How yoga culminates in bhakti, The Monk’s Podcast 125 with Garuda Prabhu

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna, Guruji. Welcome back to the Monks Podcast. Always happy to engage in dialogue with you, Chaitanya Charanjee.
So, and now the World Yoga Day is coming. I thought we could discuss on that topic. Yoga has become huge in the Western world and based on that it is also coming back to India.
And then there is as devotees, you know, we are also connecting with those who are practising yoga and then we are also trying to say elevate them to bhakti. So there are some people who say that this is just opportunism, that yoga and bhakti are two separate traditions. So what is the historical and philosophical background for these two traditions? Are they entirely separate or are they part of a one whole, one larger tradition, strands of schools within a tradition? Can you talk about the historical philosophical background too? Yes.
Yoga is something that goes beyond the historical eye. No one really knows when the practises of yoga really began. It goes back thousands of years before it was even called yoga.
It wasn’t even called yoga until, you know, some of the Upanishads, the later Upanishads, like the Shvetashvatara Upanishad and Katha Upanishad and so on. So yoga is something that goes back thousands of years in India. It does not begin in China.
Some people have this concept that yoga begins in China. No, it doesn’t. It comes from India and it is concurrent with Tantra and the Vedas.
So they seem to be a little separate, but the Vedas speak about meditating yogis, long haired, bearded, meditating yogis who are sitting in certain positions, asanas, and going into deep meditation, aided by some breathing exercises. So that’s there in the Rig Veda. So the specific word yoga or yogis is used over there, or the description is given, or what? No, just the description, not the word yoga.
Okay. That comes later. So it’s something that goes way back.
But yoga was essentially meditation. And that is ultimately what yoga is. The question is, on what are we meditating? And that can be many different levels of things.
We can be meditating on something that is focussing on the unitive sort of being of all reality, or we could be meditating on a particular supreme being. So, you know, there are many different levels of yoga perfection, and there are many different levels or types of yoga practise. And this is what makes yoga difficult to define.
Many different practises and many different levels of perfection. Okay, just before we go into the yoga practises, when you talk about the dates, sometimes the devotees are a little uncomfortable because there is this constant dichotomy between how the scriptures are dated by academic scholars and how the tradition sees them. So essentially, we can say that when the academic scholars look about the dating, they are looking based on more on the historical evidence that we have of the existence of a particular text.
But that doesn’t necessarily describe when that knowledge itself came. All that we can have is that the written evidence or some other evidence of the knowledge, it comes at this particular time. That’s right.
And, you know, the empirical academic observations that are made about spiritual traditions and practises such as yoga are limited because, again, the historical eye can just reach so far and can just reach so deep. So it’s hardly the all in all. It’s hardly the whole story.
At the same time, it gives us a little bit of perspective. Yeah. Relatively speaking.
So the Bhagavata Purana speaks about the Ashtanga system, speaks about yoga, and especially in the 11th canto, also in the third canto, in the talks between Kapila Devi and Devahuti. But particularly the 11th canto chapters, I believe, 15 and 16, I think. So 14, 15, 16, somewhere in there.
And then there’s mention of yoga throughout here and there. So yoga is something that permeates the spiritual traditions of India. It is not something that’s limited in that way.
It is more of a tool. It’s like a toolbox. You can take a toolbox and build a house, or you can take a toolbox and build a shed.
And, you know, there are different things you can build with the toolbox. So yoga is found in so many traditions in India. And now it’s found, you know, then it went east to Taoism and Buddhism.
And it was, well, the Buddha himself took up yoga in India when he was in India. But as Buddhism spread to the east, it took yoga with it and revised it and made it its own. And in modern times, you’ve got Muslims, Christians and Jews practising yoga.
Oh, I’d heard of Christian yoga, but I didn’t know about Muslims also. Absolutely. There are select Muslims that practise yoga.
Okay. So I like this metaphor of the toolbox. That’s beautiful.
That means it’s, as you said, a set of practises, different people can take whatever they want. And they don’t necessarily all adhere to one philosophy, one theology or one philosophy or one worldview. So even in the Bhagavatam, you mentioned the philosophical sections where yoga is talked about.
But apart from that, it seems almost every character, they do some kind of yoga, yogic postures. When Yudhishthira announces the world, or even when truth announces the world, they sit in the yoga posture. So that they meditate and they try to distance themselves from their material elements that make their body.
So that would also be an example of a toolbox thing, that they’re taking the yoga practise for cultivating inner awareness or focussing on the indwelling Lord, whatever it may be. That’s right. So yoga is, it can be a toolbox, just like you dip into a toolbox when you need a hammer, when you need a screwdriver.
And when you don’t need them, you put them back. It’s something that enhances the building of something, right? But at the same time, if one reads the yoga sutra carefully, if one reads the Bhagavad Gita carefully, one finds that the ultimate yoga is a perfection, is an end. And this is also an extraordinary part of yoga.
And it’s worth paying attention to, for sure. Okay, so we could put it this way, this is a toolbox, and the tools can be used for various purposes. But the toolbox has an original purpose.
Yes. So that toolbox was meant to build something, we can use it to build various things also. Yes.
So for example, in today’s world, people are using that toolbox or something from that toolbox to make their bodies slimmer and healthier. So you could say that’s a more mundane use of that toolbox. But that toolbox had original purpose.
Yes. Okay. Yes.
Well, you see, the word yoga, in the simplest of terms means union. Now union means bringing one thing together with another in a harmonious whole. So that union can take place at different levels.
My aching back, oh, my aching back with the rest of my healthy body. I go to the yoga studio and bring the unhealthy part of my back into a union with the rest of my body, my healthy body in a harmonious whole. That’s one kind of union.
Another kind of union is now typically people who come to fix their back problems in a yoga studio. They don’t stop. They go, wow, this is something special here.
I feel I feel something extra here. So yoga is always about upliftment. Always about elevation.
So don’t practise yoga, if you don’t want to be more and more elevated in your human existence. Because that’s where it goes. Now, sometimes, so after the back is fixed, then one can balance more the internal, psychical energies, the psychophysical, the psychoenergetic centres of the body, the chakras, where we bury the samskaras and the kleshas, the vasanas, the things that, the traumas, that limit the energy in our lives.
So yoga can help release those chakras. Chakra is a wheel. And if you are familiar with driving in a car, when a wheel hits a pothole, it gets the whole wheel off, can even puncture the wheel.
Yoga is about a tyre repair. It’s about a wheel repair. Allow those chakras to circle freely and to be energised freely.
So, for example, the third chakra, the Manipura chakra. I just want to understand the example, it’s a beautiful example. So you’re saying that just as a pothole may damage a wheel, so similarly, life’s traumas can damage us.
And that’s right. The wheel is damaged, the car can’t move very well. So similarly, because of the impression the samskaras created by life’s unhappy events, our energies can’t move properly.
So yoga is like fixing the tyre, so it’s like fixing the car. Fixing the chakras. That’s right.
It’s like an example. We’re like vehicles. I mean, of course, the Gita calls the body a vehicle, a yantra, right? Yeah.
So it’s a machine and it has wheels. It has seven wheels, the seven chakras. And these energise, these are psycho-energetic centres.
And it starts with the bottom of the spine, the genital area, the solar plexus, the heart area, the throat, the forehead, middle of the forehead, and then, of course, the brahmarundra. And so there are the seven wheels. Now, if something traumatic happens, like you said, Chaitanya Charanjee, something happens, a pothole of life comes along, then our wheel gets a bit damaged and it doesn’t work as well.
Now, of course, we’ve got the other six wheels working, but there’s no such thing as a spare tyre. So you have to make sure that the wheel gets repaired or it doesn’t, and it limits us in life. Okay.
So yoga is very much a toolbox to repair the tyres. Beautiful. Okay.
But what’s the purpose of these seven tyres? Where do the wheels take us? Where are we going with those seven wheels? That’s the key. And yoga answers that too. That’s what you said, that the toolbox was meant for a particular purpose, even though we use it for various purposes.
That’s right. And these various purposes needed necessarily be contradictory with the original purpose. Like you’ve got a point of union, bringing things together.
So bringing the body together, taking back to work better with the rest of the body, that is a part of a functioning human being and who can actually ultimately fulfil the purpose of life. So the purpose we use it for, if somebody uses it for say a bodily purpose, that is not intrinsically contradictory with the original purpose. It may become if their life’s purpose is entirely different consciously, but that’s something just contextual.
