"Talent is love, Tolstoy once said. The idea that great art is made out of love and can only be comprehended through love recurs through history in defiance of schools, traditions, aesthetics and ideologies. Love unleavened, of course, leads to kitsch. But with the yeast of circumstance, history and ambition added, enduring work sometimes arises."
-- Richard Flanagan
(From What Do You Do, Mr Gable? - short pieces)
“We are bees of the invisible. We wildly collect the honey of the invisible, to store it in the great golden hives of the invisible.”
-- Rilke
Down from the Country
When we came down from the country, we were strangers to the sea.The rise and fall of waters without rain,the lunglike breathing of the estuarycaused our amazement; and the white stainof salt on the rocks, when the tide receded,where we were used to dark mud that a flood leaves behind,held us enthralled; and we neededsome mental adjustment which people noticed. When the mindis confronted by such magnitudes of sight and soundthere is no mask for refuge in frown or grimace;but the face looks blank, as if it were dragged up, drowned.How much loneliness is there in a different place,out of one's shell, out of all knowledge, to be caughtout of dullness of self by such alien thought?A Cup of Sea WaterI had no thought for a poem, so I wrotecasually of the sea. The sea isa common subject, and easilydescribed -- for who doesn't know of a boatand sand and rocks and what the sea is?I wrote of the sea, and I spoke of it breezily;but not in a poem -- for who doesn't knowthat a poem couldn't capture the sea,save as a cup holds it? Then the sea tasteswarm and not unlike blood; and thoughit has water's colourless anonymity,like blood it is all too savage to drink, and wastesand is thrown away, once you taste its fierce flavourwhich is all I will you to taste, my few words to savour.A Child's Essay about the SeaTides come in, tides go out. There is all about usthe movement of waters, the motions of fuss.Even the shallow ripples discuss in whispers of hushthe boat pushing into the beach. There is a rushand surge of waters to tell you of its landfall.The sea is never silent. The sun, the moon, and allheavenly bodies are dancing upon it. The seais never still. Be it a cloud's image, or beit a passing gull in its mirror of calm.There, in the distance, is a tall waterspout like a palm,or a whale spouting. Children shouting along the beach;and dogs barking -- gulls quite unable to teachdogs that dogs can't catch gulls. A constant turmoilof tides; disorders which the steadfastness of the landcannot foil.And about PhosphorescenceThe round tank of the ocean reaches faras the eye can see, and contains every starand the image of the moon. They areconstantly filling it with light. Swirl and oarand their phosphorous glows. Step ashoreand slap the wet sand, and, once more,a repetition of stars. They have been filling the oceanwith light, all their light-years. A potionof time and starshine the sea is. The notionof night at sea as dismally black is a joke.Not since Phosphorous, the morning star, first wokehas there been any cessation of lightpouring into the ocean. It is just as brightin its fastest deeps, where fish seem alight.The Sea and InfinityHe sat by the sea, and he sighed, 'Infinity.Ah, Infinity!' But there was another sideto the ocean -- an eastern shore, a north, a south...each was a limit, a boundaryto his knowledge; and the ocean, wideas it was, was not infinite. Strange word of mouth-- Infinity. For there was the sea linked molecule bymolecule;and the sky, atom to atom; and spaceby each wave-length of field and field; and allof nature the rational, natural order and ruleof space-time was finite in time or sapce.And there was nothing that he could callinfinite but Nothing. And what is Nothing?He has not seen it. It is not the sea. His own imagining.MeridiansFor which centuries there may be tractsof ocean never approached, onlynetted by meridians. In these lonelycastnesses such netting protectsthem from disintegration into space.They were, and are, will always be some placein the ocean where a ship might passor a plane plummet, and may be foundentangled in the net. As the years pass,some time we'll find in the net a rock, a fragment of groundthrust our of the sea by submarine volcano.It is the net will hold it in its place:the net we've cast around -- a flimsy laceto hold five continents; yet, strong enough.
Stephen, his blood wooed by grace of language and gesture, blushed.
"Swimming is a geat mystery, like riding a bike, like reading. Suddenly, after days and weeks of trying and failing, one morning you can do it."
