Before You Read

 

 

 

What follows is the complete Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, all four books, in my own original translation.

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Done from practice, not from a desk.

Every translator before me chose between fidelity to the words and fidelity to the experience. Most had only the words, because they never practiced.

So they guessed. This translation guesses nothing.

Where a sutra describes a state, it is rendered from practice as far as practice has carried me. Where it has not, I translated with restraint, refusing to invent is half of fidelity.

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You will notice what is missing:

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No commentary.

Patanjali wrote in sutras, compressed threads of meaning, precisely so the text would unfold through practice, not explanation. Commentary by non-practitioners is how the corruption entered. I will not add another layer of it.

 

No Devanagari, no Sanskrit recitation.

You almost certainly cannot read it, and decorating the page with a script neither of us is using would be pretending. Authority here comes from practice, not from performing scholarship.

 

No interpretations, no "what this means for your daily life."

The text means what it says. Your practice will verify it.

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A warning about reading itself: this is not a book to consume.

 

Read a sutra. Stop. By the time you realise, it is suddenly within the boundaries of your consciousness.

The text was designed to be absorbed one thread at a time, over years, alongside practice, a sutra you have not practiced is a sutra you have not yet read.

The text will change meaning as you grow. It is, in that sense, alive.

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Reading this will not make you a yogi.

Practicing it will.

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This translation is also, legally, the intellectual property of Uncorrupted Yoga.

It is given freely. If it serves you, you are welcome to support my work.