So for example, yeah. I mean, I just want to point out to you that you can use part of the toolbox and not engage the rest of the toolbox. But then again, what you’re trying to fix is something very narrow.
The toolbox is for the whole human being and the development and elevation of consciousness. Hmm. And ultimately the cultivation of the heart.
Okay. So we will fix something very narrow. Yeah.
If I just take one tool, I might be able to fix only one thing, but I want the rest of the thing. That’s, that’s a nice metaphor. So what about when people say use yoga for a purpose, which is quite not only different from or smaller than, but can then be, can it be used for purposes that is contradictory also? So for example, some people may just use yoga to mint money.
Yoga teaching has become a very commercialised endeavour now. It has become commodity. And then it’s also used for say, I’ve seen when I search for yoga on Amazon, there are books like yoga for sex.
Now, while we could say that karma is also one of the purposes of life, dharmartha karma moksha, but still that is not, that is the progressive vision is nowhere there when people are simply trying to say, become fitter or look better for through yoga so that they can attract better partners. So would such uses of yoga, would we consider them violations of the original purpose of yoga? You know, I can use, you know, a hammer to hurt people. Okay.
I mean, you know, I mean that there, you know, I can use a knife to go hunting and hurt animals. Hmm. You know, is that the best use of the knife, you know? So again, tools can be misused.
And by the way, they, tools can be very effective in being misused. It can be effectively misused. Yes.
Very effectively misused. That’s right. That’s right.
But so, so that’s why tools need to be in the hands of the right people. You don’t give, you don’t give a little child a very sharp knife, but when a child does have a sharp knife, he or she can, well, make mistakes. They can end up cutting themselves.
They can end up cutting others. Not meaning to, this is why the guru is so important, ultimately, the teacher, the guide. So even in the area of physical postures or that part of yoga also, traditionally, the idea of a guru and disciple was also there.
It was not just in spiritual knowledge. The guru-shishya tradition was also there in the, in the aspect of postural yoga. Well, generally, you know, asana, asana yoga, asana, for instance, is only one-eighth the practise of yoga.
Yes, that’s true. Only one-eighth the practise of yoga, if you look at it in the Ashtanga system spectrum. Okay.
Now, asana would then be something that a teacher might start a student with, but asana is called one of the limbs, not one of the ladders, steps. It’s not really a ladder. It’s a limb.
And you may start on this arm, you know, heal this arm, get this arm strong, and that’ll help the rest of the body. I mean, the arm is attached to my, the rest of my body. That’s a limb.
So every limb of yoga begins to lead one to other limbs of yoga. Okay. Okay.
So, but the whole body of yoga should ultimately not be neglected. Imagine if I went to the gym and only worked out this arm, you know, what about the rest? What about the other arm? What about your legs? You know, it’s incomplete. It’s, people would think you’re crazy.
You’re only going to the gym to work out one arm. What is this? You know, one of the well-known, sorry, one of the well-known Bollywood stars, he worked, he did heavy workout for the upper body so that he could look very good. But then that heavy workout damaged his body.
And then he has to take heavy steroids just to function now. There we go. It’s an exaggerated, the exaggerated emphasis on one or two limbs to the exclusion of the other limbs will ultimately produce an imbalance.
So you’re creating an imbalance, which is the very purpose of yoga to decrease the imbalances. So you can use yoga to create the yoga disunion. Yeah.
So it’s almost like there is this concept of spiritual bypassing where people use God to stay away from God. That’s, there you go. Happens all the time.
The same way you can use yoga to actually defeat the purpose of yoga to do as you said. Exactly. Hmm.
True. So do you see that happening extensively in today’s yoga practise or people who are exploring, they do find something higher and they move on? What is your experience in the practise? Yeah. Well, I’m, I am, I’ve received a registration and certification with the Yoga Alliance at the highest level, as well as a teacher at the highest level of the yoga community.
It’s called Yoga Alliance. And I certainly have enough, enough academic initials after my name, but I ended up getting more of these with Yoga Alliance with RYTE, RYT500 and so on. So, so these certifications are good at Chittendra Charanjee because they’re, they, to get them, you have to have a certain training from physiology to philosophy to practise.
And, and this is good because yoga can also be dangerous, like we talked about with the toolbox. So, you know, there have been asana practises in which students will actually break some bones. Okay.
It’s too much. It’s too much. So this is not good.
You know, this is not good. So the training is meant to prevent that kind of thing. And to be aware of that kind of, you know, education, yoga education is very important for teacher trainees.
So that’s going on. That’s very good. That’s very good.
But so in general, you’re saying that at least those who get yoga teaching certifications from the authorised places or respected sources, they do get a holistic understanding. Now, I would say that it moves in that direction. Generally, yes.
Okay. Now, in that training, they’re supposed to study the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali and the Bhagavad Gita teachings of Krishna to Arjuna. Oh, okay.
So even in the mainstream yoga world, Gita is considered that important as a yoga text also? Yes. Okay. Yes, indeed.
And so there we find many different yoga practises and many yoga levels of perfection. That’s why it’s difficult to define yoga. You know, the funny thing is, Chaitanya Charanjee, now I’m coming out with the translation of Yoga Sutra to be published by Yale University Press.
In there, I explain that everyone does yoga. They just don’t know it. In other words, to be a human being means that you already practise the eight limbs.
You do it only partially and unconsciously. To be a human being means that there’s nothing artificially imposed in yoga practise. It’s about enhancing the attributes of being a human being in the first place.
Would you like me to demonstrate? Yeah, please. That’s fascinating. Okay.
So, for example, in the book, I will explain that there’s partial yoga, practical yoga, and perfective yoga. Partial, practical, and perfect. The three Ps, I call it.
Now, partial yoga means you’re a human being and there are eight limbs to your human existence, which Patanjali outlines beautifully in the Ashtanga system. Ashtanga, Ashta, Anga. Eight limbs, right? So, the first limb, what is it? The yamas.
Yama has to do with perfect ethical practises. The ideal ways that you and I interact with each other and others. Once human being is not concerned about how they interact with others, everyone is to a greater or lesser degree.
Human beings are social creatures. We all want to interact with some other human beings. Maybe that interaction is not always the healthiest, whatever.
That’s a different matter. But the fact is, we are socially interactive creatures and therefore the ethical dimension of the human existence is there. So, that’s the first limb, yama.
So, now you’re saying it’s a part of partial because different people may have different ideas of how to interact with people and some people may be able to interact well, some people may interact in a way that simply hurts others and hurts themselves. That’s right. So, in that sense, the specific codes of conduct people follow may or may not be the best aligned with reality.
That’s right. It’s aligned with what is best, what is good for them or what is good for both of them. That’s right.
But when I move from partial yoga, unconscious yoga, to practical, deliberate practise of yoga, then I take up, I elevate what it means to interact with other people. I start practising the ideal yogic ethics. But we’re already ethical creatures.
We just may not do it very well. So, the limbs reflect the human being and its various dimensions. So, those are the yamas.
The niyamas come afterwards and those are the personal practises, the first of which is cleanliness. I mean, I think most human beings like to be reasonably clean. I mean, this is not, how is this an imposition from yoga? No, I mean, everyone likes to be clean.
I mean, most people take a bath, I hope, at least once a week, for goodness sake. I mean, every day would be nice, of course. And in other words, human beings feel better when they’re clean.
We like to be clean. Yeah, I mean, at least we want to appear to be clean. We have at least a pure one and if not, but literally be clean and to be and so on.
So, there are different levels of cleanliness and purity and self-practises outlined in the niyamas. Fine. This is universal.
So, the yamas are universal, the niyamas are universal. And then what comes next? Now, notice it’s going from outer to inner. So, I just sometimes the yamas and niyamas are translated as do’s and don’ts.
Is that also valid? No, that is not proper. That is not proper. I’ll tell you why.
So, the don’ts, yamas, okay, what they call the don’ts, the first one is ahimsa. So, that’s a don’t, don’t harm anyone. The second one is satya, truth.
Don’t be truthful. Okay. Of course, they take it as implying don’t be untruthful, but that’s not what it says.
Okay. The third is asteya, which means don’t steal. Okay.
