Raja Yoga Sutras 20: Prana, the Upward Mind and the Light Beyond Grief

This class takes up three sutras of the Samadhi Pada, 34 to 36, and treats each as a special practice against the obstacles named in the previous lectures. Swami Jyotirmayananda first lays the ground beneath all three. The great remedy for the obstacles is ishvara pranidhana, surrender to God, and surrender is not a single act but a movement that deepens by degrees. Its key is japa of Om, and its mark is humility, which he pictures as the mango tree that bows lowest because it carries the most fruit. Sutra 34 speaks of controlling prana by exhalation and retention. Swamiji reads prana here as the mind and senses, which are always letting go and letting in, and asks the intellect to decide what is rejected and what is accepted. That choice becomes the old distinction between preyas, what pleases, and shreyas, what is good. The distinction the class turns on arrives with sutra 35. A seeker can stall by drifting with whatever is pleasant, or by building a rigid routine of so many hours of japa and meditation until the mind goes blank. Swamiji’s image for the stalled seeker is an injured bird that has made its nest on a great tree and forgotten the sky. For the rigid routine his remedy is plain: “Sutra says, renounce that renunciation.” Go by a river, watch the rising sun, and let something lift the heart. Sutra 36 brings the lecture to vishoka jyotishmati, a mind beyond grief and filled with increasing light. The means are affirmations of the pure Self, the example of Rama unchanged by the promise of a crown and the sentence of exile, a potter whose hands both mold and beat the pot, and satsanga. The class closes on a caution about the word light itself: it is not a physical flash, and it is not something to claim.

Where each passage begins

Patanjali’s three scriptures: mind, body and speech

The invocation offers adorations to Patanjali, who gave the world three scriptures: yoga for purifying the chitta, the mind; vaidyaka, Ayurvedic medicine, for purifying the body; and grammar for purifying speech. Swamiji takes the prayer as a statement of the ideal to work toward. Advancing in yoga is the goal, but the movement has to be secured. “You must be healthy.” A seeker who ignores health in the name of the spirit, telling himself that the body goes anyway, will not succeed. “So you have to have the Yogic insight of how to maintain your physical health.” Speech comes next, because it is the plainest sign of how a person deals with others. “The simplest characteristic of that dealing is the way you speak.” If every moment brings out strange words that hurt the feelings of others, then, he says, better not be a Yogi. The purity that grows in a yogi’s heart comes out through speech as the fragrance of an inner, blossoming feeling. He sets it beside the people who eat onions and then speak. “The words carry a mystic fragrance. That is not limited to just your nose. It goes into your heart, it touches your soul.”

Surrender comes by degrees

Turning to the obstacles, Swamiji names the most important way to overcome them: ishvara pranidhana, surrender to God, the development of a God-ward mind. Whatever one knows of surrender, one starts with it. He asks only that the seeker not be like Arjuna, who said, “I surrender to You, but don’t ask me to fight.” The humor, he says, is there to show that surrendering comes by degrees. The beginner surrenders to God through the night and then asks what has been gained: not even a good sleep. “You are a childish lover.” “Surrender again is a process, progressive movement.” It grows as the personality is integrated day by day: happy in one’s work, with good feeling toward people, developing bhakti in the understanding that loving God means touching people’s hearts in a good way. Then come the art of meditation, staying quiet and still, and the art of understanding, in which the intellect asks, Who am I?

The reflected sun and the sense of eternity

The I in that question, Swamiji says, is not finally the individual soul but the Absolute. “Everyone is just a wave in that ocean of the Absolute.” If the Absolute is the sun, every soul is its reflection in one of countless jars of water. “Don’t use mathematics, they’re countless.” Ask who is shining in the jar, and the answer is the sun. So the mind should not dwell on the reflected sun shaking on the water. If the vessel breaks or the water dries up, “Nothing is going to hurt you.” Here Swamiji recalls where the teaching of the Gita begins, with ashochyan anvashochas tvam, which he renders as “You are grieving over things not worth grieving for.” Weapons cannot cut the Self, wind cannot dry it, water cannot flood it. “That sense of eternity must develop along with a sense of surrender.”

