is a typical daily ritual performed even nowadays by many devotional Indians. If it is performed in samadhi by a mind that has become able to create reality, the purification of the elements results in an involution back up through the chakras that leads to divine revelation in the sahasrara (crown chakra) — the realization of pure consciousness. When this state is finally made firm through repeated application, it is then called kaivalya, or liberation. It is so called because it frees us from the bondage of conditioned existence, allowing us to abide in the limitless ecstasy of infinite consciousness.
Only then, when all eight limbs are mastered in simultaneous application, are they finally discarded, and all exertion abandoned. As mentioned earlier, Patanjali calls this process paravairagya — complete letting go. We also find this process enshrined in the Bhagavad Gita, where Lord Krishna states that by knowing the Supreme Brahman all one’s duties are discharged.18 Once the divine view is had, there is no more plan or structure. From here, life is infinite freedom and unlimited spontaneity.
Until that point, however, effort and willpower are the means by which you progress. This means keeping one’s ethical precepts (yama and niyama) in place, assuming Padmasana or similar suitable postures (asanas) in the technically correct fashion, entering kumbhaka (pranayama), drawing one’s senses inward (pratyahara), concentrating on one’s meditation object (dharana), receiving a permanent stream of information from it (dhyana), and finally establishing an authentic duplication of that object in one’s mind (called objective or cognitive samadhi). In this traditional way yogis have practiced for thousands of years. Only today do people believe that one can discard or shortcut any lengthy preparation.
1 The term rishi is inextricably linked to Veda. You won’t find a Buddhist rishi or a Tantric rishi.
2 The Brhad Aranyaka Upanishad is the oldest, largest, and most important of the Upanishads. The genealogy of teachers listed in this Upanishad spans approximately 2,500 years.
3 Samkhya Karika of Ishvarakrishna, stanza 64. The Karika is today considered the most important text of Samkhya, as all of the older texts are lost. Samkhya is the most ancient Indian philosophy, one of the six orthodox systems of Vedic thought (darshanas).
4 Western scholars date him from 788 to 820, but this view is increasingly criticized. Indian tradition holds that he lived well before that date. His birth name was Adi Shankara. In India he is known as Shankaracharya (the teacher Shankara). In the colophon of his texts he often called himself Shankara Bhagavatpada, after his teacher Govinda Bhagavatpada.
5 Yoga Sutra I.23.
6 Bhagavad Gita III.3 ff.
7 Bhagavad Gita II.45. The Vedas’ chief concern is here said to be the accumulation of material or spiritual merit. The Lord, however, wants Arjuna to abide in Brahman, beyond loss or gain.
8 The Cambridge scholar Elizabeth De Michelis’s excellent study The History of Modern Yoga reveals how and through whom many of our modern ideas of yoga were introduced from Western and Christian sources.
9 Discriminative knowledge (viveka khyateh) is the result of the last and highest cognitive (objective) samadhi. Cognitive samadhi is, however, superseded by the still higher super-cognitive (objectless) samadhi.
10 For a detailed description of each of these observances, please see Ashtanga Yoga: Practice and Philosophy, pp. 216–17.
11 For a description of the doshas, see David Frawley’s Ayurvedic Healing: A Comprehensive Guide (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1992), p. 3.
12 Yoga Sutra I.30.
13 Bhagavad Gita II.58.
14 The term deva (divine form) unfortunately has been translated as “god.” The devas are not gods, and India is not polytheistic. The superficial so-called polytheism of Hinduism is only a veiling of the deeper monotheism to which all the authoritative texts subscribe. The divine forms or celestials, which we see when success in meditation arises, are nothing but manifestations of aspects of the one Supreme Being. There may be a multiplicity of divine forms for the purpose of meditation, but there is only one Brahman, as the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Brahma Sutra teach in manifold passages.
15 To correct this problem, Mircea Eliade has suggested using the term enstasy, meaning “standing within,” but this term still has not been widely accepted. See Mircea Eliade, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969), p. 77.
16 Object here does not mean “thing.” A meditation object is any object suitable for meditation. Suitable here means an object that neither excites nor dulls the mind but rather stimulates its wisdom and intelligence; such an object is sattvic (sacred). The scriptures list many sattvic objects; they include the Om symbol or sound, a lotus, the moon, a star, a chakra, the sound or light in the heart, a tanmatra (subtle essence), the instruments of cognition such as mind, ego, intellect, and the various manifestations of the Supreme Being. Excluded, by definition, is the consciousness itself, which is the subject and therefore can never be an object.
17 Bhagavad Gita XI.8.
18 Bhagavad Gita XV.19–20.
Using Indian Myth and Cosmology to Deepen Your Practice
In this chapter I explain the importance of studying the mythological tradition that underlies all yogic practice.1 In the course of this discussion, I show how the study of myth can change the way you practice yoga and live your life. I also explain how, through myth and divine forms, you can create your own private hotline to and from the Supreme Being.
In chapter 1, I
