The text translated here is an historical find: an unknown commentary on the Yoga sūtra-s of Patañjali by Śaṅkara, the most eminent philosopher of ancient India. Present indications are that it is likely to be authentic, which would date it about AD 700.

The many references to Yoga meditation in his accepted works have sometimes been regarded as concessions to accepted ideas of the time, and not really his own views. If he has chosen to write a commentary on Yoga meditation, it must have been a central part of his own standpoint, although he was opposed to some of the philosophical doctrines of the official Yoga school. One would expect a tendency to modify those unacceptable doctrines, if this text is really by Śaṅkara. This turns out to be the case.

For those familiar with yoga meditation, who want to go straight into the text, here is the method of presentation:

(1) The basic text, the Yoga sūtra-s of Patañjali (about AD 300), is displayed in large type thus:

Sūtra 1.01 Now the exposition of yoga

(2) Below each sūtra is a (mostly brief) commentary by Vyāsa (about AD 600). This is printed in italics, and set in from the left-hand margin. Sometimes this commentary is printed in separate paragraphs.

The word Now means that this is the beginning, and the topic now begun is understood to be an exposition of yoga

(3) Below each section of the Vyāsa commentary, and sometimes below the sūtra itself, is the newly discovered Śaṅkara sub-commentary (technically called a vivaraṇa), printed in roman type and not set in from the margin, thus:

No one will follow through the practices and restrictions of yoga unless the goal and the related means to it have been clearly set out, and the commentator first explains what they were in the mind of the sūtra author, so that people may be led to practice.

***

The structure of the Sanskrit text, which has to be followed in the translation, is that the words or phrases of the original sūtra, then of Vyāsa’s bhāṣya commentary, have first to be quoted and glossed, in order. In this translation, the sūtra or bhāṣya words being glossed in the main Śaṅkara vivaraṇa are given in italics.

Example:

(Vyāsa) When a posture has been mastered, he is not overwhelmed by opposites like heat and cold.

(Śaṅkara) From that, he becomes immune to the opposites. From that, from becoming firm in a posture. He gives an example of what he means: not overwhelmed by opposites like heat and cold.

The text is in four Parts: I Samādhi (sustained trance-concentration); II Means; III Glory (supernormal powers, limited and limiting); and IV Transcendental Aloneness

Yoga

Yoga practice as a technique of meditation, under strict rules of morals, austerity and control of instinctive impulses, and generally with a religious background, is ancient in India. The aim is release from all limitations, including death. This is to be realized not by a physical or mental immortality, but by disentangling the true self- in this text called Puruṣa – from illusory identification with limitations. Then Puruṣa stands in its own nature, pure consciousness without the movement in consciousness called thought: this is release. In the philosophy of the Yoga school as it developed, it came to be called kaivalya or Transcendental Aloneness.

Such an ideal of release from the mind-cage is not appealing to the generality of mankind, who associate freedom with something like jubilation and triumphant states of mind. But the deepest tradition of what is now India always had a keen sense of the constriction of the body-mind complex. The yoga aspirant regards the man of the world, and also those aiming at supernormal enjoyments in some heaven, as prisoners simply wanting more prestige and space within the prison, or perhaps a better prison, but who have not realized that they are imprisoned. They are like the small children in a prison camp, who do not feel confined. Provided the food and affection hold up, and they are not frightened, their wishes do not go beyond immediate circumstances. They would not want to leave the place: it is home. But when they grow up, they feel the need to get out.

Still, the notion of a sort of mindless emptiness, which is the nearest most people can get to imagining consciousness absolute, is not attractive. Many yogic aspirants are thinking at the beginning of some of the supernormal powers and knowledge described in repetitive detail in the third part of these Yoga sūtra-s (with the warning that they are sources of inevitable pain). The powers are presented in the text not to invite people to practise them, but because some of them may occur spontaneously in anyone practising meditation on the true Self. Unless a practitioner has had some warning that one of these may come to him, and that they are all limited and limiting, and further that the disastrous excitement they cause may throw him back into the whirl of futile desires for a long time, he can be held up for years, or even a lifetime.

It is noteworthy that in this text, in his commentary on the five sūtra-s on God (I.23–28), Śaṅkara swings the whole trend of the practice towards oneness with God. He quotes the Gītā verse XI.55:

In the Gītā this is identification with the creator-Lord, also described at great length in the commentary to the five Yoga sūtras here. It is quite different from the Transcendental Aloneness of the official Yoga school (to which, however, elsewhere he gives formal allegiance as a commentator on a Yoga text).

Yoga texts

A tradition developed in India that any system of religious or mystical practice must have as a background some satisfactory theory of the true nature of the universe and of the soul, and of its own modus operandi. In the case of yoga, this demand was met by the rise of a Yoga school; it is usually regarded (as in the present text, for instance) as sharing most of its philosophical ideas with the Sāṅkhya school, except that Yoga proposed the existence of a god where Sāṅkhya put the question aside as not susceptible of proof. Both Sāṅkhya and the Yoga system are dualistic: Puruṣa or transcendental self, pradhāna or unmanifest nature which periodically manifests as mind and matter, are equally real and eternal.

The earliest substantial text now surviving on the Yoga school – there are fragments of others – is the Yoga sūtra-s of Patañjali, tentatively dated about AD 300. A book of sūtra-s was little more than a collection of headings, similar to those circulated by any teacher to pupils, to be filled out by oral instructions, without which many of them can hardly be understood. The oral traditions later came to be recorded in brief written commentaries; these in turn became fuller – sub-commentaries on the commentaries – and finally systematic presentations of the whole system, but still under the sūtra headings. This format occasionally necessitated long digressions from the ostensible subject-heading.

An important part of the presentation was refutation of objections, and there are long sections of debate against an opponent, who as fast as one position is refuted shifts his standpoint to another. Some of the objections are based on the views of philosophical schools which were elaborately worked out and could be strongly supported; where the opponent is simply raising one point, it may look rather feeble in isolation from the rest of the system.

The first commentary on Patañjali is that by Vyāsa. He is thought to have lived some time between AD 540 and 650. The next established commentary, on both the sūtra-s and on Vyāsa, is a long work by the famous Vācaspati, dated about AD 850. He was by conviction a follower of the Vedānta school, which teaches an omniscient god who projects, supports and withdraws the universe by his divine power called māyā, and who is also the real self of everything in it. Māyā has an element of illusion, and the universe, though it appears, is not as real as god. Ultimately there is no duality: only god exists.

In his commentary, however, Vācaspati adopted what had developed as the doctrine of the classical Yoga school: the universe is real, arising from unmanifest subtle matter (pradhāna) which has no intelligence of its own, and is not created by any intelligent god. There is a god, but he is mainly teacher and helper, and only one self (Puruṣa) out of many.

There were thus three works which laid the foundations of the Yoga philosophical school: Patañjali’s Yoga sūtra-s about AD 300; Vyāsa’s commentary, about AD 600; and the sub-commentary by Vācaspati, about AD 850. The Yoga sūtra-s have been translated many times, an early version being by Ballantyne in 1880; Vyāsa also has been translated many times. A masterly translation of Vācaspati was published by Professor J. H. Woods of Harvard in 1914.

The Śaṅkara sub-commentary (Vivaraṇa)

There has now appeared, unexpectedly, a sub-commentary which claims to be by Śaṅkara, the great commentator on the Upaniṣads and the Bhagavad Gītā, and the de facto founder of the non-dual Vedānta school. He lived about AD 700, and if this is genuinely by him it will precede Vācaspati’s work by some 150 years, and thus be of great importance. It will be an unknown work, on the theory and practice of yoga, by India’s greatest religious and philosophical genius.

The original Sanskrit text was published in 1952 as No. 94 in the Madras Government Oriental Series. It was based on a single surviving manuscript, which had to be re-arranged and considerably edited. This was done with great learning and patience by two pandits: P. S. Rama Sastri and S. R. Krishnamurti Sastri. Their judgement was, that this is a genuine lost work of Śaṅkara. It is certain that it existed in the fourteenth century, for it is quoted in a work of that date. Many of those who have worked on it are inclined to think it may well go back to Śaṅkara, about AD 700, and after working on it for a good time, I think it very probable. So far I have found nothing in it which would rule out the possibility, and quite a lot to support it. For the present purpose I shall assume it is by him.

The Yoga sūtra-s are in four Parts: I – Samādhi (trance in which the mental processes are inhibited partially or wholly); II – Means; III – Glory; IV – Kaivalya (Transcendental Aloneness). It is in the first Part, Samādhi, that he puts forward most of the original views, sometimes at great length, where he brings the thought into line with the Vedānta philosophy of which he was the leading representative. While ostensibly commenting on Vyāsa, he gives interpretations which are opposed to those of the Yoga school, at least as it developed. The most important passages come in the little group of sūtra-s on God, which total only five out of the fifty-one sūtra-s in this first Part. His remarks on these five sūtra-s take up nearly one-quarter of his commentary on the whole Part. Meditation on God, by the use of the syllable ‘OM’ in particular, has become the main practice of the yoga, whereas in Patañjali and in Vyāsa it is merely an alternative.

A Western reader may be surprised to find so much philosophical discussion in a text which claims to be a practical manual. But the view in India was that, as Śaṅkara explains at the beginning, people will not continue practice which demands their whole life unless they are intellectually satisfied about the goal and the means to it. This view is based on wide experience of human nature.

As a Western example, Dr Esdaile in Calcutta (1840) carried out hundreds of operations, including amputations, under hypnosis without pain to the patients, and modern surgeons who read the reports find them impressive; but he could give no account of how it worked, and his medical colleagues gave him no support. Lord Dalhousie, the Governor of Bengal, however, who knew prejudice when he saw it, backed Esdaile and put him in charge of a hospital in Calcutta. But when Dr Esdaile returned to Britain, he was far less successful with the patients in his native Aberdeen. They must have longed to be freed from pain, but because of their intellectual doubts could not give the full co-operation required. The Indian patients, on the other hand, could do so because there was justification in their own culture for the idea that mind could be separated from the operation of the senses. Soon after (1846), ether and chloroform were discovered, and the whole subject was dropped with relief. There is still no satisfactory account of hypnosis in Western intellectual terms, and this is undoubtedly a barrier to its further development; there is a justifiable unease about employing something not properly understood.

Śaṅkara stresses that intellectual conviction is supremely important in the early stages of yoga especially. Before there has been any direct experience, however small, it is all second-hand, as it were. After the first direct experience (as he explains in the commentary on sūtra I.35), there is an invigoration of the whole personality, and doubts no longer trouble the practitioner.

In the present text, for a long time Śaṅkara makes his explanations on the basis of inference and analogy; not tillsūtra I.25 does he quote sacred authority for his statements about spiritual truths. Once he has begun to do so, however, he cites the Upaniṣads far more than Vyāsa or Vācaspati. This is a possible indication of the genuineness of the work, as Śaṅkara in his other works stresses the absolute necessity of the Upaniṣadic teaching for realization of truth.

A special feature of the sub-commentary is that it presents the regularities of the universe as consciously planned and directed. The arguments are developed at great length, and the author evidently thought them extremely important for yoga practice. The events of the world are indeed predictable, but in the sense that the notes are predictable in a performance by an expert musician, and not in a merely mechanical sense. God controls everything from within.

There are references to something like the ‘anthropic principle’ proposed recently, which shows that the evolution of any form of life in the universe depends rather delicately on apparent ‘coincidences’ among the physical constants.

