#82. The Only Spiritual Teaching You Need | Yoga Sutras Of Patanjali

If there is only one thing that any spiritual master would want to give you, it would be awareness. That awareness leads to everything else. Patanjali, while setting his grand vision of ultimate freedom, says that you can break the cycle of action and desires by becoming aware.

======

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

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

Transcript

Namaste and a very warm welcome to all of you in this daily live meditation session with me,

Dhyansa.

We're meditating on Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.

If there is one message of these Yoga Sutras,

If there would be one sutra out of these 196 sutras,

The culmination of these 196 sutras,

If there would be one message that Patanjali would like to give to you,

If there would be one message which any spiritual master would like to give to you,

Is of awareness.

That one message is of awareness.

All what we are doing in these sessions,

All what we are trying to build for us,

All what is written down in these spiritual teachings,

In these wisdom traditions,

The focal point of all of those is your awareness.

This awareness is not any knowledge.

This awareness is not any more information.

You already have a lot of information.

You already have a lot of knowledge.

Maybe too much information,

Too much knowledge.

You are already smart.

You are already intelligent.

This awareness has nothing to do with your intelligence.

This has nothing to do with your smartness.

You can be the smartest,

The most intelligent person in the world,

But at the same time,

You may be completely unaware.

So the whole message of spirituality,

Of yoga,

Of meditation,

Of these sutras,

Of this session,

Of all the masters,

Of little effort of mine as well,

Is that you come to awareness.

An understanding of what this awareness is,

Without immediately jumping onto conclusions,

Is moving towards that awareness,

Is opening that awareness for yourself.

It will not happen in an instance.

There will be no spontaneous enlightenment possible just like that.

All of those are illusions.

You will have to step by step grow into it.

Your awareness has to unfold step by step,

Taking these steps to unfold the leaves of your awareness,

The petals of your awareness,

So that you become this 1000 petaled lotus,

This awareness,

Without this awareness,

Everything else is mundane.

Without that awareness,

All the spirituality,

No matter what you practice,

No matter you listen to yoga sutras,

Or you have your own beliefs,

Your own systems that you feel are resonating to your mind,

Resonating to how you would like your spirituality to be,

All of those,

All of those,

Including yoga sutras of Patanjali,

Is mundane if you do not move towards awareness.

This movement towards awareness will always remain our North Star,

No matter what we talk about in these sessions,

No matter what practices do we do in these sessions.

The underlying current,

The underlying direction is always towards awareness.

Whether you want to solve small problems of your life,

Or you want to have a grand vision,

The way Patanjali has set for us in these sutras,

All are achieved by awareness.

The vision that Patanjali is setting in these sutras is indeed grand,

Because he says you can have that ultimate freedom.

He is not talking about solving the problem of a body,

Of a mind,

To have a more stronger,

More beautiful body by doing some yoga postures.

He is not talking about having a more intelligent mind,

Having a more resilient mind to go through pains and all sorts of things that happen along the journey of life.

He is talking about the ultimate freedom.

He is setting that goal as the ultimate freedom.

And the reason why we should at least listen to this goal,

Tune into this goal,

Is because that goal becomes an inspiration to open up the awareness.

That goal of ultimate freedom of nirvana,

Of kevalya,

Of moksha,

Might not be our goal.

But the inspiration to come in contact with that goal,

To come in contact with those messages that are about that ultimate goal,

That are about this ultimate freedom,

Those messages contain an inspiration.

And there are only two ways to open up your awareness.

One is meditation.

The second is this inspiration of these messages from the wisdom traditions,

These messages from spiritual masters,

Setting the highest goal and towards this goal as you proceed,

Towards this goal as your mind,

Your body,

Your spirit,

Your energies align,

In that alignment,

There is opening of your awareness.

Because this awareness is not a given,

It is not something that you can just say,

Now I will be more aware,

And you become more aware.

This is out of the reach of your mind.

This is the out of the reach of your body.

So how do you access that?

How do you approach that?

Two ways,

Meditation in silence,

Growing this slowly,

By surrender,

By allowing everything of your mind to settle,

All what is going on in your mind,

Everything of it to settle,

Having a thoughtless state,

Having a state of complete clean,

Silent,

Inner silence,

And in that silence,

Your awareness rises.

And the second is the discourse,

What we are trying to do together here,

Sitting in a discourse,

Getting inspired by this ultimate vision of ultimate freedom by Patanjali in these sutras,

In this current discourse that we are on.

Let us hear what Patanjali has to say for today,

Before we sit in silence,

Before we sit in meditation.

Patanjali says,

Only that which is born of meditation are free from karmic impressions,

Thereby freeing from desires.

This is a very significant sutra,

Because the process that is behind the sutra,

The process that the sutra is trying to capture,

Is very important for us to understand.

And why I have been saying all what I have said about awareness.

When you are moving through life,

If you move without awareness,

If you are moving in life,

Whatever you are doing,

All the activities that you are doing in your daily life,

All actions,

All thoughts,

All movements,

Excluding nothing,

Everything that happens in your life right now,

If it is without awareness,

If it is not having the light of awareness,

That action,

That activity,

That happening in your life,

Carries a certain impression.

