Yoga sutras II, 24-25 IGNORANCE BINDS THE SEER TO PRAKRITI

[lavina]

II, 24 tasya hetuh avidya
II, 25 tad-abhavat samyoga-abhavah hanam tad-drseh kaivalyam

Ignorance
of the True Self
is the cause of this illusory union.

By elimination
of that ignorance
this illusory union
also disappears.
This is the remedy
for the Seer’s absolute freedom.

M. Stiles

Ignorance, one of the five kleshas, is the root cause of the union of the Seer with Prakriti. Iyengar explains that “avidya, ignorance or lack of awareness, is at the root of the confusion that brings us suffering as well as pleasure... What is right knowledge ? When discernment banishes doubt, pure understanding begins the process of disownment and detachment which releases us from the shackles of possessing and being possessed.” (p. 127) The result of disengagement of purusa from prakritis is the freedom described in sutras I, 3 and IV, 34.


Swami Satchidananda identifies our mind as both the source of bondage and liberation... “The cause of bandha and moksha (bondage and liberation) is our mind... ‘Mana eva manshyanam’ which means ‘a man according to his mind.’... If we think, we are liberated, we are liberated... Every experience in the world is mental.”

He suggests that we remind ourselves that we are the eternal witness. “Even if we know this only theoretically, it will help us on many occasions. When we are worried over a loss, we should ask ‘Who is worried ? Who knows I am worried ?’ Along with the answer, the worry will go away. When we analyze the worry it becomes an object, something we are no longer involved with.”

“The mind is an agent of Prakriti and a suble part of that same Prakriti. We should realize we are completely different from the mind. We are eternally free, never bound. That doesn’t mean that we should simply become idle; but once we realize our freedom, we should work for the sake of other’s who are still bound... There are many sages and saints who are involved in the world even with the knowledge that there is no happiness in it. They work for the sake of others.” (p116-117)



Iyengar, B.K.S., Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. New Delhi, India: Harper Collins Publications India. 1993

Swami Satchidananda, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Buckingham, VA: Integral Yoga Publications. 2004

Stiles, M., Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Boston, MA: Red Wheel/Weiser LLC. 2002

[Mirjana]

Hi Lavina, I'm happy to see you again!

Barbara Stoler Miller comments this way:
When ignorance is dispelled, the spirit becomes an observer to the world, detached from the world's painful transience.
In order to effect this detachment, the yogi must understand the multidimensional structure of the world, in which everything is composed of the three qualities of material nature: lucidity (sattva), passion (rajas), and dark inertia (tamas) - are like energy existing in potential form. Among them, Patanjali is mainly concerned with lucidity, which he contrasts with spirit.
She refers to sutras III, 35, 49 and 55
III, 35: Worldly experience is caused by a failure to differentiate between the lucid quality of nature and the spirit. From perfect discipline of the distinction between spirit as the subject of itself and the lucid quality of nature as a dependent object, one gains knowledge of the spirit.
Commentary: The yogi's aim is not to reach the apex of the material condition, however pure, but to realize his innermost spiritual being. By confusing the perfection of the material world with the spirit, desire for worldly perfection interferes with spiritual attainment.

[Fin]

Originally Posted by lavina

He suggests that we remind ourselves that we are the eternal witness. “Even if we know this only theoretically, it will help us on many occasions. When we are worried over a loss, we should ask ‘Who is worried ? Who knows I am worried ?’ Along with the answer, the worry will go away. When we analyze the worry it becomes an object, something we are no longer involved with.”

Thank you, Lavina for posting this.
The word eternal here presumably refers to something existing outside all relations of time, right?


Getting to know myself as the eternal witness seems a mammoth task, doesn’t it?

Like memory when an item in the mind (worry) becomes an object – it becomes tangible & then amenable to being discharged or dealt with appropriately, I find this a very effective device.

Love,
Fin

[lavina]

I am delighted to be back ...it has been quite a journey back to center.

Originally Posted by Fin

Getting to know myself as the eternal witness seems a mammoth task, doesn’t it?

Perhaps...another possibility is that it does not have to be be a mammoth task...it could be understood in a quiet simple moment of beauty and peace...

with love,
lavina

[Hubert]

Originally Posted by Fin

Getting to know myself as the eternal witness seems a mammoth task, doesn’t it?

Fin

It does not have to be accomplished in a single lifetime.
That's the problem with too high and foggy tasks, they make us feel small, limited, and anxious that we might never get there.

Yes the Self is hard to know ... but when I read the Gospel of John, The Epistles of Paul, the Bhagavad Gita, or Ramana Maharshi, I hear Him talking and I hear Him answering from the inside. When I see the morning sun, He is who shines on me, and He is the joy what answers in my in my heart. What a joy ! What a delicate voice ! What a love !

[Hubert]