It is interesting that Śaṅkara had an idea of gravity as a pull. Here it is proposed (1.25) that movements of heavenly bodies are controlled by something like magnetism, and elsewhere in his writings (Praśna Upaniṣad III.8; Taittirīya Upaniṣad II.2.1) he says that things are pulled down to earth. But there too it is stressed that this is a conscious action by the divinity of the earth, who controls it exactly. ‘The deity of the earth by his grace keeps under control, by pulling down, the apāna (down-going) vital current of man; otherwise the body would fall because of its weight or would fly up into the sky if left free.’

There are certain principles which Śaṅkara holds as almost self-evident. One is, that anything that can be imagined or spoken of must be a knowable, and this means that it must be actually known either in the past or present or future. It would be meaningless to try to speak of something which is never known at any time.

The doctrine is extended, so that everything, in the past and future as well as the present, already is. Differences of time are merely of phase; essentially everything exists all the time. A similar view has been proposed by some modern cosmologists.

Śaṅkara assumes knowledge to be something like space: essentially unlimited. Their contents can be limited, and they seem to be limited by barriers. But in fact it is not so. God knows everything all the time.

Main points of the text

Part I. Samādhi

Following a rather disconcerting Indian tradition, the presentation begins with the expert. This Part is for one who already knows how to practise samādhi, sustained concentration in what could be called trance. To do this, he must be one who has greatly reduced the turmoil of illusory desires and fears. The orthodox account runs something like this: Puruṣa, pure consciousness-awareness, gives attention to prakṛti, describable as infinite unmanifest potentiality. As a result of his attention, it goes into world manifestation, as three conflicting elements – sattva (light), rajas (passion-struggle leading inevitably to pain), and tamas (darkness and inertia). Puruṣa is apparently caught up in prakṛti when he identifies himself with an element in it, in the erroneous belief that there is purity, happiness, and permanence to be had in experience of prakṛti. This illusion is called technically Ignorance (a-vidyā).

There is an omniscient god in the cosmos, but he is simply a special kind of Puruṣa, who is never deluded. He is not a creator or governor of the course of things, but confines himself to teaching, and removal of obstacles to release.

In the classical Yoga school, the illusion consists of being fascinated by prakṛti’s displays, which are put on in accordance with the merits and demerits of the souls who experience them. Prakṛti is real enough, but Puruṣa enters it, so to speak, as a soul, under an illusion as to its quality. There is one illusion, and it is removed by reducing the mental processes, first to one, by meditation and detachment, and finally giving them up altogether. A reader might suppose that this would simply lead to sleep. But sleep too is a mental process, and it has to be inhibited like all the others. Then Puruṣa remains in His own transcendental nature. There are many Puruṣa-s.

The swing towards Vedānta

A feature of this text is that there is a consistent pull towards the Vedānta. For instance, the author will say that as all the Puruṣa-s are consciousness pure and alone, it is hard to see how they could be distinguished. If indistinguishable, they will be the same. This is against the official view of the Yoga school in the Yoga-sūtra-s.

Again, God is presented in this text, at great length, as the creator of the universe by his divine mind. In Vedānta too, God is the all-creating and ruling overlord of the universe, which he projects as a sort of magic show, also entering into it as the Inner Ruler of each thing in it. Release can be effected by worshipping him and repetition of his expressing word OM, leading to experience of the real Self as one with God who transcends the universe and all descriptions.

This text continually hints that the universe is unreal, not real as the orthodox view of Yoga would have it. Still, when his duty as a commentator requires it, Śaṅkara presents the formal Yoga view.

In the Vedānta view, there are two illusions, not just one. Puruṣa, the real Self, is fascinated by prakṛti’s displays, under the illusion that happiness and other emotions are there where there is only suffering, and that a real self is there where there is only egoity: but more than that, the whole world-display is also an illusion, put on by the Lord who is within everything in it as the antaryāmin (inner ruler). So that at the very core of prakṛti there is the bliss of Brahman (God); only if the magic show is taken as absolutely real is there suffering. This final Upaniṣadic view is not expressed openly in the Vivaraṇa, but there are various indications of it, such as the references to the world-process as the complex plot of a drama. This is not the same as the Sāṅkhya-Yoga illustration of prakṛti as a dancing-girl.

In Śaṅkara’s Vedānta, the Yoga system is accepted as an authority on meditation practice and some other things like ethics and renunciation. But Vedānta aims to go further, for instance to become aware of the intelligence behind the workings of prakṛti, which is discovered to be divine as set out here in the 17–page long commentary to sūtra I.25.

The total inhibition of mental processes is also described in the Upaniṣads and in the Gītā (for example, VI.25: ‘let him not think of anything’ – this is the highest yoga, comments Śaṅkara). Often the technical terms used are those of Patañjali’s sūtra-s. But the object of meditation must be one recommended in the scriptures on Self-realization, just as here the Vivaraṇa restricts sūtra I.39, ‘Let him meditate on what appeals to him’, to prescribed objects and not to pleasures.

The techniques of samādhi are described. First is one-pointedness, concentration on some one of the prescribed objects – such as the sun, for instance. As the meditation is deeper and more sustained, associations are dropped off: name, concept, time, space, and finally all memories. Mind becomes so clear, pure, and still that the essence of the object of meditation blazes out as it is. When this is practised repeatedly on the same object, the knowledge becomes what is technically called Truth-bearing. In some cases it would correspond to what is called inspiration. The basis of the process is that mind is inherently omniscient, and the yogic practice simply removes its self-imposed limitations, and focuses the omniscience.

In such yogic practitioners, the mental processes are thinned and then reduced to one. The same process is applied to the roots of the mind, the seed-bed of dynamic seeds called saṃskāra, impressions left by actions and thoughts of a beginningless series of previous lives. When surface mental processes are in abeyance, the state consists of saṃskāra-s alone, and in an ordinary unpurified mind it manifests as dream or sleep. But the yogin’s seed-bed of saṃskāra-s, purified by impressions of yogic practice which overcome the other latent impressions (because yoga based on truth will always in the end overcome illusion), supports samādhi for longer and longer periods.

Finally, as detachment from the illusions of worldly ideas becomes complete, all mental processes are inhibited without exception. By extended practice of this, there is no more mental confusion which has obscured the distinction between Puruṣa and prakṛti, and Puruṣa stands out alone as pure awareness. This is a foretaste of release, and soon becomes permanent.

In the first Part, which is about one-third of the whole, Śaṅkara is establishing certain key positions, and refuting key objections, some of them highly technical. The general reader might at his first reading begin from near the end of sūtra I.1, where the Vyāsa commentary says: But the samādhi in the one-pointed mind makes clear the object as it is … Break at page 70, after reading sūtra 1.6 and sūtra 1.7, and come in again at sūtra 1.8: Illusion is false knowledge based on an untrue form.

Part II. Means

This is yoga presented for the man of the world, who must first clear, and then steady, his mind against the fury of illusory passions, and free his life from entanglements.

In sūtra 1, the means are first given collectively as the Yoga of Action (kriyā yoga). It consists of three elements: (1) Tapas: practising keeping the mind serene under the pressure of heat and cold, and other such opposites; (2) Self-study, which is study of the Upaniṣads, and also repetition of the sacred syllable OM; (3) Devotion to God.

These three means can by themselves remove the taints and bring about samādhi. It is noteworthy that when Śaṅkara defines the Yoga of Action (karma yoga) in his commentary to Gītā II.39, it is in the same three terms, and even similar wording.

In fact this is an expansion of the method given in the first Part, in sūtra 23, ‘Or by devotion to the Lord’. It was there described as meditation on the classical indications of God such as the creation and maintenance of the world as explained in the Upaniṣad-s, and also repetition of OM as the expression of God. In this second Part of the yoga sūtra-s, devotion is analysed further. The study and meditation on the Upaniṣad-s, and repetition of OM, are a separate heading, namely Self-study. Devotion to God, which had included them, is now confined to consigning actions to the Lord, or else surrendering the fruits of actions to the Lord. (These are two stages explained in Śaṅkara’s commentary to Gītā XII.10 and 11.)

The triple Yoga of Action will appear again at the end of the second Part, as the last three elements of the observances (sūtra-s II.32 and II.43–II.45). In that place, however, it is said again (sūtra 45) that from devotion alone comes perfection in samādhi. Nevertheless other methods, including the restraints such as harmlessness (ahiṃsā) are given, along with means such as posture. They are all, however, meaningful only as methods of thinning out the taints and helping to steady the mind. Any encouragements to practise such things as posture by promising long-lasting youth are against the spirit of the Yoga sūtra.

Nearly all the elements here are discussed by Śaṅkara in his Bhagavad Gītā commentary, and the arrangement of the restraints and observances of sūtra-s II.30 and II.32 is close to that in a group of verses in the Gītā, which is much older than Patañjali’s sūtra-s:

The Gītā is a textbook of yoga from the practical standpoint, and many of its verses are poetic paraphrases of Upaniṣadic declarations. It does not justify its statements with systematic reasoning, as does the Yoga sūtra. The two texts are complementary to some extent. There is nothing in the Gītā like the elaborate account of the operations of the guṇa-s which is given in the Vivaraṇa here, but the Gītā gives vivid examples of the guṇa-s operating in thought and action of particular kinds. Often these examples show deep insight; for instance, that there is a firmness with which some people cling to fear and depression and grief (XVIII.35).

Śaṅkara here explains the Self-study of sūtra II.1 as study of sacred texts on release, beginning with the Upaniṣad-s. Now the Gītā, though generally taken as a single word ‘song’, has for its fuller title ‘the Upaniṣad sung (gītā) by the Lord’, and Śaṅkara in his commentary on it says that it contains the essence of the Upaniṣad-s. Here in the Vivaraṇa the Gītā is quoted a number of times, and it is called more than once āgama or sacred scripture. Śaṅkara’s Gītā commentary is a help in understanding the Yoga sūtra sub-commentary translated here. In the latter, for example, Śaṅkara modifies the analysis of experience into only lesser or greater pain by a sudden reference to Gītā XVIII.37, which speaks of happiness from inner purity produced by knowledge, non-attachment, meditation and samādhi (sūtra II.15). Again, on sūtra II.13 he refers to the distinction between Yoga and Sāṅkhya, a distinction discussed by him at great length in his Gītā commentary but not elsewhere.

The detailed exposition of the Taints elaborates the background, without which (as was said at the very beginning of the Vivaraṇa) people cannot be expected to sustain their practice. The fine distinctions such as dormant, checked, and scorched are not felt strange today. The comments on sūtra II.5 contain the first grammatical excursus, purely technical and to be passed over.

Then comes Sūtra II.13’s long discussion of karma, on which there is a final apt comment: ‘this course of karma is complicated and hard to know.’ It is noteworthy that on sūtra II.13 the Vivaraṇa overrules Vyāsa by citing Manu, for whom Śaṅkara has always great reverence.

The following analysis of experience into greater or lesser pain is not spiritual hypochondria, but to make the yogin-s vividly aware of the constrictions of present experience. If they sink into an apathy of acceptance the efforts to escape will flag.

The description of the guṇa-s is further background; the practical application is found in Gītā XVII and XVIII.

Vital sections for practice are those on Release and the relation of Seer and Seen (II.20–29). Unless this becomes clear and firm in the yogin, he will never be able to make the final transfer of awareness from a mental idea to pure consciousness. The abandonment of mental ideas will feel like loss of everything, annihilation in fact.

It may be noted that the concept of Puruṣa as for-its-own-sake and all else as for-the-sake-of-another, illustrated with the example of a mirror, is prominent in A Thousand Teachings, one of Śaṅkara’s other major works. It will come again under III.35.

The Part ends with introducing the eight steps of Yoga. Śaṅkara comments that their sole purpose is removal of the Taints, and attainment of samādhi. It is not expected that aspirants will become perfect in them before trying for samādhi. There is a certain lack of enthusiasm for the Restraints and Observances in the famous rush of modern life (when average TV viewing in many countries is over three hours daily), but in fact they are mostly negative: the last three of the Observances have been given already under the Yoga of Action at the beginning of the Part, as sufficient to take away Taints and bring samādhi. These are very positive.

