Plotinus and Patanjali

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Plotinus and Patanjali Presentation 1 of 1 Plotinus and Patanjali Patterning Toward Realization Presented by Roger Weir Sunday, September 16, 1984 Transcript: The fifth lecture since Tuesday. So, if I fray a little bit. If there are any yogis in the audience, you will notice there is no fraying. We have two of the most difficult human beings of all time to deal with together today. And the reason for these two is that we have been exposed to more advice than is good for us in our time. And occasionally it's interesting to see what happens when first-class minds buckle down to work. So, we'll expose ourselves today for an hour or so to the quality of intuition that has always served to make man worth saving. Plotinus is very difficult to obtain these days. The best translation was done by that Irish sage Stephan McKenna. Very, very difficult to find. I know of one-use copy for sale in Los Angeles now and it's the first time in 15 or 20 years that a used copy has come up. The next best thing is The Essential Plotinus which has been reprinted now. Elmer O'Brien S.J. does the selecting and translating. And in his edition on page 62 we find in the collection of The Enneads the place where Plotinus tells us in one of the few places, in an aside, one of his own personal experience with divinity. With the attainment of that state of being were in divinity occurs as a natural process. Plotinus writes for us that this is often happened. In fact, he writes, It has happened often roused into myself. From my body outside, everything else and inside myself. My gaze has met a beauty, wondrous and great. At such moments I have been certain that mine was the better part. Mine, the best of lives lived to the fullest. Mine identity with the divine. Fixed there firmly. Poised above everything in the intellectual that is less than highest. Utter actuality was mine. And we get the image here from Plotinus that has come down to us of the quietude inner focus, hovering like some bird above the plain of the intellectual. Where the mind delivering up all of its reflective capacities extends as a horizon, as it were. And rising above this horizon, the old eye of Horus, the spiritual Hawk, rising as an inner sun. And shining there in the immensity that suddenly occurs where the horizon of the intellectual plain is but below us and we see that as a world of limitation. And that the implied context of this limited world and this risen full true self, the implied context is that of an infinite expansiveness. In fact, it is referred to at the very end of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, when the quietude of yoga practice has yielded finally the cessation of all the rising and falling impressions in the mind that. That state of asamprajnata samadhi occurs naturally. The rising of an impression less infinite expanse called the cloud of merit. The pure land. The final paradise. And this cloud of marriage rising is like the horizon of the intellectual plain for Plotinus. The disclosure that even that passes in Patanjali yields the silence. Beyond all. And in Plotinus, he refers to it as the alone positioning itself and aspirant ascendancy and addresses it's alone to the alone. And in this instant leap and flight merges, and only the one occurs. Undifferentiate condition. These are the beginning insights that would lead us to consult Plotinus and Patanjali as indeed nearly 1700 years of seekers like ourselves have consulted them. But for Plotinus and in a contrapositive way for Patanjali, the question arises if this is so. If this actually occurs and we can experience this, know this, understand this a question comes up, why ever then what such an omnipotent authentic existence ever come down into matter? Why would we ever exist? Why is it that there are individual human beings? Why this universe? For what reasons? How could we discover this? Plotinus writes after the phrase utter actuality was mine. He writes, But then there has come the descent. Down from intellection to the discourse of reason. And it leaves me puzzled. Why this descent? Indeed, why did my soul ever enter my body? Since even when in the body it remains what it has shown itself to be, one by itself. And then Plotinus takes us in this Ennead in a quick survey of the sages of Greek antiquity, he says that Heraclitus understood these mysteries, but preferred not to be explicit about them. And in the fragmented utterances, Heraclitus invites us to observe that true intelligence with understanding declines to express the unknowable. And throws us back recursively upon our own experience. He says, this is best. And yet we are such that wished to know. And we continue to ask why may we not at least in some humble regard approach this through expression. And again, Plotinus surveying the pinnacles of Greek thought before him says, Empedocles in his cosmic cycle seemed to understand this. But that the Empedocles beyond all Greek was more of a poet. And so versified his utterances so that they would be convoluted in terms of the creative process, in terms of the poetic intuitive mind. And Plotinus says, this is even more difficult to fathom then the mystical utterances and fragments of Heraclitus. And so, he says, where may we go? Where among our forebearers. He dismisses in a poignant paragraph, the Pythagorean approach saying that this simply is too difficult for normal approaches. He writes that, I fear Pythagoras and his interpreter says elsewhere find allegory. And what is more, this allegory tends to lead us astray. And so, if we would follow Pythagoras, we must be ever on our guard against being nutted into an allegorical understanding. A state of mind in which analog becomes convincing and obscures by its own convincing forms the experience of the real. Plotinus then finally settles upon Plato. And he points to Plato, and he says that this man alone of those in classical antiquity seemed to understand the ways of ordinary human beings, approaching wisdom. Those who would wish to understand and wish to converse about it, find instruction about it. And then Plotinus cautions us about Plato. He says, Plato being a wise man. Nowhere in any single dialogue gives