The two major classical texts on Yoga, namely the Yoga Sūtras and the Bhagavad Gītā, indicate that enlightenment requires great effort and discipline. The practitioner’s exertion or effort or “intense discipline” (tapas) is a theme in the Sūtras, and effort or striving (yatna) as necessary on the part of the practitioner for achievement of higher states of consciousness is a theme in the Gītā. Most of the guidance in these two great works centers upon what we as practitioners should do, can practice, must avoid or engage, might perform, and so on. No doubt, there is much we must do to strive for and  achieve enlightenment in Yoga.

    However, there is another side to enlightenment. It is a less known side, a more subtle or hidden side, a side that often goes unnoticed or that simply gets overlooked despite its dramatic expressions in the sacred texts on Yoga. The side of enlightenment that is a gift, the side that is an offering from something much greater than ourselves. It is the side of divine grace.

    In many of the Yoga workshops I offer, I often ask my students when introducing themselves to the group, “I know all of you have been doing Yoga. But how has Yoga been influencing you? How did Yoga enter your life? How did Yoga make itself known to you?” My query implies that Yoga is not just something that we do, but Yoga has a special power that does something to us. We have all experienced it in our own ways.

    When we practice yoga, a certain light of knowledge and devotion becomes ignited in us, and in a general sense, this is enlightenment. But the other side of enlightenment is the way in which the power of Yoga itself, a power independent of us, allows us to excell in greater levels of consciousness that we formerly could not even imagine.  It is that power which, paradoxically, lifts us up into higher realms of achievement effortlessly. The Gītā tells us that this is the gift of the divine, Yogamāyā, “the divine power of Yoga.”

    Enlightenment is not something that suddenly turns on one day, but rather is something that we grow into more and more. Patañjali shows us that enlightenment is a developing thing in his exposition of samādhi. Even though samādhi itself is consider the perfection Yoga, it too has many stages within its sabīja phases, on the way to nirbīja and dharma-megha-samādhi. From the very beginning of our practice, enlightenment begins as the tiniest spark and moves into its blazing fires containing both its divine gifts and extraordinary achievements.

    Patañjali cleverly presents an idea of divine grace in one of the longer sūtra texts. If one knows to look for it, one finds in his vision of divine grace a most profound presentation and, perhaps surprisingly, a metaphorical description of it as well. The idea of divine grace or a certain power of Yoga that favors our practice can be seen in the experience of samāpatti, which, amazingly, is presented only once in the Sūtras (YS 1.41) in the following:

When the turning has ceased, when

that which is inborn shines forth like that

of a jewel in the one who grasps [the meditator],

in the grasping [the act of meditating] and in that

which is to be grasped [the object of meditation],

one stands so near that one attains a state

in which a magic ointment has been absorbed---

this is samāpatti.                    (YS 1.41)

What is being said in this sūtra text? First, the turnings of consciousness that have been conditioned by the mind’s impressions cease. Then that beloved divinity, īśvara, embedded within the self, shines forth like that of a jewel due to its pure turnings which are conducted within meditation, just as one turns a fine jewel to catch the light in its perfectly cut multiple facets. The turnings of conditioned consciousness cease and the turnings of pure consciousness occur in meditation when the meditator, the meditating, and the meditated reach perfect harmony with one another such that the meditator attains a state in which he or she absorbs a magic or divine ointment from the meditated. This ointment is a metaphor for divine grace, and samāpatti is A grace that reciprocates the efforts, strivings, and achievements of the meditator in reaching the divine object and giving himself or herself fully to the divine.

    This text defining samāpatti utilizes two metaphors for describing its experience. The consciousness of the meditator is compared to a jewel that is so pure, so polished that it can shine forth due to its capacity to catch the light that shines down upon it. The implied element of light in the aphorism’s first metaphor of the shining jewel is reinforced by the explicit and tangible substance of an ointment that is put forth in the second metaphor of the text: that state of consciousness in the meditator that absorbs the ointment from the object on which he or she is meditating. This light, this ointment, which comes from a divine object in samāpatti, powerfully expresses to the reader of the Sūtra what the essential mechanics of divine grace in Yoga are.

    It is known that Patañjali was himself an Ayurvedic physician and thus it is no surprise that he would draw imagery from that field to describe the ultimate state of Yoga. The application of this “magic ointment” (añjana) certainly draws imagery from Ayurvedic massage, in which the doctor applies the medicinal ointment to the body with the circular “turning” movements of the hands, with such massage strokes always moving in the direction of the patient’s heart. In Yoga, when the turnings of consciousness are likewise turning in the direction of the spiritual heart, these are the unconditioned, pure turnings of consciousness that one discovers in the deepest meditative state of Yoga as samāpatti.

    It is important to note that Patañjali uses the word grahītṛ (“the one who grasps”) for the meditator, the word grahaṇa (“the grasping”) for meditating, and the word grāhya (“that which is to be grasped”) for the object upon which one meditates. These three components that are united in samāpatti as subject, verb, and object of meditation, are all derivative from the Sanskrit verb root grah, which means “to grasp.” Naturally this verbal root is the same root from which one of the most commonly used words for “grace,” namely anugraha, or that which “follows (anu-) the grasping (-graha)” of the divine, is derived.

    We can observe anugraha or that grace which follows in response or in reciprocation to the yogi’s strivings and efforts in the Bhagavad Gītā. The following two verses illustrate the grasping of the yogi, as it were, and Krishna’s response of divine grace:

    However, for those who,

         having fully renounced

         all actions in me,

         are devoted to me

    Through this yoga

         and by no other means;

         who, meditating on me,

         offer worship;           

    For them, I soon

         become the one who

          completely lifts them up

          from the ocean

          of the cycle of death,

    O Pārtha,                       

         for their thought

         has been drawn

         to enter into me.    (BG 12.6-7)

Here it is so eloquently stated by Krishna that for one who is a yogi, who is devoted in action, and in meditation, and with heart, he quickly becomes the deliverer of such a soul from saṁsāra, the endless “cycle of death.” The consciousness of such a yogi “has been drawn to enter” into the divine.

    From this discussion, it is hoped that this special power of Yoga may be more appreciated. It is a power that we cannot control, it is a power that cannot be predicted. It is a gift, it is a grace, it is a cause of gratitude and reverential awe in a practitioner for whom this power has been efficacious and moving. Thus it is in Yoga that we are to be united with something much larger, much greater than ourselves, something that contains the whole universe.

    And when we become fully self-realized, fully self-aware, enlightened, as it were, we will traverse to the other side of enlightenment where we can now afford to lose ourselves completely in the selfless service of others’ hearts fully, and it will be when we are dwelling in this state permanently that we will experience special graces of the divinity in us, around us, and everywhere. There is no limit to the ways in which the divine can embrace us so sweetly and lovingly.