The present sub-commentary on the Yoga sūtra is not a complete manual of practice. Some postures are merely named, leaving actual instruction to a teacher. More details on some points are to be found in the Gītā commentary, though there too a good deal is taken for granted. Take the process of prāṇāyāma. In this text and in the Gītā, exhaling to the limit and then checking the breath, and inhaling to the limit and then checking the breath, are separate practices, distinguished from suddenly holding the breath wherever it happens to be in mid-breath. In many later texts they were combined, and the breath was held only with the lungs full. Breathing with one nostril blocked is also a sign of later date.

Some of the practices of prāṇāyāma outlined in this text need expert direction. Śaṅkara knew the techniques, as shown by some original comments: for instance, on the inner sensations, and the ‘up-stroke’, a marked effect familiar to teachers of meditation. (It is referred to in Gītā VIII.9–13.) Modern yogin-s, such as Hari Prasad Shastri and Rama Tirtha, recommend simple exhalation (sūtra I.34) in a prolonged OM. This leads spontaneously to the ‘up-stroke’, as described by Swami Rama Tirtha in his essay called ‘Praṇayama and Will-power’. It must always be remembered that prāṇāyāma is part of a whole discipline which includes worship of God and strict self-control.

At the end of this Part, the sūtra-s give a number of ‘perfections’ which arise automatically when a given discipline has been perfected. They are not the same as the special powers and knowledge which are aims of particular meditations in the third Part. He shows for some, and by implication for others, that a desire for them would prevent the perfection of the discipline.

Sūtra II.37 runs, ‘With establishment in non-stealing, all precious things come to him.’ This is not simply a rigid honesty, because, as he explains, the perfection consists of desirelessness. One who practised non-stealing, therefore, with the secret aim of attracting wealth by this perfection, would never in fact perfect it till he had abandoned the aim completely.

There is no question of Śaṅkara’s own conviction of the reality of these effects. In his Brahma-sūtra commentary he quotes Yoga-sūtra II.44, From self-study, communion with the deity of his devotion’, as proof that the sage Vyāsa could meet the gods face to face, and he adds, ‘That yoga does, as tradition declares, lead to the acquirement of such powers … is a fact which cannot be set aside by mere vehement denial.’

In the first Part, there were some notable shifts of the philosophical positions towards Vedānta, and there are a few more in this Part. The sub-commentary in various places in the second Part elaborates on Vyāsa’s simile of yoga as like medical treatment. But on sūtra II.23 he takes it further, so that the treatment is not for any actual illness, but for a false auto-suggestion of having been poisoned, which causes symptoms of illness. Śaṅkara uses this simile of medical treatment in a number of places in his works, but this brings in a new and purely advaitic extension of it.

Part III. Glory

This begins with an analysis of the so-called inner limbs of Yoga, and the elements of samādhi. The description of the last is in terms of the highest stage of samādhi, when all memories have been transcended with other associations, and the object alone shines forth (sūtra I.43, 44).

There follow some long philosophical discussions on qualities and on time-phase, and then some of the supernormal knowledge and power resulting from samādhi practice taken to the limit. Śaṅkara gives some original comments which imply that he knew these practices. But though he describes a few in detail, most he dismisses briefly, and the long descriptions of heavenly realms in sūtra III.36 he ignores completely, whereas Vācaspati revels in the details.

(Incidentally it is not clear why saṃyama on the sun and moon should lead to knowledge of heavenly worlds and disposition of the stars respectively. The Chinese Taoist visions resulting from sun-meditation describe the interior of the sun – with equally surprising geography and inhabitants – and the stations of its orbit. Similarly those on the moon are more what one would expect.)

But Śaṅkara clearly takes literally the admonition of sūtra III.37 that these powers are perfections to the unpurified mind, but obstacles to samādhi, because they trigger off latent taints at the root of the mind.

Sūtra III.36 says that certain forms of supernormal knowledge arise from samādhi on Puruṣa, and Vyāsa comments: ‘they always arise.’ But Śaṅkara deliberately omits this comment of Vyāsa, and adds (under the next sūtra) that they do not arise in one who is detached. This direct contradiction of the sūtra, and of Vyāsa’s comment, shows the great independence of mind of the Vivaraṇa author, and are another instance of the swing towards a Vedāntic view.

It may be noted that in the case of powers arising from samādhi made to acquire them, the exercise of them carries in it a sort of contradiction. To effect the samādhi, memory must have been purified of all associations (sūtra I.43, 44). But after a success, the excitement will rouse all the latent desires, and it will become increasingly difficult, and finally impossible, to free the memory from them. So the power will be lost, except in one who exercises it without any interest in it of pride or advantage. Śaṅkara in his Brahma-sūtra commentary says that all these powers are ultimately dependent on the Lord.

The very long debate on words and meanings under sūtra III.17 is entirely technical; it is of perhaps great historical importance, but of no significance for the general reader.

Sūtra III.35 is a central sūtra for those who seek release, as the Vivaraṇa remarks. It is closely connected with some important sections of Śaṅkara’s A Thousand Teachings, on the switch from mental awareness of what can be only a ‘reflection’ of Puruṣa, to Puruṣa’s ultra-cognitive awareness.

Sūtra III.52 has an interesting (and surprising) discussion on time. Time is not absolute, but operational. This will be elaborated in the next Part, sūtra IV.12 and 13.

Part IV. Transcendental Aloneness (kaivalya)

There is an account of the mechanism of powers. They are not created by samādhi, for instance, but are implementations of the infinite powers of prakṛti along a channel opened by samādhi. Prakṛti is a seething mass of potentialities, somewhat like the vacuum as envisaged by physicists, in which virtual particles are continuously appearing and annihilating one another.

The question of projection of several bodies by samādhi-power is touched on (sūtra IV.4, 5); the Brahma-sūtra bhāṣya on the same point (IV.4.15) refers to yoga scriptures as authority. The conclusion is the same, that there are several minds, but the Vivaraṇa does not refer to the Brahma-sūtra analogy of a lamp lighting other lamps.

There are further discussions on karma and time, and a long polemic against Buddhist doctrines (sūtra-s IV.13–14). This is elaborated vigorously by the Vivaraṇa, implying that Buddhism was still an opponent to be reckoned with at the time of writing.

The final sūtra-s show perfection of Knowledge-of-the-difference, and then turning away from all mental operations including even that Knowledge, so that Puruṣa stands in its own nature, pure awareness. The final turning away is the virāma-pratyaya or idea-of-stopping of sūtra I.18. It is illustrated in Śaṅkara’s A Thousand Teachings I.19, which says at the beginning to the mind: ‘O mind, make more efforts at tranquillization’ and goes on to discard, on the basis of knowledge, the futile mental activity. It leads to nirvāṇa – the blowing out of a lamp, or the dying down of a flame as fuel is exhausted. This last simile is used in the Vivaraṇa to I.18: ‘the idea of stopping is still an idea while coming to a stop and before it has ceased to be an idea at all … as a fire, little by little going out, is still truly a flame until it finally becomes ashes.’ Release is now final because the saṃskāra-s and all other aspects of the guṇa-s have fallen off. Puruṣa makes no more illusory identifications.

Cosmology

The cosmological doctrines of Sānkhya-Yoga are occasionally referred to in passing, and a few Sanskrit words have to be learnt. Some of them, like karma and nirvāṇa, are already familiar, and with the Western interest in yoga, it is likely that there will be a readiness to accept Sanskrit, just as the Italian terms were accepted in music.

The brief outline of the world according to Sānkhya-Yoga (but not followed always by Śaṅkara, as has been mentioned) would be something like the following:

There are two eternal principles: unconscious unmanifest matter (pradhāna or prakṛti), and Puruṣa, pure consciousness. Pradhāna is made up of three elements, sattva (light), rajas (passion-struggle) and tamas (dark inertia). They are explained in the commentary on sūtra II.15.

When Puruṣa gives attention to pradhāna, the latter goes into manifestation, as a play begins when the audience is ready. The manifestation first takes the form of a principle called the Great (mahat). Like everything else, it is made up of the three elements or gunā-s: sattva, rajas, and tamas. It is sometimes called Being Only. As it plays little part in the discussions, it is enough to know that it is the first manifestation. From it arises Ahaṅkāra, which could be loosely called the cosmic I. Neither of these two can be meditated upon in their fullness, as they are too great.

On the physical side, the next manifestation is what are called tanmātra-s; they are roughly speaking potentialities of sensations like smell and so on. They are not directly accessible to the senses, but can be experienced in the special concentration described in sūtra I.35. Less subtle than these, but still not within the grasp of the senses, are the atoms of various kinds. The aggregates of the atoms are the physical wholes of the world, perceived by the senses.

On the psychic side, the cosmic I produces the minds of all beings. They essentially consist of sattva, but become clouded and stained by the two other guṇa-s, namely rajas and tamas. The minds produce (or attract to themselves) senses, both of reception and of action.

Mental operations produce dynamic latent impressions called saṃskāra-s. These are the base of memory, and of impulse generally. In samādhi, mental operations are inhibited, partially or wholly. The inhibition lasts only for a time, because the urge of saṃskāra-s disturbs; however, inhibition produces a saṃskāra of its own, which is hostile to and overcomes the other saṃskāra-s which lie at the base of the mind. A great part of the yogic training consists in weakening unfavourable saṃskāra-s and reinforcing favourable ones.

Various words for mind are used rather indiscriminately in this text: antaḥ-karaṇa (inner organ), citta, manas, buddhi (sometimes distinguished as a higher mind), sattva. In the last case, the name of the guṇa of luminosity (sattva) is used for mind.

To follow the discussions on re-birth centred round II.13, it is useful to know that Nandīśvara was a poorly-off human, who through intense devotion was suddenly transformed into a divine being; Nahuṣa, a divine being, entertained a thought of lust and was on the spot changed into a snake.

The translation

The general reader of a text like this must be prepared for certain conventions. Sanskrit compounds of a basic text are often ambiguous, and one great responsibility of the commentator is to explain how they are to be understood. An example from English would be, ‘a widely-read author’. The commentator has to say whether it means that the author has himself read widely, or that his words are read by many people. In translation, of course, the compound has already been resolved when it first occurs in the basic text (here Vyāsa), and the subsequent comment is only a repetition. Nevertheless, in a translation it has to be given, and occasionally an extra gloss is thrown in which does add something. But the reader should be warned of this apparently redundant wordiness.

In the free commentary, however, once the original words have been explained (and it was the convention that every one of them must be commented on), Śaṅkara is terse. He expects his readers to have an excellent memory, and to be able to follow the argument without repetitions. As the point sometimes requires a knowledge of an opponent’s philosophical position, the general reader must accept that some passages will be obscure to him. I have not adopted the custom of putting in a series of parentheses to explain what I think he means.

This is a difficult text, and the conventional Sanskrit format makes translation occasionally awkward. The word in the basic text has to be followed immediately by its gloss, which means that sometimes the sentence has to be turned very artificially. Nevertheless, I hope that it will be found accessible to non-specialists, even at occasional cost to precision. In fact, the proper drive for precision can sometimes over-shoot into unreadability and even incomprehensibility.

I have hyphenated English plurals of Sanskrit words, to make them easy to distinguish from Sanskrit words in ‘-s’ such as rajas or tamas. I have also split up compounds where feasible, to make the elements easier to recognize, and I have usually separated off the negative prefix ‘a-’.

