“The Gateway & the Mountain,” an artistic rendering.
The Recipe
Swami Satchidananda once explained Raja Yoga with a recipe. In New York in September 1966, in his first conversation with a young student named Sadasivam Greenstone, he asked whether Sadasivam could cook. You get a recipe from a trusted source, Sadasivam said, gather good ingredients, and follow the steps with care. Swami Satchidananda held up Swami Vivekananda’s Raja Yoga, a presentation of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. This was the recipe. If Sadasivam wanted the peace he saw in his teacher, he had only to follow the instructions.
A recipe is made for something. What was this one for?
Patanjali had company in those first classes. Among the first scriptures Swami Satchidananda taught his American students were three from his Tamil homeland: the Thirukkural of Thiruvalluvar, the Thiruvasagam of Manikkavasagar, and the Thirumantiram of Thirumular. Sadasivam loved the Thirumantiram most. He noticed it appearing less often, while the Thirukkural, a practical guide to virtuous living, appeared more, and he asked why. The students were not yet ready for its advanced teachings, Swami Satchidananda told him. They needed a foundation first. And the teachings must never be watered down: the teacher’s work is to make them understandable and keep their truth intact. He kept the teaching whole and changed the order in which he gave it.
Patanjali became the gateway of Integral Yoga. The mountain beyond the gate is Brahma vidya (knowledge of the Absolute), the nondual vision of Advaita Vedanta. The gate and the mountain belong to different philosophies. Swami Satchidananda taught both, and the way they fit together is the design of Integral Yoga.
The Gateway: Patanjali’s Method
Patanjali’s 196 aphorisms present Yoga as a method with a defined goal, a defined obstacle, and an ordered practice. Swami Satchidananda translated the goal, in the second sutra, as “The restraint of the modifications of the mind-stuff is Yoga.” The obstacle is the restless mind, with its vrittis (thought-waves) and, beneath them, the kleshas (afflictions), rooted in avidya (ignorance of our true nature). The practice rests on abhyasa and vairagya: “These mental modifications are restrained by practice and non-attachment,” in his translation of sutra 1.12. It unfolds through ashtanga yoga, the eight limbs: yama and niyama (ethical restraints and observances), asana (posture), pranayama (regulation of the breath), pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses), and dharana, dhyana, and samadhi (concentration, meditation, and absorption). Limb by limb, the grip of the mind loosens.
A young New Yorker in 1966 could take up this system and keep whatever faith they came with. Patanjali names Ishvara (the Supreme) and recommends surrender to the Divine, and he leaves the form of the Divine to the practitioner. Sutra 1.39, in Swami Satchidananda’s translation, offers meditation on “anything one chooses that is elevating.” A Christian, a Jew, or a seeker with no religion at all could enter through their own devotion. Patanjali gave those first students something they could begin the same evening they heard it.
Where the Two Visions Part
The Yoga Sutras carry a darshana (philosophical vision) of their own. Classical Yoga is closely allied with Samkhya, which sees two principles in all of existence. Purusha is the Seer: pure, unchanging awareness. Prakriti is the seen: nature in every form, including the body, the senses, and the mind itself. We suffer because we take ourselves to be what we see. Sutra 2.17, in Swami Satchidananda’s translation: “The cause of that avoidable pain is the union of the Seer (Purusha) and seen (Prakriti, or Nature).” The remedy is viveka (discrimination): learning to tell what changes from what stays, until the Seer stands free of everything it sees, thoughts included. Patanjali calls this freedom kaivalya, “the independence of the Seer” in Swami Satchidananda’s translation.
Here the two visions begin to part. In Patanjali’s account, liberation leaves the distinction standing. Purusha is free, and Prakriti remains Prakriti. The Seers are also many. Samkhya counts a Purusha for every being, and sutra 2.22 says of the seen, “Although destroyed for him who has attained liberation, it (the seen) still exists for others, being common to them.”
Artist rendering of Sri Patanjali (left) and Adi Shankara representing Advaita Vedanta (right).
Advaita Vedanta, the teaching of the Upanishads as Adi Shankara explained it, takes one more step. Atman, the Self, is Brahman, the one Reality. One sun shines in many pots of water, and the many Seers are that one Self. The seen belongs to it too: body, mind, and world have no existence apart from Consciousness, as a wave has none apart from water.
Swami Satchidananda expressed the goal of Integral Yoga in more than one way. In his handwritten statement of the Goal of Integral Yoga, its culmination is “Realization of the True Self.” He also spoke of realizing the spiritual unity behind all the diversity of creation and living harmoniously as one universal family. These are not different goals. The first speaks from the standpoint of discovering the true Self within; the second expresses what that realization reveals—that the Self within is the one Reality appearing through all beings and all creation.
