In this next section of the introduction of Chip Hartranft’s The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, the yogic perspective on the nature of reality is laid out.  It’s punny to say this is heady stuff, because it actually refers to what we think of as being beyond heady, beyond intellectual thought. The Yogic perspective  suggests that everything we think we know is backwards. Reality is the opposite of what we think it is. Reminds me of the saying, “It’s not what I don’t know that is going to get me in trouble, it’s what I think I know, that isn’t so.” And I can hear Dorothy’s voice saying, “This doesn’t sound like asana and pranayam anymore, Toto!”

In the yogic perspective, Chip explains, “most physical and mental actions arise from a fundamental misunderstanding of reality and therefore entail suffering.”

“Everything that exists in creation, [Patanjali states], is different from pure awareness.”

“Everything that we might think of as me – physical, emotional, conceptual, spiritual, internal, external – is part of nature, or prakrti… all of me, even the innermost part, is material stuff, impermanent, and subject to cause and effect. Some of the stuff that me comprises is subtle…Some of it is gross…But all of oneself is prakrti.”

“Pure awareness, on the other hand, is not stuff of any sort and is therefore free of cause and effect. It was never created and never ends, existing beyond time.

“Because it [pure awareness] is immaterial, it has no location, movement , or other natural properties; nor does it have anything in common with consciousness or thought, other than the role of observing them. It is literally intangible, impersonal, and inconceivable.”

WOW, I thought. Pure Awareness is inconceivable. Beyond my understanding. The area of mystery. The domain of that which I know not.

Which led me to thinking about the Niyama Ishvara-Pranidhana.  This “observance” is defined as “surrendering to God”. It is interesting that in discussions about how to define God, one response that comes up is “mystery.” Along with other names of God, Christ, Yaweh, Jehova, Allah, Ishkala,  there are other terms as well, Great Spirit, Mystery, Goddess, Providence and simply “life happening.” I wonder then, is there a relationship between this inconceivable Pure Awareness and this concept that has baffled and confounded our species for all time.

And as we’ll soon see, The Yoga Sutra invites one of the other central questions baffling humanity, “Who am I”.

Back to Chip:

“Pure awareness is what actually sees consciousness unfolding, primarily on a screen we call consciousness. The screen of consciousness is the foundation of  human experience, a part of the phenomenal world it represents, and under ordinary circumstances it actually feels like the subjective “eye” that is observing everything.  In Patanjali’s view, though, no aspect of creation, including consciousness, can see itself, because it is material stuff. In the same way that a television cannot view it’s own programs, consciousness requires a witnessing awareness.”

Here’s where I usually start to have an image of watching a movie in a movie theatre. Who’s watching? Who’s the screen? Who’s the projector? And who makes up the movie?!

“Pure awareness has no sense of itself at all. Immaterial, unmoving, non-conceptual, it is completely submerged beneath the waves of consciousness. Like the rest of nature’s stuff, consciousness is embroiled in an ongoing process of creation, spiraling from form to form, pattern to pattern. This incessant re-patterning of consciousness distorts its actual relationship to pure awareness. Although pure awareness is unchanging, its lack of substance or motion renders it invisible to consciousness. After all, the contents of consciousness – perception, thought, memory – are all made of stuff and arise from material transformations. Because of these attributes, consciousness is an instrument poorly suited to detect the pure awareness that is watching it. In other words, consciousness is a thing that is only good at showing things.

“Like the rest of creation, the aspect that Patanajali calls consciousness, or citta, is evolving. Its evolutionary goal is to refine itself to the point where it can become so still, unmoving, and equally absorbed in all phenomena that it becomes very much like pure awareness itself. In that instant, it can reflect pure awareness back to itself, making it realize that it is distinct and separate from nature. In other words, the underlying purpose of creation is to reveal pure seeing to itself.”

Okay! Well, if you ever wondered what the purpose of life is, there is the yogic perspective. To reveal pure awareness to itself.

There’s just a little more introduction, Motion and Stillness, Effort and Effortlessness, and then we get to the first Sutra.