Book One
The Problem of Union - Consciousness and Superconsciousness (Samadhi Pada)
a. The higher and lower natures defined.
b. The obstacles and their removal considered.
c. A summation of the Raja Yoga system.
Topic: The versatile psychic nature.
Samadhi Pada ONE.
Contemplation and Meditation.
Patanjali opens with a blessing for those seeking union (Yoga) with the supreme. Here the Seer/meditator/Yogi/self is equated to the soul and the concept of ego mind is introduced. The ego mind is composed of mind, intelligence and the ego which makes up the illusory self. When one learns to restrain or subjugate the ego mind then pure soul awareness becomes possible or knowledge of the true self becomes possible. The illusory self is manifested as five fluctuations or fivefold movements.
1. A blessing to those seeking instruction on joining (Yoga) with the Supreme Spirit.
2. Union (integration) of the self to the Supreme is the result of restraining fluctuations of the ego mind, controlling cognition and annihilating the ego.
3. Then, at that time, the Soul (Seer) dwells in a state of radiance.
4. At other times, the Seer, (Soul) identifies with the mind's behavior of constant modification and fluctuation.
Obstacles to union with the Supreme
5. The mind modifications are composed of fivefold movements that are either afflicting or unafflicting, distressing or undistressing, pleasing or painful, troubling or untroubling, disturbing or undisturbing.
6. The fivefold movements manifest as valid knowledge, perversion, imagination, dreamless sleep, and memory.
7. Valid knowledge is achieved through direct perception, or the act of reasoning from factual knowledge and evidence, and from sacred texts or teachers knowledable of scripture and that which can be proven or verified.
8. Perversion is actually unreal knowledge based on beholding not one's own form, but that which occupies illusion.
9. Imagination is fanciful verbal knowledge invented in sequence that is devoid of substance, meaning or existence.
10. Dreamless sleep is the means of going toward the true reliable abode of knowing the complete essence of one's eternal condition of non-existence, the thought-wave of feeling non-being. Dreamless sleep is the closest one comes to letting the self fall away.
11. Memory is not allowing to slip away things experienced and is the recollection of perceptions, imaginations, thoughts, objects, senses and interactions with others.
Overcoming the obstacles to union.
12. The art of Yoga is the repeated practice of restraining the fivefold movements so one can detach from desires and achieve ultimate freedom.
13. Practice is the continuous effort to achieve perfect restraint of these fivefold movements.
14. To become firmly rooted with the Supreme requires that the practice be performed with zeal, dedication, and devotion continuously for a long time, without interruption.
15. Listen and perceive this transmission of ancient testimony to achieving supreme joy and contentment through freedom from desires. To obtain union with the Supreme one must detach from desires and passions, for true understanding is accomplished by subjugating and controlling the fluctuations of the mind.
16. The highest, most excellent supreme perception of pure soul awareness is achieved by trancending the three qualities of nature; (light, inertia and vibration).
17. To actually distinguish true soul awareness one must grasp the four stages: It begins with self-analysis then personal insight trancending logic through meditation leading to blissful elation and finally universal consciousness.
18. A lesser soul awareness is often achieved during meditation and practice that achieves a balance of mind with impressions registering below the threshold of consciousness. The intelligence is stilled but the impure awareness experiences visions or lucid dreams.
19. This lesser state of soul awareness has its origins in the incorporeal realm of non-material existence which is the realm of spirit and law. Failure to trancend this state of being leads to isolation or a merging with nature.
20. To continue progressing to pure soul awareness requires reverent faith, moral strength, keen memory and supreme devotion to profound meditation to achieve perfect absorption of thoughts and awareness of real knowledge acquired through intense contemplation.
21. Pure soul awareness is near for those who continue to practice cheerfully and with intensity.
22. Some proceed with mild effort, moderate effort or zealous effort and these levels of effort determine the speed one achieves pure soul awareness.
Surrender to God is the ultimate approach to union.
23. The carnal mind can be transcended into pure soul awareness by profound prayer and meditation upon God and total surrender to God.
24. God is the seat of Supreme Being, totally free from conflicts, unaffected by actions and untouched by cause and effect.
25. God is the unsurpassed and unrivaled onesource of omniscent wisdom, transcendent, yet unfolds the entirety of omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence.
26. God is the unlimited, unbounded, undefined source of all knowledge and is the foremost absolute guru untouched by time.
