Patanjali’s Eight Limbs of Yoga

Patanjali’s Eight Limbs of Yoga

[00:45] The Yoga Sutras

Jai Guru Deva. Thank you for listening to my podcast, The Vedic Worldview. I’m Thom Knoles.

Today I want to spend some time on what is referred to in the ancient texts of Yoga by Maharishi Patanjali. Yoga, Y-O-G-A, sometimes we think of that as being a place you go to do some bending and stretching and make some breakthroughs in your flexibility. Properly speaking, the word Yoga doesn’t mean that, as we’ll come to in a few moments.

But, in the philosophy of Yoga as espoused by Maharishi, Maha means great, Rishi means a seer, Patanjali, P-A-T-A-N-J-A-L-I, and, for my listeners, please let’s always say Patanjali and not Patinjelly. Patanjali is the proper pronunciation of the master’s name.

Patanjali is reputed to have lived some 2,700 years ago, and so about 100 years before Lord Buddha, he created a treatise known as the Yoga Sutras. Yoga, we’ll get into in a moment. A Sutra is a concise and pithy statement. The closest word we have to it in English is an aphorism, but properly speaking the word Sutra means a formula. And so Sutras, the plural, would mean formulae, the plural of formula.

[02:36] Ashta Anga

And in his exposition on the subject of Yoga, Patanjali describes eight limbs of the body of Yoga.

Eight limbs comes in Sanskrit as Ashta Anga. Now many of you have heard of Ashtanga Yoga, which is a style of practicing physical asanas. Asana is bending and stretching and Ashtanga Yoga is taught, it’s a system that came down from Shri Pattabhi Jois, whom I knew, from his master, whose name was Krishnamacharya, whom I also knew during their lifetimes.

Ashtanga has become something of a brand name for a style of teaching what Westerners refer to as yoga poses, which properly are asanas. Not to confuse things, Ashta Anga means eight limbs, Ashta is eight and Anga means limbs.

[03:44] Yoga – Unification

And Yoga, let’s analyze now for a moment the true proper meaning of that word. It is the word that gave us, has given us, the English word, yoke, Y-O-K-E. The thing, the device that unifies a beast of burden, say, with a plow or with the driver of the beast. A yoke, something that unifies.

Yoke comes directly from the way that Yoga is pronounced in India. In India, Yoga is not pronounced Yoga unless the Indian person is speaking to a Westerner and knows that we tend to pronounce things that way.

In India, Yoga is referred to with the elided A. To elide means to allow to evaporate. The soft A on the end of almost every Sanskrit word, with a few exceptions, almost always is left silent, the final soft A of a word. And so Yoga becomes the word Yog, and Yog, you can see how that would easily turn into yoke.

Yog means unification. Unification. And so what is it unification of? The union of individual human consciousness with Unified Field Consciousness, which is the source of individual human consciousness.

In other words, the experience that can be had when the mind settles down to its least-excited state, and, riding on the cusp of that least-excited state, one is experiencing one’s individuality becoming unbounded.

This is a common experience in Vedic Meditation, when the meditator, innocently practicing their effortless technique, consciousness settles down and moves away from all of the individual concerns of everyday life, all the concerns of the body and what not. The mind, during that 20 minutes of meditation, is able to directly experience the transcendence and then just before that transcendence where there’s no thought. That is to say, consciousness is experiencing consciousness on its own.

[06:27] Samadhi

Just before that experience is what Patanjali is referring to as Yoga, Yog. And so then the experience of that has another name which has to do with the process of the experience, and that is the word samadhi. S-A-M-A-D-H-I, Samadhi, Samadhi.

And this is the least-excited state of human consciousness where it’s not, let’s be mindful of that phraseology, the least-excited, not zero excitation.

The least-excited is a very interesting concept on its own. A trace of individuality is there along with an underlying experience of Totality, Unbounded awareness, Cosmic awareness. When these two things are experienced simultaneously, this is Yoga, Yoga.

[07:39] The Simultaneous Arrival of Balance

And so then Patanjali in his Yoga Sutras, the aphorisms of Yoga, describes that there are eight limbs of Yoga. And these eight limbs, very often mistakenly, are taken as stages Or layers. The fact is they’re not stages. They are simultaneous.

The simultaneous arrival of balance in each of eight areas. The limbs. Think of the limbs of a body. And so, if I have eight limbs, then I could have some kind of experience and, certainly, all eight of my limbs are going to be sharing in the experience simultaneously.

