Patanjali's Yoga Sutras

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Literal translation: “The above, as it happens, with seed as types of samadhi”

Meaning: “Sutras 41-45, as it turns out, come with mental connections or traces, along with pure Samadhi Awareness.”

Definition: The states of mind in Sutras 41-45, as it so happens, still bear traces or kernels of thoughts that can blossom into thinking; thus they are a crystal clarity that is “seeded” (sabījah). In these states, you may not have normal thoughts that flow on and on. But even so, there are traces of such thinking. As a result, you are in samadhi, but you are not yet in its full purity. Individual memories and ideas mix with samadhi, even if the former two may bear an illuminated presence.

For example, if you hold a clear image of a word or symbol in your mind for ten seconds or, perhaps, ten minutes, thinking of nothing else but sensing its luminosity or brightness, or you illuminate a strong sense of peace or joy about that word or image, then this is sabijah samadhi: crystal-clear mind with seed.

Comment: Some of the greatest thinkers throughout history have worked from the highest elevation of critical thinking: the crystal-clear mind with seed. Albert Einstein once said, “I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details." He first discovered his all-encompassing formula E = mc² (energy equals mass times the speed of light squared) in 1905 by having a singular, illuminated insight. He derived it from similar formulas in physics. However, his version of this brilliant idea was his own full illumination. His wife helped him develop the mathematical implications of it, and it worked! He then published it, creating a new physics during the following decades.

Similarly, Moses used the word “YHWH” or “Yahweh”–“I Am That I Am”–to describe “God.” It was an inspired, illumined choice. The Jewish Torah and Christian Old Testament relate how he received this illumined word directly from God. Moses also had the education of an adopted child of Egyptian royalty, thus the ability to know a brilliant idea when he heard it.

Another person of royal parentage and good education was Buddha. He developed the “Middle Path”: a single, clear directive that summarizes a practical spiritual journey between the extremes of asceticism and sensuality. It, too, was an illumined idea, simple yet rich with complexity. It has beoame a beacon for hundreds of millions of followers for thousands of years.

Such singular, clarifying ideas are “aha” moments for you when you have them. You even can have such an “aha” experience when, for the first time, you truly and deeply understand an important insight from someone else. Such ideas, whenever and however they occur, are very sensible and also very inspiring, filled with bright clarity, light, peace, or love, whether they appeal to millions of people or just you.

Even so, illumined ideas may help you, but they are not the end of the path or goal in meditation. They do not contain the fullness of pure, seedless, no-thought samadhi, the complete crystal-clear mind.

Literal translation: “Nirvicāra–a flow of silent Awareness: the supreme Atman clear.”

Meaning: “Your Awareness without seed is a pure crystal silence as your inner Self is perfectly clear.”

Definition: There are no “seeds”–thoughts, memories, or emotions–in the nirvicara samadhi state, which is nirvanic. This state is neither a state of unconsciousness nor a trance. Rather, it is a more-than-fully-conscious experience. It is a pure, thought-free, subtle-impression-free, flow of constant, aware peace or grand silence. In this state, the basic Self or Awareness (called Atman in Hinduism) is a pure Awareness of what surrounds it, so obviously clear that there is nothing else except it and raw, direct, ever-present reality.

For example, farmers on a tractor in a field might find, for a few minutes or an hour, that they are having a “perfect day” of no complaints, worries, or emotions–in fact, no thoughts at all–just a sheer, continuing awareness of everything around them, even within their own body–without any kind of idea, memory, emotion, or bad physical feeling. The same experience might happen to someone fishing, playing a sport, gardening, or simply walking in nature. You are super-aware of your surroundings and even your body’s sensations. But you are completely empty of any kind of normal thought or feeling.

Comment: The goal of reaching your own, perfect, crystal-clear mind is to learn–through whatever form of meditation works for you–to capture, return to, or rise to such moments regularly. You want to extend such peak times so you can live in them more constantly. People who do so neither starve nor thirst, do not lie down and die (unless, of course, they prefer to–usually at a ripe old age), and do not sacrifice their mental abilities, should they need them.

Rather, gradually through meditation, you can live your life with much less of the normal spinning and whirlpool of mental and emotional turmoil in which most people live day to day. You can be as you choose, on your own terms, in a crystal clarity of increasing peace, joy, resolution, and love. You still will have feelings, but they will be higher feelings, rather than emotions (which are, as mentioned before, a mix of thoughts and physical sensations) that jerk you around. You still can have thoughts and memories, but only when and as you need them, and they will be more illumined and help you make more–and higher quality–mental connections.