27. Aum (OM) is the sacred syllable signifying God and is the fulfillment of divinity and stands for the praise of the divine.
28. The mantra Aum is to be repeated with reverent feeling with the aim of realizing its identifying purpose,
29. Thus removing the obstacles to acquiring the mastery of pure soul awareness.
30. The obstacles to pure soul awareness are disease, procrastination, doubt, carelessness, laziness, attachment to sensual gratification, delusion, departing from practice and an unfocused mind.
31. These obstacles exist at the same time with unhappiness, despair, unsteadiness of the body and irregular breathing which further scatters the mind and causes distractions.
32. To prevent these obstacles, one should practice with single-mindedness the real state of truth so as to perceive the principal doctrine of essential nature thus revealing the very essence of pure soul awareness.
33. But by being joyfull, glad, friendly, compassionate and merciful coupled with indifference to happiness and sorrow, virtue and vice, one will become infused with a graceful diffusion of pure soul awareness leading to a favorable disposition.
Techniques in restraining the fivefold movements.
34. Helpful in restraining the fivefold movements is proper breath practice. This is done by steady slow exhalation followed by a pause before softly inhaling. This breath practice helps calm the mind and connect to soul awareness.
35. Also progress can be advanced by contemplating an object with total absorption thus producing a mind state resembling the mind's foundational origins.
36. Or, a tranquil state of mind can be the result of contemplating a luminous light of infinite brightness which is free from sorrow or grief.
37. Pure soul awareness is achieved by unattachement to objects, desires and passions.
38. In order to distinguish the gross from the eternal be cognizant of the three states of mind. The dreamless state of non-being, the dream state of delusion and the wakeful state of intelligent awareness.
39. Mind dicipline can also be developed by meditation on a selected thing that is desireable and pleasing according to one's wishes or taste.
Benefits from using the techniques.
40. Mastery over passions and the fivefold movements brings the power over the infinitesimal to the Infinite.
41. By trancending the three qualities of nature; (light, inertia and vibration) and mastering the fivefold movements, the Yogi becomes like a flawless crystal gem exhibiting the characteristics of worthyness, wisdom, politeness, courtesy and distinquished nobleness. The Yogi is transformed into accepting that the knower, the instrument of knowing, and that which is known are not separate but are just modifications of the original form.
42. At this stage the Yogi becomes totally engrossed in thoughtfull transformation as the word, its purpose, and the knowledge of the word become intermingled and mixed together such that the Yogi is trancendant of judgement. Instead the Yogi becomes the observer of reality.
43. Now the Yogi is of the purest mind, cleansed of memory, devoid of the former nature, allowing the purest form of soul awareness to be as it is, unreflecting and unconsidered, without analysis or logic.
Subtle techniques for achieving pure soul awareness.
44. In addition to contemplating objects and pleasing subjects, there are two other techniques of investigation. Both are related to the meditation of subtle things (such as ego, intelligence, time, space or causation) but one involves deliberate contemplation and the other is contemplation of the subtle without reflection or consideration. One involves logic and descrimination, the other intuition and a knowing transcendent of gross thought.
45. Either technique of meditating on subtle things will lead to the ending of fluctuations revealing pure soul awareness, having no characteristic markings but only displaying its unmanifested form.
46. Both techniques require profound meditation seeded by the core of being.
47. But when the Yogi is skilled in profound reflection without seeds, profound knowledge manifests as undisturbed pure flow of the union between the supreme awareness and individualized awareness, admitting maximum passage of clear bright light without diffusion or distortion, accompanied by serenity of disposition.
Achieving ultimate trancendent wisdom
48. The yogi's awareness now resides in insightful wisdom, full of truth and intellectual essence.
49. This insightful wisdom has the special property of being beyond wisdom achieved by traditional means. This special wisdom is first hand intuitive knowledge of the Supreme and can not be gained by conjecture or inference.
50. Now that the Yogi is born of supreme wisdom, previous formations of the mind become subliminal and the pure truth impedes future gross impressions.
51. Even this new truth bearing light must be suppressed in order to achieve permanent seedless identity with the absolute supreme. By detaching from the supreme wisdom the Yogi drops away the remaining illusions of self and only the universal supreme soul blazes without form in pristine clarity.
