Sutras Ch 3-evidence?

Yoga Discussion General Yoga
#1

Hi everyone,

I’ve been revisiting my old teacher-training copy of the Yoga Sutras after 7 years of it mostly getting dusty on the bookshelves. I definitely have found a new appreciation for the sutras, and even have been reading multiple translations. Then I get to Chapter 3 (vibhuti pada), and the blissful yoga train comes to an abrupt stop for me.

Becoming invisible (3.21)? Reading other peoples minds (3.19)? Developing the strength of an elephant (3.25)? Your consciousness entering the body of others (3.39)?

Is there any evidence of this? Or perhaps an exaggeration? Anyone reading this have any direct experience of these siddhis?

#2

The foundational message behind chapter three is that by directing the mind with unwavering concentration, mastery of the object of meditation can be wrought. Different traditions will have their own interpretation of this. For instance in 3.19, many people will interpret that meditation on your own mind will give you the power of mind-reading. Other schools will translate that the act of knowing your own mind reduces the conditioning and samskara-s which prevent you from accurately seeing and understanding another person. (The sutra after that clarifies that this ‘power’ will help you to know what people are thinking, but you can never truly understand all of the process which brought them to those thoughts). I lean toward the second interpretation, because it is very practical and logical. If you stop thinking about yourself (or analyzing your experience through a clouded perspective), you really ARE free to read and interpret the signals and thoughts of the people around you.

They say Vivekananda heard a woman’s voice and knew the pain of all her loss. They say Krishnamacharya knew his own body so well that he could stop his heart, and that he knew the breath so well that he could determine sickness or know how long a person would live by just listening to them breathe. Was their practice anything specific from chapter three, to gain this great awareness? Or did they just practice samyama in one direction, strengthening the capacity of their powers of concentration like a muscle, until they could apply it to whatever required their attention? If you were to choose, as a dedicated samyama, the cleansing of your own perception and removal of your samskaras, can we really say how far we could take the power of awareness that we gained from this?

Can we influence the strength of the body only by focusing on the strength of something outside us? Some people will say that the power of imagination cannot affect the body at all, but any child who hears a ghost story will have a thudding heart when something goes bump in the night, and any lover can tell you that the memories of their love can be felt in the body. If this connection between mind and body is cultivated as a form of meditation, it can be used to boost the immune systems of ill people, or just make them feel stronger and healthier. Some say that the mind in itself is enough to create the healing, just as the mind can cause disease. But it is true that there is no proof that the specific example will make you as strong as an elephant… but I’ve also never known anyone to try. I guess the only way to ever be convinced is to do it yourself. :slight_smile:

#3

Yogadealer,
Yoga Sutra in its conventional sequence does pose such issues of abrupt end of an idea or two unrelated sutras sitting next to eachother. This has mislead many translators to somehow infer meaning that at times produced vague philosophy. My teacher gave me the right sequence and that changes the import magically. (Its in my book) Amongst many things, it shows the sutras organized in five chapters (and not three) that lay out a clear progression of a seeker into a master.

Similarly, a literal translation also lands one into fantastic descriptions. The four examples you have given can be very simply and realistically put thus,

  1. A yogi learns to shift and relocate his awareness to the subtle body and withdraws the luminosity of the physical body making it impossible for others to see,
  2. Reading minds should mean reading thoughts. We are ordinarily familiar only with a verbalized or worded thought. But before that, a thought exists in a seed form as instinct or desire that our thinking process keeps releasing through the ajna chakra. A yogi learns to decode these seeds.
  3. Why would Patanjali talk of strength of an elephant, when the whole idea is to dissolve physical awareness? Like the scrambling of sequence mentioned above, use of symbols was common to protect these very powerful practices from wrongful or ignorant use. Elephant signifies foundation or base, indicating muladhara chakra which produces tremendous energy through yoga practices,
  4. Unless a new insight is earned, our ordinary perceptions are too tied up with physical objects. Consciousness is extremely subtle. For “entering” into another person’s body it doesn’t need to "move’ from yogi’s body and “enter”. Release your mind from the constraining ideas and you would realize that for consciousness physical body must be porus and an advanced yogi can simply direct attention to someone to let consciousness interpenetrate a body and meet the grosser awareness of that person.

Yoga sutra is not a spiritual fantasy. It is very practical, if we take it that way.

#4

Suhas, I like your post regarding the 4 siddhis mentioned in this thread. You have explained things realistically and with clarity.

#5

I think we should be very careful not to interpret the Yoga Sutras Chapter 3 and apologize for the Siddhis. I have seen many authors try to explain the siddhis away as either abilities of the subtle body, as exaggerations or lies by Patanjali. This is simply because they sound too fantastic. Yes, they are rather fantastic, but that does not change change the fact that Patanjali does indeed mention them.

Personally to me, they are not fantastic, because if you read the sutras carefully you will notice that the process for how the siddhis work are actually scientifically sound.

Invisibility: By Samyama on the form of ones body(and by) checking the power of perception by intercepting the light from the eyes of the observer, the body becomes invisible

This is exactly how invisibility actually works. If you can prevent the light from reflecting from your body into the eyes of others observers, you will become invisible. Based on this principle invisibility technologies are now being developed.

Teleportation: By Samyama on the relationship between body and the ether, lighhness like that of cotton is obtained, and thus travelling through the ether becomes possible

This is exactly how true teleportation would work. If we are able to quantimize an object(i.e., collapsing it to its wavefunction state) the object can then enter into the quantum field and be transmitted to any point in the universe. We already know this goes on with electrons in atoms, where electrons can disappear from one location and appear in another location through quantum tunneling. The ether of Yoga and the quantum field of quantum physics are identical, and several modern scientists and philosophers have pointed this out, even calling the quantum field by the Yogic name: Akashic field.

Patanjali was no idiot, he describes the siddhis that one can develop in Yoga because they are real. Modern research in parapsychology confirms many of the siddhis Patanjali describes. Some of the siddhis Patanjali describes are now common knowledge like arresting your thirst and hunger, controlling your so-called involuntary bodily process like body heat and heart beat.

#6

Wonderful answers! Thank you, everyone. I was having trouble with the siddhis in Ch 3 because I found them so dubious; whereas everything else in the Yoga Sutras was so logical to me. My concern was that by suspecting an exaggeration of the truth in just a few sutras, should I question the veracity all the sutras? (Well, yes, because it ultimately comes down to direct experience rather than authoritarian direction, but hopefully you know what I mean). Your answers have helped me with this conflict a lot.
Leslie