Don’t be acquisitive and taking things that are not rightfully yours. And this can be done on subtle levels or gross levels, whatever. It gets very rich.
It’s a rich discussion. So, that can be considered a don’t. But what about the fourth one, brahmacharya? Brahmacharya is a do.
Be a student of Brahman. You know, be one who is absorbed in spirit, in spiritual matters. That’s not a don’t.
That’s a do. Now, connotatively, it can mean be a celibate. You know, don’t be involved in the sexual dimension of being a human.
That’s connotative, but literally, brahmacharya means be a student of the divine. So, they’re not all strictly don’ts. True.
So, you’re saying that the normal meaning of the conversational or conventionally used meaning of brahmacharya is actually a second meaning. Fourth meaning. Oh, I see.
Oh, right. Yeah. Yes, that’s right.
Connotative meaning. That’s right. It’s a connotative meaning.
Yeah. So, primary meaning is to be situated in… The morphology of the word is brahman and then charya. So, to be living in the divine.
Okay. Yeah. Now, the implication is if you’re engaged in all kinds of worldly, you know, interactions, bodily interactions with others, then it’s very difficult to live in the divine if you’re, you know, engaged on a bodily level of things.
That’s okay. Okay. So, the idea is that one is living in spirit.
And then, of course, aparigraha, you know, complete non-grasping, even of things that do belong to you, to not be overly possessive. Okay. So, that’s a don’t.
But don’ts and dos is simplistic and not really accurate. Okay. So, yama means discipline.
It doesn’t mean don’ts. It means discipline, things that disciplines that we practise. So, it’s a discipline for me to be truthful with chaitanya charan.
So, I’m going to try to be extremely truthful with chaitanya charan right now. Okay. So, now I’m practising the second aspect of yama.
Beautiful. Okay. So, sometimes disciplines may involve don’ts and people may feel it that way.
I can’t do this. I can’t do this. But discipline itself can also be affirmative, not necessarily restrictive or regulative.
Yeah. That’s exactly right. And in fact, even the word ahimsa, non-harm, non-violent.
I mean, I came to a yoga workshop one time and I told everyone, I said, look, on the way here, I promise you, I didn’t kill anyone. So, I mean, on that gross level, I’m practising ahimsa. But ahimsa goes so much deeper than that.
It doesn’t mean… Okay. So, non-harm. I wasn’t harming anyone, say, with nasty speech.
You know, like if I call you a goat, chaitanya charanji. Okay. This can be very insulting, right? This could be harmful.
You know, chaitanya charanji, you’re just a goat. I mean, okay, that could be harmful. Okay.
Something like that. So, it’s on a more subtle level, right? I think with social media in today’s world, this level of ahimsa happens so much. That’s right.
Fascinating interpretations. Exactly. Yeah.
Well, but this is all of the kleshas and the samskaras coming out, just sort of releasing the endless machinations of samskaras and kleshas. So, practising ahimsa is not merely not calling you nasty names, like goat. But it means the positive, too.
It means kindness, sensitivity. Empathy. Appreciation of your thoughts and feelings.
So, even though it’s put in the negative, ahimsa, non-harm, it’s also a positive to be sensitive to the thoughts and feelings of others. Hmm. So, in the yama list, the negatives can be understood in terms of the positives.
The positives can be understood, excuse me, in terms of the negatives and so on. So, it’s a rich discussion. A very rich discussion.
But here’s the point. Every human being, to some degree, is practising the yamas. To some degree.
So, when I went to the store the other day, I promise you, I did not steal any bananas. Okay. But was I suddenly stealing someone’s dignity by thinking of another person and putting them down in my mind? That’s kind of a stealing.
Subtle. Very subtle. It’s a stealing of another person’s dignity.
Let’s say I’m a bigot and I’m prejudiced against someone of another race. That’s stealing on a subtle level, but powerful. I’m stealing their dignity.
So, there are subtle levels and gross levels to these yamas. So, this is the point. Every human being is concerned with their interactions with others to a greater or lesser degree.
Every human being is concerned with their own personal practises. And then the third one, asana. We all have bodies and we’re all positioning our bodies.
Right now, you’re sitting, I’m sitting. In fact, asana means literally sitting. Yeah.
Asana is the place where the asana sits. That’s right. That’s right.
Asana, I can be a little crude about this. Asana means when you put your ass on. Okay.
That’s pretty much what if you use the British pronunciation. Okay. The British pronunciation.
So, it literally means to be resting the body in a position, a seated position for what? Meditation. It’s preparation for meditation. Okay.
So, all asana practises, whether it be Tadasana, Vrksasana, Padmasana, all of these, you know, Shavasana, it goes on. I mean, they’ve proliferated into the hundreds. But all of them go back to preparing the body so we can go further inward, right? Yamas are very outward.
The niyamas are more inward. And now the asana is the border between the outer and the inner. And now I go to the fourth one, Pranayama.
I believe all of us are breathing, Chaitanya Charan. As human beings, everyone breathes. True.
But do we know how to breathe and oxygenate all 37 trillion cells in our bodies? Yoga, again, enhances the practise of yoga, enhances the natural breathing process, the respirational process. Whereas in partial yoga, we may not take the opportunity to really focus on the breath and oxygenate the body fully. Of course, that happens somewhat naturally.
Sometimes I go, okay, so I might take a deep breath or I might stretch, right? There’s asana, right? Stretching. Even I’ve seen babies, I’ve seen infants stretch, okay? They stretch. Yawning is a kind of stretching.
So these limbs are all naturally occurring dimensions of the human. In yoga practise, they’re deliberately taken up and enhanced. Okay.
So in this way, that’s the difference. That’s beautiful. So we could say, that’s why you’re talking about partial, practical and effective.
At a partial level, everybody is doing these things. As we become more conscious, more informed, both in terms of knowledge and awareness, then we will move towards doing it in a more effective way. Sometimes people say, do you practise yoga, Dr. Schweig? And I say, well, you do, but you just don’t know it.
It’s a little bit of an obnoxious response. But I’ll say, why are you asking? You practise yoga. Perhaps you don’t know it though.
So these eight limbs are all there in every human being. So Pranayama is expanding and deepening the breath. Pratyahara, the fifth limb, withdrawing the senses from sense objects.
Every human being at different times wants to sort of retreat from the world of sensate imagery and just go inside. Pratyahara literally means to draw from the resources that are within. So that goes deeper.
So not to take from without, but to take from within. Praty, to reverse the ahara, the taking, to reverse the taking. Instead of taking from outside in, I’m going to take from deep within and bring it to myself.
Oh, okay. I had heard this opposite. It is that we keep taking an ahara from the outside and what is outside, we keep it outside.
That’s right. Which is one part of it, but that’s not the emphasis. It’s not outside.
It’s also rather than taking from outside inside, we keep the outside outside so that we can bring what is inside outside. That’s beautiful. That’s right.
Pratyahara. So it can mean both things. Yes.
So nowadays also the people want to try some time for, now there’s the term that is using me time. Everybody wants some time for themselves. That’s right.
That’s right. I need some alone time or I need to, what are some of the expressions? The romantic expression is that I have a date with myself. That’s right.
I need to chill. I need to, you know, whatever. Yeah.
Yeah. They’re different expressions. I can’t, they don’t come to mind right now.
Yeah. But then, and we all love to concentrate on things like focussing on a novel or philosophy or some group. And we love to be elevated.
Human beings love this feeling of levity, of expanding beyond themselves. And that’s what great art does. Sometimes sports does that.
Yeah. I remember when my daughter was a miniature human, like a baby human, right? Little thing like this, right? Well, I mean, you know, her limbs were useless. She didn’t walk.
She didn’t do it. They were useless as all infants limbs are, right? In fact, the legs kind of curl up. You pull the legs, the springs back, you know? Okay.
But I used to throw her up in the air and she loved that feeling of levity and tackled wildly. All babies would do that. They love that feeling of levity.
I want to assure you that I did catch my daughter most of the time. I did catch her most of the time. Some of the times it just, I don’t know, just she went right through my arms.
So anyway, whatever. But seriously, that feeling of levity. Now, you know, humans do crazy things for that, right? They go bungee jumping.
They go on roller coasters. But sometimes it’s more subtle and even more powerful. Sometimes they view art and the music can be so elevating and transporting.
