#37. Seven-fold Wisdom On The Path Of Meditation | Yoga Sutras Of Patanjali

Namaste and a very warm welcome to all of you in this daily morning live meditation session with me,

Dhyansu.

We're going through Yoga Sutras of Patanjali,

Which is a path towards wisdom.

It is not towards intellect which is allowing us to operate with logic in our daily life.

With the way we have used our intelligence in our daily life is always utilizing that part of intelligence which is known as intellect.

But yoga,

Meditation,

Spirituality is a path to developing the intelligence utilizing the intelligence towards wisdom.

It is important to understand the difference between intellect and wisdom.

Intellect is what divides.

If you see how we have developed our understanding of the world,

Our understanding of oneself our understanding of anything,

We always divide.

We take anything that is one,

We divide into two,

Two into many,

Many into infinite.

This division is the process of intellect and the more finer details we can divide,

The more we say the person is very intellectual and the intellect is very strong.

And the whole framework of even scientific understanding is based on how strong the intellect is functioning.

That is why in society we celebrate the intellectuals,

The scholars.

But there is less room for wisdom,

There is less room for the wise.

Why?

Because wisdom is not divisional.

Wisdom is integrated.

Wisdom is of the whole.

It integrates the divisions that the intellect creates and puts them together.

The more we see that the intellect is not sufficient enough for the understanding of life,

For the understanding of oneself,

The more we have to move towards wisdom where the intelligence is not just dividing,

The intelligence is also integrating back and the perspective that you have towards things is multi-dimensional.

And yoga in another word is that union,

Is that integration where there is no isolation of different experiences of life but an integration of experiences of life,

Integration of how we operate in this life as one life and also collectively as this one life on this planet,

One life in this universe.

And this entire integration,

The entire yoga is the movement,

Is the path towards this integration where yoga,

Where meditation,

Where spirituality takes us.

Let us go through a couple of sutras of Patanjali which are related to this integration,

Related to moving from intellect to wisdom.

Patanjali says,

Viveka khyathir aviplava hana upiya Uninterrupted discriminative discernment is the method of its removal.

Removal of what?

Removal of ignorance.

The ignorance which comes when we are dividing,

When we are subdividing so much so that we lose the bigger picture,

That we lose the understanding.

If you see the events that are happening in the world,

They are all more and more towards dividing.

The more we divide even ourselves,

The more we lose the understanding of each other.

What Patanjali is saying is uninterrupted discriminative discernment is the method of its removal.

This means to practice this reflection constantly throughout our life where we are not just dividing and understanding but also trying to use the intelligence in integrating and looking at things from wisdom not only from intellect.

As an example,

If you see a leaf,

You can say it is of color green,

It is of shape round,

It is of weight so and so milligrams.

You have divided the characteristics and labeled the characteristics with certain attributes.

This is just the description of the leaf but what is that leaf?

Is that leaf just that one piece that you have in front of you or is it a part of the whole?

If we do not consider the whole,

Then the entire meaning of what that is is lost.

So wisdom is to connect to see the entirety.

At the same time,

When you see even a drop,

You see the ocean in the drop.

That is what is wisdom and that is what is achieved by uninterrupted discriminative discernment which is the continuity of your intelligence acting as wisdom reflecting being aware not just of the point,

Not just of the object,

Not just of the divided object but of the whole.

Then Patanjali says,

Tasyah saptadhah pranata bhumi prajna.

One's wisdom in the final stage is sevenfold.

So here he is talking about that while you are going through this process of yoga,

Of uniting your energies,

Of integrating this perspective towards wisdom,

Towards having the whole,

Seeing the whole picture,

Along this path there are seven wisdoms that unfold in front of you and you experience them in your own awareness,

In your own consciousness.

What are these seven wisdoms that happen to you on the path of yoga?

The first wisdom is that when your consciousness expands,

The wisdom of the knowledge.

What is the wisdom of knowledge?

The wisdom of knowledge is that you realize that you know nothing.

Socrates has said,

The more I know,

The more I know that I know nothing.

The more I know,

The more I know that I know nothing.

Which simply means that when your consciousness is expanding,

You realize that whatever you know is so small as compared to what all is the unknown,

What all is the unknowable and the more your consciousness expands,

The more your wisdom expands,

The more you have the knowledge but what is to be known,

What is unknowable in your view that expands so much that what you know remains so minimal,

So less as compared to the whole that you lose the value of that little,

You lose that division and you are with the whole.

Then Patanjali says,

The second wisdom that happens to you is the wisdom of experience.

The first is the wisdom of knowledge,

The second is the wisdom of experience.

When your awareness is turned inwards,

You realize that the entire experience of this world that you have,

That you are looking for outside is actually happening within.

You are not experiencing anything more than what your senses are making you experience.

