Kino's Birthday, Robson's Learn to float, Gannon's Iphone app, VK On one leg and Swami Yogananda.

A big Happy Birthday to Kino MacGregor today and a thank you for all the video tutorial's she's uploaded to YouTube this year, particularly appreciated when your practicing at home.

Here's one I missed


In other news.....

David Robson has a DVD out on 'Learning to float' in Sury Namaskara.  So it seems those fancy transitions I used to love are OK now after all. Typical, just as I've stopped bothering with them it seems they're becoming de rigour.  Actually I do a couple of fancy float up's in my sury's ( to make up for only practicing the odd couple of jump backs and through in VK). David's 'Learn to float' site is down at the moment but I caught it over the weekend and I think it was $9.99 a year to be able to watch the video online (wonder if there will be more content put up over time. Subscription approach, interesting way to go).

UPDATE: Site's back up and running $22.00 for the DVD, $1.99 for an audio download (curious) and $9.99 for the Online subscription.

Can't see how long the DVD it is though.

Michael Gannon has an app out for the iPhone ( That's iPhone NOT iPad, I made that mistake). I was a bit disappointed with this, I have his demo DVD where he goes through Primary to Advanced A in one go, think it's called From Earth to Heaven, can't see it on his website ( Ok you have to scroll through a couple of pages of more products) but there's something interesting on the elements of backbending called Open the heart, anyone have it? The suggest beginner to advanced but it seems to be just Primary with a choice of  beginner and intermediate voice overs. So no Intermediate or Advanced series. No video either just pictures ,as I said, bit of a disappointment. Kino should turn her videos into an app, you could click on any posture in the series and play one of her tutorials, no doubt it's in the works.

(Ex) ashtangi but still seem to be noticing the ashtanga stuff that's going on. Not surprising I guess given that my blog roll is mostly Ashtanga as well as many of my FB yoga friends.

Most of the Ashtanga postures pop up in Vinyasa Krama too so the Ashtanga videos are always interesting.

I mentioned it was Supine (series) Friday, last week and then added Saturday and Sunday too, ....you can add Monday to that as well. Seems I'm going to stick with this series all week. be nice to spend a week or so  on each series again, start to notice some of the subtleties as the week goes on.

Haven't missed the Ashtanga at all so far but then it's all the same really. I still get up a 5:30, still spend 90 minutes on asana, standing is pretty much the same, finishing not far off. Still postures I love and some I ....tolerate. It's more flexible but still disciplined and focused. Asana practice is asana practice.

One thing I did notice, remember those posts last month where I said I was sweating between one and two kilo's an Ashtanga  practice? I checked this morning 77.6 kilo before practice, 77.3 after. It's supine sequence though where your on your back most of the time but still, big difference. I could make it a little more sweaty if a wanted to, there are still arm balances in VK if you want them and Sury's and some of those one legged squats are pretty evil, perhaps a post on a sweaty Vinyasa Krama practice.

I remember the first two and a half weeks of the Vinyasa karma TT course in LA. I was getting up at 4am to do two hours of Ashtanga in the stairwell before heading on to the three hour VK asana class. We were talking  about practicing all the sequences one after another on 4th July then Ramaswami hit us with the Triangle and On one leg sequences and we were quivering wrecks by the end of practice. Stopped practicing in the stairwell after that.

Here's a video of the 'On one leg sequence' to give you an idea of the squats ( there are a couple in triangle sequence too), I tend to do just the one of these each morning in the Standing portion of my practice. Seem to remember that after videoing all these I couldn't move for the rest of the day.

Squats come up about two and a half minutes into the video.




And one more thing. Just came across this video by accident, no idea who he but It came up at the end of my video, above, when I was getting the embedding code.

Swami Yogananda doing Kasyapasana, Dwi pada Sirsasana, badha konasana and others.




When I was in LA I popped into Yogaworks in Santa Monica while passing and saw a book, black and white, elderly yogi with a long white beard doing all kinds of postures. Forgot to write down the title  anybody know it?

