Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras are the classical work of the Yoga School of thought, one of the Six Darśanas studied in the Bhakti Tirtha course. They focus on how to attain direct experience and realization of the puruṣa, or the individual self. As the classical treatise on the Vedic understanding of the mind and consciousness and on techniques of meditation and self-realization, it has exerted immense influence over the religious practices of Hinduism in India and, more recently, in the West. For Vaiṣṇavas, the Yoga Sūtras are especially helpful in understanding the first two chapters of Bhakti-rasāmṛita-sindhu.
This course completes the first two chapters – Samādhi Pada (Meditative Absorption) and Sādhana Pada (Practice).
Bhakti is like asking you to burn your house, but who would like to do that? Bhakti is difficult to follow because you have to change. Krishna says nobody really knows me. I know everybody, and nobody knows me. To know him you have to destroy your palace. And what opens to you is a new world that is most amazing, most wonderful and you wonder why didn’t I do this before? Why didn’t I get rid of this nonsense?
