, as the tamasic element kicks in, that thought on which you are meditating disappears. We then use the rajasic element to bring it back into place, and then tamas makes it disappear again. Effectively what we have are discrete thoughts which disappear. They don’t have the power to sustain themselves, something else will come along and replace them, or they will just sink back into the unconscious. So these three are always interacting.

There are a number of different ways of looking at the human being. Another perspective, according to the rishis and the yogis, is that we do not have just one body, but five. We have a physical body, which is called the annamaya kosha, annam means food, it is the body of food. The body is made of the food we consume, and it becomes food for others. Everything is connected in the cycle of life. After you die your body will decompose and become the bodies of other creatures. Even while we are alive, the cells of the body are constantly re-cycling, so we are taking in new material and building news cells, while at the same time eliminating the old. So one is constantly loosing one’s cells, these cells become parts of other creatures and other living beings - they get consumed and become food. So the physical body is called the body of food, and its completely made of the food that you eat and it is not ours, the matter we assimilate is only borrowed, is integrated into the vast nexus of life and will be cast off at death like an old item of clothing.

The second body is called pranamaya kosha, prana is the vital energy, the life force. Earlier I said, that in a certain sense, our physical body devoid of sentience is like a plant but that is not really accurate. The physical body has two aspects to it. One is totally mineral in quality and functions according to inorganic chemistry and the laws of physics, and then added to that is a life body (of course we can see the impact in the human body both of the animal and the purely human in its form and function). So the mineral element would be more like a rock, and when you add the pranic element, to the purely mineral aspect, then you have plant-like life. So pranamaya kosha is called the life body. It is said to be inside the physical body, it is more subtle than the physical body and pervades it, but it is not just inside, as it radiates out beyond the physical body as well.

The third body is called the Manomaya kosha in its relation to manas. Manas is the lower mind, sometimes called the 11^th sense. According to yoga we have not just 5 senses but connected to them we also have 5 organs of action. The lower mind, manas, is like a telephone exchange, receiving messages and transmitting instructions.

The organs of action are speech, grasping, locomotion excretion, and reproduction. The 5 organs of action and 5 organs of sense are connected to the mind and these live in a certain sense in the Manamaya kosha, which is more subtle than the pranamaya kosha. This is the body of animal type consciousness.

The 4^th body is called Vijnanamaya kosha. Vijnana means knowledge, the sheath of knowledge, or body of knowledge, or the body of intellect. And here we find the buddhi, the faculty of cognition, memory and decision making. And the 5^th body is called Anandamaya kosha, it means the body of bliss. It is also called the causal body, and this 5^th body is the one that contains the samskaras, unconscious impressions and karmas which determine an individual’s character.

So here is a way of looking at the human being by saying that the soul or Self is completely non-material in nature, and that which we experience with our body and our consciousness, our normal awareness, is composed of these 5 bodies of increasing subtle substance. So the body of food is the most solid and the bodies of energy and consciousness are progressively more subtle and the Self is beyond subtle, the Self is characterized as space – it encompasses all. This is how we understand a little bit about the concept of mind, and how the mind is not the same as the Self. This visualization also constitutes a meditation, which may lead to Samadhi and Self Realization.

They say the Self penetrates the body, “riding” on the prana and imbues the body with life and consciousness. The mind has no innate consciousness on its own, the sense organs have no ability to grasp anything by themselves, these functions are only possible due to the presence of the Self.

The Self has an impact a little bit like electromagnetism. It transfers energy across a boundary, it never enters the physical body as a discrete entity, but its touching creates an energy field or resonance in the physical body which stimulates consciousness and action. So the Self is the “light” or “current” of waking consciousness, and it is obvious that if you were dead, then the Self is no longer there, there is no thinking there is no acting, nothing is happening.

Danielle: The anandamaya kosha reincarnates, and that’s different than the true Self? Because the true Self is pure, and the kosha is not?

Guy: They have a totally different quality in the sense that the Self, or Purusa, the Soul, is not of any substance. It is of the quality of essence, of a different dimension. The purpose of yoga is to purify the bodies, and the anandamaya kosha is the closest to the Self. In its most purified manifest form the anandamaya kosha receives a direct impression of the Self – this is Samprajnata Samadhi (asmita samdhi). When even this subtle trace subsides, the highest state of Samadhi, Asamprajnata Samadhi may be experienced. After this further incarnation can stop.

Felice: It seems, when you talk about the yogis and a lot of the theory, to be going towards something that we are not possessing, to always be reaching for a state that is somewhere out there: you are always looking for something. But then when you look at someone like Guruji who had a family and a life and was very much a part of this world, there seems to be a dichotomy that I don’t really understand. Is the goal being by oneself, sitting in peaceful mediation? Or is it to have a lovely life and influence people positively?

Guy: As I said earlier, in a certain sense, there is no work to be done, there is nowhere to go. We are there essentially. There are many different paths to attaining the Self. Yoga is one of them, but music is another, dance is another, drawing is another, cooking is another. There are 64 yogic arts which can lead to Self realization. Yoga practice should be integrated into life: if we understand how to provide ourselves with the best conditions for practice, there is no struggle.

If you don’t take care of your responsibilities which you have created as a result of your karmas, you are going to have a lot of problems in practice and you are going to have to reflect and go back to take care of those mistakes. You cannot escape your responsibilities and you should not escape your responsibilities to your children and your grandchildren and society and so on.

Traditionally in Hindu culture, when people had fulfilled their responsibilities to their immediate family and children, and then to society, they would retreat to the forest and spend their time in meditation and devote the rest of their lives to Self realization. Those who naturally have no desire from birth, which is extremely rare today, are suited towards a more extreme spiritual path. Many who try to go that way, end up getting aspects of their unconscious perverted into other types of problems because they are not really suited to that path and have karmas they need to perform. So we have responsibilities, we have karmas and we have children, jobs, people who are dependent on us, people we have to serve and take care of, and there is no liberation until we have taken care of these responsibilities.

You can practice for an isolated period of the day, an hour or two hours or however long you have, and still maintain your full responsibilities in life. If you are lucky and if you live in a good environment and if your samskaras are good, you may have some very blissful and good spiritual experiences even though you might be a parent or still working or still involved in society. So you use those periods of time when you are doing your practice as a source of strength, then when you go to your job and you are dealing with people who are rajasic or tamasic or who are aggressive or violent towards you in some way, you have more strength to sustain that same will towards realization, even though you are dealing with the practical and earning a living and taking care of the kids, or whatever.

It may be a long time before we attain Self realization but the beauty of it is, that even though you may not achieve it in this life time or the next, every little bit of improvement, or little bit of movement in that direction, brings more happiness, more beauty into your life. So it has it’s benefit, even though you may not get all the way there this time. Or next time, or ever, for that matter.