Supine Friday. ( .....and Saturday and Sunday )

Friday has always been Primary series Ashtanga. It's a thing, in Ashtanga, no matter what series you practice, Primary Intermediate or Advanced you still do Primary on Friday. It's nice, practicing at home knowing that people all over the country, all over Europe are practicing it with you, that a couple of time zones over they are just finishing and, depending where you are, as you get to finishing yourself you know that a couple of zones ahead they are just starting.

It's been quite a surprise then the last couple of weeks finding I've stopped practicing Primary on a Friday, Last week, this week, no big drama I just got on the mat and practiced Vinyasa Krama instead.

Ever since Ramaswami's Newsletter came out I've been practicing the spinal exercises outlined in  my last post. There's a lot of Supine in there and over the last week I've added a little more each day. This morning I ended up just practising Supine sequence after Standing ( tadasana, surys, some triangle and On one leg subroutines).

Supine was the hardest sequence to come around to coming from Ashtanga, the other VK sequences tend to have bits of Ashtanga in them, Asymmetric and Seated is close to primary, Bow and Meditative a little similar to Intermediate and we do large chunks of the Standing sequences at the start of ashtanga and always finish with Inversions and Lotus. But Supine, very little of that in the Ashtanga syllabus.... in fact flicking through my Mathew Sweeney Ashtanga as it is book I can't see a single Dwipadapitam (table pose ).

And that's odd because practicing this morning lifting my hips of the mat and sticking them out I thought it was excellent prep for kapootasana and drop backs, key to those postures is getting the hips forward. In fact if you look at one of the more advanced Dwipadapitam postures where your holding your ankles and then imagine rotating it 90 degrees you get a kind of Ustrasana but where your more able to work at shifting the hips further and further forward.

Another posture I'm loving at the moment is the leg raise in table pose, trying to get the leg higher and higher, straighter and straighter.

Other highlights in the series for me, Tatkamudra ( Pond gesture) of course, try it before any paschimottanasana if your feeling a little stiff ( see link to previous post on this.

And also the arms and legs lift which for some reason is excellent after deep backbends. After drop backs I tend to do the arm and leg lifts then tatkamudra and only the move into paschimottanasana.

Not the best screenshot.

So there you have it Supine Friday, may well become a fixture. here's the complete sequence speeded up. feel free to capture it from Youtube using Realplayer Download and use your media player to slow it back down.

Yoga, a Spiritual practice, a Philosophy.... both......neither?

Annoyingly Blogger wouldn't allow me to post my long response to Chris in comments so I decided to turn it into a post. This is basically a heated discussion we've been having concerning 'Surrender', I think you'll get the idea of where we've been going with it from my response.

My response below is to Chris' last comment

'in my experience the rational weighing up of intellectual ideas is not enough.'

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sorry to say Chris there will no doubt be another couple of thousand (words on this ) before I'm done. Never bought into the 1% theory idea and I'm interested in this area, it's crucial too perhaps.

I just looked back through your comments on the earlier surrender post. I think I found something we agree on. You were telling me to surrender up the fruits of my actions.

'You do seem obsessed with asana. Surrender the fruits of one's actions. IE stop focusing so much on the external form, collecting asanas as if they were ££.'

I think your wrong about my view of asana, I went through to 4th in four years, in the early days they did that in four months or a year or so. But again and again I've said on this blog it's just asana, so not so important ( however the nature of this blog, especially in the beginning, was about working out asana, that's how I saw this blog, sharing tips and hints, it's the only view of my practice you got). Pranayama is more important to me than asana and I started yoga in the first place as a support for my meditation practice.

But I agree we shouldn't be concerned about the fruits of our actions.

We disagree on the word surrender. We both seem to think this is a big deal.

It's a different view of yoga, for you it's a spiritual practice, for me it's a philosophy.

You wrote
'hahaha! Isvara pranidhana is there in every spiritual tradition. 
"The word islam is a verbal noun originating from the triliteral root s-l-m, and is derived from the Arabic verb ’áslama, which means "to give up, to desert, to surrender (to God)".
I don't feel that this is a disagreement as such. More a choice as to whether one practices yoga as a spiritual discipline or not.
Asana as aparigraha?'