us the complete run, the complete development. That Plato is purposely inconsistent. He will give us bits and pieces. And so, we must find our way from dialogue to dialogue, piecing together, remembering, carrying with ourselves. So that the perusal of the Platonic dialogues as a corpus, as a whole seems to be in order. This Plotinus assures us is cumbersome. And because of the difficulties we have with Plato that Plotinus himself will now seek to explain as best he can the standpoint of someone who has experienced himself in this ultimate mode or in this modeless ultimate. And thus, all of The Enneads that have been collected together seem to revolve around this initial point. Of course, The Enneads are not around changed in chronological order. They were arranged after his death. And the nine collections of talks we have to take it that these were not written down simply to be read silently. In classical times one in fact read out loud. School children in Rome were cautioned against reading silently to themselves. So, the classrooms were just a cacophony of students reading out loud. It was the utterance of the word that was the veracity of the statements being made. And so, Plotinus' Enneads were most certainly lectures or speeches given. Given in Rome. Given to small audiences. Wisdom never draws crowds. If you see a crowd at a lecture, it's a sign of something illusory. Plotinus in his talks in Rome, probably in the 260's A.D. For the editor and the biographer of Plotinus, Porphyry, did not join his inner crowd until probably around 261 A.D. Plotinus died in 269. And so, the decade of the 260's was about this time. In The Enneads, out of the nine Enneads, the fourth Ennead which is on the immortality of the soul, contains the beginning thread of those who had most directly approach Plotinus. In the eighth tractate of the fourth Ennead entitled The Souls Descent into The Body, which I have just read you from O'Brien's translation. Here's how McKenna then translates that passage. "Many times, it has happened. Lifted out of the body into myself. Becoming external to all other things and self in centered." Note the distinction between self-centered and self in centered. The implication here is of an, of a dynamic survey going on happening. That one is not self-centered as arriving at some static point where one would put the point of the compass down and then draw a circumference. But rather the self in centered is not made apparent by a pointing to a location but is made appreciable by a circumambulation of the area. So that to be self in centered is to let a presence occur to you, a centering occurr to you, by the circumambulation marking out the sacred boundaries. This is the old path of ritual to mark out sacred definition by purposive of circumambulation. We will find, in fact, this patterning alluded to again and again in Plotinus and Patanjali. In fact, one of the rules of true discrimination is defined this patterning apparent in the process, in the methodology of realization. So, Plotinus writes, "Self in centered, beholding a marvelous beauty then more than ever. Assured of community with the loftiest order. Enacting the noblest life. Acquiring identity with the divine. Stationing within it by having attained that activity." That is by having this circumambulation, this defining motion of acquiring a sense of presence, the authentic presence. One then attains that activity poised above whatsoever within the intellectual is less than the Supreme. Having attained the sacred circumambulation it is then that he realizes that he has in retrospect spiral like climbed above the plain of the reflective mind. That in this process, what has been brought into play is something that is not there as a static thing in the mind, but as a condition preconditional to the mind. And that its operation has it lent the wind, as it were, to the sail of the inquiring self and has raised it above the ocean and of things. And so, in this risen ascendancy then, Plotinus writes, Poised above whatsoever within the intellectual is less than the Supreme. Yet there comes, yet there comes the moment of descent from intellection to reasoning. And after that sojourn in the divine, I asked myself how it happens that I can now be a descending? And how did the soul ever injure into my body? The soul, which even within the body is the high thing it has shown itself to be. How could this come to pass? Later in The Souls Descent Into Body, after he has gone through this survey of classical authors, this brief survey. He then describes that this, this is how we come to read that our soul entering into association with that complete soul. And thus, made perfect walks the lofty ranges administering the entire cosmos. That we in this body have a purpose. That the in centered soul that has descended into this corporeal reality has a purpose. And the purpose is to walking the ranges, the pinnacles of reality, to administer the cosmos, the entire cosmos. So that there is a purposeness bridging the ultimate, the real and the apparent, the world. And man has that bridging function. He is the administer to the entire cosmos. And he writes, "As long as it does not succeed," that is withdraw. "And as neither inbound to body nor held in any sort of servitude. So long it tranquilly bears its parts in the governance of the all exactly like the world's soul itself. For in fact, it suffers no hurt whatsoever by furnishing body with the power to existence." Since not every form of care for the patient cheerier need rest the providing soul from its own sure standing in the highest. So that in its purity, in its function for administering the cosmos, the soul in the body has no fear, has no care. In fact, it is an outgoing process, and the care is extended outward from the soul. And Plotinus expresses it exactly in these words, "The souls care for the universe. We care for that universe. And our care takes two forms. There was the supervising of the entire system brought to order by deedless command in a kingly precedents" Precedents. And that there is that over the individual implying direct action so that we have in our sense of care extended out to the universe as a whole, as a cosmic body, as it were. In Plato it is talked to him