Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras are the classical work of the Yoga School of thought, one of the Six Darśanas studied in the Bhakti Tirtha course. They focus on how to attain direct experience and realization of the puruṣa, or the individual self. As the classical treatise on the Vedic understanding of the mind and consciousness and on techniques of meditation and self-realization, it has exerted immense influence over the religious practices of Hinduism in India and, more recently, in the West. For Vaiṣṇavas, the Yoga Sūtras are especially helpful in understanding the first two chapters of Bhakti-rasāmṛita-sindhu.
This course completes the first two chapters – Samādhi Pada (Meditative Absorption) and Sādhana Pada (Practice).
The spiritual ahankara is giving energy to the material ahankara. The spiritual I gives consciousness to the material I, so you think that, ‘I am this body.’ This identification is very deep and it is not easy to get out of it. It is very difficult to transcend the maya because the atma itself doesn’t have any potency to get out of it. It needs the intrinsic potency. That is why Bhakti is necessary.