So if I take my body and place it into, let’s say, some cool water on a hot day, my entire body is simultaneously experiencing the cooling effect of the water.

This is a very functional analogy because in our eight limbs of Yoga we need to have an understanding of how the experience of yoga, the experience that occurs as a result of Samadhi, is made, it causes an experience to occur throughout all of the limbs of the body of human experience.

If you hear some paper rustling in the background, I just am looking at some notes that I made going back about 55 years ago when Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, my master, note, his name is Yogi, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, someone who is an experiencer, 24 hours a day, 365, of, the Yoga Consciousness State, the Unified State, and these are the notes which I’m reading to you and commenting on and interpreting.

[09:57] 1. Yama and Its Five Qualities

The first of the limbs, of the eight limbs of Yoga, described by Maharishi Patanjali in his treatise, the Yoga Sutras, the first of these is referred to as Yama.

And Yama has within it five observed qualities. Truthfulness, which is in Sanskrit the word Satya, S-A-T-Y-A, Satya.

The next of the five observed qualities is non-violence. Ahiṃsa Ahiṃsa. Ahiṃsa is spelled A-H-I-Ṃ, with a dot under it, S-A.

 Ahiṃsa, which is sometimes translated as non-violence, but properly speaking, its literal meaning is non-injury. We’ll come back to that.

The third of the five observed qualities under the heading of Yama is non-covetousness. What would that mean? Even in English we don’t use that word that often.

In other words, finding one hankering after objects of the world. To hanker, to covet or to hanker after the objects of the world. And the Sanskrit word for this is Asteya, A-S-T-E-Y-A, Asteya.

The fourth of the five observed qualities coming under the heading of. Yama is upward directed life force. This means Brahmacharya, B-R-A-H-M-A-C-H-A-R-Y-A. Brahmacharya, Brahmacharya.

Brahmacharya means that the life energy in the body successfully comes from the soles of the feet, up through to the base of the spine, up through a little chimney in the spine known as the Sushumna, and into the head, which is the center of the broadest consciousness in the human body, and is not caught up, our energy, our consciousness energy, is not caught up anywhere else lower in the body. And so this is Brahmacharya.

The fifth of the five observed qualities under the heading of Yama is non-acceptance of others’ possessions. Sanskrit word for this is Aparigraha, Aparigraha. Aparigraha is sometimes translated, and I would say incorrectly, as a scholar of Sanskrit, as non-theft, not stealing. But non-acceptance of the possessions of another, Aparigraha. We’ll come back to all of these in a moment.

[13:21] Outcomes vs Causes

Yama, five observed qualities, which are truthfulness, Satya, non-violence, non-injury, Ahiṃsa, non-covetousness, Asteya, upward-directed lifeforce, Brahmacharya, non-acceptance of the possessions of another, non-theft, Aparigraha. These are all under the heading of Yama, which is the first examined by Patanjali of the eight limbs of the Yoga Consciousness State.

So these are not, and I want to emphasize, things that you have to do in order to attain to the Yoga state. That’s an incorrect interpretation of Patanjali’s teaching.

That in order for you to attain to the Yoga state, you have to be truthful, Satya. You have to be non-violent, Ahiṃsa. You have to be non-covetous, Asteya. You have to be, have the lifeforce constantly directed upward, Brahmacharya, very often translated incorrectly, in my view, as celibacy. And the fifth, non-theft, Aparigraha.

In fact, we’re going to look at these in a completely different light and look at them as the spontaneous outcomes of the experience of Samadhi, the eighth of the eight limbs.

We’ll get into that in a moment.

[15:05] 2. Niyama and Its Five Observances

The second of the Ashta Anga is Niyama, Niyama. Niyama, sometimes is pronounced without that final A, Niyam. But we’ll go with Niyama for the moment. N-I-Y-A-M-A. It is encompassing the physiology and five observed qualities or five observances which occur in the physiology when one experiences the eighth limb, which is Samadhi.

These five observances of Niyama, which is the second of the eight limbs, is the first is purification. Shaucha, in Sanskrit. Shaucha, S-H-A-U-C-H-A, purification, Shaucha. Something that purifies the physiology.

The second is contentment, known as Santosha. Santosha properly means mature contentedness. Mature contentedness. What do we mean by that?

If somebody has immature contentedness, that means to say they are becoming contented without it yet being a deserved state, then what we have is a kind of torpor in life, a kind of disinterest in action. Premature contentedness will cause lots of problems in life, however, mature or well-deserved contentedness or contentment is referred to as Santosha, Santosha.

