Sutra 1.5

The movements of thought and consciousness are fivefold which are afflicting or not.

In the next few sutras, we find out what the five are, but even reading this for now, after sutra 1.4 knowing that we identify with our whirling thoughts, we say that this will either be disturbing or not. And the distress could be in any of the five categories. What is it that disturbs us? We may think that apparently the disturbance comes from the outside but it always arises from within in the mirror of our own consciousness.

Vrttis categorized, sorted and collated.
Here is the first sutra to look at that doesn't have a sort of meaty and direct message, rather it refers to the previous and the next several sutras to come. Yet looking at the categorization itself can be useful in the same way we can re-organize a closet. We clean it out, we give some things away, we throw some things away, we can see everything we have and so we have a new appreciation for those items. If vrttis are the ways that our thoughts can be collated and sorted and also we know will get cluttered again to be cleaned out again, we will also see in the organization that some are negative and some are positive. What if we only saw what was good and did not see the bad in the world? Would we be able to make choices? Would we think that everything was acceptable and good? At the essence, consciousness is beyond category, beyond labels of good-bad.

As Anusara teachers, we always look for the good first. We begin by seeing where the energy is flowing, where the pose is connected, open, and the beauty of the pose. Then we look at the energy of the pose and see where the major misalignment is. Seeing where the energy is misaligned gives us a choice. Now we can enhance the pose by one instruction. If we were unable to see the energy of the pose, we would not know where to go or what to adjust and so we may make an insignificant adjustment that doesn't really transform the energy of the pose into its fullest potential. The interesting thing here is the contrast-we see the essence flowing just as it is. And we can also see that underneath, somehow locked inside the pose, is one adjustment that will bring even greater energy flow to it. This is aligning along with the vrttis to the main source of energy in each pose.

Yoga Sutra 1.4 Identifying with Vrttis

Blog #5 Yoga Sutra 1.4
vrtti saaruupyam itaratra
At other times the seer identifies with the fluctuating consciousness.

Yoga Sutra 1.4 is the stepping towards what else happens when we are not in the experience of recognizing we are the delightful seer.

The deal with embodiment is that we have time, space and identity. We simply would not be here as embodied beings otherwise. The irony of yoga is that there would be no need for it if we were not condensed forms of One supreme consciousness. And for every moment we are having one experience. Within each experience, we are experiencing on multiple levels, some concealed, some revealed. If there weren’t concealment we would not be able able to experience what is revealed at any given moment. So even though we may be daydreaming of a place faraway or a place only in our imagination, in the past or the future, there we are thinking and feeling whatever it is that we are experiencing. Our body may be in one time-space, our mind sometime-somewhere else-but that combination of where our body is, where our mind is, where our heart is, is going to make the experience. Between what is revealed and what is concealed is a vast array of some things being in the forefront, some being in the background. Sometimes, our more subtle energies are in the forefront of our awareness. The previous sutra describes that experience-we dwell in our true splendor. So, the next question is, what happens when we don’t dwell in our true splendor? On one level we are always dwelling there, we are just not aware of it. On another level what is sat, what is, what we are experiencing as real is the experience of more fleeting and fluctuating waves, vrttis. Rather than dwelling in one’s swarupe, one’s splendor, one’s own true state, the seer is sarupya, identifying, being close or near to the vrttis.

We can go back to Rg Veda 10.90 about Purusha to remember that hymn that states that ¼th of consciousness reveals itself and ¾ths are always concealed. With three-fourths Purusha went up: one-fourth of him again was here. Then He spread Himself out to every side over what eats and what doesn’t eat (10.90.4-5). This hymn is a fascinating cosmological hymn describing how a cosmic person creates the worlds and also is somehow more than the world even as he too is created by it. Paradoxes aside, the yogin upon first practice may think the yoga is to uncover the ¾ths that are concealed, in the heavenly realms. But the Vedas have something far more interesting and expansive embedded in them than issuing a challenge to figure out some fixed measure of the ¾ths-in fact there is no fixed ¾ths because the universe is expanding. The Vedas teach that the universe is vast and expanding: This Purusa is all that has been and all that is to be (10.90.2). From the Rajanaka Tantric point of view, if we focus on the expanding ¼th, on the part that is here and revealed here now, we will have plenty enough to practice. We need not worry about what is concealed, but rather pay attention to what is being revealed. If we are always trying to figure out the ¾ths, we may miss out on the ¼th right before our eyes.

