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Stages of the Spiritual Path
(Comments on the Patanjali’s Scheme)
In ancient times the Indian rishi Patanjali highlighted the principal stages of the ascent to spiritual heights, to the Primordial Consciousness. He distinguished eight major steps of this ascent: yama — niyama — asana — pranayama — pratyahara — dharana — dhyana — samadhi. However, since the first two of the above-mentioned steps are very similar and are supposed to be practiced simultaneously, it makes sense to regard them as one and view this system as a seven-step “octave”. Let us look at these steps.
Yama and Niyama
These terms are translated as effort and relaxation or exertion and rest. This stage consists in mastering fundamental ethical and psycho-hygienic rules of a spiritual seeker’s life.
The first rule is called ahimsa — harmlessness. It means trying not to injure, as far as possible, any living being in deeds, words, thoughts or emotions.
This also includes the principles of ethically correct nutrition that we have discussed above and, which is no less important, getting rid of coarse emotions, which are the result of ill thoughts and often lead to rude words and actions.
We can make ethical mistakes, including crimes, as a result of either our ignorance, lack of understanding of the universal order and of our place and role in it, or of our indulging in emotions of spite, condemnation, resentment, anxiety, fear, etc., which are manifestations of our sticking out lower self.
Destroying one’s lower self by merging it into the universal Highest Self of the Creator is one of the important tasks on the spiritual Path. This kind of work begins with the inner fight against all vicious manifestations of one’s lower self — first of all, those that exist in the field of emotional reactions. Repentance is an important tool in accomplishing this task: the sincere repentance for ethical mistakes that one has committed, accompanied by the mental analysis of those problem situations and finding the best ways of resolving them.
Many people do not grasp the essence of the principle of non-condemnation. Condemnation, in reality, is an emotion, a form of anger. Identification and discussion of other people’s mistakes, as well as an intellectual analysis of them are not at all condemnation. Analysis is necessary since this is what helps us not to repeat someone else’s mistakes. But while performing this type of analysis, one should be free from any kind of anger emotions.
Emotions are states of the energy of consciousness. They emanate beyond the body, thus creating energetic environment for surrounding people and other beings. People who live in coarse emotional states produce a destructive and pathogenic environment for those around them. Communicating with such people can cause severe energetic lesions and diseases, especially in children.
But people who live in refined states of love make everything around their bodies healthy, spiritualized, and elevated; they heal with their mere presence. And the stronger their love and more powerful the consciousness — the larger space they spiritualize — up to a planetary scale.
A spiritual seeker can achieve a full control over his emotional sphere only through working with his chakras and other energetic structures and then through merging himself (as consciousness) with Consciousness of God. But he should start making efforts starting from the beginning of the Path.
Sathya (truthfulness) is a second rule of yama. Jesus Christ said about this concisely: “…Let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’.”. We can deserve respect from people and from God only if we behave in this way.
But there are cases, where we cannot tell the truth, because this will harm someone. In such instances it is better to evade answering the question…
But if we lie, we become sinners before God and captives to our lies before people, since we will have to apprehend a disclosure and to live in anxiety, instead of state of steadfast pure peace.
The third rule is asteya — non-covetousness, renunciation of a desire to possess something that belongs to someone else. We should totally concentrate on the cognition of God. Craving for material objects, especially those belonging to others, is an utter perversion of the true orientation of consciousness, which at the same time leads to harming other people.
The fourth rule is aparigraha — limiting one’s possessions to necessary things. Unnecessary things only distract our attention from the essential: from being focused on attaining the state of Mergence with the Creator.
Brahmacharya — the fifth rule — literally means acting in Brahman (Holy Spirit). This implies renunciation of one’s “worldly” desires (except for attending to elementary needs of the body) and redirection of one’s attention towards God, searching for Him first with one’s mind and then — with one’s developed consciousness.
This rule implies sincere renunciation of seeking worldly fame and honors, accumulating the things that are unnecessary in the world of Brahman, and embellishment of the body.
Some people interpret Brahmacharya rule only as celibacy (sexual abstinence). But this is too narrow of an interpretation. Besides this, sexual continence is even unnecessary provided that one regards sex as a spiritual act. On the contrary, celibacy can lead to prostatitis in men, energetic “fading” of women and result in consciousness growing “callous” — in both. It really does not contribute to progress on the spiritual Path. What is important is not abstaining from sex, but freeing oneself from being obsessed with it and from sexual contacts with inadequate partners.
