The Study And Practice Of YogaAn Exposition of the Yoga Sutras of PatanjaliVolumeII

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properly. The presence of the physical body obstructs the union that we seek with the
object, which is the reason for this search for enjoyment through the senses. But
there are no physical bodies in the higher realms; therefore, the temptations are
more powerful, and it is a greater difficulty there than here on earth. It is possible
that one can get stuck in the higher realms more easily than on earth. All these have
to be watched with great care, and the sutra tells us: “What to talk of these
enjoyments; you have to be free even from the desire to have omniscience, and you
should ask for pure Being-consciousness only.” Sarvatha vivekakhyateh—it is not
knowledge of things that we are asking for; it is knowledge as such, which is
knowledge of being alone. This is the purusha. Then comes dharma-megha
samadhi. At that time, what happens?


Nobody can say what happens. No one can go there and see what happens. Dharma-
megha samadhi is only a term which is defined in various ways, but it is said to be a
divine gift which is bestowed upon the seeker by the powers that be—the divine
forces that guard the cosmos. Rapturous descriptions of this condition can be found
in such scriptures as the Yoga Vasishtha where we are told that even the divine
beings, the guardians of the cosmos, become our servants. “The guardians of the
cosmos become the servants of this man.” Such things are told in the Yoga Vasishtha
and other scriptures of that kind.


We will become the master. There is the shadowy persistence of the ego which has
taken a cosmic form, a kind of vritti which sometimes is called, in the language of the
Vedanta, as brahmakara-vritti. It is only a theoretical description of the forms that
the mind has taken, and is really not a vritti at all. Merely because it has to subside
afterwards, we also call it a vritti. It is a vritti which the mind puts on with a single
object in front of it that is called brahmakara-vritti. The other vrittis, which are
called vishayakara-vrittis, are those which have many objects in front of them—the
usual vrittis of the mind which are in respect of various objects of sense, as is the
case with people like us at present.


We have many things in front of us. The mind thinks of many objects; that is
vishayakara-vritti. But in the brahmakara-vritti, there is only one object in front of
the mind, and that is the Cosmic Being. It has no other vritti. There is a total
awakening of the mind into the content of the whole universe, and the total universe
becomes its object. There is no multitude or variety of content in the vritti. It is a
single universal content. When the mind assumes that form, it is called the
brahmakara-vritti. Such sort of experience is perhaps comparable with what the
sutra calls dharma-megha samadhi.

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