Meaning: “The Omniscient, self-contained, infinite, eternal Lord of Being always is present for you to become one with, as well.”

Definition: Patanjali believes your true Awareness or Self is a part of, and linked to, a cosmic form of Self that is universal. He is not talking about some kind of simplistic, limited Hindu (or other) god or goddess. His concept as expressed here and in several other sutras is, instead, of an infinite, omniscient Being that is conscious, essentially like that of the personal God in the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) and in many others, as well.

Comment: What is the meaning of Īśvara? Georg Feuerstein says that “all schools of Yoga recognize the existence of a supreme being, variously referred to as īś, īśa, īśana or īś vara.” If Patanjali was one of the first creators of this concept, then he may have developed it from the ancient Rig Veda. The University of Texas Sanskrit Linguistics team says that Is means “having mastery over,” va is “blow” [which implies breath as spirit], and ra signifies “to grant” as from a ruler or master. When a Great Being is implied, as in this sutra, then combining these meanings suggests a Being with mastery over spiritual breath who can grant us this sacred breath.

Whatever the original meaning, Īśvara sometimes is called by yogis the “God of Yoga.” It is Patanjali’s way of saying that in his meditation experience, the Awareness that you are–that you have within you–links to a Being of Awareness universally, and that you can “breathe as one” with this Being. Patanjali calls this Being Isvara (in Sanskrit; also spelled Iswara or Ishwara). This kind of link–between your own basic Awareness and that of a Universal Being–is explained in a variety of religions. Patanjali appears to be talking, quite plainly, about not just the ultimate God, but God as a personal being that responds to you individually.

Some translators of this sutra offer a slightly different or additional interpretation, one that is supported, as well, in ancient versions of Sanskrit. This additional or alternative meaning of Isvara suggests that the word may refer to any spiritual being or person filled with the presence of the Universal Being. Examples include saints, founders of religions, or advanced meditation masters. In this additional or alternative interpretation, that spiritual being or person is someone on whom you may concentrate.

Noteworthy, if you do not believe in a Universal Being of any kind, is the work of neuroscientists on human and animal awareness. You can translate Īśvara as meaning your own very highest Self. Scientific studies suggests that, at a minimum, there may be more connections of physical awareness between humans than are now recognized. For example, Changhong Research Labs and Freer Logic demonstrated a car headrest at the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that is “able to read brain activity while being six to eight inches away, without any contact.” And researchers connected with the HeartMath Institute discovered that some people–and even owners and their pets–sometimes can stand within a few feet of each other and read each other’s emotions or physical feelings; and within a few inches, sometimes one can use his or her brain to perceive the other person’s emotional state.

Such experiments are just a beginning, as the science of the brain and neuro-perception is in its infancy. Between the work of physicists finding ever smaller particles and waves of energy, and the investigations of neuroscientists exploring the mysteries of human consciousness, factual science grows closer to suggesting that when you choose to–perhaps with training–your mind can reach outside itself.

One modern theory for this already exists. Highly respected twentieth-century paleontologist and philosopher Teilhard de Chardin describes a “layer” of thinking around the earth that he calls the “noosphere” (“noo-” meaning “mind”). It is similar to the biosphere, the layer of living matter around the earth. The noosphere, says Teilhard, is “a new skin,” “the ‘thinking layer,’... an immense edifice of matter and ideas,” the “psychic interpenetrability” of which “grows and becomes directly perceptible in the case of organised beings” and is “felt by us directly.” He calls it “a harmonised collectivity of consciousness equivalent to a sort of super-consciousness,” a “spirit of the earth” (italics his).

Sutra 1.24: Kleśa karma vipāka-āśayaiḥ-aparāmr̥ṣṭaḥ Puruṣa-viśeṣa Īśvaraḥ

Literal translation: “Your burdening loads and actions (klesa)–and what is cooked from them–and the storehouse of whirlpools–all in no way connected to the pure Self of the universe that is different: Isvara (the Supreme Being)”

Meaning: “Your troubles or worldly problems (klesa), your actions or deeds (“karma”), and what ripens from them: these and your swirling thought-forms are, all of them, separate from the Inner Awareness of the universe. That Awareness is beyond containment: the omniscient, infinite, eternal Being.”

A chant: “Pure Awareness is the crystal-clear soul of the universe, beyond all burdens, karma, and their fruits.”

Definition: There is an Ultimate, Infinite, Universal Consciousness, says Patanjali (often the word used for it in modern times is “God”) on which you can meditate and in which you can place yourself. In Hindu yoga, this is called the Purusa. Purusa can refer to the individual Self or spark of the divine within you. Or it can, as in this case, refer to the universal divine.

