Day 2 | Yoga Sutras + Meditation

In response to the current global crisis, Yogi Charu is offering is the wisdom of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, a deep science of Vedic wisdom. Dive deep into the Yoga Sutras with Yogi Charu. Recorded on March 23rd, 2020.

Transcript

So,

Good day to everyone and we're going to continue to explore the mind through the vision of the reaches as we explore the yoga sutras a little bit more.

If you can all put your mic on silent,

It will be appreciated.

And bring your spine tall,

Palms on to the knees,

Touch the tip of the thumbs,

Tip of the index fingers,

Close the eyes softly.

And I'll start off with the beautiful mantra from the Bhagavatam,

Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevayam.

I chant and then you can respond.

Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevayam.

Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevayam.

Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevayam.

Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevayam.

Take a deep inhalation,

Exhale slowly,

Bring the breath back to normal.

And so we left off our sutra journey with mantra three,

Where Patanjali is explaining that yoga is when the mind is in goodness,

The mind is quiet,

Then we can recognize our true spiritual self,

The true spiritual being.

And we explained in the last class that yoga is one of the six darshans or one of the six philosophies.

So we use the term vaguely in the West today or around the planet,

Oh,

This person is a yogi.

But in the ancient times,

When you refer to a yogi,

It didn't mean someone who was in contortioned posture.

That was,

They did that as well.

But what that really meant,

Oh,

This person is a yogi,

Is mean this person lives by a certain philosophy.

So it's nice to go deep into the philosophy of yoga because it helps us to understand all the tribulations which we go through our minds and bodies.

And these great rishis,

They went through the same thing and they mastered it.

They conquered their senses,

They conquered their mental agitations.

And so they left all these nice techniques for us.

So Patanjali,

When we say,

Oh,

He's the author of the Yoga Sutras,

He's also an amazing psychiatrist,

Psychologist,

Like today's doctors are not even 100% the power of this great yogi.

So mantra three left us that the yoga is to try and make us make that third major union,

The third major union with the spiritual self whom we are,

That loving me with divinity with God.

And so as he finished that,

He explains we go into a mantra four.

So if you have your Yoga Sutras with you,

Mantra four,

He explains that if we do not identify with our true spiritual self,

Naturally we have to identify with something.

So if we're not identifying with our true spiritual self,

We're not really going to identify with something else.

So he says in mantra four,

We're going to,

At other times we're going to assume mental modifications which are coming from the material elements.

And he breaks down the type of mental modifications.

So next mantra,

Mantra five,

Patanjali says there are five mental modifications.

And remember he's writing from his experience because sometimes you might find another yogic text like the Girandhasamhita,

They might say,

Giranda might say there are four mental modifications.

Or in similar in the yoga,

In Patanjali Sutras in book two,

He says,

He cutting,

You're categorizing it to help us.

So Patanjali says there are eight limbs of yoga.

But then when you read Giranasamhita,

He'll say there are seven limbs of yoga.

Read Hatha Yoga Pradipika,

He'll say there are four limbs of yoga.

So are they wrong?

No,

They're just from where and which angle the yoga is getting their realizations to their practice and the way they write it.

But the end result is getting to that third major yoga,

The union of the self with divinity.

So the way they write,

Sometimes you misinterpret and we think,

Oh,

There's only five mental modifications.

So they're breaking it down for us to just source different angles that we might identify.

So you might come across sometimes another great reach,

You might say there are more or less.

Don't get caught up with the numbers,

But just get caught,

Oh,

These are all the realizations at the time for the yoga at that moment.

So he says in Patanjali Sutras,

He says there,

He categorized,

If we don't identify with our true spiritual self,

Our identification will fall into five different categories,

Five different categories and how we identify.

So he breaks them down for us in the next mantra.

He says there are right knowledge,

There is misconception,

Verbal delusion,

Sleep and memory.

So it's amazing how if you look at our self from second to second,

Minute to minute,

Most of us,

We are caught up in one of these five mental modifications because we are not connecting to the true spiritual being whom we are.

And then he goes on to break them down,

Mancha Seven,

He breaks them down and he tries to give us what they really are.

So the first,

First one of the five mental modification is,

He says is right knowledge.

So the yoga culture teaches that in life we need a teacher,

A guru.