So I’m just saying, so you’re connecting levity with the post-pratyahara stage? Yes. Dharana, Dhyana and Samadhi. So in one sense, bungee jumping wouldn’t be at all considered to be anything like Samadhi, but the idea is that you just experience yourself beyond your body.
Ecstasis, ecstasy, standing outside myself. Oh, I didn’t know that was the etymological origin of ecstasy. From the Latin, ecstasis, standing outside.
There’s also a kind of neologism, enstasis, standing even more deeply within oneself. Oh, OK. This is your neologism? Actually, it’s not mine.
It’s one I think that came from a professor of mine at the University of Chicago way back, not Harvard, but University of Chicago, Mircea Eliade. I believe he writes about enstasis as well as ecstasis. One of the pioneers in study of religion, isn’t it? Yes.
OK. I’ve read some of the books. Yes.
OK. So that is a very, in one sense, everybody wants these experiences that break the routine and the monotony of life. So it is, you could say, when somebody does some external activities, like when they’re going to go for a party and they dance.
So in one sense, dance also gives you experience something different from what we normally get. That’s right. Yeah.
But these are all, you could say, partial ways of doing it. But when we go into Samadhi or go toward Dhyana Samadhi, we experience this freedom from our bodily selves or freedom from our normal limited self. That’s right.
Our limitations. You got it. Yeah, that’s right.
It’s freedom. Exactly. It’s a freedom to go beyond the normal limits of human existence and to experience something greater.
So yoga ultimately can take us to the greatest level of existence. And the Yoga Sutra speaks of this. The Bhagavad Gita speaks of this.
But they’re different levels for different folks. I think maybe now we are coming to slowly the link between yoga and bhakti. Talked about yoga quite a bit.
So when you’re saying if it takes us to the experience of the highest reality, that is where, so there’s an organic, you could say like a culmination of yoga and bhakti. Can you put it that way? Yes. In fact, it’s not just I that put it that way or you, but the Bhakti Sutra says that and the Bhagavad Gita ultimately says that.
In the ultimate sense, all our interactive levels of being a human, all our cognitive levels of being a human, move into and move out from the affective levels of being a human, which is the heart. Everything is centred upon the heart and everything emanates from the heart. So when you use the word affective, so are you using it in a slightly different sense from emotive? Because emotive is related to the emotions.
They can be at various levels, but we are effective at the deepest level, our deepest emotions, we can say. Yes. At the deepest level of the heart, a heart that is uncluttered and not limited by the samskaras, by the kleshas, by the vasanas, there is at the deepest level emotion, and I would like to now make a neologism, end motion.
So moving out from the heart and moving into the heart. Moving outward and moving inward is what the heart is all about. In fact, even the physical heart, the biological heart has a circulatory system where the blood moves out to nourish the whole body, and then it moves back in to be re-oxygenated and purified to be able to be sending it out again.
So we as humans can contribute something marvellous to this world by acting from the heart, emotion, but we have to make sure that that same heart motion becomes nourished and replenished by end motion. End motion means what is coming from, we also need nourishment from outside. We learn from others, we learn from nature, we are social creatures.
That’s what you’re referring to? Well, we have to learn how to be nourished by other hearts and maybe the supreme heart. Oh, okay. So at this level, we’re talking about a purity of existence, a purity of affect, a purity of the heart, a pure love, the kind that Krishna offers Arjuna in the Gita.
Beautiful. The divine is already embracing us. The divine has been embracing us for an eternity, Chaitanya Charan, as you know, through outwardly, an embrace from within, from everywhere around us, and now right in front of us, the divine waits for the full embrace, the return embrace from us.
Yoga is the return embrace of a divine embrace that’s already been there, but we’re not returning it. You know, my grandmother, she loved me a lot, okay? My family used to go up and visit my grandparents in New York City. They lived on Fifth Avenue, they lived in an apartment, and we used to go down the hall and go up in the elevator, and my sister would be there as well, my younger sister, but my grandmother had a special thing for me, right? So I was eight years old, and when that door flung open, my grandmother looked at me with wide eyes and attack arms, and she would come and I would hide behind my mother, you know, grabbing onto her skirt, and she would come and squeeze me like a boa constrictor, and I could hardly breathe, right? And I would even mouth the words to my mother, help, right? Okay, now divinity is not as aggressive as my grandmother.
It’s gentle, but it’s far more thorough than my grandmother’s embrace, because it’s everywhere. We just don’t appreciate it yet. Yoga is about evolving greater and greater levels of sensitivity, sensitivity to other human beings, but beyond that, sensitivity to all living beings, but beyond that, sensitivity to the reality of existence that engulfs us, sensitivity ultimately to the very thing from which all reality comes and emanates, sensitivity to the inner life, the inner life of God.
So we talk about yoga as harmony, but I never connected the idea of harmony with embrace. It’s such a moving and loving imagery. Harmony is also very sweet, or connection is also very sweet, but embrace has that affective part within it, very small for me.
But let’s talk about it even more ontologically. What is an embrace? An embrace is something that engulfs us, something that supports us, something that holds us up. So yes, I mean, you can bring it to a kind of almost romantic level, right? A kind of, or, you know, affective, loving level.
Okay, but I’m really using it to talk about something metaphysical here. Oh, okay. Chittendra Charan, your body consists of about 37 trillion cells.
Mine does too. How is it all working? Are you doing anything to help it? There’s so much that’s happening to us and for us, even to make it possible for you and I to speak. This is so miraculous.
If we could comprehend the miraculousness of all this, we would be stunned and we wouldn’t be able to talk at all. Within each of those 37 trillion cells, Chittendra Charanji, there are a million working parts. Are you doing anything to help? Just kind of breathing calmly, right? You’re not doing much.
We are supported. We are embraced. Everything around us and in us makes this life possible.
We’re being embraced, supported, nourished all the time without much effort on our part. So when you said yoga is increasing sensitivity, it is becoming aware of how something beyond us is sustaining us. Yes.
Upholding us, sustaining us, nourishing us, giving so much to us. That’s an embrace. And then we naturally, if we become aware of that, we will naturally want to know what is that reality? What is it that is embracing us? Yes.
So now you are. What if I send you endless gifts in the mail? And I send you this and I send you that. I send you a new kurta.
I send you a watch. I send you rings. I send you hats.
I shower these gifts on you and I never hear even so much as a thank you. That’s the human condition. We are not grateful.
We’re not appreciating. We have so many gifts, more gifts than we can even conceive of. Yoga is about being increasingly more grateful and appreciative and sensitive to all the gifts.
It’s true. This is such a beautiful explanation of yoga from a conceptual perspective. It just broadens one’s consciousness.
How much of it is, you could say, explicated in the core yoga texts or it’s implicit? And then we draw it out because from what I’ve seen, Patanjali Yoga Sutra, it’s not a very, it is not a very big text. First of all, it’s smaller than the Bhagavad Gita also. And also, the sutras are very, very terse.
And it doesn’t really talk much about the nature of the ultimate reality. So it seems to… Oh, oh, that’s because you haven’t read my translation yet. Okay.
Okay. When I say it doesn’t talk much, it doesn’t explicitly talk about a personal divinity like Krishna or anyone in the way he is talking about in the Bhagavatam or somewhere else. But you can say in that sense, but you can explain.
Okay. It does talk about Krishna, but it talks about Krishna or divinity in more neutral terms, in more epithetical, descriptive terms. So, for example, Ishwara, typically people will translate it as God.
What does that mean? I don’t know. Well, I mean, that could mean anything to a Westerner. In the West, 82% of people in the West identify God as the creator of the universe.
But in Bhakti traditions, it goes way beyond creation. Creation is something subcontracted out. Okay.
It’s given to someone else to do. He’s too busy to deal with cosmic creation, cosmic dissolution. That’s just… Look, you do that and you do that.
No. Divinity, Ishwara. I translate Ishwara not as God or Supreme Lord.
Supreme Lord is a better translation, but I’ve translated it. Well, the way I’m currently translating is the divine source of all reality. Ishvara.
It breaks down morphologically to mean that quite easily. Ishvara. Ishvara Pranidhana is this famous phrase from the Yoga Sutra.
Appears five times. Or is it four? Five. I believe it’s five.
And typically, people translate it in this limp way. Dedication to God or devotion to God. But what does that mean? Take the word morphologically apart.
