at, “the key process in mysticism is not like a construction process but more like one of unconstructing.” He couldn’t be more correct, and he has all of the Yoga Sutra to support him. In the first step of becoming a yogi, one must renounce all material possessions, one’s caste, one’s family ties as well as displacing oneself from the standards of society. From the time of our birth, we are shaped and molded. Our parents are agents of society; since they exist and participate in it, they bring back some of its views which are inherently limiting to the individual, to protect us from the other individuals. These limitations are imbedded in the morals and actions taught to us. Timothy Leary, an eminent Harvard professor, echoes this in a speech:throughout human history, as our species has faced the frightening, terrorizing fact that we do not know who we are, or where we are going in this ocean of chaos. It has been the authorities—the political, the religious, the educational authorities—who attempted to comfort us by giving us order, rules, regulations, informing and forming in our minds their view of reality. To think for yourself, you must question authority and learn how to put yourself in a state of vulnerable open-mindedness (Tool).The only way we can unshackle our minds is if we deconstruct the societal conditioning that we’ve been subjected to. The thoughts we have do not come from a state of pure contemplation. We have to question the thoughts that come to us naturally because those “natural” thoughts are tainted, filtered through our learned experiences. The key to reaching a state of contemplative calm is by removing those filters and unlearning what we already think we know.The Yoga Sutra does not just admit to the possibility that Forman’s idea of objectless consciousness exists; it goes so far as to make it a necessary state through which we achiev...
