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?He was a scientist and a master of the highest order. He was the first to understand the human mind in a way that no one has still understood.?
Bharat Thakur
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?tada drshtuh swarupe awasthanam? -
Then the seer is established in his original form
Patanjali was a rare alchemy in the world of spirituality. We have had wise men and people with experiences.We have had poets. But their experiences did not come together as did those of Patanjali.
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Patanjali?s approach in the Yog Sutras, which is a compilation of the revelations that must have come to him, was very critical. He was compressing a vast, million year old science into a few lines and a few hints. Before him we had Siva Samhita , Vashist Samhita, Gherand Samhita, Yoga Puran and the Bhagawad Gita. To summarise all of this within 200 lines of poetry was a difficult task. Composing each line must have been like Mohammed speaking the entire Koran. I think he must have heard the sutras in meditation and noted it down. Otherwise it is humanly impossible to create a scripture like the Yoga Sutra.
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Patanjali was a pragmatic person at heart who hated illusions and impractical methods. He had experienced the entire physical or Hath Yog from scratch to its peak. In the Sutras given by him, he managed to get rid of the physical aspect of Yoga in just a few verses.
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His contribution was more towards the understanding of meditation and Samadhi. In today?s world the so called yogis will not be able to present such a simple understanding of the path of yoga. For me, Patanjali was a scientific saint whose approach was to make sure that yoga did not become another religion. He kept yoga as a science, a technology, a method and a process. When he wrote about the laws a yogi should follow, he made sure that no one got scared with those laws. Hence he never mentioned hell or heaven
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