Pranidhana. Moving deeply into the space within the heart. Pranidhana.
There is where you will discover Ishvara. Beautiful. So the divine source of all reality is discovered by moving deeply into the space within the heart.
The hana. The core. And that phrase, space within the heart, is there in the Upanishads in many places.
So I’m showing some intertextual relationship there. Okay. Into the space within the heart.
Space within the heart. So here is space used in the Akash. Akash.
Now, of course, we’re not talking about the biological heart, but yet there’s so many parallels because, you know, the heart, the biological heart has four spaces. Okay. The atria, two spaces for the atria and the ventricles, two spaces.
There is space within the heart, the physical heart. But we’re talking about the heart of a soul. Have you noticed in the Bhagavad Gita that suddenly we find out that Ishvara is present within the heart.
But whenever we talk about the whole human being, we talk about Atman, we talk about Ahankara, we talk about Buddhi, we talk about Manas, we talk about the Indriyani, we talk about the Deha or the Sharira. Right? From subtle to gross. So where’s the heart? Where is it, Chaitanya Charan? Suddenly we learn that Krishna is within the heart.
Wait a minute. I didn’t see it in that list. Where is it? Is that referred to the same as the centre of our emotions? So ultimately it’s the soul.
We presently, wherever our emotions are in the mind or wherever, that’s where it will be located. Something like that. You know, the Gita says that you can stop the mind from within the heart.
Wow. Yeah, I think that’s one of the most enigmatic verses. 8.8 or something like that in the Gita.
That’s right. Yeah. One of the reasons I love our talks, Chaitanya Charan, is I love seeing what happens when I load all these unusual ways of understanding these depths of philosophy.
I love trying these things on you. I really do. Now, it’s very fascinating.
So within Sankhya, there is no place for the heart. So what does it refer to? The heart is even deeper than the soul or the Atman or the self, because it is within the heart that the Atman resides, according to the Upanishads. I have loads of quotes from the Upanishads.
The Atman resides within the heart. Not only that, it is within the heart and through the heart that the city of Brahman exists. Okay.
So there are macro, meso, and micro levels to understanding the heart, and I call it the whole hyphen heart. The whole heart. Oh.
And this brings together everything, Chaitanya Charanji. The 13th chapter, the Chaitanya. Who is that knower? Do you know who’s doing the knowing there? Do you know what is doing the knowing? Ultimately, it’s the heart.
Not merely the Atman. You know the word Atman comes from a root, a verb root, which means breath. Okay.
And so Atman is sort of like a parallel to the respiratory system. Okay. And the respiratory system’s very, very important to the body, right? But what is it a servant of? The heart.
The biological heart. It serves the heart. It oxygenates the blood, so that when the blood circulates, it can oxygenate the rest of the body.
The blood carries the oxygen to the rest of the body, and then the blood that’s been used comes back to the heart. It becomes purified. It then goes back into the exposure to the lungs, to the respiratory system.
It gets rejuvenated, and then goes around the body again. Hmm. This is what happens spiritually.
The heart is at our deepest, deepest centre, and yet it’s the whole being, like a circulatory system. So are we considering here the heart to be the thing that radiates out awareness of consciousness? Yes. Yes.
And we can do an experiment here. You can stop your breathing. You can hold your breath for, what, a minute, two minutes, but try stopping your heart for that long.
Now, I don’t want you to die, okay? So I happen to be very fond of you, okay? So I really don’t want you to die, but trust me, you cannot have your heart missing, skipping a beat. The lungs, you could, look, I’m holding the breath. Am I dying? No.
But if I were to have my heart, if I could have my heart withhold the beating, I would die. The heart, even biologically, is more fundamental than even the breath. You’re going quite a deep here into the discussion about the heart.
It’s beautiful. But you know why, Chetan and Chiranjee? Our discussion of yoga is ultimately about the heart, the whole heart, the whole human being. See, there’s no way to refer to the whole human being.
When we speak about the Kshetragya, we’re talking about the knower of the sphere of interaction, the sphere of awareness. The heart is ultimately more of a knower than the Manas, than the Indrayani, the Manas, and the Buddhi, because it includes all of those and goes beyond. Beautiful.
It is by seeing through the heart, in the heart, right? It’s locative case. They see through their hearts, what? We can know that which is practically unknowable. The essential nature and qualities of the divine.
Ultimately, it’s the heart that knows, not the Buddhi, not the mind, not the senses. And when we attain a spiritual body, which, by the way, the Yoga Sutra talks about, bodiless beings. Now, why do embodied beings become bodiless? Because their hearts become so full of purest love that it can no longer be contained within the physical body.
So, it’s not so much a state of disembodiment, which talks about like a deprivation of the body. It’s more a state of freedom from that which is insufficient for expressing the heart’s love. That’s it.
Is a phrase of mine. Heartful. Mindful.
Of fullness. It’s a tatpurusha samasa. So, it’s a fullness of heart.
You could coin a word like we are mindful. You can have heartful. You know? Well, heartful sounds, yeah, fullness.
I like fullness of heart or full heartedness. As I say in my Gita translation, introduction, I believe, or somewhere in there, I talk about full heartedness. That’s more complete.
Just heartful is a bit simplistic. Or if I truncate it further, then I’d say the whole heart. So, we started with Ishwar Pranidhana and you’re talking about how ultimately it’s like you go within Pranidhana to find the Ishwar over there.
That’s right. And it’s up to you who you discover there. If you discover Krishna, well then, wow, Arjuna discovered Krishna.
Now, when you say it’s up to you who you discover there, that means there is both, there is an objective and subjective aspect to it. Objectively, the Lord is there in the heart. But subjectively, depending on our samskaras, our vasanas, we may find something else over there.
Something that has been placed over there by our own past actions. In one sense, in the word God, we don’t use the word God as Ishwara, but everyone has a God. Everyone has something that is the centre of their being.
And it’s the highest. That is ultimate. Yes.
And in their worldview, that is the ultimate. For some people, it might be money. For some people, it might be their health.
For some people, it might be their family. Some people, it might be their country. So, you’re saying that if those people go deep into their being, it’s up to them what they will find.
That’s right. And this is how we can also understand Krishna when he says, That’s right. That’s right.
Exactly. So, it is that same Krishna, but in the sense, if this is what you think is the ultimate reality, this is what you will find over here. So, Krishna also said, I am not everyone.
That’s right. So, to what extent does the Yoga Sutra actually give an understanding of what the Ishwara is? You said that Ishwara Panidhan comes several times. Yes.
So, is the Yoga Sutra more about practise than about the vision of perfection? Or the vision of perfection, as you said, is also given. To what extent? It’s more of a kind of outline of practise and perfection, as well as the conditioned state of partial application of the limbs. It’s more of an outline, and you’re supposed to fill in the outline.
Now, if you want to, you can practise yoga in a way that takes advantage of the facility of yoga, greater health, greater sort of intellectual capacity, greater awareness. It’s kind of like this. Have you ever seen those bicycles that you ride on? And they’re in place.
It’ll go anywhere. Exercise bikes. Exercise bike.
That’s it. Yeah. So, you’re riding on it.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with an exercise bike, but you’re not going anywhere. So, you’re gaining strength, but you’re not going anywhere. So, you can gain strength, and you can be exceptional in terms of your mind, in terms of your health, but where does all of that go? Where’s it all going? Now, it just so happens that the arranger of existence schedules our bodies to deteriorate at greater or slower rates of speed.
How much do you tend to charge? I never wore glasses when I was young. Never. I had beyond perfect vision.
2020, I had 2015. I had the vision of a hawk. But when I got older, my external vision started needing some supplementation.
The arrangement for the body to deteriorate works with the assumption that there’s another body that’s being formed. That there’s a greater vision within that no longer depends on so much vision without. That’s yoga.
So, you’re saying that in one sense, yoga is meant to be, the fabric of reality pushes us toward the practise of yoga, or the fabric of reality is arranged in a way as to inspire us, or even assumes that we will move toward yoga. That’s right. Things are arranged for us to either ignore the opportunities in our existence, or to take advantage of them.
To work with the cycle of life as one is deteriorating, as one’s body is slowly fading, as the sunlight of our bodily existence begins to reach sunset. Are we prepared enough to where we can raise the full moon of spiritual existence? You refer to it. Or is it only a new moon that needs to cycle around again, and again, and again, until we arrive at the full moon, Purna Chandra.
