The Yoga-sūtras of Patañjali: Part One: SAMĀDHI-PĀDA

By Gaura Kṛṣṇa Dāsa (László Tóth-Soma)

Vedic literature, the ancient spiritual treasure of India, is an invaluable gift to us today. The most important questions of human existence and the final answers are discussed and revealed on its pages.
Those who are seeking perfection often wonder what right way to choose in order to achieve the state of perfect bliss and freedom. They are yearning for the freedom that is not restrained by time or space, or in other words, by the limits of the material world.
Freedom and happiness are the two genuine qualities of the original state of the soul, and by achieving liberation, it is possible to experience this original state once more. Liberation, the first stage of our spiritual existence, can be attained by the process of self-realization, and this is called yoga.
The author of this volume, Gaura Kṛṣṇa Dāsa (László Tóth-Soma), who is a professor at the Bhaktivedanta College of Budapest, translated Patañjali’s Yoga-sūtras from the original Sanskrit text in a very authentic way. His commentaries contain theoretical and philosophical teachings on yoga, as well as various instructions for those practicing yogis who have already stepped on the path of self-realization. His in-depth knowledge and an over two-decade-long practice make his work a reliable help for those who would like to know their real self and their relation to the final source of all.
The present volume elaborates on the first part of Patañjali’s Yoga-sūtras,
the so-called Samādhi-pāda. The following three parts will soon be available.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Bhaktivedanta College Press
• Release date: Apr 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9789631296686

Book preview

Glossary272

Auspicious Invocation

nama oṁ viṣṇu-pādāya kṛṣṇa-preṣṭhāya bhūtale

śrīmate śivarāma-svāmin iti nāmine

I offer my respectful obeisances unto His Divine Grace Śrīla Śivarāma Swami, who is very dear to Lord Kṛṣṇa, having taken shelter at His lotus feet.

I offer this book with love and eternal gratitude to my spiritual master, who leads me on the path of self-realization life after life, and who is working on the spiritual advancement of humankind with infinite patience and devotion.

I bow down to the lotus feet of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu and I beg for the blessings of Śrī Nityānanda Prabhu, who are the sources of both the love for the Supreme Lord and the spiritual strength that is needed for attaining such love. They are the crown jewels of the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava disciplic succession.

Desiring for the taste of unlimited devotion, I am offering my life to the eternally young divine couple, Śrī Śrī Rādhā–Kuñjabihāri-Gopāla,¹ everyone’s well-wishers. They are standing at the very end of the path leading to liberation as the source of all existence and as the supreme attainable goal.

I am not worthy of appearing in the role of a guru. By the blessings of my spiritual master, may I stand in the service of those, who are seeking the truth and the spiritual values, while wandering in the dense forest of the material world, life after life.

Hoping for their benefit, I begin to translate the Yoga-sūtras and to compile its Śrī Gopāla Sad-gati Bhāṣya² commentary. I wish that they can find valuable thoughts in it, worth for considering.

I need to say thanks to my students who have been inspiring me for years to systemize this knowledge and publish it in the form of a book. What is found in this book is not my work. Each and every word are based on the ancient teachings of Vedic scriptures that were transmitted to posterity by great saints such as Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī, Śrīla Sanātana Gosvāmī, and commentators of the Yoga-sūtras such as Vyāsa, Vācaspati Miśra, Vijñābhikṣu, Bhojarāja, and in the present age, Hariharānanda Āraṇya, Hṛdayānanda Dāsa Gosvāmī, Balarāma Ācārya (the saint of Gaṅgotrī), and others, whose teachings affected me directly or indirectly.

I place this book into their hands as an offering.

Badarikāśrama in the Himālaya, India

June 23, 2006

---

¹ They are the author’s iṣṭa-devatās (beloved Deities). The name Śrī Śrī Rādhā–Kuñjabihāri-Gopāla refers to Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa, the supreme, transcendental divine couple, who are wandering in the groves of Vṛndāvana.

² The name of the commentary points out that it focuses on the transcendental goal (sad-gati) of spiritual life and self-realization designated by the Vedas, and that it was inspired by the teachings of Śrī Kṛṣṇa.

