Yoga Sutra Of Patanjali (4.1 – 4.34) – On Kaivalya

Below are the 34 translated verses from the fourth part of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra. The fourth chapter of the Yoga Sutra starting with verse 4.1 deals with the concept of Kaivalya or Realization. In this chapter, Patanjali tells the secret of how realization can be obtained through Yoga. Kaivalya also means many other things, few of those are “solitude”, “detachment” or “isolation.”

Chapter 3 of Yoga Sutra is in this article.

Verse
Number
Translation
4.1Psychic powers arise by birth, drugs, incantations, purificatory acts or concentrated insight.
4.2Transformation into another state is by the directed flow of creative nature.
4.3Creative nature is not moved into action by any incidental cause, but by the removal of obstacles, as in the case of a farmer clearing his field of stones for irrigation.
4.4Created minds arise from egoism alone.
4.5There being difference of interest, one mind is the director of many minds.
4.6 Of these, the mind born of concentrated insight is free from the impressions.
4.7The actions (karma) of the yogi are neither good nor bad, while that of all other men are of three types: pure, impure and mixed.
4.8From them proceed the development of the tendencies which bring about the fruition of actions.
4.9Because of the magnetic qualities of habitual mental patterns and memory, a relationship of cause and effect clings even though there may be a change of embodiment by class, space and time.
4.10 The desire to live is eternal, and the thought-clusters prompting a sense of identity are beginning less.
4.11Being held together by cause and effect, substratum and object- the tendencies themselves disappear on the dissolution of these bases.
4.12The past and the future exist in the object itself as form and expression, there being difference in the conditions of the properties.
4.13Whether manifested or unmanifested they are of the nature of the attributes.
4.14Things assume reality because of the unity maintained within that modification.
4.15Even though the external object is the same, there is a difference of cognition in regard to the object because of the difference in mentality.
4.16And if an object known only to a single mind were not cognized by that mind, would it then exist?
4.17An object is known or not known by the mind, depending on whether or not the mind is colored by the object.
4.18The mutations of awareness are always known on account of the changelessness of its Lord, the indweller.
4.19Nor is the mind self-luminous, as it can be known.
4.20 It is not possible for the mind to be both the perceived and the perceiver simultaneously.
4.21In the case of cognition of one mind by another, we would have to assume cognition of cognition, and there would be confusion of memories.
4.22Consciousness appears to the mind itself as intellect when in that form in which it does not pass from place to place.
4.23The mind is said to perceive when it reflects both the indweller (the knower) and the objects of perception (the known).
4.24Though variegated by innumerable tendencies, the mind acts not for itself but for another, for the mind is of compound substance.
4.25For one who sees the distinction, there is no further confusing of the mind with the self.
4.26Then the awareness begins to discriminate, and gravitates towards liberation.
4.27Distractions arise from habitual thought patterns when practice is intermittent.
4.28The removal of the habitual thought patterns is similar to that of the afflictions already described.
4.29To one who remains undistracted in even the highest intellection there comes the equal minded realization known as The Cloud of Virtue. This is a result of discriminative discernment.
4.30From this there follow freedom from cause and effect and afflictions.
4.31The infinity of knowledge available to such a mind freed of all obscuration and property makes the universe of sensory perception seem small.
4.32Then the sequence of change in the three attributes comes to an end, for they have fulfilled their function.
4.33The sequence of mutation occurs in every second, yet is comprehensible only at the end of a series.
4.34When the attributes cease mutative association with awareness, they resolve into dormancy in Nature, and the indweller shines forth as pure consciousness. This is absolute freedom.
brown field and blue sky
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These translations are available in Public Domain.

This marks the end of verses 4.1 to 4.34, Chapter 4 (On Realization) of Yoga Sutra.

Thus, we come to an end in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra. A complete list of chapters in Yoga Sutra are available below:

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