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Part 1: Kriyā Yoga and the Kleśas: Purifying Obstacles on the Path to Liberation This class is by Maheśvara Nandānandajī. Gurudev kī jay. Dear friends, you may remember we had a lecture about the yamas and niyamas. Today’s topic is somewhat a continuation of that. As you recall, we already discussed the common theme of yama and niyama, and today’s theme builds upon it in its own way. Remember, the yamas and niyamas are ten principles, and I emphasize the special importance of the last three. In the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali, these are mentioned earlier, not only as part of the yamas and niyamas but right at the beginning of the second chapter, as Kriyā Yoga. The second chapter of the Yoga Sūtra starts like this: Kriyā Yoga consists of three elements—Tapas, Svādhyāya, and Īśvara Praṇidhāna. Just as a repetition, since we spoke about this briefly: tapas comes from tap, meaning heat, the principle of purification. It means self-discipline, self-control, austerities, or you can say any kind of sādhanā which we are doing. Serious sādhanā, like for example the Kriyā Anuṣṭhān program, is a type of tapas. When we observe a fasting day, that is also a type of tapas, if we do it. The second principle, Svādhyāya, means self-study—study yourself. Find out the truth about yourself. You can say tapas means to purify, and svādhyāya means to find out what actually I have to purify. Svādhyāya means only one thing: Satya, I want to know the truth, whatever that is. And this is sometimes not so easy. I try to find out what I have to work on, and then I work on that. But the result, actually the success, is not really in my hands. That means the ultimate step is to surrender, to let go. Anyway, when it is about the final aim, liberation, we cannot draw ourselves out of the mud. We need someone else—that is the Guru, the Master. Therefore, the third principle, Īśvara Praṇidhāna, is devotion to the divine, surrender, bhakti. The second sūtra here says the aim of Kriyā Yoga. Now, Kriyā Yoga in this sense is Svādhyāya and Īśvara Praṇidhāna. The aim of Kriyā Yoga is to reduce the kleśas on the path to samādhi, on the path to final liberation, God-realization, or we can say, enlightenment. So here is the connection again to the Rāja Yoga path or the Aṣṭāṅga Yoga path. It is a subsidiary path to help us reach the aim. About this step of letting go, of surrendering, we have one beautiful bhajan: Abhisan pediya is jīvanikā sabbhar tu marahatome. Now I have surrendered everything to you. The burden of my whole life I give into your hands. It is a knowing. That means jít is a success, and hár means when I don’t succeed, the loss. It means we do svādhyāya, we try to find out on what we have to work. We keep the discipline, the sādhanā, the tapas. But we come to a result; finally, the success is not in our hands. Let’s maybe just sing a little bit from this bhajan. As I mentioned, if we have this surrender, this bhakti, that alone might do. The yamas and niyamas really can be like a shortcut. And somehow the whole teaching of Swāmījī aims at developing bhakti. As we know in the mantra, "Mokṣa Mūlaṁ Guru Kṛpā," to understand it, to accept it, to feel that, that is actually the aim of yoga. We have to try, but however we try, we cannot liberate ourselves. So these principles—tapas, svādhyāya, īśvara praṇidhāna—called together kriyā yoga, whatever now would be the translation of that, I will not go into that point, is that which helps us now actually to remove the obstacles on our spiritual path. Tathokriya Yoga, tapas, svādhyāya, and Īśvara praṇidhāna help to eliminate obstacles on our spiritual path. And, of course, we would have different ideas about what these obstacles are. Someone might say, "Oh, I have back pain, that’s my obstacle." Someone would say, "My family doesn’t accept my spiritual path; that’s my obstacle." This scripture is some thousand years old, but these obstacles have not changed in this time. He names these five obstacles, five kleśas. First, to give an overview, this is the third sūtra here. Avidyā, ignorance; asmitā, ego; rāga and dveṣa, likes and dislikes; and abhiniveśa, the fear of death. And he explains that avidyā, ignorance, is the cause for all the other kleśas, like the root cause. And he also explains that these kleśas might appear sometimes strong and sometimes less strong. He says, "These might exist only as a potential problem." Or is it just a fine disturbance? So what is now avidyā? Ignorance. Does that mean someone cannot speak English or doesn’t know mathematics or some other things? It is not about this type of worldly knowledge that he speaks. That’s not a real obstacle on the path to enlightenment. Intellectual knowledge might sometimes be rather an obstacle. In the fifth śloka, he explains what