That impression becomes a memory that you remember as the event,

What you did yesterday,

What you did day before yesterday.

So in your memory,

There is a part of it which is captured as a memory,

Which we call as memory,

But something deeper penetrates in your subconscious,

In your mind,

In your inner space as an impression.

That impression becomes the seed which becomes desire.

The desire to want more,

The desire to move,

The desire to do anything,

Everything that is happening in your life on the surface without awareness,

It penetrates in you as memory on one hand,

And on the other hand,

It penetrates in you as an impression in your subconscious,

In your inner space,

And as it rests in your inner space,

As it finds the ground in your inner space,

That impression becomes a desire.

It becomes a desire to have a better house.

On the surface,

You saw a better house,

And the desire deep down came,

I need a better house,

I need a bigger space,

Or anything like that.

That desire then motivates you further to do the action.

And this cycle continues,

This cycle of action,

Impression,

Desires.

Action,

Impression,

Desires,

Again action.

And you are caught up in this cycle all your life,

Hoping that by doing the action,

You will fulfill the desire.

By fulfilling the desire,

You will have to do no more action,

But you actually do more action.

By doing more action,

More desire is produced.

By trying to fulfill that desire,

More action is produced.

You are in this infinite spiral,

This loop,

All your life.

No matter how great work that you are involved in,

No matter how great activity you are involved in,

No matter how pure your desire is,

But this loop of action and desire.

This is what Patanjali is saying you need to come out of.

Coming out of this loop is the ultimate freedom.

This ultimate freedom is known as liberation,

Is known as nirvana,

Is known as moksha,

Is known as kevalyam.

When you could come out of the loop of action and desire,

This cycle,

You are in that space where action happens on its own without any desire.

Does not mean in your life the movement stops.

Does not mean that you don't wake up and you don't do what you are doing every day.

You continue doing those things,

But the cycle of action and desires is broken.

The actions remain independent of desires.

The action resonate and flow with the flow of life.

If the life makes you go right,

You go right.

If the life makes you go left,

You go left.

If the life makes you stop,

You stop.

Your actions are independent of your desires.

That is the state of kevalyam,

Of breaking free into ultimate freedom.

There is so much more that can be said about this and we will go through this cycle,

How to break this cycle of action and desires and move towards kevalyam in the upcoming sutras.

For now,

Today let us stop at this one sutra which says,

Only that which is born of meditation is free from karmic impressions.

Meaning out of meditation,

When your awareness rises in the light of that awareness,

Only in the light of that awareness,

Those actions that happen do not result in desire and therefore not repeating the loop of desire and action.

With that contemplation,

With that inspiration,

Let us close our eyes,

Move in silence,

Move in awareness,

In our inner light.

Please close your eyes,

Take a posture that is comfortable for you.

Your head,

Neck,

Back,

Aligned,

Relaxed and alert.

Give yourself few moments for the body to find rest,

To find its posture,

Settle,

Relax,

Settle into a posture where it is resting,

Not disturbing you or your awareness for the next minutes.

With every breath,

Body settling into rest,

Into ease,

Into balance.

Let us close our eyes,

Take a deep breath,

Let us close our eyes,

Let us close our eyes,

Let us close our eyes,

Let us close our eyes,

Let us close our eyes.

Please close your eyes,

Let us close our eyes,

Let us close our eyes,

Let us close our eyes,

Let us close our eyes,

Let us close our eyes,

Let us close our eyes.

Australian For the next minutes focus to realize that your awareness is different from all that you observe in your inner space.

In other words,

Your thoughts are not your awareness.

The images that you see in your inner space are not your awareness.

The awareness is in the background,

Watching,

Witnessing,

Observing these thoughts.

The awareness is in the background,

Watching,

Witnessing,

Observing these thoughts.

Realize that you observe your thoughts,

Images,

And whatever is going on in your mind in the light of awareness.

And shift your focus.

Focus more and more on awareness.

That which is observing,

Is observing.

What can help is to remind yourself,

I'm aware.

I'm aware.

I'm aware.

That reminding will help you to identify your awareness and focus on that awareness.

That which is observing,

Is observing.

Don't try to force anything.

Let this focus on awareness be as natural as possible.

I'm aware.

I'm aware.

Anything that arises,

Any thought,

Any words,

Any images,

Is a reminder of awareness.

Pointing to the awareness.

Keep your focus on the awareness.

Thank you.

This awareness is the door to ultimate freedom.

Stay on this awareness.

Letting all the thoughts,

Impressions,

Ideas,

Fade away in the background,

And the awareness in your foreground.

This simple awareness.

This awareness is the solution to everything.

Let your life unfold in your life.

Let go of all effort,

All focus.

And simply stay in silence,

In awareness,

In what is created in your inner space.

Stay in it without any effort.

Let it all go.

Let it all go.

Silence,

Silence,

In awareness.

Breathing silently in and out in these moments.

Every breath with awareness.

As everything in you comes to rest in this restful,

Aware,

Silent state,

Very gently and slowly you may open your eyes.

With a remembrance,

A taste of the awareness,

This awareness,

Please take it in your daily life,

Allow it to be a part of every act that you do.

Thank you very much.

Namaste.

Reviews

🙏❤️

Wonderous

Awareness