Japa of Om and the bowed mango tree

To proceed with surrender and to enjoy its sweetness, there is one instruction. “Japa is the key.” “Japa is repetition of the Divine Name.” “Rāja Yoga gave the mantra oṃ, which is the mother of all mantras.” Om is called pranava, and Swamiji gives the sutra’s instruction for it: taj japah tadarthabhavanam. As the mantra is repeated, the ego comes down, the seeker becomes aware of divine majesty, and humility appears as the characteristic of real progress. Enter an orchard and ask which mango tree has the most mangoes. “The answer: whichever is bowed down.” Through the string of the mantra, one feels connected with God, and success depends on day-to-day sadhana. On that basis Swamiji turns to three special practices that help the process gather momentum.

Sutra 34: prana as the mind letting go and letting in

He gives sutra 34 as pracchardana vidharanabhyam va pranasya. “Mental purity is attained through controlling one’s prāṇa, by exhalation and retention.” The whole statement, he says, is mystical. Prana normally means what causes the breath and sustains the vital process of the body. “But in this context, prāṇas refer to the mind and senses.” “Mind and senses are always busy.” They grab things and let them go. “Letting go is just like breathing out. Letting in is just like breathing in.” “The Sanskrit words are tyāga and grahaṇa.” The question of what to reject and what to accept never stops. When the indriyas, the mind and senses, operate under purity of intellect with clear reason, this sadhana is being practiced. “So then intellect teaches you what to accept and what to reject. Ego does not, ego spoils you.” A party falls silent, he observes, when someone asks how long the drinking will go on and what happens after death; but life is not a party, and the intellect must guide it.

Preyas and shreyas: the pleasing and the good

Led by the intellect, and by what is heard in satsanga, a seeker learns two kinds of movement, preyas and shreyas. Preyas is movement by a dull intellect led by emotions and whims, without any control. “A movement that is pleasing is called preyas. But simply because it is pleasing, it doesn’t mean that it is good for you.” Shreyas may be pleasing or not, but it is good. Swamiji compares it to medicine, sometimes sugar coated and tasty, sometimes not. “Nevertheless, it is good for you.” “If you want to be healthy, you are not going after taste.” A daily discipline of meditation and yoga exercises, a plan, an alarm or a friend asked to wake you at a set hour, may not be pleasing. Adopting it anyway, under the guidance of the intellect, is where the will enters. “There comes your resolve, your willpower.” Moving toward shreyas asks for constant alertness, like driving a car, but without stress. Swamiji repeats an earlier illustration. A man lost in a forest at midnight steps out of a hut. Left and right are both dark, but the right way leads out. He remembers the Guru’s guidance that even though it looks dark, this is the way he must go. So it is when the path begins: no symptom of growth appears, and the seeker feels better off before sadhana. The instruction is to allow patience. “And soon, your patience will be rewarded.” “You’ll begin to see some light.” Some expression of freedom follows, and it has an enormous effect.

Sutra 35: a taste for the divine, not soda water spirit

Sutra 35, as Swamiji gives it, is vishayavati va pravrittir utpanna manasah sthiti nibandhani. The translation speaks of the mind developing a taste for divine objects, and he promises to explain what that means. “This will remove mental dullness.” The seeker is anchored to a higher level of spiritual movement. A seeker may be inspired for fifteen days. “Japa has given you joy, meditation has given you peace.” Satsanga has given more knowledge. Then something stops it: physical trouble, psychological trouble, or just the mood. What is wanted is sustained joy and enthusiasm. “Not soda water spirit.” He recalls the old soda bottles: press on one and foam rushes up in great agitation. “Similarly aspirants suddenly become so enthusiastic, full of soda water. The next day, down.” The alternative is udatta pravritti, an inclination that is magnanimous. It should not droop like a donkey carrying a big load. It should be sattvika ambition, an inner taste for real success and the conviction of attaining it.

