The Essential Yoga Sutra Read online

  Now we will no longer have any time for the meaningless distractions of life—we must simplify our lives, concentrate on what's really important. No more time to only work and eat and sleep and die—no more time to waste on newspapers and television to hear about how others wasted their time.

  When we take a trip by airplane, we tend to focus on small things: the food, the movie, the person next to us.

  Then if the plane suddenly drops, we forget all the small things. We think about death, about what we did with our life, about what might happen after we die.

  But we can (and will) die any time, even sitting in a chair at home. The plane is always dropping. It's alright—it's a good thing—to enjoy life. We should enjoy it. But we should also enjoy the work of finding its deeper meaning, and not lose our life in little distractions and attachments.

  The worst attachment of all is to be attached to the idea that the things all around us exist out there on their own, concretely, in the sense that they don't depend on how we lead our lives.

  We begin to see through this wrong idea when we reach the second path: the Path of Preparation. Here we begin to realize—if only intellectually—that our own true nature, and the nature of everything else in the world, is that we very much come from how we treat others.

  At the Path of Preparation, we begin serious meditation to try to see the way things really are. Our culture is new to the art of meditation; there are hundreds of different kinds, and some of them are just a temporary escape.

  Meditation is a serious tool. We need to use it to fix ourselves and the world, forever. Using meditation only to feel good for a while is like a surgeon taking the anesthesia himself, leaving the patient to die on the operating table.

  There are four types of meditation that can lead us, after we die, to a useless place called the Realm of Form. Some of these same meditations, if practiced without a conscious mental state that is infected by the Great Mistake, can save your life. You need to learn the difference, from a qualified teacher.

  Moving up through these four types of meditation is similar to listening to your favorite song. At first you only note that the song is being played. Then you begin to examine the beauty of the words and melody. A feeling of deep pleasure washes over you, and finally you go beyond even the pleasure, losing yourself in the song completely.

  We have billions upon billions of seeds in our minds, planted there by hurting or taking care of those around us. When the time is right, individual seeds sprout up in our minds at about the speed of the individual frames in a movie, and we watch the stream of our life unfold.

  The seeds that are still waiting to sprout are called “unripe” seeds. The factor that makes harmful seeds sprout is simply seeing things the wrong way. When we practice well—that is, when we learn how to avoid meditation traps and use our meditation in this other way, the right way—then we can keep bad seeds from ever sprouting.

  Death itself comes from a bad seed sprouting. The body only gets old because bad seeds are sprouting. Herein lies the secret of the water of life.

  When bad seeds are about to sprout, we call it “becoming.” This is triggered by staying in our same old nature or state, seeing things the wrong way. These seeds are what gave us a mortal body in the first place, and we can change that—if we change the seeds.

  We want to be people who follow the “other kind” of meditation and practice—the ones who go beyond a body of flesh and blood. To do this, we need to learn the Five Powers: five different spiritual skills that speed us along the Path of Preparation.

  The first power is belief. This is not blind faith, but rather a deep attraction for the beauties of spiritual life, once we have heard about them and understand we can reach them ourselves. Effort then comes naturally: once you know what a chocolate-chip cookie tastes like, you're naturally willing to go through some work to get one. Spiritual effort in gladness is doing good things for others.

  On one level, awareness is to be present: to be here now, not wrapped up in what's happened or might happen. On another level, it is watching that whatever we do or say or think is something noble.

  The highest form of awareness is to keep our mind on where the things that happen to us are really coming from. Meditation here is the ability to stay in deep thoughts on this question; and asking the question within this meditation is itself wisdom.

  If a young child falls into a fire, her mother moves quickly. People having a normal life in this world are in much more danger than the child. On the Path of Preparation, we pass through four stages that prepare us for the next path, the all-important Path of Seeing. These four steps are called Warmth, Peak, Mastery, and the Highest Object of All. Our five spiritual skills develop to a higher degree at each stage, turning from the Five Powers into the Five Peaks, then the Five Strengths, and finally the Five Highest Objects.

  The four stages represent a growing realization of the Great Mistake—a growing understanding of where things are really coming from. The stages begin with an appreciation of how objects in the world around us might be coming from ourselves. They end when we turn this understanding inside, upon our own minds.

  A person at the end of the fourth stage might be standing, watching a pot of water on the stove. He suddenly realizes that he is only watching an impossibly perfect, tiny picture of a pot within his own mind. Eyes after all don't think; they can only see some silver-colored circle.

  It can take a very long time to develop the Five Powers to the point of the pot on the stove. Another way is simply to seek the extraordinary power that comes from direct contact with a Master—a living person who has experienced these things directly, and can teach them to us.

  There are things we absolutely cannot learn from the dead pages of a book, or the wires of a computer.