The sixth rule is saucha — maintaining purity of the body. The main thing here is washing the whole body with warm or hot water and with soap — daily, if possible. This cleans one’s skin from deposits of perspiration salts, which upset normal functioning of the whole organism. Let us remember what we feel after taking a good bath, especially if we have not washed the body before that for a long time! This is the state of comfort that we can and should create for ourselves every day by washing the body in the morning.
Saucha also implies brushing one’s teeth and so on.
There are also special therapeutic saucha techniques, such as enema or an abstersion of the nose and of the nasopharynx by drawing in salted water. There is no reason for using them regularly, though.
It is also not advisable for all people to practice cold-water showers. This is beneficial as a tempering or a toning up procedure. But for those who at the moment need to establish themselves in peace and harmony it could do harm.
The seventh rule is mitahara — pure nutrition. This has already been discussed in detail above. Here we will mention only that one should take food in an emotionally favorable environment. In no circumstances should one eat on the background of conflict conversations or bitter arguments, as well as in presence of malicious or irritated people. One may perform a meditation before taking a meal in order to harmonize one’s inner state. An Orthodox prayer Heavenly Father suits this purpose very well. The prayers/mediations from book that God granted to us can also of great help.
The eight rule — santosha — consists in the constant maintaining of a positive emotional attitude. If we feel presence of the Lord and devote our lives to Him totally, if we do not act out of self-interest, if we know that He is constantly watching us, leading us, teaching us, that He creates difficulties for us so that we could learn and then Himself helps us to find solutions to the problems — why would we not live in a permanent joy?
“You are doing your job, I am controlling events,” — this is what He taught the author of this book once.
The ninth rule is svadhyaya — philosophical discussions, conversations, and readings that make for a thorough comprehension of the meaning of one’s life and of the Path to Perfection.
“Fix your mind on Me…” — this is how Krishna defined the first steps that man should take on his Path to God.
The tenth rule — tapas — implies any kinds of self-restraint and self-constraint for the sake of overcoming one’s vices. Among other things, tapas teaches us a spiritual discipline as well as to follow the principle it should be done! as opposed to I do only what I want! .
The eleventh rule is Ishvarapranidhana. This implies feeling that everything that exists is pervaded with Consciousness of the Creator (Ishvara), feeling of His constant presence inside and outside one’s body, bodies of other people and also material objects, seeing Him as the Teacher and a Witness of everything that one does and that happens to one.
There are also four very important rules:
— kshama — tolerance to those who think differently;
— daya — mercy, kindness;
— arjava — simplicity, lack of arrogance;
— hri — humble thinking of oneself, and also a lack of: self-admiration, self-pride because of one’s actual achievements, and conceit — self-praise on account of one’s imaginary virtues.
Asana
In this context the word asana means a posture, a steady position of the body. There are special methods of working with one’s body in order to prepare it for further stages of the spiritual work. Systems of asanas and other exercises of this stage of work are collectively called hatha yoga. They also help one acquire initial concentration skills and provide the entry-level development of energetic structures of the organism.
One should start doing asanas only after studying and accepting the principles of the previous stage. Practicing hatha yoga without switching to a cruelty-free diet leads to coarsening of one’s energy and to accumulation of coarse power, and this in turn leads one astray from the true Path.
The best time for doing asanas is early morning — approximately 4-5 a.m.
Each session has to be followed by shavasana — a deep relaxation of the body and mind while lying on one’s back for about 20 minutes. If one does not do this, health disorders may occur, such as deterioration of the eyesight, anxiety, insomnia, etc.
To do shavasana, lie down on the back with your eyes closed. Make sure you are comfortable in this position. Nothing should distract you. Relax the body starting from the toes. Imagine that a vertical plane — like a glass wall — starts moving through the body from the toes to the head, leaving no tension behind. Feeling of all parts of the body that are behind the plane disappears. Alienate them by saying mentally: “This is not mine, this is not mine!…” If a feeling of some parts behind the plane reappears — move the plane through this section once again. After the plane has passed the head you can experience the following states:
The first state: consciousness (self-awareness) vanishes. You fall into something resembling a deep sleep, but this is not a sleep. Consciousness is regained in about 18-20 minutes. You feel thoroughly rested, as if after a long deep sleep. This is quite a blissful state. You do not have to stand up abruptly, just enjoy it.
The second state: consciousness is retained, but absolute peace comes down on you. You may scan the entire body with the inner sight”. You may enter the inner space of your body from below. You may see light and dark regions. Gray or black colors are disorders on one of the energetic planes, which correspond to active or still latent stages of diseases. Try to gather all dark stuff in heaps with a rake, as it were, and throw it outside the body.