The injured bird and the great tree

To explain the point simply, Swamiji tells of an injured bird that found a big tree and built its nest right on the trunk. “Day by day it enjoyed a wonderful relaxed situation.” If it goes on relaxing like that, it is not good for the bird. Flapping the wings and trying to fly may be painful, but there is a greater joy in leaving the tree and using the wings, and that taste of joy must come into the bird’s heart. It comes more easily when the bird also understands that confinement to the tree is miserable. “Who knows, the tree will be here today and tomorrow a wind can blow it away.” That understanding is vairagya, dispassion. The world one depends upon is the tree, and the seeker is the injured bird. While living, start; let the wings grow; remember that the tree being rested upon is not the goal, and that a bigger experience is waiting in the blue sky. This way of thinking is mahattvakanksha, an expectation of oneself that is magnanimous, and Swamiji calls it a secret of success. One is not to view oneself as limited, being a ray of God who can rise higher and higher. “The sky is the limit.” Here, he adds, the sky is God.

When renunciation becomes stagnation

The words of the sutra are significant, Swamiji says, and he takes up nivritti. An aspirant decides to stay in one place under a strict rule: so many hours of meditation, so many of japa, the whole day filled. For a few days it is wonderful. Then the mind is simply blank in meditation, japa becomes more mechanical, and the heart is not glad about it. “Great stress has dawned upon you.” From outside, he looks like a man of renunciation. “Sutra says, renounce that renunciation. Get away from that confined state.” Begin with a simple little action. Vishayavati: look for places that can delight the heart. Go by a river or by the ocean, see the rising sun, chat with the birds. These, he says, are symbols for involving oneself in something that inspires and lifts one out of stagnation. “Being stagnant, that is not progress.” A little sniff of greatness keeps the seeker nourished by a divine nourishment.

The upward mind: unmani and adhomukhi

The mind Swamiji wants has unmani avastha, the state of looking up: ut, upward, and manas, the mind. It does not look down at the same day, the same challenges, the same faces. “Darkness will clear. You are going to face the sun.” “Your expectation of yourself is grand.” The opposite is the adhomukhi mind, going downward, which sees ahead only old age and death. The upward mind resolves instead to break down all karmas and develop dharmamegha. “A cloud of divine vāsanās will enter my mind.” “Of course, all descriptions are allegorical.” A mind that is bogged down still holds the secret, and a little change each day lets it discover its potential. “And mind begins to understand that it has a backing that is cosmic.”

Pramada and alasya: procrastination and laziness

Adopted in this way, sutra 35 removes two obstacles named earlier in the series, pramada and alasya. Pramada is the habit of thinking the work will go better the day after tomorrow, until more work piles up and the summer vacation becomes the plan. Alasya is laziness: the mind is made up, but the hand moves lazily. “Pramāda and ālasya, these troubles arise because inwardly you are not feeling joyous about what you are doing.” When joy is felt within, the energy is found.

Sutra 36: vishoka jyotishmati, the mind beyond grief

The next sutra, vishoka va jyotishmati, gives another step up, a method for overcoming boredom and a depressed mood. “Viśokā means beyond grief.” It means beyond rajas and tamas, and jyotishmati means increasing light. The aim is a mind with no grief in it. For those who know the story of Rama and Ravana, Swamiji points out why Sita was placed in the Ashoka garden. “Aśoka means without grief.” “Let your intellect be involved with God in an atmosphere of sorrowlessness.” When the mind is calm in meditation or japa, one can give a positive affirmation, such as shuddhosi, buddhosi, niranjanosi. “You are pure, you are enlightened. You are spotless.” Or one can think of a great personality as the scriptures present Him: Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, Krishna in the Gita. “Bring Jesus into your heart, bring Buddha into your heart, and feel you are growing in His image.”