What I'm reading at the moment is that the spiritual aspect we find in the Gita and and just a little in the Yoga sutras was interpolated as a direct response to Christianity and Islam, to replace a rational philosophy with spiritualism, monotheism. That's what my posts on the 'Original' Gita and 'Original' Yoga sutras are concerned with. How far that is the case is something I'm still researching.

For you it's a spiritual practice for me it's a philosophy. We both have grounds for our views yours, the last twelve hundred years, mine, the previous thousand or two.

The problem of course is that it's always been difficult if not impossible to hold a discussion from these too perspectives, different language games.

You no doubt feel I am missing something through failing to see a spiritual element in the practice, I appreciate the concern.  I of course, from my perspective, feel that yoga is being misrepresented and that questioning is disparaged, that's been a theme running though this blog since I started.

We're probably going to have to agree to disagree and hopefully respectfully.

Curing back pain with Pasasana

Back in the day, I spent five years odd hitching around, mostly Europe and North America. This was, what, early 80's, The wicked witch Thatcher was in power and not so great Britain was a distasteful place to be.

I picked up all kinds of work, built roads, roofs, houses, laid concrete, plastered walls, emptied rubbish bins and worked kitchens, a lot of kitchens.

My favourite restaurant to work at was Pizza Express and the first  job I got there was after coming back from living in a cave in Crete. I was big and hairy and pretty damned grotty, went for a washing-up job at their restaurant in Beckenham. At the end of the interview the manager told me to clean up and start Monday as his Assistant Manager.

I worked there for a few months, was taught to spin pizza by a Sicilian named Leo who kept a gun in his locker just like the Yoga police video doing the rounds. He was the pizza police and I would have to stop him night after night from rushing out to get his gun whenever somebody complained about there not being enough cheese on their pizza. Good times. May came around and I walked out with the money I had in my pocket ( around thirty quid, that was a lot, the first time I only had half that ) headed for Dover, jumped on a ferry and hitched/walked to Switzerland.

Must have worked at ten different Pizza Express restaurants over the years, from Soho to Brighton I must have played them all ( no, actually still around ten but that did include Soho and Brighton) helped pay my way through Uni and gave me a taste for good jazz.

Rutherford College UKC

It was while working at my favourite pizza Express in Fulham that I put my back out. I was lifting a couple of trays of pizza dough to put in the proofer and out it went. Couldn't sit up for a week. That and my old Aikido knee injury meant the end of any road building or general labouring jobs, time to go back to school.

I mention this because every now and again my back goes in exactly the same spot. not as bad but bad enough. It hurts, getting out of bed I feel like an old man and have to very gingerly enter the first few Sun salutations. Yeah, I practice, if yoga's not good for a bad back then what's the point.

Actually it's the yoga that puts it out, not always, a little while back it was slipping over in the snow on my bike, but a few times it's been eka pada sirsasana, that leg behind head pose. I must approach it slightly cack-handed every once in a while, maybe twice a year it does my back in, just above my hip slightly to the right of my spine.

So I take it easy for a couple of weeks, skip LBH, curiously backbends are unaffected, can still drop back, it's the bending forward that hurts. After a month or so I notice the pain has gone but never sure when exactly, just figured it was an inflammation that had finally cleared up.

I did it again last week, really painful this time, stiff as anything.It was a good excuse to explore Ramaswami's spinal exercises from his newsletter, nice gentle postures. It helped a little but still stiff and painful  every morning.

Anyway this morning, being my day off, I had a little more time to practice, I did a longer version of the tadasana sequence which includes pasasana. It's a little colder here today so I knew, being less sweaty,  I could get a good bind and make it nice and deep. just as I began to bind my wrist my back makes this almighty cracking noise down the bottom of the spine and then near the top as I completed the wrist bind. My first thought was that i wish I'd caught it on camera. My second thought was that it didn't crack like that on the other side......my third thought was that the pain had gone.

Hallelujah !!!

I tell you it was like being shot full of morphine... I had that once, twelve hours in agony with Kidney stones before the hospital finished their tests and decided to put me out of my misery. A second after they put the morphine into the drip I felt it cool and clean, running through my veins chasing all the pain from my body.

This morning was a little like that.