in that way in The Timaeus. And the care is twofold because it also extends to our individuality. And thus, the soul bridges the individual and the cosmos through a doubling motion of care, extending out and extending here. In fact, if we look at it in terms of a dynamic this is one care that extends supposedly in two directions, but the two directions are related. And so, there is a circle an ecology of application. And the individual in the cosmos are related through the souls function of caring. And thus, Plotinus establishes the fact that we are necessary to the cosmos. We are necessary to the absolute. And we occur not out of accident, not out of error, but through the necessity of a structuring of reality. Thus, man has for his purpose the recognition of this phenomenal and functional facet without which he is lost, has no idea where he is, what he is for. Plotinus in his writing was himself never fully consistent in any one of his lectures. That is, he never brought a system into being in any single lecture. And so, it is the arrangement of The Enneads is like the arrangement of Plato's Dialogues that we must trust to further our investigation along these lines. The Fifth Ennead, one of the most important in the collection has for its basic development the nature of the good and the nature of the various levels of reality. Plotinus begins in this writing to us, "What can it be that has brought the souls to forget the father God. And through members of the divine and entirely of that world to ignore it ones themselves and it." So, he's asking a further question. He has already asked, how do we come to be here? Why does the soul descend into the body? And that seems to have been answered, to have been positioned. Now he asked the further question, how is it exactly then that we go astray? How is it that given this necessity, this structure, this ecology of reality, how do we ever go astray? How does ignorance ever occur within this patterning? Could it be that ignorance is also a necessity? If so, how so? Why so? Plotinus here in The Fifth Ennead addresses himself with great accuracy to this. He urges us then, Let every soul recall then at the outset the truth that soul is the author of all living things. That it has breathed the life into them all. Whatever is nourished by earth and sea. All the creatures of the air. The divine stars in the sky. It is the maker of the sun itself formed and ordered this vast heaven and conducts all that rhythmic motion. And it is a principle distinct from all these to which it gives law and movement and life. And it must of necessity be more honorable than they. For they gather or dissolve as soul brings them life or abandons them. But soul, since it can never abandon itself is of eternal being. Plotinus seeks to assure us, assure his audience, bring to the fore again, that while considering the question of how ignorance occurs in the world. How error arises. How, if you will, evil occurs that we must keep firmly in our kin, in our view, that the soul itself is quite distinctly different from any of the elements that maneuver and change, transmute, come together. That it is of another order on other quality, which is part of the architecture of reality. Then he writes, giving us the insight, The soul once seen thus precious. Thus divine. You may hold the faith that by its possession you are already nearing God. In the strength of this power make upwards toward him at no great distance you must attain. There is not much between the corner that must be lifted so that the whole form then can be perceived, and it taken off like a husk. The corner that first must be lifted is the confirmation that the soul is indeed real. That this corner once lifted the whole problem of ignorance, the whole problem of deception becomes visible as a form and then can be understood. But to lift that corner, one may not use the mind. One may not use the faculties of perception, of identification, of quantification, of differentiation. That the problem is that consciousness itself in its formal structure forbids us to step outside of its form and perceive some other form. Only the soul may be the vehicle for this feat. And therefore, we must position ourselves to circumambulate and create a sacred space by actual experience. And in this actual experience, let occur that in centered self. And let occur the quality then of rising above the plain of the reflected forms of the intellect. There to comprehend at last, an ignorance may be seen then as some delimited form. Coextensive though it is, temporarily, with the entire extent of consciousness. Yet there is a context behind that, which we might call, designate supra consciousness. Super consciousness or supra consciousness. We now turn, momentarily, to Patanjali. For at this stage, we have gotten, if we are working with definitional mentality to a mind-boggling impasse. And Plotinus assures us that this is a normal reaction, a normal occurrence. If you feel mind boggled at this point, then you have understood the problem. Then you have brought yourself face to face with the conundrum, that there is no way to handle a way that has no handle. Therefore, we must choose a different tack. Patanjali begins his Yoga Sutras. And I'm using three different translations. The Yoga Sutras are very, very difficult to address oneself to in a consistent mode. There are four parts, four chapters to The Yoga Sutra. The first part devotes itself immediately to the problem area. In Indian Sanskrit language, Indian thought, Sanskrit language, that quality, that condition, that threshold of the divine, that supra mental quality is referred to as S samadhi. And so, the first chapter, the first of four parts of Patanjali immediately addresses itself to samadhi. The second part addresses itself to Sadana, the ways of attaining. What has already been descriptively laid forth. And the third part deals with what popularly would be called miraculous powers. The siddhis, the vaboti (sp?), it's called in classical Sanskrit. And the fourth, relates to kaivalya that liberation. Notice the four-part almost seasonal type circumambulation. So that samadhi and the vaboti, the state of consciousness, which tends to lift itself out of the mental conditioning. Samadhi