Here I present a commentary on the Yoga-Sutra for the White Europeans and those worthy of all the races. Besides the commentary itself, I will also place the verses in a new order to make the Yoga-Sutra more easily comprehensible and give more benefit to religious persons or God-seekers. It is God-seekers, religious persons, who will have the most interest in the Yoga-Sutra.

About The Yoga Sutra

A few things need to be said to introduce The Yoga-Sutra of Patanjali to the western devotees and yogins:

-- The Yoga-Sutra is like the universal scripture of all religion, outlining in the tersest terms the path back to Pure Consciousness, necessary via samadhi, that all God-lover saints finally make. It's subject matter, which includes the mind and its laws, the developments along the way, and the mystery of God and creation, is both central and highly esoteric.

-- The Sanskrit verses themselves are intentionally brief and arcane, sometimes hardly penetrable. They were intended to require a knowledgeable commentator to get the value from them.

-- Such knowledgeable commentators are very rare.

-- Not all translations are the same, and one is not as good as another.

-- There is even wider variation in the quality of the commentaries that are inevitably necessary to the abstruse verses. Some commentaries have value; some are misleading or outright ridiculous.

-- Commentaries by Americans and westerners have been, up to this point, mostly worthless and predictably degenerate since the west has been in a state of slow degeneration.

-- Generally speaking only the Indian commentators are worthwhile and speaking close to the source.

-- The Yoga-Sutra contains only four verses about the body or posture, such as"Posture is to be firm and pleasant (when meditating)" (2:46) and those verses have no connection to the modern western "yoguh studio" scene of bodily workouts.

The goal, state, and technique of yoga are all summed up in the Sutra's 1st and 2nd verses: "Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind. So that the Seer, Purusha, comes to know Itself and abide in Its own real, fundamental nature." The goal of yoga is God-knowledge, and perfect stillness of mind then gives God-knowledge as the Divine Reality obscured by the movement of the mind can then shine forth.

It is the individual ego-mind, nothing else, that is the great prodigal and reprobate before God, who both the Upanishads and the Yoga-Sutra like to refer to as "Isvara." Yoga is the technique for hauling in the mind to meet it's source. Yoga is thus an address to the mind, not an address to the body. When I use the term "yoga" I use it only in its genuine sense of austerities (which includes meditation), devotion to the Lord, scriptural study, and repetition of prayers or mantra. (These are enumerated as the basic actions of yoga in verse 2:1) This is what yoga is and shall remain. Generally speaking, real yoga was uncovered by chaste males and its true nature in Patanjali's sense will remain the domain of chaste and religious males. The male takes to mental control. These are just the facts. However, since bhakti-yoga is the highest and best form of yoga (also emphasized in the Yoga-Sutra), and because woman is the most natural bhakta, the attainments of yoga are within her purview as well, as shown by Ananda Mayi Ma, the Christian female saints, and Karunamayi, etc.

The central subject of the Yoga-Sutra is meditation. Through 25 years of meditation practice I have referred to approximately 20 different English translations of the Yoga-Sutra. Only meditation itself makes the Yoga-Sutra comprehensible. Thus I made meditation my main teacher and went to the Sutra for affirmation, encouragement, and occasional insight about technique. This slowly uncovered it.

The texts, as we have them in the west, are very difficult. The verses are difficult to comprehend in their original terse nature, then compounded by clumsy translation, then buried even more by inept commentary by authors who vary widely in their understanding. In general the only good commentary I have seen is by the ancients such as Vyasa. Only long meditation, guru's grace, and bhakti have revealed the Yoga-Sutra to me over time. (Oh, how long I puzzled over I.K. Taimni's inventive Theosophical distractions in my first unfortunate version!)

The best scholarly treatment I have seen by a westerner, of the Yoga-Sutra, is by the Romanian Mircea Eliade. It is not a commentary by a practitioner, but a mature, and insightful overview of the genuine yoga exposed in Patanjali's text from an intellectual point-of-view. I highly recommend that those serious about the path, and especially skeptics and intellectuals, include his book "Patanjali & Yoga" in their reading. The present text is not that of a scholar or intellectual but a lover of yoga.

Reordering of Verses

It has long been remarked that the Yoga-Sutra has an ordering of the verses that is not very coherent. This is true. Some say it is deliberate to keep the Yoga-Sutra confusing so that the unworthy can't make much progress with it. If that was so, it is unnecessary. Other factors filter out the undeserving well enough. My view is that the Yoga-Sutra verses need-ordering,and there are probably four reasons for the less-that-logical quality of the traditional verse order, none of them arcane: 1) Our own inner pollution gives us scriptures containing flaws, deficiencies, and confusing aspects (just as those same inner impurities produce other flaws in the external world), 2) The vagaries of how the text came to us, 3) perhaps some intention by the original author or authors, though I doubt it, and 4) simple lack of skill in teaching presentation or the idiosyncrasies of a particular teacher at a particular time, and perhaps with a particular group of disciples. Just because a fellow has the attainment of samadhi does not mean he is the most canny teacher, or that he would teach in a way suitable to all persons.

Whatever the causes of the text's disjointed presentation, the Sutra needs to be understood, for the salvation of the White Europeans and the salvation of the Christian-heritage nations, as well as India and other peoples. Now is the time to see the verses presented more coherently. In this version old students of the Sutra will be able to better see its golden threads.