  Finding our own personal Master is something we absolutely need to do. It's an art in itself; take your time. Look for a person who really understands where things are coming from. This will make them a gentle, noble person, since this understanding is the only thing that can stop negative thoughts like anger forever.

  No anger, no hurting others. No hurting, no new bad seeds in the mind. And understanding itself means that bombs stored up in the mind earlier will now simply never explode.

  Look then for a Master who understands.

  The things around us are a product of the seeds within our own minds. And so are the people. In a sense then we make our own spiritual Master.

  It's a kind of magic that happens when we find a truly qualified teacher and then have the opportunity to serve her. No blind faith here either: with our eyes wide open; having checked the person first, carefully; aware of human weaknesses (and how those we see in others come too from ourselves), we commit ourselves to the joy of working closely with a spiritual guide, and serving her and her sacred work. There is no greater way to plant the seed for ourselves to become a perfect, enlightened being who can truly help all beings.

  The bond between us and our spiritual guide is the sweetest and most meaningful relationship we will ever enjoy. Ultimately it will help countless people. For this reason too it can attract great obstacles: the more powerful the good, the more powerful the negative forces attracted to it.

  Stay as close as you can to your Master, and to the friends you have who are good people. Goodness rubs off on us.

  These lines are about mantra. A mantra is a short, essential prayer that makes wishes come true. Mantras only work if two requirements are fulfilled: the mantra must have come from a truly holy person, and the person saying it must be someone who is truly kind to others.

  There are countless kinds of mantras or prayers. The very highest prayer is simply to call upon your own Master for help. Even just calling his name, quietly, to yourself throughout the day is enough, if your mind is focused upon how your teacher will help you learn to help others.

  Repeating this Master Prayer keeps the mind focused within and less wrapped up in the outside world. Because of the
extraordinary power that comes when a spiritual teacher and a spiritual student honor and serve each other purely, all obstacles in your life will melt away.

  If you wish, you can add the word “Om” before your Masters name when you repeat it. This sacred sound is made of three parts, which represent the totally pure actions and words and thoughts you will use to help others reach the end of the five paths.

  We have too much to do, too much to think about. It's all our own choice, but it gets worse under certain conditions. Here begins a list of major obstacles to the life of the spirit.

  Illness is obviously an obstacle but can also become a fulfilling spiritual practice. It inspires us to work on what's really important in life, and makes us more humble and sympathetic of others who have problems.

  Mental fogginess or dullness comes for example from not enough sleep, or too much food. As a culture we have perfected gluttony and abolished the word. It keeps our minds from operating quickly and clearly.

  Incorrect meditation can also leave us a little foggy-headed. Real meditation gives us a bright, clear, strong mind that enables us to do anything well, from dishes to computers to ultimate reality.

  Examining spiritual ideas critically is excellent; doubt in the form of avoiding the job of figuring out life is not. Carelessness here is not staying aware of how our actions affect others and ourselves— alcohol and drugs are ideal ways to cultivate carelessness. Laziness is when we simply don't feel like doing things that we know are good and helpful for everyone.

  How we view the world—our worldview—is in the end the only thing that decides whether we suffer or find real happiness.

  It's extremely important to realize that an entire civilization can be caught up for many years in a disastrously mistaken view of the world. For thousands of years sensible people believed that the world was flat. The courageous, democracy-minded founders of the United States kept human beings as slaves and believed they were animals, not people.

  Our culture today has its own massively mistaken ideas of the world, and these cause all the hunger, poverty, sickness, and war in the world. If our peoples view of the world is causing pain to others and ourselves, then we must look for a better one, one that works. If it doesn't work, we cannot simply continue to follow whatever we learned as children, whether it came from parents or schools, churches or governments. True yoga is the search for a worldview that actually works to bring people happiness.

  There are specific levels in our path where we eliminate, forever, different spiritual obstacles like doubt. We need to learn what these levels are, how to reach them, and how to stay there.

  Yoga is also the union of the inner and outer methods for reaching total purity. This union depends upon the connection between our physical outer body and our spiritual inner body.

  Our entire being is like the layers of an onion. The outermost layer is the gross physical body. The next layer down is what feeds this layer, the breath being our most important “food.” This breath layer is linked to a layer of subtle physical energy called prana, or the “inner winds.”

  These winds flow throughout our body in the next layer, a network of tiny tubes or channels more subtle than the finest light. Upon the winds in these channels ride our thoughts themselves, the innermost layer, like a rider atop a horse: the amazing frontier where mind and body meet.

  In a negative way, problems at one layer of this onion affect all the others. If our thoughts are unstable, this disturbs the inner winds upon which they ride. This then disturbs the breath, and causes nervousness and shaking.