is related to that, those qualities that manifest themselves as superpowers, occult powers, which we are assured at every turn are to be ignored as much as possible in Probhavananda's commentary later on in Patanjali. Patanjali himself regarding occult powers as the greatest stumbling block in the path to truth. Heaps of rubbish they were called by Sri Ramakrishna. The Buddha told his disciples very definitely never to put their faith in miracles, but to see truth in the eternal principles. Christ spoke sharply against those who seek for a sign. And it is unfortunate that his strictures were not taken more seriously to heart by his followers. So that the relationship of samadhi to the siddhis is established as a polarity. It is a coordinate access in this approach to the centering process, so that samadhi and the occult powers are related they're in the same coordinate axis. But crossing them as a perpendicular horizon as another coordinate axis is that single motion, that durational expression, that we would, we would say begins in sadhana and acquires fruition in liberation, in kaivalya, the state and The Yoga Sutras designated as kaivalya. Samadhi then if pushed directly leads very directly to occult powers. And this would be, in the terms of John Bunyan, vanity fair. The way of miracles. The way of super men is a dead end. Instead, the time honored traditional humble approach, the sacred approach, is to move from samadhi to the sadhana, the practice of circumspection. The practice of asanas. In fact, we will see in Patanjali, he enumerates these quite distinctly. This practice of Sadana fruits in liberation and Kivalina in that state. But that one should not move from the practices, the sadhanas, directly to that, but also move through this psychic realm. Because moving through the psychic realm then changes the tone of the practices. Gives the fruition to the state of samadhi. In fact, in Patanjali there are eight samadhi levels that are identified specifically. The motion from samadhi to sadhana to the vaboti then naturally discloses itself in a pattern of form, spiritual form, and the fourth part occurs of its own. We no longer need to lend dynamic to it. Lend purpose to it. Deliberate or not deliberate. Argumentative or not argumentative. Enlightenment occurs. I think the message that Uncle Carl Jung carved over the lentil of his garden gate called or uncalled. The God will be there. This quality. This condition. But that it will occur because we have done the sacred circumambulation. We have acquired by then the in centered presence, the authentically existent. And it declares itself on its own terms, not on the terms of the mind or its forms, or even the super mind and its psychic forms. But in terms of the real, which is undistinguished, undivided, unmeasured occurring, as Plato would say, just so. In the beginning of The Yoga Sutras addressing himself immediately to samadhi, Patanjali assures us that we have in our capacity, the suppression of the transformations of the thinking principle. That the thinking principle, the mind, is a constant motion, a transformation. In fact, that the transformations of the thinking principle constitute the structure of the mind that in suppressing them, in quieting them, the seer abides in himself. When there is no longer this motion there occurs then that presence behind the motion. And in this, often it's been described I think that the best colloquial description I ever heard D.T. Suzuki once described the quality of being on a ship at night on the high seas. And in the mo…motion of the ship and the waves one looks down and sees the body of the surface of the ocean undulating. But that there are times and experiences when one entering a port or entering into the doldrums the water becomes quiet. And one sees on the surface of the ocean all the stars in the sky reflected out. And one has this enormous panorama, this realization, that here is the reflected order. That it occurs in its order here in the mind, in the reflective capacity. But that the order is not substantially there in the mind, but only reflectively so. But this does not mean that it is insubstantial. Simply that one must literally look up. There is the order. There is the substantiality. There is the alone to which we belong. So, the seer abides in himself. And The Yoga Sutras began immediately, just like Plotinus beginning immediately in the section that I read to you. No mincing of words. But now the question is, the problem is, how does this occur? Is there any way that we could understand this? Is there any way that we may talk about this? The first commentary in India on The Yoga Sutras were, was written by a man, a Sage, named Vyasa not Bhagavan Vyasa of The Bhagavad Gita. This Vyasa wrote his commentary in about 300 A.D., which would lead us to expect that Patanjali was probably a contemporary with Plotinus. Probably the late second, early third century A.D. There is a translation of The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali with the commentary of Vyasa in English published by Motilal Banarsidass. A group of Jain brothers in India who have been collected under their Great-Grandfather Motilal Banarsidass. And this occurs in a paper edition also. I think you can find it at some of the well-known bookstores in Los Angeles. Some of the better ones. Patanjali in discussing samadhi has put us right into the center, just as Plotinus has. This occurs. How does ignorance come? He writes then that there seems to occur in these transformations, a structure. And the mind reveals by its own meanderings its architecture. And if we can only position ourselves to see in an architectural way, in a structure way, this meandering, it will disclose for itself the order. In fact, Patanjali writes that the transformations are of a fivefold order. There is a movement of right knowledge. There is a movement of wrong knowledge. There is fancy, or what we would call today, imagination. There is sleep. There is memory. These are not just qualities of mundane consciousness. These are structures of the mind. So that when he talks about memory, for instance, he doesn't just mean that you re…you see something and then you remember what you saw. Or you remember something