"Those summers were both active and contemplative, the weather always fair but never gentle. Morning and afternoon I learned the pattern of my life, of hunting and gathering and picking over flotsam in the outer world -- fishing, diving, swimming, surfing, lighting fires, rowing boats, feeling the landscape rush in from all sides -- and of retiring indoors to wonder and write and read where only the breeze could reach me, in there where my dreams were. I would never be content with only one world or the other. At the time it felt like the ideal life, that coastal summer idyll, and maybe I've lived all my years a hostage to a six-year-old's fantasy."
"Freediving in the open ocean, for all the other things it is, is mostly a form of forgetting. Surfing, swimming laps, drifting a bait from a jetty or a boat are similarly forgetful things. They are forms of desertion, retreat, hermitage, a stepping-aside from terrestrial problems to be absorbed into the long moment. The sea is immense, trackless, potent, but above all, neutral. ... Of all water occupations, freediving is the most forgetful. You turn your back to the land, to the sun, and slide down to where all sound is flattened to chirps and rumbles. The deeper you dive the heavier is the blanket that insualtes you. You willfully forget to breathe; you sidestep the impulse and your thinking thins out to the moment at hand. The poet Jogn Blight had it clearlt: 'All reason drowns: drowning in you.' It's a religious feeling. On the seabed, or gliding midwater with everything sharp in focus and my body aching with pleasant, urgent hunger, I understand the Christian mystics for moments at a time. I too feel swallowed, minuscule, ready. But like the monk the diver contemplates on borrowed time. Sooner or later you have the surface to return to."
According to the legislation that created the National Endowment for the Humanities, "the term 'humanities' includes, but is not limited to, the study and interpretation of the following: language, both modern and classical; linguistics; literature; history; jurisprudence; philosophy; archaeology; comparative religion; ethics; the history, criticism and theory of the arts; those aspects of the social sciences which have humanistic content and employ humanistic methods; and the study and application of the humanities to the human environment with particular attention to reflecting our diverse heritage, traditions, and history and to the relevance of the humanities to the current conditions of national life."
1965.
"Practical ideals - well --h'm -- they don't appeak to me in the least.... We have trade schools and technical schools and commercial schools springing up on every corner; the high schools and the classical education suddenly turns out to be all foolishness, and the whole world thinks of nothing but mines and factories and making money...That's all very fine, of course. But in the long run pretty stupid, isn't it? ... I don't know why, but it irritates me like the deuce... I don't mean, Jean, that the July Monarchy is not an admirable regime..."
"A digital universe...consists of two species of bits: differences in space, and differences in time. Digital computers translate between these two forms of information - structure and sequence - according to definite rules. Bits that are embodied as structure (varying in space, invariant across time) we perceive as memory, and bits that are encoded as sequence (varying in time, invariant across space) we perceive as code. Gates are the intersections where bits span both worlds at the moments of transition from one instant to the next."
George Dyson (Turing's Cathedral)
"Tea with us became more than an idealization of the form of drinking; it is a religion of the art of life. The beverage grew to be an excuse for the worship of purity and refinement, a sacred function at which the host and guest joined to produce for that occasion the utmost beatitude of the mundane. The tea room was an oasis in the dreary waste of existence where weary travelers could meet to drink from the common spring of art appreciation."
"If a cell were blown up to the size of a high-school gym, you wouldn’t be able to see across it. It would be filled with tens of thousands of proteins, most about the size of a basketball. Other biomolecules no bigger than your hand, and water molecules the size of your thumb, would fill the spaces between. (To scale, your whole body would be about the size of a ribosome.) The mixture would have the consistency of hair gel. In such a world, gravity would be virtually meaningless—you would be weightless, as if suspended in a ball pit. And everything would be moving. The mixture would buzz constantly; spend just a few seconds inside it and every medium-sized object around you would have explored every square inch of your body. It would feel like pandemonium, but it wouldn’t be."
- From 'A Journey to the center of our cells.' - James Somers, New Yorker. Link
"The close, painstaking study of a tiny patch of coast, every eddy and angle, even down to individual rocks, and in every combination of tide and wind and swell -- a longitudinal study, through season after season -- is the basic occupation of surfers at their local break. Getting a spot wired -- truly understanding it -- can take years. At very complex breaks, it's a lifetime's work, never completed."
