Subject of this seminar: "Samadhi and Sadhana Pada" - Chapters 3 and 4
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.
Our life is running on these two currents of raga and dvesha. It is the same river, but sometimes we are on the love side of the river bank and sometimes we are on the hate side. But the river is only one. There is only one reality. It is our mind that makes a duality of the reality. As soon as something enters our mind, we automatically divide it into either like or dislike. When your mind is running in these two grooves, then you cannot see the reality.
