Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: The Root of Integral Yoga – Part 1

January 8th, 2024

An Integral Yoga System as a Holistic structure

We owe to the great Sage Patanjali a workable yoga system that has become the blueprint of most yoga that is practiced today. Patanjali’s wisdom comes not only from the knowledge he teaches, but from his ability to collect, assess and present the science of union in the Yoga Sutras. This system, popularly known as Ashtanga Yoga, or the Yoga of Eight Limbs, is the most integrated, comprehensive and holistic view of Yoga that has been passed down to us from ancient cultures.

Unfortunately, these days we find a lot of Ashtanga Yoga places that teach just asanas, a little pranayama, and very little focus on concentration training. In other words, from the eight limbs of the integral system of yoga described by Patanjali, only three, or at the most four, are included in the commercial spirituality we mostly have at our disposal today.

Dating the Yoga Sutras as a literary work, and Patanjali as an author, is a difficult task. Many eminent authorities have placed him as early as 1000 B.C. Others have put him in the sixth century A.D. He is one of three colossal beings that did not start a new religion or tradition, but gave to humanity the idea of using methods, and the spirit of doing so.

Charaka brought Ayurveda, the science of life, to light; Pāṇini brought the science of language and structure, Sanskrit grammar; Patanjali revealed the science of transformation, Yoga. You cannot be far from the truth when you see the mysterious presence of the Trinity coming through these three ancient sages. Similarly, three ancient Sanskrit sources quote: “Charaka purified the body with Ayurveda, Pāṇini purified our tongue (language) with his grammar, while Patanjali purified the mind with Yoga.”

The YOGA SUTRAS are the most elaborate ancient work one can find on Yoga. It is not the kind of “yoga-for-dummies” work that we see today. Written in the code of initiates, this genuine yoga bible, as some authors have called it, selects only genuine practitioners in order to deliver the secrets of personal development and spiritual betterment. A serious practitioner of Yoga finds in the SUTRAS a concise, condensed and succinct presentation of Yoga.

This concision is essential if we do not want to only transmit a collection of rigid indications for practice, but the whole spirit that needs to animate the practitioner in order to be successful. For it is the spirit of Yoga and the whole preparation of the exercises that truly unlock the entire complex of occult resonances and bring forward its amazing effectiveness. Stripped of its attitude and morality, Yoga becomes psychosomatic gymnastics that has limited effects.

The Great Sage Patanjali, therefore, gave an example of mastership of the word, doing with words what God does with the entire creation – giving strong guidelines that are unmistakable and at the same time leave room for the aspirant’s experimentation so that the guidelines are only lessons. The Great Teacher discreetly watches from the Heavens, while the aspirants complete their practice, generation after generation, perfecting it in their own understanding and under the loving guidance of their Masters. These are the Yoga Sutras that I have met and practiced from, under the guidance of a Great Master.

It is a SUTRA, or a thread, holding together 195 Sanskrit aphorisms that reach to the highest level the human spirit can aspire to, in order to guide the aspirant there. In order to achieve this genuine spiritual accomplishment – the transmission of spirituality in writing – the terms Patanjali uses are not open to poetic license. The SUTRA is a scientific work on Yoga. With little more than half sentences, literally no more than a string of nouns and adjectives, often without auxiliary verbs, the guidelines given are spiritually encoded, locking away the knowledge from spiritual adventurers.

The SUTRA is more of a “secret code” of esoteric spiritual concepts and can be deciphered only by a genuine Master who has already achieved the spiritual goal that the YOGA SUTRA points towards. Using the SUTRA as a skeleton of an idea, the Master can fill in the rest with the knowledge acquired as a practitioner.

The YOGA SUTRAS of Patanjali are not a work from which a new student of Yoga can get something more than a framework for Yoga practice, apparently without a very practical value. It is the manual of the Masters in Yoga, supplied with a structure upon which they can build an elaborate, integral Yoga system.

