The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

Similarly

Swami Sivananda

Human beings are born naked and die naked. In fact the clothes that they wear inbetween are superficial. So too, we are born with a living eternal book and die with a living eternal book, while life for a yogi is dedicated to reading that book of universal language and thus acting in harmonious consequence. The living law acts throughout eternity and is imperishable, but it is not written in words or manmade language. That act of ignoring this ever-present book has created an extractive mindset that has become chronically reified in terms of the citta-vrtti being obsessed with external books, laws, authorities, and directions. That can be called neuroses by doctors, but the yogi calls it the samsaric mindset which is to become overturned through authentic yoga practices.

Context and Content: Toward a limitless awareness unbounded by the limitations of citta-vrtta

As we have seen pramana tends to box "things" in. The box itself is the context, while the contents of the box are the display of apparently discrete objects (pratyaya). We have seen that when we frame things inside limited contexts, what suffers is the knowledge of the total system. The English idiom, "not being able to see the forest for the tree", thus applies. So what would a total or wholistic, boundless, omni-present, or limitless context look or sound like? The Buddhists simply call it emptiness and liken it to the boundless sky. What happens to content when the context is limitless? It's realization is referred to as the unification of the dharmadhatu with dharmata. Western spiritual traditions state that one cannot define the boundless or name the unnamable. Patanjali calls it samadhi in III.3, which reads:

"Thus the sole purpose (arthamatra) of yogic practice is revealed when the effulgent intrinsic seed source, as pure luminosity (nirbhasam), is fructified as a transpersonal self-realization (free of a separate self -- in svarupa-sunyam), free from any limited sequential localization within time and place, transpersonal, free from subject/object duality, universal and all pervading. That revelation is called samadhi (the intimate union of the true formless self inside and everywhere simultaneously). Thus samadhi is nothing less than the realization of svarupa-sunyam -- the transpersonal ego-free state empty of the concept of separate self."

This is where the lover of yoga is headed. It naturally occurs when our awareness s not longer obscured by the citta-vrtta.