It’s such an amazing metaphor. It’s just so intuitive also. So, we could say the full moon is rising.
That’s when one has, you could say, fully returned the embrace, and fully envisioned the reality to whom we are embracing. Yes. The moon reciprocates with the sun.
Okay, moon reciprocates, that’s true. But when it’s a new moon, it doesn’t reciprocate very well. It doesn’t shine back.
But the full moon shines back. Now, nothing can be as bright as the sun, but in our own little infinitesimal ways, we can return the embrace of the divine. So, things are arranged for us to practise yoga, no matter what, either unconsciously or deliberately and consciously, and then to attain the perfection of yoga is to be completely absorbed without any trace of conditioning.
How is it that someone can rise so high in the practise of yoga and fall from that into worldly treachery? We’ve seen this. I’ll tell you how. According to Patanjali, there’s something called sabija samadhi.
Sampragyata samadhi. Now, sampragyata samadhi is the positive way of talking about it, and there’s no such thing as asampragyata, but people impose it on the yoga sutra, which is incorrect. I won’t go into that now.
You’ll have to read the book. But sabija means with seeds. Seeds of our samskaras.
And seeds are, yes, seeds are little traces of imperfection that if not addressed and not taken care of, you know what seeds could do? They could grow into full-fledged plants and grow one right out of samadhi and grow us right back into the conditioned world. So going back to the embrace metaphor, that whom we are embracing depends on which bija is growing. If some unwanted bija is growing, then that embrace gets misdirected towards something else.
So instead of we’re about to embrace the divine, but we end up embracing something else. Yes, we could be embracing something lesser. Now, remember, everything is part of the divine.
So the problem is we don’t realise that, you see. So the divine realises that, but we don’t realise that. So we see it separate from the divine, even though we see it maybe as in an ultimate sense.
And that’s why we’re in the conditioned world. We’re here to find out what it means to discover ultimacy in the truest and ultimate sense, the ultimate ultimacy. I thought you would say intimacy, but you said it’s ultimacy.
Intimacy comes later. That comes, you know. Yes, the intimate divinity, that comes later.
That’s when you have truly found the ultimate ultimate. And then you dive into that ultimate. You join it.
You become part of it. And then you become intimate with the ultimate. So, yeah, that’s right.
It’s there. That’s right. You know me well, Chetan and Charanjeet.
That’s right. There’s something like in Krishnalaya, we talk about, say, first there’s God’s greatness and there’s God’s sweetness. So it’s ultimacy.
First, we understand the ultimacy. And then there is intimacy. Aishwarya versus Madhurya.
Yes, beautiful. So, yes. So when you’re talking about.
And by the way, Aishwarya is a strengthened form in Sanskrit of Ishwara, right? Oh, OK. Aishwarya, Ishwara, right? So Aishwarya, so Ishwara contains both the intimate divinity and the majestic and or powerful divinity, Isha being at the centre and Vara at the circumference. The circumference is the all-embracing.
You know, it’s all of reality. But the Isha is at the centre. And if one is connected deeply with Isha, then Isha turns into Bhagavan.
The intimate divinity. So the majestic lord reveals himself to be the intimate lord. Yes.
And while the Aishwarya and the majestic are always there, but when one is intimately relating to divinity, of course, as you know, one forgets about the Aishwarya. But when one is feeling isolated or separate and is missing the beloved deity, divinity, as in Viraha or Vipralambhaseva, then one remembers the Aishwarya. Just as the Gopis in the Gopi Gita, when they were searching for Krishna everywhere, and then they just sat in the forest in the middle of the night, and they sang 19 verses together of Viraha, Vipralambhaseva.
You know, it’s funny. The word Vipralambha means the attainment of distance. It’s an attainment.
Okay. So it’s the attainment, because this state of intense feeling alone and far away, Viraha, Vip, far away, Raha, alone, Viraha, alone and far away. This experience just brings divinity even closer.
But in that feeling of Viraha, you see that the Vrajagopikas, they acknowledge Krishna’s divine, as a Prabhupada would put it, opulence, or his majesty, his powerful Prakash, but also at the same time talks about the intimate dimensions of divinity. And in talking about both, you see, the Aishwarya cultivates feelings of humility and Dainya, whereas talking about the intimate aspects develops Raghatmika sentiments, passion. So there’s humility and passion.
As you know, I never talk about humility without talking about divine passion, because you cannot have one without the other. And this is exhibited in the behaviour of the Vrajagopikas. So this is yoga.
It’s the yoga of the yoga of the yoga. Why the triple yoga of the yoga of the yoga? Triple only because yoga at one level reaches the horizon of being, sat. But if it goes higher, it can reach the rise of chit and then the ultimate rising of ananda and the inner life of that ananda, of the divine.
Oh, so in that sense, sat, chit, ananda. Yes, right. So one level of aware perfection of yoga is also to realise the sat aspect that there is eternal and pure existence.
OK, yoga of the yoga of yoga. OK, so this is where bhava, one realises bhava, being. One realises the foundational horizon of being.
Yeah, I was thinking sometimes we really should discuss the Gopi Gita and the Raas Leela in detail. You have mentioned it in many beautiful ways in our various podcasts, but you need to have a devoted discussion to that. But coming back to this point about sat, chit, ananda.
So is it when the yogis realise that aspect? And if they consider that to be the ultimate, is that why there is a common notion, I would say, about yoga that yoga talks about Ishwara as the perfection as contentless or objectless consciousness. And it talks about, so is this based on scripture? The two things, and maybe these are the two things which we will need to conclude because this will take some time. One is the idea of what is the perfect state of consciousness, that is it contentless, objectless? And why is it thought like that? Is it because of, say, the Advaitic tradition superimposing or something? And the other is that the conception of Ishwara is often thought of more as not the ultimate being who reciprocates, but as more of the exemplar.
So is that something which came from Jainism or Buddhism that they are also the ultimate being, the Tirthankars are more like models than lords who reciprocate? So where are we? Because these ideas seem to be quite widely associated with the yogic conception of perfection. Yes, yes. Well, you see now the Buddhist and the Jain and the bhakti conception of existence are different.
Yes, very different in many ways. So in the Gita, really, when we talk about sattva, we talk about existence in the sort of, shall we say, I wouldn’t say impersonal sense. It’s just non-personal.
It’s not very personal. So in other words, that means the kind of interconnectedness of all things resting in the divine is Krishna. Okay.
I mean, you know, if I come to your house, I’m not going to see it as a kind of empty nothing. No, it’s still your house, but it’s not you, Chaitanya Chan. If I tell you, I came over to your house, I didn’t want to see you.
I just want to see your house. Well, okay. You know, for some yogis, that’s okay.
Or let me put it this way. They don’t reject. It’s not like rejecting Chaitanya Chan.
It’s that all they can comprehend at that time, and it’s beautiful, is the house. Wow. They can be wowed by the mansion of existence.
Wow. Okay. So that’s okay.
And, you know, we talked about Shukadev being an impersonalist or the four Kumaras being impersonalists. They’re not impersonalists in the mayavadi sense. They understand that there’s something more to it, but they prefer to stay at this more peaceful interconnectedness, unitive state of things.
It’s beautiful, because I like this word non-personal as compared to impersonal, because it conveys a rejection of the personal. Correct. Whereas non-personal is, you could say, maybe lack of awareness, lack of realisation, lack of perception of the person.
And I also like this, the wowed by the mansion of existence. It’s a beautiful phrasing. Before I was introduced to bhakti, I had read some spiritual teachers, and their descriptions of Brahman were actually very moving, just as we feel moved by hearing the beautiful descriptions of Krishna.
Yes. The descriptions of, we could say that there is no Krishna. In that sense, it’s not personal.
That’s right. But there is the affective aspect also involved. It’s not just like a cognitive aspect.
The description is very beautiful and moving for them. Yes. And this comes from the Upanishads.
Upanishads, which are, I mean, the Gita is considered Gita Upanishad. Okay, so it’s an Upanishad. And this teaching is not unaligned with the other Upanishads.
No, it’s all right there. And when we talk about the city of Brahman, a city is not a nothing place. A city is very active, very full, very beautiful, if it’s a beautiful city, of course.
So, you know, the idea here is that, no, we’re not talking about emptiness. We’re talking about the opposite. We’re talking about fullness of being.
