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Patanjali’s Nine Levels of Awareness in Aspirants #305
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For those who enter into spiritual life, progress is made in stages. It all depends upon the abilities of the individual. Some do not follow through, and quit the path after a few obstacles crop up. Others continue, but do not give it a lot of effort. Whatever the case might be, spiritual teachers have assessed the progress of practitioners and founded a system of levels based upon their experience. This wisdom chart shows Patanjali’s own measure in this regard, with Yoga being the spiritual discipline.
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The Paths of Action and Inaction #67
Connecting well with charts #35 and 66, and coursing even deeper into their manifold ramifications, the yogas of karma and raja are inspected here — a pair of pathways that have quite often and for ages been looked at as contradictory to one another — even by intelligent beings within religious circles and traditions. However, to act in accordance and agreement with one’s own purified mind and intellect is the result of successfully fusing these two great yogas, and the fruit of such an accomplishment is the ability to simultaneously concentrate on the formless Essence of Reality while remaining fully able and masterful at acting in the world — the benefits of which bring about the highest good of living beings on all levels of awareness.
The Seven Steps to Attainment of Kaivalya #87
The superlative word, Kaivalya, is rarely heard in yogic circles today. Words such as asana and pranayama abound among the uninitiated attached to body and breath, but the elevated state of penultimate samadhi is left unplumbed, overlooked. But the fathers of both Yoga and Vedanta focus in on this word, knowing, as they do, that any soul who attains to the higher limbs of Ashtanga Yoga will have to deal with its subtleties and gain mastery of it. As this chart demonstrates, Kaivalya is the doorway to Formlessness — or seven doorways, as the case may be. These openings represent the best of the Yoga darshana, and what mastery of all of the previous limbs is all about.
Nine Obstacles to Yoga #57
Yoga as union with Divine Reality is consummate and final. But how few beings in the physical realm and body actually experience such unity? Therefore, here on earth, Yoga as method and practice is extremely precious, and the practitioner ought to be well informed as to what obstacles are going to come up once this highest and best of purifying systems is initiated and adhered to. Patanjali has formulated these main impediments into four categories, making it clear as to where the seeker must look and concentrate.
The Process of Samprajnata to Asamprajnata Samadhi #88
It could be said that the four kinds of samadhis (along with their nirvitarka and nirvichara subdivisions) are like postures for the mind, like asanas for intelligence. The purpose for engaging in physical postures and breathing exercises all along the early trajectory of yogic practice was only to help prepare the way for these higher positions of Awareness. It has been stated by certain luminaries that spiritual life does not really even begin until the seeded samadhis are gained by way of direct experience; everything previous to this highest attainment only signified various types of purification. If this is true, then seeded samadhis can be viewed as similar preparation and purification for Ultimate Samadhi — of which there is only one, of unseeded nature