is avidyā. Avidya means to regard the perishable as eternal. Avidyā means to regard the impure as pure. Avidya means to regard the painful as pleasant. Avidyā means to regard the non-ātmā as the ātmā. Let’s try to understand. The perishable is confused with the eternal. When do we do that? How do we do that? Are we eternal? Yes or no? But are we aware of that, that we are eternal in our daily life? You see, if I speak here as a spiritual question, everyone, Śrīveka, is like switched on, oh yes, Swāmījī says, we are eternal, you know, we remember that. But as soon as the lecture is over, then we come into all these worldly processes, and then we are men or women, old or young, beautiful or ugly or whatever, so we identify with something completely different. We identify ourselves with this body. That’s what Swāmījī always says, that we don’t know who we are. Usually, when someone asks you, "Who are you?" you say your name. But the name is an attribute given by the parents to this body when it was born. That would mean, when this body was not yet existing before the birth, or when we die, when the body dies, then I don’t exist. And this is exactly what he says: we regard the perishable as eternal, so we forget that it is actually perishable. That means, whatever could disturb us in this identification with our body, we try to remove from our view. Practically, it means old age and death. No one likes to live just beside the cemetery, you know. And no one actually likes to be confronted with this topic all the time. Old people are already a reminder, so let us put them in old age houses, nursing homes. Same as everything we have, what we possess, we always think it’s ours, it will always be ours, but it is not. Partnership, relationship, all that, we always think, hold on, like it would be permanent, and then when it turns out it’s not permanent, then it’s a disaster for us. That means we somehow know the truth and somehow don’t want to know. To regard the impure as pure. Yeah, we identify ourselves now with this body, and we want to make it very beautiful. And we somehow know from anatomy books how a body looks. So, when you see now a map with all the muscles and the bones, is this really so beautiful? Or when there is some surgery and they have the stomach open, and now they do something, is it really so beautiful to look at that? What is your body? It’s a nice way of meditation. Just meditate on the reality of your body. So the body, this is bones. Then see how your bones look. So, this is then muscles and other tendons and so on. So then you have intestines, and think, what is all moving in the intestines? If you eat a beautiful apple, how does it look after some time? And how it looks in the end. Is it really so beautiful? And all these, what we have in our nose and inside, there are many things going on in our body, huh? So beauty is just skin deep. Already a little bit cut, some blood comes a little bit... But everyone is always looking after beautiful bodies, beautiful men, women, and so on, and tries to be beautiful. We identify ourselves so much with these bodies. To regard the impure as pure, that’s it. To regard the painful as pleasant, that’s also avidyā. Pleasant, that means actually we look for something which would give us pleasure. We are searching in our life for happiness, joy. And there are many, many different strategies. Many people think that if they have a lot of money, then they will be happy. Or nice partner, and family, and children, then they would be happy. If they become famous as an artist or as a scientist, then they would be happy. If they would win the Olympic Games—we had it just now in Vancouver, no?—then they would be happy. If they can travel around the world and see many, many things, then they would be happy. But how long? It always ends in disappointment. Whatever happiness we can find in this world through those so many different means, and everyone has their own strategy, it ends in disappointment. That’s avidyā, to regard the painful, that which will turn out as a disappointment in the end, as pleasant. Avidyā means to regard the non-ātmā as the ātmā. Ātmā means eternal. Swāmījī says, like the sky is everywhere, untouched. And all this, what is called avidyā, he says, is the root of the other problems, the other four kleśas. And very directly, the second one is called asmitā. It’s a word which Swamījī doesn’t use so much; he would usually say ahaṁkāra. The ego, or let’s say the ego sense. But now we must be careful what we mean with ego. Ego, we can say, okay, there’s a certain amount of food, and if someone takes more than his share, that’s ego. But again, Śaṅkarācārya is much more basic in his approach. That is just an excessive ego, I would say. He defines asmitā like this: asmitā, or ahaṃkāra, is wrong self-identification. False