But when we consider how small after all the cup of human enjoyment is, how soon overflowed with tears, how easily drained to the dregs in our quenchless thirst for infinity, we shall not blame ourselves for making so much of the tea cup.
it is moral geometry, inasmuch as it defines our sense of proportion to the universe.
It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life.
From Google Arts & Culture - Karl Blossfeldt was a German photographer, sculptor, teacher, and artist who worked in Berlin, Germany. He is best known for his close-up photographs of plants and living things, published in 1929 as Urformen der Kunst. He was inspired, as was his father, by nature and the ways in which plants grow. He believed that "the plant must be valued as a totally artistic and architectural structure."
A few prints from there:
Many more here
"When you write historical fiction, as I do, faith can't be sidestepped, so powerful is the force of belief in lives of former centuries.... I'm drawn to the struggle. The thousands of years of human consciousness in frantic search for meaning. All those ancient people ravenous to know how best to live, how to bear the unbearable fact of death.... the gospel messages - turn the other cheek, renounce wealth, care for the least of them -- the most rigorous ethical guidebook yet created. Winton remains steeped in those ethics...he said - 'For me, if it's not about love, if it's not about mercy, if it's not about kindness, if it's not about liberation then I'm just not that interested.' "
"...what lies beneath the surface of every sleepy step I take before breakfast: the resonance of a trillion lives, finished or only just begun, subjects that ache to be fed, seek the light and tilt toward increase in a creation that has been burning and lapping and gnawing and withering and rotting and flowering since there was nothing in the cosmos but shivering potential. To tread here and never pay tribute, to glance and just see objects, is to be spiritually impoverished... Looking deeply, humbly, reverently will sometimes open the viewer to what lingers beneath the hue and form and texture -- the faint tracks of story that suggest relationships, alliances, consequences, damage ... And ghosting forever begind its mere appearance is its holy purpose, its billion meetings with the life urge in which it has swum or tumbled or blossomed, however long or however briefly."
"He has described himself as working like a tradie, referring to the disciplined way he shows up at his wdesk just like any bloke shows up at his worksite and toils for as long as necessary to put food on the table. But he also works like a tradoe in the sense that he has mastered a craft -- all its details, its skills, all its gear and tackle and trim. And that includes sentences of glorious syntactical perfection.... Tim states his mission (on natural beauty): ' As an artist, as someone who writes stories and tries to make words into beautiful forms, it's vitally important to me, especially in a culture that's forgotten the value of beauty.' "
"We read to find life, in all its possibilities."
"...that Winton asks me to question: is a bit more tenderness, a bit more attention, a bit less aversion what's required of us if the really shattered people have any hope of gathering up their broken bits? It is a question that could not be more relevant as we spin away from each other, accelerating under the force of dark matter that we can barely perceive, but what is dragging us nevertheless into ever deeper and more distant silos. Around those high walls, our own opinions echo with a deafening clang, drowing out not only the voices of others, but any voice that even suggests we need to listen.Winton, steeped in the idea of grace, cries out for our resistance. Chich a hand back, he suggests. Let's try for less aggro, more agape.This is the work great writers to. They reveal us to ourselves. They show us who we are, and who we might become. They stand us up where the light is bright -- harsh, even -- and hold the mirror so close that we can't look away. There's immense consolation in it. When we read, we know that someone else has failed in all the ways we have failed. Someone else has felt exactly as we do. Someone else knows what this is like. We are not alone."
“Play the game. Don’t make it all about you. Look for challenges. But don’t aim for a specific outcome. Eschew ulterior motives. Hold nothing back. Be gentle and strong. Get involved, and the hell with winning. Don’t over-analyze, don’t calculate, but stay alert, alert for signs. Be vulnerable. Show your eyes, invite others to look deep; make sure there’s enough space, and try to recognize everyone’s own image. Make no decisions you don’t feel excited about. Let yourself fail. Above all, give yourself time and take the long way round. Never ignore what a tree or a body of water has to tell you. Turn in where you drawn to do so, and give yourself permission to bask in the sun. Never mind your relatives, offer support to strangers, bend down to look at trifles, duck into deserted places, don’t fall for the high drama of destiny, laugh conflict to bits. Show your true colors till you prove to be right, and the rustling of leaves turns sweet. Walk about the villages.”
