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05 - Book Two, Sutras 1-27 - The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali · Sacred Texts Archive

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Book two Sutras one to twenty seven Sutra one. The practices which make for
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union with the soul are fervent aspiration, spiritual reading, and complete obedience to
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the Master. The word which I have rendered fervent aspiration, means primarily fire,
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and in the Eastern teaching it means the fire which gives life and light,
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and at the same time the fire which purifies. We have therefore as
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our first practice, as the first of the means of spiritual growth, that
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fiery quality of the will, which enkindles and illumines, and at the same
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time the steady practice of purification, the burning away of all known impurities.
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Spiritual reading is so universally accepted and understood that it needs no comments. The
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very study of Potangali Sutras is an exercise in spiritual reading, and a very
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effective one, And so with all other books of the soul. Obedience to
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the Master means that we shall make the will of the Master our will,
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and shall conform in all ways to the will of the Divine, setting aside
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the wills of self, which are but psychic distortions of the one divine will.
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The constant effort to obey in all the ways we know and understand will
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reveal new ways and new tasks, the evidence of new growth of the soul.
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Nothing will do more for the spiritual man in us than this, for
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there is no such regenerating power as the awakening spiritual will. Sutre two.
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Their aim is to bring soul vision and to wear away hindrances. The aim
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of fervor, spiritual reading and obedience to the Master is to bring soul vision
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and to wear away hindrances, or to use the phrase we have already adopted.
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The aim of these practices is to help the spiritual man to own in
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his eyes, to help him also to throw aside the veils and disguises,
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the enmeshing psychic nets which surround him, tying his hands, as it were,
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and bandaging his eyes. And this, as all teachers testify, is
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a long and arduous task, a steady up pill fight, demanding fine courage
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and persistent toil. Fervor. The fire of the spiritual will is, as
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we said twofold. It illumines, and so helps the spiritual man to see.
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And it also burns up the nets and meshes which ensnare the spiritual man.
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So would the other means spiritual reading and obedience. Each in its action
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is twofold, wearing away the psychical and upbuilding the spiritual man. Sutra three.
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These are the hindrances, the darkness of unwisdom, self assertion, lust,
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hate, attachment. Let us try to translate this into terms of the
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psychical and spiritual man. The darkness of unwisdom is primarily the self absorption of
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the psychical man, his complete preoccupation with his own hopes and fears, plans
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and purposes, sensations and desires, so that he fails to see or refuses
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to see, that there is a spiritual man, and so doggedly resists all
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efforts of the spiritual man to cast off his psychic tyrant and set himself free.
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This is the real darkness. And all those who deny the immortality of
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the soul, or deny the soul's existence, and so lay out their lives
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wholly for the psychical mortal man and his ambitions are under the power of darkness.
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Born of this darkness, this psychic self absorption is the dogged conviction that
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the psychic personal man has separate, exclusive interests which he can follow for himself
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alone. And this conviction, when put into practice in our life, leads
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to contest with other personalities, and so to hate. This hate again makes
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against the spiritual man, since it hinders the revelation of the high harmony between
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the spiritual man and his other selves, a harmony to be revealed only through
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the practice of love, that perfect love which casts out fear. In like
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manner, lust is the psychic man's craving for the stimulus of sensation, the
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din of which smothers the voice of the spiritual man, as in Shakespeare's phrase,
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the cackling geese would drown the song of the nightingale. And this craving
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for stimulus is the fruit of weakness, coming from the failure to find strength
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in the primal life of the spiritual man. Attachment is but another name for
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psychic self absorption, for we are absorbed not in outward things, but rather
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in their images within our minds. Our inner eyes are fixed on them,
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our inner desires brood over them, and we blind ourselves to the presence of
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the prisoner, the enmeshed and fettered spiritual man. Sutraphor the darkness of unwisdom,
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is the field of the others. These hindrances may be dormant or worn
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thin, or suspended or expanded. Here we have really two sutras in one.
