Millions of human beings after having been exposed to the profound sense of self empowerment, peace,and clarity, which a functional and authentic yoga practice serves to reward, often find their curiosity evoked, asking; "what's happening"?
Subsequently many take a peek at Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. But too often, because of the prevalence of inadequate translations, most people have unfortunately concluded that the Yoga Sutras are merely an intellectual or academic work, irrelevant to daily living or authentic yogic practice. Perhaps an earnest seeker would not give up so quickly. But even after perusing alternative translations one after another, it would be all too easy to reach the unfortunate conclusion that the Yoga Sutras merely outlines an ancient dead philosophical/ideological system revealing little power or insight in how to better live modern life. Hence many sincere practitioners never go back again to the Yoga Sutras which is, once the code is cracked, a treasure trove of yogic wisdom, gleaned from the ancient oral tradition of the mountain and forest dwelling yogis of ancimnet India. Even many Swamis have become seduced by the preexisting entrenched academic and authoritative intellectually biased interpretations which have obscured the authentic meaning of the Yoga Sutras for over 1500 years. But that is all about to change.
The unsuspecting novice does not realize the reason for the apparent uniform deadness of the Yoga Sutras is because academically based translators have become groomed in a singular self serving incestuous philosophical tradition going back to the first commentator scholar, Vyasa, who wrote the first extant commentary on the Yoga Sutras, circa fourth century CE. Vyasa interpreted Yoga from the samkhya ideological framework, which set off an intellectually oriented, semantic, grammatical, and philosophical tradition which has been maintained through Indian orthodox academia up until the present day.
It is not that samkhya itself is wrong or useless, rather every human being has the right to their own tastes, views, and philosophy (samkhya included). Indeed samkhya is right, as far as it goes, i.e., samkhya is samkhya. But it would be a severe error to try to interpret the extraordinary practice of yoga which is basically an ontological system rooted in praxis (which is the traditional mountain wilderness yoga tradition) attempting to filter and view it through the lens of an etymological and reductionist contexts. Samkhya takes the very ancient yoga tradition, which is essentially trans-intellectual/transconceptual and then attempts to bend it into a much smaller container based on a limited dualistic intellectual and academic samkhya framework. Yoga however states an opposite position by attempting to break up the limits of conceptual thought patterns entirely. In short the academic tradition has tried to interpret yoga from the samkhya predilection. In that way they get samkhya, but not yoga. But yoga is not samkhya, nor is samkhya capable of interpreting the profound and ancient yogic meanings gleaned from practice. Yoga defies samkhya in that it stands by itself complete, outside of samkhya's traditional philosophical assumptions. Granted samkhya has the right to its voice, angle, view, and interpretation, but not exclusively so.
This is not to dismiss or demean the intellect (buddhi), but rather to put it in its rightful context. According to yoga, as taught by Patanjali, the intellect is a dim reflection and tool of a transpersonal Universal Wisdom (Mahat) which reflects its origin from prakrti (nature as differentiated consciousness) and purusa (pure primordial undifferentiated consciousness). When the intellect (buddhi) is used as a tool within the overall harmonious context aligned with its essential nature and origin, then kept within that context, it is a useful tool. However when the intellect (buddhi) serves the ego or individual will, the intellect is very dangerous, because it then serves to craftily subvert and substitute for direct intuitive wisdom (prajna). Such is the unmistakable teachings of the yogis as reflected in the Yoga Sutras (See I.7-9, I.42, I.49 for examples).
Further especially in the present era (Kali Yuga), where gross materialism and the ego have become dominantly out of balance, where the left brain has become amplified out of balance and harmony repressing right brain function (which has become inhibited, demeaned, or disconnected), it is especially valuable to recognize the conscious primordial intelligent power underlying the intellect, which the intellect is meant to serve and obey, which has instructed yogis directly for thousands of years. Although those who are dominated by the intellect and have lost confidence in their innate potential will be drawn to and perhaps entertained and fascinated by samkhya, this translation of the Yoga Sutras will be far more than what samkhya philosophers would be able to presently consider or imagine.
