Pure Consciousness

Sutra 24: Kleśa karma vipāka āśayair aparāmṛṣṭaḥ puruṣa viśeṣa īśvaraḥ — Īśvara is the supreme Purusha, unaffected by any afflictions, actions, fruits of actions or by any inner impressions or desires

Sutra 24 introduces the concept of God in yoga.

क्लेश कर्म विपाकाशयैरपरामृष्ट पुरुष विशेष ईश्वर
Kleśa karma vipāka āśayair aparāmṛṣṭaḥ puruṣa viśeṣa īśvaraḥ
Īśvara is the supreme Purusha, unaffected by any afflictions, actions, fruits of actions or by any inner impressions or desires

Samkhya Influence

Samkhya is one of six schools of thought in classical Indian philosophy. It’s generally seen as the oldest, with roots tracing to the upaniṣads in the 5th century BCE.

It is a non-theistic and dualistic school of thought, positing two eternal realities:

1. Purusha: pure consciousness

2. Prakriti: primal matter/nature

Yoga is the second school of thought, seen as a practical means for achieving liberation, and it draws on Samkhya ideas in many areas, and is primarily concerned with the disentangling of these two aspects of experience.

Purusha (Pure Consciousness)

Pure awareness, consciousness, the eternal witness. It is unchanging, inactive, and formless — an ever present passive observer. It is the seer, the experiencer, not the doer.

• Function in Yoga: To realize Purusha as distinct from Prakriti, leading to liberation.

Prakriti (Nature/Matter)

The material world…all phenomena: including mind, body, senses, and emotions. It is mutable, dynamic, composed of the three gunas (sattva, rajas, tamas). It is the seen, the field of experience; it manifests the universe.

• Function in Yoga: Initially can be felt as a source of bondage; but ultimately, through self-awareness, it helps one transcend it.

Yoga essentially aims to disrupt the misidentification of Purusha with Prakriti. Ignorance (avidya) can cause Purusha to misidentify with the mind-body complex (Prakriti). Discrimination (viveka), developed through yogic practice, allows one to perceive the distinction and rest in the pure awareness of Purusha.

The Progression

There is an aspect of your experience that is simply pure awareness.

But there are many other aspects to your experience (thoughts, feelings, emotions, desires) that are less subtle, and they tend to fill the space of your attention.

Over time it can feel like these things are all that exist, and in searching for the “I” aspect of your experience, you might easily conclude that it resides in one of those more tactile things, since they are all you seem to see.

By practicing yoga, you can learn to discriminate between the various layers and facets of your experience, examining them distinctly.

Eventually, within that array of examined experience, you may re-encounter that simple pure awareness.

With sustained practice and discipline, you can spend more and more time residing in that space of simple pure awareness, until you learn to identify more closely with it (than with the contents of consciousness).

So what is Īśvara?

It is thought that Patañjali may have introduced Īśvara as a pragmatic concept to offer an optional focus for devotion (bhakti) in a largely non-theistic system.

Devotional traditions were apparently rising at the time, and presenting Īśvara as a more characterizable version of a God-figure would have been useful to anyone leaning towards those kind of spiritual journeys.

In this light, we can see classical Yoga as non-theistic but not anti-theistic — open to divine symbolism, but not reliant on it.

Nevertheless, in yoga philosophy, Īśvara is not a God who creates or intervenes. It is simply an ever-free exemplar of liberation — truly, a model to which the yogi can aspire.

Here’s a metaphor to help picture what Patanjali likely means by Īśvara:

The ocean.

Before you’re like: “meh, I’ve heard that before, doesn’t help” run through this line of thinking with me. Or you can extrapolate the idea further from “ocean” to just “water”:

What happens when you throw a rock into the ocean?

• There’s a little ‘kerplunk’, and maybe a splash, but any water displaced quickly finds it’s way back into the source.

What happens when you take a bucket of water out of the ocean?

• Is it notably diminished? Or does it look exactly the same as it did before?

Put your hand into the bucket of water —

• Assuming none spills, did you remove or add anything to the quantity of water by your action?

Scoop some out into your hands and cup them so it stays there —

• Can you willingly shape the water, or does it simply take the shape of whatever container that holds it?

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There’s a lovely Christian legend I learned about when I was young in which St. Augustine describes a vision he had while walking along the oceanside pondering the nature of God.

As he was walking the beach, he saw a small child running back and forth along the sand carrying buckets of water from the surf and pouring them into a hole dug on the beach.

Augustine asked the child what they were doing, and they replied: “I’m putting the entire ocean into this hole.”

Augustine laughed and said: “That’s impossible.”

The child looked at him and said: “So is you fitting the nature of God into your head.”

In the Christian tradition, the story is meant to articulate the imponderability of Christian mysteries. In a yogic context, we can think of it it as spatially orienting for the practitioner — we are on the beach looking at the ocean. We are not the ocean, but we can, for some reason, witness it.

The “goal” of practice is not to comprehend the totality of consciousness, it’s nature, or it’s relation to reality — but to experience, firsthand, the aspect of ourselves that is that.

There’s a taoist maxim that states: “life like water”, which stems from this verse in Chapter 8 of in the Tao Te Ching

The highest good is like water. Water gives life to the ten thousand things and does not strive. It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao. In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don’t try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present. When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you

So, on the mat, we aim to make ourselves like Īśvara — unaffected by any afflictions, actions, fruits of actions or by any inner impressions or desires.

Borrowing from Ram Dass:

Quiet the mind, open the heart.

Move for the sake of moving. Breathe in, breathe out. When the thoughts arise, let them pass. You’re not here to master a handstand. But if mastering handstand helps you recognize the part of you that is eternal, rock on 🤘