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The first has been explained already. In the darkness of unwisdom grow the
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parasites, hate, lust, attachments. They are all outgrowths of the self
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absorption of the psychical self. Next, we are told that these barriers may
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be either dormant or suspended, or expanded or worn thin. Faults which are
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dormant will be brought out through the pressure of life or through the pressure of
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strong aspiration. Thus expanded, they must be fought and conquered, or,
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as potently a quaintly says, they must be worn thin as a veil might,
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or the links of anacals Sutra five. The darkness of ignorance is holding
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that which is unenduring, impure, full of pain, not the soul,
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to be eternal, pure, full of joy, the soul. This we
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have really considered already. The psychic man is unenduring, impure, full of
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pain, not the soul, not the real self. The spiritual man is
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enduring, pure, full of joy, the real self. The darkness of
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un wisdom is therefore the self absorption of the psychical personal man to the exclusion
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of the spiritual man. It is the belief carried into action that the personal
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man is the real man, the man for whom we should toil, for
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whom we should build, for whom we should live. This is that psychical
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man, of whom it is said, he that soweth to the flesh shall
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of the flesh reap corruption. Sutra six. Self assertion comes from thinking of
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the seer and the instrument of vision as forming one's self. This is the
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fundamental idea of the Sanchia philosophy, of which yoga is avowedly the practical side.
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To translate this into our terms, we may say that the seer is
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the spiritual man, the instrument of vision is the psychical man, through which
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the spiritual man gains experience of the outer world. But we turn the servants
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into the master. We attribute to the psychical man the personal self, a
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reality which really belongs to the spiritual man alone. And so, thinking of
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the quality of the spiritual man as belonging to the psychical we merge the spiritual
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man in the psychical or, as the text says, we think of the
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two as forming one's self. Sutra seven lust is the resting in the sense
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of enjoyment. This has been explained again and again sensation, as for example,
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the sense of taste is meant to be the guide to action, in
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this case the choice of wholesome food and the avoidance of poisonous and hurtful things.
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But if we rest in the sense of taste as a pleasure in itself,
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rest that is, in the psychical side of taste, we fall into
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gluttony and live to eat instead of eating to live. So will the other
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great organic power, the power of reproduction. This lust comes into being through
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resting in the sensation and looking for pleasure from that sutra eate. Hate is
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the resting in the sense of pain. Pain comes for the most part from
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the strife of personalities, the jarring discords between psychic selves, each of which
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deems itself supreme. A dwelling on this pain breeds hate, which tears the
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warring cells yet further asunder and puts new enmity between them, thus hindering the
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harmony of the real. The reconciliation through the soul Suturnine attachment is the desire
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toward life, even in the wise carried forward by its own energy. The
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life here desired is the psychic life, the intensely vibrating life of the psychical
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self. This prevails even in those who have attained much wisdom, so long
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as it falls short of the wisdom of complete renunciation, complete obedience to each
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least behest of the spiritual man and of the Master who guards and aids the
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spiritual man. The desire of sensation, the desire of psychic life, reproduces
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itself, carried on by its own energy and momentum, and hence comes the
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circle of death and rebirth. Death and rebirth instead of the liberation of the
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spiritual man Sutriten. These hindrances, when they have become subtle, are to
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be removed by a countercurrent. The darkness of unwisdom is to be removed by
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the light of wisdom, pursued through fervor, spiritual reading of holy teachings and
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of life itself, and by obedience to the Master. Lust is to be
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removed by pure aspiration of spiritual life, which, bringing true strength and stability,
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takes away the void of weakness which we try to fill by the stimulus
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of sensations. Hate is to be overcome by love. The fear that arises
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through the sense of separate warring selves is to be stilled by the realization of
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the one's self, the one soul. In all this realization is the perfect
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love that casts out fear. The hindrances are said to have become subtle when,
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by initial efforts they have been located and recognized in the psychic nature Sutra
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eleven. Their active turnings are to be removed by meditation. Here is,
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in truth the whole secret of yoga, the science of the soul. The
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active turnings, the strident vibrations of selfishness, lust, and hate, are
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to be stilled by meditation by letting heart and mind dwell in spiritual life,
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by lifting up the heart to the strong, silent life above, which rests
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in the stillness of eternal love and needs no harsh vibration to convince it of
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true being. Sutra twelve. The burden of bondage to sorrow has its root
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in these hindrances. It will be felt in this life or in a life
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not yet manifested. The burden of bondage to sorrow has its root in the
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darkness of unwisdom, in selfishness, in lust, in hate, in attachment
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to sensation. All these are in the last analysis, absorption in the psychical
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self, and this means sorrow, because it means the sense of separateness,
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and this means drawing discord and inevitable death. But the psychical self will breed
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a new psychical self in a new birth, and so new sorrows in a
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life not yet manifest Sutra thirteen. From this root there grow and ripen the
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fruits of birth, of the life span of all that is tasted in life.