The Yoga Sutras have served as a guidebook, reference, and feedback mechanism pertaining to the yogi's spiritual experiences and practices. Sincere and dedicated practitioners of "yoga", or better, accomplished "yogis" are most capable of relating to the Yoga Sutras from direct experience, but even for the beginner the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali can provide a valuable outline and context for the practice of yoga. Traditionally most yogis have dwelled far away from universities, libraries, cities, or urban populations. For them the true nature of phenomena and the true nature of their own minds were part and parcel of one wholistic intelligent evolutionary natural process. But as human populations became more artificial and dependent upon manmade structures, human awareness of their own true relationship and identity (swarupa) with being a vital part of nature slowly became demeaned. With that his intuitive powers and values placed upon natural systems shriveled and dried up. For the most part human beings gradually became increasingly dependent and addicted to artificial and contrived ways of thinking and living proportionately to the extent that they lost touch with their interconnectedness with their natural uncontrived true nature. It is these prisons of the human mind which is strangling life today more than ever. The positive side of this age of alienation from nature and life, is that the malaise is more obvious, while the myth/illusion of mastering and controlling nature is being proven impossible. Possibly human beings are on the verge of forming an alliance once again with the evolutionary power (mother nature) and re-enter the evolutionary scene. We are either apart from it or part of it.
Beyond sectarianism and dogma awaits the true seeker universal and natural law and truth. This is the healthy evolutionary religion which underlies reality which humankind must embrace now. That is the discovery of the innate intelligent evolutionary conscious power awaiting to be discovered within each living being.
The Purpose of this Book (Praxis)
Although all adherents of philosophies, belief systems, religions, or world views will have the tendency to interpret the Yoga Sutras through their own eyes, this translation will attempt to interpret the Yoga Sutras based on two major criteria. The first is based on what Patanjali has actually said in the Yoga Sutras while using that as "authoritative" proof of what he is saying, only utilizing outside sources as supportive material or examples.
The second criteria is that this translation assumes that Yoga is Praxis as it is based upon direct yogic experience only accessible by yogic practice, not philosophical theory. For a yogi, there exists an innate logos/order found within the heart of all beings as well as the timeless core/heart of the universe. The yogi brings those together.
Hence the Yoga Sutras is not a book on Yoga Philosophy (as is too often assumed), rather it is designed as a guide book for yogic practitioners, of which inference, conceptual thought processes, intellectual thought processes, etc., are not a yogic tools, rather such are hindrances. Here the yogi is informed through transconceptual practices and also through this informed state we put wisdom into action. Reading the Yoga Sutras in that way, this interpretation of the Yoga Sutras will serve its purpose.
If one wants to study the Yoga Sutras according to the prevailing academic tradition; i.e., to speak "authoritatively" about the Yoga Sutras in conformity to "conventional wisdom", then this book will not suffice. If however the reader wants to get to the core meaning and purpose of the Yoga Sutras as an adjunctive training manual for yogis who desire liberation and samadhi, then this is book is designed to serve that purpose. In fact traditionally "conventional wisdom" is seen as a transgenerational bane to humankind, being a large contributor of institutionalized ignorance, negative programming, desensitization, violence, suffering, destruction and strife. Yogic wisdom says, learn what is on the minds and hearts of others, but do not be dissuaded by them. Learn what resides behind the core of the HeartMind, and be informed by that in all one's relations.
Authentic yoga is not for the academic observer, but for the yoga practitioner. Mountain yogis had little need of books because they were immersed in the presence of a living oral and transverbal tradition. Even when the human teacher was not physically present, the mountain yogis received instruction from primordial source through the intelligent evolutionary power inherent in nature -- the primordial teacher of all yoga teachers. However modern man lives in a very different setting/reality which is ego driven and materialistic for the most part (at least the mind has become decidedly so arranged). Hence the traditional yogic setting has to adjust to 21st century situations without losing its its inner most power. Practices have to relate to that situation in order to be relevant and useful.
It is key not to attempt to place yoga within the Western or modern context (as it will never fit because the whole is much larger than its fragmented parts), but rather the effective solution is to place the modern context within the perennial and universal context of yoga irrespective of national origin, race, religion, gender, or any other limited belief system or bias. All that is necessary is a student earnestly seeking unbiased truth, liberation, and awakening. Thus there will be many unique features found in these commentaries as to how practical, relevant, and timeless Patanjali can be today. Such a contextual reframing has been long overdue. Although the starting frame of reference, culture, and context today is different from that of ancient India, the ultimate goal and purpose will not be sacrificed.
