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The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali - Book 4 - Table of Contents
Book 4 - Illumination 1. The higher and lower siddhis (or powers) are gained by incarnation, or by drugs, words of power, intense desire or by meditation. 2. The transfer of the consciousness from a lower vehicle into a higher is part of the great creative and evolutionary process. 3. The practices and methods are not the true cause of the transfer of consciousness but they serve to remove obstacles, just as the husbandman prepares his ground for sowing. 4. The "I am" consciousness is responsible for the creation of the organs through which the sense of individuality is enjoyed. 5. Consciousness is one, yet produces the varied forms of the many. 6. Among the forms which consciousness assumes, only that which is the result of meditation is free from latent karma. 7. The activities of the liberated soul are free from the pairs of opposites. Those of other people are of three kinds. 8. From these three kinds of karma emerge those forms which are necessary for the fruition of the effects. 9. There is identity of relation between memory and the effect-producing cause, even when separated by species, time and place. 10. Desire to live being eternal, these mind-created forms are without known beginning. 11. These forms being created and held together through desire, the basic cause, personality, the effective result, mental vitality or the will to live, and the support of the outward going life or object, when these cease to attract then the forms cease likewise to be. 12. The past and the present exist in reality. The form assumed in the time concept of the present is the result of developed characteristics and holds latent seeds of future quality. 13. The characteristics, whether latent or potent, partake of the nature of the three gunas (qualities of matter). 14. The manifestation of the objective form is due to the one-pointedness of the effect-producing cause (the unification of the modifications of the chitta or mind stuff). 15. These two, consciousness and form, are distinct and separate; though forms may be similar, the consciousness may function on differing levels of being. 16. The many modifications of the one mind produce the diverse forms, which depend for existence upon those many mind impulses. 17. These forms are cognized or not, according to the qualities latent in the perceiving consciousness. 18. The Lord of the mind, the perceiver, is ever aware of the constantly active mind stuff, the effect-producing cause. 19. Because it can be seen or cognized it is apparent that the mind is not the source of illumination. 20. Neither can it know two objects simultaneously, itself and that which is external to itself. 21. If knowledge of the mind (chitta) by a remoter mind is postulated, an infinite number of knowers must be inferred, and the sequence of memory reactions would tend to infinite confusion. 22. When the spiritual intelligence which stands alone and freed from objects, reflects itself in the mind stuff, then comes awareness of the Self. 23. Then the mind stuff, reflecting both the knower and the knowable, becomes omniscient. 24. The mind stuff also, reflecting as it does an infinity of mind impressions, becomes the instrument of the Self and acts as a unifying agent. 25. The state of isolated unity (withdrawn into the true nature of the Self) is the reward of the man who can discriminate between the mind stuff and the Self, or spiritual man. 26. The mind then tends towards discrimination and increasing illumination as to the true nature of the one Self. 27. Through force of habit, however, the mind will reflect other mental impressions and perceive objects of sensuous perception. 28. These reflections are of the nature of hindrances, and the method of their overcoming is the same. 29. The man who develops non-attachment even in his aspiration after illumination and isolated unity, becomes aware, eventually, through practised discrimination, of the over-shadowing cloud of spiritual knowledge. 30. When this stage is reached then the hindrances and karma are overcome. 31. When, through the removal of the hindrances and the purification of all the sheaths, the totality of knowledge becomes available, naught further remains for the man to do. 32. The modifications of the mind stuff (or qualities of matter) through the inherent nature of the three gunas come to an end, for they have served their purpose. 33. Time, which is the sequence of the modifications of the mind, likewise terminates, giving place to the Eternal Now. 34. The state of isolated unity becomes possible when the three qualities of matter (the three gunas or potencies of nature) no longer exercise any hold over the Self. The pure spiritual consciousness withdraws into the One.
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