The Yoga Sūtras
(YS) of Patañjali, as well as many other texts from Eastern traditions, give us
not only a theory of reality, but a therapeutics of the spirit. In diagnosing the symptoms of the ‘disease’
they also detect the root of the cause, the cosmic reason for its existence,
and provide methods for its complete elimination. Such therapeutic nature is easily visible in
the four noble truths of Buddhism and also in the structure of the second Book
of the YS. Both Buddha and Patañjali not
only detect that the main disease is suffering but also that we all have it (YS
II.15), even in moments of great pleasure and happiness. Why? Because even though the symptoms may
recede and we may feel well, the cause of the disease remains. For Buddhism, attachment, the root of the
disease, can be present even while we are feeling good, and for Patañjali,
ignorance is always present during suffering regardless our mental state. Both think that the disease can be cured
(II.16) although the healing process may require an arduous and long
treatment. Curiously enough, for both
Buddhism and the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali, the path for the
cessation of suffering is eightfold.
Now let us go a little bit slower. Why does Patañjali say that the cause of
suffering is ignorance? Ignorance of
what? Sutra 17 says, under Iyengar’s
translation, that “The cause of pain is the association or identification of
the seer (ātma) with the seen (prakṛti) and the remedy lies in
their dissociation”. The word pain is
translating duḥkha, which is more commonly rendered as suffering. I think this is more accurate, since the word
‘pain’ conveys the meaning of a sensation that is ephemeral and ceases with its
opposite, i.e. pleasure. But suffering
is more of an existential state that does not really have an opposite. The only way to get rid of suffering is to stop
its existence altogether, to eradicate the root that causes it.
Sutra 17 tells us that the cause of
suffering is a certain ‘association’ (saṁyoga) between the seer and the
seen. But Iyengar adds, perhaps to make
it clearer, that the remedy lies in their dissociation. This could be a little bit confusing,
especially when we get into the next sutras which talk about the Cosmogony of
Yoga. Who is the ‘seer’, what is the ‘seen’,
and why should they be dissociated?
Patañjali describes ‘the seen’ (dṛśyam)
as that which is constituted with the three qualities of: bright
appearance, action, and steadiness (YS II.18).
Basically, the ‘seen’ is that which is constituted by the three guṇas,
that is, the three basic universal forces that are characterized by
bringing lightness, clarity, intelligence, brilliance, in the case of sattva;
movement, activity, restlessness, in
the case of rajas; and heaviness, firmness, obscurity, in the case of tamas.
Everything in Nature (prakṛti) is a combination of guṇas, and
it is due to their different levels of sattva, tamas and rajas, that
each object presents its particular characteristics (YS II.19).
In the cosmovision presented by the
YS, the manifestation of everything visible presupposes the activity of
different levels of reality that have been evolving since the very first moment
of existence of the Universe. In other
words, all the objects that we see, like plants, trees, rocks, rivers, animals,
our own bodies, houses, cars, as well as everything that can be not only seen,
but touched, smelled, tasted and heard, is already the manifestation of more
subtle particles and natural forces that we cannot see, nor touch, nor smell,
etc. Those subtle elements or forces
come from even subtler sources of manifestation in the Universe, in such a way
that the more subtle a level of reality is, the more universal it becomes. For example, in the realm of the objects that
we normally “see”, we have them of different and varied colors. If we attend to the source of the color, we
realize that it comes from particles of light which are refracted in different
ways. But the light, being a subtler
principle, is one and the same for all the colors. Now, according to the YS, the particles of
light would be a manifestation of something even more subtle, for just as there
are particles of light, there are also electromagnetic waves. So as long as there is a variety of species
there will be a subtler principle from which that variety comes.