So the yoga culture teaches the first guru,

The first guru in our culture is our mother because the mother,

When the baby is in the womb,

Whatever the mother is thinking affects the psychic of the baby.

Whatever food the mother is eating,

Whatever she is drinking affects the baby.

So the mother is the first guru.

And then the second guru in the yoga culture is our father.

And that's why when the babies are born,

They put the baby close to the bosom of the mother,

The baby stop crying.

The baby is very peaceful because the baby remembers the sound of the heartbeat.

Boom,

Boom,

Boom.

They give the baby to the mother,

To the father,

The baby cries.

The baby doesn't recognize the father.

The baby will only stop crying in the baby,

In the father's hand when the father speaks.

As soon as the father speaks,

The baby can recognize the voice of the father.

So in the yoga culture,

The parents are the first guru.

And so the baby,

When we were born,

Remember the baby's pure consciousness right there.

And so the baby doesn't know,

The baby is experiencing the true pure spiritual self.

The baby doesn't think I am a male or I'm a female.

The baby doesn't even have a false perception to say that I am this name.

I am Yogi Charu.

That doesn't even exist in the pure consciousness.

The baby doesn't even understand that I am Belizean,

American,

Russian,

Japanese,

French.

It doesn't,

Those doesn't exist in the pure consciousness.

And so the parents,

Then it's up to the parents to instill right knowledge into the consciousness of the atma,

The spiritual being.

But because we're cultured by the culture we're born into,

Right knowledge becomes a very,

It's very,

It gets distorted because they give us the name.

And then the second you hear that name,

You respond to it over and over.

You hear it five times,

10 times.

We start off,

Oh,

That's my name.

That's my name.

And then we go to preschool and that's how we're identified with.

So if you are in the street,

Say like in New York City,

Normally when it's normal,

It's,

You're in Times Square.

You call out Angela,

Like 10 people,

10 ladies,

They're thinking that's their personality,

But that's just a name.

And there's nothing very unique about the name.

Many people has that name.

There's nothing unique about being a male.

How many males are on the planet?

How many females are on the planet?

So the yoga culture is trying to teach us that there is a unique spiritual being whom we are and there's no second to that.

So to try and find out that true unique spiritual being is the goal of yoga.

So if you look at the bookstores,

You'll find a lot of books,

Which is a lot of knowledge,

But it's all pertaining to the physical body.

And we need those knowledge.

Like right now,

We need medicine to understand how the body is working when people get sick.

That's important.

And then,

But besides that,

That Angela explained,

There is a,

He calls it that because we also need spiritual knowledge and spiritual knowledge is kind of lacking today because we do not connect to the spiritual senses enough.

Just like we have these material senses,

The eyes,

The ears,

The nose.

And so the books,

If you go,

You'll find medicine for the ears,

The nose,

The eyes,

Medicine for the whole amazing body.

And even in the labs,

You're still discovering more things about this amazing body because the knowledge that we have in the scientific world is always evolving.

There's more and more understanding.

And then for the mind,

If you work in the psychological part of the bookstore,

A lot of doctors are there trying to figure out what is the mind and how does the mind works and how does disease works with the mind.

So a lot of the books are always changing the revised edition,

Revised edition.

So we cannot take the knowledge that's there fully as a hundred percent.

Whereas spiritual knowledge is the opposite.

Spiritual knowledge is coming down from realized beings who are sharing it to us.

It's not ascending.

The way we get knowledge in the West is ascending.

The engineers,

The scientists,

Brilliant brains,

They're in the labs,

I know,

I know.

But then every so often they have to revise the book because they're kind of something else.

Whereas real knowledge,

Spiritual knowledge is coming down from realization.

So that's how we go on.

So the first teachers,

Our parents,

They're trying to teach us how this atmosphere is that we're living on.

Our parents will tell us,

This is the element of water.

They take us to the beach the first time and we see the ocean.

We're walking on earth and then the first time we put our foot,

We understand,

Oh,

We sink in the element water.

So they understand,

Oh wow,

That's a different element.

And then we see fire.

We see the candle.

Our parents say,

Yogi Charu,

That's fire element.

It's going to burn you.

What do we do as kids?

We put our hand in there and it burns.

So we understand,

Oh,

That's the element.

