Patanjali spends one sutra naming the nine things that stop a practice, and Swami Jyotirmayananda spends most of an hour on them. Before naming one, he removes the assumption that naming is the cure. You do not get rid of an obstacle because you have learned what it is called. Knowing is the beginni

Seven days ago Swamiji read the sixteenth verse of the seventh chapter and named the four kinds of people who turn to God. He comes back to it at the start of this class and says why: “because of its importance, I’m reiterating this verse.” The second reading is not a repetition. The first one named

There is a moment in this class where the whole architecture of the Ramayana quietly inverts. Rama, who is Brahman, under whose governance maya assembles entire universes in an instant, is being led around a building site by a group of children who have decided He does not know very much. They point

Rama has been answering a question nobody quite asked him. Vishvamitra came to King Dasharatha’s palace for a practical reason: he needed Rama and Lakshmana to protect a yajna. What he got instead was a young prince who had turned so far inward that the court had to ask him what was wrong. Rama’s re

Section 15 of the Vairagya Prakarana carries a title that sounds almost comic until you sit with it: Ahamkara-jugupsa, finding fault with one’s own ego. Jugupsa is the word for gossiping against something, speaking ill of it behind its back. The section is Rama gossiping against his own egoism, at l

Almost everyone who has tried a mantra has had the same experience. You repeat the words. Nothing appears to happen. You conclude, quietly and without saying it to anyone, that this particular door is closed to you. Sutra 28 of the Samadhi Pada anticipates that conclusion and refuses it. Patanjali’s

Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 7, verses 14 through 16, in Swami Jyotirmayananda’s commentary of May 31, 2015. This lecture is about the difference between understanding something and being changed by it, and it opens by refusing to let the first stand in for the second. You can gather every illumination th

Tulsi Ramayana, Lecture 93, Balakanda verses 220 to 222

A man travels to Arabia to buy the finest horse in the world. The seller, a famous dealer, tells him he has the best horse anyone could imagine, and then spends a full hour proving it: the nose, the ears, the mane, the legs. Nothing in the description is false. At the end of the hour the buyer asks

For years the Yoga Vasistha class has been complete on the channel from lesson forty-five onward. Anyone who went looking for the beginning found that the beginning was missing. Thirteen of the earliest lessons, including this one, were recorded in Miami and then simply never posted. They are not ou

Someone offers to take you to Niagara Falls. He will describe every part of it to you in full detail, on one condition: you keep your eyes closed the entire time. Afterward, you tell him he is all-seeing.

Chapter seven of the Bhagavad Gita carries a compound title, and Swami Jyotirmayananda opens this lecture by pulling it in half. Jnana is intellectual grasp. Vijnana is intuitional realization. Both are knowledge. Only one of them is the goal, and the illustration he uses is a mountain: a great many