Patanjali Yoga Sutras Lecture 002

Full Transcript(Not Corrected)

Om Sahana Bhavatu Sahana Bhunatu Sahaveeryam Karavavahai Tejasvi Navadhi Tamastu Mavidvishavahai Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Om May Brahman protect us both May Brahman bestow upon us both the fruit of knowledge May we both obtain the energy to acquire knowledge May what we both study reveal the truth May we cherish no ill feeling toward each other Om Peace Peace Peace be unto us I bow to the eminent sage Patanjali who removed the impurities of the mind through yoga impurities of speech through grammar and impurities of the body through medicine We are discussing the Patanjali Yoga Sutras, a summary of what we discussed in our last class There are schools of philosophy and in India the Sanskrit term for philosophy is Darshana Darshana means unobstructed, direct, intuitive experience of reality or who we really are In this connection I also briefly mention there are six schools of philosophy Whether we call ourselves as philosophers or not, all of us are philosophers What does that mean? It means we have a world view Our world view is dictated by our understanding of who we are To give a simple example, if we think that there is no God, there is no after world, there is no rebirth Our entire attitude towards this life changes If there is no God, that means there is no justice If there is no justice, there is no judge If there is no judge, there is no police Just imagine you know, there is no police Could you understand what is going to happen? Many of us do not turn into criminals Not because we are intrinsically good people but because of the fear Fear of even bad name, fear of transgressing the family name My father was so well known, would I spoil his name etc. Fear of police, fear of morality So if there is no God, there is no justice and there is no one to supervise We can do what we like and that is what most of the people are doing nowadays If we are caught, we will see what happens So whether we like it or not, whether we know it or not, we are all philosophers And most of us are unconscious philosophers A person who says I believe in God, I believe in the law of karma And yet so attached to properties, so much miserly Is it not common sense to understand that if this person really believes in the law of karma What does the law of karma say? If we do good actions, we will get the good results, isn't it? If I can help other people, then who is going to get benefit? Only we This most marvelous philosophy has been so exquisitely expounded by Swami Vivekananda In his book on Karma Yoga By helping the world, we help ourselves Read it again We are not helping anybody This is very important to understand If I know that if I do this good karma, I am going to enjoy the result Who will not do it? Every one of us will definitely do it We are all philosophers But most of the time we are unconsciously philosophers That is why if we observe a person's behavior, we know what type of philosophy is he Ramakrishna makes wonderful statement in one of his teachings A worldly person's devotion is like a drop of water on a hot frying pan What does that mean? One second emotion comes and then it is gone So you cannot call that person a devoted person But if we become conscious and try to think about it Then one invariable conclusion, inescapable conclusion will come What is it? Life on this earth is 99% pain, misery, suffering If we open our eyes, it is suffering Ha ha kar, nothing but ha ha kar Alas, alas Is it true? What is the first teaching of Bhagwan Buddha? First Aryan noble truth of Lord Buddha Life is, do you think he is irrational? Do you think he is a depressed personality? He is the most enlightened person What do you call? Most mature person on earth And yet he said because that is the truth Time means suffering Separation from everything else So we are philosophers But there are some people who sat down I am talking about Hindu philosophers And thought things out And as a result, six systems of philosophy have come I briefly mentioned Uttaram Imamsa, Purvam Imamsa, Nyaya, Vaiseshika, Sankhya and Yoga Do not bother about the Sanskrit names But all these six systems of philosophy are called Aasthika Darshanas Aasthika means, you know, Aasthika and Naasthika Na, Aasthi, Aasthi Now something very briefly I will have to tell you here A believer and a non-believer Believing philosophy, non-believing philosophy Now what do you mean by believing? Usually asked, do you believe? Are you a believer? Yes, what does that mean? I believe in a God But that is not what is meant by orthodox systems of philosophy What is meant is I believe in the Vedas I believe in the Vedas In fact, the Sankhya philosophy Of which this Yoga philosophy, the practical part of it Categorically says There is no God, there is no need for God Everything is achieved through nature Like our modern scientists In fact, it is very close allied to science Whereas Yoga gives a little bit allowance and says No, there is a God So Sankhya is called Nirishwara Darshana Nirishwara means non-God philosophy Yoga is called Seshwara, Sa-Ishwara Believes in God, but not as we understand