The YOGA SUTRAS of Patanjali that we know of, contain only 195 verses or sutras. The original may have been much longer and been abridged or shortened by other writers over the ages. What makes this work unique is the fact that it is a framework of the, “Science of Sciences” which is Yoga. One cannot alter and change the terms of a science to suit one’s fancy, without destroying the whole structure. One cannot put in or take out anything without altering the whole framework. Therefore, the integral yoga system that is presented in the YOGA SUTRAS does not vary according to culture, religion, human interpretation or even the methodology that derives from it. Starting from this frame that Patanjali revealed, one can only end up with a similar YOGA system.

Patanjali reveals an integral yoga system that has a number of “yogas” embodied within it. They are like the lines and geometrical bodies of a yantra that separately mean something distinct, but together create the representation of another reality that is much more than the sum of all its parts. However, we cannot “drop” some of the Angas or branches of Ashtanga Yoga just because they do not suit our lifestyle, or because they are not very popular in our neighbourhood. Upon closer inspection, anyone can see that this is the form of a holographic structure, where the sum of all parts enjoy a totally new quality that is afterwards also reflected in all the parts. The practitioner of an integral yoga system built on the guidelines of the YOGA SUTRAS will add, one by one, all these forms of yoga into their practice, but only when assimilated will they together produce a spiritual leap to another level of consciousness. This reality remains unsuspected by those who cannot intuit the way an integral system works; just like someone who is ignorant about I.T. will not be able to guess what could result from correctly putting together a pile of spare electronic parts from a computer.

Without proper guidance in the practice of an integral yoga system in our modern times, those involved in promoting the practice of Asana and Pranayama very often leave out the explicit need for Yama and Niyama – the prerequisite morality and ethics that form the foundation of an effective yoga practice. They rush to do some physical stretching, to feel strong tingling sensations or to perceive energy flowing into their systems. But the further evolution of the consciousness is jeopardised by a weak moral foundation that was not put in its rightful place from the beginning. It is true that a class of moral lessons would not sell much nowadays, especially as a starting point, but that which is sold without the moral foundation… is not Yoga. As Patanjali already warned us long ago.

Others who want to try, “Meditation Yoga”, think they can drop all of the outer phases of yoga: Yama, Niyama, Asana, Pranayama, and Pratyahara, as well as the inner phase of Dharana, and begin straight at Dhyana (or meditation) as though the other steps are not necessary for them! Apart from the arrogance that such an attitude shows (which could be expected, considering they skipped the morality classes), it also makes the attempt to realise meditation as, “a continuous focus of the flow of attention towards the subject of meditation”, an almost impossible task. It is like attempting to jump directly on top of a mountain from the bottom of the valley, without doing any training or walking any road towards the top. But again, what kind of meditation class would start these days with moral lessons and simple asanas, and still have students? At the same time, what will result without these other yogic “limbs” will not be meditation, and for sure not yoga. It will be just a training of patience by sitting still for longer periods of time, a time “off” in order to think, a time with oneself… interesting, maybe, but not yoga. The YOGA SUTRAS play the role of the blade of discernment, sorting that which is genuine from commercial scams.

Leaving out parts of the integral yoga system leads to a mutilation of this amazing practice for meagre purposes, reducing its spiritual effects to mere exotic aesthetics with a fancy flavour of well-being and fashion. It has brought out an incredible “Ego Yoga” that often takes comical forms. On one side we find the “armchair yogis”, satsang consumers, and “professional” meditators who look down on others who are still “caught up” with what they consider “body yoga”. At the other end of the spectrum we find those who are acrobatically practicing asanas and pranayama as Ashtanga Yoga, an eight-limb yoga that has been reduced to only two. They consider concentration to be a faculty that we need to use only to align the body very well, with the ideal position from the picture, while meditation, in most cases, is reduced to an endurance test of bodily immobility for long periods.

In the middle of this circus that is nowadays called yoga, I believe that the integral system of Patanjali is the most authentic path of yoga available to the modern person. It fits perfectly with the modern paradigm of thinking… when interpreted by a genuine yoga master.