Anyone remember my Epsom salt, I'm Superman post from last year? The rest of practice felt a little like that too.

Best of all now I know. Next time the back pain rears it's trickster head, I'll be the guy with the beatific smile on his face squatting at the end of the mat with his arms wrapped around his knees.

Here's the Vinyasa Karma approach, the pasasana comes in after about seven minutes.



Oh and I seem to have stopped practicing Ashtanga ( I know, said that before but this time not even a Friday Primary), what's that all about.

.....and where does that leave this 'Ashtanga' blog.

The 'original' Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (?)

Oh my, talk about rabbit holes.

If you saw yesterday's post I was discussing this book The Gita as It Was: Rediscovering the Original Bhagavadgita Book by Phulgenda Sinha; 1987 where Sinha argues that most of the Gita was added later and that the original consisted of only 84 verses. My copy is still on the way from Amazon but Maya found one online at Scribd HERE. Now at the end of yesterdays post I wrote

'Oh and it seems there's an original Yoga Sutras too, all that about Ishvara, 100 slokas or so.... yep you guessed it, they added that too.......perhaps'.


Well flicking through Sinha's book on Scribd, I came across the section where he discusses the sutras and get this, the 'original' Yoga Sutras supposedly consisted of only 83 verses ( yes yes, i know begs the question... a lot of them in fact). You can forget about  Chapter one, which is a bit of a bugger because that's the chapter I'm most comfortable chanting. Forget chapter four as well ( that's OK it's commonly thought to be a later addition) but also the first 27 verses of chapter 2.

Sinha is quoting J.W. Hauer book DER YOGA ( p238-239) in German. It's supposedly translated by G. J. Larson as Classical Samkhya see p150

OK, if you've spent any time in academia you know this goes on a lot. For every academic arguing that a couple of Shakespear's plays were written by Marlow you get another hundred arguing against it. Still, it's often interesting and keeps the pasty faced scholars off the streets.

Interestingly though it perhaps doesn't matter. Chapter one wasn't really for us anyway, it's talking about the born yoga who doesn't have to work at it. Chapter two that was for us mere mortals who have to work at it along with Chapter three on the good stuff. Best of all we can chant it in ten minutes and catch last orders.

Here it is below Translated by BonGiovanni from HERE just to give us an idea before we hit our own editions which I'll be doing right after practice.

The Original Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (?)


2.28 On the destruction of impurity by the sustained practice of the limbs of Union, the light of knowledge reveals the faculty of discrimination.


2.29 The eight limbs of Union are self-restraint in actions, fixed observance, posture, regulation of energy, mind-control in sense engagements, concentration, meditation, and realization.


2.30 Self-restraint in actions includes abstention from violence, from falsehoods, from stealing, from sexual engagements, and from acceptance of gifts.


2.31 These five willing abstentions are not limited by rank, place, time or circumstance and constitute the Great Vow.


2.32 The fixed observances are cleanliness, contentment, austerity, study and persevering devotion to God.


2.33 When improper thoughts disturb the mind, there should be constant pondering over the opposites.


2.34 Improper thoughts and emotions such as those of violence- whether done, caused to be done, or even approved of- indeed, any thought originating in desire, anger or delusion, whether mild medium or intense- do all result in endless pain and misery. Overcome such distractions by pondering on the opposites.


2.35 When one is confirmed in non-violence, hostility ceases in his presence.


2.36 When one is firmly established in speaking truth, the fruits of action become subservient to him.


2.37 All jewels approach him who is confirmed in honesty.


2.38 When one is confirmed in celibacy, spiritual vigor is gained.


2.39 When one is confirmed in non-possessiveness, the knowledge of the why and how of existence is attained.


2.40 From purity follows a withdrawal from enchantment over one's own body as well as a cessation of desire for physical contact with others.


2.41 As a result of contentment there is purity of mind, one-pointedness, control of the senses, and fitness for the vision of the self.