God God is only first come first served person He was the first person, so he got lordship He put his flag down and said, I am God Who is there to challenge me? He is also, for a logical reason He is considered as Ishwara What is the logic behind? We all have knowledge And we never start with fresh knowledge We always start with knowledge Accumulated over number of Kms When we are born, we just start from where we are For example, the youngsters nowadays Computer savvy we call them But for old people like me It takes a long time to understand Most of us, the older we are And the difficulties for us We may use them, but we do not really understand These youngsters are like this Go on doing it By that time you are only seeing the fingers moving Nothing else But they accomplish it so fast So many IT people are here So we all start with certain amount of knowledge We build upon that knowledge This is how knowledge is accumulated Who is the first person? The very first person, imagine There was no knowledge before And he has to acquire it That first person who had somehow We don't know how He got that knowledge He is called God By the particular system of Yoga system of philosophy Another function he fulfills is We need to focus our minds Upon some noble idea So God is a very noble idea Not as devotees understand God It is a target practice Then without God, this whole universe What is our idea of God? We do not think But we accept it What is the acceptance? If I see a beautiful chair This microphone When I see this microphone Do I really believe It just fell down from the sky? There must be some person Who sat down and created it So we see this very marvellous world Is one of the arguments put forth To prove the existence of God You know this vast universe Billions and billions and billions of galaxies And each one is so powerful We have no idea Even imaginatively We cannot think about it And such wonderful intelligence I am talking of two things here One, the physical objects that we see The power of the suns The power of the stars The power of this What is called nebulae, galaxies What is our earth compared to that? This is material thing But look at the intelligence For instance, a Beethoven A Kalidasa A Sri Ramakrishna A Swami Vivekananda You see tremendous power Tremendous power Now what is power? This tremendous intelligence What is intelligence? Knowledge What is knowledge? Knowledge is power You heard the word Knowledge is power Because if you have knowledge You can do anything you like You can make You can break You can do anything So why Sri Ramakrishna is so powerful? Why Swami Vivekananda is so powerful? Why Holy Mother is so powerful? Her power is even more than anybody else Why is she so powerful? Do you know why? Because she has the knowledge Her power stems from knowledge What is the knowledge? All these are my children My very dear children My own children That knowledge gave her that power What is that power? Power of love In spite of so many obstacles So many betrayals So many things Holy Mother is adored Why? Because we can go to her Do whatever we like And she will never take offense That is the power What is the power due to? Power of love What is the power of love due to? Knowledge And that is the knowledge they got That is such a tremendous knowledge When we see in front of our eyes Such a tremendous knowledge Then we have to wonder and say There is a difference between me and this powerful person So this power must have some origin And what is the origin of that power? All the material things That are combined together Is called Prakruti All the power that we see In yogic terminology It is called Prana I will come to that subject later on But I am just recollecting What we discussed last time Slightly elaborately So all this Both the material And the Prana or power Both these combined Must have some origin And that origin is what we call Creator Maintainer And destroyer Constantly this phenomena is going on In each object that we see There are so many cells In this particular so called Static table That is going on Within our body Cells are being created Cells are being maintained Cells are being destroyed But that is not the idea of God of unfortunately Sankhya So what is the point we are discussing? When the Hindu philosophies say We are Astika Darshanas Believers Do not mean belief in God Then what do you believe in? We believe in Vedas What is the distinction between Believing in God and believing in Vedas? Who comes first? Does God come first? Or Vedas come first? Veda means knowledge For you to believe or not to believe First of all there must be Knowledge You can't say about nothing I believe or I do not believe Does it make sense? About something which doesn't exist Can you say I believe or I don't believe? Only about something Which seem to exist You have an option Either I believe Or I do not believe So what is Veda? Veda means knowledge Not books Veda means knowledge Specifically Vedas mean That knowledge Which can never be obtained Through our ordinary Five sense organs And therefore Even if we have to believe in God We must have knowledge of God Where from are we going to get The