In the following article, we will speak about Sutra 34 from Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, where he brings us a way to integrate our spiritual practice and our social life.
Essentially, we often have this inner conflict, where we want to live a spiritual life. If we start to meditate and have wonderful meditations, we feel a beautiful peace and an elevated inner state. But then we also long to have contact with others. When we come to have contact with others, it is not always as elevated.
Social Life as a Spiritual Practice
We notice that when we come and interact with other people, it does not necessarily give us high states of consciousness. It is not the state of peace and interization that we have when we meditate profoundly. What Patanjali does in this sutra is give us a short and essential way to relate to others, by offering these 4 attitudes:
- Friendship to the happy.
- Compassion to those who suffer.
- Joy in the face of the virtuous.
- Non-judgmental and detached in front of the non-virtuous.
Once we relate to others in this way, vividly, with a lot of heart, our interaction with people becomes a spiritual practice. It can be as important and effective as meditation or prayer. We will explore this fundamental sutra and see how it becomes applicable to our lives.
Ordinary State of Consciousness vs. Higher State of Consciousness
Scholars say that Patanjali wrote the Yoga Sutras about 2300 or 2100 years ago, somewhere between the lives of Buddha and Christ. He describes in the Yoga Sutras the transition from our ordinary state of consciousness which is mind-based and ego-based – a state of consciousness that is mediocre, where we are not able to shut down our regular mental agitation – a state in which we are very reactive emotionally to anything coming from the world, and we can not help it.
From this state of consciousness, if somebody tells us some bad words, we can not help but get emotional about it. If somebody tells us some words of validation we can’t help but feel flattered. On this level, we are complete slaves to the outer world. Our mood will go up and down. With our mood, our health and our interactions with others will move in this way. Our inner state is completely blown in the wind by outer events.
Patanjali shows the way to higher and higher levels of consciousness, where the regular chattering mind switches off. There is an ecstatic silence and expanded state of consciousness, a capacity to see the spiritual reality, to see our inner nature and so forth.
He describes all sorts of ways of attaining this elevated state of consciousness. The most famous is the 8 stages of Patanjali, where through concentrated focusing on one object consciousness expands, limitations of individuality are dissolved, and one attains the state of Samadhi or cosmic consciousness.
In the next article, we will discuss the main obstacles to attaining success on the spiritual path and the 7 ways to overcome them.
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This article was transcribed and edited by Zita from the following video: