Vaj - >Tat Whale Baba and his successor both insist they be done in >Sanskrit. They also insist the entire set be performed each day, and >the requisite other techniques the sutras require (which are oral or >upadesha instructions on inner yoga).
Tat Wala Baba's status as a yogin and guru allowed him to insist on anything he pleased. Everything a traditional guru says about sadhana is upadesha. Everything Tat Wala said during his one-hour daily darshan was upadesha. I never heard his teachings so I don't know if the definitional split between inner yoga and outer yoga was a category he used. The facts remain the same. The crux of a sutra is its meaning because the sutra is an idea. It is that idea which is entertained in awareness through the mode of a briefly focused attention. It is entertained through recollection or smriti. Thus mindfulness is summarily present. Maharishi described meditative attention as "active but undirected", meaning alert but resting. Returning to the mantra occurs when recollection occurs. Thus mindfulness is also summarily present. Whether the idea-sutra is entertained in Sanskrit or natural, conventional language does not change these facts. In fact the idea-sutra is used MMY's sanyama technique in a manner that makes it also a mode of contemplation (bhavana). It does not function merely as a meditation "object". As far as Tat Wala preferring Sanskrit, Sanskrit chanting of the sutras of Patanjali is itself a type of yoga. This is what Vyas Houston was able to transmit to Westerners even from the beginning of his introductory courses in spoken Sanskrit. Chanting the Yoga Sutras is itself a direct path and most Indologists cannot do this - yet even a beginner in his intro course engages in this process. I hope that Tat Wala's method helps people learn the sutras in Sanskrit. However doing so cannot make sanyama any better because the sutras are specifically used as ideas rather than sounds as such. I just wish that more TM teachers and meditators would dig deeper and realize that there is much more in the soup than the broth. No one explained that the sanyama technique includes a contemplative value (bhavana). No one explained that the holding-flowing-uniting of sanyama and the inherently contemplative bhavana were actually values of Dhi, the original form of rishi-drishta/rishi-shrauta. Maharishi didn't want to encourage discrimination in meditation, so he didn't say much to ordinary meditators, whether citizen-siddhas or governors. However, there are now Westerns that have mastered the Visuddhimagga Jhanas which means there are people willing to do the practice seriously over a long period of time. Whether any Westerners have become adept enough in tsa-lung and tummo to master the generation and completion stages of Naropa's sadhanas is unknown. For them to be able to sucessfully train other Westerners to a level of mastery is even less certain. In fact it is improbable at this point. What is certain is that more is possible for TM/Sidhi practitioners. However, in my opinion this won't develop through any form of tutelage by the TMO.