According to the mountain yoga tradition, the Yoga Sutras are designed to empower the yogi to be able to reach his/her highest potential in this very life. The assumption is that all have this innate seed potential (isvara) which resides pervasively in all beings and things, but few of us have realized that potential consciously (purusa/father consciousness), here in the human body, and on planet earth (prakrti or mother nature). That is the inseparable union of pure consciousness (Cit) and pure beingness (Sat), spirit and nature, mind and body, father/mother, purusa/prakrti, Shiva/Shakti, Sun and moon, and so on resulting in pure bliss -- in Sat-Cit-Ananda) which yogic practice achieves within the container of the yogic practitioner. Then that yogi, brings about yoga as harmony, balance, union, conscious awakening, and happiness in all their relations. This is what the Yoga Sutras naturally intend.
So the context is very simple; not at all complex. What appears as "complex" appears to the intellect as such, but authentic yoga is beyond the human intellect. A yogi gets used to that and welcomes that state. Our Through negative conditioning "Now Awareness" has become deadened, veiled, desensitized, and compromised through transgenerational negative programming and conditioning, so that the average human being has established negative mental patterns and habits (called citta-vrtti) which distort our highest creative potential NOW. Yoga thus offers a series of practices which remediate these occlusions, obstructions, and hindrances thus allowing one's fullest human potential to unfold in life NOW. It is innate and ever present. It is the primordial authentic teacher to be rediscovered through yoga, NOW.
A gift of the Yoga Sutras is the ability to identify the negative conditioning (ignorance, desensitization, and confusion) lodged very deep in the average human conditioned situations, and release them -- burn them up. Simultaneously, there exists a dormant innate and intelligent evolutionary power whose ultimate nature is to be discovered and expressed as love -- liberated and brought forth naturally.
For the most part, the non-yogi having become inured to the negative programming, has taken the former delusionary state at some time in their life as true; mistaking it as "reality". Thus the common state of mind and behavior repeatedly and habitually ignores the necessary process of letting go of attachments to illusion. Such is the nature of habitual thought patterns (vasana). Society, composed of such people, have set up many rules and codes to self perpetuate this delusion while dumbing down people mostly unwittingly. It is that attachment (to this conditioned state of ignorance and insensitivity) that precludes a mass awakening of the human being. Such transgenerational institutionalized ignorance attempts to preclude man from manifesting his highest evolutionary potential here on the planet, again unwittingly for the most part. Those who do it wittingly, do it out of personal gain, vengeance, spite, hatred, greed, exploitation, pride, and other such negative emotions called kleshas. Those negative preoccupations are what authentic yogic practices remediate. How? By putting the yogi in touch with something far more empowering and satisfying.
What is needed is for human beings who have become so deluded (polluted), is for them to experience a severe disillusionment process, an identity crises, or what is called an ego death. Yes the ego will resist, but in the trade we say good riddance! This is not a physical death or annihilation, but an rebirth and awakening. The prisons of the old roles and boundaries are exploded and released. What is left is boundless love and joy -- a constant and ongoing moment to moment identity crisis which liberates us from all thought patterns and habitual syndromes (citta-vrtti), which keeps us alive and present. Yoga is the way to conscious awakening and liberation. Instead of negating, renouncing, or demonizing "the world", nature, or life which are common escapist teachings, what is taught in the Yoga Sutras is how to let go of those fears and attachments (which are entirely mentally conditioned) while being cleansed from negative past programming, re-sensitized, and empowered to act in harmony with our innate intelligent evolutionary creative power. Then we can live life fully, creatively, and effectively, as a natural expression of that intelligent evolutionary power and thus fulfil our deepest evolutionary purpose on the planet.
