“Patanjali Yoga Sutra article based on the talk in Los Angeles, March…”

Patanjali Yoga Sutra article based on the talk in Los Angeles, March 24th 2009

In the last discourse, we addressed the seventh sutra where Patanjali talks about the first modification of the mind: Right Knowledge. Now we will address the eighth sutra where Patanjali talks about wrong knowledge. Right knowledge and wrong knowledge are interconnected. Patanjali defines right knowledge as that which should be done. He defines wrong knowledge as that which should not be done.

The whole science of unclutching is given in the eighth sutra. This one sutra can completely transform the way in which you think, the way in which you act and the way in which you live. This one sutra can awaken a new consciousness, a new energy inside your being. Patanjali says:

viparyayo mithya-jnanam a-tad-rupa-pratistham

The sutra is translated as, ‘Interpreting based on past conditioning leads to misconception or wrong understanding.’

Problems start with our wrong understanding, as Patanjali puts it here - viparyayo. Please understand it is an important word. I can say, it is the key word.

Earlier today in a press meet, one journalist asked me, ‘You speak about meditation. What are we supposed to do? Should we close our eyes, sit and meditate?’ I replied to him, ‘In the initial level you need a technique. You may need to close your eyes and sit for half and hour. However the real essence of spiritual life is not just meditation. This one sutra gives the complete understanding. Stopping the misunderstanding is real meditation. Meditation is not just an activity that you do for ten to fifteen minutes per day and then forget about it. No! It’s a quality of life! In the initial level, it might be more appropriate for you to create a point of concentration to centre yourself. Sitting for half an hour with closed eyes in meditation is OK but it is not the end.

Meditation techniques are like boats. The teaching that Patanjali gives in this sutra is like a river. Boats are OK in the beginning but a boat is not life itself. Life is a river!

So Patanjali says, ‘Interpreting based on past conditioning leads to misconception or wrong understanding.’

Whatever problem you may have can be solved with this one key because whatever problem we have is only because of this one reason: ‘interpreting based on our past conditioning’. All of our fear, greed, all of the things which we think as our identity, all of our worries and whatever we think as a disturbance or misfortune in our life, can be sorted out with this one understanding.

For example, if you were hurt in the past by somebody who was wearing white clothes, whenever you see a person in white clothes, you will always have a certain fear and discomfort. You will continue to carry that fear. The person who hurt you in the past is in no way connected to the person you now see in white clothing! They are different people, at different times, place and space. However we pass a judgement.

We continuously carry our past and with that past we constantly judge the present. When we judge with past conditioning, it leads us to misconception. The judgements we pass about a particular race, the judgements we pass about a particular religion and the prejudices we carry, are all related to this misconception and wrong knowledge. Actually if this one sutra was propagated all over the world, there would not have been any wars. The world would become a much more peaceful and blissful place.

If we look with a little bit of compassion and sympathy at each moment, a whole new understanding will happen. When we don’t have compassion for this moment, we will always judge this moment with our past experience.

Patanjali is giving us a new key and that key is to have compassion and sympathy towards the present moment. We are always violent with the present moment. We kill the present moment with the past. Killing the present with the past is what I define as hell!

In any situation, if we are open, fresh and alive without words from our past conditioning, we can handle the situation directly. We can experiment with the situation directly. We can experience the situation directly. Instead, we don’t wait until the situation appears in front of us. Before it even happens, we take our own decisions, our own ideas and our mind becomes completely confused with our past engrams (engraved memories). We go on and on interpreting simply based on our past conditioning.

With this one sutra, Patanjali describes all of our problems. If you just sit and contemplate on this one sutra, it can lead you to enlightenment; nothing else is required.

Just internalise this one sutra and do this one technique: Sit in your house for just one hour today and write down ten incidents where you made the mistake of interpreting an incident with your past conditioning. They don’t even have to be incidents collected from your whole life. Even from today morning until evening you will surely be able to write down ten incidents. Write them down so you can observe how your mind behaves, so you can observe directly how the second modification of the mind has led you to suffering.