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Fully, to comments on this would be to write a treatise on karma
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and its practical working in detail, whereby the place and time of the next
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birth, its content and duration are determined. And to do this the present
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commentator is in no wise fitted. But this much is clearly understood, that
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through a kind of spiritual gravitation, the incarnating self is drawn to a home
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and life circle which will give its scope and discipline, And its need of
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discipline is clearly conditioned by its character, its standing, its accomplishment Sutra fourteen.
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These bare fruits of rejoicing or of affliction, as they are sprung from
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holy or unholy works, Since holiness is obedience to divine law to the law
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of divine harmony, and obedience to harmony strengthens that harmony in the soul,
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which is the one true joy. Therefore joy comes of holiness comes indeed in
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no other way. And as unholiness is disobedience, and therefore discord, Therefore
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unholiness makes for pain. And this twofold law is true, whether the cause
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take effect in this or in a yet unmanifested birth Suitra fifteen. To him
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who possesses discernment, all personal life is misery because it ever waxes and wanes,
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is ever afflicted with restlessness, makes ever new dynamic impresses in the mind,
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and because all its activities war with each other. The whole life of
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the psychic self is misery because it ever waxes and wanes, because birth brings
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inevitable death, because there is no expectation without its shadow fear. The life
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of the psychic self is misery because it is afflicted with restlessness, so that
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he who has much finds not satisfaction, but rather the wetted hunger for more.
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The fire is not quenched by pouring oil on it, so desire is
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not quenched by the satisfaction of desire. Again, the life of the psychic
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self is misery because it makes ever new dynamic impresses on the mind. Because
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a desire satisfied is but the seed from which springs the dea desire to find
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like satisfaction. Again, the appetite comes in eating, as the proverb says,
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and grows by what it feeds on. And the psychic self, torn
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with conflicting desires, is ever the house divided against itself, which must surely
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fall Sutra sixteen. This pain is to be warded off before it has come.
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In other words, we cannot cure the pains of life by laying on
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them any bomb. We must cut the root absorption in the psychical self.
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So it is said, there is no cure for the misery of longing,
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but to fix the heart upon the eternal Sutra seventeen. The cause of what
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is to be warded off is the absorption of the seer in things seen.
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Here again we have the fundamental idea of the sankia, which is the intellectual
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counterpart of the yoga system. The cause of what is to be warded off,
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the root of misery is the absorption of consciousness in the psychical man.
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And the things which beguile the psychical man. Their cure is liberation. Sutra
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eighteen. Things seen have as their property manifestation action inertia. They form the
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basis of the elements and the sense powers they make for experience and for liberation.
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Here is the whole philosophy of life. Things seen the total of the
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phenomena possessed as their property, manifestation, action, inertia, the qualities of
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force and matter in combination. These in their grosser form make the material world.
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In their finer, more subjective form, they make the psychical world the
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world of sense impressions and mind images. And through this totality of the phenomenon,
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the soul gains experience and is prepared for liberation. In other words,
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the whole outer world exists for the purposes of the soul and finds in this
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its true reason for being Sutre nineteen. The grades or layers of the three
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potencies are the defined, the undefined, that with distinctive mark, that without
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distinctive mark, or as we might say, there are two strata of the
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physical and two strata of the psychical realms. In each there is the side
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of form and the side of force. The form side of the physical is
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here called the defined. The fore side of the physical is the undefined,
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that which has no boundaries. So in the psychical there is the form side,
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that with distinctive marks, such as the characteristic features of mind images.