Preface

Vedic literature,³ the ancient spiritual treasure of India, is an invaluable gift to us today. The most important questions of human existence and the final answers are discussed and revealed on its pages. Nevertheless, over the thousands of years of history, there had been many different ways attempting to understand the truth of the transcendence on the basis of Vedic wisdom. These different paths sometimes led and sometimes misled those who merged themselves into transcendental adventures, while searching for the truth. Amongst the many approaches, six traditional schools appeared from the mist of ancient times presenting the same knowledge from different viewpoints (darśana). These schools are known as āstikas — wherein asti means ‘existent, present’ — because all of them accept that the Vedas are eternal, that they originate from God, and that they are the infallible source of instructions, even though not each of these schools reach the final essence of the Vedas in their consequences.

The first amongst them, (1) the system of Vedic logic (nyāya), lays down the rules of philosophical argument aiming liberation and specifies the definitions of the basic concepts to be discussed such as the material world, the soul, God, and liberation as the final goal. (2) The so-called atom theory (vaiśeṣika) deals with the structure and the ontology of the material world. The teachings of vaiśeṣika connects the method of logic to the analysis of material existence, demonstrating that living beings in physical bodies in the material world — as the prisoners of material nature — insist on a way of existence to which originally they do not have much to do with, and which eventually falls apart into invisible atoms. (3) The school that studies and analyzes the world in detail (sāṅkhya) develops this method further in order to help those who have already been inquiring about transcendental subjects of distinguishing between matter and spirit. (4) Through the system of aṣṭāṅga-yoga, the original spiritual vision of the soul is being awakened and so the yogi can see himself separate from his own body (and from the material world), and by becoming devoted to God (īśvara), he can step on the path of liberation. (5) The path of sacrifices carried out for material benefits (karma-mīmāṁsā) directs the living being towards religion and morals if the sacrifices are performed in accordance with the prescription of the Vedic literature. (6) The school summing up the final, God related teachings of the Vedas (vedānta), diverts one’s attention to the supreme attainable goal — namely God, His transcendental nature, and the devotional service rendered to Him — by emphasizing the final conclusions of the Vedas, as they are explained in the Upaniṣads, the Purāṇas, and the Bhagavad-gītā.

Most of the Indologists argue that the basic principles of Nyāya were compiled and systemized by Gautama Ṛṣi in the 6–5th centuries BC, while his contemporary, Kaṇāda collected the teachings of Vaiśeṣika and Kapila Muni organized Sāṅkhya philosophy (that was reorganized by Īśvarakṛṣṇa in about the 4–6th centuries AD). Patañjali built up a system to show the full path of yoga in eight limbs (aṣṭāṅga), based on the wisdom of Vedic literature in the 4–3rd centuries BC, and it was Jaimini who summarized the Karma-mīmāṁsā instructions. According to the tradition, the original organizer of the Vedānta doctrines was Vyāsa himself, the compiler of the Vedas, but later, in the 8th century AD, Śaṅkara used Vyāsa’s Vedānta-sūtras for constructing his own impersonal, Advaita-vedānta philosophy that considered the personal qualities of God and the soul to be an illusion.⁴

These six orthodox philosophical approaches — similarly to the faculties of modern universities, which represent different disciplines — used to be stages of a process that offered an integrated understanding of the Vedas. However, in the course of time, they had parted from each other and from their Vedic roots, so they became individual schools. During this process, they preserved or lost, in different grades, the idea of the most important purpose regarding human existence, namely the realization of God, the service rendered for Him, and the liberation that leads out of the material world.

The Karma-mīmāṁsā school is a good example for the above. By the 5th century BC, Karma-mīmāṁsā became the primary philosophy of the Indian priest community, but at the same time, it was used for sanctifying mass animal slaughter in the disguise of animal sacrifice. Due to the importance of the universal principle of ahiṁsā (nonviolence), this would have been impossible in an ontological school that is strongly connected to its roots.

In spite of their different viewpoints, there are a number of basic theses that these schools agree on:

1. They all accept that the final spiritual substance, the soul of the human being is eternal and indestructible, and so it stays alive after the death of the physical body. The so-called self is not influenced by the death of the physical body, however, as long as it is attached to mundane existence, it gains birth in the created material world again and again (reincarnation).

2. In this material world that is created according to the desires of the living beings, suffering is inevitable in all forms of life.

3. The cause of the misery experienced in the material world is not God, but the living being itself, since its circumstances are arranged (by the Supreme) according to its own desires and previous activities. This chain of cause and effect is expressed in the law of karma (wherein karma means ‘act, action, performance’).

4. The final cause of the suffering of the conditioned souls in the mundane world is that they are unaware of their transcendental nature. This ignorance can be dissolved by transcendental knowledge.

5. They also accept that the real goal of life for all human beings is liberation (mokṣa or mukti) from material existence.

