The Yoga of Patanjali

Lesson - 8 133work therein. The planes of your consciousness should beexposed to the illumination of your awareness. There are manyplanes of consciousness existing in you and they have manydivisions and sub-divisions called ‘Lokas’ in Sanskrit. In theordinary man they exist separate to one another and the awarenessworks althrough life only in few planes and the majority ofplanes remain dormant. During every birth there will be activityin a few planes, that too not simultaneous.Sometimes people live in one sub-plane of consciousnessalthrough the life, just as the worm in a bud lives and dies withinthe few folds of a petal. See how the worm is not at all consciousof the many petals of the flower in which it is living. Manypeople live in one or two or three of the sub-planes and theremaining will be left unused. Your yoga practice sheds theillumination of awareness upon all the planes and sub-planes.After attaining Samadhi it is your duty to apply it to the variousplanes of existence. Planes of existence are not separated byspace, they exist interpenetrated. To an ordinary man they existwater-tight like the differences between consciousness, thesleeping one and the working one. If a person is reading in aroom and another is sleeping in the same room, they live indifferent planes and they do not exist to each other. To thesleeping man the awakened man has no existence. To the workingman there is only the existence of the body of the sleepingman. To a Yogi it is possible to witness his own sleep.Now you have to apply your Samadhi to the variousplanes in you. This application is of two types, the arbitraryapplication and the prescribed application. You can apply itto anything you want in life and you can continue to do solifelong. This is arbitrary application. There is the prescribedapplication, that which is prescribed by the ancient seers. Ithas seven steps and you have to apply it yourself in a progressive