from a few days ago. That memory is a structure, is in play, all the time in the mind. And memory causes then a reoccurring, an impression to reoccur as if it were happening again. And that this constantly is going on and happening. And that in fact, this intermixes then with the other motions of the mind. So that if one is dealing with a motion of right knowledge, you might remember something from a motion of wrong knowledge and get the whole sequence muddled up. And something else may come in from fancy. And so, we have literally a plate of spaghetti to unravel. Everything is mixed together. Everything influencing each other. And because they are transformative structuring's these dynamics merge with each other very easily. The hand is quicker than the eye. The mind much quicker than the hand. But the yoga, the technique of in centering much quicker than the mind. And so, Patanjali says, "We must learn to see. We must be on firm ground. And this takes a long time and takes practice. And the practice has a quality to it." I'm going to leap ahead a little bit here. Patanjali uses the term ardent for this quality of practice. He says there are mild, moderate. The purusha is disclosed. And its disclosure, it's occurrence even momentarily to the practitioner, discloses that it also has been obscured by a major structure, which is not of the minds making and yet occurs just as the mental structures occur. And this structure is a tripartite structure, and the three parts are designated as the three Gunas, the rajas, tamas and the sattva. And it is this structure that supports, as it were, conditions, as it were, the illusory structure of the mind. And that these three gunas in fact have a doubling process. They not only support the phantasmal world of the mind, but they are the gateway that leads to the apperception of the purusha. And when that is attained, they, as it were, enfolded themselves and disappear. That their purpose, their task has been completed. That they are in fact, by their own occurrence a royal road to realization. They are at the same time, the supported foundational substructure of illusion. So that there is a direct connection between realization and illusion. Almost a necessary architectural link between them. So that Plotinus and Patanjali both cautioning us follow the patterning, the spiritual patterning, do not rush forth. There is nothing to be gained by the haste. In Patanjali then, in the first section talking about samadhi, bringing in all of these qualities of the mind, of consciousness. He then assures that that there is also another variety, another kind of samadhi that occurs. And that this is Asamprajnata samadhi. Unconscious. There is an unconscious samadhi. There was a state of this hovering wherein it is not a conscious function, but an unconscious function and yet still occurs. Addressing ourselves to this then we note that the problem, the conundrum that was set for us by dealing with the mind at first has been precarious. It is said to be dangerous. The reason for the precariousness and the dangerousness is that the underlying structure is modified by an unconscious variety. And that too must be taken into consideration. Therefore, this circumambulating pattern is not simply false humility. Or not simply a primitive mentality. Or a beginner's mind. But is a necessary structure, in order to allow the unconscious, the Asamprajnata to participate into this defining circumambulation. That without that participation, there will be no liberation. Without that participation, the conscious mind, clever, egotistical, bureaucratic to the extreme. When it comes to the occult powers will seize upon them as its ultimate purpose and usurp the chance for paradise. So, we are encouraged in Patanjali to acquire a condition, which is in fact, as he calls it, seedless. That these impulses, these compulsions to acquire control, to have for ourselves. These powers, these conditions come from as he calls them seeds, which not necessarily occur in just one lifetime. They may occur in many lifetimes. I realized this is difficult to follow. Try and bear with it. There is a quality of seedlessness where there is no longer in the conscious or in the unconscious, any of the seeds that would develop. This can be done in a single lifetime, but the quality of attention must pay attention to the fact that perhaps in previous lifetimes certain seeds were planted. And they now begin to come to the fore. That as we control the conscious mind in this lifetime, increasingly the karmic seeds from other lifetimes come into play. And this is why the care. This is why the procedure of paying attention over a long pattern period of time. Because if we were to make the egotistical flaw of thinking that we were simply dealing with ourselves and who knows us better than we know, we would fall into the trap at this point and having begun to master ourselves only to have karmic other selves that we have absolutely no control over. And grow and take over. These are the cases of possession. These are the cases of neurotic happenings. Usually when people start on the spiritual path the first thing, they notice is that their life gets worse. Conditions are much worse. Problems that never used to come out. Phobias of all kinds. Incredible. Losing your temper. And you think I should have been a better person. I must have been doing it wrong. And then the supermarket shopping happens. You go from place to place, and you think nothing's going to help. It's simply symptomatic that something is in operation. That you were in fact, doing something effective. But quieting yourself is only the beginning of the problem. It is only then that the problems become visible. This is why a long-term pattern; procedure is eventually the one that one will choose. Just out of as Frank Lloyd Wright is to say, man finally learns the right way through the way of abuse. When he's abused every other way, he convinces himself well, there's nothing left, but this. And that's usually, that's the one. The one that the way of abuse leaves standing when you've knocked them all down. I think at the rate our century is going the 21st century should be a mystical century. We're making all the errors that are possible and pursuing