“It’s just me, offspring of another village. But this you may all be sure of: through me speaks the spirit of a new age, and that spirit has the following to say. Yes, there is danger, and that alone enables me to speak the way I’m going to speak: in resistance. So listen to my Dramatic Poem. You’re right to stop living in a daze, but don’t go waking each other like a pack of barking dogs. No one among you is to blame, and precisely in your fits of despair you may have realized that you’re not really in despair. If you were in despair, you’d be dead already. So don’t act as if you’re all alone. True, your story offers no comfort you can rely on. But stop brooding over to-be-or-not-to-be: being is, and will continue to be, conceivable, and not-being isn’t conceivable. Recognize how alike you are; recognize that you’re alike. It’s just me saying that. But I’m not merely me. “I” in these two guises can be the most flimsy and ephemeral thing on earth, and at the same time the most all-encompassing—the most disarming. “I!” am the only hero—and you should be the disarming ones. Yes, that “I” is the essence of human nature that keeps us human! War is far from here. Our armies don’t stand gray on gray on gray tarmac but yellow on yellow in flowers’ yellow throats. Bowing to show respect to a flower is possible. A bird on a branch can be spoken to. So in a world wrecked by artificial colors, make room for the colors of nature that can revive it. The blue of mountains is real—the brown of a gun holster isn’t; and the person or thing you think you know from television you don’t really know. Our shoulders exist for the sky, and the path from the earth to the sky has to pass through us. Move slowly, and in that way become the form without which no distance can take shape. Nature’s the only promise you can rely on. Yet nature can be neither refuge nor escape. Nature does provide a gauge, however: it just has to be checked daily. The clouds passing overhead, even when they race by, slow you down. Who says you must crash and burn? Haven’t you put your war behind you? Well, bolster the peaceful present and display the serenity of survivors. What looked from a distance like a menacing death’s head turns out to be child’s play when you come closer. Air out your thousand-year-old bed. Ignore the childhood-distant doubters. Don’t wait for another war: true peace-lovers can be found in the presence of nature. Don’t show your descendants the devil’s profile. The house of strength is in the other’s face. Here and now is the festival of gratitude. So let it not be said of you that you failed to take advantage of peace: let your labor work wonders—pass it on. But only those who love pass it on: love just one—that suffices for all. In loving you, I awake to myself. Even when most can’t be uplifted, be upliftable. Avert your eyes from the bestial two-legged creatures. Be real. Follow the caravan music. Walk until the vanishing lines emerge from the confused tangle, so slowly that the world becomes yours anew, so slowly that it becomes clear how it doesn’t belong to you. Yes, always keep your distance from power that parades itself as power. Don’t complain that you’re alone—be even more alone. Pass along the rustling. Describe the horizon, lest the beautiful dissolve into nothing again. Describe life-images to one another. What was good deserves to exist. Take your time—and be creative: transform your inexplicable sighs into mighty songs. Our art must aim to cry out to the heavens! Let no one talk you out of beauty—the beauty we humans create is what shakes us to the core. Devote yourselves to demystification, which at the same time reveals the One Mystery. Take note: whenever a child coming toward you stares at you aghast, you are the cause. To take on many disguises will be your destiny, and to prefer a jolly swindle to a truth made public. Play the farces of everyday life. Losing oneself is part of the game. (And yet: only the one who wears no mask marches proudly.) Go forth into the unknown regions of the earth and let those without illusions grin maliciously: illusion provides the strength for visions. Yes, let yourselves be pierced by yearning for form and pass along the healed world—the scornful laughter you receive stems from ignorance; it’s the death rattle of soul-cadavers. The dead give you extra light. Don’t worry if you can’t talk to them: one syllable suffices. But keep our unborn in your thoughts. Beget the child of peace! Save your heroes! They should be the ones to proclaim: War, leave us in peace! You people from here: you’re in charge. Don’t let anyone convince you that you’re the sterile ones at the end of days. We’re as close to the original source as ever. Perhaps there are no wildernesses left. But that which is wild, that which is always new continues to be: time. The ticking of clocks means nothing. Time is the vibration that helps us get through this accursed century. Time: I have you! The blessed day is now. Working effectively you can feel it. Perhaps there is no such thing as rational belief, but there’s rational belief in the divine shudder. Behold the miracle and forget it. Take the great leap. Joy is the only right form of power. Not till you feel joy will all be well with the world. – It’s still true that in the story we all share there’s no comfort we can rely on. Who’s measuring? The child-murderers in power vanish, unpunished. Peace and quiet doesn’t last: the trickling fountains collapse into barricades. Hope is the false wingbeat. Killjoys are everywhere. As we walk beneath the sun of joy, we drink deep of bitterness. Dear folks from here: The cries of dread will go on forever. Your pleading for mercy will merely elicit the thumbs-down sign. So pull yourselves together and look at the man in a dark suit and white shirt. Look at the woman across the river who’s standing on the balcony in the sun. Prove, with the means at your disposal, our human defiance! A blessing upon every kiss, however fleeting. And now each of you: back your seat. Fill the space with demonic energy, through repetition. Form is the law, and it lifts you up. Eternal peace is possible. Listen to the caravan music. Calculating and knowing, be heaven-bound. Hold fast to this dramatic poem. Walk ever onward. Walk about the villages.”
