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The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali - Book 3 - Union achieved and its Results
43. When that which veils the light is done away with, then comes the state of being called discarnate (or disembodied), freed from the modification of the thinking principle. This is the state of illumination. Again, we have a free, rather than a literal translation, and in this the true sense of the archaic terms used is preserved instead of academic correctness. The reason for this will be apparent if certain well-known translations are given. They are correct translations but demonstrate [340] the ambiguity which is inevitable when a literal translation of the Sanskrit terms is used. "An outwardly unadjusted fluctuation is the great Discarnate; as a result of this the dwindling of the covering to the brightness." - Woods. "The external modification (of the internal organ)... thoughtless is (called) the great incorporeal (modification); therefrom (results) the destruction of the obscuration of the illumination (of intellect)." - Tatya. Vivekananda expresses the sutra in the following terms: "By making sanyama on the real modifications of the mind, which are outside, called great disembodiedness, comes disappearance of the covering of light." The great difficulties under which all translators labor is apparent from this and hence the frank paraphrasing of this passage. There are two thoughts seeking expression in this sutra. One refers to the veil or covering which prevents the illumination of the mind, and the other to the state of realization which is achieved when a man has freed himself from this veil. That which covers up the light (the "bushel" referred to by the Christ in the New Testament) is the changing, fluctuating sheaths or bodies. When they are transmuted and transcended the light of God (the second divine aspect) can flood the lower man and he knows himself as he is. Illumination pours in and he knows himself as something different to the forms through which he is functioning. He is no longer centered, no [341] longer polarized in his forms, but is actually in a condition of disembodiedness. His consciousness is that of the man out of incarnation, of the true man on his own plane, the real discarnate thinker. St. Paul, as has been pointed out by several thinkers, had a touch of this state of being. He referred to it in these words: "I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago (whether in the body I cannot tell, or whether out of the body I cannot tell; God knoweth); such an one caught up to the third heaven. And I knew such a man... how that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter." (I Cor., XII.) This "third heaven" can be understood in two ways: first, as standing for the mental plane on which is the true home of the spiritual man, the thinker, or a more specific state to be understood as that found on the third or highest of the three abstract levels of the mental plane.
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