#59. 3 Stages Of Energy Are Latent, Manifest, Unmanifest | Yoga Sutras Of Patanjali

With meditative awareness, you see the same world with a completely new perspective. Our current mind sees the world in bits and atoms. With meditation, everything that exists can be seen in the 3 stages of energy: Latent, Manifest and the Unmanifest.

======

Join me in a 30 min meditation session every day at 7 AM CET on my website.

Each session is unique, starts with a 15 min discourse, followed by 15 min Guided Meditation.

Transcript

Namaste.

Welcome to this meditation session with me,

Dhyansay,

Your path to inner peace,

Wisdom and awareness.

To be meditative is to become sensitive.

To become aware,

To become conscious.

If you see how we know this world,

How we get to know about this world,

Is through division,

Is through the division of the entire world in atoms,

In bits,

And on all these descriptions that arise out of intellect.

But when you become meditative,

When you become aware,

When you become conscious,

When you become sensitive,

You stop dividing the world in its physical units,

In atoms,

In bits,

In how we have right now described the world and build operations on top of this understanding of the world.

This changes completely,

Entirely,

Where in meditation,

In meditativeness,

You do not divide the physical,

You do not divide the non-physical,

You take them together,

You take the physical and non-physical together as one,

And the way to understand,

The way to create an understanding is not of division.

There is another way of looking at everything,

There is another perspective that you get while you look at everything.

And if we have to describe in certain units,

Those units become the unit of consciousness and the unit of energy.

In the end,

In the beginning,

It's all one,

It's one and that what you access directly in your vision,

In your experience,

In your pure consciousness.

But if you break it down,

If you bring it down into understanding,

Into a meditative understanding of this world,

Of this existence,

Of oneself,

It divides into two.

One is consciousness,

The other one is energy.

Consciousness is,

Of course,

Also energy,

But it is that ability,

It is that characteristic,

It is that quality of energy which allows to witness,

Which allows to see,

Which allows to become aware,

Which allows oneself to say I am,

Which allows oneself to be,

And the other is the rest.

It can be in the physical terms called as meta,

But there is so much more to it.

And if you take all of that together,

You can call it energy,

Physical,

Non-physical.

Energy which is comprised of physical in the form of body,

In the form of mind,

And everything else that you can describe,

Then you can pack in energy what is beyond the body,

Beyond the mind,

Beyond the physical.

And this understanding,

This way of approaching life,

This way of approaching the world,

This way of approaching oneself,

Where you are no longer seeing things in bits and atoms,

But you see everything in consciousness,

In energy,

It changes the gestalt completely of how you approach life,

And the result is that you are more at peace.

You are more established in wisdom,

You are more centered,

You are more happy in bliss.

So try to change this gestalt by coming into meditative states,

By bringing meditation into life,

You not only operate out of the intellect and keep on dividing the world into bits and atoms,

And when you look at the world,

You see there is actually nothing in it if you keep on dividing everything in bits and atoms.

There is nothing to really live for,

There is nothing,

There is no meaning to life in bits and atoms.

The meaning to life begins when you start to see life in consciousness and in energy.

Let us hear what Patanjali has to say in this context,

How he guides us into meditation,

Into unfolding this wisdom for ourselves in our life.

Patanjali says,

It is the substratum,

The prakriti,

That by nature goes through latent,

Uprising and unmanifested phases.

It is the substratum that by nature goes through latent,

Uprising and unmanifested phases.

What I just explained before,

There are two things that come out if you look at everything meditatively,

One is consciousness and the other one is energy.

Now here Patanjali is talking about the other one,

The energy,

He is calling it prakriti,

He is calling it the substratum,

The foundation of the entire existence,

The foundational element,

This energy is,

You can call it prakriti,

You can call it simply energy just to understand.

He is saying this by nature goes through latent,

Uprising and unmanifested phases.

So it goes through these modifications.

Latent meaning it is there as a potency,

The energy is there as a potency,

It is not yet manifested.

Then it manifests into,

It uprisings,

It takes a manifestation,

It takes shape,

It takes form,

And then it eventually goes back into the unmanifest.

It degrades,

It defaults,

It goes back into the unmanifest.

You can see in every cycle of life where one takes birth or one even before the birth,

There is potency.

There is potency of life energy which then becomes the birth and the manifestation and eventually that manifestation,

Once it reaches to its peak,

It has to break itself down into the unmanifest,

It goes back into the unmanifest.

So here Patanjali is pointing out not at consciousness but at the energy which is taking these shapes,

Changing these forms from latent to manifested energy,

Uprisings,

Manifestation back to unmanifested state.

So this cycle which this energy keeps on taking from the latent to the manifest to the unmanifest,

This has to be understood.

Once you become meditative,

Once you become sensitive,

Once you become aware,

You see the cycle of latent energy,

Of the potency,

Of the manifestation from birth until the full uprise,

Until the full maturity and eventually merging back into the unmanifest,

Eventually once again disintegrating the form and going back into the formless.

It is also worth noting and understanding that consciousness,

It does not change.

It is that that remains always constant in you.

So if you were to meditatively analyze yourself,

You will see that there is something that never changes,

That unchanged witness consciousness is you.

And the energy that you carry is this prakriti,

This energy which keeps on cycling,

Which keeps on taking these different stages of the cycle where once it was potent,

Then it became into manifestation and then it eventually went back into the unmanifest.

Then Patanjali goes on saying,

Krama Anyatvam Parinama Anyatve Hetu The succession of these different phases is the cause of different stages of evolution.