If we go far deeper into the levels
of reality, we will find that the origin of all variety of physical forms,
energies, frequencies and forces is that level in which things are not differentiable
any more (alinga). In that level,
everything is merged into a mass of pure matter, if it can be described like
that. When that happens, the guṇas
stabilize in full equilibrium, like a triad of forces that do not allow the other
two to manifest. Everything, from this
pure potentiality of manifestation to the myriad forms, visible and invisible,
that exist around us is what Patañjali calls “the seen”, and the seen has its
origin in praṛkti, the ‘mass´ of pure procreative matter.
Prakṛti is called “the seen”
because the Universe would not be manifest if there were not another to whom it
can manifest, that is, the Universe is only the Universe because there is a
consciousness that is constantly ‘seeing’ it.
That consciousness is usually described in the Indian classical
tradition as a “witness”, as that which ‘perceives’ and is ‘conscious’ of all
the objects in the universe without being one of them and without being
affected by them (YS II.20). The “seer”
is that which gives this whole existence meaning, for if there were not “a seer”,
“the seen” would not have any purpose. There
would not be anyone to whom the Universe could give “enjoyment or emancipation”.
Literally, for the YS, the purpose of
this whole existence is so that “the seer”, the universal consciousness, can
have the experience of enjoyment (bhoga) and liberation (apavarga) (YS
II.18 and 21). We could also put it in
this way: that it is “the seen” which
gives purpose to the “seer”, for without anything to see or experience, the “seer”
would not have to be liberated from anything, and therefore, would not be able
to experience itself. For liberation is just
that, the moment in which Consciousness experiences itself as it is, pure,
eternal, immaculate. “The conjunction (saṁyoga)
of the seer with the seen is for the seer to discover his own true nature (YS
II.23)”.
So now we can ask again, why, if the
conjunction of the seer and the seen give purpose to each other, do they have
to be separated, dissociated, as Iyengar’s (and many others’) translation
says? It is my interpretation of the
Yoga Sūtras that the seer and the seen can never be dissociated, for their
very same definition depends on each other.
It is, however, their confusion which needs to be avoided. The seer and the seen are not the same, and
yet, the whole predicament of our existence and suffering, as the YS have been
repeating over and over again, is that we are constantly taking them to be the
same. But to take what is conscious to
be unconscious is precisely what constitutes our ignorance (YS II.5), for it is
when we take ourselves to be this body, and these belongings, and this
personality, beliefs, ideas, labels, names, etc., that we ignore our real self. This sounds like a repetitive Yoga Sutras
slogan, but just consider: if we knew and fully acted with the consciousness that
we are beyond any limited label that is attributed upon ourselves, then our
happiness, freedom and possibility of action would not depend upon others’
acceptance, or others’ judgement, not even life disasters, or death… This is, I think, the “dissociation” that
Patañjali is referring to: the dissociation of what is the real conscious
element in ourselves and in the universe from all those limited unconscious
associations that do not allow us to express ourselves as conscious
beings. It is, thus, an existential
dissociation rather than a metaphysical one.
It is a dissociation that happens in our understanding of ourselves and of
the world, rather than a dissociation or separation like that which happens
between water and sand.
In this way, the ignorance (avidya)
that makes us ill with suffering is that cognition that makes an incorrect link
between the seer and the seen, rather than the cognition that links the seer to
the seen. I again depart from Iyengar’s
translation in II.25 where he renders the sutra as saying that “breaking the link
binding the seer to the seen” is emancipation.
The seer and the seen are cosmically linked, we cannot disconnect or
dissociate them. That would just
generate— and has certainly generated— more suffering. Emancipation is precisely to recognize their
link and discern correctly between them so that we stop making incorrect
connections, like that of thinking that our self reduces to our ego or selfish
personality.
Thus, the medicine against suffering
is discernment, viveka (YS II.26), that knowledge that expands
our wisdom into deeper and deeper layers of understanding (prajña) and
that, according to the Yoga Sutras, is achieved by the eightfold practice of
yoga (YS II.28).
(By the way, check on the sidebar to the right the video (posted previously) where I try to illustrate the different layers of reality according to the Yoga Sutras.)
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