8 Steps of Yoga
यमनियमाSSसनप्राणायामप्रत्याहारधारणाध्यानसमाधयोSष्टावङ्गानि
THE EIGHT STEPS OF YOGA ARE: YAM, SELF-RESTRAINT; NIYAM. FIXED OBSERVANCE; ASAN, POSTURE; PRANAYAM, BREATH REGULATION; PRATYAHAR, ABSTRACTION; DHARANA, CONCENTRATION; DHYAN, CONTEMPLATION; SAMADHI, TRANCE.
The eight steps of yoga. This is the whole science of yoga in one sentence, in one seed. Many things are implied. First, let me tell you the exact meaning of each step. And remember, Patanjali calls them steps and limbs, both. They are both.
Yam
SELF-RESTRAINT
To Patanjali self-restraint does not mean to repress oneself. It simply means to direct one's life -- not to repress the energies, but to direct, to give them a direction. Because you can live such a life, which goes on moving in opposite directions, in many directions -- then you will never reach anywhere.
To create a self-restraint means, first, to give a direction to your life energy. Life energy is limited. If you go on using it in absurd. undirected ways, you will not reach anywhere. You will be emptied of the energy sooner or later -- and that emptiness will not be the emptiness of a Buddha; it will be simply a negative emptiness. nothing inside, an empty container.
Self-restraint means, the first meaning: to give a direction to life. Self-restraint means to become a little more centered. How can you become a little more centered? Once you give a direction to your life, immediately a center starts happening within you. Direction creates the center; then the center gives direction. And they are mutually fulfilling.
Unless you are self-restrained, the second is not possible -- that s why Patanjali calls them steps.
Niyam
FIXED OBSERVANCE
The second is niyam, fixed observance: a life which bas a discipline, a life which has a regularity about it, a life which is lived in a very disciplined way, not hectic. Regularity... but that too will sound to you like slavery. All beautiful words of Patanjali's time have become ugly now. But I tell you, unless you have a regularity in your life, a discipline, you will be a slave of your instincts -- and you may think this is freedom, but you will be a slave of all the vagrant thoughts. That is not freedom. You may not have any visible master, but you will have many invisible masters within you; and they will go on dominating you. Only a man who has a regularity about him can become the master someday.
Niyam
POSTURE
The third is posture. And every step comes out of the first, the preceding one: when you have regularity in life, only then can you attain to posture, asan. Try asan sometimes; just try to sit silently. You cannot sit -- the body tries to revolt against you. Suddenly you start feeling pain here and there. The legs are going dead. Suddenly you feel, on many spots of the body, a restlessness. You had never felt it. Why is it that just sitting silently so many problems arise? You feel ants are crawling up. Look, and you will see there are no ants; the body is deceiving you. The body is not ready to be disciplined. The body is spoiled. The body does not want to listen to you. It has become its own master. And you have.
Asan means a relaxed posture. You are so relaxed in it, you are so restful in it, that there is no need to move the body at all. In that moment, suddenly, you transcend body.
always followed it
Pranayam
BREATH REGULATION
If the body can be in rest, then you can regulate your breathing You are moving deeper, because breath is the bridge from the body to the soul, from the body to the mind. If you Can regulate breathing -- that is pranayam -- you have power over your mind.
And pranayam is not something which can be taught to you. You have to discover it because everybody has a different rhythm to his breathing.
Breathing is an individual phenomenon, that's why I never teach it. You have to discover your own rhythm. Your rhythm may not be a rhythm for somebody else, or may be harmful for somebody else. Your rhythm -- you have to find.
