Meditation styles and Yoga practice

Guru Patanjali Preaching in Sadhana Yoga

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Part 26
Translation: - Unflinching and unwavering discriminative knowledge is the means of warding off the state of bondage.

It is through unflinching discriminative knowledge and through constant and unbroken awareness that lack of spiritual knowledge can be warded off. The state of bondage in which a living being gets involved on account of his lack of spiritual knowledge can be warded off through the attainment of continuous discriminative knowledge. The attainment of the knowledge of lack of spiritual knowledge is the only means of ending the state of lack of spiritual knowledge. It is through feeling and experience of conscious mind of the embodied living being, which is nature’s essence, that knowledge about lack of spiritual knowledge and knowledge about the means of ending it gets attained.

The subtlest nature’s essence and the mind and the body produced by nature’s states are different and distinct from self-conscious of soul’s essence . It is due to self-conscious conjunction with the mind that a feeling gets created in the mind. The knowledge of the conjunction that is due to the presence of lack of spiritual knowledge and the knowledge of lack of spiritual knowledge that is due to the presence of conjunction is called discriminative knowledge. It is with this discriminative knowledge that consciousness and mind becomes the means of warding off this lack of spiritual knowledge. When this happens, consciousness and mind becomes pure, guilty and stable. They become free from subtle lack of spiritual knowledge. They become completely enmity free; fear free, affection free and almighty. They become free from self-ego and lack of spiritual knowledge. They also become free from distress provoking thoughts and cravings. They become free from distress provoking thoughts, which had become lingering past subliminal impressions and had become the seeds of distress.

The Great Sage says that it is by removing and destroying the impurities and guilt of mind that salvation can be attained. He says that the flow of distress provoking thoughts in the life of a living being is to be stopped altogether. It is on account of the presence of lack of spiritual knowledge that affection for living beings and affection for life continues to remain embedded in the conscious mind. Life, which is eternal, keeps on undergoing a change each and every moment. Such a change is capable of causing distress. It is faith, which gives eternal pleasure to the self-conscious of soul. When it is touched by mind it become self-ego. It is on the complete elimination of lack of spiritual knowledge that discriminatory knowledge gets attained and such knowledge gets attained in a state of complete awareness.

The knowledge about that distinction of self-conscious of soul’s essence from the nature’s essence gets attained. It is with this knowledge that self-realization gets attained. The mind that believes in lack of spiritual knowledge gets destroyed. The cycle of life, which produces seeds of distress, gets destroyed. Consciousness, which sees the formless self-conscious of soul does not, believes in it self and does not experience its self. It does not become aware of its self. This is because the self-conscious of soul does not have any form. What comes in the grasp of conscious is the spiritual knowledge of the soul. The knowledge of the self-conscious of soul gets attained only when the mind is completely clean and pure. Subtlest Nature’s essence , in its non-merger state, is in a state of complete knowledge. Nature’s essence and its characteristics and qualities namely melodious and illumination, motion and action and sluggish and inactive and their characteristics, modes and cosmic law are beyond the grasp of its fragmentary subtle elements state and hence stable.

What is self-conscious and what is mind? . The mind is state of mixture of characteristics and qualities of inner conscious mind and outer nature essence states called self-ego.

The Great Sage Patanjali says that the subject of consciousness and mind is an extremely subtle subject. It is more complex than the subject of the formless. It is the subject, which is even subtle than the concept of thoughts of distress. This subject does not quickly get in the grasp of the disciple. What the disciple sees what he smells and what he touches and what he enjoys and what he hears, all these phenomena take place in this mind. As such knowledge of consciousness and knowledge of conscious mind does not quickly get in the grasp of comprehensions. The knowledge that the disciple does attain is in reality the knowledge of lack of spiritual knowledge. It is in lack of spiritual knowledge that there is the matter and subtle forms of faith, of experience and of awareness. It is due to the presence of the smoke screen of lack of spiritual knowledge of the formless forms that knowledge does not quickly get comprehended about these aspects.

Consciousness is the subject of the embodied self-conscious of soul. It does not have a formless form. It is without shape. As such knowledge of its lack of spiritual knowledge falls under the realm of non-preparatory yoga. The non-preparatory yoga gets attained during seeded spiritual union with self-conscious in conscious mind, in which mind is in the state of complete purity. It is in the non-merger state of nature, at that time knowledge gets attained about the mind’s lack of spiritual knowledge or say like this that when the mind gets obliterated, it is then that knowledge about the lack of spiritual knowledge of self conscious and knowledge about the conscious mind gets attained. Such knowledge gets attained automatically. It is when the mind becomes clean, guilt-free and static that such a knowledge gets attained.

The mind remains restless on account of impure and guilty thoughts and self-ego. The mind’s impurities and its guilt complex and its wandering thought create distress in the mind. When there are less of impurities and less of guilt complex and less have wandering thoughts of the mind that it starts experiencing pleasure. The restless mind does not experience pleasure. The mind normally does not remain in a state of pleasure. Due to knowledge of this aspect it experiences less distress when there are less impurities and less complexes in its thoughts. lack of spiritual knowledge is due to the presence of self-ego, which hibernates in the depth of the conscious mind. It is because of this self-ego that the mind exists. The lingering past subliminal impressions which are embedded in the mind are about the living being, his life span and his place in the universe, gets created. The creation is very subtle. This is because of the presence of lack of spiritual knowledge in seed form in conscious mind.