"Humankind lingers unregenerately in Plato's cabe, still reveling, its age-old habit, in mere images of the truth. But being educated by photographs is not like being educated by older, more artisanal images. For one thing, there are a great many more images around, claiming our attention. The inventoy started in 1839 and since then just about everything has been photographed, or so it seems. This very insatiability of the photographing eye changes the terms of confinement in the cave, our world. In teaching us a new visual code, photographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe. They are a grammar and, even more importantly, an ethics of seeing. Finally, the most grandisoe result of the photographic enterprise is to give us the sense that we cab hold the whole wold in our heads -- as an anthology of images."
An aspiration list read for a long time. Begun often, but could not be completed. In the book, once again. Saving some notes as I go.
He suggests reading the last letter first. And indeed, the last letter has a sort of index or contents of what he covers:
And then some perspective:
I have a long list of aspirational reads. And a long pile of unread books either bought first hand, second hand, borrowed, downloaded. I try to tell myself, it is not about the unread, it is about what I put on my day's plate. And I would rather have good sense, appreciation, some uplifting thoughts that lend me some clean perspective, orient me back to my reality, and inspire me to do well there. At least some of such readings every day.
Really like the simple clean thinking. Would love to carry it with me through my day too.
Further about past and future, and their claim on present
In fact his last letter from this volume is a good note to read now and then just to regain some perspective and some sort of positive action forward in the age of disillusions. He has somethings beautiful to say about faith of older times, and the questioning age.
Although, and in fact because it is written in 1930s, the slice of history provided by this book, the context, and then the postscript gives a view of the world right before the second world war. There are very few personal writings that cover the world in that scope which I have come across. If one were to read just a little bit, perhaps the last letter and postscript.
**
I have found an interesting blog post that introduces the book to those who may not know more. Here it is.
**
Further from the earlier sections:
"And so I have always thought that the best way to find out what is right and what is not right, what should be done and what should not be done, is not by giving a sermon, but by talking and discussing, and out of discussion sometimes a little bit of truth comes out."
"the joy of discovery and of learning new things—the great adventure that all of us who care to may have."
"Great leaders have something in them which inspires a whole people and makes them do great deeds."
"Often we may be in doubt as to what to do. It is no easy matter to decide what is right and what is not. Be brave, and all the rest follows."
"But history is one connected whole and you cannot understand even the history of any one country if you do not know what has happened in other parts of the world. I hope that you will not learn history in this narrow way, confining it to one or two countries, but will survey the whole world.... Undoubtedly people do differ from one another, but they resemble each other also a great deal, and it is well to keep this in mind and not be misled by the colours on the map or by national boundaries."
"Of all American poets, I will always have the greatest affinity with Walt Whitman. He fulfills the condition of greatness which Oscar Milosz spoke of when he demanded that a work should be like a river, bearing rich silt and broken pieces of trees, not just nuggets of gold. That is why longueurs and repetitions, entire catalog of objects, should not be irritating. Whitman is the opposite of "pure poetry." But at the same time, one's experience of him is like one's experience of large canvases by master paitners, on which one can discern, through attentive observation, many minute and fascinating details."
