The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali quotes

3. Then the Seer comes to consciousness in his proper nature.

Egotism is but the perversion of spiritual being.

Ambition is the inversion of spiritual power. Passion is the distortion of love. The mortal is the limitation of the immortal. When these false images give place to true, then the spiritual man stands forth luminous, as the sun, when the clouds disperse.

Egotism is but the perversion of spiritual being. Ambition is the inversion of spiritual power. Passion is the distortion of love.

The mortal is the limitation of the immortal.

When these false images give place to true, then the spiritual man stands forth luminous, as the sun, when the clouds disperse.

Egotism is but the perversion of spiritual being. Ambition is the inversion of spiritual power. Passion is the distortion of love. The mortal is the limitation of the immortal.

When these false images give place to true, then the spiritual man stands forth luminous, as the sun, when the clouds disperse.

4. Heretofore the Seer has been enmeshed in the activities of the psychic nature.

Egotism is but the perversion of spiritual being.

Ambition is the inversion of spiritual power.

Passion is the distortion of love. The mortal is the limitation of the immortal. When these false images give place to true, then the spiritual man stands forth luminous, as the sun, when the clouds disperse.

Egotism is but the perversion of spiritual being. Ambition is the inversion of spiritual power.

Passion is the distortion of love.

The mortal is the limitation of the immortal. When these false images give place to true, then the spiritual man stands forth luminous, as the sun, when the clouds disperse.

Instead of spiritual joy, the undivided joy of pure being, there has been self-indulgence of body and mind. These are all real forces, but distorted from their true nature and goal.

They must be extricated, like gems from the matrix, like the pith from the reed, steadily, without destructive violence.

Spiritual powers are to be drawn forth from the psychic meshes.

We have here a list of mental and emotional powers; of powers that picture and observe, and of powers that picture and feel.

But the power to know and feel is spiritual and immortal.

What is needed is, not to destroy it, but to raise it from the psychical to the spiritual realm.

We have thought of ourselves, perhaps, as creatures moving upon this earth, rather helpless, at the mercy of storm and hunger and our enemies.

We are to think of ourselves as immortals, dwelling in the Light, encompassed and sustained by spiritual powers.

The steady effort to hold this thought will awaken dormant and unrealized powers, which will unveil to us the nearness of the Eternal.

The image used is the swift impetus of the torrent; the kingdom must be taken by force. Firm will comes only through effort; effort is inspired by faith.

The great secret is this: it is not enough to have intuitions; we must act on them; we must live them.

22. The will may be weak, or of middle strength, or intense.

From the beginning, the Oversoul has been the Teacher of all souls, which, by their entrance into the Oversoul, by realizing their oneness with the Oversoul, have inherited the kingdom of the Light.

For the Oversoul is before Time, and Time, father of all else, is one of His children.

27. His word is OM.

The next two terms, concerning the life breath, offer some difficulty.

The surface meaning is harsh and irregular breathing; the deeper meaning is a life of harsh and irregular impulses.

32. Steady application to a principle is the way to put a stop to these.

36. As also will a joyful, radiant spirit.

There is no such illusion as gloomy pessimism, and it has been truly said that a man’s cheerfulness is the measure of his faith.

Gloom, despondency, the pale cast of thought, are very amenable to the will. Sturdy and courageous effort will bring a clear and valorous mind.

We must recognize that the fall of man is a reality, exemplified in our own persons. We have quite other sins than the animals, and far more deleterious; and they have all come through self-indulgence, with which our psychic natures are soaked through and through.

As we climbed down hill for our pleasure, so must we climb up again for our purification and restoration to our former high estate.

The process is painful, perhaps, yet indispensable.

Here is a thought which our own day is beginning to grasp: that love is a form of knowledge; that we truly know any thing or any person, by becoming one therewith, in love.

Thus love has a wisdom that the mind cannot claim, and by this hearty love, this becoming one with what is beyond our personal borders, we may take a long step toward freedom.

Two directions for this may be suggested: the pure love of the artist for his work, and the earnest, compassionate search into the hearts of others.

Newton was asked how he made his discoveries. By intending my mind on them, he replied. This steady pressure, this becoming one with what we seek to understand, whether it be atom or soul, is the one means to know.

When we become a thing, we really know it, not otherwise.

Therefore live the life, to know the doctrine; do the will of the Father, if you would know the Father.

our spiritual selves attain true consciousness through unity, where the partition wall between us and the Highest, between us and others, is broken down and we are all made perfect in the One.

The highest riches are possessed by all pure souls, only when united.

Thus we rise from separation to true individuality in unity.

The poet, the wise philosopher and the saint not only reach a wide and luminous consciousness, but they gain certain knowledge of substantial reality.

When we know, we know that we know.

For we have come to the stage where we know things by being them, and nothing can be more true than being. We rest on the rock, and know it to be rock, rooted in the very heart of the world.

When we know, we know that we know. For we have come to the stage where we know things by being them, and nothing can be more true than being.

We rest on the rock, and know it to be rock, rooted in the very heart of the world.