Book Two
The Steps to Union - Ways To Attain Yoga (Sadhana Pada)
a. The five hindrances and their removal.
b. The eight means defined.
Topic: The means of attainment.
Samadhi Pada Two
Spiritual Disciplines
1. Austerity, the study of sacred texts, and the dedication of action to God constitute the discipline of Mystic Union.
2. This discipline is practised for the purpose of acquiring fixity of mind on the Lord, free from all impurities and agitations, or on One's Own Reality, and for attenuating the afflictions.
3. The five afflictions are ignorance, egoism, attachment, aversion, and the desire to cling to life.
4. Ignorance is the breeding place for all the others whether they are dormant or attenuated, partially overcome or fully operative.
5. Ignorance is taking the non-eternal for the eternal, the impure for the pure, evil for good and non-self as self.
6. Egoism is the identification of the power that knows with the instruments of knowing.
7. Attachment is that magnetic pattern which clusters in pleasure and pulls one towards such experience.
8. Aversion is the magnetic pattern which clusters in misery and pushes one from such experience.
9. Flowing by its own energy, established even in the wise and in the foolish, is the unending desire for life.
10. These patterns when subtle may be removed by developing their contraries.
11. Their active afflictions are to be destroyed by meditation.
12. The impressions of works have their roots in afflictions and arise as experience in the present and the future births.
13. When the root exists, its fruition is birth, life and experience.
14. They have pleasure or pain as their fruit, according as their cause be virtue or vice.
15. All is misery to the wise because of the pains of change, anxiety, and purificatory acts.
16. The grief which has not yet come may be avoided.
17. The cause of the avoidable is the superimposition of the external world onto the unseen world.
18. The experienced world consists of the elements and the senses in play. It is of the nature of cognition, activity and rest, and is for the purpose of experience and realization.
19. The stages of the attributes effecting the experienced world are the specialized and the unspecialized, the differentiated and the undifferentiated.
20. The indweller is pure consciousness only, which though pure, sees through the mind and is identified by ego as being only the mind.
21. The very existence of the seen is for the sake of the seer.
22. Although Creation is discerned as not real for the one who has achieved the goal, it is yet real in that Creation remains the common experience to others.
23. The association of the seer with Creation is for the distinct recognition of the objective world, as well as for the recognition of the distinct nature of the seer.
24. The cause of the association is ignorance.
25. Liberation of the seer is the result of the dissassociation of the seer and the seen, with the disappearance of ignorance.
26. The continuous practice of discrimination is the means of attaining liberation.
27. Steady wisdom manifests in seven stages.
28. On the destruction of impurity by the sustained practice of the limbs of Union, the light of knowledge reveals the faculty of discrimination.
29. The eight limbs of Union are self-restraint in actions, fixed observance, posture, regulation of energy, mind-control in sense engagements, concentration, meditation, and realization.
30. Self-restraint in actions includes abstention from violence, from falsehoods, from stealing, from sexual engagements, and from acceptance of gifts.
31. These five willing abstentions are not limited by rank, place, time or circumstance and constitute the Great Vow.
32. The fixed observances are cleanliness, contentment, austerity, study and persevering devotion to God.
33. When improper thoughts disturb the mind, there should be constant pondering over the opposites.
34. Improper thoughts and emotions such as those of violence- whether done, caused to be done, or even approved of- indeed, any thought originating in desire, anger or delusion, whether mild medium or intense- do all result in endless pain and misery. Overcome such distractions by pondering on the opposites.
35. When one is confirmed in non-violence, hostility ceases in his presence.
36. When one is firmly established in speaking truth, the fruits of action become subservient to him.
37. All jewels approach him who is confirmed in honesty.
38. When one is confirmed in celibacy, spiritual vigor is gained.
39. When one is confirmed in non-possessiveness, the knowledge of the why and how of existence is attained.
40. From purity follows a withdrawal from enchantment over one's own body as well as a cessation of desire for physical contact with others.
41. As a result of contentment there is purity of mind, one-pointedness, control of the senses, and fitness for the vision of the self.