The six schools trace out six different routes for gaining higher spiritual knowledge, which they represent from different viewpoints and distances. According to the original concept, they were steps gradually leading to the supreme goal, designated by Vedic wisdom, but in due course of time, they became individual philosophical paths, which further developed and changed throughout history. To demonstrate their original function, one can apply the wheel analogy well-known from references. If one is sitting on the flange of a huge cart wheel, they constantly rotate while riding up and down. After realizing that sitting in the axle would prevent many inconveniences, one finds themselves in a calm, balanced, and harmonious situation. The center of the wheel, the hub is the Vedānta viewpoint, from where Absolute Reality becomes visible to the greatest possible extent.⁵

The Idea of Liberation

The central teaching of each school of philosophy in Hinduism is based on the idea of the soul (ātman or jīva). They all claim that the living entities who gain birth in this world are different from their physical bodies. While the body is subject to birth, growth, disease, aging, and death; the soul is eternal, ever-existing. The soul is also different from the biological system consisting of various life phenomena working within the body. In time, through the process of aging, this biological system is gradually losing its organized and coordinated structure, as well as its viability. The living being is not identical with its material consciousness either. The material consciousness can be detected through the living being’s personality, it is constantly changing, therefore it can experience happiness and distress even in unchanged circumstances, and it is dependent on various desires, emotions, imaginations, dreams, or hallucinations. The self also differs from the intelligence, in which doubts, faults, and defects are usually inherent. Moreover, the organized union of those listed elements cannot be considered the eternal and unchanging self either. The substantial nature of the living being is beyond all of them. It is due to the strong and constant relation the living entity maintains with its physical body, with the synchronized activities of the mind, and the intelligence (the manifestations of the psyche), that it identifies itself with those elements, as well as with the struggles, sufferings, and enjoyments they detect. This is called false self-identification (ahaṅkāra). The substantial nature of the soul is beyond all of these, and cannot be influenced by the limited material body and the psyche, or by their alterations, advancement, degradation, happiness or distress.

The so-called Vedic literature, which deals with the fundamental ontological questions of Hindu culture, emphatically declares that the real self (ātman or jīva) of the living entity is void of any defects and limits, unborn as it is eternal, and cannot be touched by growth, disease, aging, and death, For the soul there is neither birth nor death at any time. He has not come into being, does not come into being, and will not come into being. He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing and primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain.⁶

We falsely think that the physical body, the senses, the different organs, the mind, the intelligence, the defects related to all of these, as well as the happiness and the distress experienced by them, belong to our real self. The living being (the soul) has nothing to do with the matter, the reason why one considers it material, despite its transcendental nature, is ignorance (avidyā). Finding the way out of this deeply rooted ignorance, one must acquire spiritual knowledge and become completely free of all sufferings. But this spiritual knowledge cannot be gained by common mind and intelligence. To be able to comprehend it, the yogi must purify or refine his contaminated consciousness (citta). Having purified the mind and the intelligence, the living being — absorbed in meditation on God — becomes capable of perceiving the dimensions beyond matter, to experience eternity and realize its relation with God. This way one can get rid of all influential contamination, weakness, imperfection, sadness, biased conception, and can achieve the state of perfect inner peace and freedom that is called jīvan-mukti, the state of liberation or self-realization.

One must, of course, be mentally and physically active and play a useful role in society, as long as they live in this world as embodied psycho-physical beings. This is one’s duty towards the world. But this duty can be fulfilled with an enlightened mind that helps one remain free from the flood of desires, which would pull them down and divert their attention from the spiritual essence. The self-realized, liberated yogi apparently lives, moves, and acts in this world just as anyone else, but internally he is free, not obstructed by any bondage or any limits. His deeds are inspired by love and sympathy, and having transcendental consciousness, he does not know material desires or sadness and is always able to behold the essence.

When, as a result of the practices of self-realization, after giving up false self-identification, one becomes fully aware of being a soul, and sees all others as eternal living entities in spite of their visible bodies, one has acquired perfect spiritual knowledge. The most famous scripture of Hindu yoga literature, the Bhagavad-gītā, states that these perceptive "…humble sages, by virtue of true knowledge, see with equal vision a learned and gentle brāhmaṇa, a cow, an elephant, a dog, and a dog-eater [outcaste⁷],"⁸ because they know and experience that eternal souls live in those different bodies.