And that is not difficult. There is no need to ask any expert. Just keep a chart for one month of all your moods and states. Then you know which is the rhythm where you feel most restful, relaxed, in a deep let-go; which is the rhythm where
Prtyahar
ABSTRACTION
And after pranayam, breath regulation, is pratyahar, abstraction.
pratyahar is also returning back, coming back -- coming in, turning in, returning home. After pranayam that is possible -- pratyahar -- because pranayam will give you the rhythm. Now you know the whole spectrum: you know in what rhythm you are nearest to home and in what rhythm you are farthest from yourself. Violent, sexual, angry, jealous, possessive, you will find you are far away from yourself; in compassion, in love, in prayer, in gratitude, you will find yourself nearer home. After pranayam, pratyahar, return, is possible. Now you know the way -- then you already know how to step backwards.
Dharna
CONCENTRATION
Then comes dharana. After pratyahar, when you have started coming back nearer home, coming nearer your innermost core, you are just at the gate of your own being. pratyahar brings you near the gate; pranayam is the bridge from the out to the in. Pratyahar, returning, is the gate, and then is the possibility of
dharana, concentration. Now you can become capable of bringing your mind to one object. First, you gave direction to your body; first, you gave direction to your life energy -- now you give direction to your consciousness. Now the consciousness cannot be allowed to go anywhere and everywhere. Now it has to be brought to a goal. This goal is concentration, dharana: you fix your consciousness on one point.
When consciousness is fixed on one point thoughts cease, because thoughts are possible only when your consciousness goes on wavering -- from here to there, from there to somewhere else. When your consciousness is continuously jumping like a monkey, then there are many thoughts and your whole mind is just filled with crowds -- a marketplace. Now there is a possibility -- after pratyahar, pranayam, there is a possibility -- you can concentrate on one point.
Dhyan
CONTEMPLATION
If you can concentrate on one point, then the possibility of dhyan. In concentration you bring your mind to one point. In dhyan you drop that point also. Now you are totally centered, nowhere-going -- because if you are going anywhere it is always going out. Even a single thought in concentration is something outside you -- object exists; you are not alone, there are two. Even in concentration there are two: the object and you. After concentration the object has to be dropped.
All the temples lead you only up to concentration. They cannot lead you beyond because all the temples have an object in them: the image of God is an object to concentrate on. All the temples lead you only up to dharana, concentration.
That's why the higher a religion goes, the temple and the image disappear. They have to disappear. The temple should be absolutely empty, so that only you are there -- nobody, nobody else, no object: pure subjectivity.
Dhyan is pure subjectivity, contemplation -- not contemplating "something," because if you are contemplating something it is concentration. In English there are no better words. Concentration means something is there to concentrate upon. Dhyan is meditation: nothing is there, everything dropped, but you are in an intense state of awareness. The object has dropped, but the subject has not fallen into sleep. Deeply concentrated, without any object, centered -- but still the feeling of "I" will persist. It will hover. The object has fallen, but the subject is still there. You still feel you are.
This is not ego. In Sanskrit we have two words, ahankar and asmita. Ahankar means "I am." And asmita means 'am.' Just "amness" -- no ego exists, just the shadow is left. You still feel, somehow, you are. It is not a thought, because if it is a thought. that "I am," it is an ego. In meditation the ego has disappeared completely; but an amness, a shadowlike phenomenon, just a feeling, hovers around you -- just a mist-like thing, that just in the morning hovers around you.
In meditation it is morning. the sun has not risen yet, it is misty: asmita, amness, is still there.
You can still fall back. A slight disturbance -- somebody talking and you listen -- meditation has disappeared; you have come back to concentration. If you not only listen but you have started thinking about it, even concentration has disappeared; you have come back to pratyahar. And if not only are you thinking but you have become identified with the thinking, pratyahar has disappeared; you have fallen to pranayam. And if the thought has taken so much possession of you that your breathing rhythm is lost, pranayam has disappeared: you have fallen to asan. But if the thought and the breathing are so much disturbed that the body starts shaking or becomes restless. Asan has disappeared. They are related.