them. I am going to skip over now a great deal of what I had outlined for you. Just so as not to tax you. And I'm going to go to section two. And for section two, I'm moving over to the translation by Christopher Isherwood in Swami Prabhavananda. Published here in Hollywood, How to know God, The Yoga and Aphorisms of Patanjali. Their treatment is the best for the second. In fact, they often use the term instead of transformations they use the term thought waves, which is perhaps easier for people in our electronic age to deal with. Thought wave. And he is finished the section on samadhi. He finishes with a description of how the mind becoming pure, as it were, having gotten rid of impurities, that the impressions that have been made on the mind seemed to be wiped out. Wiped clean. One has almost the kinesthetic feeling those moments of someone taking a large cotton swab and just cleaning out. So that there was just a sense of bareness in that samadhi. But Patanjali it goes one step beyond that because he is a spiritual teacher urging us always to open ourselves up. And so, the last aphorism of the first book reads this way in translation. I better give the last two. "The impression which has made upon the mind by that samadhi wipes out all other past impressions". And then the last aphorism. "When the impression made by that samadhi is also wiped out so that there are no more thought waves at all in the mind, then one enters the samadhi, which is called seedless." This in Plotinus is given to us as the one in the initial hypothesis in The Fifth Ennead he writes in venturing an answer. We first invoke God himself, not in loud word, but in that way of prayer, which is always within our power. Leaning in soul towards him by aspiration. Alone towards the alone. But if we seek the vision of that great being within the inner sanctuary, self-gathered, tranquilly, remote above all else. We begin by considering the images stationed at the outer precincts. Or more exactly to the moment the first image that appears, how the divine mind comes into being must be explained. So that when we get to that seedless samadhi what occurs to us is an ultimate problem that comes into the view of the seeker probably for the first time in its full implications. No longer the question is, how does the soul come into our bodies? Why, why are there bodies? The question now becomes, startlingly, why is there God? Why would that ultimate occur at all? And so, the problems of purposeness are finally raised to an ultimate level. Why him? And Plotinus echoing Patanjali saying, we must at this point be careful not to raise their voices loud. It is an address of the alone to the alone. And we wish here in this Job like solitude and connectedness to understand exactly completely no more arguments. The first of the four sections of The Yoga Sutras ends and the second begins. At this point, Patanjali stops talking about samadhi and starts talking about sadhana, about practices that lead to this. Why is this? Why would he not go on? It's like a gem cutter. It's like a jeweler who understands that the raw diamond needs to be cut just right. The facets to be made. And so, at this point where this ultimate question, as it were, comes into view the questioning quality of the mind must be cut off abruptly. Because of the very nature that the answer is not an answer to a question. It is a condition which surrounds the questioning capacity. And therefore, one must not be led on indefinitely with questions and answers, but at the strategic point to cut it short. This is when you close the book. Even if there's more in the book, you close the book. That's it. That's it for today. It's like a jeweler cutting the diamond at this point. And the very next praises, the very next aphorism in Patanjali reads thus in translation. Austerity study and the dedication of the fruits of one's work to God, these are the preliminary steps toward yoga. We're thrown back before the condition of samadhi even arises. Back to the very beginning. And we're told there's nothing about austerity, study and dedicating the fruits of actions to the other. So, we've been thrown back all the way to the beginning. Zen mind beginner's mind. If we are reluctant to go there at this point, then we are jailed. We are jailed by our own ambition. If we, at this point of the revelation of a divine mystery will not go back and practice naturally all over again we then know that we have become infected with egotistical grade. Psychic empire building. Now, what we want to do is we want to have those powers for us. But the willingness to go back all the way back to the beginning. "Very well, we do not know, but we will dance before the Lord with all our might. That we will do." This then yields the second aphorism of the second part of Patanjali. And he writes in translation. Thus, may we cultivate the power of concentration and remove the obstacles to enlightenment, which cause all our sufferings. By being willing to go all the way back this is the core of sadhana. This is the core practice. Of constantly being willing to go back. Very well we will go all the way back and begin again. In the floor of Chartres Cathedral there is a labyrinth put in there by the builders. And the only way to get to the center is to cover all of the ground of that labyrinth. And the path goes in very close, and it goes way out again and in. Only if you're willing to go the entire path, the way of completion is the way of perfection possible. The two braided together, exactly to locate an in centered presence, not a centered presence. For a centered presence, sensing the occult powers thinks to itself, I'll take these. And this of course is the very essence of the demonic. The essence of our time. Patanjali and I'll quickly go through the second and the third and get us to the fourth, writes in the ninth aphorism. The desire to cling to life is inherent both in the ignorant and the learned. This is because the mind retains impressions of the death experience from many previous incarnations. What is that indelible impression that carries most poignantly from life to life? What is that real powerful amperage behind karma? And we have died again and again and again and again. And now this becomes