2.42 Supreme happiness is gained via contentment.


2.43 Through sanctification and the removal of impurities, there arise special powers in the body and senses.


2.44 By study comes communion with the Lord in the Form most admired.


2.45 Realization is experienced by making the Lord the motive of all actions.


2.46 The posture should be steady and comfortable.


2.47 In effortless relaxation, dwell mentally on the Endless with utter attention.


2.48 From that there is no disturbance from the dualities.


2.49 When that exists, control of incoming and outgoing energies is next.


2.50 It may be external, internal, or midway, regulated by time, place, or number, and of brief or long duration.


2.51 Energy-control which goes beyond the sphere of external and internal is the fourth level- the vital.


2.52 In this way, that which covers the light is destroyed.


2.53 Thus the mind becomes fit for concentration.


2.54 When the mind maintains awareness, yet does not mingle with the senses, nor the senses with sense impressions, then self-awareness blossoms.


2.55 In this way comes mastery over the senses.


End Part Two


Part Three
on Divine Powers
3.1 One-pointedness is steadfastness of the mind.


3.2 Unbroken continuation of that mental ability is meditation.


3.3 That same meditation when there is only consciousness of the object of meditation and not of the mind is realization.


3.4 The three appearing together are self-control.


3.5 By mastery comes wisdom.


3.6 The application of mastery is by stages.


3.7 The three are more efficacious than the restraints.


3.8 Even that is external to the seedless realization.


3.9 The significant aspect is the union of the mind with the moment of absorption, when the outgoing thought disappears and the absorptive experience appears.


3.10 From sublimation of this union comes the peaceful flow of unbroken unitive cognition.


3.11 The contemplative transformation of this is equalmindedness, witnessing the rise and destruction of distraction as well as one-pointedness itself.


3.12 The mind becomes one-pointed when the subsiding and rising thought-waves are exactly similar.


3.13 In this state, it passes beyond the changes of inherent characteristics, properties and the conditional modifications of object or sensory recognition.


3.14 The object is that which preserves the latent characteristic, the rising characteristic or the yet-to-be-named characteristic that establishes one entity as specific.


3.15 The succession of these changes in that entity is the cause of its modification.


3.16 By self-control over these three-fold changes (of property, character and condition), knowledge of the past and the future arises.


3.17 The sound of a word, the idea behind the word, and the object the idea signfies are often taken as being one thing and may be mistaken for one another. By self-control over their distinctions, understanding of all languages of all creatures arises.


3.18 By self-control on the perception of mental impressions, knowledge of previous lives arises.


3.19 By self-control on any mark of a body, the wisdom of the mind activating that body arises.


3.20 By self-control on the form of a body, by suspending perceptibility and separating effulgence therefrom, there arises invisibility and inaudibilty.


3.21 Action is of two kinds, dormant and fruitful. By self-control on such action, one portends the time of death.


3.22 By performing self-control on friendliness, the strength to grant joy arises.


3.23 By self-control over any kind of strength, such as that of the elephant, that very strength arises.


3.24 By self-control on the primal activator comes knowledge of the hidden, the subtle, and the distant.


3.25 By self-control on the Sun comes knowledge of spatial specificities.


3.26 By self-control on the Moon comes knowledge of the heavens.


3.27 By self-control on the Polestar arises knowledge of orbits.


3.28 By self-control on the navel arises knowledge of the constitution of the body.


3.29 By self-control on the pit of the throat one subdues hunger and thirst.


3.30 By self-control on the tube within the chest one acquires absolute steadiness.


3.31 By self-control on the light in the head one envisions perfected beings.


3.32 There is knowledge of everything from intuition.


3.33 Self-control on the heart brings knowledge of the mental entity.


3.34 Experience arises due to the inability of discerning the attributes of vitality from the indweller, even though they are indeed distinct from one another. Self-control brings true knowledge of the indweller by itself.


3.35 This spontaneous enlightenment results in intuitional perception of hearing, touching, seeing and smelling.


3.36 To the outward turned mind, the sensory organs are perfections, but are obstacles to realization.


3.37 When the bonds of the mind caused by action have been loosened, one may enter the body of another by knowledge of how the nerve-currents function.


3.38 By self-control of the nerve-currents utilising the lifebreath, one may levitate, walk on water, swamps, thorns, or the like.


