PATANJALI'S VISION OF ONENESS
AN INTERPRETIVE TRANSLATION BY SWAMI VENKATESANANDA

The Yoga Sutras

Om Namah Sivanandaya OM  Om Namo Venkatesaya
Om Tat Sat

SRI PATANJALA YOGA DARSHANAM



Chapter 1

I. 1.

atha yoga 'nusasanam
 

Now, when a sincere seeker approaches an enlightened teacher, with the right attitude of discipleship (viz. ,free of preconceived notions and prejudices, and full of intelligent faith and receptivity) and with the right spirit of inquiry, at the right time and the right place, communication of yoga takes place.

 

I. 2.

yoga citta vritti nirodaha

 
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Yoga happens when there is stilling (in the sense of continual and vigilant watchfulness) of the movement of thought - without which there is no movement.

(Audio Clip Part 2)

I. 3.

tada drasthuh svarupe 'vasthanam
 

In the light of non-volitional, non-moving and therefore spontaneous and choiceless awareness the undivided intelligence with its apparent and passing modifications or movements of thought within itself is not confused with nor confined to any of these. Then (when yoga thus happens), the seer or the homogeneous intelligence which is ignorantly regarded as the separate experiences of sensations and emotions, and the separate performer of actions, is not split up into one or the other of the states or modifications of the mind, and exists by itself and as itself.

 
     

I.4.

vritti sarupyam itaratra

At other times, when yoga does not happen and when the mind is busily occupied with the movement, there is a cloud of confusion in the undivided, homogeneous intelligence. In the shadow of that cloud, there arises false identification or cognition of the movement of the mind-fragment and hence distorted understanding .The single concept or idea or the single movement of thought is mistaken as the totality.

I. 5.

vrttayah pancatayyah klista 'klistah

 

These apparent movements or states or moods of the mind, which are concepts, ideas or images in it, can all be grouped under five categories, irrespective of whether they are experienced as painful or not-painful, and whether or not they are covertly or clearly tainted by the five-fold afflictions described later.

I. 6.

These five categories of apparent movements of the mind are:

  1. proven theory, which is often assumed to have been reliably proved and therefore to constitute right knowledge; (or, rationalization of the movement of thought .)
  2. unsound thinking or wrong knowledge, assumptions, presumptions, beliefs (deductions and inference may also be included here); (or verbal condemnation of the movement of thought as wrong.)
  3. (fancy or hallucination or imagination totally unrelated to any proven or assumed theories, which may also include the delusion that one is already out of the movement of thought .
  4. a state of dullness or sleep; or succumbing to the movement of thought, feeling it is impossible to go beyond it;
  5. memory, or the recollection of a teaching or an experience which gives rise to the notion that it is possible to go beyond the movement of thought; such a notion forms an image.

 

I. 7.

pratyaksha 'numanah'gamah pramanah
 

What are proven theories?

 Theories are said to derive their proof from one or the other of the following sources:

 (1) direct perception, sense-experience, or intuition,

 (2) deduction or extension of direct perception and sense-experience or beliefs: in the absence of direct proof or experience, indirect proof is deduced from the right or wrong application of principles of logic chosen by oneself, which often lead to vague generalizations or presumptions that " since the theory comes from a usually reliable source, it must be correct. "

 (3) scriptural or other trustworthy testimony or authority - where, again, one accepts as proof the statements of those whom one has accepted as THE authority, such acceptance being blind and fanatic.

 

1. 8.

Unsound thinking or wrong knowledge is based on error, on mistaken identity, where the cognition is unreal and faulty and hence the knowledge is faulty, too, and where there is no agreement between the expression and the experience, between the substance and the description .

I. 9.

Fanciful or hallucinatory expressions and even experiences or imaginations are "sound without substance", empty words and phrases or descriptions which have no corresponding reality, however realistic or inspiring or satisfying they may appear to be: hence they are the most deceptive and least trustworthy. .

I. 10.

When nothingness or void is the content of the mind, when the idea of nothingness alone prevails, or when the mind thinks that it does not think at all, there is sleep, which is a state of mental or psychic inertia.

CONTINUE

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