When doing shavasana, we may also experience involuntary exits of the material body: we may suddenly feel ourselves in our usual form but in an unnatural position — for example soaring above the floor, standing on the head, and so on. There is nothing to worry about: once we feel like getting back into the body — we will find ourselves there right away. But under no circumstances one should encourage oneself to perform such exits: these are still exits into a coarse space dimension — into the so-called astral plane. One should learn how to exit immediately into the highest space dimensions; but the methods for doing this are different.
Children under age of 12 must not be taught shavasana: having realized that they are out of the body they do not always want to get back into it.
Attempts to do anything with kundalini as a part of hatha yoga training are strictly prohibited: this can lead to severe health disorders — both physical and mental. Working with kundalini is a task of the buddhi yoga stage. Raising kundalini is allowed only after all chakras and major meridians have been cleansed and developed thoroughly.
One also needs to understand that hatha yoga is just a preparatory stage for the actual yoga path. This is why devoting one’s life to it, counting on any substantial spiritual success — is not serious. Moreover, excessively long hatha yoga practice may even be harmful, for it produces the effect of hyper-development of the astral body. This will be a serious obstacle for refinement of consciousness and for its crystallization in the subtlest eons. Only working with the spiritual heart within raja and then buddhi yoga programs can ensure serious advancement.
Pranayama
Working with energies within the body and within the cocoon that surrounds it is the task of raja yoga. And the first stage of raja yoga is pranayama, which is translated as working with energy.
Sometimes this term is incorrectly interpreted as breathing exercises. This is an atheistic error. In reality it is the energy of consciousness that gets moving during pranayamas, but one may perform this — for convenience — keeping time with one’s breath.
The part of consciousness that is working during pranayamas should transform into white flowing light. We wash away all areas of bio-energetic contamination located within our bodies with this light; it results in general improvement of health and elimination of various diseases. Also the consciousness itself turns into a mobile and active power.
Now we describe a few general purifying exercises of the pranayama type.
Stand up. Bend slightly to your right so that your right arm is hanging freely without touching the body. Try to feel your arm thoroughly from the shoulder joint to the wrist. Imagine that a pump chamber, to which “air”-light is being fed through the arm like through a hose, expands and contracts in the chest with every inhaling and exhaling. Special attention should be paid to the exhaling. Try to achieve the clarity of feelings. The “hose” should be as thick as the arm and nothing should prevent “air”-light from moving freely inside it.
Perform the same exercise with the left arm, and then with each leg. The “hose” to each leg should come down from the chest through the corresponding side of the body.
Place images of two vessels, for example, barrels, under your feet. One of them is empty; the other is full of white liquid light. Touch this light with your foot-hose and pump it through the body-pump into the other barrel. With each inhaling the pump chamber inside the body and the head is expanding, drawing the light from the full vessel through the leg. With each exhaling the chamber is contracting, the light pouring out through the other leg into the empty barrel. The light cleanses the whole body from inside.
When the barrel with the light gets empty — fill it up again and overturn the content of the other barrel into an image of fire so that all dirt that has streamed out burns. Turn the body around over the barrels and repeat the exercise.
After that repeat the same, placing the barrels under your hands.
In this way you should attain a feeling that your whole body is filled with bright white light.
The room in which pranayamas are performed should be lit by either natural sunlight or by filament lamps. Fluorescent lighting does not fit for this purpose: it has a very unfavorable energetic impact on the human organism.
Pratyahara
The word pratyahara means removing indriyas from material objects. Pratyahara is the stage at which the aspirant learns to control the “tentacles” of consciousness that are called indriyas in Sanskrit. This allows him to achieve the ability to see in subtle and the subtlest layers of multidimensional space, as well as to exit of his material body into them and settle in them, accustoming himself to their subtlety, tenderness, and purity.
The concept of indriyas exists only in Indian spiritual culture. Europeans with their simplified, complicated, and degraded religious ideas usually are not capable of grasping this kind of knowledge. Even in translations from Indian languages they substitute the word indriyas with the word senses that has lost its original meaning; by doing this they completely reject the immense methodological significance of pratyahara concept and of principles of work at this stage.
Europeans translate the term pratyahara as control over the senses. But senses are not everything that is denoted by the term indriyas, since indriyas include mind as well. It is also essential that the image of “tentacles” evoked by the word indriyas provides profound understanding of the principles of functioning of the mind and consciousness, as well as of methods of controlling them.
