Vairagya – Spontaneous Non-attachment

Vairagya – Spontaneous Non-attachment

[00:45] Maharishi Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras

Some 2,700 years ago, so about 700 BC, was a great Maharishi who lived and taught. His name was Patanjali, Patanjali. And you know, sometimes I hear Westerners butchering the name, because we can’t help it. We pronounce our words differently, “pat in jelly.” But the proper pronunciation, for those who’d like to learn how to pronounce it properly, is Patanjali [Part-arn-jilly].

And properly, we should use the prefix before his name. His title was Maharishi. Maharishi Patanjali. Maharishi Patanjali, one of the great masters of our tradition. He’s best known for a book that he wrote entitled The Yoga Sutras.

Yoga means, not bending and stretching and all of that that everyone does, which is also helpful. That’s what yoga has come to mean in the West. But yoga actually properly means unification of individuality and Universality. Where individuality and Universality meet, deep down inside of our consciousness state, the place where that unification occurs is referred to as yoga.

And the word yoga has given us our English word yoke, Y-O-K-E, where a thing which attaches something that moves like a beast of burden with, say, a cart. That’s the yoke.

In India, yoga is not pronounced yoga. Some of you’ll be surprised by this. When you go to India, you’ll hear people pronouncing the word yog, yog, Y-O-G. The A is elided. To elide means to evaporate a particular syllable. And so yog became yoke in English, the thing that unifies, the thing that unifies two things.

[02:56] Siddhis – Developing Extraordinary Human Capabilities

Yoga then is a consciousness state. It’s a consciousness state that can be experienced and attained during the practice of Vedic Meditation.

Sutra, Yoga Sutra. Sutra is related to our English word, and is the etymology of our English word, suture. A suture is a stitch, something that binds something to something else. When you bind two things together, you use a suture, and suture comes from the Sanskrit word sutra.

A sutra is a consciousness formula. Sometimes it’s translated as the word aphorism, meaning a short, concise statement of a truth, an aphorism, but properly, it’s a suture; it’s a stitch. What the Yoga Sutras do is they are specific consciousness formulas which bind The Absolute state onto the relative state.

That is to say, individuality and Universality are bound together using sutras, sutras. Yoga Sutras of Maharishi Patanjali, a fabulous document. And it reads in a very abstruse way. When you read it, sometimes it’s hard to make sense of it because it’s written in a formulaic style and it’s codified. That is to say, you have to be somebody who knows what the code is in order to extract from it any useful kinds of practices. 

And one of the bodies of knowledge that I have shed light on in the last 20 years is what we call the siddhis. Siddhis represents the third chapter of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Siddhi, S-I-D-D-H-I, means an extraordinary human capability. An extraordinary human capability. 

The siddhis are part of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, how to develop extraordinary human capabilities, and I have a course called Mastering the Siddhis, in which I train you to use the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.

[05:36] A Spontaneous State of Non-attachment

In the Yoga Sutras is a word that Patanjali uses frequently, and the word is vairagya. V-A-I-R-A-G-Y-A. Vairagya, vairagya, V-A-I-R-A-G-Y-A. Vairagya, vairagya.

Vairagya is very often misinterpreted and mistranslated, understandably, but mistranslated nonetheless, as “detachment.” And he describes it as a condition of consciousness that arises from the practice of dhyan. Dhyan is the Sanskrit word for transcendence, meditation. You dive beyond thought; you’re experiencing dhyan.

If you stay conscious and go beyond thought, you’re experiencing dhyan. Dhyan is what we refer to in the West as meditation, if by meditation we mean sitting quietly with eyes closed, sitting upright. If that is what we mean by meditation in Sanskrit, that thing’s called dhyan, D-H-Y-A-N.

One of the products of dhyan is supposed to be vairagya, which is misinterpreted as detachment. And so then what happens is when well-meaning amateurs, an amateur is somebody who does something for the love of it. It’s turned into a pejorative phrase or term that we use to describe people who aren’t very good at what they do.

But I like to use it literally. It has the word love in it. Someone who does something for the love is an amateur. 

When amateurs read Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, they’ll often come away with the way to gain enlightenment is to culture detachment, vairagya, and that’s not in fact what Patanjali had intended whatsoever in his writings.

Vairagya is a spontaneous state of, and I’m going to make a distinction here, non-attachment. What’s the difference between non-attachment and detachment? Detachment is a decision that somebody makes; they decide to be detached from whatever is the object of experience.

