The ‘eight steps of the Yoga of Patandjali’ were known thousands years ago. However, up to now, their original esoteric meaning had not been unfolded. The Teachers were to reveal it only to the devoted pupils and that time has now come. The ‘eight steps of yoga’ show a progressive path towards perfection. Without having mastered one step, it is impossible to comprehend originally the following. It is, however, necessary to practice all steps, placing emphasis on the first ‘till all actions of developing yourself do not merge into a single infinite act of unification with the Supreme.
The first step: Yama
This stage could be regarded as that of self-restrain or yoga ethics. Yoga is the path leading to the union between ourselves and the Universe, between the spirit and soul, between the finite and the infinite. It is a path that lasts a whole life.
If you split yoga from life you will not be successful. This split comes from a misunderstanding about what yoga is. Yoga does not deny a life, it does not force a person to reject life, but it gives a new view of both the surrounding and yourself.
Although Yoga encompassed a vast array of exercises, its essence is that of seeing the Divine in everything that exists. To this purpose, it is necessary to free yourself from all illusions that disturb this process.
Prejudice has hypnotized us in childhood under the influence of an environment created by people who are fundamentally unhappy and ignorant.
If you do not want to end up being like them, you should seriously decide to embark on this path. Yoga’s ethics do not uphold the same values as social ethics. This is spiritual ethics and it supports spiritual development and it makes us conscious of ourselves not as social individuals, but as whole universes, as God’s infinite ocean. SAT CHIT ANANDA.
Ahimsa- Do not kill
The principle ‘do not kill’ is known to all and it iseven persecuted by the law.
Ahimsa, however, does relate to murder. On the contrary, all Indian philosophers talk about the immortality of the soul: you are immortal and, therefore, no one can kill you nor can you kill others at the soul level. However, it only our body that is mortal, as all things on earth, this too is finite.
In childhood you had one body that changed in adulthood and will again become different as you grow old.
The esoteric law Ahimsa says that a human being kills himself at all times. You have a tendency towards violence, towards engaging in the continuous struggle amongst body, feelings and mind. This conflict is killing you, it eats you energy and your life. For instance, you wake up in the morning and your mind says: “You have to get up and go to work”. Your body, on the other hand, does not want it, it is passive. This is why, a conflict arises between them. In another occasion, maybe you are in love with somebody, but your mind forbids you to live it, tells you that this is not allowed, that it is not moral. Your feelings might want joy and fulfillment, but your body is sick and weak and again conflict arises! This makes you weak, irritable and violent against the world. The real reason is however in your own self: body, feeling and mind, as in the ancient myth “The swan, the crab and the fish”, pull in several opposite directions.
Yoga is, first of all, union of body, feelings and mind. This Oneness can only come, on the one hand from liberation and, on the other, from developing will power, seen as the ability to control the work of the body, of the emotions and of the mind and, also, of achieve independence from them.
Conflicts cannot be repressed. If you repress something in your being, you will not destroy it, but drive it into the subconscious. This will express itself from there, it will never give you rest. Let us see how the human brain is arranged. This consists of small cells, the neurons. When you perceive something new and learn about it, the neurons gather in groups by means of the communicating branches- the axons.
In the brain, there are sets of these groups devoted to storing information about people, work, home friends etc. By reference to one of these agglomerates, you may remember one of your friends or any event that happened in your life. If you develop your concentration, then you can recollect all events as realistically and vividly as if you had plunged into what has been part of you in the past.
The chains of neurons subsequently form larger agglomerates where unpleasant and pleasant, edifying and depressing, stupid and wise memories are stored. It should be clear by now that the brain is divided into several ‘compartments’ constantly fighting with each other, as for instance the ‘compartment’ responsible for morality and that responsible for the reflection of the man, who oppresses and terrorizes you.
You start to hate this person, but as a result, you destroy by power impulses the zone of the brain responsible for it. Memories, hatred, rage and other negative emotions are destructive.
You can hate this person even when he is not present, even when he has died, as the zone that reflected him has remained. The first thing to realize is that everything that you know about the world is in you, it is memory and, yet, this knowledge divides you, carries conflicts. Each part of the brain has certain energy, one part of a brain opposes another and, yet, you need to understand that all of it is you: all people and events, although they exist outside, for you they are part of your brain and, amongst them, there is a continuous internal dialogue. Various conflicts or idyllic situations can never occur again and, yet, they keep on repeating themselves in the imagination and this goes on endlessly.
Yoga, first of all, is not only the lack of oppression of one part over the other, but the union of all these parts into a whole.
There are three paths leading to this union.