knowledge of God? Only from the Vedas How do we know God exists? We don't know The Vedas tell us Simple How do you know God exists? Suppose you Of course most of us didn't read Vedas Excepting some What is called Upanishads You might have read Or Bhagavad Gita Bhagavad Gita is not part of the Veda It is part of Mahabharata So how did you From Krishna's devotees How did you Come to know there is a God? Because you read a book called Gospel of Ramakrishna How do you know that you are going to You are suffering because of your past karma Because Ramakrishna said so How do you know you are going to have A beautiful life? I am talking a very interesting topic You know what is interesting? I am using the word interesting many times Because I heard from psychologists If I use the word interesting many times You feel interested in it I am not joking It is really true Marvelous Stupendous If somebody says Then you start getting excited We are all devotees of God We are devotees of Ramakrishna And we believe every teaching That Ramakrishna had taught us Is absolute truth And what is it? He says If you realize God Then you will be in a wonderful state You will be free from all miseries Sufferings You will be ever with God You will not know what is birth Therefore you will not know what is death You become paripoorna Infinite Absolutely perfect This is the hope And because of our faith We do our japa dhyana Is it not? If you really believe That my japa dhyana May or may not yield fruit Then you will never do it You have definitely You have the faith Sometimes it may become Van or wax That is due to circumstances It could be music It could be good food It could be cloudy weather There is a different issue But certainly there is a belief There is a faith So that is why Aasthika darshanas means Those who believe in the Vedas Afterwards You may believe in God You may not believe in God Sankhya philosophy is one such thing Darshana philosophy is also Because of another reason I said last time Just to remind all of us Because we are subject to Threefold suffering Adhyatmika, Adhibhautika and Adhidaivika Physical, mental as well spiritual Bodily and outside from the world Or even from supernatural beings We are all subject to misery And that is we don't want to suffer This is one thing is true Everybody agrees on one point Or rather let me say two points What is it? Let me never suffer And let me be always happy There is no conservative party No labour party here No republican, no democratic All of us completely agree with that Then how is it possible? With darshanas fellows Yes, that is why it is called darshana Yes, it is possible So if it is possible What shall I do? There are three things we can do Or we must do First, you must believe that it is possible Second, you must desire to attain to that Because even if you believe That you may not have the desire I will give you an example We all know Any one of us can become doctors or engineers Or even the prime minister As citizens we have the right and we can become But do we desire it? We do not So knowing is one thing But desiring is a different thing One person, one bright student He knows he could become a good doctor But he says I do not like that subject I like another subject So also a person says I believe in God But I do not desire him There are so many like that And most of us are like that If God comes and says Do you want me or happiness? Do you want me and happiness? Yes So the six schools of philosophy Darshana means how can we get out of it? First thing, we must know it is possible And believe it Second, we must desire it Third, there must be a way to achieve it Every philosophy tells us these three things That is why it is called philosophy or darshana Not speculative philosophy This is what we briefly discussed Then also we discussed The Sankhya and Yoga are very closely allied So Sankhya provides the philosophical part Yoga provides the practical part And I also mentioned Sankhya is heavily borrowed by Vedanta Vedanta philosophy is different from Sankhya philosophy The most important difference Because we are all devotees of God We know some bit of Vedanta So what is the difference? Vedanta always tells Thou art Brahman Aham Brahmasmi It does not say as I mentioned Very important to understand this point That you are Brahman No You will be Brahman No Vedanta always tells I am Brahman You are Brahman Now or past tense Now or future tense Because that is what we really are It is our real nature I also mentioned briefly According to Yoga philosophy Yoga means Vyoga I briefly mentioned the word yoke It is derived from the word UG Sanskrit word Yoking Yoking means When two things are inextricably mixed together So that you can never separate them afterwards That is usually the meaning we understand Yoga means to unite The individual soul is united with the universal soul Jivatma is united with Paramatma That is whether you follow Jnana Yoga or Bhakti Yoga But in the Yoga philosophy It is just the opposite meaning Yoga means Vyoga Vyoga means separation from Prakruti Whatever is Maya Separation from Maya Vedanta also is like that only really speaking When you say you are