Krishna presented a fundamental knowledge about working with indriyas in the
Bhagavad Gita. He was talking about indriyas of vision, audition, smell, touch, proprioreception, and also about those of mind. And indeed: concentration on an object through any sense organ or with mind is very similar to extending a tentacle to it from one’s body. When we switch concentration to another object we detach and move our indriyas to it. In the same manner the mind creates its own indriyas, when we think about something or someone. People with developed sensitivity can perceive other people’s indriyas touching them. In some cases they can even see those indriyas and therefore they can influence them.
Krishna was saying that one of the things that man should learn is the ability to draw all his indriyas from the material world inwards, just like a tortoise retracts its paws and head into its shell. Then one should extend one’s indriyas into Divine eons in order to embrace God with them, to draw himself to Him and to merge with Him.
Now Sathya Sai Baba — a contemporary Avatar and Messiah, an
incarnation of God in the human body — constantly talks about indriyas. Many of His books have been translated into Russian but in all of them the information about working with indriyas was lost due to inadequate translations.
One cannot attain control over indriyas without mastering the ability to shift concentration of consciousness between chakras and main meridians, i.e. the meridians that make up microcosmic orbit plus the middle meridian. We will dwell on this separately in one of the following chapters.
Dharana
Dharana means maintaining proper concentration. Proper concentration means keeping one’s indriyas on God. In other words, this is a manifestation of a man’ aspiration towards God, towards Merging with Him.
But God in the aspect of Creator or Holy Spirit is inaccessible for direct perception at this stage of apprenticeship.
Our loving thirst for God can be partially quenched by working with an Image of a specific Divine Teacher, for example, Jesus Christ, Babaji or Sathya Sai Baba — the One, Whose form in His past incarnation is familiar to us.
If one holds the face of a Divine Teacher in one’s anahata on the background of emotion of the most intense love that one is capable of, one gradually enters a state when it is not one who looks at the world from one’s anahata, but Him. This denotes the Yidam (this is what this Image is called) becoming alive; one is partially merged with Him. After that one may live in Unity with Him in one’s anahata, or having moved concentration of consciousness to the chakras located in the head one can address Him in one’s anahata as an Advisor and a Teacher. This is not an illusion, but the real Divine Teacher entering into His Image created by a spiritual warrior. He may also become an Instructor in one’s meditative trainings. He will lead His devoted and loving disciple through His Consciousness — into the Abode of the Universal Consciousness of the Creator.
“If you can visualize the Image of the Teacher in your
consciousness with the most complete clarity, you can transfer your
consciousness into His, and thus act through His Power, as it were. But for
this, you must visualize the Image of the Teacher with utmost precision, to the
minutest detail, so that the Image does not flicker, suffer distortion or change
Its outlines, as frequently happens. But if following the exercise of
concentration one succeeds in invoking the steady Image of the Teacher, through
this one may gain the greatest benefit for oneself, for those around one, and
for the work.” (Hierarchy: 90).
“You may be asked how the entrance upon the path of Service is
defined. Certainly, the first sign will be renunciation of the past and total
aspiring towards the future. The second sign will be realization of the Teacher
within one’s heart not because it is one’s “duty”, but because it is impossible
otherwise. The third sign will be rejection of fear, for he who is armed by the
Lord is invulnerable. The fourth will be non-condemnation, because he who
strives into the future has no time to occupy himself with the refuse of
yesterday. The fifth will be filling of the entire time with labor for the
future. The sixth will be the joy of Service and completely offering oneself for
the good of the world. The seventh will be spiritual aspiration towards the
far-off worlds as a predestined path. According to these signs you will discern
a spirit that is ready and manifested for Service. He will understand where to
raise the sword for the Lord, and his word will be from his heart.” (Hierarchy: 196)
Those students, for whom working with Yidam does not bring immediate results, may benefit from practicing visualization. They may practice creating images that help develop chakras or visualize blissful pictures of communicating with living nature, etc. But only those images, which are filled with exultation of happiness, harmony, joy, subtlety, and bliss will make for one’s correct spiritual development. Corresponding types of paintings, musical compositions and art photography, etc. may also serve as an aid.
Dhyana is the stage of meditative trainings that lead to Samadhi.
Meditation is the work of consciousness aimed at the consciousness development along the path to Perfection and to the Mergence with the Creator. Meditation is practiced at three stages of the Patanjali’s scheme.
At the dharana stage students among other things learn how to expand consciousness in the subtlest and the most beautiful that exists in the world of matter. By means of such attunement they establish themselves in sattva guna. (And through working with Yidam they may immediately come in contact with the Fiery manifestation of Divine Consciousness and experience Samadhi).