Whether that object of experience is news of a particular type, something that has come to your awareness that you didn’t know before, that’s news. Whatever that news is.

Or, an experience in which you’re engaging, like for example, eating an avocado sandwich, and you might decide to be detached while eating. Detachment is very often described by people who misinterpret Patanjali as a technique because he does relate it to meditation.

And I’d like to just shed some light on the truth of vairagya as non-attachment. Non-attachment happens to be a spontaneous observation you’ve made about the way in which you didn’t get attached. Rather than detachment, which is a more conscious, proactive, prospective behavior: “I decide to be detached,” or “I was detached.”

Detachment may also mean a thing that I did afterward. “I had the experience and then I detached from it.” Non-attachment means attachment never occurred in the first place. And this refers to an experience that practitioners of Vedic Meditation may have after some years of becoming more adept at their practice, morning, evening, morning, evening, 20 minutes twice each day is our recommended prescription.

[09:48] A Witnessing Phenomenon

And what happens is familiarity with the deep inner consciousness field, the deep inner Self, the field of Being, that becomes so great that that state of Being has awakened. And it’s awakened to the extent that it’s detectable, even in the eyes-open waking state. One can sense a backdrop of silent Beingness, which is more defining of who I am inside than is the activity in which I’m engaging.

Typically what happens is we become what we see, and by see here, I mean see, taste, type, smell, or hear. Seeing means perceiving. You become so engaged in the thing that you’re looking at or tasting or touching or smelling or feeling that you lose your deep inner sense of self. The object world defines you.

The object world, the behavior of the objects, the movement between them, the phenomenology of them, causes identity to occur. In other words, I identify with the object world; I become what I see; I become what I hear. And so my Self knowledge gets overshadowed by knowledge of the object world, and my deep innermost knowledge should be my knowledge of myself as the Totality Field, the Unified Field.

That field, which is the one indivisible whole consciousness of The Universe, is in fact my baseline. When I’ve awakened that baseline through regular practice of meditation, and it’s starting to appear in the waking state, the sense of that, then when I think about who I am and what I am, more importantly what than who.

When I think about what I am, I’m the one indivisible whole consciousness field, and I might be eating a delicious avocado sandwich, and I notice that there’s a kind of witnessing phenomenon going on. I appear to be the witness of a hand picking up the sandwich and a mouth munching on the sandwich, but I’m not the hand; I’m not the beautiful sandwich; and I’m not the mouth that’s munching on it. I am this other thing that’s sitting in the backdrop witnessing this.

In order to explain this experience, Maharishi Patanjali refers to it as non-attachment. It is non-involvement. Although from an outside perspective, you look totally engaged and you may even be with your mouth full while chewing the avocado sandwich, having an animated conversation with somebody at the table, from anybody else’s perspective, you appear to be fully engaged, fully involved, total involvement.

[12:55] A Consequence of the Practice of Vedic Meditation

From your own inner perspective, the real you deep inside is witnessing the phenomenology of a sandwich being eaten by a body and by a hand and a mind generating thoughts and conversing with people. And so there’s this non-involvement, non-attachment experience, and so Patanjali doesn’t extol vairagya as a thing to be practiced.

He extols the practice of the art of meditation, which may then produce the experience of vairagya. So vairagya is really a symptom. It’s not a cause of anything. We can’t become a more enlightened person by deciding to be detached. 

So then you see people who interpret this wrongly. They begin to culture a tendency to be detached. And so somebody comes at them and says, “Oh. I just love you so much. I look into your eyes and my whole soul sings to you. Thank you so much. I adore you.” And the response of the person who’s practicing detachment is, “I’m so happy you’re having a good experience. What’s next?” You know. You know, detached.

If you practice detachment, you’re going to become not a very nice person to be around. If spontaneously, you experience non-attachment while yet engaged, you’re engaged at every other level, but inside yourself, it seems as though the dance, if you’re a dancer, is dancing itself through you.

If you’re a pianist, the music is processing through you onto the keyboard. If you are an orator, the words are flowing out of your mouth spontaneously without any aforethought. If you are a martial artist or basketball player like Michael Jordan, you’re in the zone, meaning there’s a frictionless flow that causes you to be able to deposit the basketball in exactly the right place at the right time with no friction.