The earliest written Hindu scripture, the Rig Veda, to which Patanjali likely is referring, says, “A thousand heads hath Purusha, a thousand eyes, a thousand feet [meaning all beings],...all that yet hath been and all that is to be.... All creatures are one fourth of him, three-fourths eternal life in heaven.... [Purusha] formed the creatures of the air, and animals both wild and tame,...moon...and...sun,...sky,...Earth,...the worlds.” Purusha and Purusa are the same word. Usually, Purusa refers to the individual Awareness or pure Self within you. Here, Patanjali calls it by the name Isvara, emphasizing that it also is universal. The individual, personal Purusa, he is saying, and the universal Purusa, which he calls Isvara, are the same in the sense of both are of the same consciousness or being.

Meditating upon Purusa/Isvara within yourself is yet another way to reach your own high clearness of mind. They are separate and different from your klesa (a plural word meaning “troubles,” “distresses,” or “afflictions”) and karma (past actions still affecting you in the present). Meditating upon your Purusa does not mean you must join a religion and practice it. Instead, you may focus on your own Purusa and/or God directly or indirectly, such as through traditional meditation, prayer, or meditative ritual, whether in a religion or outside of it.

Comment: You may meditate on Aware Being directly, or through concentrating on a mediating spiritual being or person. You can meditate on the closest experience you have had to experiencing God. You can do so also by meditating on a great spiritual master such as Moses, Jesus, Muhammed, Buddha, Lao-Tse, or others. You can focus on an angel, if you wish. Any of these, says Patanjali, can bring you success in meditation.

The word klesa has a number of interpretations and meanings, depending on the religion (Hinduism or Buddhism) and the branch within it. However, Patanjali uses the word to clarify that the varied anxieties, worries, bad habits, meannesses, self-doubt, and other negative energies that sometimes inhabit you are not “you.” “You” are separate from them. The Purusa, whether the purest part of you or the pure universal state of Being he calls Isvara, is above, beyond, outside of, and not subject to such troubles.

Klesa, or troubles, often are a wasted trip to nowhere. Rick Hanson and Richard Mendius say, for example, in Buddha’s Brain, “Emotional pain with no benefit to yourself or others is pointless suffering. And pain today breeds more pain tomorrow. For instance, even a single episode of major depression can reshape circuits of the brain to make future episodes more likely (Maletic et al. 2007).”

This emotional pain is one type of Patanjali’s klesa or “troubles.” Patanjali’s point, here, is to emphasize that you can find a place within you that excludes, deletes, washes away, or otherwise defies or cleanses your klesa.

In fact, there is a relationship in the word klesa or “troubles” to the word “sins” in the Abrahamic religions. In these three religions’ scriptures, says John O’Gara, a “sin” means–in both the Hebrew word chat·taʼthʹ and the Greek word ha·mar·tiʹa–something that is “missing” or gone wrong, as in the Christian book of Acts 22:16: “Get up, be baptized, and have your sins washed away....” In Sanskrit, when you have klesa, or troubles, you are missing the perfection of the crystal-clear mind. One of the Merriam Webster Dictionary’s definitions of a “sin” is “an often-serious shortcoming: fault.” O’Gara says that “to sin” means “to miss the mark of perfection.” Because each person is missing this perfection, says O’Gara, each is a “sinner” in this sense. Sinning in this sense means to have within yourself a fault, shortcoming, or imperfection.

Also worth noting is that Patanjali’s Isvara or “Being” may be what Jesus of Nazareth offered his followers. According to mystic poet and interpreter Robert Bly, the word “Heaven” in Jesus’ sayings also can be translated “Spirit.” Bly says that “a simple error of translation like this can destroy a religion.” Thus, says Bly, Jesus’ original followers may have understood Jesus to mean what might be translated today as “Realm” or “Land of the Spirit”–not what Bly calls the misinterpreted phrase “Kingdom of Heaven.”

If Bly and other Christian Bible interpreters are correct, then Jesus’ “Realm of the Spirit” is similar to what Patanjali is saying. This Realm is much like the Yoga Sutra’s land of the Purusa–a place of Aware Being that extends everywhere.

Noteworthy in addition for those who are scientific agnostics or atheists is that if a “collective unconscious” or “noosphere” of human and animal minds does exist, Patanjali would argue that it has a pure part or being within it. This pure part, he would say–from his experience of whatever it is–exists as a perfectly clear, fully conscious experience of the totality of this collective mind.

Literal translation: “In that [Being] beyond all highest and lowest excelling, with omniscience incomparable, unrivalled: the original seed”

Meaning: “That Supreme Awareness is matchless–in each second, of all Knowing, the first source.”

Definition: This simply means that before, within, and after all time–and before, within, and after all matter–says Patanjali, a universal Awareness exists, just as you are an Awareness. It is like a the field of matter throughout the universe, except it is not matter, but Consciousness. As in the previous sutras about Isvara, Patanjali is not talking about a smaller god or goddess, nor is he talking about abstract religious or philosophical ideas. Rather, he is referring to a state of being, or a process. some people call this Awareness “Being,” some call it “God,” and it is known by a thousand other names. Those beings or holy ones who constantly embody this Spirit also are constantly in a state of ultimate Awareness.