The succession of these different phases,

Meaning these phases what I was describing,

These potency,

Manifestation,

Unmanifest,

Unmanvested energy,

These three different phases,

Once they are in succession,

Once they keep on repeating,

Once after the other,

They become the cause of what we feel as different stages of evolution,

Where we feel that there is a certain movement,

There is a certain evolution in life,

In this world.

If once again you are observant enough,

If you are analytical enough,

If you are seeing this world with very high sensitivity,

You will feel,

You will conclude,

That there is a movement in this world,

That it is going somewhere,

It is evolving into something.

Without this sensation,

Without this sensation of evolution,

Without this sensation of movement,

There is no life energy that really becomes active in you.

Otherwise,

If you would not have this sensation,

You would consider that life is constant,

Life is dead,

Then there is no life,

Then there is only death.

So this sense of life,

This sensation of life,

Which is coming with the sense of evolution,

With the sense of growth,

With the sense that the world is moving somewhere,

The cosmos is moving somewhere,

This sensation is arising out of a cause.

And that cause is prakrti,

The energy which is changing these different stages,

From potency to manifestation to unmanifested energy.

Then Patanjali goes on saying,

Parinama trayaya samyat atita angata jnanam By practicing Samyama on the tree comes knowledge of past and future.

So here he is saying,

When you do Samyama,

When you meditate,

I had explained what Samyama is in the past sessions,

For now and in future,

Just to simplify we will call it meditation.

And we will incorporate the techniques of Samyama in our meditation.

So when you meditate upon these three stages of potency,

Of manifestation and unmanifestation,

When you understand the cause,

When you feel when you are sensitive enough to see the cause in yourself and in everything around you,

You understand the past,

You understand the future.

You see time,

You see and understand time in a completely different way.

Where one of the realizations,

And you will come to this by your own experience,

Once you become meditative,

Once you are sensitive enough,

That past and future are the same.

There is no real future that happens.

We are continually repeating the past.

We are taking the past which becomes the manifest in the future,

And then once it degrades back,

It becomes our past,

It becomes the potency again.

To move into the future,

Into the real future,

Is a completely different dimension.

You can call it,

It's a higher dimension,

Or you can call it,

It's a forward dimension.

But on time,

Past and future,

They are on the same plane,

They are on the same line.

There is no real progression.

But this is something that you can take as a theory,

As a concept.

For now,

What is important is that you meditate,

That you learn the Samyama on these three and feel that in your own existence,

In your own daily life as well.

And from there on,

Whatever wisdom dawns upon you is the truth.

Let us practice this meditation on the three stages of energy,

Which is the potency,

The manifestation,

And the unmanifested energy.

The easiest way to begin meditation on this is to look at your thoughts,

To observe your thoughts.

When you start observing your thoughts,

See that there is a potency,

A latent thought that arises in you,

Where the thought has not yet fully developed,

It's somewhere there,

Which has not yet manifested.

Then the thought becomes very clear that you are thinking about this or that,

The thought is very clear,

It's fully manifested in front of you.

And then you see somewhere the thought dies,

It disappears.

And if you keep on observing,

If you keep on using your consciousness,

Keeping your awareness on your mind,

On your thoughts,

You will see this cycle,

This process repeating again and again and again.

And the more meditative you become,

First of all,

You will see it very clearly,

And then very slowly this will fade away and put you into a thoughtless state,

And put you into complete silence where there is only consciousness,

There is only pure unmanifested energy.

Let us practice that by closing our eyes and taking a posture that is comfortable with your back straight,

And taking a couple of deep breaths,

Allowing the body to rest,

To settle with its own weight.

Inhale.

And with exhalation,

Let go of your body.

Let it rest,

Yet alert.

Your breath flowing gently in and out at its natural pace,

So calm that you don't hear your breath.

It flows quietly.

It flows silently.

And shifting awareness inwards,

Towards your mind,

Towards your thoughts.

Simply remaining an observer of your mind,

Of your thoughts,

Carefully watching how the thought arises from where the thought arises.

How it moves from being latent to becoming active in your mind,

And once again losing energy,

Falling back into the unmanifested energy.

Let go of your breath.

Let go of your breath.

Don't try to change anything.

Only observe quietly your mind,

Your thoughts,

Your inner chatter,

How it arises from nowhere,

And how it goes back into nowhere.

At all times,

Remain a witness.

Alert,

Quiet,

Rested,

Silent.

Observe how the thoughts empower themselves,

And then eventually lose the power,

The energy,

And fade away.

Remain at a distance.

From thoughts,

From your mind,

And observe all that is happening in your mind.

All what is happening in your mind.

With every breath,

More stillness,

More awareness,

Observing the mind.

Let go of this observation,

Allowing your awareness to just be,

Without taking any form,

Without taking any shape,

Without becoming any sound,

Simply awareness and silence.

Let go in this pure awareness,

Unmanifested energy,

Which is shapeless,

Formless,

Timeless.

And very gently and slowly,

You may open your eyes.

Remaining aware,

Meditative,

Sensitive,

From observing the three,

The latent,

The manifest,

And the unmanifest,

Not only in your mind,

But in everything that happens in your life.

Take this observation,

Make it a habit in your life,

To observe your entire life in these three,

And see what wisdom that brings to you.

Thank you very much.

Namaste.

Reviews

🙏

Excellent

Much gratitude 🙏🏼

Thank you 🙏 so much for this incredibly beautiful explanation of this concept & for the gorgeous meditation ~ Namaste