Now, fullness of being at that point is more passive. It’s more, you know, sort of, shall we say, reverentially orientated. Okay.
Whereas being within supreme being is the supreme being. So sometimes people need to see the mansion of existence first and say, who lives there? Who lives in that house? And then they get to know, ah, that’s who lives in that house. And you know what, once you get to know the person in the house, of course, you’re amazed at the whole house, but you don’t focus on the whole house.
You focus on the loving relationship within the house. Once we know the person, it is not that we are aware of the house, but the house, in one sense, the centre becomes the person. It’s like we say Krishna, it is a Bhushanam Bhushithah.
He’s the ornament of ornaments. That’s right. So from a devotional perspective, so even the Brahman is like an ornament of Krishna.
We don’t see it as disconnected. The appreciation, like in the 10th canto, there are the verses where that’s that Brahman whom the Jnanis seek, that Parmatma whom the Yogis seek, that he’s playing as a boy in the courtyard of Nanda Maharaj. How fortunate is Nanda Maharaj.
Right. So that’s like, when you know the mansion, you appreciate the owner of the mansion more. That’s right.
But at the same time, the mansion recedes and the loving exchange is everything. Beautiful. I mean, even in human relationships, I have a very wonderful relationship with my wife.
She’s a real partner in life and everything in my devotional and yogic life, everything. We could live in a hut or we could live in a mansion. That’s secondary.
If there isn’t the affection there, then what is the use of any kind of living space? So similarly, the divine mansion may be dazzling at first, but that can’t sustain us. It’s what’s between hearts that sustains us. That is bhakti.
And that is the yoga of bhakti, which ultimately translates as rasa. Yoga is a code word in the ultimate sense as rasa. Beautiful.
So if you consider yoga as connection, then what connects the human and the divine is actually rasa. There it is. Beautiful.
This is why, Prabhupada, you’ll see yoga in the verse in the Gita, in the word for word, even though some people can’t read Devanagari. So it’s in the transliteration and it’s in the word for word. Then Prabhupada has the audacity to put devotional service in the verse.
And people don’t know why. I said, you don’t understand. Prabhupada is seeing the ultimate, ultimate achievement of yoga as rasa.
And devotional service is the human response to that divine embrace. But you don’t see that. So Prabhupada is fast tracking the reader in the Gita.
Beautiful. Fast tracking. That’s such a nice one.
I often say the same thing that Prabhupada, his compassion makes him impatient. It’s like he wants to give throughout the Gita what Krishna has given at the conclusion of the Gita. That’s right.
That’s the same thing. Fast tracking. That’s right.
Placing the conclusion in the steps. Yeah, that’s right. So you explained that the non-personal conception is a progression.
It’s like seeing the vision, is seeing the mansion before we come to see the person. Now, so then where is the idea that, okay, I’m seeing the mansion and I see the person also, but why would I think the person to be more exemplar than a reciprocator? Where does that idea come from? Because we cannot, in the Yoga Sutra, cannot deny that, as you said, Ishvara is prominent. And it’s not just, although you could say it’s one limb of yoga, but his position is much, much more than that.
Yes. So how does Ishvara get sidelined to an exemplar rather than the as a reciprocator? How did it happen? And I mean, is it, is it all? They’re not interpreting the whole Yoga Sutra. In text, in the Samadhi Pada, first part, text aphorism 41, it speaks about how the meditator is grasping the divine and how the divine is anointing, effectively anointing the meditator.
It’s a raw concept of grace. It’s beautiful. It’s that the meditator described as grahitra, the grasper, grahitra.
And there’s the grahana, the grasping. And this, you could translate it even as embracing. So the embracer, the embracing, and then that which is to be grasped, grahya.
And it’s all, it’s so strongly implied. The one most powerful word in Sanskrit for grace is anugraha. Beautiful.
Look at that. And anugraha means that which follows the grasp, the embracing. So when we go to the divine to grasp and embrace, the divine returns the grasp, anugraha.
That’s called grace. Now, anugraha is not the word mentioned there. Rather, what is talked about there is there is a process of anjanata.
Anjana means ointment. And ta is the abstract suffix. So ointment, it means a massage.
The meditator is massaged by the divine. That’s why you said anointed, okay. Yeah, anointed.
It’s right there in the direct literal translation. Now, you know how many people translate the yoga sutra in, you know, remote kind of, you know, metaphorical, they try to, you know, twist it around. Well, if you don’t want to take the yoga sutra seriously, just do whatever you want with the text.
I translate it literally and deliberately for what it says. And there is a raw concept of grace. And the whole first pada builds up in the first 22 aphorisms, builds up to this idea of the purusha, the human purusha, ultimately arriving at the perfection of Ishvara.
There’s something beyond the sampragyata state of samadhi. And usually what they all say is there’s the state of a sampragyata. But that’s not there.
They’re doing that and diverting one away from Ishvara. Ishvara is what Patanjali presents as the state beyond the, he calls it the other state beyond sampragyata is Ishvara pranidhana. There is no explicit reference to a sampragyata samadhi at all in the.
No, no. My God. They’re simply stating that there’s a state beyond sampragyata.
That state beyond sampragyata is Ishvara pranidhana. And everyone speculates and says, oh, it’s a sampragyata. There’s no a sampragyata.
There is no a sampragyata. So it’s not according to Patanjali. Okay.
So that’s where the idea comes up that sampragyata, you’re having an object for your meditation, but you go beyond. That means there is no object. That’s where the, that’s the inference that is being drawn over there.
That’s why the idea of. And they’re, and they’re incorrect. There is Ishvara.
When you’ve gone beyond sampragyata, the other, anya, anya, the other state beyond sampragyata is Ishvara pranidhana. It’s right there. Wait till you read my translation.
Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. It’s, it’s going to be groundbreaking when this insight comes out because just like. The Yoga Sutra has been co-opted by impersonalist Dwaitin yogis.
And just as you have brought out the, the love, the love aspect in the Bhagavad Gita, I think you’re going to bring it out in the Yoga Sutras. But it’s there. I can’t help it.
And the vibhuti pada. All these different translators think that the vibhuti is the vibhuti of the yogi. No, the word vibhuti is not used in relation to the yogi.
It is only divinity that has vibhuti. As in ekapad vibhuti, tripad vibhuti, vibhuti belongs to Ishvara. And the siddhis are a manifestation of how the buddhi can spill over a little bit into the life of a yogi.
And these miraculous things can happen only because of the yogi’s close proximity to divinity and the vibhuti of divinity. But the yogis do not have vibhuti. Oh, okay.
Vibhuti is singular. Siddhis is plural. You can have siddhis.
Look, I mean, come on. How powerful are yogis anyway? Come on. They all die.
Have you ever known a yogi to just keep going on? No, they all die. Yogis in this world, it doesn’t matter how many siddhis you have in this world. Patanjali is talking about vibhuti pada.
Why does he even bother with the vibhuti pada? Because he wants to show the glories of divinity, not the glories of the power of the yogi. Beautiful. That’s why.
And you know what’s funny, Chaitanya Charanjee? There’s very little commentary by many yogis who do a yoga sutra under the vibhuti because they’re embarrassed about how powerful, you know, they don’t know what to say. I mean, but it’s not the power of the yogi. It’s the power of divinity that can sometimes spill over.
That’s beautiful. When you said that spill over, I was thinking of 1041 in the Gita. Krishna says, everything opulent manifests the spark of my splendour.
There you go. There you go. The only reason there are such beautiful, splendorous things in this world is because of something unimaginably, extraordinarily, exquisitely beautiful in the eternal sense.
This is the vibhuti. Hmm. Then does the sutra also talk about something beyond the chitta vritti nirodha? Because that is given as one definition of yoga, and that also seems to indicate some kind of stasis, that the consciousness has become nirodha.
So can you talk this or do we need to have another session to talk this? Well, that could be a whole other, because I do not translate yoga’s chitta vritti nirodha. The way most people do, and this is what I’m working on right now. Chitta is a word that can mean mind.
It can mean thought. It can mean consciousness. It can mean heart.
I translate it as hrdayapurna, the whole heart. So what is my translation of it? We can perhaps end on this. Leave your listeners absolutely stunned by what they could learn from all of this.