In addition, another frequent Torah/Old Testament name for God is “Elohim.” It, too, has a mixed meaning, a definition that scholars have argued about for many centuries. To convey its mystical meaning, a reasonable translation is that “Elohim,” usually translated as a singular noun, “God,” literally means the “he/she/it/god(s).” In other words, the singular “God” is a masculine, feminine, and neuter pronoun at one time and also is both singular and plural. Like the word “Yahweh,” this combination is impossible to translate accurately with our inadequate languages. Green, above, calls “God” a verb. Richard Rohr says, similarly, “Christian mystics Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, and John Duns Scotus taught...’Deus est Ens,’ that is, God is Being itself...different from saying that God is a Being.”

Literal translation: “That [Being] to the Earliest Ones, even: a guru, uncut by time”

Meaning: “That Being was, even to the Ancient Holy Ones, their teacher, for the Supreme Awareness is outside the dimension of time.”

Definition: Patanjali is saying that Ultimate Being is timeless–outside of or beyond time–and that this Being taught the first ancient sages thousands of years ago. Any great mystics who are speaking and acting from within this eventful Being are, while they are embodying it, also, in a sense, offering experiences outside of time and matter.

Comment: Hindu tradition says that the greatest rishis–wise yoga mystics–lived in India before recorded history, ca. 1700-1500 BCE and possibly much earlier. According to tradition, these brilliant, highly-experienced male and female yogis created the earliest Hindu scriptures. Those scriptures–in the form of hymns–were passed down orally by memorization and chanting for hundreds of years (or longer) until finally, sometime in 1700-1000 BCE, someone wrote them in Sanskrit, starting with the Rig Veda and other Vedas. In Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and in several other related religions and ancient ethnic groups, these rishis continue to be venerated.

Regarding their inspired scriptures, says twentieth-century mystic Sri Aurobindo, “The Vedic Rishis believed that their Mantras were inspired from higher hidden planes of consciousness and contained secret knowledge. The words of the Veda, [they said], could only be known in their true meaning by one who was himself a seer or mystic; from others the verses withheld their hidden knowledge.”

Here in the Yoga Suras, when Patanjali mentions scripture as being filled with complete truth–for example, in Sutra 1.7–he is referring to the Vedas and possibly the Upanishads. In his time, such scriptures were believed to be factual reports of the rishis’ meditation experiences using descriptions that only advanced meditators could understand.

Meaning: “The Ultimate Awareness’s ancient word is the cosmic, vibrant ‘aum.’”

Definition: The last Sanskrit word of this sutra, pranavah, means “humming.” Patanjali has experienced Being as basic vibration, as in sound and other energy waves. While he does not exclude other definitions of Being, he does say that vibration is a close embrace of it. For Hindus then and now, one way that meditators can come closer to this experience is the “humming” sound om, a Sanskrit word that now is used so much in Western languages that it is spelled (without the normal italics for foreign words) as “om” or “aum.”

Comment: Patanjali’s mention of “humming” references what is an important meditation activity, both modern and ancient, throughout the world. Mystics who practice it assert that a special sound is with Ultimate Being or is Being–and is a way to reach toward that Being when you meditate.

Christians, for example, declare, from their New Testament Gospel of John, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (emphasis added, John 1.1, HNV). The “Word” is sound, and sound is vibration.

An ancient Hindu scripture offers a very similar statement: Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood note that the Rig Veda says, “In the beginning was Brahman [God], with whom was the Word; and the Word was truly the Supreme Brahman.”

In Judaism, the sound of God is YHWH–Yahweh–which, as a word translated into English, “I Am that I Am,” has a humming sound that rolls through the mouth nasally. And in paganism and some ancient religions, the sound of God is “Ma” for the Great Mother, another rolling, vibrating sound for meditation.

In ancient Aramaic, the language used by Jesus of Nazareth and all others Jews in Israel at that time (and in many countries around them), the word rahme may have served a similar purpose, says Aramaic scholar Neil Douglas-Klotz. Rahme, which means “womb,” “love,” and “compassion,” appears in Jesus’ Beatitudes, where its presence implies that it might have occurred in chants that doubled as breathing exercises.

Meaning: “Om’s repeating by you in an undertone makes its intended purpose fill up in you.”

A chant: “Repeat your Om in a low undertone so it blossoms within you.”

Definition: Such repetitions are a long-honored tradition in India. They are called japa. To “say japa” is to use a mantra–a key meditative word or phrase–repeatedly. Repeating the word om is not, in Hinduism, the repetition of the name of a god or a spiritual power or being. Rather, the sound of it is a connector, a device, to reaching a higher or deeper meditative experience.

