Swami Jyotirmayananda Vedanta and Yoga, taught in Miami

Study guides ·

Raja Yoga Sutras 22: Meditation of Your Choice and the Four Stages of Dispassion

This class covers two sutras of the Samadhi Pada, 39 and 40, and then turns to the steps by which dispassion matures. Swami Jyotirmayananda begins with the invocation to Patanjali,

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This class covers two sutras of the Samadhi Pada, 39 and 40, and then turns to the steps by which dispassion matures. Swami Jyotirmayananda begins with the invocation to Patanjali, who gave three gifts to the world: yoga for the mind, Ayurveda for the body and grammar for speech. From that invocation he draws a practical ideal. Speech should awaken goodness, the body should be healthy enough to let the mind flow to God, and the mind should be enlightened. He then returns to japa, the repetition of a mantra, and to the surrender it is meant to bring. Surrender, he says, is not a single declaration made in a sermon. It is a progressive movement that changes how you work, how you feel, how you think and how you understand, all four together. That is why spiritual progress is not measured by flashes of light in meditation but by a life that is better lived. Sutra 39 gives the seeker freedom: meditate on whatever draws the heart. Techniques are like medicines, and the seeker is the authority on which one to take. Sutra 40 names the result of meditation, mastery over everything from the smallest atom to the greatest. Swamiji reads it plainly. It means the world no longer upsets you. He traces three levels of experience, the physical, the mental and the intellect, and shows why a trip to the moon, to Mars or to Switzerland gives the same world in a different language. The second half of the class is about vairagya, dispassion. A soul that depends on the clouds of the mind takes itself to be a small patch of blue; its reality is the whole sky. Swamiji gives a mantra for that understanding, walks through the four stages of lower dispassion, and closes with supreme dispassion, where the mind itself is no longer needed, as a river finds its fulfillment in the ocean.

Where each passage begins

Patanjali’s three gifts: body, speech and mind

The class opens with the traditional invocation. “I offer adorations to the best of sages, Sage Patañjali, who gave to the world the scripture of yoga for purifying the citta, the mind stuff.” He also gave the scripture of vaidyaka, Ayurvedic medicine, for the body, and the scripture of grammar for purifying speech. “This invocation gives you the ideal before you.” A seeker should not grow on one side only. “You should have all aspected integration.” Swamiji begins with speech, from a practical point of view. At the first stage, language should be cultured and correct. At the second, speech should have purpose: it “Should bring out the goodness of your heart.” And it should go outward too. “Awaken goodness in others.”

Sarasvati and the training of the tongue

“The Devī of the speech is Sarasvatī Devī, Goddess Sarasvatī.” To misuse speech is to slight her. “You are misusing your speech, you are insulting the teacher.” “She doesn’t like to be insulted.” These are simple points, he says, but brought into life as an ideal, they build spiritual character, a strength that carries one through great troubles without much struggle. “All starts from the speech.” And speech has its own discipline: “Also you train your tongue by Japa, repetition of mantra.”

Health that lets the mind flow to God

Then the body. “Perfection for the body is not the goal.” If it were, everyone would wish to grow eight or nine feet tall, with muscles that bounce, always in the Olympic spirit. “That’s admirable, but that’s not the goal.” The goal is a body healthy enough to serve something beyond itself. “That allows your mind to flow to God.” That, Swamiji says, is real health. Too much strength, by contrast, can leave the mind so distracted it does not know what to do; he recalls Bhima, the hero said to have the strength of ten thousand elephants. So one should have insight into how to keep good health: yoga exercises, pranayama, the right diet, and the benefit of research. “Also, subtle secret of the health lies in your mind.” A positive mind lets the pranas, the vital forces, harmonize in the body. “And finally, the yoga teachings are for the mind. How to enlighten the mind.” Patanjali gave attention to all three. “Body, Speech, Mind.”

Japa and progressive surrender

The class is in sutra 39 of the Samadhi Pada, whose theme has been how to direct the mind into deep meditation and samadhi. Swamiji reiterates an earlier method. Patanjali presented japa, and he gave the mantra Om. “Japa should bring in your heart profound surrender to God.” Surrender at its most profound is enlightenment itself. The illusion of ego has dropped away, and you “experience yourself like a river that has entered the ocean.” “But that’s the height of surrender.” In the beginning, one practices progressively. Every religion speaks of surrender. “In every sermon you find, surrender yourself to God.” People come to think it is a simple act. “Just say it, I surrender.” “The teacher says, oh wonderful. You have entered a new life.” “It seems the whole problem is over.” Swamiji corrects this. “You must realize surrender is a progressive movement.” In the early stages the mind works with confusion. One asks, “I have been surrendering for a whole week. But what has God, has God done to me?” “Probably he’s too tired, busy with something else.” So long as surrender is mixed with such questions, he says, “You have not surrendered.”