One could raise the question what happens to the living entity, the soul (ātman), after leaving its body at the moment of death. At the time of death, it is solely the physical body (sthūla-deha) that perishes, the soul remains in the company of the subtle body (sūkṣma-deha). The subtle body — consisting of the mind (manas), the intelligence (buddhi), and the false self-identification (ahaṅkāra) — animates and carries the material consciousness (citta), and it does not perish with the visible body. In other words, one’s material self-concept, subtle desires, past experiences along with their different types of imprints (vāsanā and saṁskāra) in the deeper part of the material consciousness, and the result of the merits and faults of one’s previous activities (karma), all remain connected to the soul. These factors force the soul to accept a new body. In its new body, the soul returns and performs new activities, faces new challenges, and experiences misery and sometimes happiness in the physical world.

However, if one leaves his physical body after self-realization, death means a final departure from the manifested world. The aspiring yogi, who achieves spiritual perfection and liberation, becomes fully aware of his real self, and after his death, he regains his original spiritual form (sva-rūpa) and identity, his transcendental qualities, and his relation with God (īśvara). He does not have to take birth anymore, neither in this world nor in another one since those options which can be experienced in the temporary physical creation have no significance for him any longer.

As the different schools of Hinduism in the field of religious philosophy approach the Absolute Truth from different perspectives, they reach different phases of the long way leading to the perfection of self-realization, and so they give insight into the details of their philosophy accordingly. We saw that the six main schools — including Patañjali’s yoga philosophy — represent such viewpoints (darśana) which differ from each other to a certain extent, but all of them are standing on the foundation of Vedic wisdom, and they all intend to attain perfection and the final goal described by the Vedas.

The Fate of the Soul after Liberation

The Teachings of the Vedānta and the Upaniṣads

It is certainly the Upaniṣads and the Vedānta-darśana which paint the most inspiring and complete picture about the condition, or the fate, of the soul after its liberation. According to their teachings, the qualitative features of the soul, after its complete release from the imprisonment of the material body, are perfectly identical with the features of the supreme Brahman, the Absolute Truth (God) — the final cause of the complete material creation.

As for the revelations of the mentioned scriptures, the Brahman — i.e. the Absolute — is the source of all, unlimited, eternal and perfect sac-cid-ānanda, and supreme to material qualities, to the chain of cause and effect, as well as to the concept of relativity. He is the self-manifested Reality, He is one without a second.

They teach about the endless variety of the physical world, the manifestation of the Brahman that takes shape in time and space without causing any change in the transcendental, non­material nature of the Brahman. The individual souls are identical with Him substantially. There are two basic theories about this identity.

1. According to the first theory, which is the best reflection of the original Vedic teachings, the soul simply regains its originally eternal, fully cognizant, forever blissful (sac-cid-ānanda) nature or form, which in a qualitative manner, is completely identical with the nature of the Absolute, the Supreme Godhead. Although the soul is identical with God regarding its nature and qualities, it never becomes God. The soul in its original and perfect state, having personality and qualities, serves the Supreme, its own source, as an individual entity. Later we are going to see that, for example, in the terminology of the Sāṅkhya school — whose philosophical viewpoint agrees with this theory —, the totality of the individual souls (puruṣa) is called Brahman.⁹

2. Another theory is represented by Śrī Śaṅkara (AD 788–820), one of the commentators of the Vedānta philosophy. According to his viewpoint, the identical nature of the Brahman and the jīva (soul) is complete oneness (advaita). In his opinion, self-realization means that the living being realizes that he is not different from God. According to Śaṅkara, the individual nature of the soul, its birth, death, joy, and misery in this world; as well as the endless variety of the material manifestation are all just illusions.

Contrary to Śaṅkara’s philosophy about extreme identity, many Indian schools of religious philosophy are of the opinion that the living entities are identical with God solely in their nature (as both of them are transcendental), but they are eternally different in the quantitative parameters of their qualities.¹⁰ It is in the light of the teachings of the Upaniṣads, the Bhagavad-gītā, and the Vedānta-sūtra that these schools do not accept the complete oneness of the soul and God. Śaṅkara’s teaching on the extreme oneness of the soul and God is only an insignificant opinion in the great ocean of Vedic wisdom.

For instance, the Vaiṣṇava Vedānta schools especially emphasize that God and the soul are not material, their existence is eternal, and both of them have personal qualities. In the Vaiṣṇava Vedānta view, the most fundamental and natural element of the relation between the soul and God is the soul’s devotion (bhakti) to God. On the basis of the scriptures, they consider God to be the Supreme Person, who is beyond the limits of time and space, who eternally possesses infinite knowledge, wisdom, wealth, power, fame, beauty, sweetness, and transcendental form. Besides all these, He is boundlessly loving, merciful, and is not attached to anything.