identification. Ātmā, and the ātmā is consciousness. My name is ātmā, and the ātmā is consciousness. But we identify, and we spoke about this already before, with body and mind, with all these social roles which we have in this society. Part 2: The Five Kleśas and the Path of Viveka These are merely reflections of that—and that is the entirety of yoga. This is the whole essence of the Yoga Sūtras: that we should overcome our wrong identification and find our right identification, moving from “How am I?” to “Who am I?” In this sense, to see any duality is already ignorance, is asmitā. Where is the limit of this consciousness? In space, does it end here or there? There is no limit. Where is its limit in time? Did my consciousness begin yesterday, or fifty years ago, or a hundred years ago? There is no limit in time. So already when I say “I” and “you,” that is ignorance, that is asmitā. Ādi Śaṅkarācārya, who brought the Vedānta philosophy to us, said: the thought of “I” and “my”—that is the root of ignorance. And we are caught in this identification. We distinguish between “I” and “my.” “That’s my paper, that’s my watch, don’t take it away, it belongs to me.” Because we are wrongly identified with our body and mind, everything connected with us in this way creates a duality. And then comes the grosser expression of ego. “Now I see you have more food than me—give me that.” Thus the egoic behavior that we commonly call “ego” emerges, but this is merely a result of our deeper nature. What in everyday understanding we call ego is only when it manifests in excessive forms. Yet the ego itself is much deeper. We all have ego, however humble or respectful we may be. Who has no ego? Śaṅkarācārya declared: “I am one without a second.” That is the highest realization; that is samādhi. It means there is no duality anymore. Duality is the fruit of this asmitā. So this is a very fundamental principle to understand—not just a small thing we can overcome easily. Out of this asmitā, I will now skip the next two principles and go to the last one, because the connection is very clear. The last of these five kleśas is called abhiniveśa. Abhiniveśa means the fear of death. Or, in daily life we could say the reverse: the clinging to life, holding on to life. And the commentary of Patañjali here states that it is a strong tendency found even in advanced yogīs. That means even when we have progressed greatly on the spiritual path, we must be aware that this principle is still active in us. But now come two points—and they are very, very practical for our daily life, every hour, every minute. This is, I would say, the core. The other three principles are truly basic, but here we have something to work on every minute. The previous three principles were very basic, but these two represent the core with which we can work every minute. This is the pair called rāga and dveṣa. Rāga, and here I quote Patañjali again: rāga is the liking of that which gives pleasure. Dveṣa is the dislike of that which causes pain. There is an echo of what we heard earlier. Do you remember when he explained avidyā, ignorance? He said that avidyā means to regard the painful as pleasant. Pleasant means pleasure, so here we have a direct outcome. Because we are searching for happiness in this world, we are actually searching for pleasure, for enjoyment. And that is what always, in the end, brings us into disappointment. We seek it where it cannot be found, yet we still do. This is a mental principle, a principle of our mind. Swāmījī used to explain that our mind follows two basic principles. One is rāga and dveṣa, likes and dislikes. The other is saṅkalpa and vikalpa. Saṅkalpa means “I make up my mind, I want that”—we use it in yoga nidrā as a resolve. And vikalpa means “I give up this idea and say, ‘No, I don’t want it; I want something else.’” So we could say in English: to make up your mind and to change your mind. I think we are all quite skilled at that, aren’t we? We want something, and then we find something else, maybe better—especially after a disappointment. They say, “No, that was not the right thing. Let me try something better.” Let us reflect a little on how we make decisions in our daily life. How do we make choices? How do you choose when you enter a shop—for example, which furniture or clothes to buy? How do you decide, when you visit the barber, how to style your hair? When you chose your profession, how did you make that choice? Your whole lifestyle—how do you choose it? And the answer, when someone asks you about such matters, would usually be, “I like that.” It’s true. Likes and dislikes—rāga and dveṣa. This is a very suitable topic for self-inquiry meditation. Next time you sit down and wish to know yourself, consider all the choices you make in life. It is very, very practical. How do I decide? How do I choose? Then place all