Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
The Uncorrupted Translation
The Quarter Concerning Ecstasy
Guidance for the subjugation of the mind.
Yoga is the cessation of the processes of the mind.
Then the Seer remains in itself.
Otherwise there is identification with the processes.
The processes of the mind are fivefold, with and without affliction.
Experience, Delusion, Fantasy, Sleep, and Remembrance.
Experience: sensory experience, inference, and tradition.
Delusion is false knowledge which is not based on those forms.
Fantasy pursues knowledge, made of words in the absence of objects.
Sleep is the process relying on the notion of non-being.
Remembrance is the preservation of experienced sense-objects.
Their cessation comes through practice and absence of desire.
Among these, the effort directed toward their stability is practice.
But that shall become a firm foundation only when practiced for a long time, without interruption, with dedication.
The controlled perception that does not thirst for sensory impressions seen or heard is the absence of desire.
Its highest degree is the non-thirst for the qualities, arising from the realization of the Subject.
In (cognitive) rapture one follow the another: examination, ascertainment, bliss, and the sense of "I".
The other is the practice of the notion of cessation, after which only the impulses remain.
The notion of existence of the bodiless ones dissolved into Nature.
For others it is preceded by faith, vigour, memory, absorption, and recognition.
This stands closest to the radical ones.
Of this there are also different levels: mild, moderate, and supreme degrees.
Or on the basis of surrender to the Lord.
The Lord is untouched by the tendencies of the fruits of afflicted karma, The Distinct Subject.
In Him, is the unsurpassable seed of omniscience.
He is also the teacher of the ancients, for time does not limit Him.
His speech is the Roar.
Through its repeated murmuring its meaning can be lived.
From that comes the inward turning of the mind and the disappearance of obstacles.
Illness, dullness, doubt, lack of discipline, lethargy, scattering, false perceptions, superficiality, and agitation — these are the obstacles that distract the mind.
Suffering, dejection, trembling of the limbs, and sighing accompany distraction.
In order to remove this, the One Real must be practiced.
The mind becomes purified when it experiences love, compassion, joy, and equanimity toward both joyfulness and suffering, right and wrong sensory impressions.
Or through the outflow and cessation of the breath.
Or when activity directed toward the object firmly holds the thinking mind.
Or through carefree luminosity.
Or through a mind that perceives without desire.
Or through a mind relying on knowledge of dream and sleep.
Or by deepening into whatever is agreeable.
Its mastery extends from the smallest to the greatest.
The unity of the “high-born,” whose processes have vanished, with the grasper-the act of grasping-and the grasped is like a crystal that reflects the colour of whatever is placed before it.
Where word, meaning, knowledge, and imagination mixed — this is the Critical Unity.
The non-critical occurs when, in the purification of memory, the self-form empties and only the goal shines.
This also explains the unity with subtle-objectified, with certainty and beyond certainty.
And subtle objecthood ends in the unmanifest.
All these are Seeded Ecstasy.
In the purity without certainty the supreme Essence becomes revealed.
Within it is the order-bringing Recognition.
Its object is different from that of learned or inferred recognitions, hence its meaning is different.
The impulse born from it obstructs every other impulse.
When even that ceases, from the cessation of all, that is the Seedless Ecstasy.
The Quarter Concerning Practice
Burning-through, self-transcendence, and surrender to the Lord are the action of subjugation.
Its aim is the experiencing of Ecstasy and the weakening of the afflictions.
The afflictions are: not knowing, self-ness, desire, hatred, will-to-live.
Not knowing is the ground of the others, which are dormant, weak, obstructed, or aroused.
Not knowing is seeing the impermanent, the impure, the painful, and the meaningless as eternal, pure, joyful, and meaningful.
Self-ness is taking the power of the Seer and seen to be identical.
The tendency of happiness is desire.
The tendency of suffering is hatred.
The will-to-live feeds on its own savour; thus it takes root even in the wise.
These can be avoided by reversal when they are dormant.
Their processes can be avoided through deep immersion.
The karma-tendency is affliction-rooted, knowable in seen and unseen birth.
As long as the root exists, its fruit is birth-life-experience.
These are heating or cooling fruits, according to whether their cause is right or wrong.
For the one who distinguishes, however, all this is suffering because of the burning nature of changes, the suffering-nature of impulses, and the opposing processes of the qualities.
The future suffering can be avoided.
The cause to be avoided is the bondage of the Seer and the seen.