  This ultimately causes physical ailments like ulcers or heart problems, which again sets off unhappy thoughts—a continuous downward spiral. The outer exercises and inner meditations of yoga reverse this cycle.

  There is one crucial practice for stopping all obstacles, and this is the Four Infinite Thoughts. They are called “infinite” because, in the end, we look upon infinite living creatures on infinite worlds with our own eyes, in a single moment, and love them all.

  Infinite kindness is the desire to bring all living beings happiness. And it means deciding that I myself will make it happen, even if no one else wants to help me. Infinite compassion is the decision to remove the pain of every living being, by myself if need be.

  Infinite joy is the decision to bring all living beings to a higher form of happiness. A cup of coffee or cocoa makes almost anyone happy. But we don't finish feeling happy until we can actually help and serve countless other people.

  Infinite equanimity is the decision to help everybody this way—not just our friends or family. Equanimity begins with avoiding extremes of feelings: happy when we feel well, or not when we don't.

  Which is only to say we shouldn't be thrown off balance by how we feel. We must of course escape all pain and achieve all happiness— and we must desire to do so.

  A daily meditation on the Four Infinite Thoughts changes our entire life. It gives our life real and lasting meaning. Eating, earning and spending money, working for a house that we will lose, the slow descent into weak old age and death are not what we were meant to do with our lives. Deep inside, we know that very clearly.

  That's why it makes our minds feel bright and clear when we hear someone say that our real purpose in life is to help and serve others; and not with kinds of help that will themselves quickly be used up and disappear. We were all meant for more.

  The physical yoga exercises, and the special breathing techniques that go with them, are meant to open up the subtle inner channels. But because the thoughts themselves travel in these channels, we can get the same results—a lot more quickly and easily—by simply thinking these highest four thoughts of all.

  We rarely really think about what others around us want or need. When we do, we find that we are released from our constant, exhausting compulsion for the bigger and better—clothes, food, money, fame.

  The Four Infinite Thoughts ultimately trigger infinite love. This love begins when I quite seriously believe, after much thought and training, that it is possible for any normal person to become someone who can assist countless people all at once.

  For a time, even now, this love is just an idea. But it gets stronger, and one day it explodes into the direct experience of ultimate love.

  This feels completely different from what we normally think of as love. In almost all people, the inner channels at the heart are tangled and blocked. At the first instant of ultimate love, the inner winds break free in crystal-colored light from the heart. Physical yoga was created to help this happen.

  When it does, then for a brief time we can actually see the face of every living being, not just in our world but on countless planets. And in this moment we see as well that we will spend every hour of the rest of our life, and lives beyond this one, learning to go and take care of each one of these beings. We are freed forever from selfishness and forever from wanting anything less than this.

  We've talked about how our world is a product of the seeds within our own minds. Just wanting to help a single other person alters these seeds drastically. The wish to help infinite numbers of people—even if it is only a wish, and a very feeble wish at first—has the power to transform all the seeds within our minds. This then transforms— well—everything there is, everywhere.

  Naturally this effect spreads to all those states of mind we go through in a normal day. The act of sleep itself becomes an adventure—we're as lucid in dreams as we are in our everyday life, and we use our sleeping hours to explore and improve both mind and heart.

  If meditation can bring us a kind of bliss, then simply standing in the kitchen and thinking the four thoughts brings us the same bliss, with a lot less effort.

  As the seeds in our mind transform, we suddenly become very good at anything we try to do—whether small exacting tasks or monumental projects. As this process continues, we even gain the power to actually enter and alter processes from subatomic to galactic levels—if that would help somebody.

/>   The most important moment of our life is when we see ultimate reality for the first time at the third path, the Path of Seeing. It changes us forever, and brings us to the very verge of our goal.

  This path cannot occur unless first we are staying in the state of meditation with a totally clear and focused mind: balanced, free of the two extremes of dullness and hyperactivity.

  During this first brief period in ultimate reality we cannot perceive anything less than the ultimate. And so we are for a while like water poured into water, unaware of ourselves or even that we are seeing, for these are not the ultimate things that we are looking upon with our minds.

  Ultimate reality is like a crystal; specifically, like a diamond, and we will know it is so. Nothing can be ultimate—highest or hottest— because we can always add another inch or degree. But the diamond comes close, for nothing else in the universe can scratch it.

  Ultimate reality lies all around us now, but beyond our sight, clear as diamond. In fact everything there is, everywhere, possesses its own ultimate reality—just as every splinter of diamond is simple, perfect purity.

  We commune briefly with ultimate reality and then come down and back to our normal state of the Great Mistake, seeing things wrong. Except that now we know what we're doing wrong: we don't believe how we're seeing things, and thus there's the sense of an illusion going on.