The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali - Chapter 3 - On Divine Powers
Patanjali
©Yoga People, LLC 2017
- One-pointedness is steadfastness of the mind.
- Unbroken continuation of that mental ability is meditation.
- That same meditation when there is only consciousness of the object of meditation and not of the mind is realization.
- The three appearing together are self-control.
- By mastery comes wisdom.
- The application of mastery is by stages.
- The three are more efficacious than the restraints.
- Even that is external to the seedless realization.
- The significant aspect is the union of the mind with the moment of absorption, when the outgoing thought disappears and the absorptive experience appears.
- From sublimation of this union comes the peaceful flow of unbroken unitive cognition.
- The contemplative transformation of this is equalmindedness, witnessing the rise and destruction of distraction as well as one-pointedness itself.
- The mind becomes one-pointed when the subsiding and rising thought-waves are exactly similar.
- In this state, it passes beyond the changes of inherent characteristics, properties and the conditional modifications of object or sensory recognition.
- 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.
- The succession of these changes in that entity is the cause of its modification.
- By self-control over these three-fold changes (of property, character and condition), knowledge of the past and the future arises.
- 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.
- By self-control on the perception of mental impressions, knowledge of previous lives arises.
- By self-control on any mark of a body, the wisdom of the mind activating that body arises.
- By self-control on the form of a body, by suspending perceptibility and separating effulgence therefrom, there arises invisibility and inaudibilty.
- Action is of two kinds, dormant and fruitful. By self-control on such action, one portends the time of death.
- By performing self-control on friendliness, the strength to grant joy arises.
- By self-control over any kind of strength, such as that of the elephant, that very strength arises.
- By self-control on the primal activator comes knowledge of the hidden, the subtle, and the distant.
- By self-control on the Sun comes knowledge of spatial specificities.
- By self-control on the Moon comes knowledge of the heavens.
- By self-control on the Polestar arises knowledge of orbits.
- By self-control on the navel arises knowledge of the constitution of the body.
- By self-control on the pit of the throat one subdues hunger and thirst.
- By self-control on the tube within the chest one acquires absolute steadiness.
- By self-control on the light in the head one envisions perfected beings.
- There is knowledge of everything from intuition.
- Self-control on the heart brings knowledge of the mental entity.
- 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.
- This spontaneous enlightenment results in intuitional perception of hearing, touching, seeing and smelling.
- To the outward turned mind, the sensory organs are perfections, but are obstacles to realization.
- 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.
- By self-control of the nerve-currents utilising the lifebreath, one may levitate, walk on water, swamps, thorns, or the like.
- By self-control over the maintenance of breath, one may radiate light.
- By self-control on the relation of the ear to the ether one gains distant hearing.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Perfection of the body consists in beauty, grace, strength and adamantine hardness.
- 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.
- From that come swiftness of mind, independence of perception, and mastery over primoridal matter.
- To one who recognizes the distinctive relation between vitality and indweller comes omnipotence and omniscience.
- Even for the destruction of the seed of bondage by desirelessness there comes absolute independence.
- When invited by invisible beings one should be neither flattered nor satisfied, for there is yet a possibility of ignorance rising up.
- By self-control over single moments and their succession there is wisdom born of discrimination.
- From that there is recognition of two similars when that difference cannot be distinguished by class, characteristic or position.
- Intuition, which is the entire discriminative knowledge, relates to all objects at all times, and is without succession.
- Liberation is attained when there is equal purity between vitality and the indweller.
|