3.39 By self-control over the maintenance of breath, one may radiate light.


3.40 By self-control on the relation of the ear to the ether one gains distant hearing.


3.41 By self-control over the relation of the body to the ether, and maintaining at the same time the thought of the lightness of cotton, one is able to pass through space.


3.42 By self-control on the mind when it is separated from the body- the state known as the Great Transcorporeal- all coverings are removed from the Light.


3.43 Mastery over the elements arises when their gross and subtle forms,as well as their essential characteristics, and the inherent attributes and experiences they produce, is examined in self-control.


3.44 Thereby one may become as tiny as an atom as well as having many other abilities, such as perfection of the body, and non-resistence to duty.


3.45 Perfection of the body consists in beauty, grace, strength and adamantine hardness.


3.46 By self-control on the changes that the sense-organs endure when contacting objects, and on the power of the sense of identity, and of the influence of the attributes, and the experience all these produce- one masters the senses.


3.47 From that come swiftness of mind, independence of perception, and mastery over primoridal matter.


3.48 To one who recognizes the distinctive relation between vitality and indweller comes omnipotence and omniscience.


3.49 Even for the destruction of the seed of bondage by desirelessness there comes absolute independence.


3.50 When invited by invisible beings one should be neither flattered nor satisfied, for there is yet a possibility of ignorance rising up.


3.51 By self-control over single moments and their succession there is wisdom born of discrimination.


3.52 From that there is recognition of two similars when that difference cannot be distinguished by class, characteristic or position.


3.53 Intuition, which is the entire discriminative knowledge, relates to all objects at all times, and is without succession.


3.54 Liberation is attained when there is equal purity between vitality and the indweller.


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Perhaps just as interesting as what stays in is what gets discarded, forgetting about chapter four for now, here are the verses from Chapter one to verse 27 of Chapter Two. Any favourites?


1.1 Now, instruction in Union.


1.2. Union is restraining the thought-streams natural to the mind.


1.3. Then the seer dwells in his own nature.


1.4. Otherwise he is of the same form as the thought-streams.


1.5. The thought-streams are five-fold, painful and not painful.


1.6. Right knowledge, wrong knowledge, fancy, sleep and memory.


1.7. Right knowledge is inference, tradition and genuine cognition.


1.8. Wrong knowledge is false, illusory, erroneous beliefs or notions.


1.9. Fancy is following after word-knowledge empty of substance.


1.10. Deep sleep is the modification of the mind which has for its substratum nothingness.


1.11. Memory is not allowing mental impressions to escape.


1.12. These thought-streams are controlled by practice and non-attachment.


1.13. Practice is the effort to secure steadiness.


1.14. This practice becomes well-grounded when continued with reverent devotion and without interruption over a long period of time.


1.15. Desirelessness towards the seen and the unseen gives the consciousness of mastery.


1.16. This is signified by an indifference to the three attributes, due to knowledge of the Indweller.


1.17. Cognitive meditation is accompanied by reasoning, discrimination, bliss and the sense of 'I am.'


1.18. There is another meditation which is attained by the practice of alert mental suspension until only subtle impressions remain.


1.19. For those beings who are formless and for those beings who are merged in unitive consciousness, the world is the cause.


1.20. For others, clarity is preceded by faith, energy, memory and equalminded contemplation.


1.21. Equalminded contemplation is nearest to those whose desire is most ardent.


1.22. There is further distinction on account of the mild, moderate or intense means employed.


1.23. Or by surrender to God.


1.24. God is a particular yet universal indweller, untouched by afflictions, actions, impressions and their results.


1.25. In God, the seed of omniscience is unsurpassed.


1.26. Not being conditioned by time, God is the teacher of even the ancients.


1.27. God's voice is Om.


1.28. The repetition of Om should be made with an understanding of its meaning.


1.29. From that is gained introspection and also the disappearance of obstacles.


1.30. Disease, inertia, doubt, lack of enthusiasm, laziness, sensuality, mind-wandering, missing the point, instability- these distractions of the mind are the obstacles.