The Sanskrit words in parenthesis are mostly terms characteristic of Saṇkara, and important for the question of authenticity. They have no significance for the general reader who is primarily interested in Śaṅkara’s yoga practice, on which this text throws a flood of light.

To facilitate reference, I have put headings to the sections of the text: they are only approximate, as the subject can change abruptly. No such headings are to be found in the text itself.

Authenticity

To examine and judge the likely authenticity of this text will require not only expert philological and historical knowledge. The ideas of the text also have to be compared with those of Śaṅkara’s well-attested works. It is not enough to know the wording of the texts, however exactly. And ideas may be known without being understood.

A great scholar of Śaṅkara’s works once remarked that Śaṅkara’s mistake was to suppose that consciousness could only be one: Śaṅkara simply did not see that there could be two similar consciousnesses. The point was made as though it were obvious, and so it is, but only from a naïve standpoint. Erwin Schrödinger, Nobel Prize physicist and a philosopher of science, in his famous What Is Life? discussed this very point, and explicitly cited the Advaita view, which he confirmed. Schrödinger’s support does not prove that Śaṅkara was right, only that his ideas are not to be dismissed out of hand.

The long arguments for an intelligent world-creator and ruler here in sūtra-s I.24 and 25 would, not very long ago, have been similarly dismissed as nursery teleology. Many of them are now acceptable, as massively evidenced for instance in The Anthropic Cosmological Principle by Barrow and Tipler (Oxford University Press, 1986).

The validity of yogic states, dismissed by Edgerton as ‘self-hypnosis’, is to be proved or disproved by experiment, not by pre-conceptions. In a sense, Japanese scholars have an advantage because they are familiar with a still-living stream of meditation practice, which is well attested historically to have freed many from the fear of death, and to have been a source of inspiration in many fields of culture. The life of the late Hari Prasad Shastri in London was equally convincing to his pupils.

Yoga is inhibition of the mental processes

(Opponent) If the sūtra has been presented to give this definition, it should have been ‘Yoga has inhibition of the mental processes’; to put them in apposition is not right, for a definition should not be simply the thing defined. Or at any rate it should have been said, ‘The definition is, inhibition of the mental processes.’

(Answer) A definition is projected (adhyas) on to the thing defined. When we say ‘This person is Devadatta’ there is a projection (adhyāsa) of the definition on to the thing defined. So there is no fault.

(Opponent) (The commentator’s previous gloss) But the ultra-cognitive is when there is inhibition of all mental processes is also a definition of it, so the sūtra should have been ‘Yoga is inhibition of all mental processes.’ This has not been said and the definition is too wide.

(Answer) As to why the word All is omitted from the sūtra, he says that if All were put in, it would be denying that the cognitive samādhi, which comes about by restricting the processes to a single point, is yoga at all. To prevent that, the word All is left out.

(Opponent) If so, the cognitive and ultra-cognitive have the same definition and are not in fact distinguished.

(Answer) The subject is yoga, as we see from the repetition of the word (in the first two sūtra-s). And unless he did intend a distinction, there would have been no point in putting into the definition the word yoga (which is well known to include meditation on objects).

(Opponent) The word yoga is of minor importance for actual exposition; it would suit the purpose of exposition if the definition just said ‘Inhibition of the mental processes’ without the word yoga at all.

(Answer) Not so, because what was introduced was an exposition of yoga, and it is exposition of yoga that has been begun, not exposition of non-yoga. The proposed definition could have too many contexts and would not be connected to the meaning of the words ‘exposition of yoga’. For the idea of an exposition of yoga does not follow from the words ‘inhibition of mental processes’.

(Opponent) Why then should the word yoga lead to a definition of the ultra-cognitive samādhi alone, and not to a definition of the cognitive, if there is no such distinction in the word itself?

(Answer) Because it applies exactly. What applies loosely is not a definition of a thing. The definition as inhibition applies exactly to the ultra-cognitive samādhi, but only loosely to the cognitive. Having horns is not the mark of cow-ness, because it applies also to buffaloes and other animals.

(Opponent) Neither is inhibition exact as a definition of the ultra-cognitive; (it is too loose) because there is inhibition in the cognitive too, namely inhibition of the undesired mental processes.

(Answer) True, but the ultra-cognitive cannot be defined by anything else except inhibition. Inhibition alone is its definition because nothing else is there, whereas the cognitive is definable in terms of special characteristics like verbal associations. As a parallel case, when tangibility is cited as a defining mark, it is the element Air alone that is defined by the fact of tangibility, which is regarded as special to it, though in fact tangibility is found also in the other elements in the descending order from Fire (to Water and then Earth).

Thus the word yoga is simply a corroboration (anuvāda), and so it is that All has not been put in the sūtra. It is settled that the ultra-cognitive is defined by the bare word ‘inhibition’, and if ‘All (the mental processes)’ were included, it would deny that the cognitive also is yoga. Therefore this is the definition of ultra-cognitive alone, and the commentator will sum up later in these words: Ultra-cognitive (a-sam-prajñāta) in the sense that in it no thing is cognized (sam-prajñāyate): this yoga is inhibition of the mental process.

What is the nature of that mind, inhibition of whose processes is called yoga? To explain mind and its processes and their inhibition, the commentator says:

Mind is said to consist of the three guṇa-s, because it is always tending towards illumination, activity, or stasis. Illumination is making known, bringing to light, that being characteristic of sattva guṇa. Activity is motion and operation, that being characteristic of rajas. Stasis is being stationary, limitation, and resistance, such being characteristic of tamas. These are the invariable tendencies of the guṇa-s, and as mind is always tending towards one of them, it is true to say that it is continual transformation of the three guṇa-s.

To the objection that illumination and the others have not been established as causes, he says:

The word For means that this is something generally accepted; it is well known in the world and from scripture how mind makes everything manifest. So mind is sattva, and is therefore called mind-sattva, because its main transformation is that of sattva.

Or again, mind can be pointed out clearly as pure knowledge (khyāti) having other mental processes mutually combining and separating. So it is that he says For mind-sattva is by nature illumination.

Now he explains the conflicting varieties of mental processes which arise from relative dominance or subordination of rajas and tamas. When sattva is predominant, but mingled with rajas and tamas, they being equally strong, mind becomes fond of power and possessions, and this fondness for them is passion. The meaning is, that thoughts arise concentrated on the passion for power and possessions.

When that mind, which is illumination by nature, is pervaded by tamas, with rajas subordinate in it, then tainted thoughts arise of a-dharma and the other three (Ignorance, passion, and helplessness).

That same mind, when the covering of illusion has dwindled, when tamas has been overcome, as when the rain-cloud passes away the darkness is at an end and the sun-disc illumines everything pervaded by a measure by a trace of rajas, is endowed with dharma, etc. (knowledge, detachment, and power), and pure thoughts of dharma and the others arise.

When the last stain of the trace of rajas is removed, the mind is grounded in its own nature in its own nature as illumination and that alone. It becomes simply the Knowledge that sattva and Puruṣa are different. Mind is sattva, and Puruṣa is the experiencer (bhoktṛ); discriminating them as different is Knowledge (khyāti) of them, awareness of them. The word simply indicates that it is free from taints or any other things (than Knowledge). It is endowed with the meditation called Rain-cloud of Dharma, this being the samādhi of that name.

The mind overcomes rajas and tamas by power of prasaṅkhyāna, which is meditation (dhyāna) established in the perception of the nature of Puruṣa alone, pure Knowledge itself, which the meditators the yogins call the highest prasaṅkhyāna (continuous meditation on Knowledge).

Having explained what the mental process is in itself, he shows how it is to be inhibited. The power-of-consciousness (citi-śakti) is unchangeable: consciousness alone is power, so it is called power-of-consciousness. Powers which blossom out only in births appropriate to the possession of those powers are not inherent power, but consciousness is inherent power, dependent on nothing else. It is therefore eternally established. The apposition of the word consciousness (citi) meaning pure consciousness (cinmātra) and the word power (śakti) is to show that the subjective consciousness is of unvarying nature. This being so, it is something unchanging. When in an abiding possessor-of-qualities (dharmin), one quality (dharma) gives way to a different one, that is called change. Since this consciousness never changes, it is unchanging. For just this reason, it does not engage with objects. For it is only things like mind, which do change, that are found to engage with objects.

So the various objects are shown to it: an object is shown to it through the mind (antaḥ-karaṇa). Therefore it ispure and therefore in space and in time it is infinite. (In this explanation which has been given) each fact is to be understood as the cause of the next one.

An example of the contrary is mind and senses. Opposed to pure consciousness is Knowledge-of-the-difference, whose nature is sattva-guṇa. Sattva-guṇa means pure sattva, and its essence is that alone. To say that its nature is sattva means that its nature is essentially to illumine. Again, it is said to be essentially sattva-guṇa because this thought is not concerned with any object of the world.

Again, Knowledge is bound by the very fact of being Knowledge, just because it is essentially sattva. This Knowledge being thus distinct from, and opposed to, the characteristics of the power-of-consciousness described, does have changes and so on.

Being associated with qualities like change, it is inferior to the supreme Puruṣa which is free from them.Therefore because it sees the defect (doṣa) in its own nature, the mind, turning away from giving up even that Knowledge, inhibits it.

In this state the state of inhibition what remains is saṃskāra-s; only saṃskāra-s are left. This samādhi in this state of inhibition is the seedless. The meaning is, that here the seed is gone; in this all the seeds of taint and so on are gone.

To show this very mark of the ultra-cognitive samādhi, he quotes the sūtra, This yoga is inhibition of the mental processes.

Their inhibition is by practice and detachment

He explains the means for their inhibition: Their inhibition is by practice and detachment. The characteristics of practice and detachment will be described in the coming sūtra-s. By these two the mental processes already described are inhibited, because they are opposed to them. Inhibition (nirodha) means cessation (upaśama). To show discrimination as the object of practice and detachment, the commentary explains the mind-stream.

The men of saṃsāra are always carried by the mind, as by a stream, towards objects. They are borne on to saṃsāra, ending up in saṃsāra, which is like an ocean, dammed up: held back, made to flow: set in movement, by making an opening. The form udghāṭyate is an optional retention of the long vowel in the causative, which otherwise would be short according to the Pāṇini sūtra 6.4.92.

So it depends on both, it is dependent on both practice and detachment.

Of him, the expression is praṇava (OM)

It has been said Or from devotion to the Lord (sūtra I.23). How should one perform devotion to him, and what is the means of that devotion? To explain the form in which the devotee contemplates on him, the sūtra says Of him, the expression is praṇava (OM). Of the Lord who has been described, the expression the expressing word, is praṇava. In the same way the word cow expresses something which has a dewlap and horns and so on. Now the word praṇava is variously explained etymologically:

pra stands for prakarśena, perfectly;

nu (= nava) stands for nūyate, he is praised;

praṇava the word OM, praises (praṇauti) the Lord;

the Lord is devoutly worshipped (praṇidhīyate) through it by his devotees; they bow down (praṇam) to him through it;

through it they worship (praṇidhā) the Lord mentally; here the extra -dhā stands for the final -va (of praṇava).

Mental devotion for things known only indirectly is through a word, as with the worship of the sacred mountain Meru or the god Indra. It is the Lord who is expressed by the word OM; the sound of the word accords with its meaning.

From the termination -ava is understood avati, he favours. The meanings like ‘protection’ are excluded from this word here. He brings out his devotees from saṃsāra, he leads those in saṃsāra to nirvāṇa, he brings to a devotee unsurpassed joy, he grants him samādhi to lead him to the highest truth. But all these meanings are associated with the most intense love of the Lord.