At the dhyana stage, students work on increasing the “mass” of consciousness and obtaining power in subtlety.
At the next stage, their efforts are focused upon interaction of individual consciousness with Consciousness of the Universal God and upon merging with Him in His Fiery Aspect as well as in the Infinity of the trans-mirror realm.
At the dhyana stage, the meditative work is especially effective if it is performed at special places of power — areas on the Earth’s surface that have a special energetic impact on human beings. Among the variety of them only those should be chosen that make for expanding of consciousness in the subtlest eons. A correctly selected subsequence of such places ensures that the most complex tasks of correct crystallization (i.e. quantitative growth) of consciousness will be solved easily and with little efforts.
For the same purpose, one can meditate during athletic exercises, as well as practice winter swimming and meditative running.
The structure of the human organism responsible for meditation is the lower bubble of perception the principal part of which is anahata chakra, supplied with energy by the lower dantian (a complex of three lower chakras). This is why success of the work at this stage depends on the level of purity and development of the entire system of seven chakras, which is combined into one complex by the meridians that have been mentioned above.
From the very beginning of meditative training until the absolute Victory of Merging with the Primordial Consciousness one should always remember that the man’s main merit is measured by the level of development of his spiritual heart. This is by what man can merge with God. This is why it is the spiritual heart that man should develop and keep pure in every possible way. What was said above allows us to take it not as a nice figure of speech or a metaphor, but as a quite practical knowledge and instruction.
The steps of the ladder of the spiritual ascent that we are discussing now are meant for teaching one how to position consciousness, first, in anahata, then to ensure the growth of anahata within the body and, after that, beyond it — within the cocoon, then within Earth and beyond the planet in the highest eons.
This is how we can grow ourselves as Love. God is Love; this is why one can merge with Him only after becoming a Great Love, a Great Soul of Love (Mahatma).
And there are no other ways of developing Divinity, except for those fundamental steps that we are describing here.
Samadhi
This stage includes a range of highest spiritual achievements — from the first Samadhi to Merging with the Primordial Consciousness in the Abode of the Creator.
Consciousness of the spiritual seeker prepared at the previous stages becomes capable of getting in contact with Consciousness of God in the highest eons. These first contacts give one a vivid novelty of bliss, which is what the term Samadhi denotes.
In contrast to Samadhi, Nirvana is a stable Mergence with the Consciousness of God in which feeling of localized “I” disappears. The term Nirvana means complete burning away, i.e. losing one’s individuality in the Mergence with God; at that, man, having expanded and dissolved in Him, feels that he is God. And this is what happens in reality.
In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna speaks about Samadhi and about principal stages of Nirvana: Nirvana in Brahman (the Holy Spirit) and Nirvana in Ishvara (the Creator).
But in India, the term Nirvana became widely used by Buddhists at some point in time, and later on, this term along with Buddhism, was “forced out” from India by Hindus. Instead of using the term Nirvana, Hindu schools started to expand the meaning of the term Samadhi by adding to it various prefixes. Various schools used these composite words and because of this the term Samadhi grew “diffused” and lost its unambiguity. This is why it makes sense to get back to accurate terminology that God introduced into spiritual culture through Krishna.
So, in order to get from Samadhi (Contact) to Nirvana (Mergence) one has to have a large and strong individual consciousness, developed by preceding trainings. In addition to this, it has to be firmly established in Divine subtlety.
If these two conditions are fulfilled, then all one needs to do is to just find an entrance into the required eon, enter it, and dissolve in its Consciousness using the method of total reciprocity, which one has to master in advance. The latter includes not only meditative skills, but also ethical preparation. This preparation consists in destroying one’s lower self in every possible way and replacing it with collective self first, and then with universal Self, i.e. the Paramatman. This is the only way man can connect to unlimited Divine Power.
“…We have an inexhaustible reservoir of psychic energy!” (Hierarchy:394), says God.
But “if one were to expound the conditions and the aims of Yoga,
the number of applicants would not be great. Terrifying for them would be the
renunciation of selfhood…” (Hierarchy: 451).
In connection to the above said I want to cite the Carlos Castaneda’s book The Power of Silence: “…War, for a warrior, is the total struggle against that individual self that has deprived man of his power.”
One explores the highest eons one after another. Before starting exploring the next eon, one has to accumulate power of consciousness for a long time, which sometimes takes years, in order to be able to enter it and remain in it. The only exception is the people who approached these stages in their previous incarnations and maintained the amount of personal power and level of refinement of consciousness necessary.
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