Surrender is integral growth

“Surrender is not a sentimental act. It is an integral growth.” Swamiji unfolds it across four sides of the personality. How do you do your duties? “How do you do your duties? Karma Yoga.” How do you deal with your feelings: do you have generosity and compassion? “You enjoy cultivating divine feeling within your heart.” “It’s another level, Bhakti Yoga.” How do you deal with your mind: do you enjoy “Serenity, calmness, one-pointedness, stillness”, or let the monkey mind go on jumping? And what of understanding? “Understanding is not just intellectual”; it goes to a deeper level of experience. “So, if these four are blended, it’s called Sampūrṇa Yoga, integral yoga.” That, he says, is the message of the Gita and all scriptures. Depending on your state of evolution you may give more attention to karma yoga, to devotion or to meditation. “But you must realize that your progress will be four aspected.” “No matter what path you adopt.”

How spiritual progress is measured

Character changes, in how you deal with people. Feeling changes, in your loving relations. “What type of love do you exude from your heart?” Thinking changes. “And these changes imply you are progressing.” Progress is not measured by whether light flashed when you sat in meditation. If an extraordinary experience comes, the mind says it has succeeded; if not, it says nothing has happened after so many years, “Not even a sweet sound coming to the ear.” Swamiji asks for a more mature view. “Spirituality is life. Well lived, profoundly lived.” As these points are integrated, life is enriched: you feel better and more joyous. “Your anxiety is coming down, your fear is getting away.” And “you have a sense of support that you couldn’t imagine.”

Sutra 39: meditation of your choice

Having given different techniques, Patanjali says yathabhimata dhyanad va, “or by meditating on anything according to one’s choice.” Different scriptures give different techniques. “The techniques are like different types of medicines.” “For the same ailment, one person receives one medicine, another person receives another.” So too with meditation. “One may like to just meditate on the rising sun as a symbol of God’s wisdom.” “Another may like to meditate on a little flower.” “Another may meditate on Lord Jesus.” Even then there are different ways: Mother Mary holding the infant, or Jesus on the cross. Others meditate on Krishna or Rama: “countless ways of meditation.” “Behind which one you should choose, you are the authority.” There are countless things on your plate. “What should you eat and chew on and digest and relish? That should be your choice.” Krishna gave Arjuna many teachings and techniques for handling the mind, and ended by saying yathecchasi tatha kuru: “Or you all do as you like.” “Absolute freedom of choice.”

Sutra 40: mastery from atom to infinite

Now the result of meditation. Sutra 40 reads paramanu parama mahattvanto’sya vashikarah. “As a result of meditation, the mind of a Yogi gains control over all objects.” Reading that, one might tense the muscles and imagine controlling things. “That’s not really needed.” “Simply means you are not upset by anything.” “The world does not agitate you.” God’s creation, from the smallest atom to the greatest, has three stages. “Bhūr, Bhuvaḥ, Svaḥ. Bhūr relates to physical universe.” “Immensity of the universe will blow your mind.” And yet that is not the attainment. A jump on the moon was watched by the whole scientific world. “It’s a big jump for the whole civilization.” Now there is suspense over Mars. “I’m not underestimating these progresses. That’s wonderful.” But the craving for every variation of thrill should not be in demand. “Same world wherever you go. Same five elements, same five types of experiences.” “Go to Switzerland, yes, they give you same things but in a different language.” When the mind is more mature, “You are not deluded by presentations.”

The mental world and psychic space

The next level of focus is the expansion of the mind. “Mind implies ability to develop compassion, ability to develop divine love, ability to enjoy profound peace.” These are “the divine qualities, those qualities you can’t find in the external world.” “Now you are coming to a different world, the mental world.” “In that mental world you have, you are closer to yourself.” That world is “much more profound, more extensive than the entire physical universe”, a subtle world “where you can’t measure the distance. Your time and space are transcended.” Experience there is in terms of sentiments and feelings. “Feelings that can’t be put into test tubes and sold.” They move in what Swamiji calls “psychic space, mystic space, that’s totally different.” Everyone knows it. “You are sad, your space has become restricted. Glad your space expands.”

Buddhi, the ray of God

The third level is “the profoundest level within you: buddhi, intellect.” “Intellect gains its clarity.” It begins to discover that you are “A ray of God”, and so “an indwelling Presence in all.” Between the normal level and that ideal there are many stages. Great scientists and research scholars have tasted a little of it, and so their joy is “more profound than just jumping on the moon.” So are those who give humanity profound literature and inspiring teachings, the work of an illumined intellect. Every soul can experience joy and expansion on all three levels, and they are blended in one’s experience. “A pinch of physical, a pinch of subtle, subtler, mental.”

