We suffer because of the illusion of separation between our individual consciousness from Universal Consciousness or Brahman. The Yoga Sutras are a practical guide or roadmap on your spiritual journey to discover and remember that union.​ The term suture, means to connect or hold together. Throughout the ages when the teacher expounded on a piece of knowledge, the student would be given a short phrase or sutra that would later remind him/her of the greater body of material. The Yoga Sutras contain 196 Sutras, divided between four chapters, discussing the aims and practice of yoga, the development of yogic powers and finally, liberation.

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To encapsulate the whole teaching early in the discourse. Patanjali does this in the first few sutras, giving you the essence of what’s to come:

“Yoga is the progressive settling of the mind into silence. When the mind is settled, we are established in our own essential state, which is unbounded consciousness. Our essential nature is usually overshadowed by the activity of the mind”

 

Your spiritual practice is the commitment and time to look within. Your true Self lies hidden in the silence between your thoughts, beyond all limitations. The main obstacle to your spiritual progress is stress, which takes up a lot of energy, leading to anxiety, depression and doubts about who you truly are and it can hold you stuck in a rut or believing that things can never change.  This creates sensory attachments which are essentially delusions and you forget who you are.

 

Now you can overcome all of these illusions, but you must first take responsibility for your thoughts, words, and actions by living consciously. 

 

In the Sutras of Patanjali, which are still in print, the great teacher was not primarily trying to interest people in developing their psychic abilities. He was actually writing a guide on how to become a realized person — how to experience God. He would say that knowing God is part of knowing yourself. The mystic had observed that, once people learn to quiet their minds, they begin to have all sorts of interesting experiences, such as seeing into the distance, experiencing the future, diagnosing illness, healing the sick, and much more. But his goal was to help his students achieve transcendence, rather than to display these siddhis, or powers.

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Patanjali also gave step-by-step instructions for what might be called omniscience, as well as the quiet mind. He taught that if one wants to see the moon reflected in a pool of water, one must wait until every ripple is stilled. So it is with mind. He wrote that “yoga (union with God) is mind-wave quieting” and is a first step to either transcendence or knowing God. 

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When we develop the heart chakra, we begin to influence the surroundings with our spiritual presence. 

When we develop the communication chakra, we begin to influence the country with our spiritual presence. 

When we develop the seventh chakra, we begin to influence the world with our spiritual presence without doing anything.

 

- Swami Dhyan Giten