Himalayan Yoga Tradition Teacher Training Program

THE SANKHYA SYSTEM OF EXISTENCE

The tattvas ("thatnesses," consisting of 24 primary substances) emerge from each other. This emergence is the natural
process of unfolding, or [d]evolution, or the "normal" waking state of consciousness from the primal, undifferentiated,
quiescent state of prakriti [Nature]. By yoga the transformations, or tattvas, are dissolved back again, this reverse
movement representing a process of involution. The former process, namely that the [d]evolution of the tattvas from
the subtle (sukshma) to the gross (sthula), is marked by a continuous increase of tamas guna [the quality of heaviness,
solidity and darkness], whereas with the return, sattva guna [the quality of lightness, spaciousness and illumination]
comes to prevail. However, purusha (Pure Consciousness) remains uninvolved, no matter which way the process runs,
and no matter how refined the state of sattva guna that is attained. Purusha is beyond the system of the gunas
absolutely, whether the latter be in [d]evolution or involution. Self-radiant, self-subsistent, aloof, it never changes,
whereas Prakriti will go on changing forever. (from PHILOSOPHIES OF INDIA by Heinrich Zimmer, p. 328)
(The chart below is from Swami Veda Bharatis Commentary on the YOGA-SUTRAS OF PATANJALI, Vol I, p. 34.)

(PURUSHA)PRAKRITI

MAHAT (Universal Intelligence)

BUDDHI (Intellect, the Faculty of Discrimination)

AHAMKARA (I-am-ness, egoity, the I-maker, the principle of self-identification)

SATTVIC
AHAMKARA

RAJASIC
AHAMKARA

TAMASIC
AHAMKARA

(impelling both)
MANAS
10 INDRIYAS

(Lower Mind)

(Powers / Capacities)

KARMENDRIYAS
(Active Senses)
Speech Organs
Hands
Feet
Organs of Generation
Organs of Elimination

BUDDHINDRIYAS
(Cognitive Senses)
Ears
Skin
Eyes
Tongue
Nose

5 TANMATRAS
Subtle Elements)
Sound (Shabda)
Touch (Sparsa)
Sight-Form (Rupa)
Taste (Rasa)
Smell (Gandha)

5 BHUTAS
(Gross Elements)
Space (Akasha)
Air (Vayu)
Fire (Agni, Tejas, Jyoti)
Water (Apah)
Earth (Prithivi)

______________________________________________________________________________
(The principle in
ritual is to sacrifice
(lit. "sacred act") the
Gross to the Subtle,
the Material to the
Spiritual.)

The 5 Subtle Elements

Sound / Audibility >
Touch / Tangibility >
Sight / Visibility
>
Taste / Flavor
>
Smell / Odor
>

The 5 Gross Elements

Ritual Offerings
Spaciousness / Ethereal
> Bell, Sea Shell
Gaseous (Air)
> Flowers
Illuminative Light (Fire)
> Candle Flame
Liquidity, Flowing (Water) > Water
Solidity (Earth)
> Incense

2006, 20012 Himalayan Yoga Tradition Teacher Training Program, All rights reserved