When the Lord is continuously worshipped in the mind by means of this syllable OM, he gives his grace. There are many sacred texts such as ‘Om kham brahman’ (Bṛhad. Up. 5.1.1) ‘Brahman called Om’ (Taitt. Up. 1.8.1) and the traditions ‘Om tat sat’ (Gītā 17.23) ‘Om Viṣṇu is all’ (first name of the Thousand Names of Viṣṇu). The grammarians declare that OM, ending as it does in ‘m’, is an indeclinable which does not take inflections.

(Opponent) Granted that the Lord, or someone, set up at some time this convention for common usage, in the form ‘let this (OM) be the name of that (Lord)’. But before the convention was set up, thus giving devotees an option whether to worship by OM as the name of the Lord or by some other name, they would have used one of the other names. So let it be now; why should OM be singled out (as his expressive word)?

(Answer) The relation is fixed like that between a lamp and its light. So even at a first hearing, the Lord is understood, like the sun by its light.

(Opponent) If there is already a fixed relation, it is pointless to have a convention about it too. Unless the convention is established from the first, it is only a useless reiteration.

(Answer) The relation of what is to be expressed here and its expressive word is fixed. Whether the word be taken as permanent or transient, the conventional usage makes luminously clear that very fixed relation.

(Opponent) If the relation is fixed, people ought to understand it the first time they hear it.

(Answer) The relation of word and meaning is a relation of idea and what causes the idea, and though it is fixed, it is not perceptible to the senses, any more than the relation between a sense and its object. The capacity to express, and the capacity to be expressed, are not directly perceptible things.

(Opponent) Well, the meaning can be inferred from the word by which it is spoken.

(Answer) That is not so, because the relation is not perceptible. It depends on the usage of others, and an inference does not depend on the usage of others (so this cannot be an inference).

(Opponent) An object can be inferred from a relation which is itself inferred.

(Answer) You will have to explain how a relation of word and meaning can be inferred.

(Opponent) Having ascertained the meaning from seeing the effect of the word (on its hearers), he understands the relation between them, just as when one knows a form through the eye, that is the visual relation.

(Answer) There is this refutation: definite knowledge comes from the word alone, without any inference. And when one has achieved his object by cooking food in one way, what would he gain by cooking it in another way?

(Opponent) A relation is perceived from seeing the conjunction of the two things several times, as with the relation between fire and smoke.

(Answer) We do not agree, for even in a hundred conjunctions, the relation of word and meaning is never directly perceived, as is perceived the relation between fire and smoke even at the beginning. And it is the same thing with a sentence and its meaning.

Therefore the conventional usage makes clear the relation between the Lord who is expressed and praṇava (OM) which expresses him, which is a fixed relation like the fixed relation of father and son. Since there is a convention as the means, the meaning is not recognized at the first hearing, any more than an object in darkness is recognized by the eye.

(Opponent) A word is something passing, and how can there be a permanent relation when one of the things related is passing? There is no permanent relation between a rope and a pot, which are passing things.

(Answer) In the cases of proof and proven, sense-organ and its object, action and its agencies, there is a fixed relation although the things related are passing. So too here the relation is ever-fixed, because it never varies; the convention is in accordance with the relation of the capacities of expression and being expressed at the beginning of creations.

Just as there is creation of form and eye, in accordance with the capacity of being perceived and of perceiving in the previous creation, so in this case conventional usage is established in accordance with the capacity of being expressed and of expressing.

Since it is invariably accepted, and there is the growing chain of traditional use of one thing to make another understood, the consensus is permanent and not otherwise; so the scriptural sages (āgamin) expounders of the Veda (veda-vādin) affirm. And the relation of word and meaning is based on that consensus, so they tell us.

Therefore it comes to this: whether from the standpoint of the traditionalists or from the other standpoint, in any case the relation is fixed, like that of father and son, and it is made manifest by the conventional usage.

If there were not the fixed relation between this expressive word and what it expresses, it would not be true that through the form of praṇava, OM, the Lord is met face to face. In the same way it would not be proper to take a fire as the means of cooking unless there were a fixed relation between the raw food and what cooks it. But since there is the fixed relation between this expression and what it expresses, it is proper to employ OM as a means for practising worship of God, and this is the purport of the whole commentary.

The mind is made clear by meditation on friendliness towards the happy, compassion for the suffering, goodwill towards the virtuous, and disinterest in the sinful

How is the mind to be trained? Practice on one principle has been taught; what is the one principle which is to be the object of the practice? He says, meditation on friendliness towards the happy, compassion for the suffering, goodwill towards the virtuous, and disinterest in the sinful.

Friendliness is meditation on being a friend, one who rejoices in happiness when he sees it without anything like envy. So towards suffering, a kindly sympathy, and to the righteous he feels goodwill. It is added that he should practise disinterest in regard to the doings of the habitually sinful.

Practice of this all the time produces pure dharma, which does no injury to living beings; this dharma makes the mind clear. When it is clear, it attains steadiness in one-pointedness; the meaning is that by one-pointedness it is concentrated in samādhi, as the Gītā says, ‘The mind of the pure-hearted soon becomes steady’ (II.65).

(Opponent) Disinterest cannot produce dharma because it is not an action, so why is it included?

(Answer) If indifference were not mentioned, the mind would become engaged with those habitually sinful, and from the taint arising from dealings with them, it would not be fit for meditations on friendliness and the others. Disinterest is mentioned only in the context of steadying the mind so that there should be no a-dharma arising from casual dealings involving habitual sinners. The great thing here is steadiness of the mind.

When he has thus engaged his mind in meditation on one principle in this way, the mind will come to samādhi and no obstacles will then arise.

Identification-in-samādhi (samāpatti) is when the mental process has dwindled and the mind rests on either the knower or the knowing process or a known object, and like a crystal apparently takes on their respective qualities

(Opponent) He is going to speak about the objects of samādhi in the Third Part (sūtra III.35): by saṃyama on what-is-for-its-own-sake, (distinct) from what-is-for-the-sake-of another, there comes knowledge of Puruṣa.There he is going to explain the nature of identification-in-samādhi, namely the nature of saṃyama, by the resultant effect, so the present sūtra is superfluous.

(Answer) Not so, because here he wishes to show the purpose of mastering the methods that have just been described. They have been properly mastered when the mind, identified in samādhi with the knower or with the process of knowledge or with a known object, assumes the appearance of it. Sūtra I.17 has already said that samādhi is cognitive when it is accompanied with vitarka (verbal associations), vicāra (subtle associations), ānanda (joy), and asmitā (I-am-ness), and now it has to be explained what they are. He cannot describe what they are without reference to samādhi, because they are properties of it.

The ideas, of right knowledge of external things and so on, have died down.

(Opponent) The ideas must have died out altogether. Only when they have all ceased does the commitment of the mind end, and there must be no dependence on anything physical or subtle.

(The answer is that Vyāsa in his commentary has explained that the cognitive states, where there is still one idea remaining, are preliminary to the other samādhi which is ultra-cognitive – Tr.)

(No Vivaraṇa comment on first two paragraphs – Tr.)

Identified with Puruṣa as knower means Puruṣa in its nature as causing buddhi to know (buddhi-bodhaka); concentrated on that, mind appears in the form of the knower; identified with Puruṣa released when this very knower of buddhi is no longer a knower of ideas of objects, then its state is the bare knowledge that sattva and Puruṣa are distinct.

When it is said that in this detachment the Puruṣa is released, the sense is that the mind is released from all taints. Freedom of the mind from taints is what is called ‘release’ of Puruṣa. This is why in the sūtra it says only knower.And here Puruṣa released means only the knower aspect of Puruṣa, otherwise he would have said just Puruṣa.When the highest consciousness of mastery in detachment has arisen, there is never again any involvement with saṃsāra. So it has been said: though there be still a bare connection with mind, if there is no connection with taints, ‘he is ever freed, ever the Lord’ (comm. to I.24).

Therefore it is said coloured by meditation on Puruṣa released, identified in samādhi with Puruṣa released, it appears to have the nature of Puruṣa released. Here it would be wrong to think that by meditating on mere cessation of any connection with mind one will be identified in samādhi with Puruṣa released and will appear in the form of Puruṣa released, because that would mean that the mind itself would have been dissolved. Puruṣa is at the limit of subtlety. Pradhāna is equally subtle, and mind is an effect of an effect of an effect of it. Mind, identifying itself in samādhi with Puruṣa or pradhāna, could not maintain itself when making the identification, any more than a jar can be identified with the jar-form without giving up its previous condition of clay-form.

(Opponent) But it is said that the Great principle (mahat) and the cosmic I (ahaṅkāra) are knowable to the mind of the yogin, even though it is an effect of them.

(Answer) As to whether they are knowable or not, there is a distinction according to how far the knowledge is to go. If they are to be knowablc, there has to be some special relation involving a knower whose nature is apart (from them). They are both manifest, so a special relation is not inconceivable; they could be known by a special relation in the same way that it is known by a special mental idea that one’s own Puruṣa is a knower and is released. But they cannot be known as the self (ātman) of all, because that would be too great to comprehend. They would be the self of the very mind which sought to know them as the self of all, and as such they could not be known as an object by it. Pradhāna and Puruṣa, however, are essentially absolutely unmanifest, and there can be no perception of them in their own nature, or of any relation between them.

(Opponent) If pradhāna and Puruṣa and the relation between them are not to be directly perceived, it would mean that the Lord is not omniscient.

(Answer) There is no question that everything other than pradhāna and Puruṣa and the relation between them is capable of being perceived, for it is universally accepted that the range of direct perception is unrestricted; what is not within the range of our perception is knowable to the Lord. If there is a knowable then certainly somehow or other someone must know it; without a knower, it would not be a knowable.

Now if prakṛti (= pradhāna) and Puruṣa are to be knowable as objects in their own nature, they would be things experienced, like the mind. Then (being objects) they would exist-for-another, and that other would have to be supposed to be beyond them.

(Opponent) The Puruṣa-s could know each other, without supposing any further knower.

(Answer) Not so; the Puruṣa-s being identical, there would be nothing to determine which was subject and which was object. And two lamps can not each be subordinate to the other.

Moreover if Puruṣa is going to be known, it implies that there is happiness and so on in his nature, and this would involve many further difficulties, such as the fact that the happiness, etc., would not be dependent on pradhāna as cause.

(Opponent) But he does speak of Puruṣa as directly perceived (in sūtra III.35): by saṃyama on what-is-for-its-own-sake, (distinct) from what-is-for-the-sake-of-another, there comes knowledge of Puruṣa.

(Answer) Yes, and it is rightly said. This is why we said that Puruṣa does not become an object in its own nature. In the commentary there it says, It is not that Puruṣa is seen by any idea of Puruṣa, which – because it is an idea – would be essentially mind. It is Puruṣa that sees the idea resting on his own self. And so it has been said: ‘By what indeed would one know the knower?’ (Bṛhad. Up. II.4.13)

(Opponent) The mind coloured by resting on Puruṣa is an object for Puruṣa, so in fact Puruṣa is directly perceived, for when an idea coloured by resting on a jar is perceived by Puruṣa, that is what is called the jar’s being perceived.

(Answer) The cases are not parallel. For Puruṣa is not pervaded by the mind, as the jar is. A thing like a jar is external and pervaded by the mind; not so Puruṣa, for it is infinite.

The limited mind, which would take Puruṣa as its object, cannot pervade that which is the infinite subject. If it could pervade Puruṣa, it should be able to pervade pradhāna too (which is impossible as it is only a remote effect of pradhāna).

Therefore, as the face is perceived in a mirror in the form of a reflection, so it is an idea transformed into the form of a reflection of Puruṣa which is seen by Puruṣa. Thus Vyāsa says, ‘As in the clearness of a mirror, one sees the self in the self (Mahābh. Śānti Parva 204.8).