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And there is the fore side without distinctive marks, such as the forces of
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desire or fear, which may flow now to this mind image, now to
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that Sutra twenty The seer is pure vision. Though pure, he looks out
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through the vesture of the mind. The seer, as always is the spiritual
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man, whose deepest consciousness is pure vision, the pure life of the eternal.
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But the spiritual man, as yet unseeing in his proper person, looks
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out in the world through the eyes of the psychical man, by whom he
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is enfolded and enmeshed. The task is to set this prisoner free, to
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clear the dust of ages from this very temple Suitre twenty one. The very
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essence of things seen is that they exist for the seer. The things of
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outer life, not only material things, but the psychic man also exist in
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very deed for the purposes of the seer, the soul, the spiritual man.
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Disaster comes when the psychical man sets up, so to speak, on
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his own account, trying to live for himself alone, and taking material things
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to solace his loneliness Suitre twenty two. Though fallen away from him who has
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reached the goal, things seen have not altogether fallen away, since they still
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exist for others. When one of us conquers hate, hate does not thereby
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cease out of the world, since others still hate and suffer hatred. So
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with other delusions, which hold us in bondage to material things, and through
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which we look at all material things. When the colored veil of illusion is
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gone, the world which saw through it is also gone. For now we
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see life as it is in the white radiance of eternity. But for others
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the colored veil remains, and therefore the world thus colored by it remains for
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them, and will remain till they too conquer delusion Suiture twenty three. The
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association of the seer with things seen is the cause of the realizing of the
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nature of things seen, and also of the realizing of the nature of the
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seer. Life is educative. All life's infinite variety is for discipline for the
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development of the soul. So passing through many lives. The soul learns the
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secrets of the world, the august laws that are written in the form of
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the snow crystal, or the majestic order of the stars. Yet all these
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laws are but reflections, but projections outward of the laws of the soul.
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Therefore, in learning these, the soul learns to know itself. All life
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is but the mirror, wherein the soul learns to know its own face Sutra
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twenty four. The cause of this association is the darkness of unwisdom. The
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darkness of unwisdom is the absorption of consciousness in the personal life and the thing
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seen by the personal life. This is the fall through which comes experience,
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the learning of the lessons of life. When they are learned, the day
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of redemption is at hand Sutra twenty five. The bringing of this association to
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an end, by bringing the darkness of unwisdom to an end is the great
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liberation. This is the seer's attainment of his own pure being. When the
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spiritual man has through the psychical, learned all life's lessons, the time has
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come for him to put off the veil and disguise of the psychical and to
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stand revealed a king in the house of the Father. So shall he enter
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into his kingdom and go no more out Suitra twenty six. A discerning,
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which is carried on without wavering is the means of liberation. Here we come
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close to the pure Vedanta with the discernment between the eternal and the temporal.
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Saint Paul, following after Philo and Plato, lays down the same fundamental principle.
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The things seen are temporal, the things unseen are eternal. Potentially means
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something more than an intellectual assent, though this too is vital. He has
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in view a constant discriminating in act as well as thought, of the two
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ways which present themselves for every deed or choice. Always to choose the higher
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way, that which makes for the things eternal, honesty rather than roguery,
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courage and not cowardice, the things of another rather than one's own, sacrifice
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and not indulgence. This true discernment, carried out constantly makes for liberation Suitor
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twenty seven. His illumination is sevenfold, rising in successive stages. Potentiali's text
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does not tell us what the seven stages of this illumination are. The commentator
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thus describes them first. The danger to be escaped is recognized. It need
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not to be recognized a second time. Second, the causes of the danger
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to be escaped are worn away. They need not be worn away a second
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time. Third, the way of escape is clearly perceived by the contemplation,
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which checks psychic perturbation. Fourth, the means of escape clear discernment has been
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developed. This is the fourfold release belonging to insight. The final release from
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the psychic is threefold, as fifth of the seven degrees. The dominance of
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its thinking is ended as sixth. Its potencies, like rocks from a precipice,
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follow themselves once dissolved. They do not grow again. Then, as
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seventh, freed from these potencies, the spiritual man stands nforth in his own
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nature as purity and life. Happy is the spiritual man who beholds the sevenfold
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illumination in its ascending stages. End of Book two, Suitras one to twenty seven.