Page 1

Himalayan Yoga Tradition Teacher Training Program

Pushing the Tree Back Into the Seed

from Process of Conscious Mind #3401
by Swami Veda Bharati
You are given a mantra, or you are given the breath, and we say, Now dont pay attention to all
the [random] processes of your conscious mind. Let all the energy of your conscious mind be
concentrated into one experience in the experience of breathing. Or let all the energy of the
conscious mind direct you to that one experience of mantra.
Now that is a process of pushing the tree back into the seed. I do not know if the Zen people have
a koan like that, but I would create this koan, and you can use it: Pushing the tree back into the
seed. Think of all these activities of the mind being like the waving branches, twigs, leaves,
shapes and kinds, and colors (green and red and yellow) all waving about. And then you say,
Now where is this activity coming from? Its going on, or some wind is blowing. So you trace
the leaves to a twig. You trace the twig to a small branch. You trace the small branch to a larger
branch. You trace that branch to the trunk. Then you trace the trunk. Where did it all come from?
From where did the tree sprout from the seed? All of this thought, the entire rational and
intellectual process, all of your emotional experience is a mixture of the subconscious and the
conscious. All of this experience, like the branches and the twigs, belongs to some trunk. It is like
the sprouts coming from a seed. In what shape and form are the sprouts inside the seed? In what
shape and form is the tree inside the seed? In what shape and form was I when I was smaller than
an ants egg attached to the wall of my mothers uterus? In what shape and form were you when
you were smaller than an ants egg attached to the wall of your mothers uterus? In what form was
your nose there? In what form were your eyes there? Where were your ears? They were there or
where? In what form? So where does the mantra leads you? It leads you to a seed, to a point in
the core of the mind from where all of these thoughts and emotions have sprouted out and become
the tree. And the process of meditation that you have learned is a very direct process. Its a short
cut. In twenty minutes you can go to that seed where all the syllables of your mantra are all one.
So when I sit down in meditation, I do my mantra. But what do I do the rest of the time? I am a
philosopher, I am a professor, I am a man with a natural intellectual inquiry, and I want God, and I
have emotions, and I have intellectual needs, and I have general activity in life. What do I do with
all of that? So the system of the Yogas of Life (Jnana Yoga, Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga) says,
Well, okay, dedicate it all to God. So, like your meditative process of twenty minutes a day, let
the other processes of your life also lead to that same very seed. Otherwise how far will you go?
A few leaves, a few twigs to one branch. But that one branch will not merge with the one tall big
branch and will not merge with the trunk and will not go back into the real seed until all of these
other branches are taken care of.
So as long as there is any conflict, so long as there is the slightest difference between your
meditation and your emotional life, you have not reached the path of Bhakti, and your meditation
will not reach the final enlightenment. So long as there is the slightest conflict and slightest
difference between your meditational life and your daily life of things that you do for your
husbands, wives, children, employment, education, so long as there is the slightest difference, you
will not reach the ultimate enlightenment. And so long as there is the slightest difference between
your intellectual activity and your reading of books and your inquiry and your philosophy and your
2006, 20012 Himalayan Yoga Tradition Teacher Training Program, All rights reserved

Page 2

Himalayan Yoga Tradition Teacher Training Program

discussion and your libraries and your novels, stories, films and the whole intellectual process of
criticism and analysis between that and meditation, until you have taken those branches to the
trunk and the trunk back to the seed also through twenty minutes a day of meditation, you will not
reach ultimate enlightenment.
In Swami Vedas Commentary on Patanjalis Yoga-sutras these three important philosophical
concepts are explained:
Prati-prasava: The dissolution of [d]evolutes in reverse order of their creation; effects dissolving
into their causes and finally into prakrti; the return of the gunas into equilibium in their ultimate
cause (unmanifest prakrti).
Prati-chanchara: In Sankhya philosophy, the principle of orderly dissolution of material
[d]evolutes into their causes in reverse order of their [d]evolution and development (sanchara); the
dissolution of the universe and its phenomena.
Sat-karya-vada: A doctrine of Sankhya schools stating that the qualities of objects pre-exist in
their causes, that gunas are constantly transmuted into their [d]evolutes, and that a cause does not
cease to be simply because it is transmuted into an effect. "That which is not, does not come into
being; that which is, never ceases to be." (Bhagavad Gita II.16)

Lecture IV on Sankhya:
"Pain, and the Four Purposes of Life"
by Swami Veda Bharati
August 8th, 1973
Om. Saha nav avatu. Saha nau bhunaktu. Saha viryam karavavahai.
Tejasvi nav adhitam astu. Ma vidvisavahai. Om. Shanti, Shanti, Shanti.
Om. May He protect us together. May he accept of our offerings together. May we gather strength together.
May our study be filled with brilliance. May there be no distances among us. Om. Peace, Peace, Peace.

