The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are a philosophical explanation of the logical fallacies and cognitive biases that prevent the individual from being in relationship with reality. In our life time we have a false sense of who we are reified in us through out the course of our lives. This false sense of self is the Ego. Life Characterizes us to our self, thus we develop a self image that is an illusion in so far as it distracts us from knowing our true inner self. Neural myelination is created every time a pattern is repeated. This essentially hard wires the brain into certain patterns and instincts and habits which are hard to break, and some people do not have the strength or self discipline either to be aware of themselves and the patterns the create, repeating them like a crazy person and expecting a different result. I refer to humans as organic computers because they are much more predictable than people think.
Imagine if you will that neural myelination is like a dirt road in an old west town, when it rains, mud is created, and when a carriage is drawn through the town it makes grooves in the road, the natural weight of the carriage, drops it into the grooves and the course the carriage takes is almost exactly like that of every other carriage. This instinct prevents creativity in changing times. It prevents people from reacting correctly to what is happening right now. Eventually people are in relationship with a non reality because they are in relationship with the way things were or are supposed to be and not in relationship with the moment, the present. They are, in all effect, delusional.
Some of you know that I am a linguistic philosopher. I do subscribe somewhat to the theory of linguistic determinism. The patterns that the vast majority of people are capable of creating are based on their vocabulary which is their thought tool set as it were. Most people do not personally create their own patterns or break pattern without permission because Authority has been extracted from most people in order to make them civil and controllable. Society tells us what the correct response is and the correct action is, even when people do break pattern from the social norm often times they do not do so in a beneficial or constructive way. People that can think new thoughts, come up with new arguments, look at things in a way no one has ever looked at them before are few and far between. The rest of humans are copy cats. Only when they see another person create a pattern are they then able to copy that pattern, but if they had never seen it they never would have come to that action of their own accord. This has been referred to as the acquisitively mimetic behavior of humans.
The word Yoga, is the origin of the word Yoke, which essentially means to make one.
“The light of thy body is thy eye. If thy eye be single, thy whole body will be lightsome: but if it be evil, thy body also will be darksome.” Luke 11: 34
The word here translated as single is sometimes translated as healthy, which has the connotation of whole, or holy, perfect or complete. Some of you know that I have done a lot of work in pointing out the similarities between what Jesus taught and the ancient Saraswati cults of India. This statement is a rhetorical tautology of the third eye chakra.
10The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?”
11He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. 12Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. 13This is why I speak to them in parables: “Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand. 14In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: “ ‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. 15For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears,and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.’a
I am not preaching any particular branch of yoga, and I am not trying to push christianity on anybody, I am merely describing and explaining.
heal (v.)
Old English hælan “cure; save; make whole, sound and well,” from Proto-Germanic *hailjan (cognates: Old Saxon helian, Old Norse heila, Old Frisian hela, Dutch helen, German heilen, Gothic ga-hailjan “to heal, cure”), literally “to make whole” (see health). Related: Healed; healing. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=heal
holy (adj.)
Old English halig “holy, consecrated, sacred, godly,” from Proto-Germanic *hailaga- (cognates: Old Norse heilagr, Old Frisian helich “holy,” Old Saxon helag, Middle Dutch helich, Old High German heilag, German heilig, Gothic hailags “holy”). Adopted at conversion for Latin sanctus.
Primary (pre-Christian) meaning is not possible to determine, but probably it was “that must be preserved whole or intact, that cannot be transgressed or violated,” and connected with Old English hal (see health) and Old High German heil“health, happiness, good luck” (source of the German salutation Heil). Holy water was in Old English. Holy has been used as an intensifying word from 1837; used in expletives since 1880s (such as holy smoke, 1883, holy mackerel, 1876, holy cow, 1914, holy molyetc.), most of them euphemisms for holy Christ or holy Moses. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=holy
Yoga essentially means to make one, or to become whole, it is about the marriage of everything with everything, the marrying of the individual to reality, which is a rhetorical tautology of becoming one with god, which in turn means to understand and be wise and to be properly in relationship with the world around you and the people as well. This means to be correctly in relationship with facts but more than that to have a deep and intimate and correct understanding of the very nature or reality, as god. The Fruity Spiritualists that don’t really know what Yoga is about or even spirituality for that matter, presuppose a pleasant, non violent, superficial spouting of shibboleths and telling people what they want to hear. Instead of waking people up to reality, which can be unpleasant, what they do instead is put them asleep to the nature of reality and indoctrinate them into a pleasantly deluded cognitive dissonance, a running away from reality and putting oneself in a trance of artificial pleasantness, this is the opposite of the intention of Yoga.