Yoga has many names. Sometimes it is called action yoga (karma yoga) without attachment to results, bhakti yoga (isvara pranidhana) as in devotional practices, raj yoga (kingly yoga) as in meditation, or hatha yoga (as the union of spirit and nature) most well known in the west as utilizing asana, pranayama, and visualization, and/or all of these together being mutually synergistic. Yes, this does require disengagement from one thing, but not from the evolutionary force (life) nor primordial presence. The disengagement has to do with the citta-vrtti (conditioned habits of the mind field), not the over simplified disengagement from life, the planet, or the body as put forward by life negative philosophers who follow the path of negation. One renounces stasis and dreariness, To be straightforward, authentic yoga is not a withdrawal from life, but maybe a withdrawal from artificial programming and the artifices of egoic and fear driven cultures. It is the withdrawal from delusion (asmita), deceit, self deceit, untruth (satya), and harmfulness (ahimsa), but that renunciation brings forth clarity of vision, truth, integrity, and the expression of spontaneous love naturally.
Yoga as a withdrawal from life or isolation is another interpretive error of the philosophical predilection of samkhya dualistic philosophers, who take an "other worldly" or escapist interpretation. Of course other religions also teach salvation or liberation only in the after life. Such is an oversimplified approach. They say: "Life is an illusion, bad, or evil, so just ignore it it or negate it." Some will even try to prove that to us!
Again the difficulty is not in life, but in the disconnected and confused mind who interprets/perceives it incorrectly; i.e., our ignorance of our innate connection to primordial consciousness which co-exist both inside and outside of time, space, and causation. Without any direct experience while being limited solely to intellectual analytical processes, intellectuals fail to understand the power and great beauty of enlightened living, of selfless service and devotion, love and transpersonal living, the power of community and nature which is taught as the higher wisdom in the great narratives such as the Bhagavad Gita, as well as in the Yoga Sutras. Thus they also misinterpret most of the sutras framing it within escapist negations having become numb and inured to the a supposedly dead inanimate world. Specifically they miss entirely the significance of Sutras I.12 through I-19 which is the key to selfless service non-attachment to results. Vairagya is liberation and selfless service. It is in is implementation the expression of transpersonal and intimate love. Without it there is no surrender to the transconceptual but essential heart/core within. Without surrender -- nay utter loving abandon -- there is no yoga. Hence scholars can go over the sutras endlessly with their intellect, but cannot find the light that it offers, because they have rejected it. If one "gets" I.12-19 and is able to abide in that sacred space of open pure awareness 100% of the time, then they need not go on reading or practicing yoga. They have realized yoga NOW re-establishing their connectedness with all beings and things.
My assumption in writing this book is that many people are not fully HERE (present) most of the time. By that I mean they are fully present or conscious on other than a very superficial level; i.e., they still get closed down, upset, insensitive, disempowered, and disconnected which are symptoms for lacking in true virtue -- of primordial creative evolutionary moral power and an aligned will. Grounding is often lacking in modern life. By grounding it is meant a connection to the evolutionary power (mother nature), as a identification with that process, as a vital part of that process (rather than apart from it). Once allied with life, once human beings honor, respect, and act as pro-life agents of expression, then human life will indeed improve for all. That happens when awakening happens to the natural self (swarupa). A mass awakening is always possible, but it requires awakened human beings to pull it off.
Resisting this is the demoralization process pervasive in today's materialistic, cynical, greedy, selfish, or nihilistic society. No amount of ersatz "objects" or rather compensatory modalities of satisfaction and security will be able to substitute or suffice for such an earth shaking loss. What is needed is alignment of individual will with universal will. Yoga teaches us how to discover that. With this wisdom and experience, man's morale soars naturally in all our relations. That is because through authentic yoga primordial spirit becomes more present, conscious, available, and naturally expressed.
So I invite the reader on this journey to rediscover one's true nature of mind (unconditioned reality as-it-is) so that it will nurture you and all beings. This book is written for one purpose only which is to reveal the intrinsic non-dual integrative wisdom and evolutionary purpose and will that resides within each sentient being, so that the reader may walk in harmony on the beauty path. Patanjali's Yoga Sutras is such a work with that focus in mind.
Toward that ultimate culmination, this translation and commentary of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras is offered. The Yoga Sutras by itself, without a personal yogic practice, will remain a failure. It is the author's intent that this translation may serve interested human beings realize that profound culmination as their reality in their everyday experience – as sacred presence in UNIVERFSAL NOW AWARENESS.