42. Supreme happiness is gained via contentment.
43. Through sanctification and the removal of impurities, there arise special powers in the body and senses.
44. By study comes communion with the Lord in the Form most admired.
45. Realization is experienced by making the Lord the motive of all actions.
46. The posture should be steady and comfortable.
47. In effortless relaxation, dwell mentally on the Endless with utter attention.
48. From that there is no disturbance from the dualities.
49. When that exists, control of incoming and outgoing energies is next.
50. It may be external, internal, or midway, regulated by time, place, or number, and of brief or long duration.
51. Energy-control which goes beyond the sphere of external and internal is the fourth level- the vital.
52. In this way, that which covers the light is destroyed.
53. Thus the mind becomes fit for concentration.
54. When the mind maintains awareness, yet does not mingle with the senses, nor the senses with sense impressions, then self-awareness blossoms.
55. In this way comes mastery over the senses.
Book Three
Union achieved and its Results - Powers (Vibhuti Pada)
a. Meditation, and its stages
b. Twenty-three results of meditation.
Topic: The powers of the soul.
Samadhi Pada Three.
Divine Powers.
1. One-pointedness is steadfastness of the mind.
2. Unbroken continuation of that mental ability is meditation.
3. That same meditation when there is only consciousness of the object of meditation and not of the mind is realization.
4. The three appearing together are self-control.
5. By mastery comes wisdom.
6. The application of mastery is by stages.
7. The three are more efficacious than the restraints.
8. Even that is external to the seedless realization.
9. The significant aspect is the union of the mind with the moment of absorption, when the outgoing thought disappears and the absorptive experience appears.
10. From sublimation of this union comes the peaceful flow of unbroken unitive cognition.
11. The contemplative transformation of this is equalmindedness, witnessing the rise and destruction of distraction as well as one-pointedness itself.
12. The mind becomes one-pointed when the subsiding and rising thought-waves are exactly similar.
13. In this state, it passes beyond the changes of inherent characteristics, properties and the conditional modifications of object or sensory recognition.
14. The object is that which preserves the latent characteristic, the rising characteristic or the yet-to-be-named characteristic that establishes one entity as specific.
15. The succession of these changes in that entity is the cause of its modification.
16. By self-control over these three-fold changes (of property, character and condition), knowledge of the past and the future arises.
17. The sound of a word, the idea behind the word, and the object the idea signfies are often taken as being one thing and may be mistaken for one another. By self-control over their distinctions, understanding of all languages of all creatures arises.
18. By self-control on the perception of mental impressions, knowledge of previous lives arises.
19. By self-control on any mark of a body, the wisdom of the mind activating that body arises.
20. By self-control on the form of a body, by suspending perceptibility and separating effulgence therefrom, there arises invisibility and inaudibilty.
21. Action is of two kinds, dormant and fruitful. By self-control on such action, one portends the time of death.
22. By performing self-control on friendliness, the strength to grant joy arises.
23. By self-control over any kind of strength, such as that of the elephant, that very strength arises.
24. By self-control on the primal activator comes knowledge of the hidden, the subtle, and the distant.
25. By self-control on the Sun comes knowledge of spatial specificities.
26. By self-control on the Moon comes knowledge of the heavens.
27. By self-control on the Polestar arises knowledge of orbits.
28. By self-control on the navel arises knowledge of the constitution of the body.
29. By self-control on the pit of the throat one subdues hunger and thirst.
30. By self-control on the tube within the chest one acquires absolute steadiness.
31. By self-control on the light in the head one envisions perfected beings.
32. There is knowledge of everything from intuition.
33. Self-control on the heart brings knowledge of the mental entity.
34. Experience arises due to the inability of discerning the attributes of vitality from the indweller, even though they are indeed distinct from one another. Self-control brings true knowledge of the indweller by itself.
35. This spontaneous enlightenment results in intuitional perception of hearing, touching, seeing and smelling.
36. To the outward turned mind, the sensory organs are perfections, but are obstacles to realization.
37. When the bonds of the mind caused by action have been loosened, one may enter the body of another by knowledge of how the nerve-currents function.
38. By self-control of the nerve-currents utilising the lifebreath, one may levitate, walk on water, swamps, thorns, or the like.
39. By self-control over the maintenance of breath, one may radiate light.
40. By self-control on the relation of the ear to the ether one gains distant hearing.
41. By self-control over the relation of the body to the ether, and maintaining at the same time the thought of the lightness of cotton, one is able to pass through space.
42. By self-control on the mind when it is separated from the body- the state known as the Great Transcorporeal- all coverings are removed from the Light.