Today, as I am a little sick, I feel my sore throat, my lower energy, and I had a very full day and do again tomorrow, and so on. But the invitation of this sickness is to go deeper inside and feel the vibrancy on a deeper and more intrinsic level. Sometimes, when outer vibrant health is so present, we may not even notice, we can take our health for granted. But when we feel sick, we remember acutely what it is like to feel vibrant, but in a curious way we also forget what it is like, and so however the lens of sickness is allowing us to see the world, there we are, experiencing it just as we are. Sickness itself is not necessarily a detriment to spiritual practice, just as the vrttis are not necessarily a hindrance, just as the ¼ does not obscure that we know there is even more. Rather quite the opposite can be true, can be sat, can be what is our experience. Resting while being present in a full and active day-resting while acting fully: this is a concept of both identifying on one level with the fluctuations-and that the more we receive those fluctuations just as they are-for instance, sickness-vrtti, the more we can actually align with what their energies are offering us. If we are looking at the vrttis as more unsettled and anxious thinking that spins us away from accepting and receiving what ¼th is being offered in any given moment, then we could interpret this sutra ironically as this: we are splitting ourselves dualistically. We are identifying with the vrttis OR we are seeing ourselves as somehow separate from our vrttis and so we start thinking we should not be identifying with them and so then our thinking becomes based on what we shouldn’t do OR we are doing both of these!

The Spanda Karikas tell us throughout that each thought and emotion can be a gateway to the One. They also tell us that every thought and emotion is nothing but the One. May we bring ourselves fully to every moment so that we allow for each vrtti to be felt and thought fully. May we be present with every sickness, soreness, etc so that we may attend to what is. Today, a little sick, I feel the love of my family and their small gestures, their own vrttis swirling, unwinding, winding, I could sense my students’ sorrows and joys, know the fragility of health, acutely feel the delicacy and brevity of life, and that unconquerable spirit that pulsates and chants, “I am”, “I am”, “I am this and this and this”, and simply once more, “I am” no matter what or when. “I am” is eternal. “This” is infinite and whatever we as “seers” are able to “see” ourselves as in this ¼th revealed.

Sutra 1.3 Our Mind, our Splendor, Prakasha-Vimarsha

.Sutra 1.3 bestows remembrance of when we steep in our essence. Then the seer dwells in His or Her own splendor.

When does this occur? When do you dwell in your own true splendor?

I watch my son, Oliver, being tickled by his dad. That laughter and light shines. I watch my daughter belt it out on stage when acting and singing in her school play. Their lights are so purely radiating at these times. These are two instances of them shining in their own true splendor. For my experience of watching: of being the "seer" in this instance-the one watches other "seers" become and be themselves. A seer watching seers can lead to that seer dwelling in her true splendor. I bathed in the rays reflected upon the mirror of my own consciousness.

For a tantric thinker, to read this is to think of places in our tradition where words like "splendor" and "seer" and "consciousness" reside.

Prakasha is the power of the emanating light of consciousness, it is how we are “seers”. Vimarsha is the power of self-reflection. These are the powers of the divine to know itself. These are the powers within each of us to know our selves. Prakasha is not experienced without a mirror, without self-reflection. To empower our experience, we reflect. In the tantra, we say that the entire universe emanates within the screen of our own awareness.

There I was, reflecting joyfully watching my children being themselves. Yes, they are always themselves, yet sometimes we are somehow “more of ourselves”. Our children, and all of us really, seem to be ourselves when we are in our passion, when we are doing what we love, be it in nature, listening to or playing music, flowing freely in a challenging asana sequence, and so on. What is it about these circumstances that lend to the flow of consciousness somehow in a deeper alignment? Somehow the negative peripheral thoughts are quieter. Instead of being a league of overgrown antagonists, they become more like harmless, floating insects on a warm picnic day. They may still be there, but we are in the fullness of the experience of the entire shimmering landscape of our consciousness. Douglas Brooks of the Rajanaka tradition always says that “yoga is becoming virtuosic in being yourself.” Be yourself. Dwell in your splendor.