And there’s a part of you that doesn’t feel involved in the action, rather than this becoming a state that you have a query about and you wonder whether or not it’s correct. Patanjali points out it’s a symptom of regular practice of meditation. Spontaneous non-attachment occurring on the level of that non-involvement of your deep inner Self.

Outside, everything else fully attached. So if somebody comes to you and says, “I totally adore you. You’re the most lovable thing, and you make my heart sing.” You just say, “I feel the same.” But the deep, the deepest, most deep inner I, the non-involved Self, non-attached Self, and then there is the relative self that’s totally engaged. This is the proper meaning of the word vairagya, vairagya.

Vairagya is not a practice. Vairagya is a symptom of a practice. It’s a symptom of a practice.

[16:23] An Indication of Cosmic Consciousness

Guest: So then by extension, is that an indication of Cosmic Consciousness?

Thom Knoles: It’s an indication of the growth of it, when we have moments of it, and then it might fade away. The vairagya, the non-attachment, non-involved, I find myself engaged. I’m fully engaged. I’m not being detached. I’m fully engaged, and yet there’s a layer of me that feels as though something else is doing the activity.

There’s a mind doing it. There’s an intellect doing it. There’s a hand writing or typing or whatever, and there’s a layer of me that’s the innocent witness. Now, this may move in and out of consciousness. For a period of time it’s there and then it fades away, and then one is not having the non-attachment experience anymore, and then it comes back in again, and then it goes away again.

Sometimes extreme excitation of the outside world will cause non-attachment to occur on the inside world because of the contrast. You know, you get a big contrast. You’re called upon physically or mentally to engage in a way that is dynamic, very dynamic, then it contrasts with the part of you that is the witness. And sometimes in a situation like that, you might notice this vairagya happening.

Now when gradually, gradually, it becomes the standard experience that’s going on all the time. Not moving, not alternating in and out, not fading in and out, but it begins to, you know, here’s an episode of it; there’s an episode of it. They might be an hour apart and then gradually they’re only half an hour apart. And then gradually they merge and there’s no apartments at all. Maybe you have 5, 6, 7, 8 hours or a whole day of vairagya, and then gradually even it spreads into the night’s sleep.

I’m lying on the bed, my body is falling asleep and I can hear the body snoring, or making the little throat rumbles if we don’t want to call it snoring, and there’s a part of me that’s witnessing myself being asleep. I’m witnessing a sleeping body. The I is not asleep; the body’s asleep. But you can go into sleep as well.

And first instances of vairagya, it’s always very noticeable. It stands out. As it starts to become a continuum, one normalizes it. And when you normalize it, it’s so interesting. You don’t know you’re experiencing it anymore. You don’t know that you’re experiencing it anymore.

[19:08] The Freedom of Spontaneous Non-attachment

What you do notice is that other people get really attached to everything. So you’re standing in the airport terminal and they make the announcement that, after five announcements of delays, one hour apart each, they finally tell you the truth, which is that they’re planning to cancel the flight.

And you see other people around you reacting to this in a way that’s very attached to whatever their thought was about the flight and its potential outcomes or the disruptions that now are going to come from the flight not being on time.

And you suddenly discover you have lots of room and what’s that room? You have room for adventure. Like, “What’s going to happen now? Wow. I’m at Dallas Fort Worth and my flight’s been canceled. Where’s the best restaurant in town?”

Instead of being attached, like everyone else around you, you notice you must be non-attached, even though you’ve normalized it; it doesn’t seem to be your habit to get attached. When change comes, you’re able to be adaptive. When change comes, you’re able to improvise. When change comes, you’re even able to be a little adventurous about what’s coming next, and you’re fascinated by it.

So a fascination with change, a fascination with changes of expectation rather than an aversion, which is aversion comes from being attached. “I was very attached to the relative world, was going to generate satisfactory experiences according to my expectations, and now the relative world no longer is the arbiter of what I feel like.

I feel good all the time. Change of expectation. No problem. Couldn’t wait. Time for adaptation. Change of expectation sounds like adventure to me.”

Guest: This feels like a parallel to Kriya.

Thom Knoles: It is. It is. It runs in parallel with it. They’re really all part of the same thing. Kriya.

Spontaneous right action. Flow. Being going into action. Innocent witness. “I am not the actor. I’m the witness of the action.” Action’s happening. In detachment action may not be happening. And someone goes, “I’m detached. I’ve decided to be indifferent about this.” This is an intellectual thing. Non-attachment is non-intellectual.

Spontaneous non-attachment means you have freedom.