Bhakti is the path of love towards everything external and internal that unites your fragments and eliminates all conflicts among them. Find within yourself the one who already loves the whole world, without expressing violence and without forcing yourselves to love.
Each part of the brain has a telepathic connection with the object it reflects. When you have negative thoughts about a person, you send negative emotions to him/ her. If that person has no negativity, then your emotions will find no match and will return to you. If you have managed to influence this person in a negative way and he or she is similar to you, conflict will arise when you meet or you, vibrating on a hostile impulse, become object of an attack of the negative emotions of the other.
When every spot in our brain is predisposed towards a specific flow of emotions, it is capable of attracting similar energy and information from the surroundings as well as from other people.
Magic is based on this.
People who are aware of this create within their being a part responsible for the reception of the highest emanations or, in other words: divine emotions, through the chanting of prayers and mantras, through faith and the offer of service to God, through higher emotions or, also, through receiving high knowledge with creative actions, philosophical thinking, development of intuition etc. This more advanced side takes control of the whole brain. The existing knowledge and methods of influences of yoga unite the brain in a single whole and, thus, the person gains a crystallized personality, individuality. The path to it crosses the threshold of the conflict between the internal and the external, in order to learn to live in harmony both with external and internal world.
OM SHAKTI, SHAKTI, SHAKTI.
Satya – Truth
This is translated as ‘truth’. It does not mean only to tell the truth about some facts but, above all, to b free oneself from the fantasies.
A lot of people deceive themselves. The whole of society does so. For instance, a person thinks that he has willpower but, in reality, he does not. He is driven by desires.
Many people are unable to free themselves from simple habits, like smoking, idle talk etc. Sometimes a person, led by the fear of death, may beat one of the habits that may harm his health. This, however, it is not willpower, but desire to live.
In order to test your willpower, you should try to overcome at least one of your habits, even though as a human being you are totality made out of them.
Besides what said so far, a human being falsely believes that he is whole. In reality, a person is made up of various personalities. Within a person exist simultaneously the good family man and the hangman, pity and cruelty, rationality and recklessness. As we have said, there are many different parts in the brain and a person assigns a role to each one of them: family man, boss, lover, buddy etc.
A person shows as many personalities as there are spheres of being: one is not the same and not identical everywhere; one cannot be himself, but simply a ‘role’.
Even at this moment, as you are reading these words, you are assuming one of the most rational roles, that of the ‘learner’, yet exaclty this part of you needs to be integrated into a single whole. If you think that you are whole, you are wrong: in you there are all sorts of people and they function as they like. Each of them takes power for five minutes and creates whatever they want in the kingdom of your essence.
That you have the same name all the time and, also, a body changing to a greater or lesser degree, create the illusion of a unity that, in reality, does not exist yet.
Each one of the parts of your brain has its qualities and its own abilities: one can be wise and, another effective in action. They are all necessary in life. The only drawback is that they are split.
These pieces are like servants who occupy places where they should not be: the groom is in the kitchen whilst the cook in the stable.
An important clue that will help you tidy up this mess is the ‘managing director’ or, in other words, the most intelligent part of your brain, equipped with methods for self-stabilization, to be more precise: Yoga practices.
Most people present themselves as they like, as light souls, intenolligent beings or as people with a developed consciousness. In fact, all this is just wishful thinking and does not correspond to reality.
Man is identified with his own body; he cannot feel that he is a soul, although he can imagine that he is a soul.
Man may not be conscious of the processes controlling him, although he keeps on saying that he is a conscious being.
Creating constant nonsense, this person likes to think that he is reasonable, this makes him satisfied. Many people show pseudo-competence when they are not competent at all. A lot of them have an answer for all occasions; they judge everything in the world, even things of which they have no idea at all.This is why Jesus Christ used to say: “You are sons of deceit and daughters of lie”.
The mind is literally a canvass of lies and this is a fact that can be understood only through constant and impartial self-observation.
If a person does not start telling the truth to himself, even his development becomes a big lie as everything else. We are born in lies, we have been taught lies for too long and, now, the time has come for us to make a revision of all this. You can use any situation and thought to come to this realization, as this is the whip of idle talk and inner dialogue. Putting an end to these is the main goal.
Asteya – Do not steal
The esoteric meaning of Asteya is different from the simple ‘non appropration of a foreign object’, because the meaning of the words ‘I’, ‘not I’, ‘mine’ or ‘foreign’ are relative and ephemeral.
Asteya means: not to steal from our own selves. Each person constantly steals from him/herself.
If you look at your life and at the life of people around you, you will see that this is awfully primitive and monotonous.