visible. It bubbles up. The occurrence of this terror, this spiritual fearfulness, are we not then precarious? The mind, the ego rebelling against going through this again. I want no part of this. Anything but this. Any subterfuge. Perhaps the occult powers will preserve me from having to do that, to go through that again. And so, there was this, this difficulty. There are the obstacles. And Patanjali and Plotinus then caution us, reduce them down carefully. Reduce them to vestiges. How? How may we do this? By the practice of that old morality, that time honored morality. We must tell ourselves again, the basic virtues are real. And they are eight in number in Patanjali. They're called the eight limbs of yoga. The expressive appendages by which yoga articulates its gestures of in centering. They are abstention from evil doing, the various religious observances to keep them, posture asana, control of the breathing of the prana, withdrawal of the mind from sense objects, concentration, meditation, and absorption in the samadhi. So, we are given the old virtues again. That there is no way to get around them. We were told them as a children, as a child. We were told them as a matured practice, practice the virtues. In these eight, Patanjali as careful to group three towards the end. And in fact, in the beginning of the third book of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, those last three are brought into focus because they are very powerful. And the in the Mahayana tradition, which was somewhat different from this, the perfections, the virtues, were called paramitas and there were six. And there were three that were capable of being given to children. And then when they matured into adults and really had spiritual power, psychic capacity, mental perspicacity, they were given three more that raised those initial three to very high levels. The three that you could give to children were, they were called Dana, which is charity. Khanti, which is patience. And Sila, which is morality. You could teach children moral rules and behavior. Teach them to be charitable. And teach them to be patient. And that those three virtues, inner penetrating together, would allow children to form some beginning basis of virtuous life. But when they matured. That is when they went through adolescence. When they went through puberty and were coming into their own as mature beings, then they were given the virtues the paramitas that were very difficult to understand. Very difficult to control because they're, they're more powerful in the sense of controlling more amperage of, of human possibility. And they were Dhyana, concentration. Virya, energy or strength, forthrightness, stamina, spiritual stamina. And prajna, which is wisdom, insight. So those were the paramitas. The eight given to us by Patanjali collect themselves in a group of five that have to do with the physical person, have to do with a mental person. And the last three were grouped together because they happen to focus upon a unity between the three of them. Concentration, the very first aphorism in the third book of The Yoga Sutras. Concentration is the confinement of the mind in a place. Concentration the confinement of a mind in a place. meditation is the continuation of the cognition therein. So that there's a difference between concentration and meditation. Concentration is bringing it together in one place, here or there. Meditation is the continuance of that. The durational continuance of that. Then that meditation itself, having the manifestation of truth alone as if devoid of its own form. That is meditation when carried on long enough so that its own form begins to dissolve into the very practice of it, that is identified as spiritual absorption. Spiritual absorption. Which is a quality that occurs when meditation loses its durational form. And this now is where Indian thought becomes so subtle. That all, but a few of the Western commentators lose themselves here. Because the fourth aphorism of the third chapter, The Yoga Sutras very briefly says, the three unified together is the sumyama. The three together concentration, meditation and spiritual absorption together is what is called the sumyama. And it is that application of that quality of presence of the sumyama that makes occur all the occult powers when it is applied to this or to that and it's named specifically in Patanjali. They disclose the ultimate energy structures, the transformative capacities, telepathy and all the rest of them. This is where the control of that focus is spiritually necessary. How can we best understand this? And we'll just talk about this for about a minute, and then we'll skip over to the fourth and concluding book of Patanjali. We can understand this by letting occur to ourselves a notion of unity. And we can say that in designating unity we can call this one. That is somewhat analogous to what concentration would be. The making of a singularity. The occurring to us of the intelligibility of a one. But that the designation of the word one contains traps within itself, within its capacities. So that we should engender in ourselves a sense of unity described as one but experienced as a unity. The fact that one could express one different from unity is one of the key insights, which meditation makes available. That the doubling nature, the two, the duality, has this mysterious quality in that the one occurs. And because it occurs the context, which let it occur, must also be taken into consideration. And so that the one and its context are a two. And this is like the core of meditation pondering on this. Then the further occurrence that the one and the two are related architecturally. We have to use the term here more precisely architectonically. The one and the two are related in an indelible relationship. They are like a primordial ratio. Ratio. They are rational because their relationship is indissoluble. The two is actually the one in motion. Therefore, if we can call the one and its relation to the background two, we can call the one and the background and its relationality a three. So that the triad, the sacred triad, is actually a ratio with its relationality between say the denominator and the numerator. But that this has to be seen as a