Book II: Ways To Attain Yoga (Sadhana Pada)
(This
is an excerpt
from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences
course at www.umsonline.org,
please feel free to visit the school website)
- Practical ways to attain Yoga
(union of consciousness with the Infinite) are through ascetic disciplines
(tapas), study and meditation on Aum (Svadhyaya), and by devotion to the
Lord (Ishvara). [Refer to Book I:23-28.] These are the preliminary steps
(kriya yoga).
- The purpose of kriya yoga
is to bring about superconsciousness and to weaken the afflictions.
- The afflictions are ignorance,
ego-consciousness, desire, aversion, and the clinging-to-life instinct.
- Ignorance is the cause of
the other afflictions whether they are dormant (exist in potential form
in the subconscious), weakened (rendered non-operative through meditation),
overpowered (the yogi counters them by cultivating the opposite tendencies),
or fully operative.
- Ignorance is regarding the
non-eternal as eternal, the impure as pure, the distressing as pleasurable,
and the not-Self as Self.
- Ego-consciousness is the apparent
identification of the Perceiver with the instruments of perception.
- Desire is that which dwells
upon pleasure.
- Aversion is that which dwells
upon pain.
- The clinging-to-life instinct,
springing up of its own nature, remains even in the wise.
- When the afflictions are in
potential form they should be overcome by resolving them into their natural
cause (prakriti).
- The gross effects produced
by the afflictions in their fully operative form should be overcome by
meditation.
- The result of past experience
of the afflictions is that tendencies (karmas) are stored in the subconscious
mind which causes suffering both in this life and the life to come.
- As long as the storehouse
of karmas exists, they will bear fruit in the next birth, length of life,
and experiences of pleasure and pain.
- These fruits will result in
pleasure or pain according as to whether their cause is from virtue or
vice.
- But, to the discriminating
yogi, all material experience is considered painful since by the three
material modes (guna vritti) the painful consequences of change, anxiety,
and new tendencies (samsaras) happen.
- What is to be avoided is pain
not yet come.
- The cause of avoidable pain
is the identifying of the experiencer with the object of experience.
- The objective world has the
nature of illumination, activity, and stability (ie. the three modes of
material nature (gunas)), and comprises the physical elements as well
as the senses. Its purpose is for the sake of experience and the liberation
of the experiencer.
- The four aspects of Nature
are gross (or general), subtle (or specialized), the once resolvable (or
primal) and the irresolvable (or unevolved).
- The Seer (Purusha), although
pure consciousness only, sees through the senses and mind which becomes
coloured by the object. [Refer to Book I:16,41]
- The visible universe exists
for the sake of the Seer.
- Although the visible universe
has ceased to exist for those who have achieved enlightenment, it still
exists because it is common to all other experiencers.
- The relationship between the
Seer and Nature (Prakriti) is that of the owner and the owned, and this
causes identification of the Self and not-Self. [See Book I:16.]
- The cause of that identification
is ignorance.
- When this ignorance is absent
the identification is also removed, and the Seer attains liberation (kaivalya).
- This ignorance (and consequent
identification) is removed by unwavering discriminative knowledge of the
Seer and Nature.
- The yogi develops this perfect
knowledge through seven stages.
- The practice of the things subservient to Yoga gives the light of knowledge which destroys the impurities preventing complete discriminative knowledge.