Walking the Yogi Path

Liberation, Experience, and Practice

The eight limbs of Ashtanga Yoga teach us how to pause. In that moment of stillness, we gain awareness of our choices, and are granted a deeper freedom to create. We are no longer confined on a singular trajectory, but in those pauses between breath, between movement in and out of a kriya, in the silence of meditation, we are liberated from the constrictions of routine, habit, and pattern. Just as a slight turn in a car’s steering wheel will send the vehicle in a different direction, so will small adjustments in our mindset and habits over time evolve us into a new embodiment of ourselves. This truth of Yoga’s capacity to awaken our potential for intentional manifestation is clearly articulated throughout The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.

Manifestation and the Power of Choice and Attention

Through the practice of Yoga, we become conscious of our sacred potential to create. We are all creating every day. Intentionally or not, we are creating our thoughts, actions, words, and reactions. Sri Swami Satchidananda, in his discussion of the Book 1: Yoga Sutra 2 states that, “the entire outside world is based on your thoughts and mental attitude. The entire world is your own projection … If you feel bound, you are bound. If you feel liberated, you are liberated,” (5). When we transform our inner landscape, we will also experience a shift in our understanding and response to what occurs outside of ourselves. 

The process of manifestation, according to The Yoga Sutras, begins with cultivating a clear intention or sankalpa to experience wisdom-filled-with-truth, and then directing unwavering attention toward knowing our True Self. Through discriminative wisdom and detachment from distraction, we learn how to balance the natural fluctuations of the mind. This focused attention cultivates clarity and awareness to achieve the goals and desires of our heart. Sri Swami Satchidananda explains that “a focused mind gains power, and when that powerful mind concentrates on an object, the entire knowledge of that object is revealed to it,” (30). This concept aligns with the Western neurophysiology of how we define the functions of the reticular activation system in our brain: through the mechanics of our brain, we notice whatever is in our line of attention. When our attention is consumed with looking for blue vehicles, our attention notices thousands of blue vehicles. When our attention is consumed with a victim narrative, we notice all the ways we are victimized. When our attention is consumed with gratitude, we notice all the ways we are blessed and live abundantly. 

Overcoming Obstacles of the Ego

Yoga awakens the awareness of the connection between what we desire to create and the decisions and behaviors that will manifest those desires. According to Book 2: Yoga Sutra 3, our suffering is the result of obstacles or klesas that cause distractions including ignorance, egoism, attachment, hatred, and clinging to bodily life (80). During the cycle of reincarnation, we forget our true Selves or Purusha and disconnect from our union with God. This allows us to mistakenly identify ourselves as one and the same with our ego-experience, generating attachment to selfish worldly desires. Through our attachment to seeking these pleasures and desires that fulfill our identification with our ego-experience, we come to feel hatred and frustration when our desires are not met according to our expectations, and we cling desperately to these selfish goals out of fear of loss or failure. Our attachments follow us through this lifetime and beyond as patterns or samskaras until we transform how we understand the nature of ourselves. 

The eight limbs of ashtanga yoga establish a path for achieving this identification with the True Self and liberation, and it is a practice that cultivates selflessness and peace. As Sri Swami Satchidananda advises, “do everything with the idea that you are preparing yourself to serve others. Even the practice of meditation is not done just for your own peace but is done because with a peaceful mind you can go out into the world and serve well,” (26). Through regulation or yama, training or niyama, meditative postures or asana, breath control or pranayama, withdrawal of the senses or pratyahara, concentration or dharana, meditation or dhyana, and absorption or samadhi we maintain the health, peace, and balance of our bodies, minds, and spirits so that we are able to manifest our highest potential in selfless service to others. 

Peace through Attitude and Practice

Practical techniques for practice include the use of mantras; the cultivation of appropriate attitudes, study and practice; humming of AUM; pratipaksa bhavana; and acceptance of all experience. Mantra means “a sound formula for meditation.” Sri Swami Satchidananda recommends a “conscious dedication of our lives for the sake of the entire humanity,” through repetition of the mantra “dedication, dedication, giving, giving, loving, loving,” (79). This repetition reminds us of the manifestation of selfless service even as we advance in our practice and the spiritual powers outlined in Book 4. Through this attitude of selflessness, we cultivate attitudes that maintain our own mental peace. According to Book 2, Sutra 33, “By cultivating attitudes of friendliness toward the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous and disregard toward the wicked, the mind-stuff retains its undisturbed calmness,” (51). The purpose of our practice is to maintain our own sense of peace. Our mental peace is disturbed when we display a misaligned attitude toward others. As such, we are advised to celebrate in the joy of another’s success; to demonstrate support for another’s sorrow; to imitate and celebrate the actions of others who are more spiritually advanced; and to disregard immoral actions rather than offer advice or guidance (51-54). 

Union with the True Self

The experience of Samadhi, the final branch on the 8-limbed tree of Ashtanga yoga, illuminates for us our identification with Purusha, the true Self. This experience cannot be learned through reading or theory, but is only available as a phenomenological experience. Samadhi cannot be taught, only experienced. This experience is called rtambhara prajna or “wisdom filled with truth,” (68). After an experience of wisdom-filled-with-truth, one becomes a jivanmukta, or a realized saint. Sri Swami Satchidananda explains that:

“jivan means one who lives; mukta means liberated, so such a person is a liberated human being. You live, eat, and talk like anybody else, even do business like anybody else, but still you are liberated. A jivanmukta may be doing anything. He or she need not be sitting in samadhi in some cave; this person may be in Times Square, but is still a jivanmukta. A jivanmukta is involved in the world for the sake of humanity without any personal attachment (71).

Rtambhara prajna is a journey, not a destination, and a practitioner must be cautious to use their spiritual knowledge of conscious manifestation of experience for the liberation of all beings, not only for enhancing the enjoyment of their senses. Patanjali describes five mental changes that are either selfish or selfless. Selfish thoughts create pain, and selfless thoughts do not create pain. Sri Swami Satchidananda explains that “whatever the thought is, if there is no selfishness behind it, it can never really bring pain to the person concerned. The result is neither pain or pleasure, but peace. Seeing this truth, we should analyze all our motives and try to cultivate selfless thoughts. That is our first and foremost duty,” (10). Whenever we are projecting an expectation in gratification of our ego-experience, we are cultivating selfishness and creating an experience with pain (94). However, when we move through this world on a path of peace and acceptance of others and ourselves, we are releasing the bondages of attachment. We are liberated. 

Patanjali and the Yoga Sutras provide a framework for living a fulfilling, peaceful, and content life of selfless service. Through daily practice of the eight limbs of Ashtanga Yoga, we maintain physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health, and we evolve into an identification of our True Selves. This allows us to overcome the petty obstacles that keep us in ignorance and suffering if we cling to identification with our ego-experience. On an existential level, it also allows us to release the patterns that bind us to a human experience. Walking the yogi path is a journey toward liberation, not only for ourselves but for all living beings. Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu. May all beings everywhere be happy and free.