The seen is characterized by illumination, activity, and stability; its essence is elements and senses; its purpose is experience and release.
Distinguished, undistinguished, mere sign and signless, are the contents of the qualities.
The Seer is only seeing: pure, though observing through images.
For His sake the essence of the seen exists.
For the one whose purpose is fulfilled, it disappears, yet it does not disappear, for it is sustained by others.
The bondage is the cause of the grasping of the power of the Possessor and the possessed, as having the same form.
Its cause is not knowing.
From the absence of this comes the absence of bondage; its abandonment is the aloneness of the Seer.
The means of abandonment is: uninterrupted certainty of the distinction.
Through seven levels this leads to the Highest Recognition.
From the stabilization of the Limbs of Yoga, with the disappearance of impurity, the radiance of knowledge arises, the certainty of discrimination.
Restraint, virtue, posture, guidance of breath, withdrawal, concentration, immersion, and ecstasy are the eight limbs.
Harmlessness, truthfulness, non-stealing, discipleship, and non-possessiveness are the restraints.
These are the great vow, valid for everyone, independent of origin, place, time, and circumstance.
Purity, contentment, burning-through, self-transcendence, and devotion to the Lord are the virtues.
When harmful thought arises, experience the opposite.
Thoughts of harm and the like—whether done, encouraged, or approved—have craving, anger, and delusion as their cause; their fruit is endless suffering and non-understanding; therefore experience the opposite.
In the environment established in harmlessness, hostility ceases.
One established in truthfulness relies on the fruit of actions.
For one established in non-stealing, all values offer themselves.
Established in the life devoted to God, one wins courage.
Those firm in non-attachment realize the manner of birth.
From purification come modesty regarding one’s own body and non-association with others.
Also spiritual clarity, goodwill, one-pointedness, mastery over the senses, and the capacity for self-seeing.
From contentment comes the attainment of the Highest Happiness.
From burning-through, through the disappearance of impurity, comes fulfillment of body and senses.
From self-transcendence comes connection with the desired deity.
From devotion to the Lord comes the fulfillment of ecstasy.
The body-position is firm and comfortable.
It arises from the loosening of effort and from union with the infinite.
From then on, the dualities no longer disturb.
When this is accomplished, restraint of the course of breathing is breath-guidance.
It becomes long and subtle. Its movement turns outward, inward, or is suspended. It is determined by place, time, and count.
The fourth points toward the relation of the outer and inner sensory world.
From this the covering of the light disappears.
And the thinking mind becomes capable of directed focus.
Withdrawal is when the senses are not bound to their own sensations but to the form of the knower.
From this comes perfect mastery of the senses.
The Quarter Concerning Great Powers
Directed focus is the binding of the mind to place.
In that, the one-directionedness of perceptions is Immersion.
When its own-form empties and only the meaning shines, that is ecstasy.
The three together are concentration.
From the victory of this, recognition shines forth.
Its realization proceeds through stages.
These three limbs are more inward than the previous ones.
But compared to the Seedless, these too are only outer limbs.
The suppression of activity-impulses and the forthcoming of cessation-impulses is the shift into cessation, that strengthens the cessation-moment-awareness.
Its calmed flow comes from impulse.
The shift into ecstasy is when the mind’s “about-something-ness” disappears and its one-pointedness remains.
When the calming and the newly arising images are alike, that is the shift of the mind into one-pointedness.
This makes the phenomenal, temporal and conditional changes occurring in the elements of being and in the sense organs understandable.
The bearer of appearances follows the calming, the emerging, and the undetermined phenomenon.
The difference in sequence is the cause of the difference in change.
By concentrating on the threefold change, past and future can be known.
Sound, meaning, and image blur together, one laid upon the other.
By concentrating on their separation, the cry of every being can be understood.
From the examination of the impulses: knowledge of previous births.
From conception: understanding of another mind.
But not its support, as that is not a sensory existent.
By concentrating on the form of the body, suspending its graspable power and interrupting the appearance reaching the eye: concealment.
By this, the disappearance on the plane of hearing and the other senses is also explained.
The act is taken or not yet taken.
By concentrating on this, or from the omens: knowledge of destiny.
In love and the others: powers.
Among powers, the strength of the elephant and the like.
By placing oneself in the illumination of functions: knowledge of the subtle, the hidden, and the distant.
By concentrating on the Sun: knowledge of the living world.
On the Moon: knowledge of the arrangement of the stars.
