Thirteen Obstacles and the Luminous Mind - Yoga Research Foundation

You sit for meditation and an arm begins to shake. It feels like something is finally happening. The next day it does not come, and it feels like going backward. In this class Swamiji places that whole reading of experience among the obstacles Patanjali names in the Samadhi Pada, and then spends most of the lecture on what to do instead. The class takes in sutras 30 to 36. Sutra 30 lists nine obstacles, the antarayas. Sutra 31 adds four consequences, the vikshepas, which are obstacles in their own right. Swamiji counts them together: thirteen. The remaining sutras are remedies, and each is matched to a particular set of obstacles. Practice on one point answers the subtle ones, such as doubt and the misreading of experience. Four attitudes toward other people answer sorrow and a stressed mind. Mastery of prana and the senses answers disease, trembling and disturbed breath. A taste for great objectives answers laziness and procrastination. And the luminous mind of sutra 36 is where the remedies lead. Before any of this, he lays out what is being purified. The opening invocation honors Patanjali for three gifts, and Swamiji uses it to define chitta, the mind stuff the sutras are meant to clear, as four functions working together. He also insists, at some length, that the body and speech belong to the spiritual life and are not distractions from it. The distinction the lecture turns on comes early. There are experiences in meditation, and there is progress, and they are not the same thing. A seeker who confuses them rides every sensation up and down. The rest of the class describes what a mind looks like when it has stopped doing that: focused, friendly, in command of its senses, drawn toward something large, and gradually transparent to the light behind it.

Passage index

The four functions of chitta

The invocation praises Patanjali as the sage who gave the scripture of yoga for purifying the chitta. Swamiji stops on that word. Chitta, he says, means four things. Manas is the conscious mind, which picks up perceptions through the senses. Buddhi, the intellect, evaluates those perceptions; what it likes is allowed to go deeper, and what it does not like is thrown away. Chitta in the narrow sense is the storehouse, the unconscious, which keeps every recording. Ahamkara, the ego, sits between the storehouse and the intellect as a regulator, because it is the ego that tells the intellect what is good. That is why even the best of things can be refused. If the ego says no, the intellect closes the door. Swamiji sums up the ego as the function that asserts its sense of identity, “This is me, this is mine”. The storehouse he describes with plain wonder. Millions of impressions are kept there, and when you speak even a few words, it supplies what they mean and how they should be arranged. “The mechanism is so advanced that science will never get to it.”

Body and speech belong to the path

Patanjali is honored for two more scriptures: Ayurveda, for purifying the body, and grammar, for purifying speech. Swamiji takes both seriously. “Gaining health of body and mind is a part of the spiritual movement.” “No spirituality is possible unless you focus your attention on the body, mind, and how to maintain health as normal, as perfect, as ideal as possible.” Speech gets the same treatment. A person with a good body and a good mind is still not ideally perfect if the tongue is split, double-talking, unregulated. At the ordinary level, that means knowing a language well and not filling it with slang. One step further, it means speaking with a purpose: to share a good sentiment and to make people better. The Sanskrit word for literature, sahitya, comes from hita, doing good. “So, that intention of doing good should overpower your tongue.” He adds that this is the secret of inspiration itself. “When your heart is full and you want to really convey something, then you become a great literary personality—poets, writers, inspirers.”

The first obstacle: disease

The obstacles proper begin with vyadhi, disease, and Swamiji widens the word. A person may be technically healthy, with nothing a doctor could find, and still not be healthy in the sense that matters: if the body is not allowing the mind to be calm, free from stress, relaxed and joyous, something is wrong. The remedy he names is yoga exercise, asanas and pranayama, and he is careful to say why it differs from other exercise. Each movement requires mental focus, so the body begins to touch the mind and the mind begins to touch the body. “At the end of your exercise, in complete relaxation, the mind must feel joyous.” On a machine, running fast, the mind has gone elsewhere by the end. He does not disparage that: all technology is good, but asanas and pranayama should not be forgotten, because they let you experience the interrelation of mind, body and prana. “And that’s tremendous; it’s a key to success.” Without that knowledge, he says, the resources God has given are misused day by day.

Dullness, doubt and procrastination

Styana is dullness, a mind that is not inspired. “Yes, perspiration enough, but inspiration very little.” Samshaya is doubt, and Swamiji is precise about where it belongs. In the study of logic, doubting is part of the practice. The obstacle is a mind addicted to doubt, which challenges even what it knows to be the best. And people feel quite happy about it. The doubter develops a kind of pride, the person who says, “Everybody says the lecture was wonderful, but I found many mistakes,” to show how subtle the intellect is. Pramada is putting things off for tomorrow. Alasya is laziness. Avirati is a lack of dispassion. He moves through these quickly; the remedies come later in the class.