Great Sage says that the spiritual knowledge of lack of spiritual knowledge about consciousness and knowledge of mind is to be attained by a disciple. He says that knowledge about thoughts in respect of lingering past subliminal impressions is also to be attained. Thoughts of lingering past subliminal impressions are to be enjoyed and undergone carefully and with consciousness According to him that is the cure or treatment which will lead to the knowledge of self-ego and the knowledge of lack of spiritual knowledge. It is on the total purification of the seeded spiritual union that complete awareness gets experienced. Before the perfection of seeded spiritual union, the knowledge which the mind attains is that of lingering past subliminal impressions floating in it. Such knowledge is of the living being’s subtle mind subtle elements state of nature. It is created out of the subtlest essence state of nature.

It is nature, which creates it with the help of its own characteristics and qualities namely melodious and illumination, motion and action and sluggish and inactive along with they’re characteristics, modes and the cosmic law. What is experienced on the attainment of knowledge of the mind is the subtle formless form of the mind or what are experienced on the attainment of the knowledge of the mind are the formless forms of subtle thoughts that keep on crisps crossing through the mind. The seed of affection, enmity or fear of death keeps on sprouting in the subtle mind or in the thoughts racing through it. This condition and state of mind is due to the presence of gross thoughts, due to the presence of impurities due to the presence of guilt of cravings and due to the presence of lack of spiritual knowledge in the mind. All these aspects keep on floating through the flow of all the five kinds of thoughts, Knowledge itself is not the causes of its smoke screen.

The cause of gross, impure and guilty thoughts in the mind are due to lack of spiritual knowledge, about affection, enmity fear and self-ego. It is only on the attainment of the knowledge of gross form of lack of spiritual knowledge that the cause gets eliminated. The five kinds of thoughts of the mind which flow in the mind in the shape of a form and which are about subjects and objects and animate and inanimate elements, appear to take on a form. They take on the shape of the form on which the mind’s consciousness is focused. As such the Great Sage Patanjali says that the disciple is first of all to attain knowledge about the gross form of the five kinds of thoughts of his mind. There after he is to liberate his thoughts from impurities and guilt complexes. It is only after liberating the thoughts from guilt complexes and impurities and making them craving free that the disciple is to make efforts to stabilize the empty thoughts of his mind. The gross and subtle thoughts passing through the mind are to be emptied of their contents and made totally free from any encumbrances. It is only then that the empty thoughts of the mind are to be stabilized. A stable mind is pure and guilt free.

lack of spiritual knowledge, however, continues to remain in the mind due to the mind’s unconsciousness, which is focused on it. It is by gaining knowledge of lack of spiritual knowledge that knowledge about the mind’s true and formless non-merger state gets attained. The mind does not have an independent existence of its own. It is only a means adopted by nature to grip the consciousness of the embodied self-conscious of soul. When consciousness becomes aware of this knowledge, it is then that the mind gets obliterated automatically. It is then that the consciousness gets stabilized in its own embodied self-conscious of soul. It is only by self-realization that release and salvation from life gets attained and the self-conscious of soul by crossing beyond impurities and guilt complexes and distresses becomes enmity free, fear free and gets liberated. When the self-conscious of soul gets liberated from the cycle of birth and death, it becomes the knower of action. It becomes Almighty. It is then that it gets merged in the God. The self-conscious of souls own separate conscious mind gets eradicated and eliminated.

The Great Sage says that creation of nature essence and self-conscious of soul essence and God essence are one true essence . The self-conscious of soul is the internal middle part of the creation of inner formless God. Consciousness is possessed by the self-conscious of soul. When the self-conscious of soul is focused on the nature, it is then that nature creates its own conscious mind in its subtlest nature essence. The arrangement which nature makes in making the consciousness stay in it is through the conscious mind. It is nature, which makes an arrangement for showing its innumerable and endless sights in the conscious mind. It mean’s that the conscious mind’s life is created by nature essence. When consciousness is focused on nature, the self-conscious of soul does not get knowledge about its own existence. The knowledge that it attains is about nature or its subjects or objects. When consciousness is focused on the self-conscious of soul, it is then that the embodied self-conscious of soul gets true knowledge about him. It is then that he gets knowledge about the existence of natures as well. When the consciousness gets stabilized in formless God, the knowledge attained is the seed of supreme knowledge of formless God. It is also the knowledge of the self-conscious of soul . Such knowledge also encompasses knowledge about the creation.

Yoga Tip :- Select any one spiritual form & remain above any blind worship or superstition attached to it. Meditate on it with devotion regularly and consciously. Here is offered secular image of Hotei in tranquality- the Laughing Buddha. Hotei in tranquality is the Japanese God of Good Fortune. Amiable, serene, and content, Hotei in tranquality is a Buddhist priest. Hotei in tranquality posture of relaxed , cheerfulness & standing meditation posture emphasizes that the state, which Buddhists call enlightenment, is consciousness of mind that is subtlest state of nature essence. In this world, human being lives heavenly or hell life depending upon his control of conscious mind.