Brahman You are not going to attain Brahman You are never going to attain Brahman You are not going to attain Brahman You are not going to attain Brahman Why you know? You are already Brahman You have never been separated as Brahman It is your real nature But we somehow have forgotten that What is the forgetfulness due to? It is called Maya What is the Maya consisting of? According to Yoga philosophy It consists of three things What are those? Sattva, Rajas and Tamas Anyway, briefly Yoga means Vyoga This is what we discussed Now let me give a very brief summary of Sankhya philosophy Because our whole Yoga system of Patanjali Is based upon the Sankhya philosophy Sankhya means different numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 You know Sankhya You count That is why it is called Sankhya Sankhya also means knowledge Really speaking That is why the second chapter of the Gita is called Sankhya Yoga There it is not counting There it is It means the chapter dealing with knowledge Self-knowledge But anyway here counting What is the counting? According to Sankhya Yoga There are 25 things Just as chemistry tells us There are 107 or 108 elements The whole creation is consisting of 107 or 108 elements Similarly, according to this philosophy 25 elements are there But of all these elements One element is There are two elements Which are eternal Which are totally separate What are they called? Prakruti and Purusha Purusha means It is the pure consciousness But according to Sankhya It is not one According to Vedanta Brahman is only one God is only one According to Sankhya As many of us are here So many Purushas are there So the nature of the Purusha is pure consciousness And Prakruti is the other element Second element Prakruti and Purusha What is Prakruti? Anything opposite to the pure consciousness What is that opposite? If Purusha is consciousness Then Prakruti is non-consciousness But it is eternal Both are eternal This is an evolution of thought Human thought It is not a final reality As we evolve We understand a little better And that is how In those days These people have divided Later on Vedanta took over all these things Combined them And that is what we get now What is called special Advaita Vedanta Even according to the Ramayana system As I mentioned I promised you I will not confuse your minds But now and then I will just give bits of information For the sake of those people Who know a little better According to Ramayana philosophy There is only one Paramatma But Purusha's consciousness individuals Are infinite in number Like the cells in the body of one person Anyway That is not an important piece of information for us So what happened? This Prakruti There is no English translation For this word Prakruti What it means is The basic material Out of which this whole universe has evolved What scientists call matter And matter as you know Is completely non-conscious One of the points I mentioned in my last class Is that These scientists who say Matter is unconscious, non-conscious They are violating their own beliefs In what way? There is a law of science What is it? Something cannot come out of nothing That means what? If life principle Or intelligence principle Is not already involved in the matter At some point How could it come out? Is it ever possible? But this is what Most of the scientists are making mistake As though consciousness has become A P-phenomena they call it At some point Somehow as a by-product it has come Mutation has come As Swami Vivekananda pointed out More than 100 years back And say if life was not there within matter How could it ever come out? Well suddenly you find You plant plenty of apple trees Or let us say neem trees You know why neem trees? Your monkeys refuse to touch them You can cultivate billions of neem trees If you know that On one day suddenly you go there Early in the morning It is full of life Fuzzily mangoes Is it ever possible? It is impossible It is the scientific law Swami Vivekananda had pointed out According to Sankhya philosophy This is the nature of Prakruti Everything that you can call Everything that we experience If of anything we can say I know this Of anything we can say I know this So let me slightly elaborate it I know this is a table That means this table is Belonging to whom? Is it Prakruti or Purusha? Prakruti I know this body That means this body is also An evolute of Prakruti I know this mind My mind is disturbed How do you know? If you don't know Your mind is disturbed Will you say my mind is disturbed? Because you said my mind is disturbed That means That is separate from me Whatever we know is not we That is the first thing you have to know Whatever we know is not we The knower is different from the known So of whatever we can say I know It belongs to Not to the Purusha Not to the pure consciousness But the experienced The known The seen So that is the principle So whatever we see here Experience here Body, mind Ahankara Egotism Everything belongs to Prakruti But as I said Prakruti Doesn't have Consciousness But our mind is conscious So how do we explain that? To explain that I give you a small analogy Supposing A poor fellow Absolutely has no