People perform five types of actions: eat, sleep, work, fight and entertain themselves. However, a human comes into this world with endless possibilities. He can develop his talents, become ingenious, achieve anything he wants, reach beautiful worlds, become like Christ, Buddha or Zarathustra. Instead, he is chained to a family, his work, his small purposes and desires, worthy only of animals.
You are similar to the owner a great castle who huddles in the cellar. You can find an exit into beautiful halls, you can live at once in each room, but you are not even suspecting this. This castle is not a million in your pocket; millionaires often commit suicide: any riches surpass the maddest of dreams.
As an ant is incapable of understanding the life that humans lead, so you are unable to realize your infinite prospects and potential: they areboundless.
Man is a slave of the collective unconscious and blindly imitates the thoughts, desires and actions of the social circle he belongs to.
A person unconsciously either kills time or works as a donkey senselessly and for the only purpose of getting on with life somehow. Often, a person searches for what is inside in the outer world. He aspires to knowledge, happiness and authority, searches for love and God outside of himself, when all of it is within our being. Any power coming from the outside is unstable and has an end, whereas at the same time any knowledge obtained from books and unsupported by experience is dead and useless. External happiness is replaced by suffering and by the pain of loss. If you wish something, first of all feel the condition you wish to reach.
Imagine that your desire has been fulfilled and hold on to it, understand that you want to achieve these feelings, this emotion, although you already know about it, as it is in you.
Just visualize and experience what you have been wishing with greater intensity and, then, increase and cultivate this feeling in you: then you will be independent from the external. Before, in order to hold on to a feeling you needed a push from outside, someone's permission or someone's opinion. Now you are free. This feeling is simply a movement of energy in the body and it depends only from you.
Authority is will, knowledge, concsiess, happiness and love for the whole world.
Yoga is the development of the inner activity, the development of energy. Ordinary people are active externally and passive internally. Their feelings and reason are generated from the outside. It is necessary to learn to operate them meaningfully so as not to depend on the external world. You can rob yourselves by living in the constant expectation that something will happen, that someone will do something for you, that the prince or the wizard will come. This will never happen, everything is in you.
What you need is celebration. You wait for holidays or for a work permit so that you can celebrate;celebration also needs permission, food, drink, friends, praise and gifts. You can be in constant celebration, no matter what, without a reason, just having the feeling of this state, just feeling the movement of cosmic energy within: this energy always exists; it is here and simply waits for you to unleash it and fill yourselves up with it. This is true wealth.
Brahmacharya
It is usually translated in a metaphorical sense as ‘celibacy’ and it means ‘the Brahman’s student’, the priest.
We approach the God’s knowledge with the help of people, who already have this knowledge. We cannot reach it alone. In the beginning of the spiritual path, we need a ‘push’ forward, we need a Guru, highest knowledge, without which we are incapable even of thinking that it is possible to live in a different way.
When, by receiving knowledge, we understand the purpose of and the possibilities in our life, we need of someone who awakens us, ‘pushes’ us and offers us new advice. However, the Teacher does not lead you personally.
The enlightened are few and far in between and their tasks are great. The Teacher only works with a group of people, who decidedly and actively follow this knowledge and whose members help each other. There are not enough people capable of waking alone the path away from the prison of the collective unconscious. If you already have tried, then you understand this. Help already waits for you. If you wish to advance in the spiritual world and help even a small group of people, the Teacher is ready to help you.
He can initiate you and you can organize at home a community for the creation of the spiritual culture that awakens humanity. The devoted pupil, living in the world, studies from the true Brahman’s reality. The whole universe becomes ‘the Teacher’: any situation, any person helps the pupil to uncover something in his being and to realize it. He sees the Absolute in all and everywhere. Even now you can use life for understanding your own self, each situation and each barrier, as obstacles are not outward, but inward imperfections. By overcoming the external, we overcome something in ourselves.
Frequently during the period of Brahmacharya, the pupil decide to make a vow of chastity (vow of celibacy), although this is not compulsory.
What matters is to control one’s sexual energy. Sexual energy is the creative power of Kundalini that lifts our consciousness to the Divine. Many people, carried by this energy, have destroyed themselves, by falling into promiscuity.
It is exactly this power that drives someone to create a family and need love and care. When you govern this power, you become able to acquire great strength and the ability of developing creativity and spirit.
Recollect how inspired you were in your childhood and compare this state of being with what has appeared in you after starting your sexual life.
Look how people have withered from not knowing how to use their life power correctly. You may say that sex offers great pleasure and yet, to be able to maintain energy can provide a constant condition of euphoria, independently from sex. We are not opposing sex. Right from an antiquity, India had Tantra-yoga, the path of sex.
