Yoga Sutras of Patanjali · Chapter 4
The Chapter on Liberation
34 verses · Patanjali culminates in kaivalya — the final aloneness of pure consciousness. He examines the nature of mind, the mechanics of memory and karma, the dissolution of the gunas, and consciousness's release from prakriti into its own untouched essence.
Chapter 4
कैवल्य पादः
Kaivalya Pada
4.1
The siddhis — extraordinary attainments of the yogi — arise from one of five sources:…
4.2
Transformation from one species or birth-class into another comes about through the…
4.3
An apparent cause does not actually set nature in motion
4.4
Constructed minds — the multiple mind-fields a yogi can manifest — arise from the sense…
4.5
Although the minds are many, one mind directs them all
4.6
Of the five sources of siddhis, only the mind born of meditation is free of latent residue
4.7
The karma of a yogi is neither white nor black; for others, it is of three kinds — white,…
4.8
From karma comes the manifestation of those vasanas — latent tendencies — that correspond…
4.9
Even though separated by birth, place, and time, memory and samskara are continuous,…
4.10
These vasanas are beginningless, because the will to live is eternal
4.11
Because vasanas are bound together by cause, fruit, support, and object, when these are…
4.12
The past and the future exist in their own form; they differ from the present only by the…
4.13
These dharmas — past, present, and future — are essentially of the three gunas
4.14
The reality of an object lies in the unity of its transformations
4.15
The same object is perceived differently by different minds; their paths are distinct
4.16
An object does not depend on any single mind; if it did, what would happen when that mind…
4.17
An object is known or unknown by the mind depending on whether the mind is colored by it
4.18
The modifications of the mind are always known to its lord, the purusha — because the…
4.19
The mind is not self-illuminating, because it is itself an object of perception
4.20
Furthermore, the mind cannot perceive itself and an object simultaneously
4.21
If the mind were known by another mind, there would be an infinite regress of cognitions…
4.22
Consciousness, which does not move from place to place, becomes self-aware when the mind…
4.23
The mind, colored by both the seer and the seen, comprehends all objects
4.24
Though variegated by innumerable vasanas, the mind exists for the sake of another — the…
4.25
For one who sees the distinction between mind and Self, brooding on the nature of Self…
4.26
Then the mind, inclined toward discrimination, gravitates toward kaivalya
4.27
In the gaps of that discrimination, other ideas arise from latent impressions
Today's verse
4.28
The removal of these samskaras is to be accomplished in the same way as the removal of…
4.29
When the yogi, free even from interest in the highest meditation, sees discrimination…
4.30
From that — from the dharma-megha samadhi — the afflictions and karmas cease
4.31
Then, when all coverings and impurities have been removed, knowledge becomes infinite,…
4.32
Then, the succession of transformations of the gunas comes to an end, their purpose…
4.33
Sequence is the correlative of moment; it becomes graspable at the very end of…
4.34
When the gunas — now empty of any purpose for the purusha — return to their own source,…