43. Mastery over the elements arises when their gross and subtle forms,as well as their essential characteristics, and the inherent attributes and experiences they produce, is examined in self-control.
44. Thereby one may become as tiny as an atom as well as having many other abilities, such as perfection of the body, and non-resistence to duty.
45. Perfection of the body consists in beauty, grace, strength and adamantine hardness.
46. By self-control on the changes that the sense-organs endure when contacting objects, and on the power of the sense of identity, and of the influence of the attributes, and the experience all these produce- one masters the senses.
47. From that come swiftness of mind, independence of perception, and mastery over primoridal matter.
48. To one who recognizes the distinctive relation between vitality and indweller comes omnipotence and omniscience.
49. Even for the destruction of the seed of bondage by desirelessness there comes absolute independence.
50. When invited by invisible beings one should be neither flattered nor satisfied, for there is yet a possibility of ignorance rising up.
51. By self-control over single moments and their succession there is wisdom born of discrimination.
52. From that there is recognition of two similars when that difference cannot be distinguished by class, characteristic or position.
53. Intuition, which is the entire discriminative knowledge, relates to all objects at all times, and is without succession.
54. Liberation is attained when there is equal purity between vitality and the indweller.
Book Four
Illumination - Liberation (Kaivalya Pada)
a. Consciousness and form.
b. Union or at-one-ment.
Topic: Isolated unity.
Samadhi Pada Four.
Realizations.
1. Psychic powers arise by birth, drugs, incantations, purificatory acts or concentrated insight.
2. Transformation into another state is by the directed flow of creative nature.
3. Creative nature is not moved into action by any incidental cause, but by the removal of obstacles, as in the case of a farmer clearing his field of stones for irrigation.
4. Created minds arise from egoism alone.
5. There being difference of interest, one mind is the director of many minds.
6. Of these, the mind born of concentrated insight is free from the impressions.
7. The impressions of unitive cognition are neither good nor bad. In the case of the others, there are three kinds of impressions.
8. From them proceed the development of the tendencies which bring about the fruition of actions.
9. Because of the magnetic qualities of habitual mental patterns and memory, a relationship of cause and effect clings even though there may be a change of embodiment by class, space and time.
10. The desire to live is eternal, and the thought-clusters prompting a sense of identity are beginningless.
11. Being held together by cause and effect, substratum and object- the tendencies themselves disappear on the dissolution of these bases.
12. The past and the future exist in the object itself as form and expression, there being difference in the conditions of the properties.
13. Whether manifested or unmanifested they are of the nature of the attributes.
14. Things assume reality because of the unity maintained within that modification.
15. Even though the external object is the same, there is a difference of cognition in regard to the object because of the difference in mentality.
16. And if an object known only to a single mind were not cognized by that mind, would it then exist?
17. An object is known or not known by the mind, depending on whether or not the mind is colored by the object.
18. The mutations of awareness are always known on account of the changelessness of its Lord, the indweller.
19. Nor is the mind self-luminous, as it can be known.
20. It is not possible for the mind to be both the perceived and the perceiver simultaneously.
21. In the case of cognition of one mind by another, we would have to assume cognition of cognition, and there would be confusion of memories.
22. Consciousness appears to the mind itself as intellect when in that form in which it does not pass from place to place.
23. The mind is said to perceive when it reflects both the indweller (the knower) and the objects of perception (the known).
24. Though variegated by innumerable tendencies, the mind acts not for itself but for another, for the mind is of compound substance.
25. For one who sees the distinction, there is no further confusing of the mind with the self.
26. Then the awareness begins to discriminate, and gravitates towards liberation.
27. Distractions arise from habitual thought patterns when practice is intermittent.
28. The removal of the habitual thought patterns is similar to that of the afflictions already described.
29. To one who remains undistracted in even the highest intellection there comes the equalminded realization known as The Cloud of Virtue. This is a result of discriminative discernment.
30. From this there follows freedom from cause and effect and afflictions.
31. The infinity of knowledge available to such a mind freed of all obscuration and property makes the universe of sensory perception seem small.
32. Then the sequence of change in the three attributes comes to an end, for they have fulfilled their function.
33. The sequence of mutation occurs in every second, yet is comprehensible only at the end of a series.
34. When the attributes cease mutative association with awarenessness, they resolve into dormancy in Nature, and the indweller shines forth as pure consciousness. This is absolute freedom.
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