There is no possibility of the mind’s taking on the form of some other released Puruṣa; though it might be the form of the other one, still it would be seen as one’s own. For it is nothing else than a transformation of the mind; it is only the mind which Puruṣa sees transformed into his own form. The possibility of the transformation is when there is a relation to the form of Puruṣa its owner, of whom the mind is the property.

(Opponent) Then how can it ever be known that any other Puruṣa even exists, when that other would not be related as owner?

(Answer) As another face can be seen by means of another mirror, so Puruṣa sees his own mind transformed into the form of another mind, corresponding to the second mirror, and so knows another Puruṣa.

But the distinction ‘This is his self, this is mine’ is known by inference alone, by the indication of the special attributes of a mind different from one’s own, for minds being composed of the three guṇa-s inevitably have attributes special to themselves. But Puruṣa-s being attributeless cannot conceivably be different in their own nature.

It rests on the knower or on the knowing process or on an object, and it is coloured according to which one it rests on. When established there, it takes on that form.

The identification (sam-āpatti) is a complete assumption (samyag-āpatti) of the likeness in the form of an idea devoid of anything else. Though there are such identifications in the extravertive mind also, they are not very complete, because the mind is then predominantly under the control of rajas and tamas.

The saṃskāra produced by it inhibits other saṃskāra-s

When the yogin has attained samādhi-knowledge, a fresh saṃskāra made by the knowledge is produced.Knowledge must set up a saṃskāra. Each time the knowledge is renewed, its special saṃskāra is reinforced. But the renewal of the knowledge is from again taking up meditation on the object, different from itself. The saṃskāra produced by Truth-bearing knowledge removes the other accumulated deposit (āśaya) of saṃskāra-s of extroversion: it can do this because it is produced by a different object, namely the thing as it really is (yathārtha). The accumulated deposit (āśaya) is so called because it ‘lies there’ (ā-śi) till release.

When the extravertive saṃskāra-s are overcome when the saṃskāra deposit of extraversion has been overcome by the saṃskara of samādhi-knowledge, no ideas arising from them from the extravertive saṃskāra-s appear.

With inhibition of ideas inhibition of extravertive ideas, samādhi namely the cognitive samādhi becomes habitualto the yogin. Then there is knowledge from that samādhi: from that, more saṃskāra-s are laid down of knowledge, and so in this way a fresh deposit of saṃskāra-s is built up. From that again knowledge, and from that more saṃskāra-s of it.

(Opponent) The new accumulation of saṃskāra-s produced by samādhi-knowledge will set up movements which will involve the mind, because they will produce thoughts, as did the former accumulation of saṃskāra-s of extraversion, for they are equally saṃskāra-s of thought. And so the commentator expresses the doubt: Why would not this new accumulation of saṃskāra-s draw the mind into involvement with it? – mind which has the saṃskāra-s.

(Answer) The objection does not hold because they are saṃskara-s of inhibition. These saṃskāra-s cause destruction of the taints, and so do not constitute anything that would involve the mind. It is taints like Ignorance which cause saṃskāra-s producing thoughts of extraversion, and supply the drive for those saṃskāra-s to appear in the mind. But the saṃskara-s of ideas arising from samādhi will have produced ideas which inhibit the others, and they do not cause any mental involvement to appear to it.

They make the mind cease desist from its activity from mental processes arising from saṃskāra-s. For the exertions of mind come to an end in Knowledge. The birth of Knowledge of Puruṣa, and the existence of saṃskāra, is a contradiction. For one who is completely free from thirst will not desire to take a drink. In the same way, as regards Puruṣa there is nothing that has to be done by the mind, and no one feels he should do as a duty what is already done.

The other (samādhi) follows on practice of the idea of stopping, and consists of saṃskāra-s alone

The words follows on practice of the idea of stopping show the relation to the discipline, but consists of saṃskāra-s alone explains its nature. They both go with The other, which therefore follows on the practice, and consists of saṃskāra-s alone. It is the seed-less ultra-cognitive samādhi, which is other than the cognitive samādhi which has just been defined in the previous sūtra.

stopping is ceasing. The compound idea-of-stopping (virāma-pratyaya) means: stopping and the idea of it; the form of the idea is simply stopping, so it is called the idea of stopping. It still has the form of an idea at the time of ceasing from everything, while it is still coming to a stop and before it has ceased to be an idea at all. In the same way a flaming fire which is little by little going down as its fuel is used up, is still truly flame until it finally becomes ashes.

The practice of this idea of stopping finally leads to a state, which must have been preceded by this practice, where only saṃskāra-s remain: with the stopping of the ideas, what remains is only the saṃskāra-s of them. The meaning is that when the mind has withdrawn from ideas of objects, there remain saṃskāra-s alone. The means to it is the higher detachment: the further degree of detachment is the means to this samādhi.

(Opponent) It should have been said, the higher detachment also, because it has just been said that the means to inhibition is by practice and detachment both.

(Answer) Not so. There could be no question that practice is one of the means, because the sūtra itself sayspractice of the idea of stopping. But there might have been a doubt about detachment, which was not mentioned, and in merely supplying that, it is not necessary to say ‘also’.

(Opponent) Well then, why is there no mention of detachment in the sūtra itself?

(Answer) It has been mentioned already.

(Opponent) Why was it mentioned there (and not here)?

(Answer) Because detachment was the context there, and it was mentioned in connection with the further (higher) detachment as distinct from the earlier one. The earlier detachment is confined to the field of the cognitive samādhi, and the remaining and higher detachment is a discipline with a different field, concerned only with the samādhi without seed (nir-bīja). So the sūtra did not use the word ‘detachment’, but the commentator indicates what is necessarily implied, because it has been declared, Their inhibition is by practice and detachment (I.12).

No meditation on an object can be a means to it, because that would be incompatible with this samādhi which has no object, whereas the idea of stopping, which is absence of anything is compatible with the samādhi with no object, and the meditation is on it. This is the samādhi without seed, with only saṃskāra-s remaining, which is ultra-cognitive.

Tapas, self-study, devotion to the Lord, are the yoga of action

(Opponent) But tapas, self-study, and devotion to the Lord are going to be given among the observances (II.32); why are they mentioned here?

(Answer) The purpose is as has been said: to show how one of extravertive mind may become steady in yoga.

(Opponent) Not so, because that purpose is declared along with the list of observances. And do not say that it is also taught here that they thin out the taints, because that too is taught in that place. ‘From following up the yoga methods, destruction of impurity’ (II.28), and impurity means such things as the taints. As to (the other effect mentioned here namely) that they take him towards samādhi meditation, that too will be given as the result of a yoga method: ‘From devotion to the Lord, perfection in samādhi’ (IL45). So to have instruction on tapas and the other two in this place is meaningless.

(Answer) No, it has meaning. It shows that yoga practice, being the means to right vision (samyagdarśanopāya), comes before right vision. All the yoga methods are means to right vision and therefore precede it in time. From among them, some of the observances are here mentioned to illustrate the point that all the means must come first. Obviously the means must come first, but the point should thus be clear.

(Opponent) If they come before right vision, the latter should be mentioned immediately afterwards (instead of the taints, in II.3).

(Answer) No, because right vision is the direct adversary of the taints, etc., since Ignorance (the first taint) is the root of all evil, and Ignorance is destroyed when directly confronted by right vision.

(Opponent) Then one may ask: are tapas and the other two the direct opponent of Ignorance, or is that opponent right vision alone?

(Answer) In a work on right vision, first of all its field has to be stated, and that is: Puruṣa overcome by the mass of taints and karma-s and their fruition, as the man suffering from illness is the field of a medical work. Now the field and the subject of the field (viṣaya, viṣayin) should be defined by a mention immediately after tapas, etc., otherwise it will not be clear what is the field and what the subject of the field.

Moreover the teaching on the means to right vision at the beginning of this Part shows its connection with the First Part. There the yoga of the already concentrated (samāhita) mind was set out, and here it is shown how the extravertive mind, by tapas, etc., may become steady in yoga.

Now it has to be explained that the purpose of tapas and the others is samādhi meditation and thinning out the taints.

(Opponent) It is going to be said later on, ‘From devotion to the Lord, perfection in samādhi’ (II.45) and ‘From destruction of impurity by tapas, perfection of body and senses’ (II.43), so that a perfection is going to be stated for each means separately.

(Answer) Not so; what will be said there is only a statement in praise of the means, supplementary to the perfections given here, where the sūtra says, ‘to actualize samādhi and thin out the taints’ (II.2). What is said later on will be added in praise of the means.

Now the words of the sūtra are explained. The compound tapas-self-study-devotion-to-God means tapas andself-study and devotion to God. It is these which are yoga in the form of action, so this is yoga of action. Tapas and the others are actions, and as their aim is yoga, they are themselves called yoga. Yoga is the mental state of samādhi, and this yoga of action aims at that; he who practises it is a yogin.

Tapas is fasts like kŗcchra and cāndrāyana, and endurance of pairs of opposites like heat and cold; self-study (svādhyāya) is repetition of OM, and the purifying scriptures on release (mokṣa-śāstra), beginning with the Upaniṣads; devotion to the Lord is consigning actions to the Lord, the supreme teacher, or else letting go their fruits and surrendering them to the Lord.

(Opponent) What has tapas got to do with yoga? It is concerned with the body and its impurities and so on, and remote from mental concentration, whereas self-study and devotion to the Lord are relevant to yoga because they are inner means.

(Answer) This is why he says, In one without tapas, the yoga does not succeed. One will not succeed in yoga whose attitude is to cherish the body and bodily things, whose habit is to avoid discomfort of body, senses and mind, who sees the body absolutely as his self and thinks of it as very delicate. This is why tapas is taught.

Impurity, coloured from time without beginning … by saṃskāra-complexes (vāsanā), formed of complexes of saṃskāra impressions of sense contacts from time without beginning, and so variegated, a net of sense contacts;the objects of present time are a net, by which net of the present objects the mind is caught like a fish in a net; this is not destroyed without tapas. And how can there be samādhi for a mind whose impurity has not been destroyed?

And they the yogas hold that it tapas is to be practised without the calm of the mind the inner means to samādhibeing upset by it. Since the goal is calmness of mind, if one should upset that by tapas, the very purpose would be frustrated.

Repetition of it and meditation on its meaning

Repetition (japa) of it and meditation (bhāvanā) on the Lord who is signified by OM. When the yogin thus repeats OM and meditates on its meaning, his mind becomes one-pointed. So it has been said:

When the yogin has thus understood the relation of the expression OM and its meaning, how does he attract the grace of the supreme Lord? The sūtra says, Repetition of it and meditation on its meaning. Practice of repetition of OM, which is the expression of the Lord, taken as consisting of three-and-a-half measures (mātra) or of three measures, is called japa; the repetition is either mental or in a low voice (upāṃśu).

meditation on its meaning the meditation is setting the heart on the Lord, the meaning, who by the word OM has been recalled and brought into the mind. The words he should undertake are to be supplied at the beginning of the sūtra. Yogin-s who are doing both attain one-pointedness of mind. He illustrates how the one-pointedness is the result of that worship by quoting the verse.

After OM repetition after repetition of the praṇava syllable, his mind bowed before the Lord, let him set himself in yoga let him meditate on the Lord, its meaning. When his mind becomes unwavering from meditation on the Lord, the meaning, let him set himself to repetition let him repeat OM mentally. Mental repetition is recommended because it is closer to meditation (than is verbal repetition). The sense is that the mind must not run towards objects. When OM repetition and yoga come to perfection when he is not disturbed by other ideas contrary to them, he is perfect in repetition and in yoga; by that perfection in repetition and meditation on the supreme Lord (parameśvara) the supreme self (paramātman) who stands in the highest place (parameṣṭhin)shines forth for the yogin.