So the purpose of the study of Sankhya philosophy is discrimination to find the one and
the one in the two. Which is the one and which is the other one. There is one thing in
common between Sankhya-Yoga and Buddhism. That both start out with the problem of
pain. It is not certain historically whether Sankhya borrowed the preoccupation with pain
from Buddhism or that Sankhya had already developed this philosophy, and then it was
passed on to the Buddha. I already told you that the birthplace of the Buddha was
Kapilavastu, the city which was built on the site of the ashram of the sage Kapila [the great
sage of Sankhya philosophy] and that Buddha in his wanderings in search of Truth spent a
great deal of time with a Sankhya teacher named Aradakalam. The Four Noble Truths of
the Buddha are called the Arya-Satya (Noble Truths). They are dukham, duhkha-hetuh,
duhkha-hanam and dukha-hanopaya. (Pain, the cause of pain, the removal of pain, and the
means of removing the pain.) This was the first Truth that dawned upon the Buddha.
There is also Vyasa, the commentator on the Yoga-sutras, the most authentic, most
important commentator on the Sutras. You cannot read the Yoga-sutras without the
2006, 20012 Himalayan Yoga Tradition Teacher Training Program, All rights reserved

Page 3

Himalayan Yoga Tradition Teacher Training Program

commentary of Vyasa. And Vyasa says the identical words. He says, "As the medical
science is four-fold: disease, cause of disease, removal of disease, and the means if
removing the disease, so the Moksa-shastra (the Science of Liberation) is fourfold: pain,
the cause of pain, the removal of pain, and the means of removing the pain, the same
fourfold things.
The text I am reading here is in verse form. There is also Sankhya-sutra, which the
traditional Indian orthodox teachers regard as very ancient; however, modern Western
scholarship regards it as very recent, about the 11th Century A.D. The first sutra is "atha
trividha-dubkha- ????? yanta-nirvrttih atyanta-purusarthah." We must understand the
word "purushartha." Remember I spoke of purusha, the conscious principle, the sentient
principle, the purpose of a purusha, of a personality coming into being, coming into life , is
fourfold and this is the essence of the entire Hinduism. Everyone, all schools philosophy
agree on this purushartha, the purpose of the existence of human beings. The Vedic
philosophy, and the epics like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and all the stories,
everything is geared towards that one aim, explaining the purpose of human beings what
is your personal purpose in life. And this is fourfold. If you don't know the four
purusharthas, you know nothing, absolutely nothing about the Hindu philosophy. You can
call it Yoga philosophy, you can call it Vedanta philosophy, if you want give non-sectarian
names, fine anything but the view of life as developed in India is this fourfold
purushartha, the purpose of human beings. The purpose of a personality being constituted:
Dharma, artha, kama, and moksha.
Dharma
Dharma is "the right way," although dharma is a lot more than that. Dharma is the natural
order of all things, an understanding of that natural order. The first thing is the natural
order, the natural qualities of things, the natural harmony of the universe. The second part
in dharma will then be a person's understanding of that natural order and thereby regarding
himself part of that natural order. So that at any point where there is no understanding of
the natural order, there is no understanding of persons. And therefore, then, the right action
cannot evolve; because without understanding, without jnana, there is no karma, no action.
So you come to dharma also meaning the way of life. So you have three things: natural
order, understanding of the natural order, and then the way of life based on that natural
order. A way of life based on that natural order, the corollary of which will then be all the
laws, all the politics, all the economics, all the rituals, all the ceremonies, the whole social
bit. Everything. So to say that the Yoga philosophy is not inclusive of the natural order,
that Yoga philosophy is not inclusive of the socio-political questions and so on, is wrong.
It must be included. They come under dharma.
Artha
From those laws, from "the right way," is derived and is dependent on that dharma is the
second category: artha. "Artha" simply means "means." And that includes the details of
your material needs. What business should I go into? How should I be successful in it?
How should I run my politics? How should I vote for an assembly? What taxation should
I charge as a King? What taxes should I pay as a subject? All of that is the means.