One can fall from meditation. Meditation is the most dangerous point in the world, because that is the highest point from where you can fall, and you can fall badly. In India we have a word, yogabhrasta: one who has fallen from yoga. This word is very, very strange. It appreciates and condemns together. When we say somebody is a yogi, it is a great appreciation. When we say somebody is yogabhrasta, it is also a condemnation: fallen from the yoga. This man had attained up to meditation somewhere in his past life and then fell down. From meditation the possibility of going back to the world is still there -- because of asmita, because of amness. The seed is still alive. It can sprout any moment; so the journey is not over.
Samadhi
TRANCE
When asmita also disappears, when you no longer know that you are -- of course, you are but there is no reflection upon it, that "I am," or even amness -- then happens samadhi, trance, ecstasy. Samadhi is going beyond; then one never comes back. Samadhi is a point of no return. From there nobody falls. A man in samadhi is a god: we call Buddha a god, Mahavir a god. A man in samadhi is no longer of this world. He may be in this world, but he is no longer of this world.
It is said about the man of SAMADHI he lives in the world but the world does not live in him.
These are the eight steps and eight limbs together. Limbs because they are so interrelated and so organically related; steps because you have to pass one by one -- you cannot start from just anywhere: you have to start from yam.
Now a few more things, because this is such a central phenomenon for Patanjali you have to understand a few things more. Yam is a bridge between you and others; self-restraint means restraining your behavior. Yam is a phenomenon between you and others, you and the society. It is a more conscious behavior: you don't react unconsciously, you don't react like a mechanism, like a robot.
You become more conscious; you become more alert. You react only when there
is absolute necessity; then too you try so that that reaction should be a response and not a reaction.
A response is different from a reaction. The first difference is: a reaction is automatic; a response is conscious. Somebody insults you: immediately you react -- you insult him. There has not been a single moment's gap to understand: it is reaction. A man of self-restraint will wait, listen to his insult, will think about it.
Gurdjieff used to say that his whole life changed because when his grandfather was dying, Gurdjieff was just nine years of age, he called him and told him, "I am a poor man and I have nothing to give to you, but I would like to give something. The only thing that I have been carrying like a treasure is this, this was given to me by my own father.... You are very young, but remember it.
Someday you will understand -- just you remember it. Someday you will understand. Right now I don't hope you can understand, but if you don't forget, someday you will understand." And this is the thing he told to Gurdjieff "If somebody insults you, answer him after twenty-four hours have elapsed."
It became a transformation, because how can you react after twenty-four hours?
Reaction needs immediacy. Gurdjieff says, "Somebody will insult me or somebody will say something wrong, and I will have to say, 'I will come tomorrow. Only after twenty-four hours am I allowed to answer -- and I have given a promise to my grandfather and he is dead, and the promise cannot be taken back. But I will come.'" That man should be taken aback. He will not be able to understand what is the matter.
And Gurdjieff will think about it. The more he will think, the more useless it will look. Sometimes it will be felt that the man is right, whatsoever he has said is true. Then Gurdjieff will go and thank the man, "You brought to light something of which I was unaware." Sometimes he will come to know that the man is absolutely wrong. And when the man is absolutely wrong, why bother? Nobody bothers about lies. When you feel hurt, there must be some truth in it; otherwise you don't feel hurt. Then too there is no point in going.
And he said, "It came to pass that many times I tried my grandfather's formula, and by and by anger disappeared" -- and not only anger -- by and by he became aware that the same technique can be used for other emotions: and everything disappeared. Gurdjieff was one of the highest peaks that has been attained in this age, a Buddha. And the whole journey started with a very small step, the promise given to an old man dying. It changed his whole life.
Yam is the bridge between you and others -- live consciously; relate with people consciously. Then the second two, niyam and asan -- they are concerned with your body. Third, pranayam is again a bridge. As the first, yam, is a bridge between you and others, the second two are a preparation for another bridge -- your body is made ready through niyam and asan -- then pranayam is the bridge between the body and the mind. Then pratyahar and dharana are the preparation of the mind. Dhyan again, is a bridge between the mind and the
soul. And samadhi is the attainment. They are interlinked, a chain; and this is your whole life.