How to Know God (Swami Prabhavananda/Christopher Isherwood)
Best Introductory Text to Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras
[My 4-star Amazon review (NDA) of “How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali” by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood.)
I am a yoga teacher and a mystic-scholar. I have been reading spiritual texts for more than forty years, and two of the first texts I read when I began studying the aphorisms of Patanjali were "Raja Yoga," by Swami Vivekananda, and "How to Know God", by Prabhavananda and Isherwood. "Raja Yoga" was supposed to be the finest advanced Patanjali text (it isn't), and "How to Know God" was supposed to be the best basic, or introductory, text (it was, and as far as I know, still is)--and so I don't recommend Vivekananda's book for advanced students of Raja Yoga, but I do recommend "How to Know God" for beginners, with the caveat that it is for neophytes, not for advanced students looking to really penetrate the deeper "mechanics" of the Self-realization process.
I am familiar with the other advanced texts recommended in the reviews--even though I have not fully read or studied all of them--and none of them, in my opinion, are as deep or profound as "Yoga Philosophy of Patanjali," by Samkhhya-yogacharya Swami Hariharananda Aranya. Raja Yoga culminates in Kaivalya (eradicating the dominant "Buddhi," or ego-I sense, and realizing the transcendental `I,' or Self, in the Heart-center (the Hridayam, distinct from the anahata heart chakra), where the samskaras, or psychical seed tendencies, are "fried"); and Kaivalya is preceded by Dharmamegha ("Cloud of Dharma") samadhi, whereby and wherein the yogi receives the Divine downpour (of Shakti, or Grace) from the Divine "Cloud Above." Prior to encountering Aranya's text, I was unfamiliar with Dharmamegha samadhi in Raja Yoga, but as a yogi who channels heavy-duty Shakti (or Spirit Power) into my Heart-center and regularly rests in deep Heart-felt samadhis, I knew, from my own experience and from what other yoga traditions (especially Kashmir Shaivism) say, that he was describing the Self-realization process on a level beyond that of the other Patanjali texts I had studied.
So start your study of Patanjali's Sutras with "How to Know God," and if you find that Patanjali floats your spiritual boat, "graduate" to two more advanced texts: Aranya's (see my five star review) and also Edwin F. Bryant's excellent "Yoga Sutras of Patanjali" (see my four-star review).
[My 4-star Amazon review (NDA) of “How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali” by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood.)
I am a yoga teacher and a mystic-scholar. I have been reading spiritual texts for more than forty years, and two of the first texts I read when I began studying the aphorisms of Patanjali were "Raja Yoga," by Swami Vivekananda, and "How to Know God", by Prabhavananda and Isherwood. "Raja Yoga" was supposed to be the finest advanced Patanjali text (it isn't), and "How to Know God" was supposed to be the best basic, or introductory, text (it was, and as far as I know, still is)--and so I don't recommend Vivekananda's book for advanced students of Raja Yoga, but I do recommend "How to Know God" for beginners, with the caveat that it is for neophytes, not for advanced students looking to really penetrate the deeper "mechanics" of the Self-realization process.
I am familiar with the other advanced texts recommended in the reviews--even though I have not fully read or studied all of them--and none of them, in my opinion, are as deep or profound as "Yoga Philosophy of Patanjali," by Samkhhya-yogacharya Swami Hariharananda Aranya. Raja Yoga culminates in Kaivalya (eradicating the dominant "Buddhi," or ego-I sense, and realizing the transcendental `I,' or Self, in the Heart-center (the Hridayam, distinct from the anahata heart chakra), where the samskaras, or psychical seed tendencies, are "fried"); and Kaivalya is preceded by Dharmamegha ("Cloud of Dharma") samadhi, whereby and wherein the yogi receives the Divine downpour (of Shakti, or Grace) from the Divine "Cloud Above." Prior to encountering Aranya's text, I was unfamiliar with Dharmamegha samadhi in Raja Yoga, but as a yogi who channels heavy-duty Shakti (or Spirit Power) into my Heart-center and regularly rests in deep Heart-felt samadhis, I knew, from my own experience and from what other yoga traditions (especially Kashmir Shaivism) say, that he was describing the Self-realization process on a level beyond that of the other Patanjali texts I had studied.
So start your study of Patanjali's Sutras with "How to Know God," and if you find that Patanjali floats your spiritual boat, "graduate" to two more advanced texts: Aranya's (see my five star review) and also Edwin F. Bryant's excellent "Yoga Sutras of Patanjali" (see my four-star review).