Patanjali’s kaivalya frees the Seer from the seen, and the unity Swami Satchidananda named goes on to find one Self in both, and in every being.
Who Is the Witness?
The word that blurs the two visions most often is the witness, sakshi. Swami Satchidananda gave witnessing great emphasis, and the word does two jobs.
Sit and watch a thought. It comes, it changes, it goes, and you remain. Watch anger arise, and it is seen as a movement in the mind, something more distant than my anger. This is one of Raja Yoga’s great discoveries: what can be seen cannot be the Seer. Witnessing in this sense is a stance the mind learns to take toward thoughts, emotions, and sensations. It can be practiced, it frees us from our mental weather, and in Patanjali’s terms it is the discrimination between Purusha and Prakriti at work.
Then the question changes. What about the one who says, “I am watching”? That, too, can be noticed. Even the satisfaction of being a good witness can be seen. A student can settle at this stage for years, and the stance still holds two: a watcher here, a watched there. Advaita presses on. Who is the witness?
In Advaita, sakshi names the Self as self-luminous Consciousness, the light by which every thought is known, including the thought “I am witnessing.” This Consciousness performs no act of observing and takes up no position. It is present in the restless mind and the still mind alike. When the last distinction between observer and observed falls away, what remains is Pure Consciousness itself, Atman, Brahman.
Sutra 1.3, in Swami Satchidananda’s translation, reads: “Then the Seer (Self) abides in Its own nature.” Samkhya hears a Seer standing free of nature. Advaita hears the one Self, with nothing standing apart from it.
How Swami Satchidananda Held Them Together
Integral Yoga starts where we are. Sit straighter. Breathe. Tell the truth. Repeat the mantra. Watch what the mind does. These look like small things, and slowly they make the instrument still enough for another question to be heard: Who am I?
The book Swami Satchidananda held up to Sadasivam gives the image. In Raja Yoga, Swami Vivekananda compares the mind to a lake: the vrittis are its waves, the true Self is the bottom of the lake, and the bottom can be seen only when the ripples subside. Patanjali stills the water. Classical Vedanta asks for the same preparation before the knowledge of the Self, namely discrimination, dispassion, calm, self-restraint, and a longing for liberation. A student who sincerely lives the eight limbs develops many of the same capacities: discrimination, nonattachment, self-restraint, steadiness, and inwardness.
Artistic rendering of the 6 branches of Integral Yoga.
Integral Yoga can therefore take Patanjali seriously on his own terms. His psychology of the mind and his discipline remain powerful exactly as he gave them, and his philosophy of two principles can be read as he meant it. The nondual darshana that orients Integral Yoga comes through Advaita Vedanta and is articulated most explicitly in Jnana Yoga, which carries the inquiry further, into the nature of the Self and of ultimate Reality. Swami Vivekananda, a monk of Advaita Vedanta, wrote the book on Patanjali that became Sadasivam’s recipe.
Jnana Yoga gives explicit voice to the nondual vision that orients the whole Integral Yoga Path. Hatha Yoga works through the body. Raja Yoga steadies the mind. Bhakti Yoga opens the heart. Karma Yoga loosens the grip of self-interest. Japa Yoga gathers the mind around the Divine Name. Jnana Yoga asks the question waiting inside all of them: Who is practicing?
The vision and the practice need each other. The nondual vision without practice remains an idea held by a restless mind. Practice without the vision can stop at the gate: a meditator can spend years refining the watching of thoughts and take that refinement for the goal. Held together, they give the student a double vision: tend to what needs tending in daily life, with an easeful body, a peaceful mind, and a useful life, while knowing more and more deeply what all of it is.
Sixty Years On
Sixty years ago, Swami Satchidananda set the Thirumantiram aside for students who needed a foundation and handed them a recipe. Integral Yoga students have been following it ever since. The recipe was for something. Patanjali teaches us to still the mind enough to see, and Advaita asks what, finally, is seeing. The gate opens onto the mountain, and at the summit is the teaching Swami Satchidananda carried from the beginning: the Self within is the Self in all.
About the Author:
(Erik Phillips-Nania)
Erik Phillips-Nania is a Yoga teacher, writer, former attorney, and author of Climate Change Yoga (2015, rev. 2021), which develops an eco-yoga framework for the healing and revitalization of the Earth. He holds a JD and a Master of Environmental Law and Policy from Vermont Law School, and a 500-hour RYT teaching certification in the Himalayan Kundalini lineage from World Peace Yoga School in Rishikesh. He is founding editor of the Journal of Contemplative Neuroscience & Yogic Studies, and his writing explores dharma, moksha, Ayurveda, pranayama, sacred ecology, and the yogic perspective on contemporary civilization. Erik lives and serves at Satchidananda Ashram–Yogaville as Programs Coordinator. He writes at https://epn108.substack.com/.
