Amanaska

“So, we are considering the Approach in Amanaska Yoga. Now, if you look at the traditional approach in, let’s say, Bhakti Yoga, you invariably begin with a form of the Divine and you say, or your Guru may tell this to you, that you must have faith and you must have surrender and now you start worshipping the Divine. Or you start with a japa invoking the Divine and making your mantropasana or the mantra sadhana as an offering to the Divine, something along those lines. So, which means it’s an outer activity, essentially, even though there is a residue in consciousness, the inner realm. But in Amanaska Yoga we begin straightaway with all the problems, the doshas (miseries and sufferings) which the self is creating in the inner life. And what are these?

“These are conflicts in practically every relationship, confusion and then an enormous amount of suffering because our desires are not fulfilled, and we do not know how to relate to other people just like us. And there is a lot of anger and there is jealousy, a great deal of jealousy and no fulfillment. So, we start with this very difficult terrain of the doshas and from there, we have to move to the Light, which we are supposed to be, but which we have not yet discovered. Mm-Hmm. There is no point in believing that we are the Light because that will be of very little value. We have to see whether we can authentically discover our true nature as to who we are.

“So, we begin with the observation of the doshas, how the doshas play out in relationship, and they take the form of the divisive activity of the self and the conflict begetting activity of the self and the suffering which the self is creating because of its self-centered postures. And we start observing all these doshas at work. Now once we start observing all these doshas, which is possible only after turning inward; if our vision is turned outward towards the Divine towards the deity, then we cannot even begin this.

“So, in Amanaska Yoga, we do not look outward we look inward abinitio, right from the beginning, and we start observing the doshas, the dynamical display of the doshas through the movements of the self. And then we will find that we understand the ulterior motives of the self and we don’t criticize, we don’t condemn, we don’t judge and we don’t say, this is good and this is wrong. But we watch the whole movement of the self, much like a loving mother, watches her very mischievous infant, doing a lot of mischief. In the same vein we watch the movement of the self creating all the doshas, and then we will find to our amazement, because we have allowed the light of Awareness to fall on all the activities of the self, that the self is very mysteriously calmed and silenced.

“And once the self is mysteriously calmed and silenced, then we find that we are developing a new kind of equanimity, which is new to us. We have not seen this before and that equanimity is so peaceful that it allows us to look at the other in relationship as though we are looking at the other for the first time. So life begins to move on a different plane with the calming and silencing of the self. And after that, in the sequel to that, you will find that in the Approach in Amanaska Yoga, you go so far as to make a discovery of the mysterious Divine, which the eyes cannot see, which the ears cannot hear, which your fingers cannot touch, but which nevertheless exists and whose existence we cannot refute because we gather irrefutable proof for the existence of this mysterious Unmanifest Divine. And that is the culmination of the inward journey”.

– Sankara Bhagavadpada