Advaita (not-two in Sanskrit) refers to the identity of the true Self, Atman, which is pure consciousness[note 3], and the highest Reality, Brahman, which is also pure consciousness.[11][note 4][note 5] Followers seek liberation/release by acquiring vidyā (knowledge)[13] of the identity of Atman and Brahman. Attaining this liberation takes a long preparation and training under the guidance of a guru. Advaita thought can also be found in non-orthodox Indian religious traditions, such as the tantric Nath tradition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Vedanta
Vidya is vitiated knowledge.
vi·ti·ateˈviSHēˌāt/verbformalpast tense: vitiated; past participle: vitiate, spoil or impair the quality or efficiency of.”development programs have been vitiated by the rise in population destroy or impair the legal validity of.
For the Epicureans[edit]
For the Epicureans, ataraxia was synonymous with the only true happiness possible for a person. It signifies the state of robust tranquility that derives from eschewing faith in an afterlife, not fearing the gods because they are distant and unconcerned with us, avoiding politics and vexatious people, surrounding oneself with trustworthy and affectionate friends and, most importantly, being an affectionate, virtuous person, worthy of trust.[citation needed]
For the Pyrrhonists[edit]
For the Pyrrhonists, given that neither the sense impressions nor the intellect, nor both combined, is a sufficient means of knowing and conveying truth, one suspends judgement on dogmatic beliefs or anything non-evident. It is from this suspension of belief ataraxia arises as one realizes one thing is ‘no more’ than that. No more up than down, no more wet than dry, no more hot than cold, no more night than day, “the number of stars one can see in the night sky is no more even than odd”, no more left than right, no more black than white as when Anaxagoras countered the notion that snow is white with the argument “Snow is frozen water, and water is black; therefore snow is also black”, etc. Most important of all, in enunciation of ‘no more’ or ‘I determine nothing’, in uttering these expressions, one is merely stating how things appear to them, at the time and in an undogmatic way, without making any assertion of truth regarding external reality.[2]
For the Stoics[edit]
The Stoics, too, sought mental tranquility, and saw ataraxia as something to be highly desired and often made use of the term, but for them the analogous state, attained by the Stoic sage, was apatheia or absence of passion.[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ataraxia#For_the_Pyrrhonists
IN CLOSING
From the perspective of the Ancients, Yoga was a lifetime commitment and their was no guarantee that the seeker would ever actually attain the fruit of their desire and work. The individual is born in ignorance and may never get to the point of attaining to non vitiated knowledge, or understanding, or wisdom, but if he does he becomes a jivamukti, he becomes free in his own lifetime, reborn, free from illusion. Having discovered the One True Self that connects us all and indwells us all the True self, Shiva. When one comes into union (yoga) with the supreme reality, jiva becomes Shiva. The individual self becomes, the ONE SELF.
The Advaita school holds the view that the world appearance is owing to Avidya (“ignorance”) that has the power to project i.e. to super-impose, the unreal on the real (Adhyasa), and also the power to conceal the real resulting in the delusion of the Jiva who experiences objects created by his mind and sees difference in this world, he sees difference between the atman (“the individual self”) and Brahman (“the supreme Self”). This delusion caused by ignorance is destroyed when ignorance itself is destroyed by knowledge. When all delusion is removed there remains no awareness of difference. He who sees no difference is said to be a Jivanmukta. Perception of difference leads one from death to death, non-difference can be perceived only by the highly trained intellect, so states the Sruti (Katha Upanishad II.4.11).[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jivanmukta#Implication