# Yoga, Karma, and Rebirth  ## Metadata - Author: [[Stephen Phillips]] - Full Title: Yoga, Karma, and Rebirth - Category: #books ## Highlights - In the Yoga Sutra, yoga is defined (YS 1.2) as the power not to think, ([Location 967](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007H9GWMW&location=967)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - The gap between this consciousness and everything else makes discourse that seems to be about it problematic, anirvacaniyatva, “it is impossible to say.” ([Location 1010](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007H9GWMW&location=1010)) - In the broadest terms, yoga is practiced to promote harmony between whatever is our highest or deepest self or consciousness and mental, emotional, and bodily instruments. ([Location 1156](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007H9GWMW&location=1156)) - Patanjali, however, seeing self-rapt self-awareness as the sole locus of value (joining Advaitins), places no value in siddhis. ([Location 1388](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007H9GWMW&location=1388)) - He uses the word kaivalya, aloneness, for what he sees as the ontological equivalent of asamprajnata samadhi, a meditation without prop, i.e., without any content or intentionality other than self-awareness itself, a self-absorption beyond space and time. ([Location 1418](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007H9GWMW&location=1418)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - One answer is sattvafication, the answer of the Yoga Sutra: purification of the nature so that the self can know itself as it really is, namely, separate from nature. This is the YS’s theory.32 Nature is teleological, serving, as Patanjali says, the purpose of the purusha. A different answer connects consciousness with its body or ([Location 1582](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007H9GWMW&location=1582)) - The Isha (c. 500 B.C.E.) makes the connection with yogic self-discovery in a common theme: realization of a cosmic self (atman) brings freedom from sorrow. Verse 7: “Those who see all beings as in the self alone / And the self in all beings, henceforth do not recoil (from anything). / For whom all beings are known as just self, / For him how can there be delusion? How can there be grief? / For he sees (everywhere) unity.”19 There is only the single self, the knowledge of which banishes fear and grief.20 Conversely, we practice ahimsa, trying to see others as ourself or having the same self as we. ([Location 2018](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007H9GWMW&location=2018)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - Nonabsolutism, anekanta-vada—a positive pluralism of perspectives—is the position that reality is so rich that it makes true, with qualifications, every intellectual stance. ([Location 2157](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007H9GWMW&location=2157)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - special sevenfold logic—called sapta bhangi, seven styles (seven combinations of three truth values, truth, falsity, and indeterminacy), also called syad-vada, “maybe-ism”—was developed to facilitate the disarming of controversy. Here are the weapons of intellectual ahimsa. ([Location 2162](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007H9GWMW&location=2162)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - The Jaina sapta bhangi, a septad of styles or manners of valuation of truth, is comprised of all combinations of three truth values, truth (+), falsity (−), and indeterminacy (0):36 +, −, 0, +−, +0, −0, +−0 ([Location 2177](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007H9GWMW&location=2177)) - The rupa skandha—anglicizing the Sanskrit, which in Pali is khandha—is sense data, form, matter corresponding to the food (annamaya) sheath; vedana is sensation, feeling corresponding to the pranic (pranamaya) sheath; samjna is cognition, thought corresponding to the lower-mind (manomaya) sheath; samskara (also vasana) is disposition corresponding to the higher-mind (vijnanamaya) sheath; and finally vijnana is consciousness corresponding to the bliss (anandamaya) sheath and the central self. ([Location 2747](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007H9GWMW&location=2747)) - The argument can be reconstructed as follows. A) If God is X (Sachchidananda, loving, omnibenevolent), then life has to be meaningful. B) Life would not be meaningful without persistent individuality. C) Persistent individuality in our world demands rebirth as machinery. D) God is indeed X (Sachchidananda, etc.). Therefore, E) Rebirth is real. ([Location 3104](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007H9GWMW&location=3104)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - There is my personal divinity, the spark soul in my heart, my higher self, my guru, who is intimate and responsive and moves my feelings by my sense of his or her connectedness, which makes me connected too. ([Location 3375](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007H9GWMW&location=3375)) - One of these methods is bhakti.18 YS 1.23 sums it up: Mental silence can result “from opening to (pranidhana, meditation on, surrender to) the Lord (ishvara).” Vyasa, the first commentator, glosses pranidhana as bhakti, which he says is an intense desire to be like the Lord in certain yogic characteristics and abilities. ([Location 3418](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007H9GWMW&location=3418)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - “The inner self (atman) is a conscious being (purusha), thumb-size, forever dwelling in the heart of creatures. / It is to be extracted from the body patiently, with diligence, like the cane shaft from the munja reed. / The bright, the immortal, it should be known. The bright, the immortal, it should be known.” ([Location 3556](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007H9GWMW&location=3556)) - I interpret this fire (following Jagannatha) not as earthly or heavenly but rather as psychic fire, the Hamsa, the spark soul. ([Location 3689](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007H9GWMW&location=3689)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - The idea is that we enliven the soul’s intention when we call the psychic flame. In other words, we call the fire, the Hamsa, the “thumb-size” consciousness in or behind the heart, dwelling in a cave or inner sanctum of the body as temple. ([Location 3692](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007H9GWMW&location=3692)) - Tags: [[favorite]]