This doctrine initiates to the path into Maidhuna, the correct sexual intercourse. This rests on the following set of conditions:
1. During Maidhuna one should not have an orgasm,
2. Maidhuna should not lead to exhaustion or to a release, but to increasing energy and excitement,
3. It should be done only with a Tantric partner, i.e. a congenial and, only, for a spiritual cause, purpose.
Although Tantra is rather difficult, it is far more effective than celibacy. A person’s level of consciousness depends on the level of his energy and, therefore, by keeping energy, you can also raise your level of consciousness in order to understand the Spirit. Wasting energy through sex, seeking love and desiring to look after somebody else hold you away from real happiness, as this should not depend from anything at all.
Aparigraha: non ‘gathering wealth in everything’
People’s wish of ‘gathering wealth in everything’ is connected not only with material things, but also with opinions. Even a spiritual purpose can become object of ‘gathering wealth’. Often Aparigraha is understood as ‘being satisfied with little’, be unpretentious. It is a fact that someone’s real needs are much, much less than what he has got used to think he needs. By refusing superfluous needs a person finds the freedom pf perceving the highest spiritual world: the refusal of each pseudo-need is both victory and progress.
Besides physical needs, it is very important to eliminate any other limiting striving to anything mundane and, later on, to all other purposes. Actually, this act of rejcting gives more than what a person had originally given up: the whole life long had ‘exchanged the moon for a copper penny’, by blaming destiny, giving himself away for a trifle and loosing the perspective of life.
Any attainable aim limits you. Buddhism has Bodhisattva, the vow to lead all beings, plants and even stones to enlightenment and, only after, go to Nirvana. This unattainable purpose gives the chance to reach the unimaginable. It gives energy and the understanding that a person’s perfection is infinite. A limited purpose reduces your power, deprives you of youf freedom and limits your growth. If you do not dream the impossible, it hardly will come true.
In the beginning marks and purposes are certainly necessary to you. Aspire to the highest; do not think that you cannot reach it. It is only a thought. Yet, after achieving the crystallization of your being, you will need to reject all purposes and tasks, because it is impossible to reach freedom, having it as purpose as it is impossible to enter Nirvana by aspiring to it. At the end of the path, it is necessary to reject even the highest purposes so to be released and gain access the incomprehensible. This marks the transition from action to non-action, where ‘non-action’ is ‘action without purpose’.
Once people asked a monk who had reached freedom: “How do you live now?” He answered: “I carry water, I chop wood.” So people told him: “We do that as well.” He answered: “You are not in what you do, you want to an award, to have a result. I am content with the action”.
A person has forgotten how to enjoy life and simple actions. He looks for reward, without even knowing what to do with it sometimes. He always seeks the result, run for whole live towards the end of the line, but the end of the line is death.
It is necessary to reject ‘wealth gathering’ and to be here and now, to enjoy life, to be content of one’s own destiny. A person always searches for something outside. He wishes to be like others with regards to any ideal but, in this away, he departs from truth, from his own self, forgets his unique individuality and, as a result, turns himself in to a set of social opinions and stereotypes, forever closing himself off from creativity and freedom. Turn to yourself: you are neither worse nor better than others: you are unique. At present your individuality is buried by the attributes of the collective unconscious as well as by worldly purposes and programs.
Reject it all! It kills you, it gives you pain and grief, it burdens your life. Be yourself! Live in the present, free your chains and do not care if the world accepts you or not. As for you, accept the world, completely, without feeling pity for it. As for yourself, you are good because you are in the essence. Conflicts in you only generate out of the models imposed by a society that does not allow you to be yourself, that represses you.
The practice of Aparigraha uncovers all your desires, analyzes them and weakens all identification and connection with them; relax and with a feeling of relief, exhale, rejecting them all.
Yama practice is re-evaluation of life:
In the first stage it is necessary to:
1. Study everything written about this stage every day.
2. Analyze our life in relation to the five principles mentioned above.
3. Make a list of the opinions, goals and programs that lead you in life and try get rid of them through understanding and detachment, whilst having a clear sense of your own individuality.
In order to feel your individuality, you can request your own personal Mantra, Yantra as well as a meditation music for your “I’m”. If you do not understand and translate into action the practice of Yama, the next stages of yoga will bring no result.
Yoga is not only a healing system, but also a tool for changing and transforming our own human-animal self into human-god self. If you place the ‘turbo engine’ of yoga in the rotten carriage of your being as this is now, you will gain very little benefit from it. Understanding should transform your being.
Each stage of yoga can lead you to freedom. As these together lead us to a lost area of freedom and happiness, all its steps are interdependent. Let good luck be with you, in your sacred work, uniquely valuable both for you and the whole Universe. AUM!
