Patanjali and the Forman

A detailed Summary of Patanjali and the Forman

>From birth to the age of three, our bodies unlock the secrets of motor movement. From the age of two years to ten years, we have the formation of thinking patterns and personality; a worldview begins to form. By the time we reach high school, many of us have formed rigid opinions of the world around us, blinders that limit the scope of the universe. Several psychology texts assert that the best time to expose a child to a musical instrument for instruction is around the age of five or six, and that a person has much greater difficulty learning to play an instrument after the age of twelve or thirteen.

Imagine the mind as being a sponge, and pure thought as the pool of water that it sits in. It can only hold so many ways of thinking, limiting the further intake of new thoughts. Yoga offers a method of wringing out that sponge so as to be free of old, stagnant thought patterns, thus allowing the intake of new thoughts (which must also be squeezed out). The retention of those thoughts is unfavorable. They mix with pure thoughts and taint them. This is what the Yoga Sutra defines as the turnings of thought. The goal of Yoga, as stated in the second aphorism, is the cessation of the turnings of

Sutra Attributed to Patanjali. New York: Bantam, 1995.

the true nature of an object, without the improper subliminal impressions that distort our perceptions.

Stephen Katz and Robert Forman have two conflicting views on the nature of mystical experience. Katz believes that it springs from our past experiences and learnings while Forman argues that it is transcendental of language and thought, and can strike regardless of whether you believe in it or not. If we examine this debate under the context of Patanjali's Yoga Sutra, we see the inherent truth in Robert Forman's notion that mystical experiences can include a "pure consciousness event" or an "objectless consciousness."

Miller, Barbara Stoler. Trans. Yoga, Discipline of Freedom: the Yoga

The Yoga Sutra does not just admit to the possibility that Forman's idea of objectless consciousness exists; it goes so far as to make it a necessary state through which we achieve liberation. In order for the turnings of thought to cease, we have to erase all traces of these conditioned thought patterns. They are tangled in with our memory, reasoning, and even intuition as what the text refers to as "subliminal impressions." They must be eliminated. Only then will a state of seedless contemplation ensue (Miller 43). Contemplation that neither springs from or bears seeds corresponds to what Forman calls "objectless consciousness", and is what meditation is all about. In fact, it is the final, end result of proper meditation. The text directs us to control our breath, control our posture, and focus on a single, suitable object. The object of meditation will eventually disappear and we will be left with a contemplative state with no seeds. In this state, we can discern !

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Approximate Word count = 1254
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Religion