Self-Knowledge and Self-Transformation: A Way Towards the Ethics of Life
摘要
Yoga philosophy talks about the realization of the ultimate truth about the self and the world. Yoga refers to the union of the individual and the supreme selves. To achieve this goal, yoga promotes nirodha, cessation or control of the mind. Yoga is the science of controlling the mind, as the mind is considered the root cause of bondage and the cause of liberation. Yoga teaches non-attachment to the self with the world. Attachment creates an imbalance between body and mind. It makes difficult for the self to choose between the reality of eternal bliss and sensual pleasures received from the world. Non-attachment, for Patañjali, is to detach the mind from the fascinating worldly pleasures and be united with the infinite, where the self attains super-consciousness. The cessation of the cycle of life is possible with the practice of yoga, where the limited mundane self gets the scope of realizing its unlimited power of true knowledge and enters the level of pure consciousness. The self starts realizing the power of self-transformation present within it. Yoga promotes the self to break the cycle and move forward in the direction of eternal bliss by achieving self-knowledge and self-transformation recognized as pure consciousness. The limited self transforms as the limitless self with the help of sādhanā is defined as yoga, that is, the ultimate point of “unitness.”