And here it is. It reads like this. I read it as a double entendre, okay? So that means I’m double translating vritti nirodha.
The first instance in which you hear the translation, it’s a negative one. In the second, it’s positive. And you’ll hear it right now.
Yoga is a transformation of the whole heart as its conditioned turnings become uprooted. So its pure turnings can take root and flower. Beautiful.
Nirodha, vritti, turnings. What kind of turnings? They’re either conditioned turnings or they’re pure turnings. Nirodha is either uprooting or taking root and flowering.
And this, you see, ni means root. Rodha means blossom, flower, growing upward. So this is supported by two other key texts.
One in particular in which the word nirodha appears three times. Nirodha, what is it? Nirodha-saṃskāra. So that’s the uprooting of the saṃskāras.
Nirodha-paṇināma, the transformational process of nirodha. And nirodha-cinmaya, I think it’s cinmaya. I forgot exactly.
Anyway, and that’s the transcendent, the flowering of the garden. Of yoga. So that expression is also there.
So nirodha cannot be reduced to one thing. And this is such a, what you’re doing is a beautiful translation. So I thought, well, how did you do that? But that’s beautiful.
There’s so much here. I’m telling you, Chaitanya Charanjee, there is so much. I’m very excited about it.
But I have to restrain myself because I can’t get everything in one talk. So we should probably wind up now. That’s true.
So your heart is limited by your body. There you go. There you go.
Here we go again, right? Yeah. Should I try to summarise quickly? Please. So this was a thrilling discussion.
We discussed about broadly the topic of from yoga to bhakti. So we started about our yoga and bhakti, two distinct traditions that originated. So we talked about how yoga is almost prehistorical beyond our human history to know.
The historical eye can only see so much and see so deep. But the reality is much bigger. But even in whatever texts you do have, wherever it’s available, yoga is not just talk yoga.
You give the metaphor, which I think we use a lot of like a toolbox. So yoga is difficult to define because it involves various kinds of practises and various conceptions of perfection also. But even the Rig Veda mentions about people who resemble yogis.
So there is that description. And then, of course, the Bhagavatam has the philosophical description of yoga in the third and eleventh cantos and also the practise of some limbs of yoga at least by many of the major characters over there. So then from there, how yoga is described historically, we came to today.
You talk about how yoga spread in India also. It is not that it’s come from China. It’s very much from India and Buddha practised in India.
Then it went eastward and then afterwards it went westward. So from that toolkit throughout history, different people have taken different things. And each tool has its value, but the toolkit has its original purpose.
So if somebody wants to fix their back is aching and they want to fix their get the say if you consider yoga as harmony or connection, then get the back to work in harmony with the rest of the body. That’s also what yoga offers. So yoga can connect us, connect union or connection.
Union means to bring various parts together in a whole, in a harmonious way. That can happen at various levels. And this is good at one level, whatever people are benefiting.
It becomes yoga, however, can do V-yoga when we make that part as the absolute, when we do that alone and reject everything else. So then like if somebody, if the other metaphor uses somebody strengthens their one arm or just upper part of the body and neglects everything else, then in seeking the health of one part, they might damage the rest of the body. So like that, like that yoga can lead to V-yoga.
But if people want to use it as a toolkit, then within yoga itself, there is the something which uplifts. So a person practises yoga and then they feel some kind of something special, something more over here. And to some extent that there is even the yoga teaching is moving toward that holistic understanding by talking about not just the physical postures, but also the philosophy and the broader worldview.
And then we talk about how yoga is meant to heal. It’s like a car that has been damaged. The wheels have been damaged because of a pothole.
So like our inner being becomes damaged by the chakras get, you say, what is it? Within the chakras get buried the vasanas, the samskaras and the kleshas. Yoga is meant to free those so that our energy can come forth and we can function at a more wholesome level. And then from that point, we move forward to the whole, I think, the metaphor of the embrace.
So as we move forward, we talk about yoga and so we connect, we bring the part together with the whole. So there can be different conceptions of the whole as a person moves forward. And there is the, so there can be yoga at the level of sat, everyone understands the eternity of one’s existence.
They can look at the level of chitta and then they look at the level of ananda. So therein, there was a significant discussion about the point that when people are practising yoga, at that time, it is, the Lord reveals himself the way they conceive. So Ishvara is to translate as God is just people think of him as a creator.
But in the bhakti tradition, creation is outsourced, subcontracted, as you said. So then within, so Krishna is much, much more than the creator. And there is with the description of Ishvara, Ishvara Panidhan comes several times.
So we talk about going deep within the heart. So with respect to that, you talk about the yoga practises, the langas of yoga can be understood at a practical level, at a partial level and then at a partial practical and then at a perfective level. So at a partial level, they are universal.
We talked about all of the yamas and niyamas, all of them are universal. And yamas and niyamas are not do’s and don’ts, but they are more of social interaction rules, guidelines for social interaction and guidelines for individual discipline. And then the postures, the breathing.
So we all go inward. And the idea of pratyahara is not just not taking ahara from outside, not just doing the opposite of taking ahara from outside in a complete sense, taking ahara, taking food from inside, getting nourishment by drawing out what is within and then the further states. So you talk about levity, like throwing up your daughter.
So we all want to free ourselves from the limitation of our beings. So even somebody who goes bungee jumping and things like that, which may not seem at all like samadhi, but people are experiencing something over there, even in art, even in sports. But the deepest level of freedom from the limitations of our being, that’s when we go deep into our heart.
And so then we talk about the heart. Heart is not just the biological heart. It is actually, it’s not even mentioned in the anatomy of our being from the atma to the ahankara to the indriya.
So it is actually within the atma, the deepest level of our being, where, so when there is outflow, emotion, and then you said in motion, was it? They go out and go in. Yeah, in motion. In motion.
So that reciprocation, so when the deepest we go into the heart, that’s when depending on what kind of samskaras are there within the person, they will perceive the ultimate reality accordingly. So, but if somebody has purified themselves, then that ultimate reality is revealed to be Krishna. And we talk about, first we realise the ultimacy of the reality and then we talk about the intimacy of that reality, intimacy of that being.
So bhakti yoga is, so that ultimate being is always embracing us. So bhakti, so yoga is also increasing awareness and then increasing gratefulness to all the gifts that we have, to how our existence depends on so many things which are beyond our comprehension also, leave alone control. Like how 7 trillion cells in our body, each has millions of activities going on.
What can we control in that? What can we even know? So that is, and then as we become grateful, it’s like we want to know who it is. Somebody keeps giving us gifts, we want to know who is the person giving us the gifts. And then the idea that there is, when it is thought that the ultimate reality is impersonal, actually it’s not impersonal, it’s non-personal.
So somebody may be attracted more to the magnificence of the mansion than the actual resident, the owner of the mansion. So they are not being impersonal, they are more non-personal. So the yoga, so Shukadeva Goswami, the Kumaras were more non-personal.
So that’s something like Brahmavadis. And then from there, once you see the person, then you fall in love with the person completely. So the Sat level of realisation is also one valid level of realisation.
However, there is more in that also. And then we talked about the idea that Ishwara is non, the Ishwara is not a reciprocator. That is because the word graha, you played with the word graha and talked about anugraha.
So that the word graha is very much there. And when the ultimate Ishwara, there is Sampragya Samadhi. But beyond that, it’s not a Sampragya, it’s beyond that is Ishwara.
Ishwara is an object like no other object. So in that sense, we are going beyond all ordinary things or all ordinary beings to that supreme being in our meditation. And then Yogas Chittamrithi, we could say, in cricket, India cricket is very popular.
So they said the match winning sixer. Yeah, the climactic moment. Yeah, the climactic moment.
So let me see if I get the translation. So Yogas Chittamrithi Nirodha is that the conditioned, that the perfect, there’s the transformation of consciousness by which the conditioned turning becomes uprooted and then the pure turnings can take root and then flower. So Nirodha is both ways.
Negative and positive. Yes. Magnificent.
So thank you very much. Did I miss out anything you want to add? Any concluding words? I think you summarised everything beautifully as usual, Chaitanya Charanjeev. It’s been a pleasure, really, and an honour.
Thank you. Thank you very much. It’s a very enriching, always enriching talking with you.
But today it’s enriched understanding of yoga as well as the understanding of bhakti, you could say. Yeah. Thank you very much.
Hare Krishna. Thank you.