Usually attaining this high level of samadhi is a gradual process. However, occasionally, some people suddenly are thrown into its nirvanic state for days, weeks, or even months. This usually happens from sudden, often intense changes in other aspects of their lives as they pursue meditation. Examples may include (though ordinarily do not happen from) psychedelic drug use, self-infliction of pain, a long sickness, a long and intense spiritual retreat, or other extremes. But even if you become a nirvanic voyager in this way, you will return to normal thinking and feeling after a time. Then you, too, like most others, must practice meditation to regain your high samadhi sufficiently in a more controlled manner.

A serious question among scholars and Buddhists is whether anyone other than Buddha can experience nirvana. Patanjali clearly thinks it can happen to many–that samadhi and nirvana are the same. Buddha, with whom the word nirvana is most associated, also believed many can find it. He defines arahants (or arhans)–those who reach the highest nirvana–as a group that includes multiple people in his own time; thus, one would assume, he would include thousands, even hundreds of thousands, who have become arahants experiencing nirvana since his death millennia ago. Similarly, modern Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh says that “any person can become a Buddha, and the Buddhas are all those countless persons who have obtained enlightenment.”

However, whether you call this experience nirvana, samadhi, satori, being touched by the Holy Spirit or by Yahweh/Elohim, ecstasy from whirling wisdom dance, or some other entrance event, the basic dimensions of such an experience are clear and unmistakable. It is an intense experience of conscious Awareness–of Being.

Patanjali is trying to say, in these sutras, that it is available to everyone, whether you gain it slowly or quickly. And especially, says Patanjali, you can work your way to it.

Literal translation: “Final truth you bear, in that: absolute knowing”

Meaning: “Therein lies the real truth that you carry when you have that gnosis awareness.”

Definition: In that gnosis or blazing clear awareness of crystal clarity in the previous sutra, you are experiencing the real truth of existence, not the world’s seeming multiple ideological, mental truths. Patanjali’s kind of “knowing” is, in Western languages, called a “gnosis”–a personal, experiential knowing. It is knowing what the ocean is like from walking into it yourself rather than just hearing about it, or tasting pure salt rather than reading about its chemical composition. This knowing is explained further in the next sutra.

Comment: Patanjali’s use of the words “real truth” and “knowing” are very important. There are two kinds of “knowing.” One is an intellectual process of learning: something you “know about,” which you’ve learned in school, from friends, from books, etc. It is word- or picture-information you have been given by others: intellectual knowledge that to you is secondhand. The information in this (and any) book is, for example, something you only “know” about because someone else has told it to you.

However, Patanjali is talking here about “knowing from experience”: knowing what a burn is like because you once got burned yourself; knowing the pleasure that a specific song can bring because you have been uplifted by that song yourself. The spiritual knowing that Patanjali is talking about here is a direct perception of a beyond-typical experience. Call it a bright inner light, an intense calm, a deep joy; call it whatever you will, but it is not an intellectual object of your thinking from simply hearing about it, but rather something you directly experience.

The medieval German theologian and mystic Meister Eckhart describes this knowing as a final truth, a form of inner seeing. He says, “If my eye is to discern colour, it must itself be free from all colour. The eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me. My eye and God's eye is one eye, and one sight, and one knowledge, and one love.”

Sutra 1.49: Śruta-anumāna prajñā-abhyām anya viṣayā viśeṣa-arthatvāt

Literal translation: “Experiential tradition and logic–correct knowing of both: in a separate, material domain. (The other) a higher grasp of gnosis”

Meaning: “Truths that you hear or read, and your own mental logic–knowing these are truths in the world of matter. But the other kind (as in Sutra 48) is a higher, deeper, direct knowing that is an end unto itself.”

A chant: “Teachings and logic are mental truths; pure Awareness is an ultimate Truth that you only can Know.”

Definition: Again, as in the previous sutra, Patanjali clarifies the meaning of two very different kinds of truth. One is truth from nonfiction books and films, friends’ factual reports, etc., along with your careful logical thinking about such things. These are intellectual or mental truths that you assume are factual. However, the truth of experiencing the clear crystal mind–of samadhi, satori, the holy spirit, etc.–is a truth that is experienced, just as much is the experience of knowing pain, for example, or having the direct knowledge of the taste of something sweet or sour–or having the actual experience of the person beside you who is a good friend. These are truths that are available to your own direct experience, self-evident to your inner senses.

Your mind apprehends samadhi as a sensed experience. The crystal clarity is an inner sense experience that happens just as the eye sees, the nose smells, and the ear hears.

Comment: It is possible to keep looking at the same or similar sunsets, taste ice cream by buying more, or touch a velvet cloth as often as you wish. However, inner experiences seem to appear and then fade. How can they be repeated or maintained?