The third of the five observances within the physiology, under the subject of Niyama is withdrawal from deserved pleasures. Withdrawal from deserved pleasures is translated into the Sanskrit word Tapasya. Tapasya. Also known, with the final ya, missing, the word properly spelled is T-A-P-A-S-Y-A, Tapasya, but it’s very often, and most frequently, referred to simply as Tapas. T-A-P-A-S. Tapas.

Tapas or Tapasya literally means to heat up the body. Heating up. I’m returning to that soon.

The fourth of the five observances of the physiology under the heading of Niyama is that of study. Study, we’re going to say better intellectual understanding.

Intellectual understanding, Svadhaya. Svadhaya. S-V or W if you like because in Sanskrit a V and a W are represented by the same alphabet character, they are the same letter. Svadhaya. S-V-A-D-H-A-Y-A, Svadhyaya. Sometimes you’ll hear it pronounced in India as Svadhay. Svadhaya means good intellectual understanding, sometimes translated as study.

The fifth of the five observances that are described under the heading of Niyama is known as Ishwara Pranidhana. Ishwara is spelled I-S-H-W-A-R-A. Ishwara Pranidhana, P-R-A-N-I-D-H-A-N-A, Pranidhana. Ishwara is expressive of the Supreme personification. Personification of the Supreme Creative Intelligence. And Pranidhana means absorbed attention or devotion.

This is considered to be a feeling of devotion to that supreme personification of creative intelligence, Ishwara. Supreme personification of creative intelligence, whatever it is that’s supreme to you.

[20:18] 3. Asana – The Sequential Elaboration of Limbs

The third of the eight limbs examined by Patanjali is known as Asana. Asana literally means either a seat, something upon which you sit, or a posture that you assume. Asana. And the way that my teacher, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, described it, Asana means the sequential elaboration of limbs intended, not for action, but rather a sequential elaboration of limbs intended to transition from action in the direction of Being.

 And Asana is what all Westerners refer to incorrectly by the word yoga. I’m going to go off and do some yoga at the Ashtanga place or Swayamvara Yoga or Anuswara Yoga or Hatha Yoga or I go to the yoga studio and I study yoga and the idea meaning that you bend and stretch in a variety of ways in specific sequences.

Most of what is taught today, I would say at least 98 percent, in the yoga studios of the West is actually Asana. Asana is the proper name for this, physical asana, bending and stretching the body in particular ways, a sequential elaboration designed to move in the direction of action.

Whereas in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, very specifically, he refers to Asana, what we commonly call yoga, these different sequences of poses, as a sequential elaboration of poses designed not for action, but to move in the direction of transcendence, to move in the direction of Samadhi.

That is to say, you learn how to bend and stretch your body in a specific sequence which, instead of preparing you for war, which is what 98 percent of all yoga taught in the West is designed to do, they are the asanas designed for soldiers who are going to go into battle.

Very effective if, after the so called yoga, after the asanas, you’re planning to go and take yourself into the battlefield of the world. I learned this from the man who brought modern-day yoga to the West, Sri Krishnamacharya, two of whose students were Shri Pattabhi Jois and B. K. S. Iyengar. Krishnamacharya told me that the asanas which he had taught were asanas designed to go in the direction of action, not in the direction of the Yoga Consciousness State. It’s very interesting.

[23:32] Asana for Transcendence

My teacher Maharishi Mahesh Yogi taught a system of Asanas, a sequence of bends and stretches and poses, and a way of doing them, we call Vedic asanas, that any one of you can learn from a properly qualified teacher of Vedic Meditation, as an aid to your practice of Vedic Meditation, a sequence designed to take the mind and the body from the excitatory levels of wanting to engage in action, specifically “battle,” instead of that, to move back in the direction of Being, of the one indivisible, whole consciousness field, the least-excited state.

So Asana properly, as described by Patanjali, which is the third of the eight limbs of Yoga, means learning how to do a sequential elaboration of Asanas, of bends and stretches, designed to quieten the mind and take the mind in the direction of transcendence, rather than into action.

[24:51] 4. Pranayama – Administration of Breath

The fourth of the eight limbs, the Ashta Anga of Patanjali, is known as Pranayama.

Pranayama. Prana means the life force that’s in the air. It’s embedded in the air, pervading the atmosphere, but it becomes Prana when you learn how to do Yama with it.

Yama, whenever we see this word Y-A, Ya and Yama, we see something being administered. The administration of the breath, that is to say, the use of making the breath subtle in aid of moving the breath in the direction of Samatha.