So we're trying to figure out the elements in this universe as a little bit.

Earth,

Water,

Fire,

Air,

Ether,

The mind,

The intellect,

The ego.

But beyond those,

Patanjali has explained,

Is spiritual knowledge.

And spiritual knowledge can then spiritualize the material knowledge.

The next misconception he says in the mind is the misconception.

So every one of us have misconceptions in our mind.

You might brought up in a certain culture.

So we have misconception of another person,

Another race,

Another culture.

We have misconceptions about in the nighttime you see a rope and the person is thinking,

Oh wow,

That's a snake.

And the screen,

Oh,

It's a snake,

A snake.

But then you get the flashlight and you come in your eyes,

Oh,

It's not a snake,

It's a rope.

So every one of us have misconception in the mind.

So we have in part,

We have partial knowledge.

Then we have misconceptions in the mind about so many things.

And as you meditate on this,

You will recognize,

Wow,

I carry a lot of misconception in my mind.

And I identify with those misconceptions.

Many misconceptions we have.

Misconception is,

You know,

On the planet,

Right?

Oh,

Hawaii is paradise.

It's a misconception.

It is a beautiful place.

It is,

But it also has ups and downs.

You can,

You know,

It's not all the universe,

Reality is the whole universe is in duality.

There's pleasure and there's pain.

So we don't live in that utopia.

It's all just paradise.

Misconceptions of,

You know,

If you're like,

I remember I was walking the street in New York a few months back and a lady was with her two kids on the street and a gentleman was walking ahead of me.

And he was,

Because it's okay now to walk around smoking weed in New York.

This gentleman was smoking weed and he was Caucasian complexion and he was ahead of me.

And you can smell the wolf,

Right?

And the wolf hit the mother and the kids.

And the mother looked at the guy.

She didn't see the way,

But she looked at me and she gave me these evil eyes.

Like she just,

She just thought,

Wow,

My kids,

And she thought it was me.

Misconception of my complexion.

Right?

So we got a lot of misconceptions in our minds,

Which we have to remove these ignorance out of the mind.

A lot of time when I was in Hong Kong,

I lived in Asia for so long.

I would be in Hong Kong and I'd meet my Chinese friends the first time.

I tell them,

Hey,

Where are you from?

They asked me where are you from?

Yeah,

I'm from the Caribbean.

You know?

Yeah.

Caribbean.

Wow.

You want to roll up?

I'm sad.

No,

I don't roll up.

Are you sure you're from the Caribbean?

Yeah.

I don't need to roll up to be from the Caribbean.

So we have a lot of misconceptions of cultures,

Of peoples,

Of so much.

And so when you meet someone or when you meet a situation,

Rather than jump into conclusion,

Take your time to know the situation,

Explore it.

And that's how we keep the calmness in the mind.

He says the third mental modification is verbal delusion.

And this is a verbal delusion is done mostly by the marketing people.

The marketing people are very good at using sound vibration to capture our senses.

So I remember once I just moved back to America and a friend of mine invited me to go watch the NBA playoffs.

He says the playoffs,

Come on watch it.

So I said,

Okay,

I'll go watch the NBA playoffs.

And in between the timeouts,

They would bring these advertisements on.

Then at the bottom,

There was a disclaimer in small writings.

And that's my friend.

Why is there a disclaimer here?

He said,

Because what he's saying is not true.

I was like,

Oh my great.

Verbal delusion.

So you can make the marketing people are very good at selling us something that's not true.

And so we get in,

Once we gravitate to the mental modification of it,

We identify with it.

We're never going to connect to it in our happiness.

This one I see around is all over the planet.

This is a common one all over the planet.

If there's a single parent,

A single child,

Normally if there's two or three children,

You don't hear it that much.

But if there's a single child,

I hear it constantly around the globe.

The parents will tell the child,

Honey,

You are the best.

That phrase right there is a verbal illusion because when the kid goes to school,

They're going to be other kids with other gifts.

So there's a way to express that amazing sentiment,

That unique sentiment which you have for a child.

There's a better way to rephrase that sentiment that for us,

You're the best.

When you go to school,

There are going to be other kids who have better talents.

That way the kid is not bewildered when they meet other people who are better than them.

