Picture: Sri Paramhansa Yogananda
For those of you who will not be able to attend the Retreat at Loon Lake here is a glimpse of what we will be focused on during our time, an excerpt from Yogananda’s commentary on Patanjali. Even if you cannot be there in body please join us in Spirit.
“Krishna told his disciples, “If you don’t practice Yoga you can’t attain the final state.” Drupada laughed and said, “I admit that, my Lord, but I can’t think of anything but You wherever I look. In order to meditate I have to take my mind away from you.” Krishna laughed. That is the Miruddha state.
“So every Yogi must watch his spiritual progress by adjudging the quality of meditation in the following way:
- Am I continuously restless during meditation racing with likes or dislikes or thoughts? Am I the restless type? Am I restless all the time?
- Am I so addicted to any good or evil sense habit that when I meditate I can think of nothing else but that? Am I the mentally obsessed, infatuated type? Am I obsessed by sense pleasures all the time?
- Am I the type who is momentarily calm and most of the time restless or am I half the time calm and half the time restless?
- Am I calm all the time and once in a while restless?
- Have I attained the last exalted state.
- Am I fixed in the joy of the soul all the time unable to be restless anymore?
- Have I reached the object of meditation–the soul bliss—so that being with it all the time I don’t have to meditate on it anymore?
- Has the flower of meditation forever dropped away because the fruit of soul bliss has reached its complete maturity?
“The flower precedes the fruit. When the fruit grows the flowers drop away. Meditation is the precursor of soul bliss. When soul bliss is perpetually attained without a moment’s separation then the flower of meditation drops away.”