cloths And one day morning He comes to And attends a Queen's dinner party Gorgeous cloths He didn't have them What do you presume? Only two things Either he got them Either by Borrowing Or stealing Only two conclusions So if Whatever we experience Is not having consciousness And mind is what we Experience And that is the most troublesome Of all the troublesome things Which is the most troublesome thing Of all the enemies we have Which is the most virulent enemy You know It is the mind And the mind says Oh that fellow is my enemy This fellow is my friend I like this I don't like this It is behaving as though It has wonderful Intelligence Consciousness But we know That it doesn't have consciousness Because when you go to sleep It is gone And when we forget also It is gone Simple thing You know You have specs On your own face But you forgot your specs You are going on searching What is the good of it? So what is the presumption? It must have Borrowed Borrowed Borrowed intelligence Now The point we are discussing is For some reason Which no philosophy Has ever been able to solve Swami Vivekananda was asked Sir You are going on teaching us That we are all Brahma Divine How come I do not know I am Brahma If my nature is A pure consciousness And the worst thing That can happen is Losing that consciousness You know What is losing consciousness? Not becoming unconscious But not being conscious That we are conscious beings If a rich man Is lying down on the In the gutter And you go and search Who are you? He says I do not know who I am I was in a strange town That is what happens I tell you A very interesting example This is what really happened In I think USA One man Married man Had children Beautiful family He loved his family One day he walked out in the morning And again Thereafter not seen for 8 years Or so So police went on searching Searching They could not find anywhere else Ultimately after 8 years Somehow He was traced To the next town itself And then he was asked What is your name? Are you so and so? Completely he denied He said I do not My name is not that This is my name He gave a new name What happened? Amnesia Completely he lost his memory So he walked out Went to the next town And he Somehow some name he got He introduced himself And then he got One lady And they were married He started having a family He is a good man But what happened? Memory is gone Our memory And this point We will come back later on Is very intimately Associated with knowledge What is it that misleads us? Our memory How do I know? You know you are coming And sitting in front of me This most marvelous subject I know you for so many years But how do I know who you are? Because of Suppose I lost my memory Will I recognize you? Can I recognize you? If I lost my memory You know what happens in old age? You know dementia Old people are lying in the hospital And even their own children Or even husband, wife Go there And do you think they recognize? No Some idea is there This person is a harmless person That some vague idea is there What a terrible thing state We can't recognize We don't even recognize ourselves So these are the two incidental points What is the point? First of all This memory is knowledge Knowledge is memory It is not really true But knowledge expresses only Through the instrumentality of the memory The second point is The memory is always associated With what we call our ego I, my memory Your memory will not do Swami, I know you very well Yes, yes, I know you very well You know me very well But I don't know myself very well So what is the second point We are discussing about? First of all Even though there is knowledge We may have tremendous knowledge Einstein When he is in deep sleep Is he Einstein or somebody else? Only when he wakes up Is he Einstein or not? Even then no Suppose he has got dementia And he is awake Do you think he is Einstein? Do you know how many people Lose their knowledge and everything? Memory is so intimately associated That is why we need special keep Let God bless us Let we never lose our memory Otherwise life is gone Totally gone It is like vegetables Second point It is intimately associated with me Ahankara There is a special word for this What is called The house of memory In Vedantic language is called Chitta Antahkarana Inner organ What is that? Manaha Buddhi Chitta Ahankara I will again come back to this Chitta means storehouse of memories If the storehouse is put to fire Then we don't know who we are So intimately associated Why is it associated? One simple reason Before you can issue any statement Any statement Positive or negative What is this? This is a table We never use that language We say Even though if you ask me What is this Swami? I say it is a table Right? But what I mean is I am aware That this is a table What comes first? Table or me? It comes me First I I That is why memory is so important And right memory is even more important That is why you have to pray to Mother Saraswati Medha Devi Yushamana Agad O Mother Let me have The power of Medha What is Medha? Good memory And memory also has got lot of problems It has both good side and bad side If you can remember good things That is