But somehow that's a common verbal illusion.

So we have so much,

Right?

The guy meets the girl.

The guy looks at the girl the first time and says,

Hello,

Gorgeous.

You look so beautiful.

Verbal illusion.

And the girl is thinking,

Oh,

Wow.

The girl goes back and tells her friends,

Oh,

Wow.

He says,

I'm gorgeous.

He told that to so many other girls already.

So we have to be very careful when it's knowing that it's coming from verbal illusion.

So sound vibration.

We want to purify the sound.

And if we don't purify the sound,

We'll identify with those realities where are not true to the true self.

I think those are three out of the five.

We'll contemplate,

We'll meditate on those because that's how our strength,

Our strength when we study the sutras,

You meditate and recognize where do I have to go.

Where do I have my verbal illusion that affected me?

Where did I have my misconceptions?

Where do I have my,

The knowledge which I taught was complete,

But it's also incomplete.

So without any further ado,

Let's say everyone can stretch your legs out.

Wiggle the ankles,

Shake the knees.

We'll put the philosophy into practice so we can go on quiet the mind and reflect and look at our psychic conditioning.

Why are we not connecting to this loving divine being whom we are?

We're not connecting to it.

It means we are going to be identifying with these mental modifications.

And get across the legs back into a very comfortable seated pose.

Bring the palms onto the knees.

Touch the tip of the palms to the tip of the index fingers.

Close the eyes softly.

Become aware of the room you're sitting in.

Become aware of the breath moving in and out of the nostrils.

Let's quiet the body before we can quiet the mind and work on the mental modifications.

We must first bring the physical body into stillness,

Hayasthara.

Take your awareness to the right foot,

Toes to the heel.

The right foot is still.

To the left foot,

Left foot is solid.

To the entire right leg,

From the toes,

Passing the calf,

The knee,

The thigh,

To the right hip girdle.

To the entire right leg is immovable.

To the entire left leg,

From the toes,

Passing the calf,

The knee,

The thigh,

To the hip,

The entire left leg is stable.

Take your awareness to the pelvic floor,

The glutes,

The lower back,

The front of the pelvis.

The entire pelvic floor is grounded.

To the entire back,

From the glutes to the shoulders,

The entire back is still.

Take your awareness to the right hand,

Fingertips to the wrists.

The right hand is rigid.

To the left hand,

Left hand is steady.

To the entire right arm,

From the fingertips passing the wrists,

The forearm,

The elbow,

The upper arm,

To the right shoulder blade.

The entire right arm is immovable.

To the entire left arm,

Fingertips to the shoulder.

The entire left arm is steady.

Take your awareness to the neck.

The neck is motionless.

So the head,

The head is completely still.

Take your awareness to the whole body and imagine the whole body is like a statue.

Immovable,

Stable.

As the physical body moves into stillness more and more as time progresses,

That body made up of earth,

Water,

Fire,

Air,

Ether,

Let's work on stilling the subtle body,

The mind,

The intellect,

And the ego.

The bridge between the physical body and the subtle body is our amazing breath.

The breath is taking place in the present moment.

Liberate the mind into the now.

Become aware of your amazing breath at the entrance of the nostrils.

Try not to control the breath.

Just witness it moving in and out.

As you play,

Pay close attention to the breath,

You'll recognize the breath has a slight temperature change.

The incoming breath from outside is cooler.

The outgoing breath,

Because the body,

The breath went through detoxification of the elements,

The breath comes out a little warmer.

Burning off karma with every exhalation.

By the slight temperature change at the entrance of the nostrils.

Throughout the day,

A lot of thoughts enter our mind,

Try to be of greatest importance,

But the rishis,

The yogis,

They recognize there's nothing more important in our life than the breath.

Every other thought is secondary or tertiary.

Without the breath,

The mind won't be energized to have thoughts.

The body won't be energized to stay alive.

Just be with the breath now.

As the breath passes the epiglottis at the throat,

I want you to make a gentle hum with the breath.

Yogis call it Ujjayi Pranaya.

I will exaggerate it.

I want you to breathe as slowly as possible,

In slowly as possible,

Out,

But allow the mind to dwell into the soothing sound created by the breath as it passes the epiglottis at the throat.

A Parsishi and jnana.

Hold.

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