Samatha is the marginal breathing in and out, very, very slight, almost and including almost not breathing, which spontaneously occurs, not as a practice, when the mind of the Vedic meditator is in the least-excited state.

Pranayama is designed further to make subtle the breath in the direction of that spontaneous arrival of virtual non-breathing that spontaneously occurs when the mind and body are very deep in the practice of Vedic Meditation.

In Vedic Meditation, when mind and body are in their least-excited state, the requirement to top up oxygen from the atmosphere is minimized. As a consequence of that, one of the outcomes, spontaneously, is that the breath hardly comes and goes. It’s a sign of the body in a state of unprecedented deep restfulness.

We call that breath state Samatha, S-A-M-A-T-H-A, the micro-oscillations that characterize breathing during the experience of transcendence.

[27:00] 5. Pratyahara – Inward Intentionality

Now, we’re going to examine the fifth of the eight limbs of Yoga, according to Patanjali. The fifth is Pratyahara. Pratyahara. Pratyahara. P-R-A-T-Y-A-H-A-R-A.

Pratyahara. This is the intentionality to turn inward. When we practice Vedic Meditation, we have to have an intentionality in which we are willing to withdraw from the objects of the senses. The senses themselves acquire the inward-moving charm that’s provided by the bija mantra. Bija, seed, mantra, mind conveyance.

A bija mantra is a sound, in word form, which is taught to a Vedic meditator by a qualified teacher. That sound, not working on the level of meaning, working purely on the level of sound, there are different bija mantras that are appropriate for different experiencers of them.

Just as in Ayurveda we’ve learned there are many different body types that respond differently to temperatures, respond differently to food groups, respond differently to times of day, to seasons and what not. There’s no one blanket statement you can make from the Vedic perspective about what’s healthy for everyone.

Any particular food that you name, for about a third of the people it’ll be helpful, but for about a third of the people it will have almost no effect, neutral, and for about a third of the people that food that you are recommending will make them worse.

Getting back to Pratyahara, the fifth of the eight limbs of Yoga, examined by Patanjali, inward-moving charm of the bija mantra. Which kind of mantra do you need in order to settle down into the least-excited state? Classic practice of Vedic Meditation.

[29:31] Reversing Habits of the Senses

This reverses the senses’ habit of projecting toward the objects of the outer world solely. See, our senses are habituated to seeking charm and all the variety provided by the outside world.

“Oh, I just had a bagel, that was really good, with some butter on it, and a bit of tahini. Okay. Now, what’s next?” Say the senses. “Oh, perhaps I can go for a walk on a hot day and let a cool breeze blow on me as I’m walking on the hot day. Ooh,” says the senses, “something more out there in the world that is charming to my senses.”

And now I can take my senses somewhere else and expose them to a variety of experiences, all of which presumably were going after whatever kind of yummy experiences there are there. By yummy, I mean making the senses happy. But from Patanjali’s perspective, this is not the direction of Yoga.

Yoga, meaning the experience of the union of individuality with Universality, has to be experienced by allowing the senses to gain their fascination by providing them with a vehicle of experience internalized with eyes closed, a bija mantra.

A mantra which, as you innocently allow it to repeat silently from inside, within the consciousness field, each pulsation of the sound becomes intrinsically more charming than the previous pulsation of it.

The mind then begins to follow this sound, which, as it becomes subtler, fainter, softer, and quieter, that’s its nature to do so, also becomes intrinsically more charming, more charming, more charming, and this ever-increasing charm attracts the five senses inward.

The willingness to do that is the setting of intentionality to allow this reversal from the outer, senses being only on the outer experiences, to senses being on the inner experience, this intentionality now to go within is referred to as Pratyahara, the turning inward.

[32:05] 6. Dharana – Inward Movement

The sixth of the eight limbs of Yoga as examined by Patanjali is known as Dharana, D-H-A-R-A-N-A, Dharana.

The mind and inner senses dedicate to ever-increasing charm, becoming fascinated by each and every increasingly subtle impulse of mantra or of thought forms in their infant states. Those infant states being just after the thought form has issued forth from the bliss of the unmanifest. This spontaneously affects the exclusion of less charming, that is to say, outer phenomenology. Dharana.

When the mind acquires that internally moving sound of the mantra, which becomes progressively more and more subtle, at the same time becoming more and more charming, Dharana is occurring. Dharana is when our senses find it far more fascinating to be moving actively inward than to move outward, not only intending, intending is the Pratyahara, the previous one.