Because of the sufferings caused by changes and anxieties and the saṃskāra-s of them, and from the clash of the guṇa-s, to the clear-sighted, everything is pain alone

How at a time when the object of experience is happiness, can it be pain? It has been said already (under II.5) that he is going to show that the experience of pleasure is pain. The answer is given now because in that place it was not explained. Because pain is the result of any action, and it has to be explained at length how it is reasonable that it (pain) should logically follow immediately on action.

Changes, anxieties and saṃskāra-s are to be understood separately; anxieties and saṃskāra-s are pain, and in addition to that pair there is change. These are pain alone, they cause pain, and because of the sufferings caused by changes and anxieties and saṃskāra-s caused by them, everything is pain. Why everything? Because the causes are taints, which can only bring about pain. Birth and life and experience, and the objects which cause the deposits of taints and so on, are causes of pain, and so it is that everything is pain alone.

Is it so to everyone? No. He says: to the clear-sighted. He who can distinguish the elements of taints, etc., is the one who sees clearly; it means that he recognizes the taints and karma-s and their maturing, and sees that they are causes which produce pain in everything, all being essentially the clash of the operation of the guṇa-s in changes and anxieties and saṃskāra-s. It is not so for others who do not have this clear vision, but for him it is all a fever of pain. Now when one becomes aware ‘I am in that fever’ as a fact in himself, even then one who is confused recognizes only this much: ‘I am in pain.’ If he were to discriminate further than that, he would think, ‘This pain will also produce further pain.’ Then he would be one who sees clearly, that all this is pain and has to be endured. So though at the time of suffering they see pain alone, those without clear sight do not realise that it will lead on to further pain in everything. Again, he who sees that change is a cause of pain is clear-sighted, one for whom all is pain.

He now explains how it is that there is painfulness in change: in every case the experience of pleasure is pervaded with passion-desire (rāga). By saying in every case he points to what is universally known by observation, since it is well known in the case of all living beings. Sons, cattle, gold and so on, attained after they have been striven for, constitute experience of pleasure. At the time of that experience the mind functions as passion, which is characteristic of the man who is feeling happy. This universal function is associated with taints and so causes virtue and sin. Pre-existing karma-stock is consumed as the result of karma-already-in-operation; on the occasion of experience, fresh karma is being piled up. So while the root is there, the karma-stock whose root is the taints, comes to maturity, that is, it happens.

So also when experiencing things which cause pain which are hostile to the current of pleasure, he hates them,and with his mind furious to protect his experience of pleasure, he becomes bewildered, and so it is that thekarma-stock is created by is produced by, the previous operation of hate and illusion. Or it may be taken that hate and illusion themselves are the two functions which have created it.

Thus it is said: There can be no enjoyment of things none of this pleasure without injury without causing harm somewhere. As being a cause of destruction, enjoyment is itself described as a destroyer, inasmuch as it has the double effect. Even when one thinks, ‘Let some other person also enjoy what is mine alone’, the possibility of any enjoyment at all is dependent on wealth, the acquisition of which must certainly have caused pain to others. All the more will be the pain by the fact of having caused such suffering. Therefore built up on injury to others is the karma-stock of the body; from operation of that cause, the body goes forward.

Thus on each occasion of enjoyment, the karma-stock of desire, anger and illusion increases in so many ways. Experience of pleasure, characterized as it is by passion-desire, fever and illusion, and a correspondingly many-faceted karma-stock, is changing, and accordingly painful; this is what is called the painfulness of change. But for the one who sees all this clearly, even on the occasion of pleasure there is only pain, like a man eating rice and yogurt which he knows have been mixed with poison.

Furthermore, all is pain only, because pleasure in objects is in fact Ignorance. That experience of pleasure in objects is essentially an undiscriminating idea. On this he says, The pleasure in objects is said to be Ignorance.

(Opponent) Where has this been explained?

(Answer) It has been explained in this commentary in these words: ‘When there comes about a failure, as it were, to distinguish between the experiencer and what is experienced, which are utterly distinct and nothing to do with each other, that is the condition for experience. But when the true nature of the two is recognized, that is Transcendental Aloneness. Then how could there be experience?’ (comm. to II.6, p. 191). Again, it will be said later by the sūtra-author, ‘Experience is an idea that fails to distinguish’ (sūtra III.35). The ever-changing Ignorance makes everything baneful, and so pleasure in objects is itself a bane, because it contains the seeds of pain, as even the sweetest thing (is bitter) if it is known to cause illness. To explain what it means to say that pleasure in objects is Ignorance, he gives the verdict of the holy texts: Pleasure is the calm from satisfaction of the senses by experiences. The experiences are objects like sound; the senses experience them, and then there is a resulting satiety. As a result, a pacification of the senses, a state in the form of the idea ‘There is nothing to cause disappointment or trouble’, an absence of any defect; this is pleasure.

But pain is when there is no rest no relief from agitation, because of the presence of desire. On this it is said: ‘There is no pain like thirst, no pleasure like freedom from thirst.’ (Mahābh.XIII. App.15.3997, with atṛṣṇā instead of tyāga).

(Opponent) It is only by enjoyment that there can be freedom from thirst; that is the goal of enjoyment. Enjoyment becomes happiness.

(Answer) That is why he says: Freedom from thirst cannot be attained by practice of sense experience. Why not?He replies: Because passions increase with application to sense enjoyments. As it has been said:

Skills techniques in the practices of enjoyment correspondingly increase in the senses. Even though it may be that skill of the senses is preceded (normally) by skill in the mind, still it is seen that in eating and so on there is a skill in the sense organs too. Like a man running away from the scorpion’s poison, bitten by a venomous snake, is the pleasure-seeker trapped by objects, caught by them, following after them, or obsessed with them, as a man’s fear excited by a scorpion with its lesser venom brings him into a greater suffering, caught by the more virulent poison of a snake. So fleeing from this first merely apparent pain, which is in the end great pleasure (Gītā XVIII.37), frightened by the idea that it is painful, he becomes sunk in a boundless mire of great pain. In this waythis which is in the end pain, is counter-productive as regards pleasure (and known as such) to the yogin even on the occasions of pleasure. Thus the yogin enjoys pleasure only with misgivings in his heart, for the karma which has yet to be experienced according to its quality is more powerful (than the occasion of pleasure). Therefore to the discriminating, all is pain.

Now the painfulness of anxiety (tāpa) is explained. A developing experience of pleasure becomes painful when its inevitable result is realized, through knowledge of its true nature, as does the pleasure of eating a sweet of yogurt and rice when known to be mixed with poison, in spite of the fact that its apparent nature does give a shade of pleasure sensation. Here again the painfulness is from the true nature of the thing, inasmuch as anxiety is inherently adverse.

Tormented by that pain, seeking means to pleasure refinements of various kinds, he gets excited, and sets about helping or harming others. Then by that helping or harming of others he piles up virtue and sin. This virtue and sin created by helping or harming others becomes a karma-stock arising out of greed and delusion, the pain of anxiety extending itself further and further. For the man who sees thus clearly, all is pain alone, as caused by involvement with objects.

Now he goes on to the pain of saṃskāra-s produced by experience of joy and suffering. What then is the painfulness of saṃskāra? From experience of pleasure, there is a saṃskāra-stock of pleasure; from experience of pain, a saṃskāra-stock of pain. Since pleasure and pain are pervaded by passion and hate, their respective saṃskāra-stocks too will be pervaded by passion and hate. So the maturing of karma in the form of birth, life span and experience is experienced as pleasure or pain.

The saṃskāra-stock of pleasure-pain experience is made up entirely of that experience, and so the saṃskāra-s as well as the experiences are entirely pervaded by passion and aversion. The respective saṃskāra-stocks become factors in action and experience, and in this way the saṃskāra-stocks become sources of pain. The dynamic character of saṃskāra is itself painful, and that is the painfulness of saṃskāra. For no one employs a means to an experience or action which he does not remember, and it is well known that memory depends on saṃskāra.

Even if a saṃskāra were not inherently painful, still to the man of clear sight who knows that it will cause pain, its very existence is itself pain, like the mere fact of having eaten poison (before any effect is felt). Thus as a result of change, anxiety and saṃskāra, everything indeed is pain. In this way the beginningless stream of pain, inherently adverse to him, distresses the yogin alone.

(Opponent) It is inherently adverse to the others also. Why does it not distress them?

(Answer) It does not distress the others, just because their minds are undiscriminating and calloused with every foulness of taints and so on. To them, the adverse quality is not the main thing. A man accepts on his head a fist-blow, even like a hammer, from his beloved. He puts up with the wetting and fouling by his baby son held to his chest. He feels he is moving in an ocean of joy and has no resentment at all in him. To him, it is not inherently adverse. So in the case of the undiscriminating man, he assents to the passion-desire and thereby increases it all the more.

(Opponent) The circumstances are the same for the yogin too, so why does it distress him?

(Answer) It afflicts him alone. Why? Because the knower is like an eyeball. The meaning is, that it afflicts him because of his purity and his withdrawal. The cause is not the same for him, inasmuch as he is a knower. He does not have an undiscriminating mind calloused with feelings of taints and so on, for he would not be a knower unless he had got rid of that calloused mind. So it is that it afflicts the knower alone, who is sensitive like an eyeball, and not the others.

On this he explains the difference between the knower and the ignorant by some examples. As a thread of woolthough its touch is so light flicked on to the eyeball, causes pain because of the extreme sensitivity of the eyeball, so the pain afflicts the yogin whose consciousness is so refined and whose heart is so pure. The thread of wool lashed even very violently on to another member of the body will not cause pain by its contact. So the other recipient is not afflicted by pain, because his mind has become calloused with taints, like other limbs of the body which have hard skin.

He continues: So those pains afflict the yogin alone, who is like the eyeball, and not another recipient. He shows how the other recipient is like the other limbs of the body, in the next passage, beginning But that other and concluding with the words the sufferings flood down. But that other is subjected to pain brought on by himself;the effect of karma is brought on a man by way of mental process, the pain being induced by causes animate and inanimate; subjected to pain again and again, casting it off by leaving the body, and then in another place, having taken on another body, that pain which he had cast off emerges; with his mental processes from time without beginning shot through and through so to say with various saṃskāra-complexes, with Ignorance.

What is the character of this other? Taking on what he should avoid, namely ‘I’ and ‘mine’. ‘I’ is something supposed, by illusion, in the body and senses and their qualities of action, attribute, and result; ‘mine’ is the idea of it in regard to externals, animate and inanimate. Both of these should be avoided, as they are wholly seeds which ripen into tainted karma. Without these two, passions, etc., and their karmic ripening cannot come about, so they are to be avoided, and this is a man who is taking on what he ought to avoid, namely ‘I’ and ‘mine’.

Born again and again like one of the other members of the body in the simile, to be pursued by sufferings with causes both objective and subjective, objective in the form of a god or the elements of nature, and subjective, being that particular kind of cause; the sufferings result from both these kinds of cause.

Three-fold: the sufferings whether from external or the other causes are of three kinds, in that they are either past, future, or present. As the sūtra will say, ‘To be escaped is the pain not yet come’ (II.16). Or again, they are three-fold as being essentially taint, and karma, and its ripening, and again their triple painfulness is from change, or from anxiety, or from saṃskāra. So they are three-fold, and these flood down, they are the inevitable consequence.

Seeing that other one, the undiscriminating recipient, and himelf and all beings, being borne away by the stream of pain without beginning submerged in that torrent of pain, the yogin takes refuge in right vision, destroyer of all pain.

(Opponent) But if he is a yogin, he must already have got right vision.

(Answer) One who is practising the yoga methods is a yogin even if he has not got right vision. The statement shows that yoga is the means to right vision.

