Integral Yoga Magazine asked three of Integral Yoga’s most senior Raja Yoga teacher trainers (each with over three decades of study on the subject!) to discuss what they personally find to be the most unique, meaningful and important teachings contained in the Yoga Sutras. During this third and last installment, they discuss the steps to enlightenment and the grace needed to get there.

Swami Karunananda: In the middle of his commentary on the Sutras, Gurudev boldly says: “Ultimately, nobody can achieve eternal peace by doing something with the mind, which is part of nature.” He seems to be invalidating the whole treatise. Gurudev then says, “That supreme joy can only be acquired when you rise above nature by complete surrender. Then, you transcend nature and understand God in His transcendental state.”

Paraman Barsel: Also, there’s another commentary Gurudev gives where he says, “You gain supreme mastery over nature when you say, ‘I can do nothing.’” We all start by saying, “I can do it!” But, when we give up and say, “I can do nothing,” then we “gain complete mastery over nature.” There seems to always be this two-tiered thing where Patanjali tells us to try hard, we grapple, we get it under control, things are attenuated and then we transcend totally when we get into the highest samadhi, which is so reassuring.

Jaganath Carrera: To put it in everyday language, he’s saying that you have to let go of everything—what is there that is beyond knowing everything. It’s just so stunning to think that we have to go beyond the stage of thinking, “Yes, I know everything there is to know, and now there’s something else!”

PB: I recently read an autobiography of a famous Japanese Zen master and when he comes to describing his enlightenment, he basically says that his master was driving his disciples to the point where they were sleeping an hour and a half a night, and he describes being so totally beyond exhaustion, throwing himself on the mat one morning. He said, “All I can tell you is that I was so tired, so exhausted and I went anyway and something finally happened.” That’s the way he described it! That reminds me of this kind of giving up. Jaganath, you describe seven stages of wisdom in your book, Inside the Yoga Sutras, can you talk about that?

JC: There are seven stages of final wisdom, and it begins with a key moment when you realize, not that you are not the body, but that you are not the mind. At this point in the Sutras, Patanjali is addressing more experienced practitioners who have already grappled with this idea that they are not the body. Now, you are left with your most intimate aspect, your normal consciousness, your mind, who you think you are. And you have to get to this point where you start to realize the mind is not me. All the stuff to which I attach the “I” is really not me, and once that realization happens, the sage Vyasa says that prakriti (matter or nature) falls away like stones rolling down a hill. That’s why Patanjali mentions Ishwara pranidhana (surrender to the God, the Divine) several times in the text. The idea of surrender is that, no matter where we start, this is ultimately where we have to go. At some point, we realize that we can’t go into our meditation, keep our mind always focused and expect to keep going deeper because one part of the mind, the will, is actually exerting force over another part of the mind. That’s okay for awhile. That influence is fine, but, if you keep exerting force, all you are doing is extending the life of that vritti (thought or mind wave).

SK: True confessions time! I practice, practice, practice—but any meaningful, profound experience I have been blessed to have has not been directly the result of or occurring in a practice session. Anything I’ve experienced that I feel was on the most profound level came totally unexpectedly, unannounced, very often in the midst of my daily life. We could say that all the practice provided the foundation for that to happen, but the actual happening never occurred during a practice. Maybe it’s God’s way of ensuring there is humility as the process continues, that we understand it is not by our own effort. We do what’s been asked of us by our spiritual master, but it is my experience that the actual fruit comes as a gift of grace.

JC: Whether it happens in formal meditation practice or outside of the practice, ultimately it is an act of grace because the experience that true spiritual seekers are looking for is always outside of the boundaries of their own egos…