On the Pole Star: knowledge of their movement.
In the navel-circle: knowledge of the arrangement of the body.
In the throat-well: the cessation of hunger and thirst.
In the tortoise-vein: firmness.
In the radiance of the crown: the way of seeing of the perfected.
Or all this through clear-seeing.
In the heart: the self-awareness of the mind.
The non-differentiation of perception of the utterly non-mixing Purusha and Sattva is experience.
From concentration directed to what exists for another and what exists for itself: knowledge of the Subject.
From this, hearing, feeling, seeing, tasting, and smelling arising from clear-seeing come to victory.
These are obstacles in ecstasy, but perfections in mental activity.
Experiencing its wandering and loosening the causes that bind, makes the mind’s entry to another body possible.
From the victory of upward breath there is no sinking into water, marsh, thorn-bush and the like, and there is rising upward.
From the victory of the collective breath: blazing forth.
From concentration on the relation of hearing and space: divine hearing.
From concentration on the relation of body and space, and from becoming one with lightness like a feather: passing through space.
The great bodilessness is an outer, non-imagined process of mind, from which the light-covering disappears.
From concentration on the gross, the own-form, the subtle, their relation, and their “meaningfulness”: victory over the elements.
From this comes the perfection of the body, minuteness and the others, and phenomena no longer cause harm.
Beauty of form, strength, and diamond-hardness are the perfections of the body.
From concentration on grasping, own-form, self-ness, their relation, and their meaningfulness: victory over the senses.
From this comes the speed of the thinking mind, existence independent of organs, and victory over the substance of being.
Only one who sees the difference between the spiritual and the Subject stands over the whole of being and can bear omniscience.
One who is without desire even in this, through the disappearance of the seed of wrong, becomes Alone-One.
If invited to a high position, one should not trust oneself, so as to avoid re-binding to what is undesirable.
By concentrating on the moments and their divisions: knowledge born from discrimination.
Then even two similar things that cannot yet be distinguished by origin, mark, or place can be experienced.
Knowledge born from discrimination is all-embracing, concerning every object of sense, concerning objects of all times, without sequence.
The equal purification of the spiritual and the Subject is Aloneness.
The Quarter Concerning Aloneness
Birth, plant, word, burning-through, and ecstasy give rise to fulfilment.
Passing into another birth comes from the fullness of nature.
The triggering cause does not set nature in motion; it only breaks through the dam, like the farmer.
The forming minds arise purely from self-ness.
In different workings, one mind is the cause of the others.
Among these, the mind born from immersion is without inclination.
The karma of the yogi is not black or white; for others it is threefold.
From that, only the memory-traces corresponding to the consequences manifest.
Separated in regard to birth, place, and time, they are nevertheless continuous, because impulse and memory are of one essence.
And these are without beginning, because desire is eternal.
Cause and effect, foundation and its support belong together. If these cease, those cease as well.
The past and the future exist in their own form, because the paths of phenomena differ.
These are manifested or subtle, according to the essence of the qualities.
From the unity of changes comes the reality of the thing.
The thing is identical, yet because the paths of minds differ, the two differ.
The thing does not depend on one mind. What would happen to it if it were not perceived?
The thing is known or unknown according to the colouring of the mind.
The processes of the mind are always known by their owner, because the Subject is unchanging.
It has no light of its own, as it is of the nature of the seen.
And at one moment it cannot be directed in two ways.
If one mind were the object of another mind, intellect would collide into intellect and memory would become confused.
In the unmoving knower, taking the form of the mind, its own meaning becomes conscious.
The mind, coloured by the Seer and the seen, reaches any aim.
Though variegated by countless memory-traces, it exists nevertheless for another, because of connectedness.
For the one who sees with distinction, the experience of “I am” disappears.
Then the mind's immersion in distinction draws towards Aloneness.
In its gaps other images arise from impulses.
Their cessation, as was said concerning the afflictions.
One who even at the final reckoning is not grasping for gain, through all-embracing discriminating vision — attains the ecstasy of the Cloud of Law.
From then the afflictive karma ceases.
Then all veils of imperfection disappear, and because knowledge is infinite, little remains to be known.
Then the sequence of the transformations of the qualities comes to an end, its purpose fulfilled.
Sequence is the linking of moments, graspable at the end of transformations.
Aloneness is the withdrawal of the qualities, the emptying of their purpose for the Subject, or the consolidation of the power of self-awareness in its own form.
End.