Dharana is when it’s actually happening. Dharana, that movement inward.

[33:41] 7. Dhyana – Arriving at the Subtlest Layer of Thought

The seventh of the eight limbs of Yoga, as espoused by Maharishi Patanjali, is Dhyana. Dhyana, D-H-Y-A-N-A, very often just pronounced as Dhyan, the final A is elided.

The process of arriving at the subtlest layer of thought and transcending it. That is to say, experiencing the finest layer of thinking, either of mantra or some thought in its infant state of development that’s just issued forth from the bliss of Being.

This is sometimes the experience of a Vedic meditator. It may not be that the last thought you had was a thought of your mantra. It may be the last thought you had on your way into transcendence is some other extremely abstract, faint thought form, but imbued with bliss because it’s just emerged from the bliss field.

And so the process of arriving at the subtlest layer of thought and transcending it. All the previous six limbs are affected simultaneously during Dhyana. Therefore, all of them are implicated in it via integration in the process of Dhyana. We’ll come back to this.

[35:14] 8. Samadhi – Being Knows Itself

The eighth of the eight limbs of Patanjali’s Yoga, is Samadhi. S-A-M-A-D-H-I, Samadhi. The transcendent Knower knowing itself and later it knowing itself even in the waking, eyes-open, relative world while simultaneously experiencing the backdrop of unboundedness.

Samadhi has different levels of achievement, of attainment. Very temporary Samadhi, you’re practicing your Vedic Meditation technique, sitting quietly, and there are moments where mantra disappears and no thought replaces it, but you stay conscious.

Being is Consciousness knowing itself. This is temporary Samadhi because the first thought that comes is, “This is it,” but this isn’t it anymore.

Now you’re experiencing the thought, “This is it,” and so then you need to know how, effortlessly, to allow the attention to curve back onto the technique of the effortless favoring of the mantra that will take the mind once again to that Samadhi. And so then, Samadhi is the state that lies beyond technique. It’s the state in which Being knows itself.

[36:50] Samadhi Affects Yama

Alright, now we need to go back to Yama, Yama, Niyama, these virtues and these qualities and observations of different kinds of things. When we experience Samadhi, during Vedic Meditation, it affects Yama, the five observed qualities. One spontaneously is experiencing the ultimate truth.

Truth means that which never changes. If a thing changes, then it’s not true anymore. It may have had temporal truth or conditional truth, like, “Oh, it’s a hot day.” Well, is it’s a hot day a truth forever? No, it’s a truth for this moment, so long as the day stays hot. As soon as the day starts cooling down, or the day converges to night, it’s a hot day, no longer is a true statement.

What is it that is absolutely True with a capital T? It is only pure consciousness, The Absolute, and the reason why it’s capital T Truth is because it never changes, ever. It is one indivisible, whole consciousness field, unmanifest.

This is Satya. This is the first of the five observed qualities under the heading of Yama, Yama being the first of the eight limbs of Yoga.

Nonviolence. Is it possible to live a relative life? Without bringing harm or injury to absolutely anything. This is a rhetorical question and we must arrive at the conclusion, no, it’s not possible. Because with each breath we take, we are slaying thousands of microorganisms. In every moment of our existence, we are, by virtue of our existence, robbing some other critter, whether it’s microscopic or macroscopic of its right to existence.

Is it possible ever properly to have Ahiṃsa? Total non-violence. Some people say, “Well you can intend it.” And, you know what your mother used to say about intentions. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” The best of your intentions is not going to get you to a state of Ahiṃsa.

The only state in which Ahiṃsa exists is when individuality ceases to be individual and merges into Samadhi, into The Absolute state. Coming out from that, it’s natural that one spontaneously finds it unnecessary to injure, and one becomes less and less and less violent as a result of practicing Vedic Meditation.

[39:50] Spontaneous Self-Sufficiency

As a result of Samadhi, the 8th limb, non-violence is effected, truthfulness is effected, non covetousness, when the mind is in bliss, Asteya. Asteya non-covetousness spontaneously occurs because in that state of transcendence, one’s mind, though conscious and capable of moving on to anything, if anything were more charming, one’s mind spontaneously stops thinking about such things because of B-L-I-S-S. The mind is fathomed in bliss and so spontaneous non-covetousness.

Upward directed life force, Brahmacharya. When we are in that state of transcendence, our body and our other features of our consciousness are not stuck on anything in the relative world or the desire for engaging in the relative world. One is in a state of absolute satiety, satisfaction. Brahmacharya has occurred.

