This book was originally written in my mother tongue, Telugu. Now, for the sake of my English readers, the English version is released.
I happened to read the Yoga Sutras for the first time in 1976 when I was 13 years old. My knowledge of English and Sanskrit was rudimentary at that time. While reading all the spiritual books that I could lay minds upon, I had read with great relish the 'Complete works of Swami Vivekananda' in Telugu. One of the volumes contains the lectures on Yoga Sutras that the swami delivered in foreign countries. Though I could read the script in Telugu fluently, I could hardly understand all the sutras. They seemed Greek and Latin to me. Then I joined the college at Narasaraopet and learnt English. Curious to read the original words spoken by the Swami, I had read the Complete Works in English to my heart's content. Afterwards, I happened to read the Yoga Sutras many times, slowly corelating and understanding them in the light of my sadhana which blossomed all along.
Later, revered Swami Nandanandaji who was one of my gurus, gave me as his parting gift the same book which contained the lectures of Swami Vivekananda on Yoga Sutras.
There were many scholarly commentaries on the Yoga Sutras down the line. I too, based on my understanding borne out of my sadhana, made a humble attempt to write a commentary on them. This is my effort to clear rishi rina to which every devout Hindu is subjected to by birth. In my commentary, I tried to explain how Sage Patanjali built his edifice of Yoga on the existing foundations of Sankhya and Buddhist philosophies and how he integrated the age old Yoga tradition with these two lines of thought.
In the Yoga Upanishads, we find the Yoga tradition purely based on ancient Hindu philosophy and its traditional way of life. In contrast, the 'Yoga Sutras' portrays the synthesis of Yoga, Sankhya and Buddhist ideologies. By comparing them with one another, the readers will be able to understand the ancient philosophies as well as how they evolved with time into the Yoga Sutras.
My heartfelt thanks and blessings to my wife Sarala Devi, my disciples Akhila Jampala and Sri Lalita, both from Detroit USA, for their constant help and support in the translation of my Telugu book into English and my disciple Pravin from Hyderabad India, who designed the cover pages so beautifully.
I hope that this English work will be read by the international community with great interest. As usual this book also, like our other books, is available from google play books at our web site