those where your answer is “I like” on one side. There may be a few points where you say, “No, I have other reasons.” For example, you really like ice cream. But your dentist told you it is not good. Swāmījī always gives this example. You understood it, you accepted it, and you decided, “I don’t eat ice cream.” And truly, you don’t. In this case, there is no like. You are not dealing with what you like or dislike. Someone might invite you for ice cream, and you decline. The other may ask, “You don’t like ice cream?” because he cannot imagine that there could be any criterion other than likes and dislikes. Or someone invites you to eat, but the food is not vegetarian. You say, “No, thank you.” And he would ask, “You don’t like meat?” He cannot conceive that another reason might underlie your choice. So there are certain decisions in our life that, I hope, we make not based on this principle of rāga and dveṣa, but from a higher standpoint. If you tried to explain it, how would you speak? You would say, because it is not genuinely good. If it’s food, you might say it is not healthy. Or, in the case of vegetarian food, you would say, “It harms others.” You offer concrete reasons. And someone who comes only with likes and dislikes would realize that, compared to such arguments, his own like-or-dislike reasoning is rather weak. So what is it, then, that enables us to make such decisions? This too comes from the mind. But I think it was yesterday that Swāmījī said: the essence, the cream of the mind, is the intellect. Yet even the intellect is often misguided. So what is the cream of the intellect? Viveka. Viveka. There we are. That is the one principle that helps us overcome dislikes and likes. In the Kaṭha Upaniṣad, I always think back on this. One sentence puts it with great clarity and practicality. It is said that two paths lie before us, every moment. And we have the choice. One is the path of the pleasant. The other is the path of the good. The path of the pleasant and the path of the good—that is our choice, every moment. The path of the pleasant means rāga and dveṣa, likes and dislikes. The path of the good means viveka. What is truly good for me and also good for others? That is what, in the end, will truly carry us forward. And I think with these two principles, rāga and dveṣa, we have much to do. In this way, the five kleśas are something we can truly apply in our daily life, on our yoga path, in our meditation. This is what I wanted to share with you. And we have a beautiful bhajan from Holī Gurujī, where he speaks quite clearly about these. You know, the root principle of the kleśas is what? Ignorance—avidyā, or ajñāna, as it is called. So Holī Gurujī sings, “Awake, awake, all you ignorant ones.” Chaitā, chaitā, abhijīva ajñānī. And I was astonished, when I lived in India those years, how the Indians accepted and loved that bhajan. If a saint like Swāmījī or Holī Gurujī says it, we feel it is the truth and we can accept it. The whole bhajan actually seeks—exactly like Patañjali—to remind us of these fundamental points in our life. We forget that everything is perishable. Whatever you possess will stay here. When you have to leave this world, you must leave everything behind. In the end, when your life comes to an end, you have to go alone. He speaks also of Mātā, Pitā, Kuṭumbaya—that means all our relationships, our partnerships. He says these only awaken worldly attachments in us. But when it really comes down to it, when the summons comes, they cannot help you. The only one who can help is someone who has already conquered all these worldly attachments—who has overcome these five kleśas. And that is the saint, the master, the guru. Therefore he emphasizes the importance of following a master, for the master is the only one who can truly guide us, help us, and liberate us. And he also picks up the point of our wrong identification with this body. We think the body is for beauty. We think the body is for enjoyment. And he says, “No, this body is to realize God.” He does not say it is worthless. Quite the opposite—he says it is amolaka, priceless. He tries to make clear what the real value of a human body is: to use our life for the spiritual purpose, and not to lose ourselves in rāga and dveṣa, in the struggle for enjoyment that ends in disappointment. Gaya vakt avinahipyare, firpichitavare. That means, when your time has passed, the time that is gone does not return, and then in the end you are disappointed. We awake, but too late. And that is the work of Swāmījī and Holī Gurujī: to try to awaken us in time, before it is too late. So let us sing that bhajan. Chet, Chet, Abhajīvā, Abhyāna. Tomorrow is a fasting day. I have a suggestion. Food-fasting is good, but perhaps tomorrow we can undertake a rāga-dveṣa fast. For one day, whatever you have to decide, try to do so with viveka.