1.31. Pain, despair, nervousness, and disordered inspiration and expiration are co-existent with these obstacles.


1.32. For the prevention of the obstacles, one truth should be practiced constantly.


1.33. By cultivating friendliness towards happiness and compassion towards misery, gladness towards virtue and indifference towards vice, the mind becomes pure.


1.34. Optionally, mental equanimity may be gained by the even expulsion and retention of energy.


1.35. Or activity of the higher senses causes mental steadiness.


1.36. Or the state of sorrowless Light.


1.37. Or the mind taking as an object of concentration those who are freed of compulsion.


1.38. Or depending on the knowledge of dreams and sleep.


1.39. Or by meditation as desired.


1.40. The mastery of one in Union extends from the finest atomic particle to the greatest infinity.


1.41. When the agitations of the mind are under control, the mind becomes like a transparent crystal and has the power of becoming whatever form is presented. knower, act of knowing, or what is known.


1.42. The argumentative condition is the confused mixing of the word, its right meaning, and knowledge.


1.43. When the memory is purified and the mind shines forth as the object alone, it is called non-argumentative.


1.44. In this way the meditative and the ultra-meditative having the subtle for their objects are also described.


1.45. The province of the subtle terminates with pure matter that has no pattern or distinguishing mark.


1.46. These constitute seeded contemplations.


1.47. On attaining the purity of the ultra-meditative state there is the pure flow of spiritual consciousness.


1.48. Therein is the faculty of supreme wisdom.


1.49. The wisdom obtained in the higher states of consciousness is different from that obtained by inference and testimony as it refers to particulars.


1.50. The habitual pattern of thought stands in the way of other impressions.


1.51. With the suppression of even that through the suspension of all modifications of the mind, contemplation without seed is attained.


End Part One.


Part Two
on Spiritual Disciplines
2.1 Austerity, the study of sacred texts, and the dedication of action to God constitute the discipline of Mystic Union.


2.2 This discipline is practised for the purpose of acquiring fixity of mind on the Lord, free from all impurities and agitations, or on One's Own Reality, and for attenuating the afflictions.


2.3 The five afflictions are ignorance, egoism, attachment, aversion, and the desire to cling to life.


2.4 Ignorance is the breeding place for all the others whether they are dormant or attenuated, partially overcome or fully operative.


2.5 Ignorance is taking the non-eternal for the eternal, the impure for the pure, evil for good and non-self as self.


2.6 Egoism is the identification of the power that knows with the instruments of knowing.


2.7 Attachment is that magnetic pattern which clusters in pleasure and pulls one towards such experience.


2.8 Aversion is the magnetic pattern which clusters in misery and pushes one from such experience.


2.9 Flowing by its own energy, established even in the wise and in the foolish, is the unending desire for life.


2.10 These patterns when subtle may be removed by developing their contraries.


2.11 Their active afflictions are to be destroyed by meditation.


2.12 The impressions of works have their roots in afflictions and arise as experience in the present and the future births.


2.13 When the root exists, its fruition is birth, life and experience.


2.14 They have pleasure or pain as their fruit, according as their cause be virtue or vice.


2.15 All is misery to the wise because of the pains of change, anxiety, and purificatory acts.


2.16 The grief which has not yet come may be avoided.


2.17 The cause of the avoidable is the superimposition of the external world onto the unseen world.


2.18 The experienced world consists of the elements and the senses in play. It is of the nature of cognition, activity and rest, and is for the purpose of experience and realization.


2.19 The stages of the attributes effecting the experienced world are the specialized and the unspecialized, the differentiated and the undifferentiated.


2.20 The indweller is pure consciousness only, which though pure, sees through the mind and is identified by ego as being only the mind.


2.21 The very existence of the seen is for the sake of the seer.


2.22 Although Creation is discerned as not real for the one who has achieved the goal, it is yet real in that Creation remains the common experience to others.


2.23 The association of the seer with Creation is for the distinct recognition of the objective world, as well as for the recognition of the distinct nature of the seer.


2.24 The cause of the association is ignorance.


2.25 Liberation of the seer is the result of the dissassociation of the seer and the seen, with the disappearance of ignorance.


2.26 The continuous practice of discrimination is the means of attaining liberation.


2.27 Steady wisdom manifests in seven stages.