Rama’s serenity and the potter’s pot

Swamiji recites a line about Rama, prasannatam ya na gatabhishekatah. When Rama was told he would be heir apparent to the throne, “He didn’t become elated.” A day or two later he was told he was banished because of his stepmother Kaikeyi’s plan, and it showed no difference. “That prasannatā must blossom in your heart.” Whatever changes come in the world, one stands above them, in a position to enjoy. “The sky is in a position to enjoy dark clouds coming in or silvery clouds coming in.” Adversity and prosperity both enrich the soul. When adversity comes, the dull mind asks where God was. Swamiji answers with the potter working a pot, sometimes beating it, sometimes softly molding it, until the raw clay becomes a ripe, well-baked pot. “Prosperity and adversity both to be viewed as God’s gift.” That does not mean inviting adversity. If it lingers in spite of one’s best effort to get away from it, “Enjoy developing patience.”

Satsanga and the increasing light

For reducing inner boredom Swamiji names satsanga, and he quotes satsangatve nissangatvam. As enjoyment of good association grows, one begins to discover God within, and a sense of freedom develops. Then comes nirmohatvam, freedom from delusion. The world is no longer seen through an ego dominated mind that asks only whether a thing is helpful to me, whether to get it or to avoid it. “Therefore you are not able to see the glory of God.” “World is filled with divine glory.” It is not waiting in some future when Jesus or Krishna must come again. “Where can He go?” “It’s here and now.” When grief moves away, the inner vision is unobstructed, and the revelation is I am That. “But this whole process is progressive. Every step is giving you more light.” The light of the senses gives way to the greater light of thought, and that to feeling that blossoms into mystic experience. The class ends on a caution about the word. “Don’t think of physical light.” Many practice for months expecting a flash in meditation, and some go on telling others about a light that has never flashed. Swamiji turns that question to his listeners, and the class closes with the chant of peace.

Terms

ishvara pranidhana — surrender to God; the most important means of overcoming the obstacles
japa — repetition of the Divine Name; the key to surrender
pranava — Om, the mother of all mantras
prana — in sutra 34, the mind and senses, always letting go and letting in
tyaga and grahana — rejecting and accepting; the breathing out and breathing in of the mind
indriyas — the mind and senses, to be operated under purity of intellect
preyas — movement toward what is pleasing, led by emotions and whims
shreyas — movement toward what is good, pleasing or not
udatta pravritti — a magnanimous inclination; sattvika ambition with a taste for real success
vairagya — dispassion; seeing that the tree one rests on is not the goal
mahattvakanksha — a magnanimous expectation of oneself
nivritti — withdrawal; in this class, a renunciation that can harden into stagnation
unmani avastha — the upward looking state of mind
adhomukhi — the mind turned downward
dharmamegha — the cloud of divine impressions the upward mind resolves to develop
pramada — procrastination; putting the work off to another day
alasya — laziness
vishoka jyotishmati — the mind beyond grief, filled with increasing light; the subject of sutra 36
prasannata — serenity, as in Rama unchanged by crown or banishment
satsanga — good association; the company of truth
nirmohatvam — freedom from delusion, which follows from satsanga

For reflection

Where in your practice have you built a nest on the tree, and what would it mean to use your wings?
Has any part of your routine become a renunciation that needs renouncing, and what simple delight could take you out of it?
When adversity lingers, do you ask where God was, or can you see the potter’s hands at work?

About this lecture

Patanjali’s Raja Yoga Sutras, Samadhi Pada, sutras 34 to 36. Lecture 20 by Swami Jyotirmayananda, Yoga Research Foundation. The complete archive of Swamiji’s lectures is free to all.

This study guide is drawn from the archived teachings of Sri Swami Jyotirmayananda.