It is in each and every moment that we contain that awesome creative/evolutionary potential power -- the opportunity to embody, reflect, and emanate this beauty, love, will and joy in celebration of life and evolution, thus reversing the causal factors in human consciousness that have lent themselves toward suffering, illness, war, brutality, and ecological destruction. This is thus a very crucial theme for our current time in human history. Human beings must take their place in the grand scheme of natural law. What has been needed for a very long time is a 21st` century "Green" translation of the Yoga Sutras that is free of dogma, aversion, and anti-nature bias. This revelation of Patanjali's will prove to be practical and relevant to the modern Western reader, is already far past due.
It is a fortunate time to bring forward a modern translation of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras rooted in the reverence for all life (ahimsa) and relevant to the modern experience especially in the West. This reflects the needed integrative approach which combines spiritual truths, spiritual fulfillment, social justice, environmental justice, and sustainability as one. By respecting all life we respect our own life and its creator/creation process. This is an authentic healthy response that must be integrated in All Our Relations for the human being affirming their participation and identification within the wholistic integral context and process of being a intimate of creation and the embodiment of the creative evolutionary force (as distinct from being apart or independent from it). Health and future survival depends upon this vital awakening. It is up to awakened beings to bring forth this awareness and love and embrace it. That is freedom -- taking response-ability for the future.
Because of the recent burgeoning embrace of yoga, many are seeking deeper explanations for their heightened experiences and guidance to move even further into that integrative non-dual state. To that end it is my hope that Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras may help fulfill that primal passion that reconnects us all to what is the Heart of the "Mater" – in yoga.
Throughout this book, the Yoga Sutras are placed within the context of personal practice and experience -- within the assumption of an experiential process oriented integrative and wholistic system. It was necessary to rescue it from the institutionalized traditional, dry, academic, scholarly and left brained commentaries which locked the Yoga Sutras within the prison-like context of a mere philosophical or religious treatise. This translation of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras is neither religious nor philosophical. This interpretation does not paint yoga as an escape nor a negation of life and the universe, but rather describes the Yoga Sutras as a self empowering nature-positive adjunct to enlightened living based on a careful translation utilizing Patanjali’s own words without imposing pre-established assumptions. This translation has ben augmented and tested by over forty years of yoga study and practice.
This translation places the Yoga Sutras within a context that is vitally relevant not only to the human being, but to all life on the planet. For example placing the sutras within an empirical and experiential base, one frees the reader from other-world escapism, negatively programmed negation of life, religious doctrine, anti-nature ideology, conjecture and other such manufactured bias, prejudice, and belief systems which are rampant today. The translation attempts to base itself on natural law, the Santana Dharma. For example without ignoring the rise of fundamentalism and fixated belief systems, the discussion on pramana-vrtti in sutra I.7 (what is generally considered as a proven theory or “right” knowledge) has become entirely challenged, being very different from that of conventional orthodox Indian academia and traditional thought that has grown up around, obscured, and served to encrypt the vitality and living power of the sutras for almost two thousand years.
Similarly, this book makes a clear distinction between the institutionalized assumption that yoga was a system of withdrawal from nature, life, and direct experience; as distinct from yoga as an integrative process where daily actions, body, breath, mind, nature, and source all come together as a profound mutually synergistic fluid whole – as a profound dance of natural liberation. Once one has become freed from the past patterns of negative conditioning/programming, such a realization flows naturally. Indeed yoga is a withdrawal from confusion, negative programming, ignorance, and suffering, and hence is an affirmation of happiness, wisdom, beauty, and living love.
Herein, yoga is thus presented, as Patanjali and the ancient mountain yogi tradition intended; i.e., as a method of activating one’s deepest core creative potential in this very life. Instead of presenting yoga as a body negative, nature negative, other worldly, or even self adversarial teaching (which is often the traditional academic approach), yoga is presented more honestly and simply in the context of ahimsa (remediating harm), peacefulness and fulfillment (santosha), simplifying one’s life and activating our natural spontaneous ability to be generous (aparigraha), acting in integrity (asteya), removing the blinders of delusion (satya), self study (swadhyaya), and developing skills in listening for one’s inner voice to be expressed (isvara pranidhana) -- all in order to realize and then spontaneously express one’s own innate inner evolutionary potential
It is the author's experience, that the Yoga Sutras as-it-is, stripped of its externally imposed reifications, prejudices, and philosophical imputations made by intellectual dogmatists will prove to be a reliable field manual and guide for human evolution. That will disclose our inner teacher (isvara) and creative healing powers, restoring vision, self confidence, human sensitivity,peace, compassion, and sense of being part of a greater whole, rather than being apart from it. The living law of love and wisdom (the primordial wisdom which manifests as love) will by itself replace compensatory manmade laws, ersatz materialism, greed, exploitation, war, prisons, punishment, and himsa (violence). It will manifest as a living response-ability -- as moral courage as an expression of divine will and truth (satyagraha).