the secret of happy people You know There is an analysis Statistics Who is a happy person? A happy person is not A person For whom circumstances are always happy No Circumstances Weather All these things are common things For everybody A happy person is one Who forgets unhappy memories And only Remembers mostly Happy things And an unhappy person is just the Opposite So these are two important points Keep in mind Because we have to deal With these things In this Patanjali Yoga Sutras First of all Even though there is knowledge That knowledge Can be expressed And is expressed Is possible to express Only through Memory That is why memory is very important And the second point This Memory Is intimately Associated with I Or me We will Continue there So what is the Sankhya philosophy? There are two principles What are those principles? One is called Purusha Another is called Prakruti What is the nature of the Prakruti? It consists of Three Gunas The word three Is a Sanskrit word Borrowed Three Gunas What are they? Sattva, Rajas and Tamas So what happened? Before creation Perfect balance between Sattva Rajas And Tamas Perfect balance And as I mentioned For some reason Nobody is able to Answer this question If I am infinite How did I become finite? How did God become the world? Can God become Ever become the world? Because God is infinite Can the infinite Ever become finite? Is it ever possible? Logically it is not possible That question Nobody was able to answer Including Vedanta Only thing is Vedanta Frankly is I don't know the answer Buddha will ask Does God exist? Because if God exists All his allied problems Will come If you had said God existed The next question will be Why this hell? Who created the hell? Terrible And then if God Could create the hell That means God Is of the nature of Hell You know He cannot create something From outside himself Whatever is himself Can That only can manifest That means he is a mixture Of both good and evil That is why In Vedanta When you study Vedanta It is very important To understand Vedanta The first description Of God is He is Nirguna But if you ask further He is appealing to me He is giving me A little bit A hook Whereby I can Catch hold of it Then it will say Ok He is Saguna But never Ever Vedanta says God is only of good qualities And not Bad qualities And this idea Is expressed So emphatically Every time We sit there Srishti sthiti vinashanam Shikthi bhute Sanatani Srishti Sthiti Vinashanam Creation Maintenance And destruction My mother is the creator Of this world And she is the Maintainer Maintainer Sustainer Of the world She is also the destroyer Of the world We don't want to take it One step further Who created happiness Who maintains the happiness Who destroys the happiness Mother Kali Do you see Four hands What does that indicate This fact That is why Vedanta philosophy We conveniently Ignore some parts It never It says God is only of the nature Of good Or auspicious qualities He is also Of an auspicious quality Then inauspicious quality Belongs to whom I am a bit logical In my mind you know You see God is You know Among all auspicious How do you know What is auspicious How do you know What is good You know if there are Fifty persons How do you know Who is a good person And among good persons also Good most good Gooder person Goodest person Who is the goodest person A person who gives me One rasagulla is good Person who gives me Two is good A person who gives me More than three is Goodest You know this is how We are acting I am not joking This is how we act And react towards Everything in this universe Who is nearest to us The person who loves us most Forgives us Everything We can offend That person But that person Will never offend us This is what we call That is why Shri Ramakrishna Doesn't take Broke nonsense Yeah But Holy Mother You can do whatever you like She will still accept it That is why This philosophy says This somehow The infinite has become finite If the infinite Has become finite Can it Can the infinite Ever become finite Is it ever possible It may seem To have become That is why seemingly That is why Vivartavada Appearance A rope Appears as a Snake But it has never become Really A snake We have never become Human beings So one of our Swamis Put it so beautifully I repeated it But I will repeat it again We are not Human beings Trying to be Spiritual We are Spiritual beings Temporarily caught In the net of Human body And mind And so struggling To get out Somehow This Gurusha I am using that word Please remember Pure consciousness Somehow It comes into contact With the Prakriti And what is the nature Of Prakriti Perfect balance Perfect balance No creation Perfect balance No creation You know like Perfect lake Swami Vivekananda Gives that example Perfect lake You go there And you know Who you are It is a beautiful example You stand on the Bank of a Beautiful lake Absolutely calm You look down You can see the very bottom Crystal clear Then you can see your reflection You know who you are That means what You know who you are Means what That means You know You are separate From the lake When you stand In front of a mirror When you look At your image The first