2006, 20012 Himalayan Yoga Tradition Teacher Training Program, All rights reserved

Page 4

Himalayan Yoga Tradition Teacher Training Program

Kama
Kama is the desires, passions, which are normal and natural in persons for the fulfillment of
a proper family life. And for an average person without these three, without passing
through these three, there is no moksa, no liberation. Quite often a teacher, a yogi, a
master, will force a householder to fulfill his desires quickly. Work intensively and fulfill
them. If according to your karma you are meant to earn, let us say two million dollars in
your lifetime, finish earning them in two years. Go ahead, hurry up, quickly! Then you are
through. Rather than linger on, linger on, linger on, linger on and go die without moksha,
finish doing that fast, hurry and then go. You paid off your karma.
Moksha
And then finally is mokha, which is release, liberation, enlightenment. (Answering a
question) Yes, it's a gradual moksha, I should say. Each school of philosophy defines
moksha according to its belief. To be released to a certain degree is to be released too.
(Another question.) By expansion. The progress is measured by expansion, how wide you
are. I was just teaching a text on Shaivism. As the bondage develops the Atman that was
all-pervading becomes apu (minute). And as the anava-mala, the dirt around it, is washed,
it expands. Expansion of consciousness.
The first sutra of the Sankhya-sutras (recites the verse in Skt.), he says, "Now we shall
discuss total removal of the three-fold pain." Total atyanta, total removal of the three-fold
pain. This is the definition of total purusartha, the final purpose of humans. What is the
three-fold pain? Remember the lecture Swami Rama gave to that group of doctors
downstairs Wednesday night? He said, "Give me a topic." And Dr. Mayo said, "Why don't
you speak on the value of pain?" And Swamiji started with, "There are three kinds of pain,
adhyatmika. adhidaivika. and adhibhautika."

adhyatmika: relating to atma, or self, not necessarily the supreme Self, but personal self,
adhidaivika: coming from devas, natural forces and their presiding deities, and
adhibhautika: resulting from the interaction between the living beings.

The adhyamika pain is two fold, physical and mental. In fact the medical philosophy of
India goes into a great deal of detail on this. This is one thing about the texts on any
science in Sanskrit. They must go through the relationship of the things in the spiritual
world to the problems for which we are now seeking solutions. The student slogan today
of the need for "relevance in education" is very familiar to me. How relevant is it to my
spiritual progress? So if a new surgical instrument is developed, I must view it as a means
towards spiritual liberation. If you cannot prove the connection to me then it is of no use to
me. So physical and mental pain is the pain of the person, adhyatmika. Adhidaivika
comes from natural forces and their presiding "deities," rains and floods and those things,
in which people often suffer collectively or individually. And third is adhibhautika, a
mosquito bite or a war - interaction among the living beings.
So, according to the first sutra, the total removal of the three kinds of pain is the final, the
highest purpose of the existence of human beings. Sometimes you will hear some of the
academicians state that the problem of human pain was not considered in Indian
2006, 20012 Himalayan Yoga Tradition Teacher Training Program, All rights reserved

