If you have ever done a bit of gardening, you very well know how difficult it is to keep the weeds at bay. No matter how many times you pluck them out, they regrow once again.
That is because these weeds leave back their seeds before you pluck them out. And these seeds sprout back into new weeds at proper times. So, you will forever face the menace of these weeds.
One way is to carefully eliminate the seeds one by one so that there is nothing left to germinate. But that is a difficult proposition. Now-a-days we have several chemical sprays that render these seeds ineffective. They literally burn out these seeds. And burnt seeds don’t germinate.
Patanjali says that our mental impressions that delude us are like the seeds left behind by our past Karma. They re-germinate however much we try to suppress them. We have to somehow get rid of these seeds or render them ineffective.
We were talking about the preset impressions that all of us are born with. Patanjali calls it Avidya or wrong knowledge.
How does this Avidya cause problems?
We concluded our previous episode by wondering why we cannot remain in an ever-blissful state even after we attain the ‘self-realization’ through the practice of Yoga.
The ultimate state of Yoga namely the ‘Samadhi’ is supposed to take us back to our real state – namely a blissful state. But when we come out of this Samadhi, we once again get trapped into a mix of happy and sad states of mind. Why?
It was mandatory in many ancient Indian scriptures or philosophic texts to spell out the ultimate purpose of whatever was going to be espoused in the text before starting the discussion .
So, does Yoga have any practical utility? Well, I am not talking about byproducts of Yoga such as health benefits, stress reduction and so on. I am talking about the utility of reaching the ultimate state of Yoga namely the Samadhi. Does it have any utility?