The sky and the patches of blue

Developing vairagya has two aspects for the mind to handle, and the first is this: “Deep within, there is the eternal Self.” “Think of the sky with clouds.” The sky appears through the clouds as little patches of blue. “Patches of blue, they expand and contract on the basis of clouds.” Seen through a limited mind, you are just such a patch. “A soul depending upon clouds.” It depends on the experiences of the senses and the mind, and on the practical realities of the world: time, space, karmas. “The reality of your soul is the sky.” With that understanding, you stop building on limited existence. “I don’t love the dark clouds, I don’t love the silvery clouds.” “They all change.” And the patch of blue begins to repeat a mantra: “Nothing exists. Nothing belongs to me. I am the sky.” “That’s a mantra for vairāgya and dispassion.” Dispassion has nothing negative in it, Swamiji stresses; it is the throwing away of illusions, and it asks for patience, endurance and perseverance in sadhana. “Greater is your substantial inner enrichment.” The more you depend on the world, the shallower you are inwardly. “The more you depend on cloud, the more you will be just distracted.” “The whole Earth planet is shaky constantly.”

The first stage: striving

Lower dispassion, apara vairagya, develops in stages. “First stage called yatamānam, striving stage”. Everything in life changes: “relatives, friends, your own body, your own health, all things go on changing.” Some changes thrill you; others disillusion and shock you. So one repeats the Gita’s janma mrityu jara vyadhi duhkha doshanudarshanam, reflection on the pain of birth, death, old age and disease. “If you have come into the world, do you think you are not going to exit?” Why be shocked when others leave? “You are one of them.” “Do you want the people to grieve over you? Just like you are grieving over them?” “Or is there any other solution?” The mantra returns here. “Each time you sit for your meditation.” Turn the mind to japa and bring in that big declaration. “Nothing exists. So why are you bothering yourself?” “They are all clouds.” “I’m neither mind nor body, immortal self am I.” The mind should take up the sacred task of not coming back into embodiment: salvation, liberation, nirvana. And the work of the world does not suffer. “The fact is, you will be handling them more peacefully, more joyously, more spontaneously, because now you are linked with a divine hand.” “People say he works so hard. You look within yourself and smile.” “Who is working hard?”

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Differentiating, the one sense and mastery

The second stage, vyatireka, is differentiating. “Certain objects will not tempt you and you are safe with them.” “In certain areas you may become tempted.” A diabetic in a restaurant full of sweets will be tempted; with an addiction one should “get far away from wrong association.” You become aware of where your control is strong and where it is not. The third stage is ekendriya. The mind has become profoundly mature, and the senses cannot force it. “It’s the mind that directs the senses.” “not the other way around.” At that stage, “You never complain against the world.” If someone goes on with harsh words, “You have compassion for his constant use of tongue, abuse of tongue.” “But why should you be affected? That means mind is the one.” This does not make you insensitive. “Your senses will be clicking, you will be extremely sensitive”, but the mind is not agitated by what they bring. “The mind will put things in a proper way.” The fourth stage is vashikara. “Vaśīkāra, even that mind is under your control.” “But then, still you are dealing with it.” As long as dispassion concerns how the mind is cultured and embellished, “so long that vairāgya is lower vairāgya.”

Para vairagya: dismantling the mind

“Now what happens? There comes a process of dismantling the mental process.” “You don’t need the mind.” “Mind is needed as long as your soul has not attained liberation.” Swamiji gives a passing image: water is needed only so long as one wishes to remain a reflection, and supreme dispassion is the wish not to stay in the bucket at all. “This seems not easy to understand.” “Mind itself is nothing but a bundle of thought, a bundle of desires.” “When you are deeply relaxed, what happens? You become thoughtless.” Thoughts and desires swirl only when inner stability is lacking. Deep sleep gives a hint. “You move away from your mind. There’s no more thinking, no more desire.” “Who is missing what?” “That gives you an idea of the ultimate goal.”

The river and the ocean

“This point needs to be understood by living a spiritual life”; otherwise there are only theoretical concepts, and every concept is defective. “A river finds its fulfillment in the ocean.” While it flows, the river may imagine what the ocean will be like. It may picture meeting the rivers it has heard of from the trees and birds. “And ocean God will have a big platform.” The rivers will be seated there with their gifts. “And they will be all singing and dancing.” However it imagines, “It will be always defective.” Human ideas of the realm of God are much the same. “No two religions describe exactly the same.” There is always dance and song in them. Swamiji’s last word on it is plain. “The actual attainment blows away all.”

Terms

For reflection

About this lecture

Patanjali’s Raja Yoga Sutras, Samadhi Pada, sutras 39 and 40. Lecture 22 by Swami Jyotirmayananda, Yoga Research Foundation. The complete archive of Swamiji’s lectures is free to all.

This study guide is drawn from the archived teachings of Sri Swami Jyotirmayananda.