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10 - Introduction to Book Four - The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali · Sacred Texts Archive

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  Introduction to Book four. The third book of the Sutras has fairly completed the
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  history of the birth and growth of the spiritual man and the enumeration of his
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  powers, at least so far as concerns that first epoch in his immortal life,
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  which immediately succeeds and supersedes the life of the natural man. In the
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  fourth book, we are to consider what one might call the mechanism of salvation,
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  the ideally simple working of cosmic law, which brings the spiritual man to
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  birth, growth, and fullness of power, and prepares him for the splendid,
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  toilsome further stages of his great journey home. The Sutras are here brief
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  to obscurity. Only a few words, for example, are given to the
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  great triune mystery and illusion of time. A phraser two indicates the sweep of
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  some universal law. Yet it is hoped that by keeping our eyes fixed on
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  the spiritual man, remembering that he is the hero of the story, and
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  that all that is written concerns him and his adventures, we may be able
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  to find our way through this thicket of tangled words and keep in our hands
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  the clue to the mystery. The last part of the last book needs little
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  introduction. In a sense, it is the most important part of the whole
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  treatise, since it unmasks the nature of the personality, that psychical mind,
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  which is the wakeful enemy of all who seek to tread the path. Even
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  now we can hear it whispering the doubt whether that can be a good path,
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  which thus sets mind at defiance. If this then be the most vital
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  and fundamental part of the teaching, should it not stand at the very beginning.
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  It may seem so at first, But had it stood there, we
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  should not have comprehended it. For he who would know the doctrine must lead
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  the life, doing the will of his father, which is in heaven.
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  End of introduction to Book four.