unity. It can be experienced in mental notion as particulars, but they have to be realized. And here's where we use the term realized. They have to be realized as a unity. Plotinus will tell us that the soul is an emanation of the intellectual principle, but that the intellectual principle in itself also is an emanation of the one. But the soul and the intellectual principle brought together any primordial, authentically existent ratio make occur immediately the sacred triad that they are not only related to but related in such an intimate way that they are the one. And so, when one comes to these three, the one, the two and the three, one has an overwhelming confirmation of the sacred unity of them all. Because they are not separate things. It is simply like functional for ambulations of the one. And this Patanjali calls the Samyama. And this Samyama is the key point, the writing point of reality. And when it is applied, everything comes into existence. He ends The Yoga Sutras in the fourth section. It's the shortest of the four sections. In fact, some commentators in the West, naive scholars, assume that the fourth part of The Yoga Sutras was added later because it seemed to go into areas that were beyond what had already been said in the first three parts. This is a natural egotistical assumption that one should end with the engendering of these occult powers. But Patanjali like Plotinus being a spiritual teacher carries us through this maze, through this dead end. Halfway through that third section, he writes by making Samyama on the three kinds of changes, one obtains knowledge of the past, the present and the future. So that all time becomes as it were visible. Then at the very beginning of the fourth section, the concluding section of The Yoga Sutras on liberation, he writes immediately, "The psychic powers may be obtained, either by birth or by means of drugs or by the power of words, the practice of austerities or by concentration." So, he completely negates the special qualities that they have. One could have these simply by accident of birth. One could have these by taking drugs. One could have these by this, that, and the other. They are negligible. They are in the way. They are obstacles. So, the fourth part, The Kaivalya begins immediately by dismissing the overwhelming capacities that have loomed. And he writes in the second aphorism of the last part, "The transformation of one species into another is caused by the inflowing of nature." And so, we get the inner penetration of the universe. Everything has been related together, and because of this unity it is possible to transform any part into another part, any quality into another, indefinitely. This transformative capacity is just like the transformative capacity of the mind. And it is supported in fact, by those three Gunas, which have supported the illusory quality of the mind. So that the physical world, the illusory world of the mind have a, an echoing, as it were. An above and a below. They act in the same way. They have a similar basis. And at the very end of The Yoga Sutras Patanjali writes, "Then in consequence of the infinity of knowledge free from all ossification and impurity. The range of what has to be known becomes inappreciable. One sees that what constituted one's whole world or the possibilities of it, or even this universe were infinitesimal in comparison to what actually does occur. In terms of wholesomeness. In terms of reality on that perception, He writes, "Then the succession of the transformations of the Gunas comes to an end. They having fulfilled their end." Their whole structure comes to an end. And he writes "The recession to their origin of the Gunas void of the motive to act for the purusha. This is Kaivalya, the soul coming to its own." And so Patanjali leads us very quickly then into this realization. Plotinus, and just to end here in the lecture, in The Sixth Ennead and the fourth chapter called Omnipresence of an Authentic Existence, leads us to understand it in this way. "Souls," he writes, Souls to that principle distributed over material masses. We hold to be in its own nature incapable of distribution. The magnitude belongs to the masses. When this sole principle injures into them, or rather they into it. It is thought of as distributable only because within the discrimination of the corporeal, the animating force is to be recognized at any and every point. For soul is not articulated section of soul to section of soul to body. There is integral omnipresence manifesting the unity of that principle. It's veritable heartlessness. Now as the soul unity does not debar variety so, with being and the beings in that order, multiplicity does not conflict with unity Multiplicity. He writes, This is not due to the need of flooding the universe with life. Nor is the extension of the corporeal the cause of the multiplicity of souls. Before body existed, soul was one and many. Many souls for existed in the all not potentially but each effectively. That one collective soul is no bar to the variety. The variety does not abrogate the unity. The souls are a part without partition present each to all as never having been set in opposition. They are no more hedged off by boundaries then are the multiple items of knowledge in one mind. The one soul so exists as to include all souls. The nature of such a principle must be utterly free of boundary. And then Plotinus using an example which has become classic in Western spiritual thought. He says, imagine a transparent sphere lighted by a whirling light mass spiraling within. And the light from this whirling light mass. And now we begin to imagine a galactic spinning form. He says the light from that shimmers on the transparent circumferences of the sphere. Now he says, imagine the light source being gone, but the light's still occurring. He says there will be an in centered omnipotent presence through all. And any point could be the source of the light. Any limit of it, the reflection thereof. There is no longer any boundary necessary. There is only a luminous unity to which Plotinus gives the term translated into English, alone. Not lonely, but unity as it is for ourselves. Thank you for bearing up. But I hope the cassettes will be useful. END OF RECORDING