Mistaking experiences for progress

Bhranti darshana is the obstacle the lecture dwells on longest among the nine. It is the inability to recognize the real stages of your own progress. A person gets some abrupt experience in the nervous system and takes it as a sign of advancement. You sit for meditation and your left or right arm begins to shake, and you feel very good about it. The next day it does not come, and you feel you are going backward. On the third day both arms shake, and now you feel you are progressing faster. “But bhrānti-darśana has nothing to do with your progress.” The same misreading attaches to many extraordinary perceptions: light, touch, forms appearing in the mind. “Therefore, guidance is needed.” With authoritative guidance and the support of satsanga, a seeker comes to see for themselves that such things do not mark progress. Two more obstacles close the nine. In alabdha bhumikatva, you go high but simply slide down; no step is made on which to settle. In anavasthitatva, you do find a step and see its value, but cannot stay on it. “All these are subtle obstacles.”

Sorrow, stress, trembling and breath

The nine give rise to four vikshepas. The first is duhkha, sorrow. “You are sad. You don’t even know why.” Sometimes you know the cause, sometimes not, but either way the mind is down and practice becomes difficult. Daurmanasya is a stressful mind, running in many directions. Duhkha lies deeper; daurmanasya is the wandering. Sorrow and stress devitalize. The pranas stop operating in harmony, and the effect reaches the nervous system and the body. That is angamejayatva: some part of the body suddenly begins to shake. “And that is not advancement.” The shaking a seeker mistook for progress a few minutes earlier in the lecture turns out to be a symptom. The fourth is shvasa prashvasa, literally breathing in and breathing out, the breath becoming disturbed. Swamiji gives it a broader meaning as well: the senses, which are always accepting and rejecting. That process should run under the guidance of the intellect. When the senses no longer follow that guidance, the result is an obstacle.

Sutra 32: practice on one point

The first remedy, eka tattva abhyasa, is aimed at the subtle obstacles: doubt, the mistaken notion of progress, and the instability that cannot find or keep a higher state. It means practice of one-pointedness, which is to say meditation. Swamiji’s instruction is direct. “Don’t wait until you know what meditation is all about.” Start practicing. Take up japa, the repetition of a mantra, and let the mind be focused. The practice has three levels: concentration, meditation and samadhi. The object can suit the person. Someone who simply wants to improve the mind can choose a flower, a lotus, the rising sun, or a flame; in trataka you look at the flame, close your eyes, and see it inwardly. “You don’t have to work very hard with imagination.” For the spiritually inclined, a better object is a form of the Divine, such as Rama or Krishna, along with the mantra. The benefit, he says, reaches every part of life. One-pointedness gives clarity about what to will and how to will it. He asks you to picture going into your job with a clear mind, and then going in burdened and worried, watching the boss watch you. One-pointedness carries into work itself: “Let me finish this, other things will wait.” Things get done with greater dexterity, and you end the day inspired rather than exhausted.

Sutra 33: four attitudes toward others

For the obstacles of grief, sadness and shallow thinking, Patanjali gives sutra 33: maitri, karuna, mudita and upeksha, friendliness, compassion, cheerfulness and indifference, each toward a different kind of person. Toward the happy, friendliness. When happy faces come to you, be happy with them, as if you have been friends for long. Toward the unhappy, compassion, turning to them the way a mother turns to a child. “The compassion means you step out of yourself”, without worrying about what you will feel. “Not just turn and feel that way, but do something about it.” Toward those advancing in virtue, joy. Never think that they are different from you. “Think your own spirit is beckoning you to your own possibility.” “They have done it, wonderful. That means I can do it also.” The negative mind reacts the other way, asking how anybody can be greater than me after all I have suffered. Swamiji recalls a man who told him, “I suffered more than Christ.” That feeling, he says, leads to one’s own ruin. Toward the perverted and the gross-minded, indifference. They are part of the world, the way a forest holds wild snakes and vultures; you do not bring a vulture close to your face. “Learn to be indifferent.” Practiced together, the four remove sadness, anxiety and dullness, and the mind becomes more energetic.