"The other extreme among the possibilities for error is ecstasy, and between phenomenalism and ecstasy, in knowing both, lies the truth, or at least truth can be reached if one knows both. The path of error, however, lies as much on the side of phenomenalism as on the side of ecstasy. We have seen what soul condition leads into the wish to acknowledge only phenomenalism. It is fear, horror, which man does not admit, which he tries to conceal. Because he is afraid to abandon all sense reality and to make the leap over the abyss, he accepts sense reality, demands the specters, and arrives thereby only at the dying, at that which destroys itself: This is one source of error. The other force of the soul, intensified through the exercises often described here is self-love, sense of self; self-love has as its polarity — one would like to say — the “getting out of oneself.” This “enjoying oneself in oneself” (pardon the expression; it is a radical choice but points exactly to what we are concerned with here) is only one side; the other side consists of “losing oneself in the world,” the surrender and dissolving and self-enjoyment in the other and the corresponding intensification of this self-seeking coming-out-of-one's self is ecstasy in its extreme. It is the cause of a condition in which man in a certain respect can say to himself that he has gotten free of himself. He has become free of himself, however, only by feeling the comfort of his own self in the being outside himself. If the one who knows the soul looks at the evolution of mysticism in the world, he finds that a large part of mysticism consists of the phenomena just characterized. As great, as powerful in soul experiences, as deep and significant as mysticism can be, the possibilities of error in ecstasy are actually rooted in a false cultivation of the mystical faculty of the human being. When man strives always to enter more and more into himself, when he strives through this for what is called the deepening of his soul life, strives, as he says, to find “God in himself” this God that man finds in his inner being is usually nothing other than his own I or ego made into God. With many mystics we find, when they speak of the “God within,” nothing other than the God imprinted with their own egos. Mystical immersion in God is at times nothing but immersing oneself into one's own dear ego, especially into the parts of the ego into which one does not penetrate with full consciousness, so that one surrenders one's self, loses one's self, comes out of one's self, and yet remains only within one's self. Much that confronts us as mysticism shows that with false mystics love of God is often only disguised self-love."

Quote from Errors in spiritual investigation by Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, March 6, 1913

Just to contrast my former post, as it is good example of the above quoted mistake.

[Nichole]

I want to share additionally from How to Know God, translated and with commentary by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood; Vedanta Press. Because of their arrangement, I would like to include a few preceding sutra to be complete.

II:20 The Atman--the experience--is pure consciousness. It appears to take on the changing colors of the mind. In reality, it is unchangeable.

II:21 The object of the experience exists only to serve the purpose of the Atman.

II:22 Though the object of experience becomes unreal to him who has reached the state of liberation, it remains real to all other beings.

II:23 The Atman--the experiencer--is identified with Prakriti--the object of experience--in order that the true nature of both Prakriti and Atman may be known.

II:24 This identification is caused by ignorance.

II:25 When ignorance has been destroyed, this identification ceases. Then bondage is at an end and the experiencer is independent and free.

These aphorisms would seem, at first sight, to express a paradoxical idea. When Patanjali says that the experiencer is identified with the object of experience in order that the true nature of both may be known, and then added that this identification is caused by ignorance--we feel a certain bewilderment. ...And yet, this bewilderment that we feel is merely another product of the same ignorance. Rooted in maya, we cannot hope to understand maya or to judge the "justice" or "injustice" of its bondages by our little relative, ethical standards. All we do know for certain is this: that the great saints who found liberation did not look back upon their struggles with bitterness or regret. They did not even regard maya with horror; rather, they saw it as fascinating and amusing play. Swami Vivekananda, near the end of his life, could write, "I am glad I was born, glad I suffered so, glad I did make big blunders, and glad to enter peace." ...Instead of wasting our time reasoning and philosophizing, we shall do better to keep our eyes fixed on those tremendous figures who reached the end of the journey and stand, as it were, beckoning us to follow them. Their triumph is our reassurance that somehow--in some way which we cannot yet understand--all is for the best.


How to Know God; pgs. 134, 135



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[Fin]

Thank you Lavina & Hubbert for reminding me that when you objectifies anything then it becomes a property of the mind & the ego quickly gets in…
But a feeling when felt for what it is - & this feeling when expanded becomes the universe or simply a moment of beauty & peace (as Lavina so aptly put it)!

These days all my feelings (anger, hate, sorrow, despair, love etc) all are blessings since they all give me access to my heart from whence I capture this moment of beauty & peace, and sometimes just sometimes I slip into that eternal silence…!

Originally Posted by Nichole

...we shall do better to keep our eyes fixed on those tremendous figures who reached the end of the journey and stand, as it were, beckoning us to follow them. Their triumph is our reassurance that somehow--in some way which we cannot yet understand--all is for the best.

How to Know God; pgs. 134, 135

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Thank you, Nichole – when I first read the above I received a definite thrill up my spine, … yes there are moments when I hear these tremendous figures beckoning me …
The pilgrimage continues … & the pilgrim (myself) is so very fortunate to have such wonderful fellow travellers (all my fellow yogis) on this Forum…


Love,
Fin

[Hubert]

Originally Posted by Nichole

Instead of wasting our time reasoning and philosophizing, we shall do better to keep our eyes fixed on those tremendous figures who reached the end of the journey and stand, as it were, beckoning us to follow them. Their triumph is our reassurance that somehow--in some way which we cannot yet understand--all is for the best.

How to Know God; pgs. 134, 135

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And what is this attitude different of any other religious one ? All religions teach the respect for saints, and faith in providence, karma, or God's will. I am not saying that this is wrong, this alone is quite a huge feat in a world dominated by materialism.

I think the sutras are similar to mathematic statements, truths. They are there, but we must to deduct them for ourselves. Otherwise, what is their reason of existence ? They are not such that they would work on our intuition, inspiration, imagination. They are dry like the Gobi desert. They are bewildering. They cannot be assimilated, or understood but only by arriving to the same truths by self made effort.
Otherwise one who reads them once would become instantly liberated. The right attitude is not accepting that they are true. The right attitude is putting the question: How can they be true ?

[Nichole]

Hubert, it is interesting to me that you say that because Christopher Isherwood, one the authors who I quoted, offers a really interesting perspective in all of his translations and commentaries, not only the Sutra. The Sutra group that I study with often comments how his commentary, at times, sounds very clearly in a tone of Christianity. Here is a little Wiki about him. Christopher Isherwood - Wikipedia

Do you have Mukunda's Sutra book? Lavina has quotes and referenced it about. It is void of commentary, instead poetic in its translation to invite your commentary. The Sanskrit and Devanagari are the back of the book so you can still see the original words to get clear on the subtleties you are picking up on in the poetry and language. It is my favorite for this reason, it sparks my heart to give commentary