There is a video of this talk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGppAC9GsIU

Let us start with an invocation

Asto ma sadgamayah

Tamso ma jyotir gamayah

Mrityo ma Amrito gamayah

Aum shanti shanti shanti

This invocation means

Lead me from untruth to truth

From Darkness to Light

From Death to Eternal Life

This is such a beautiful invocation to start the talk on Yog Sutra.  Yog Sutra is all about moving from untruth to truth, from darkness to light, from impermanent and mortal to eternal.

Yog Sutra is an Hindu classic text. It lays out the way for us to know the truth.

It is short and to the point–it has only 196 verses in four chapters. Today Yoga has become popular.  There is even an international Yoga day recognized by UN in June. The common image of Yoga is the physical sets of exercises–asanas.  The more knowledgable know that the physical part of yog is a small part of the overall Yog.  Asanas are the preparation of body for the more important purpose of Yog.  It is actually an 8 step journey to ultimate liberation.

So what is the core objective of Yog.  The ultimate goal of Yog is to go beyond the distortions of our mind and realize the truth.  The truth that we all are one.  That universal consciousness is the same as the life force within us.  Like any body of knowledge it is best to start with core principles before going to advanced concepts and practice.  The first chapter of Yog Sutra is a description of how to get the true knowledge about any object.  It has 51 verses.  It lays out a framework of correct and incorrect knowledge and also clarifies what are the obstacles in getting the correct knowledge.

First how do we get true knowledge.  There are three ways. First is direct perception.  Using one of our 5 sense organs we observe the object directly.  Every time we see, hear, touch, smell or taste something we know of the object.  Second way is to estimate.  This can also be called indirect perception.  We can’t observe gravity, however, the effects of gravity are visible and felt by us all the time.  We also see the pictures of bouncing astronauts in space.  So we can estimate what gravity is like.  And third way to get true knowledge is through competent testimony.  This is knowledge because someone else told us so.  All our life we learn new things from teachers and experts.  There are so many objects which we can’t observe directly or even infer their impact.  For all such objects we rely on competent testimony.  It is important that the expert providing the testimony is competent.  Let us say you rely on the word of a street side quack about the power of a powder he is trying to sell to you.  He can tell you about all the magical effects that the powder can have, but that is not competent testimony.

Now let us discuss incorrect or untrue knowledge.  Untrue knowledge might be one of the following–1) we may be “sleeping” which means that we may not be observing the reality.  My children often joke that I don’t really know what happens in the movies because I half sleep through them.  If you are not awake, you are in a state of false knowledge. Thought the inactivity of thought in sleep and deep meditation may seem similar, but it is completely different.

2) we have the wrong perception.  The famous example of confusing a rope for a snake is the best example here.

3) we may be imagining something (which is not the reality).  This is tricky to fix.  Sometimes we may have no direct observation, inference or even competent testimony but we can imagine really bad situations.  A recent case is our assumption of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  Turns out there was no evidence, however, in our imagination we could make up horrible situations and initiated a set of events which have caused a lot of suffering in the region.  

4) Finally, the last source of untrue knowledge is our memory.  This one is the hardest to understand and correct.

Memory is essential recognizing objects through direct observation.  If we did not remember what a mango looks like, how can we ever recognize one.  It is also essential in estimating or evaluating competent testimony correctly.  How can we infer correctly or even know who is a competent source if we do not rely on our memory.  The actual verse here says

“Anubhuta vishaya sampramoshah smrith”

Which translates into “don’t let memory carry away the experience of the object”

When we let memory add or take away something from our direct experience of the object then we are letting the store of memory to color the reality as it is now.  Let me tell you about the power of memory.  There is a medical phenomenon called the phantom limb syndrome.  People who lose a limb–an arm or a leg–continue reporting sensation and pain in that limb long after limb has been amputated.  This is the power of memory that mind has.  Our mind can make us believe that even a body part exists when it does not.  And memory here is much deeper.  Our latent impressions form memory. Take an example of a simple hug. A person who has been abused as a child will continue to react with suspicion any physical touch all his life.  It will create anxiety and fear in them.  Another person who was hugged with affection when she was a child will find tremendous comfort in the physical touch.  This is the power of your memory.

Memory can also be cultural or at the level of society.  Major events like the partition of India or 9/11 attacks have created memory for a whole generation of people and it shapes and colors are perceptions about reality.  

So now that we know the difference between true and untrue knowledge, let us talk about the path to get there.  How do we get there.  There are only two keys to success–practice and detachment.  The more we practice better we become.  And the more we become detached to the strong attractions or aversions.

Doing more practice is self explanatory.  So let us talk about becoming more detached.  The have strong likes and dislikes.  These strong likes and dislikes are deeply embedded in our thoughts and color everything by association.  So the journey is to weaken the strong likes and dislikes.  As we weaken them, the distortion it causes in our thoughts goes down.  Recently in India there have been demonstrations against artists who come to perform in India from Pakistan.  This is a case of our dislike of a country coloring our thoughts about something totally different.  

At the same time, we need to be discerning. We also need to know what is right and what is wrong.  We should not reduce our liking for beauty and aesthetics or reduce our dislike for violence and hunger.  It is simply that we need to reduce the hold those memories have on our ability to observe the reality.  Let us say that you like driving in the shade.  And in the heat of North India right now, who would not like to drive in the shade.  As you are driving down the road you see a tree on the left so you swerve totally to the left, a little ahead you see a tree on the right so you swerve to the right.  Like this you are moving forward in a zig zag pattern.  As you reduce your attachment to the tree, you can move in a straight line efficiently.  You will get some shade along the way and you will get to your destination much faster.  This is the meaning of reducing the attachments and aversions.  It does not mean being totally directionless.  It means that being so much in control of the mind that unnecessary diversions do not take away from moving in the direction that you want to move in.  And this is also the secret of effective decision making.  We must observe reality as it is.  We must not let our likes/dislikes color our perceptions.  And lesser the impact of our memories and latent impressions, the better off we will be in becoming of the reality around us.

So now that we have talked about the methods to move from false knowledge to true knowledge, it is apt to close with the biggest false knowledge that we encounter.  It is to overcome this false knowledge that the whole methodology has been created.  The biggest untruth is a sense of separateness from the universal consciousness.  A sense of identity with the ego.  Following this method one realizes that there is a life force behind the mind.  A person who has a memory loss or suffers from alzheimer’s does not lose their life force,  They lose their memory and a lot of the accumulated likes and dislikes.  They are no longer attached to their children or spouses. So there must be something more innate than our likes and dislikes, our mortal relations.  That innate thing is our consciousness which is common with all else.  It is the universal consciousness.

However, this knowledge of non-duality is difficult to achieve and represents nirvana.  In the meantime, we can use the framework to get true knowledge about our daily situations and make better decisions without being swayed by mind distortions.