As a translator, one’s responsibility is to render the original author of the Yoga Sutras as truly as possible in the language while honoring both time and place differences. . This can only be done by understanding both languages (Sanskrit and English), both cultures (that of Patanjali’s and the modern West), and most importantly, yoga, itself.
Admittedly every translation will have its bias, and hopefully offer some insight as well. The most common translations are based on the samkhya interpretation which paints a strong dualistic coloring of the "Yoga Sutras". Such is based on the idea that liberation involves isolation, withdrawal, negation, and escape from existence, nature, the body, and life itself. Samkhya is reductionist and at best less than half the yogic equation, Yoga however is integrative, based on praxis. While it is true that both systems (samkhya and yoga) utilize some shared terms, it’s overall aims and goals are quite different. Just as soccer and football are similar, they should not be confused as the same game.
In the course of self transformation, the negatively programmed human being moves from ignorance to wisdom -- from limited and obscured vistas (avidya) to broader and more vast awareness (vidya), from entrapment to interactive liberation. Part of that process of self transformation is the withdrawal from pre-programmed false and dysfunctional mental habits which is the first step of purusa consciousness, witness consciousness, self awareness, or mindfulness, but that is the first step of a very profound journey. Witnessing "self" in mindfulness is absolutely helpful as it allows us to recognize and then let go of old dysfunction mental and physical habits. Total isolation from this awareness is needed, but simultaneously as it is won, then an all inclusive non-dual omni-present awareness which is akin to absolute unconditional freedom (kaivalya) is realized. That realization is all inconclusive, non-dual, transpersonal, and integrative, rather than isolationist, dualistic, nor reductionist.
This translation and commentary will not regurgitate the standard fare, nor will it pretend to speak for the mainstream traditional club. This translation and commentary will however break that mold in a respectful spirit yet devoid of the need to advocate identification with external past authority figures, traditions, or self interested institutions. Hence this translation would not be politically correct in a strictly traditional academic setting. Such is its unique value.
Many people have stubbornly decided that it is necessary for them to align themselves with a pre-existing "authority" and structure and hence subject themselves to such a structure in terms of conformity and obedience. These same human beings who do not trust (nor are they in contact with) their inner teacher (isvara), claim that it is arrogant and egotistical to trust their innate wisdom. For them liberation is obedience/conformity. If the reader wants to conform or learn conventional wisdom and orthodoxy there are many other books and traditions to chose from. If however one desires to incorporate the deep spiritual blessings of authentic yoga (isvara) in their daily lives in which to enliven and empower it – if one wants to get in touch with their dormant, innate, transpersonal, creative/evolutionary power – if on wants to be shaken free from past programming, limitations, dogma, conditioning, and afflictions -- if one wants to improve their yogic practice in order to facilitate these, then this translation and commentary may prove to be an adjunct.
In this translation the author has attempted to take Patanjali’s word for what he is saying over that of the traditional academic commentators and use Patanjali’s own words to make such distinctions. If such is done, the Yoga Sutras read as a coherent integrative whole. This translator assumes consistently that Patanjali belonged to the ancient tradition of mountain yogis who lived in caves, forest hermitages, and river banks for at least the millennia preceding and practiced a yoga similar to that of Gautama Buddha. In fact the teachings of Buddha and Patanjali are very similar. These yogis were practicing yogis and sages, not scholars nor orthodox Brahmins studying texts, performing ritual, and prayers in the traditional manner. Far fetched as it may seem, the practices of the mountain yogi tradition was as Patanjali has described in the "Yoga Sutras", rather than as an intellectual or philosophic study.
