By the same author
Foreword by Godfrey Devereux, author of Dynamic Yoga
Patañjali’s Yoga Sutras are the bible of yoga. However, their inaccessibility in the hands of scholars and academics has left yoga practitioners adrift with neither chart nor compass. B.K.S. Iyengar’s translation, based on over fifty years of dedicated and accomplished practice and teaching, is unique in its relevance and utility to contemporary yoga practitioners. The depth of his practice and understanding shines through his elucidation of the often terse and obscure sutras. Iyengar’s ability to elucidate Patañjali in pragmatic terms is an extension of his clarification of the subtlety and integrity of yoga practice. This is most evident in the rigorous precision with which he understands and articulates the body in yoga postures. However, it goes further and much deeper than that. In his unique investigation of alignment, Iyengar not only reveals the therapeutic necessity of stuctural integrity in the body, but also its subtle and equally necessary impact on the flow of energy and consciousness in the mind.
What Iyengar has proved, for those willing to apply themselves to test it, is that the apparent divide between matter and spirit, body and soul, and physical and spiritual is only that: apparent. Through his insistence on structural integrity he has opened the spiritual doorway to millions of people for whom the mind would otherwise never give up its subtleties. Here, in his presentation of Patañjali, that door is flung wide open. This is especially clear, to even the least academically minded student, in his profound and practical interpretations of the sutras relating to Asana and pranayama. Here, especially, Iyengar’s genius comes as a great gift of clarity and insight that can only deepen the understanding and support the practice of any keen student.
Iyengar’s incomparable experience as an Indian teacher of Westerners, combined with his experience as a Brahmin and participant in a genuine lineage of the yoga tradition, gives his perspective an authority and authenticity that is all too often lacking. It offers a lucid and pragmatic interpretation of the insights and subtleties of yoga’s root guru. To practice yoga without the profound and panoramic inner cartography of the Yoga Sutras is to be adrift in a difficult and potentially dangerous ocean. To use that map without the compass of Iyengar’s deep and authoritative experience, is to handicap oneself unnecessarily. No yoga practitioner should be without this classic and invaluable work.
Introduction to the New Edition by B. K. S. Iyengar
I express my sense of gratitude to Thorsons, who are bringing out my Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patañjali in this new attractive design, as a feast not only for the physical eyes but also for the intellectual and spiritual eye.
As a mortal soul, it is a bit of an embarrassment for me with my limited intelligence to write on the immortal work of Patañjali on the subject of yoga.
If God is considered the seed of all knowledge (sarvajña bijan), Patañjali is all knower, all wise (sarvajñan), of all knowledge. The third part of his Yoga Sutras (the vibuti pada) makes it clear to us that we should respect him as a knower of all knowledge and a versatile personality.
It is impossible, even for sophisticated minds, to comprehend fully what knowledge he had. We find him speaking on an enormous range of subjects – art, dance, mathematics, astronomy, astrology, physics, chemistry, psychology, biology, neurology, telepathy, education, time and gravitational theory – with a divine spiritual knowledge.
He was a perfect master of cosmic energy; he knew the pranic energy centres in the body; his intelligence (buddhi) was as clean and clear as crystal and his words express him as a pure perfect being.
Patañjali’s sutras make use of his great versatility of language and mind. He clothes the righteous and virtuous aspects of religious matters with a secular fabric and in so doing is able to skilfully present the wisdom of both the material and the spiritual world, blending them as a universal culture.
Patañjali fills each sutra with his experiential intelligence, stretching it like a thread (sutra), and weaving it into a garland of pearls of wisdom to flavour and savour by those who love and live in yoga, as wise-men in their lives.
Each sutra conveys the practice as well as the philosophy behind the practice, as a practical philosophy for aspirants and seekers (sadhakas) to follow in life.
What is sadhana?
Sadhana is a methodical, sequential means to accomplish the sadhana’s aims in life. The sadhana’s aims are right duty (dharma), a rightful purpose and means (artha), right inclinations (kama) and ultimate release or emancipation (moksa).
If dharma is the atonement of duty (dharma sastra), artha is the means to purification of action (karma sastra). Our inclinations (kama) are made good through study of sacred texts and growth towards wisdom (svadhyaya and jñana sastra), and emancipation (moksa) is reached through devotion (bhakti sastra) and meditation (dhyana sastra).
It is dharma that uplifts man who has fallen physically, mentally, morally, intellectually and spiritually, or who is about to fall. Therefore, dharma is that which upholds, sustains and supports man.
These aims are all stages on the road to perfect knowledge (vedanta). The term vedanta comes from Veda, meaning knowledge, and anta meaning the end of knowledge. The true end of knowledge is emancipation and liberation from all imperfections. Hence the journey, or vedanta, is an act of pursuit of the vision of wisdom to transform one’s conduct and actions in order to experience the ultimate reality of life.
Due to lack of knowledge or misunderstanding, fear, love of the self, attachment and aversion with respect to the material world, one’s actions and conduct become disturbed. This disturbance shows as lust (kama), wrath (krodha), greed (lobha), infatuation (moha), intoxication (mada) and malice (matsarya). All of these emotional turbulences affect the psyche by veiling the intelligence.
The yoga sadhana of Patañjali comes to us as a penance in order to minimise or eradicate these disturbed and destructive emotive thoughts and the actions that accrue from them.
The yoga sadhana of Patañjali
The Sadhana is a rhythmic, three-tiered practice (sadhana-traya), covering the eight aspects or petals of yoga in a capsule as kriya yoga, the yoga of action, whereby all actions are surrendered to the Divinity (see Sutra II.1 in the sadhana pada). These three tiers (sadhana-traya) represent the body (kaya), the mind (manasa) and the speech (vak).
Hence:
At the level of the body, tapas, or the drive towards purity, develops the student through practice on the path of right action (karma marga).
At the level of the mind, through careful study of the self and the mind in it’s