Page 5

Himalayan Yoga Tradition Teacher Training Program

philosophy. This is wrong. An entire school of philosophy was developed on the word
"dhuka," pain.
Here now I start with the Sankhya-karika which is the versified text:
"The total removal of pain cannot be accomplished through visible means."
Anything that is accomplished through visible means is always seen to return. Let us say,
pain of hunger. You remove it through visible means, but the moment you have finished
eating, it starts again. You have attempts at removing disease, the disease returns. Some
diseases have been totally eradicated from the earth, but other diseases have returned to
take their place. Malaria mosquitoes were killed to extinction, but now a strain has
developed that is totally immune to the spray. We say, "Let's put a hospital within
everybody's reach and make a very fast road so a sick man can reach the doctor quickly."
So these are built, and although some people stopped dying from disease, they died from
auto accidents. No matter what precautions you take to remove human misery, you will
remove one category of human misery, but another category will automatically,
immediately take its place. You remove physical diseases, or hunger and poverty and that
kind of discomfort and misery, you create a society in which those things no longer exist,
immediately you create a society in which psychological disease has increased a hundredfold. Now you have more psychiatric patients than you have physically ill patients in the
United States. This is because these attempts, however valid for an individual type of
disease, at removing human misery are naturally replaced by other diseases.
Therefore, says a Sankhya philosopher, let us look for a means of removing the pains of
persons which is permanent. He says among the visible, the sensed objects, the material
things of the world, we do not find a means whereby there will be total removal of all three
kinds of pain. Again, the philosopher says, if you want to test whether a law "x" or an
action "x", a goal, a pursuit, is really a valid means for removing the pain then test whether
all the three kinds of pain will equally be removed by it. But if you remove a physical pain
and cause mental pain, or if you remove mental pain and cause physical pain, then it is not
a valid means. And, if the pain returns in another form, then, too, it was not a valid means.
Now, the verse says that people suffering from these three kinds of pain will naturally have
a desire to seek for a means for removing the pain. And we find that the visible means
which we see before us is not sufficient; for we are looking for something that is beyond
the tangible means for removing the pain.
The second verse: (in Sanskrit) is something visible in religious arts, rituals ceremonies,
and worship. Don't they contribute to the removal of pain? Sankhya says, "No!" The
seeking of heaven is no seeking of liberation. Heaven is a temporary state. The pleasures
of paradise are just a form of temporary experience resulting from good deeds. Even the
good deeds, ritual acts, and that kind of external worship leads to the temporary state of
heaven. When the force, momemtum of good karmas is exhausted, one must return from
heaven to earth to start anew. The only way of total eradication of pain is by the
knowledge of three factors:
2006, 20012 Himalayan Yoga Tradition Teacher Training Program, All rights reserved

Page 6

Himalayan Yoga Tradition Teacher Training Program

Vyakta: manifest matter, which is only a transmutation, an alteration of Avyakta,

Avyakta: the unmanifest matter, from which the manifest matter arises, and
Jna: the Consciousness Principle (as in jnana) the Purusha. "Jna" means "the knower."
On this you should read the 13th Chapter of the Bhagavad-gita, which speaks of ksetra and
ksetra-jna, the "field" and the "field-knower." The body is the field, the spirit is the fieldknower. Matter is the field, and Purusha is the field-knower. Now he defines these. And
in the next lecture we will come to twenty-five categories of Sankhya. Categories mean the
essential elements that the Sankhya deals with: the elements of the universe and the stepby-step discrimination of those twenty-five. This is the subject of Sankhya. I'll list those,
next time.
Q. & A: Knowledge is the determinant of your action, isn't it? You know that there is
such a thing as a bookshop, so you go to buy a book. But if you did not know this other
thing as a bookshop, you wouldn't know what to do. You know that a car is something that
can be driven, and you know the way to drive it. With that knowledge you are able to
drive, although the philosophy itself will be of no use unless translated into action. You
cannot drive a car on paper no matter how well you master the theory. See? You'll have to
do it. As you do it, your knowledge improves, because the senses of experience and the
senses of action have constant interaction among themselves.
Q. & A: All schools of philosophy are true. There is no false school of philosophy. That's
the way it goes. The school of philosophy that is totally materialistic is true, so long as it
explains matter. Having explained matter, it goes silent. Then it has no business talking
about anything else. A materialist scientist is perfectly right in explaining matter and
explaining everything from a purely materialistic point of view. He knows his business, he
knows his molecules, and he knows his energies. But for him to state that no other kind, no
spiritual energy exists is trespassing into a field that he has never explored. Any exclusive
statement, a statement that "there is none else," that is not true.
When you have reached the all-inclusive knowledge of Brahman, [that is different]. We
have a saying: "All feet are included in the elephant's foot. All feet are smaller than the
elephant's foot, so the ant's foot can't cover an elephant's foot, but the elephant's foot can
certainly cover an ant's foot.
So, the purpose of Sankhya is the total removal of pain through the discrimination between
purusha and prakrti. You know that for a human being there are two parts: the path of
pravrtti and the path of nivrtti. The path of pravrtti is the path of involvement with the
world, and the path of nivrtti is the path of turning away. The path of pravrtti is also called
preyas, the Path of Pleasures. And the path of nivrtti is called the Path of the Good, or in
the Western philosophy summum bonum, the Highest Good, the Final Good, which is
called shreyas. So, a human being, before embarking upon any path, any action, making
any decision, has to decide whether he is on the path of pravrtti or on the path of nivrtti, the
path of involvement or the path of turning away; whether s/he is after the pleasant or after
the good.