49. The object of this perception is other than what is learned from the sacred books, or by sound inference, since this perception is particular.

because birth brings inevitable death; because there is no expectation without its shadow, fear. The life of the psychic self is misery, because it is afflicted with restlessness; so that he who has much, finds not satisfaction, but rather the whetted hunger for more.

The fire is not quenched by pouring oil on it; so desire is not quenched by the satisfaction of desire.

Again, the life of the psychic self is misery, because it makes ever new dynamic impresses in the mind; because a desire satisfied is but the seed from which springs the desire to find like satisfaction again.

16. This pain is to be warded off, before it has come.

In other words, we cannot cure the pains of life by laying on them any balm.

We must cut the root, absorption in the psychical self. So it is said, there is no cure for the misery of longing, but to fix the heart upon the eternal.

Yet all these laws are but reflections, but projections outward, of the laws of the soul; therefore in learning these, the soul learns to know itself.

All life is but the mirror wherein the Soul learns to know its own face.

24. The cause of this association is the darkness of unwisdom.

And when we come to detail the means of Yoga, we may well be astonished at their simplicity. There is little in them that is mysterious. They are very familiar.

The essence of the matter lies in carrying them out.

29. The eight means of Yoga are: the Commandments, the Rules, right Poise, right Control of the life-force, Withdrawal, Attention, Meditation, Contemplation.

This broad, general training, which forms and develops human character, must be accomplished to a very considerable degree, before there can be much hope of success in the further stages of spiritual life.

First the psychical, and then the spiritual. First the man, then the angel.

On this broad, humane and wise foundation does the system of Patanjali rest.

Now as to the more direct application. To conquer a sin, let heart and mind rest, not on the sin, but on the contrary virtue. Let the sin be forced out by positive growth in the true direction, not by direct opposition.

Turn away from the sin and go forward courageously, constructively, creatively, in well-doing.

In this way the whole nature will gradually be drawn up to the higher level, on which the sin does not even exist. The conquest of a sin is a matter of growth and evolution, rather than of opposition.

Now as to the more direct application.

To conquer a sin, let heart and mind rest, not on the sin, but on the contrary virtue.

Let the sin be forced out by positive growth in the true direction, not by direct opposition. Turn away from the sin and go forward courageously, constructively, creatively, in well-doing.

Turn away from the sin and go forward courageously, constructively, creatively, in well-doing. In this way the whole nature will gradually be drawn up to the higher level, on which the sin does not even exist.

The conquest of a sin is a matter of growth and evolution, rather than of opposition.

34. Transgressions are injury, falsehood, theft, incontinence, envy; whether committed, or caused, or assented to, through greed, wrath, or infatuation; whether faint, or middling, or excessive; bearing endless, fruit of ignorance and pain. Therefore must the weight be cast on the other side.

Where the heart is full of kindness which seeks no injury to another, either in act or thought or wish, this full love creates an atmosphere of harmony, whose benign power touches with healing all who come within its influence.

Peace in the heart radiates peace to other hearts, even more surely than contention breeds contention.

36. When he is perfected in truth, all acts and their fruits depend on him.

There is needed, further, a positive fire of the will; a keen vital vigour for the physical powers, and something finer, purer, stronger, but of kindred essence, for the higher powers.

The fire of genius is something more than a phrase, for there can be no genius without the celestial fire of the awakened spiritual will.

44. Through spiritual reading, the disciple gains communion with the divine Power on which his heart is set.

And sorrow and darkness are inevitable, until the path be found, and the personal will made once more one with the greater Will, wherein it finds rest and power, without losing freedom.

In His will is our peace. And with that peace comes light.

Soul-vision is perfected through obedience.

Neither is effective without the other.

Aspiration without effort brings weakness; effort without aspiration brings a false strength, not resting on enduring things.

The two together make for the right poise which sets the spiritual man firmly and steadfastly on his feet.

and in the same direction of thought it has been eloquently declared that prayer does not consist in our catching God’s attention, but rather in our allowing God to hold our attention.

The vital matter is, that we need to disentangle our consciousness from the noisy and perturbed thraldom of the psychical, and to come to consciousness as the spiritual man.

This we must do, first, by purification, through the Commandments and the Rules; and, second, through the faculty of spiritual attention, by steadily heeding endless fine intimations of the spiritual power within us, and by intending our consciousness thereto;

and, second, through the faculty of spiritual attention, by steadily heeding endless fine intimations of the spiritual power within us, and by intending our consciousness thereto; thus by degrees transferring the centre of consciousness from the psychical to the spiritual.

It is a question, first, of love, and then of attention.

54. The right Withdrawal is the disengaging of the powers from entanglement in outer things, as the psychic nature has been withdrawn and stilled.

It is the power to focus the consciousness on a given spot, and hold it there

Attention is the first and indispensable step in all knowledge.

Attention to spiritual things is the first step to spiritual knowledge.

Third, there is the ardent will to know its meaning, to illumine it with comprehending thought. Fourth, all personal bias—all desire merely to indorse a previous opinion and so prove oneself right, and all desire for personal profit or gratification must be quite put away.