The five senses and the six,

The mind where you have all the thoughts and your imaginations and your dreams and so on,

Beyond the six,

There is no experience and these six are so subjective.

What you hear is what you hear,

Not only what is happening outside but your interpretation,

What you see is not what is necessarily happening outside but your interpretation,

Your perception of what you see and so on.

So all these five senses and your thought is creating the entire experience.

You are looking for the experience outside but the wisdom of experience which unfolds when your consciousness turns inwards,

When your awareness turns inwards on the path of yoga is that you see the entire experience is created inside.

So what are you looking for outside,

That happiness,

That pleasure,

That joy,

That bliss that you are looking for outside is all within.

All you need to do is turn inwards,

Understand,

Realize in your own experience that everything that is happening,

All the experiences that you are looking for and you are currently experiencing are only happening within.

There is nothing outside,

Everything is just within.

Then the third wisdom happens,

The wisdom of connection.

How are we to be with each other?

Here the wisdom that dawns upon is that everything is connected.

The intellect which has divided,

Which has made all of us,

Put all of us into isolation and put us more and more distant and far apart,

The wisdom is that we are all connected.

So what is the point of all this division?

We are all connected,

We have to come closer,

Not go far away from each other.

This interconnectedness of not just the human beings but of nature,

Of this entire multidimensional process that is happening all around us,

This wisdom dawns upon us.

You see that the water that you drink comes from that river that has fallen as a waterfall from the glaciers which get their water from the clouds which get the water back from all the rivers that are completing the full circle.

You see that everything is interconnected,

You see every being on this planet has a role to play in that interconnectedness.

In isolation there is no meaning,

In isolation there is no significance to life.

The significance to life is only when you see the interconnectedness and act out of that interconnectedness.

That is the wisdom of connection that leads us to how we operate with each other.

And also if you understand when we are connected,

What is that force that connects all of us?

Then comes the wisdom,

The fourth wisdom of love.

That love is that force.

Love is that only force which puts us all together.

There is nothing else that holds valid across the entire universe of what we call as our world and there is no other force that holds so much more valid as love.

You can see in your relationships,

Not just with people but with things,

With everything around you,

If there is no love sooner or later it falls apart.

Love is that universal force which holds us together which is the interconnectedness of all of us together.

The fifth wisdom is of self-knowledge which means to know oneself is to know God.

This points to the fact that there is nothing other than God.

What that means is when we know ourselves we know God.

When we know God we know ourselves.

It is all one and the same and the only realization is that we,

When we turn inwards,

When self-knowledge happens we see that we are pure awareness,

We are pure consciousness.

When we turn ourselves towards God we again see that it is only pure consciousness that we call as God.

It is one and the same thing.

So this self-knowledge is the wisdom of self-knowledge that happens on the path of yoga,

On the path of meditation.

Very quickly the last two wisdoms that happen are the wisdom of action which is what is the purpose of this all and Patanjali says true action has no purpose.

When you have perfected your action to that level where there is no purpose to your action there is absolutely nothing that you are chasing and that action becomes your natural action.

Action out of no action is what yoga aims to give you as the wisdom of action,

The wisdom of purpose.

And the last truth is liberation.

Ultimately all this leads to truth,

All this wisdom leads to the truth of the whole which liberates us from this entire misery that we are living in and puts us in a place where there is peace,

Where there is silence,

Where there is bliss.

With that I invite you to close your eyes and reflect on these seven wisdoms that arise on the path of yoga while moving towards silence,

While moving inwards,

While having the consciousness expanding.

Please take a posture that is comfortable for you.

Take a nice deep breath inhale from the nose and exhale from the nose allowing your body to rest.

Your spine erect at all times.

Your mind more and more in this present moment.

As you move into silence put all what you know aside.

Your knowledge that you have gathered,

The labels,

Descriptions,

The ways that you have gathered put them aside.

In silence without carrying anything with you.

Not even the knowledge of how to meditate,

What you would do.

Simply move in silence.

The wisdom of experience.

Notice all what you are experiencing in this moment is within you.

The noises,

The activities are all within you.

With your own projection.

You wisdom of connection and love awareness to your heart Tune in to the love in your heart the unconditional love flowing for everyone you wisdom of self-knowledge,

Truth,

Liberation all your awareness inwards towards yourself and become aware of the awareness the awareness that enables you to be aware shift towards that awareness and stay there for the next minutes let go of all effort stay in this pure awareness all your awareness inwards towards yourself all your awareness inwards towards yourself this silence,

This meditative awareness keep your eyes closed as long as you like go within as deep as you can oh,

Very gently and slowly you may open your eyes with me maintain this awareness,

This centeredness which leads to a whole integrated view of life,

Of wisdom I will see you tomorrow at 7 am Central European Time Namaste