Fortunately, samadhi and other true experiences of spiritual states, like so much else in life, become memories. As memories, they are not the original state, just a reflection of it. However, they still may shine in memory with the glory, beauty, love, and/or peace within them. As a result, you may be able to find your way back to the experiences by first remembering them intently. The mind often wants to return to such experiences, and you may be able to find them again simply by recalling them thoroughly and giving yourself over to the real experience once again.

Remembering is an abstract mental activity, but it can be a doorway to actually feeling the original experience–being submerged in it–once again. That repetition of the experience itself is not a mental abstraction but rather the experience itself, which continues to exist just as truly as a rock, an ocean, or a blue sky. Spiritual states always are available to the open mind and exist in a realm of their own. They are an energy of sorts, one that is just as real as the energy of the sun or wind.

If remembering alone is insufficient, then you may need to recreate whatever conditions or steps brought you to samadhi in the first place. Setting up the background–the cause-and-effect workings–of your mental and physical state can trigger the return of the samadhi. This is similar to regaining, for example, an excellent taste of a specific meal: you must duplicate the source of the food, its cooking, the herbs and spices, and sometimes even the setting of the meal to find it again.

Such recalling and recreating of spiritual states is a part of the very purpose of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. He is saying that such experiences are not an accidental, lucky, one-of-a-kind experience: Patanjali’s entire plan in the Sutras is to help you find, repeatedly, such experiences and then make them not just regularly accessible but, eventually, normal. The Yoga Sutras are a spiritual cookbook, if you will, for whatever level of mastery you wish to obtain. It is a recipe manual for life.

Or you may experience what many people on the path of meditation find: you might have a brilliant spiritual experience of a specific kind for the first time (a variety of which are possible). You may have found your way to this experience through a combination of your own actions on the one hand and, on the other, of events beyond your control. As a result, your fortunate mixture–whatever its known and unknown ingredients–may lead you to an experience of deep and intense clarity. It does not have to be a one of a kind experience, though. You can pursue it. Rediscovering such a wonderful state is not just uselessly chasing a dream. Such states are what you are meant to find, repeat, and keep, if you wish. It is not selfish to want such states, but rather selfless to give up your normal self so that you can experience this deeper Self that is part of such experiences.

What were the ingredients that helped you gain what you experienced? How can Patanjali’s instructions–and/or those of other systems of inner discovery–help you?

Literal translation: “That (samadhi) born of past vibrations, your vibrations replaced”

Meaning: “That clarity (in Sutras 47-49) having been born and developed from your old patterns, your echoes and attachments fall away.”

Definition: The samadhi in Sutras 47-49 creates a state of being–an impression–that is pure and strong, full and intense, such that when you are in it, old connections and impressions are wiped away. You do not lose your normal mind or memory and can return to them whenever you wish. However, you do perceive life and its connections differently, as you are more and more often in the here and the now, with life presenting itself to you as an unreeling presence to which you react less and are more likely to use your increasing “I Am” perspective.

For example, says Sri Satchidananda, this sutra means that you could even be in “the middle of Times Square” without being personally involved in–not reacting to–all the events and movements going on in it. He also quotes “a beautiful Tamil verse” that says if a person in this state “sees the cool rays of the moon in the broad daylight, or a three-day-old corpse get out of its coffin to walk, he will not wonder, ‘Oh, how can that be?’”

Comment: Alan Watts bundles Buddhism, Zen, and the Yoga Sutras together when he talks about nirvana. Nirvana–one of several words used to describe this experience–has, he says,

such a dubious etymology that a simple translation is exceedingly difficult,...the blowing out of a flame,...or...the cessation of waves, turnings, or circlings (vritti) of the mind.... Thus nirvana is the equivalent of moksha, [which means] release or liberation,...to lose one’s life is to find it–to find freedom of action unimpeded by self-frustration and the anxiety inherent in trying to save and control the Self [which is] synonymous with the aim of yoga, defined in the Yogasutra.

This experience–whether you call it samadhi, nirvana, satori, moksha, liberation, the fullness of the holy spirit, or other traditions’ names–can become such a filling of your being–a saturating or oceanic completion–that all other vritti (swirling energy forms), klesa (difficulties), duhkha (troubles), and samskaras (old impressions)–that is, all your old normal thoughts, memories, emotions, and sensations–disappear during the experience. In this crystal-clear state, mystic Sufi poet Kabir says, “[S]uppose you had to cut your head off / and give it to someone else, / what difference would that make?”