In other religions, examples of saying japa include repetitive prayer phrases; meditating while repeating a key phrase from the Talmud, Bible, Koran, or other scripture; repetitious chanting and singing; repeating words or phrases of power, as in Wicca; and, in modern centering prayer, repeating a bridge word with special meditative meaning to you.

Comment: How do you say om? It is a practice whose beginning is so ancient that its beginning is unknown. It can be pronounced “awm,” “aw-oo-m” or “owmm.” Generally, you use a very medium- to low-register sound. Start with a deep, short “o” as in “aw” or “ow,” with your mouth open. Then you slide into a short “u” with the tongue moving from touching the back of the palette (top of the mouth) to the front of the palette, then to just behind the teeth. The “m” is drawn out low in a nasal tone so that it reverberates in nose, jaw, throat, and chest. You say it as you breath out. Then, after a pause and another deep breath, repeat it. Meditating upon this, sometimes you may feel you are becoming the sound, and the sound is becoming you. One of the best ways to understand the sound and related breathing is to search for and listen to the word spoken online.

You can use it to meditate, to calm yourself in any situation, or even to simply to rest. You may do so out loud, or you may use your inner voice, subvocalizing it. Either way, it creates a vibration in your larynx (your “voice box”). The larynx is a two-inch long organ in your throat that contains the vocal cords. These two cords–muscles that look like skin folds–vibrate when you talk, and they relax when you are breathing and not vocalizing verbal thoughts in your head.

Likewise, similar chants work. You may especially want to try those that have in them–or draw out the sound of–the “mmm” sound of om. The important thing is, simply, to hum in some form.

Literal translation: “Then, bending back upon itself, consciousness going to mastery; barriers disappearing also”

Meaning: “As om reveals itself, your consciousness also, as it looks upon itself, gains attainment. Your obstacles go away, too.”

A chant: “Say om and move your Awareness to see itself; then barriers fall.”

Definition: Saying om and becoming aware of your own Awareness will bring you to success as your mental obstacles fall apart. This does not mean you necessarily are finding the perfect clear mind space. However, it means you are getting closer. The barriers Patanjali mentions are listed in the next sutras.

Comment: As previously stated, you don’t have to use the specific word om. Other vibrating and humming words work, too, or just simple humming itself. In Hinduism, humming words and phrases are called “mantras.” The word is so common that it has become Westernized. Sometimes, in the West, “mantra” also means “a resolution” or “a common saying.” However, in yoga meditation, it means an act of vocalized word-humming (external or internal) that clears the mind and body. The word itself comes from the Hindu word manas or “mind,” and from the even earlier root word “manna” or “food or gift from heaven.”

Saying a mantra is a one-pointed method of concentration that some meditators use consistently. Using a mantra is a method that can be used with other practices. On the other hand, it can be a single, primary method of meditating: one of several methods recommended by Patanjali and others that are among the more difficult but purer for one-pointed concentration.

There also is another specific meaning–very important–in one part of this sutra. This phrase is Patanjali’s implicit recommendation to become aware of being aware: “bending back upon itself, consciousness going to mastery.” What does consciousness “bending back upon itself” mean? As a meditation practice, its meaning is that you use your own awareness to look at your awareness. It is a specialized way of meditating that requires you to look at your looking, to see your seeing, to hear and feel your hearing and feeling: it is, to use the metaphor of the layered koshas above, the center of your onion looking at the center of your onion.

The process seems impossible: how can you “know” your knowing? It may feel like looking at invisibility, or listening to the sound of silence. However, it is defined by its results. At first, you may find that trying to practice this bending of consciousness back upon itself flips you into an unconscious mode or to thinking random thoughts. But if you practice it, even if for a few minutes each day, you gradually may find it opening new doorways of reflection and feeling within you. Some master meditators practice it regularly.

In Western spiritual terms, you may find awareness-of-awareness meditation easier to understand if you think of it as an act of “faith.” The original meaning of “faith” in the Abrahamic religions is not, as popularly translated, merely a mindless, proofless acceptance of religious belief or ritual. Rather, “faith” in its highest, deepest meaning is an act, an experience, or an event. It is, in meditation, a reaching out to the very core or height of Being itself, or at least waiting with an expectation of the experience or event coming to you.

William James says in his classic Varieties of Religious Experience, "faith-state and mystical state are practically convertible terms.” He means that faith does not simply say, “Oh well, I’ll let God take care of it.” Rather, faith in its active sense is a handshake, an intention, a searching that uses your most basic, deepest sense of knowing and focusing to find Knowing or Awareness–to find Being.

Sanskrit Text: Patanjali, c. 400 BCE-400 CE

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See also Meditationary, a Meditation Dictionary.

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