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The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali - Book 3 - Union achieved and its Results
4. When concentration, meditation and contemplation form one sequential act, then is sanyama achieved. This is a most difficult idea to express for we have not in the English language the equivalent [251] of the Sanskrit term "sanyama." It is the synthesis of the three stages of the meditation process and is only possible to that student who has learnt and mastered the three states of mind control. Through that mastery he has produced certain results, which are as follows: He has freed himself from the three worlds of mind, emotion and physical plane existence. They no longer attract his attention. He is not concentrated upon, or engrossed by them. He can focus his attention at will and can hold his mind steady indefinitely, whilst working intensively in the mental world, should he so choose. He can polarize or center himself in the consciousness of the ego, soul or spiritual man, and knows himself as separate from the mind, the emotions, desires, feelings and form which constitute the lower man. He has learnt to recognize that lower man (the sum total of mental states, of emotions and physical atoms) as simply his instrument for communicating at will with the three lower planes. He has acquired the faculty of contemplation or the attitude of the real Identity towards the realm of the soul and can look out on the soul-realm in a sense corresponding to the way a man can use his eyes to see on the physical plane. He can transmit to the brain, via the controlled mind, that which he sees, and can thus impart knowledge of the self and of its kingdom to the man on the physical plane. This is perfectly concentrated meditation and [252] the power so to meditate is called sanyama in this sutra. It is the attainment of the power of meditation which is the objective of the Raja Yoga system. Through this achievement, the yogi has learnt to differentiate between the object and that which the object veils or hides. He has learnt to pierce through all veils and contact the reality behind. He has achieved a working knowledge of duality. There is yet a higher consciousness than this, that realization which is covered by the term unity, but as yet it is not his. This is, however, a very high stage and produces in the physical man astounding effects and introduces him to various forms of phenomena.
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