And so then, when we are in that state of complete Samadhi, we’re in self sufficiency, we spontaneously are so self sufficient, the idea of acquiring something which another has laid claim to is not even a possibility. And certainly as a result of practicing Vedic Meditation twice a day, one becomes more and more self-sufficient and doesn’t consider it to be charming to acquire something that belongs to another.

[41:34] Samadhi Affects Niyama

Point number two, Niyama. Niyama, the physiology, the five observances: purification, Shaucha, contentment, Santosha, withdrawal from deserved pleasures, Tapasya, study or intellectual understanding, Svadhaya, devotion to Ishwara, Ishwara Pranidhana. This all spontaneously occurs, all the Niyamas spontaneously occur as a consequence of experiencing the 8th limb, Samadhi. Practicing your meditation twice a day gives you that.

The five observances, purification, body is purified of anything which is foreign to its functioning, notably stress. Accumulated stress is the most pivotal impurity in the human physiology. Contentedness is here absolutely deserved. The mind is in a state of supreme inner contentedness in the meditation state, in Samadhi.

Tapasya, withdrawal from deserved pleasures. That means to say, the mind is no longer engaging in things, even those things that you deserve to experience. You can’t be bothered thinking about them because your mind is in that state of bliss, and certainly as a result of regular practice of Vedic meditation, one finds oneself more and more self-sufficiently happy.

Intellectual understanding, Svadhaya. Those spontaneous occurrences of “Aha,” as you are a practitioner of Vedic Meditation twice every day, how frequently you realize you have a realization. “Oh, the meditation teachers say, do less and accomplish more. Aha! I seem to be doing less and accomplishing more. It looks as though so many of the things I was doing before were unnecessary.”

And then Maharishi would go on to say, “Do least and accomplish most.” “AAh, aha, it seems as though as I import more and more of Cosmic Intelligence into my thinking, the least is required of me, just a mere impulse of intention, and things get done. Things begin to go the way they need to go for fulfillment to occur.”

Maharishi would say sometimes, “Do nothing and accomplish everything.” This is basically what The Universe is doing. Evidently, The Universe doesn’t need any help getting everything done that it gets done through the mechanics of Nature.

We don’t see Nature groaning and straining to make stuff happen. It’s without changing its nature, apparently, under the aegis of the physics principle, the law of least action, The Universe is getting everything done without straining.

Devotion to Ishwara. Devotion to Ishwara means one finds oneself in awe of that personified intelligence that one begins to perceive as existing throughout, through and through and throughout all forms and phenomena. Ishwara Pranidhana.

[45:09] Samadhi Affects All Other Limbs

Samadhi affects Asana. The sequential elaboration of limbs is a thing that you could either do in advance of sitting to meditate, or we can look at it in terms of Samadhi spontaneously causing the body, that is the deep state in meditation, causing the body spontaneously to move into those postures and styles of functioning that it needs to move into in aid of satisfying this balance that Patanjali refers to.

The fourth limb, Pranayama, the further making of subtle the breath in the direction of the spontaneous arrival of Samatha. Samatha, hardly breathing at all, or even cessation of breath, In that deep, deep state of suspended animation that occurs in Samadhi. Pranayama also is affected by the eighth limb.

You see where we’re going here? These are not stages through which you have to go in order to earn Samadhi. You go for Samadhi first. That is to say, you learn how to practice the technique of Vedic Meditation and all the eight limbs spontaneously are affected by you simply going to Samadhi first. These are not the grades of earning Samadhi.

Samadhi spontaneously impacts all of these. Pratyahara, turning inward, Dharana, mind and inner senses dedicating to an ever-increasing charm of moving inward. Dhyana, meditation, process of arriving at the subtlest layer of thought and transcending it, and Samadhi.

[46:56] A Process of Verification and Validation

So Patanjali’s encoding of his Yoga Sutras, is really a way of taking those who are in the know through a process of verification and validation.

If you are doing the right thing, and what is the right thing? Cease doing whatever it is you’re doing. Cease thinking whatever it is you’re thinking. Settle down into the least-excited state of your own consciousness. Transcend the subtlest and experience oneness with Totality, and spontaneously, all the other seven limbs of Yoga will be affected.

And, this is the beauty of our knowledge, the beauty of our technique, and why we refer to it as supreme knowledge, because it meets, properly, the highest level of interpretation of the Ashta Anga, the eight limbs of Maharishi Patanjali, the great seer of 2700 years ago, who wrote the Yoga Sutras, the aphorisms of Yoga.

Jai Guru Deva.