Sutras 1.3 - 1.4. Svarupa. Genuine inwardness, or what happens after vrittis have been overcome??

The subject of chitta scattered character (chitta-vikshepa) that we have investigated in the previous articles allows returning to a more thorough consideration of the term that Patanjali introduced yet in the third line. Namely, the category of “svarupa” or, making it verbatim, “own form”, “proper form”, “proper inwardness”. Let me remind that the line as a whole goes as follows:

1.3. At that time (in the state of chitta-vriddhi-nirodha) the drashtar’s (the inner observer’s) svarupa (own form)

1.4. otherwise – merger with vritti

Sutras 1.27 - 1.28. Sanskrit and mantra-yoga

The following two lines of Yoga Sutras are dedicated to mantras and power of the sound.

तस्य वाचकः प्रणवः ॥२७॥

1.27. tasya vācakaḥ praṇavaḥ

तज्जपस्तदर्थभावनम् ॥२८॥

1.28. tajjapastadarthabhāvanam 

Sutras 27 and 28 tell that “the expression of that (Isvara) is OM (pranava)” and “the repetition of it (Om) in one mind’s eye allows one to experience it (the Isvara)”. Without getting into specifics of what the Om-sound means let us raise a more important question: why do mantras generally exist and how do they work?

The Fundamentals of sanskrit grammar

Whenever someone suggests that you translate Yoga Sutras using only a dictionary and without knowing enough about Sanskrit grammar – don’t fall for it! This person is either not aware of what he is talking about and has never been doing it himself, or it is no further than the third or fourth line of the original text that he himself has managed to “advance”. Sanskrit is a fairly sophisticated language which grammar is intricate enough. Words that have been “distorted” in the course of morphologic transformations, including the rules of guna and sandhi, may bear little resemblance to their dictionary forms, while the logic of cases is somewhat different from what we are used to in our languages [Russian and Ukrainian – translator’s note].

The Lessons of Mahabharata and “Traditional” Values

Have you ever paid attention to the fact that allgrand classic epics are utterly tragic and their endingsare worlds away from those happy-ends of Hollywoodthat we are used to? So that even if the principal (allegedly positive) characters attain their goals they experience heavy disappointment all the same.Gilgamesh loses the magical herb of immortality andaccepts his destiny of a mortal man; Rama is not ableto enjoy the company of his wife whose bringing backcost him significant efforts, and so he suffers from loneliness; the Pandavas, the principle characters of Mahabharata, having survived the tragic death of almost all of their relatives and fellows-in-arms during the war that they had launched are ill-fated in their attempts to ascend to heaven alive and end up finding themselves in the realms of the hell (having in factcommitted a ritual suicide).