2006, 20012 Himalayan Yoga Tradition Teacher Training Program, All rights reserved

Page 7

Himalayan Yoga Tradition Teacher Training Program

In other words, "pleasant" is not the antonym of "painful." This point must be understood
about the Sankhya and Yoga philosophy. "Pleasant" is not the exact opposite of "pain."
There are three separate categories: the painful, the pleasant, and the Good. And the Good
is beyond pain and pleasure. In other words, we should draw the diagram in this way on
the blackboard: Shreyas is equated with ananda (the Supreme Joy, the Perfect Joy of God)
Magut, (the Supreme Bliss). And the opposite of that shreyas and ananda is preyas and
kriyas or gupta (pleasure versus pain). So, whereas in the path of withdrawal there is only
one category, the Good, which is one and the same as Supreme Joy; when you move away
from that unity, you immediately come into the duality of pain versus pleasure. Where
ever there is duality there is pain. And therefore, pleasure is pain because it is part of that
duality. It is pain because it is always coupled with pain. It's pleasantness is derived
through comparison with a pain. Only compared to a certain pain is something pleasant.
So, Shreyan, the Good, the higher wellbeing is arrived at through the knowledge of Bhakti
and Jnana that we spoke of last time. The manifest/unmanifest, and the Knower. And then
in Chapter 13 of the Bhagavad-gita there is the knowledge of the field, and the fieldknower.

THE SIMPLE PURIFICATION

by Kabir (version by Robert Bly)
Student, do the simple purification.
You know that the seed is inside the horse-chestnut tree,
and inside the seed there are the horse-chestnut blossoms, and
the chestnuts, and the shade.
So inside the human body there is the seed, and inside the seed
There is the human body again.
Fire, air, earth, water, and space if you dont want the secret one,
you cant have these either.
Thinkers, listen, tell me what you know of that is not inside the soul.
Take a pitcher full of water and set it down on the water
Now it has water inside and water outside.
We mustnt give it a name, lest silly people start talking
again about the body and the soul.
If you want the truth, Ill tell you the truth:
Listen to the secret sound, the real sound, which is inside you.
The one no one talks of speaks the secret sound to himself,
and hes the one who has made it all.

2006, 20012 Himalayan Yoga Tradition Teacher Training Program, All rights reserved

Page 8

Himalayan Yoga Tradition Teacher Training Program

THE CLAY JUG*

by Kabir (version by Robert Bly)
Inside this clay jug there are canyons and pine mountains,
and the maker of canyons and pine mountains!
All seven oceans are inside, and hundreds of millions of stars.
The acid that tests gold is there, and the one who judges jewels.
And the music from the strings that no one touches,
and the source of all water.
If you want the truth, I will tell it you the truth:
Friend, listen: the God whom I love is inside

*A clay pot is a tradition symbol for the human body. One of the teachings which uses this
analogy describes the pot as having space around it and space within it. When the pot
breaks (symbolizing death), space joins with space, the droplet joins the ocean, the infinite
within joins the infinite without, and there is the realization that there never was any
difference between the internal reality and the external reality, fullness joins with fullness,
perfection joins with perfection as in the morning Prayer of Perfection.

2006, 20012 Himalayan Yoga Tradition Teacher Training Program, All rights reserved

Page 9