If there is thus any bias on my part, it is from the point of view of the mountain yogi which has much in common with non-dual tantric Buddhists, Saivite Tantrics, and the traditions of deep ecology, alchemy, and wholism. It is irrefutable that Pada III and IV are definitively tantric and that Patanjali was familiar with tantra, Buddhism, and the alchemical tradition. It is irrefutable that Patanjali was a non-dualist. So if there is any bias to this translation I would admit such, but with the declaration that it is an honest intent to translate the Yoga Sutras given that every translation suffers from some bias (intentional or not). Because this translation is non-traditional and unconventional does not make it insincere, rather I am certain that it may prove more authentic and more vitally relevant than the standard fare, although certainly it is not devoid of errors.
"Wisdom is always taste -- in both Latin and Hebrew, the word for wisdom comes from the word for taste -- so it's something to taste, not something to theorize about. "Taste and see that God is good," the psalm says; and that's wisdom: tasting life. No one can do it for us. The mystical tradition is very much a Sophia tradition. It is about tasting and trusting experience, before institution or dogma."
Matthew Fox, "Holy Impatience", an interview with Matthew Fox by Sarah Ruth van Gelder in the Winter 2006 Issue of "Yes!"
How to use this book
The direct translation of the sutras is meant to stand alone by itself, however an extensive commentary (not necessary) is provided in order to provide clarity and context especially, since the sutras have become hacked over by academic traditional theorists. The translator has gone to great lengths to justify where and why his translation varies from the academic mainstream. This feature may not be of interest to the new reader. Unlike most other translations and commentaries this work is full of practical examples many of which come from the translators personal experiences. Such is due to the translator's long dedication to the practical aspects of yoga and also to the study of the Yoga Sutras which has lasted considerably over 40 years.
The translator has studied the Yoga Sutras in person at the feet of Hari Das Baba, Dr. Ramamurti Mishra (Sri Brahmananda), Swami Veda Bharati, Sri Pungaliya, Sri Swami Satchidananda, and others. Humble gratitude is due to my teachers, Swami Muktananda, Swami Vishnudevananda, Haridas Chaudhuri, Yogeshwar Muni, and Swami Kripaluananda. I am especially indebted to Swami Venkatesananda for his excellent translation and commentary.
This translation comes complete with an annotated glossary, a plain language "English only translation", and an annotated translation with commentary of all four chapters, with additional chapters on the historical background of the Yoga Sutras, a Yoga FAQ, a preface, forward, introduction, table of contents, and index.
Patanjali's Yoga Sutras Made Accessible: An Essay Designed to rescue the Yoga Sutras from excess intellectualization/elaboration
An Ashtanga (Eight Limbed) Yoga Meditation Practice
Beloved Yoga Teacher, Sri Dr. G. K. Pungaliya Essay on Patanjali and Jnaneshwar Sri Pungaliya was an ardent student of yoga, and subsequently became a modern master. Here Sri Pungaliya shares his insight on Samkhya, Patanjali, and Sri Jnaneshwar.
Yogiraj Shyamacharan Lahiri's Translation of the Yoga Sutras A more classic but inspired translation by the Grandson of Lahiri Mahasaya. This is very long download in PDF format.
Yoga Sutra Translation by Chester Messenger A refreshing, little known, and sincere work of a life-long meditator.
Links to over 25 Different Web Based English Translations of the Yoga Sutras. at HRIH.NET. Most of these translations are unoriginal and offer little insight. They are mostly an exercise in grammar, semantics, and epistemology.
A Sanskrit to English Annotated Glossary
Professor Whicher's commentary on Prakrti and Purusa
Alien Gods: Samkhya Interpretation of Nature (using Brahmacarya as the example)
A Review of Ian Whicher's. The Integrity of the Yoga Darsana: A Reconsideration of Classical Yoga by Georg Feuerstein
Yoga as seen in the Light of Vipassana by S. N. Goenka
A Short History of the Yoga Sutras
"Is Yoga a Religion": an astute and concise article by Georg Feuerstein
An article entitled "Is Yoga a Religion", by Swami Jnaneshvara Bharati
Yoga is not a Religion, by Shakti Das
Proceed to Chapter One of the Yoga Sutras: Samadhi Pada