thing That you see is As you are The first thought The very first thought Of any object You know I am seeing you The first thought What is the first thought That comes This is so and so First thought is This is so and so Then the memories Come back This rogue This person is a rogue Day before yesterday This person had hurt me Or 50 years back He hurt my great grandfather You know This is how This tribe Fights against tribe You know that So this memory Before that memory came The pure knowledge This is so and so That is it When we look at the mirror What is the first thing This is my reflection And then Am I looking alright Is the powder alright Is the colouring alright All these etc etc etc And disturb our mind But before the disturbance starts We are completely pure That means what We recognise I am not the reflection I am not the mirror In fact there is nothing There is nothing called mirror When you look at the image Do you remember Any time this is a mirror It is very interesting fact You know there is a mirror And you are here What do you say That is a mirror Notice that But the moment you go And stand in front of that mirror Are you looking at the mirror Or are you looking at There is a psychology you know There are thousand people Making all sorts of noise Can you hear what the persons At a distance are talking about Can you understand What they are talking about In that big noise Never But let somebody utter Swami Dayatma Swami Dayatma Immediately my ears get pricked Even though I am pretending I am a bit deaf I still hear that Even from the back If they are whispering also I hear Why Because I have special identity With myself Suppose you see There is your old What is called photograph With other schools What is it called Alma Alma mater Alma mater or whatever You know 300 students there Whom do you recognise there first Where do your eyes go Your eye What is the point I am making When we stand in front of a mirror The first thing that happens is I am different Mirror is different This is only my image My reflection That is the important point for this But later on comes Am I looking beautiful Am I looking ugly Should I do this Should I do that You know how much time it takes Will leave the joke remember Centipede Centipede couple Was invited for a dinner party So the husband centipede Went outside waiting for the wife Waiting waiting waiting And the wife He was shouting Come out it is time I am coming in a minute And he got so angry He shouted And he got She also got angry I am going to come out Within a minute I have been shouting this For the last one hour How do you expect me To match all my shoes Shoes must be matched 100 feet So what is the point The first impression is When I see you When you see me When you We see any object Is completely neutral But later on The memories from flooding Associated with that object And it creates hell to us So prakriti When it is in perfect balance Absolutely fine No creation But for some reason This purusha Pure consciousness And this matter Come here And immediately There is a turbulence And that causes The three gunas Balance is lost When that balance is lost Creation starts Maintenance starts Destruction starts This whole circus Vedantic circus starts So this is the explanation of Sankhya philosophy So the first evolute of that Prakriti is absolute balance That state of balance Is called samadhi What is samadhi That state of balance of the prakriti Where there is no Evolute at all Then what happens The purusha says I am the purusha This is prakriti But the moment Just like you know The lake becomes turbulent Then what happens Our image also becomes turbulent Our mind is It lost our picture Original picture And it goes on saying If the image goes that way Oh this is me If the image goes this way That is me Means what What am I talking about If the wave goes this way Distorts the image I am happy person If the image If the wave goes that way I am unhappy person I am good I am bad I am beautiful I am ugly I am learned All these are ideas in the mind Chitta How do we know We know because Each one of us are undergoing Three states Every single day You know that What are those three states Waking Dream And dreamless Waking and dream This mind is hesitated We identify with the Reflections Hesitated Reflections Disturbed Reflections But the moment we go into deep sleep What happens The mind is Left behind Then The pure consciousness I am So this is the explanation What is yoga Yoga is Attainment of samadhi What is samadhi When The prakriti Or three gunas Absolutely Compose themselves Into perfect balance Incidentally this word Perfect balance Is a beautiful word When do you feel healthy You know We call When do you feel I am sick When there is a pain What is pain Imbalance You know We call it disease The very word disease How do you How do you split it Dis Ease You are not at ease You have lost your balance So this is what happens But When the balance Is perfectly Restored Then the purusha says I am purusha Other times He identifies himself With whichever Reflected image That we saw So by nature What is Patanjali telling This is the most Wonderful thing Allied to Vedanta