Another student had grown curious.
“What does the Master do behind the curtain? I want to see.”
His curiosity became so strong that he couldn’t resist and lifted the curtain to see the Master. At that very moment, all 999 students were reduced to ashes.
Patanjali was deeply saddened. He had been ready to share his knowledge with the entire world, and now all his disciples had perished in an instant.
Just then, the one small boy returned.
Patanjali asked him where he had gone. The boy explained and asked for forgiveness.
Patanjali, being full of compassion, felt relieved that at least one of his students had been spared.
So he passed on the remaining Yoga Sutras to him—all the knowledge contained in them.
But since the boy had broken the rules, Patanjali could not forget it. He said:
“Because you violated the rules, you will become a Brahmarakshasa, or a ghost, and will hang from a tree.”
The only way for the boy to be freed from the curse was to find at least one student of his own.
Having said this, Patanjali vanished.
And so, the Brahmarakshasa hung from a tree, asking a question to every passerby, and if they couldn’t answer, he would devour them.
He had no choice. And so it went on for thousands of years.
He couldn’t find even a single person to whom he could pass on the knowledge of the Yoga Sutras.
And thus, he remained suspended from the tree like a ghost.
(The moral here is that when someone possesses great knowledge but commits a wrongdoing, they fall into the state of a Brahmarakshasa.
It is far more dangerous for an intelligent person to become a wrongdoer than for an innocent one to do so.
If someone who holds deep wisdom turns into a criminal, it is much more destructive.)
So the Brahmarakshasa continued to wait for his liberation.
Then, out of compassion, Patanjali himself returned—this time as a disciple.
He went to the Brahmarakshasa, who passed on the knowledge of the Yoga Sutras to him, and Patanjali wrote it down on palm leaves.
The story tells us that in order to redeem the sin of one disciple, the master became the student of his own student.
Patanjali wrote the Yoga Sutras sitting atop the tree, as that is where the Brahmarakshasa resided.
The Brahmarakshasa worked only at night, so he dictated the Sutras at night, and Patanjali wrote them on leaves.
He plucked all the leaves, made a small scratch on his body, and wrote with the blood that flowed.
This continued for seven days.
Finally, Patanjali became exhausted.
He wrapped the written leaves in a cloth, placed it below the tree, and went to bathe.
When he returned, he saw that a goat had eaten most of the leaves.
So Patanjali took the cloth with the remaining leaves and left.
This story is very profound.
The Puranas do not give us explanations.
They simply tell us the tale, and it is up to us to draw the lesson from it.
So—what is your lesson?