His devotees, the transcendentalists, whose goal is to reach God, call Him in different names listed in the Vedic scriptures. They are aspiring to develop a confidential relation with Him by means of meditation and activities. They fully merge themselves into thoughts about Him, because this remembrance leads to the perfect state of samādhi, which opens the gate to liberation and, beyond that, to the perfect transcendental future.

According to the enlightened followers of these schools, the souls, after their liberation, leaving their perishable material bodies and the constantly changing physical world behind, enter into a transcendental realm of spiritual bliss, where they eventually regain and enjoy their original, individual, and personal relationship with God in eternity. This is the perfect liberation.

The theistic Vedānta schools emphasize that one can achieve different types of liberations (mukti) according to their desires, to the spiritual practice (sādhana) they perform during their lifetime, as well as to the goal they intend to attain with their spiritual practices.¹¹

The Sāṅkhya Philosophy

Regarding the nature of the soul, Kapila, the systematic organizer of the Sāṅkhya philosophy, puts emphasis on the soul’s absolute qualitative difference from the material world. He does that to such an extent that in his teachings he denies any spiritual qualities that would be even slightly similar to material qualities. He says that the soul (puruṣa), after its complete liberation from the bondage of its physical and subtle bodies, inflicted on it by the material nature (prakṛti), regains its original, transcendental nature as pure, unchanging, infinite, and self-effulgent consciousness. According to his teachings, the number of souls is infinite and they are eternally different from each other, however, he considers that they have no individual qualities, or personalities. They represent the consciousness that, by its proximity, induces the process of cosmic evolution by causing a disturbance in the yet passive and steady state of the material energy.¹²

Considering that the teachings of the Sāṅkhya philosophy are rooted in the soil of Vedic literature, one can understand that denying the mentioned characteristics simply means the denial of the soul’s material parameters, but does not exclude the existence of the spiritual, transcendental qualities. Kapila simply does not get into such depths in his discourse on the subject matter. The existence of the spiritual features can be undoubtedly accepted because the Vedic literature (the Upaniṣads, the Purāṇas, etc.) provides unambiguous statements about the transcendental personality and qualities of the soul. Similarly, the concept of the supreme living being, God (paramapuruṣa) is not mentioned in Kapila’s system either, however, it can be found in the Vedic scriptures. Nevertheless, this supreme living being is introduced as īśvara (God) by Patañjali, the representative of the next school. He considered God to be an unquestionable part of his teachings besides applying the philosophical system of Sāṅkhya.¹³

It is probably worth mentioning that the Sāṅkhya philosophy has a more ancient system within the Purāṇas, which is undoubtedly built on theistic foundations, and which is related to another sage also called Kapila.¹⁴

Aṣṭāṅga-yoga

Patañjali basically accepts Kapila’s doctrines about the material world and the transcendental soul in his scientific summary called the Yoga-sūtras. However, he emphasizes that the soul does have an original, transcendental consciousness, which is covered by the contaminated, material consciousness (citta) when the soul is in the prison of the physical body. In its liberated state, the soul is conscious, it is able to experience, and has its own original, spiritual form (sva-rūpa) and qualities. At the moment of liberation, the material world becomes nonexistent for the soul, while other living beings remain captured by its illusion.

Patañjali suggests that the most important means for liberation, or the key for the perfect form of spiritual absorption (samādhi), is the devotion to the supreme soul, God (īśvara) that should be developed and practiced.¹⁵ The yogi should worship the īśvara and should consider Him to be the subject of his meditation, as He is the most perfect amongst all living beings (the puruṣas, or the souls who are sentient, immortal, and have personality). He is eternally independent and not influenced by the energies of the material world. He is not affected by time or by the reactions of any activities (karma). In the perfected state of liberation, the living beings’ qualities are identical with His nature, but they never become one with Him.

The Philosophy of Nyāya-vaiśeṣika

The teachings of Gautama Ṛṣi’s Nyāya philosophy and Kaṇāda’s Vaiśeṣika system present another approach. They believe that the physical world originates from those uncountable atoms (paramāṇu) that are eternal, are of four types (earth, water, fire, air), and have no expansion. Ether, space, time, the countless souls and minds are considered to be all-pervading and unchanging nonmaterial substances. Above all of these, stands the Supreme Soul, God (paramātman or īśvara), who rules and controls the listed elements.

The īśvara created the whole cosmic manifestation by His own intelligence and His own will.