What is it telling It is telling To us That The nature Of the mind is Samadhi The very The real nature Of the mind is Samadhi Perfect balance But For some reason It is disabled So what is yoga now Restore The lost Balance And that practice That which restores The balance Is called Practice of Yoga And for that There are Eight limbs Astanga We call it What are they Yama Niyama Asana Pranayama Pratyahara Dharana Dhyana And samadhi But To summarize What we have been talking About Vedanta philosophy Doesn't matter What it means is I am pure consciousness For some reason I have forgotten My real nature I identify myself With other With the Other You know If I am not myself Then who am I I must be Someone else And that someone else Is called Maya Vidya Maya Whatever name you call it Ignorance Ignorance means Not absence of knowledge But Wrong knowledge All our miseries come Again Very briefly This whole Matter Is evolved into Or fallen down From its nature of Samadhi Or perfect balance That is called Involution What is involution Descending Falling down From its original state Say a person who is pure A Prakruti Which is absolutely balanced It falls down Then it becomes The first Evolute Is called Mahat Very subtle matter You can't see it Because it is a Very subtle matter Out of it The whole thing has come From Mahat Equivalent to that So you have to Put up with it Prakruti degenerates Evolves We call it But in Vedantic language It is called Involution Means falling down From its original state It becomes degenerate Into Called Mahat It is a technical name From Mahat comes Ahankara Ahankara means Not your My Ahankara That pure existence Which says I am That is called Ahankara So Prakruti Gives rise to Mahat Mahat gives rise to Ahankara From Ahankara came Five Subtle Elements Called Tanmatras And from those Five subtle elements Came five Gross elements Which we call Space Air Fire Water Under And from these two From the subtle elements Came mind And from the gross elements Came the Everything that our Physical universe Now earlier I mentioned Why do we want a philosophy Darshana School of philosophy Because we suffer from Three types of Miseries Three types of Miseries belong to whom? Only to Body and Mind That means what? So long as we are Identified We forget our true nature And say I am Prakruti Means I am putting it in An easier way So long as we say I am the body and Mind So long We cannot escape There is no Something called Perfect body It doesn't exist Perfect mind That doesn't also exist If you have a head There will be invariably Headache If you have property There will invariably be Tax Tax You have to pay the tax So if there is a mind There will be Worry There will be Blood pressure And all those things Will be there Worries will be there So if I want to have Body and mind And yet want to be free From the Accompanying Effects of Body and mind Is it ever possible? So this is one of the Most important Explanations of Samkhya philosophy Says Every body Has to undergo Six changes Call them Birth Then Transformation Then growth Then decay Then disease Then ultimately Destruction All There is Every object That has manifested It has to go through These things And when we go Through these changes Then we experience Pain Misery So If we want to avoid These six changes What is the way to do? Get rid If you don't want Headache Forever What do you need to do? Get rid of the Mind So what is yoga? That system Which first tells us What is body What is mind What is your Relationship with body Mind And it tells crystal Clearly You are not the body And mind And so Get rid of it But we are so much Attached Yes that is fine That is what your Present state But We will come to that We will give you a formula By which you can Get rid of this So if I don't have Body and mind Then who am I? At the moment It is very difficult For us to imagine If I am not the body If I am not the mind Then what am I? We have no idea But the scripture Gives us a clear idea That you are that Infinite Because all limitations Or finiteness Comes what? Because of Particularities And body and mind Is nothing but Particularity Limited Limitedness If there is no body Then Two Three things will disappear Along with body and mind Three things will disappear What are those things? Desha Kala Desha means Space Kala means Time Nimitta means Causation And if there is no time You are eternal If there is no space Then you are Infinite If there is no causation Then you have no identity To go beyond this Time, space and causation And What is Maya? Time, space and Causation To go beyond this Maya To know that I am really the divine That is the goal Of all philosophy East or west Or whatever it is That is the goal Of all religions That is what the yoga Proposes to tell us There was a great soul Called Patanjali Rishi And he had formulated Special technique Very briefly He deals only With the theoretical part Very briefly But mostly It is practical And who he is And how wonderful This book is And when it came Into existence And how it can help us These subjects We will discuss In my next class Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Shanti Shanti Shanti Shanti