However, if you were actually to cut off your head and give it to a friend, you could as easily take it back. Your old normal self is sitting there, available for use once again if it fits you well (like a useful set of clothing) for living in the world. In actuality, most people gradually adjust their “normal” self so that it works increasingly better in intermixing with the true Self–the liberated Self (or the “no self” of Buddhism)–that they experience in meditating. In most people, after such Self experiences, normal consciousness reasserts itself, gradually or quickly.

It is said that Buddha, when he reached the age of 35, discovered nirvana and sat in it for seven weeks. But even he returned from it. And then, for 45 years, he taught others as he, himself, went in and out of the experience. Almost everyone, after first experiencing the crystal-clear mind, whether mildly or intensely, returns to normal consciousness and then works slowly, step by step over many years, to strengthen and lengthen the experience. Chapters 2-4 are a more specific guide for doing this.

If everyone simply could tap into the crystal-clear mind and instantly gain permanent liberation, then not only would you see a number of holy people everywhere, but also Patanjali would not have bothered to write the other three chapters of his Yoga Sutras. In this first chapter, now almost at an end, Patanjali has offered his basic thesis: the crystal-clear mind exists. Chapter 1 summarizes what it is, the obstacles to it, a list of ways to work toward it, and the appearance of the final results. In Chapters 2-4, he will elaborate on these in more detail.

Literal translation: “Of this, too, clearing away, (then) all stilling–no-seed samadhi”

Meaning: “When your memory of this samadhi also is restrained, you reach the ultimate seedless form, nirbija samadhi.”

A chant: “Silence even your thoughts about your crystal-clear mind, and its purity is complete.”

Definition: The Sanskrit language of this sutra calls this ultimate state nirbijah samadhi. The literal translation of this phrase is “liberation without seed” or “seedless being.” It is “without seeds” because in this state, not even seeds of thoughts, memories, desires, or emotions cross your awareness. (See Sutra 1.18’s explanation of a thought seed.) This condition is a perfectly realized, fully aware state in which you have the crystal-clear mind without any thoughts about it, no self-examination of this state, and no memories about its existence a minute earlier.

This pure state first may last only a few minutes. However long, it is perfect in its clarity.

Again, this is not a state of un- or semiconscious trance, but completely the opposite: an intensely awake and present awareness. It is not a death of yourself as a walking, talking, breathing person, either. You will continue to live (unless you are near death and choose it). Once more, it is not a complete end to your regular life. You will return to normal, or at least appear to do so. But you never will be quite the same again.

The experience does create an entirely new way of having a personality: you realize that you have no true personality. Or rather, the personality you retain is turned into a conditional–not absolutely necessary–state of living. This now-adjustable self continues to help you live in the world. But it no longer is the center of your life. The heart of your individual self has become the eternal Self within you. Your true nature, your true “I,” is now for you a singular pure, unadulterated state of being. It is your Awareness itself.

Comment: Imagine, for example, that you are a newborn infant. The world is an experience about which you have no thoughts or memories, no desires, no emotions. You feel pain, but that is a raw physical experience. You may feel wonder or a sense of awe, but that is a pure, non-emotional super-awareness, a gift of bliss. You have no particular desire for–or distaste against–anything or anyone. And you have no sense of an individual self. You and the world are one. You are just a raw, fully present awareness–a camera, audio recorder, and sense-impression receiver.

You might experience your first desire, hunger, as you are introduced to milk, and the need for elimination as another desire. Slowly, you will gain experiences and develop memories.

This is very similar to nirvana. Perhaps all infants are born in some way nirvanic.

Little children often retain much of this pure awareness, often without much thought about what is happening, has happened, or what they mean. Jesus of Nazareth comments on this:

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?"

He called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me.”

Alan Watts speaks of this childlike attitude or awareness when he describes the Mahayana Buddhist word and concept tathata, which, he says, “we may translate as ‘suchness,’ ‘thusness,’ or ‘thatness.’” He tells us the first part of this word, tat,

is probably based on a child’s first efforts at speech, when it points at something and says, “Ta” or “Da”.... When we say “That” or “Thus,” we are pointing to the realm of nonverbal experience, to reality as we perceive it directly,...the world just as it is, unscreened and undivided by...thought.

In being childlike, you become as a newborn, no thought, empty mind, in the crystal-clear Awareness of the true Self.

The Gospel of Thomas–an early Christian manuscript from the first century CE, buried for about 1600 years and rediscovered in 1945–tells the story of Jesus of Nazareth speaking of this true Self. Jesus says, “[D]ivine Reality exists inside and all around you. Only when you have come to know your true Self will you be fully known....”

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

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See also Meditationary.org, a Meditation Dictionary; and BodyMeditation.org, Introducing Yoga Meditation.

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