There must be a purely disinterested love of truth for its own sake.

Thus is the perceiving consciousness made void, as it were, of all personality or sense of separateness. The personal limitation stands aside and lets the All-consciousness come to bear upon the problem.

By doing this, I gather a harvest for the evening, I gain a deeper insight into life, in virtue of which I begin the next day with a certain advantage, a certain spiritual advance and attainment. So with all successive days.

In faith and aspiration, we pass from day to day, in growing knowledge and power, with never more than one day to solve at a time, until all life becomes radiant and transparent.

7. This threefold power, of Attention, Meditation, Contemplation, is more interior than the means of growth previously described.

10. Through frequent repetition of this process, the mind becomes habituated to it, and there arises an equable flow of perceiving consciousness.

Control of the mind by the Soul, like control of the muscles by the mind, comes by practice, and constant voluntary repetition.

As an example of control of the muscles by the mind, take the ceaseless practice by which a musician gains mastery over his instrument, or a fencer gains skill with a rapier. Innumerable small efforts of attention will make a result which seems well-nigh miraculous;

there are the buds at the end of each branch and twig, which carry the still closely packed needles which are the promise of the future. In like manner, the chrysalis has, as its past, the caterpillar; as its future, the butterfly.

The man has, in his past, the animal; in his future, the angel. Both are visible even now in his face.

So with all things, for all things change and grow.

So we may once more use the same illustration. Perfectly concentrated Meditation, perfect insight into the chrysalis, reveals the caterpillar that it has been, the butterfly that it is destined to be.

He who knows the seed, knows the seed-pod or ear it has come from, and the plant that is to come from it.

So in like manner he who really knows today, and the heart of to-day, knows its parent yesterday and its child tomorrow. Past, present and future are all in the Eternal. He who dwells in the Eternal knows all three.

23. By perfectly concentrated Meditation on sympathy, compassion and kindness, is gained the power of interior union with others.

Unity is the reality; separateness the illusion.

The nearer we come to reality, the nearer we come to unity of heart. Sympathy, compassion, kindness are modes of this unity of heart, whereby we rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.

Thereafter, these forces, or their spiritual prototypes, are turned to the building of the spiritual man.

Always, it must be remembered, the victory is first a spiritual one; only later does it bring control of the bodily powers.

32. Through perfectly concentrated Meditation on the light in the head comes the vision of the Masters who have attained.

and, finally, the wholly occult vital powers of the plant itself, stored up through ages, and flowing down from the primal sources of life.

The husbandman but removes the obstacles. He plants and waters, but God gives the increase.

So with the finer husbandman of diviner fields. He tills and sows, but the growth of the spiritual man comes through the surge and flow of divine, creative forces and powers. Here, again, God gives the increase.

Pain’s surcease brings pleasure back again. So here, too, the states of consciousness run their circle. In all psychic states there is egotism, which, indeed, is the very essence of the psychic; and where there is egotism there is ever the seed of future sorrow.

Desire carries bondage in its womb.

But where the pure spiritual consciousness begins, free from self and stain, the ancient law of retaliation ceases; the penalty of sorrow lapses and is no more imposed. The soul now passes, no longer from sorrow to sorrow, but from glory to glory.

With the psychic, the alternation between prize and penalty is swifter.

Hope has its shadow of fear, or it is no hope.

Exclusive love is tortured by jealousy. Pleasure passes through deadness into pain. Pain’s surcease brings pleasure back again. So here, too, the states of consciousness run their circle. In all psychic states there is egotism, which, indeed, is the very essence of the psychic;

so that it cannot be said that there is any first member of the series of images, from which the rest arose. The impulse is beginningless, since it comes from the Self, which is from everlasting.

Desire is not to cease; it is to turn to the Eternal, and so become aspiration.

11. Since the dynamic mind-images are held together by impulses of desire, by the wish for personal reward, by the substratum of mental habit, by the support of outer things desired; therefore, when these cease, the self reproduction of dynamic mind-images ceases.

“I feel even irritated at having to use these three clumsy words—past, present, and future. Miserable concepts of the objective phases of the subjective whole, they are about as ill adapted for the purpose, as an axe for fine carving.”

In the eternal Now, both past and future are consummated.

Bjorklund, the Swedish philosopher, has well stated the same truth:

The simplest manifestation of this is the matter of attention.

Our minds apprehend what they wish to apprehend; all else passes unnoticed, or, on the other hand, we perceive what we resent, as, for example, the noise of a passing train; while others, used to the sound, do not notice it at all.

But the deeper meaning is, that out of the vast totality of objects ever present in the universe, the mind perceives only those which conform to the hue of its Karma. The rest remain unseen, even though close at hand.

These new enemies and fears are to be overcome by ceaselessly renewing the fight, by a steadfast, dogged persistence, whether in victory or defeat, which shall put the stubbornness of the rocks to shame.

For the Soul is older than all things, and invincible; it is of the very nature of the Soul to be unconquerable.

Therefore fight on, undaunted; knowing that the spiritual will, once awakened, shall, through the effort of the contest, come to its full strength; that ground gained can be held permanently;