Seeing that yoga and the fruit of yoga (powers) are all nothing but pain, he takes refuge in right wisdom. As the sūtra will say, ‘From indifference to that too, the seeds of imperfection are destroyed, and there is Transcendental Aloneness’ (III.50).

And for another reason, all is pain to the clear-sighted man. What reason is that? From the clash of the operations of the guṇa-s.

(Opponent) Why has the teaching made a division between the reasons? It should have said simply, ‘Because of changes, anxieties, saṃskāra-s, and clash of operations of the guṇa-s.’

(Answer) There is no mistake. Everyone knows experiences of pleasure and pain and the saṃskāra-complexes of them, and these are referred to in the phrase ‘Because of the sufferings caused by changes and anxieties and saṃskāra-s’. But the man who has clear knowledge, which can distinguish their cause, becomes aware – in the perfection of his discrimination – of the clash of the operations as caused by the guṇa-s (in the mental processes), and this is a separate cause. But inasmuch as they are all painful and so causes of pain, they are put together in the one sūtra.

The guṇa-s are sattva, rajas and tamas; mental processes are formed out of them; there is pain from the clash of these. The guṇa-s are embodied in forms, like the inner organ of mind. As there is continual change of predominance among the guṇa-s, their operations clash; one of them is overcome by the rising up of another. Thus the operations of each of the three guṇa-s are every moment alternately suppressing the others or helping them to appear.

When among the three guṇa-s, which are inherently either happiness or pain or delusion respectively, a process belonging to one is in possession, it is not that there is no connection with the others. So the conclusion is this: when rajas arises, which is inherently pain, it is not to be taken that just because there is some pain, it must necessarily be pain only from a process of rajas. Sattva and tamas are there along with the rajas, and the painfulness is theirs too. And the rise and cessation of sattva and tamas follow from the operation of rajas, so that pain belongs to all of them.

He explains further: With their operations always tending to light or activity or fixity respectively, the guṇa-s are mutually dependent on each other. Although mutually clashing, they also act towards each other as helper and helped, like oil and wick and fire in a lamp. They produce ideas of just three kinds, peaceful of sattva, violent of rajas, and deluded of tamas. They go together as auxiliaries to each other. When a peaceful idea of sattva has arisen, it is at once overthrown by an upsurging thought of force, or rajas aided by tamas.

When some idea of force, a rājasik idea, comes to rise, supported by another guṇa, it is soon overcome by an idea of delusion, namely a tāmasik idea, supported by sattva, or else by a sāttvik idea supported by tamas. The idea of tamas in its turn is overcome by ideas of the other two, and similarly the sāttvik idea is overcome. Thus the guṇa-s have their rise and subjection and activity.

Why is this? Because the operation of the guṇa-s fluctuates, the essential nature of the guṇa-s shows in the forms of the mind, and the mind is a quick changer, as it is said.

(Opponent) Where is this said?

(Answer) In holy texts.

(Opponent) But why should the guṇa-s clash with each other?

(Answer) Because there cannot be more than one thing predominant in the one place, any more than in an inner room, darkness and light could be simultaneously predominant. There cannot be simultaneous predominance of the guṇa-s making up the form of the mind (antaḥkaraṇa) – in the shape of happiness, pain or delusion – either in their own forms as operational processes of light, activity and restriction, or as ideas of happiness and the others characterized by knowledge, etc.

The mental process is linked, along with the guṇa which is manifest, with the other two guṇa-s in their unmanifest forms, which do not clash because they are in the state of one evenness. As it is said, each when predominant in operation and predominant as an idea clashes with the predominance (in operations and ideas) of the others, but when unmanifest, they co-operate with the predominant one. When there is predominance (by sattva) in the form of happiness, there is no predominance (by rajas) in the form of pain or (by tamas) in the form of delusion. When the one is dominant, the others are not. So when the mental process of knowledge is predominant, that of the idea of greed is not so. When any one of them predominates the others do not.

So these guṇa-s come to have the ideas of happiness, pain and delusion respectively through the support of both the others. The idea of happiness comes to sattva through the support of both rajas and tamas; rajas comes to have the idea of pain through the support of both sattva and tamas; tamas too comes by its ideas of delusion through the support of sattva and rajas. So each has the effect of all.

(Opponent) If so, how is the distinction made that this is a sāttvik idea and this of tamas and this of rajas?

(Answer) He says, However the distinction is made between them according to which guṇa is then in the principal place. The identification (as of a particular guṇa) is made or rejected according to whether it is predominant or subsidiary. Even in the scheme of the five elements, what is classified as ‘earth’ is also watery and fiery. There is this kind of clash of the guṇic processes and therefore all is pain to the clear-seeing man, as it has been said. The purpose is, that from (awareness of) this clash, there should come about the supreme detachment.

(Opponent) How is this purpose shown?

(Answer) A distinction was made in the sūtra, which first said ‘because of the pain from changes and anxieties and saṃskāra-s’ thus pointing to the pain-producing character of all thirst for things seen or heard about. But that has no relation to the supreme detachment, which is from the pain of things invisible.

But by adding ‘and from the clash of the operation of the guṇa-s’, he teaches the supreme detachment, namely detachment from the possession of qualities whether manifest or unmanifest. For there is pain from the very fact of mutually clashing guṇa processes. And when it is said here that each of them has the form of all, as either principal or subsidiary, the reference is to manifest and unmanifest qualifications. This is why the sūtra makes separate mention of the clash of the processes of the guṇa-s.

From the fact of pain in change and anxiety and saṃskāra, it is demonstrated that the seed which produces this great as characterized by the guṇa-s and their qualities mass of pain, is Ignorance, and what causes its annihilation is right vision as its opponent. Since Knowledge (vidyā) is based on things as they really are, it is only Knowledge that causes the annihilation of Ignorance which is based on things otherwise than as they are, just as the correct view of the thing as it is, the moon single, abolishes the view of a false thing, the moon seen double.

As accompanied by the fundamental cause of pain, taints and karma-s and their ripening, all is pain, and so it has been shown. The one who suffers from that pain is the man of clear sight (vivekin), and as such he is the proper object of a work on right vision (samyagdarśana-śāstra) and not the other one, who ‘accepts the very pain. He now seeks to illustrate the point by an example: As classics of medicine are in four parts: illness, cause of the illness, the healthy condition, and the remedy.

As the classics of medicine are divided for teaching purposes into four: illness, cause of illness, the normal state of health, and the treatment for that purpose, and it is called four-fold as having these four parts of illness, etc., so in this work of yoga. There is saṃsāra with its mass of pain; its cause is the conjunction of pradhāna and Puruṣa, arising from Ignorance; liberation from saṃsāra so caused is the purpose of a work on right vision (such as this one); and there is right vision itself. With these four, this too is a system of four parts. Again it is four-fold because its subjects are divided in the four ways.

In this, it is not that the true nature of the one who escapes (has to be acquired or escaped from).

(Opponent) Here should have come the definition of the one who escapes, namely the sūtra ‘The Seer is sight alone’ (II.20).

(Answer) Not so. In order to explain the purpose of undertaking the work, saṃsāra has been described, with its taints and so on, all ending up in pain. The work is directed to that traveller-in-saṃsāra (saṃsārin) who by reason of the pain of saṃsāra has become a man of clear sight (vivekin). For such a man of clear sight the work is undertaken, and this was indicated in the first sūtra. Right vision alone is the goal of the work thus begun. This is therefore the right place, immediately following on the description of the pain of saṃsāra, to teach that the true nature of the one who escapes, namely Puruṣa, is not to be acquired or escaped from.

(Opponent) Why should it not be? Unless it is either acquirable or avoidable, it turns out to be nothing at all. In the world, happiness and what causes happiness are to be acquired, and pain and what causes it are to be avoided. So this Puruṣa too – being a thing – should have qualities on one side or the other.

(Answer) What would follow in that case? release would entail his destruction. If this had the character of something to be avoided, then it should be destroyed. And what would happen upon release? It would entail destruction of the self.

(Opponent) What is wrong with that?

(Answer) We shall explain what is wrong, in the Fourth Part, on Transcendental Aloneness (kaivalya). Moreover, since there is no other to be released, release would never come about.

(Opponent) Let it be that self alone is itself released from self.

(Answer) No. The action would be self-contradictory, and there cannot be a split in the very self. If self is to be what escapes from self which is to be escaped from, there will be yet another (escape), and so to an infinite regress. Each self which escapes would itself be escaped from. Nor can there be simultaneous existence of the two sides of the escape; and if they are to exist at different times, then they will not be self which is escaped from and self which escapes from it.

If it is accepted that the escaper is himself to be escaped from, there can never be the relation of escape, because there would be an infinite regress. In the infinite chain of escapers, it becomes meaningless for any escaper to strive for liberation at all, since he accepts that what he seeks to escape from is himself alone. There can be no resulting liberation, for the result sought by a man in bondage is not his own destruction, but release. Never does a man wish his own destruction, even when he sees that he is on the point of death. If this kind of escaper in the infinite chain did attain his purpose by destruction, he would not in fact be desiring true liberation, in the sense of attaining what liberation aims at.

As for the position that the one who escapes is eternal, this is what we are going to teach in the sūtra on the Seer in the Fourth Part on Transcendental Aloneness. Therefore what is to be escaped from is never Puruṣa but it is saṃsāra, the manifestation of the Great Principle and the rest, and full of pain. The point is, that Puruṣa has no such characteristics (as acquirability or avoidability); if it had such characteristics, it would imply a doctrine of its own perishability.

(Opponent) Well, let it be something to be acquired, as a material object which causes happiness is acquired in order to get happiness.

(Answer) Not so.

(Opponent) Why not?

(Answer) The doctrine that self is to be acquired would make it something caused. If the relation is like that for acquiring material objects, and he is himself what is acquired, then the acquisition would be meaningless, because there is no other to acquire. A cloth is not acquired by the cloth itself; a thing has to be acquired by something else. And if another acquirer (of self by self) is supposed, there will be infinite regress, for he too will be acquired by another, and that one too by yet another.

Furthermore it would imply dependence on another. For a thing is acquired from something else which is its cause. Puruṣa will be taken as the cause of pradhāna consisting of sattva and the other guṇa-s, as the potter is the cause of acquiring the clay lump for a pot. But along with being the cause of acquiring pradhāna, this Puruṣa would (himelf) be acquired like pradhāna, and there would be the qualities like sattva in him also, because he would be something acquired like a lump of clay. So his acquisition of pradhāna would have nothing to give it any purpose.

(Opponent) Let it be acquired for the purpose of the Lord, or for mutual purposes among the Puruṣa-s.

(Answer) That would entail a whole mass of defects like being experienced, being unconscious, and being changeable. And therefore Puruṣa cannot have the qualities of pradhāna. And so he says, that the doctrine that self is to be acquired would make it something caused.

He is going to say that the cause is not of Puruṣa. If acquisition of it were causeless, the operations of pradhāna would be causeless. And nothing can be found that is for itself alone, for we do not find that lamps, etc., are for themselves alone.

Denying both the other views: rejecting both – that self is to be escaped from or that it is to be acquired – there follows the teaching that it is eternal, the doctrine of eternality of self. Even though pradhāna, which is something to be acquired, also has eternality, still as inherently changing, that (eternality) is not eternal. Pradhāna has defects like inherent plurality, impurity, Ignorance and dependence on another. If the Puruṣa-s were like that, there would be no release. Since bondage and release and their causes, Knowledge and Ignorance, must refer to the self, it would mean that bondage and release would be indistinguishable. So the doctrine of eternality is reached by rejecting both other views – that self is to be escaped from or that it is to be acquired – and that is right vision.