Sutra 34: mastery of prana and the senses

Sutra 34 speaks of exhalation and retention of prana. Swamiji reads prana here as all the indriyas: the five senses of perception and the organs of action. Control of the senses means knowing how to use them, how to withdraw them, and how to keep from abusing them. His example is ice cream. You are hungry, you buy one, and you are enjoying it. How much should you eat? That should be under your control. “It should not be limitless.” The reverse also holds: a nutritious dish you do not much like should not simply be rejected, and a little pickle helps digestion. There is always a question of how much to accept and how much to reject, and in a cultured mind it becomes automatic, without carrying a calculator. When the senses are under the control of good reasoning, viveka, the result is freedom from disease, from shaking of the body, and from abnormal breathing: the very vikshepas named in sutra 31. Pranayama is implied as well. Breathing in is accepting; breathing out is renouncing. “Prāṇa is not the breath, prāṇa is subtle energy.” People begin with the breath because the operation of prana is easy to see there. “But this is a beginning, an initial and a kind of kindergarten movement.” The broader movement is to notice how prana is wasted. You spend time with someone who brings you all the dirty laundry of the whole block, and a balanced mind is suddenly agitated. Swamiji recites the principle that purity of intake brings purity of mind, ahara shuddhi, and extends intake to everything you see, hear and taste. A beautiful sight in nature harmonizes the prana. A mind kept this way is receptive and joyous. “A joyous mind finds so many things to learn.” “You are always a student.”

Sutra 35: a taste for great objectives

Sutra 35 is aimed at procrastination and laziness, the mind that is not interested, or, if interested, not today. Swamiji reads it as the mind developing a taste for divine objects, which removes dullness and lets the mind move toward samadhi. He puts it another way: develop udara vritti, be magnanimous, a person with a bigger heart and bigger thoughts. Once the mind has something big to work for, laziness and tomorrow cease to arise. “Rather you want God to push in many more days in one single day.” “Allow the mind to flow towards great objectives.”

Sutra 36: the sorrowless, luminous mind

The last sutra of the class is vishoka va jyotishmati: the mind led to a state that is sorrowless and luminous. That means freedom from rajas and tamas. Tamas draws the mind toward sleep, laziness, cruelty and insensitivity. Rajas pulls it outward into fancies and empty imaginings, building lots of castles in the air. “They do nothing but they crash on your head.” The cure is sattva, developed through good association, which gives the mind spiritual material to work with: how to love God, how to enjoy japa and feel the power of the mantra, how to turn negative qualities into positive ones. As the mind moves toward sattva, it grows peaceful and begins to shine, because the Divine Self behind it shines through. “Make the cloud a little less opaque. The sun begins to pour through it.” He is careful about what luminous means. It is not only physical light. “Generosity is luminous.” Miserliness and cruelty are dark. Cheerfulness and joy are luminous. “Clarity of mind that reveals you what you are. That’s luminous.” And he is clear about where it ends. “Liberation is not to stay stuck with the mind.” The goal is to go beyond the mind, and a mind that loves the light finally melts in it, the way a cloud that keeps letting the sun through gradually dissipates. He insists this is not a grim picture. “It’s a thrilling description. Cloud vanishes.”

Terms

antaraya — an obstacle in the practice of yoga; sutra 30 lists nine
vikshepa — a consequence of the obstacles, itself an obstacle; sutra 31 lists four
manas — the conscious mind, which receives perceptions through the senses
buddhi — the intellect, which evaluates and reasons
ahamkara — the ego, which asserts “this is me, this is mine” and regulates what the intellect admits
chitta — the storehouse of impressions; in the invocation, the whole mind stuff
bhranti darshana — mistaking experiences in meditation for signs of progress
alabdha bhumikatva — going high but finding no step on which to settle
anavasthitatva — finding a higher step but being unable to stay on it
angamejayatva — trembling of the body, a consequence of sorrow and stress
eka tattva abhyasa — practice on one point; the remedy of sutra 32
udara vritti — magnanimity; a mind with something big to work for
vishoka jyotishmati — the sorrowless, luminous state of mind in sutra 36

For reflection

What have you been treating as a sign of progress, and what would it mean to let it go?
Toward which of the four kinds of people is your attitude least steady: the happy, the suffering, the virtuous, or the twisted?
What great objective could give your mind a reason not to wait for tomorrow?

About this lecture

Raja Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Samadhi Pada, sutras 30 to 36. Lecture 19 by Swami Jyotirmayananda, Yoga Research Foundation. The complete archive of Swamiji’s lectures is free to all.

This study guide is drawn from the archived teachings of Sri Swami Jyotirmayananda.