"Ambition, after all, is Schopenhauer's Will, a force equal to biological terrors and drives. The will, however cannot do everything, even in sports, where tenacious daily training means so much. Laying oneself open, letting oneself go, a certain comfort with passivity, allows the body to work in harmony. This is even more true in powetry; straining comes to nothing, for we receive the gift whether we are deserving of it or not. There is a contradiction between striving for recognition and fame on the one hand, and creating something that may bring one fame on the other."
"Horror is the law of the world of living creatures, and civilization is concerned with masking that truth. Literature and art refine and beautify, and if they were to depict reality naked, just as everyone suspects it is (although we defend ourselves against that knowledge), no one would be able to stand it. Western Europe can be accused of the deceit of civilization. During the industrial revolution it sacrificed human beings to the Baal of progress; then it engaged in trench warfare. A long time ago, I read a manuscript by one Mr. Ulrich, who fought at Verdun as a German infantry soldier. Those people were captured like the prisoners in Auschwitz, but the waters of oblivion have closed over their torment and death. The habits of civilization have a certain enduring quality and the Germans in occupied Western Europe were obviously embarrassed and concealed their aims, while in Poland they acted completely openly.It is entirely human and understandable to be stunned by blatant criminality and to cry out, “That’s impossible!” and yet, it was possible. But those who proclaim that God “abandoned us in 1941” are acting like conservators of an anodyne civilization. And what about the history of humankind, with its millennia of mutual murder? To say nothing of natural catastrophes, or of the plague, which depopulated Europe in the fourteenth century. Nor of those aspects of human life which do not need a grand public arena to display their subservience to the laws of earth.Life does not like death. The body, as long as it is able to, sets in opposition to death the heart’s contractions and the warmth of circulating blood. Gentle verses written in the midst of horror declare themselves for life; they are the body’s rebellion against its destruction. They are carmina, or incantations deployed in order that the horror should disappear for a moment and harmony emerge—the harmony of civilization or, what amounts to the same thing, of childish peace. They comfort us, giving us to understand that what takes place in anus mundi is transitory, and that harmony is enduring—which is not at all a certainty."
"It seems so odd to me now, how one can be so unsettled by the improbable. When we know that our entire existence is founded on freak occurences and imrpbable coincidences. That we wouldn't be here at all if it weren't for these curious twists of fate. That there are human beings on what we call our planet, that we can move around on a rotating sphere in a vast universe full of incoceivably large bodies comprised of elements so small that the mind simply cannot comprehend how small and how many they are. That in this unfathomable vastness, these infinitesimal elements are still able to hold themselves together. That we manage to stay afloat. That we exist at all. That each of us has come into being as only one of untold possibilities. The unthinkable is something we carry with us always. It has already happened: we are improbable, we have emerged from a cloud of unbelievable coincidences. Anyone would think that this knowledge would equip us in some small way to face the improbable. But the opposite appears to be the case. We have grown accustomed to living with that knoweldge without feeling dizzy every morning, and instead of moving around warily and tentatively, in constant amazement, we behave as if nothing has happened, take the strangeness of it all for granted and get dizzy if life shows itself as it truly is: improbably, unpredictable, remarkable."
"I have had an eventful day and I am tired, but it's a strange energised tiredness. My brain is spinning. I seem to have changed speed and direction, but also and more particularly, size. I have regained my proper proportions. I am not sure if this is because I spend my nights looking at the sky or because I have gone further afield....I do not take much from this world, I think to myself, not when you consider its size, and I feel as though I have become lighter, more nimble. I can change direction....That's how little difference I make to the world. That's how little the activities of one person matter on the eighteenth of November."
"Words were the material of Andrić’s own individual struggle against transience, and one of man’s most potent means of survival in a fundamentally tragic and hostile world. They must be used with the greatest precision and not lightly or carelessly transacted.This sense of responsibility to words was closely related to the strong sense Andrić had that the mere activities that seem to fill our daily lives are not real life. The real, the enduring things are ideas and the works of artists, the accounts of past events, the stories and legends handed down through the generations."
The joys of stumbling on random words in the word origin dictionary. Capsule histories, capsule contexts, time capsules.
Came across this little library of works from Asia - available online here.
And a few poems: Hyaku Nin Isshu in English (1907) - A hundred poets, a hundred poems - Available here. One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each (Hyakunin Isshu)
Another translation here. A list of other Japanese poems.**
One of the poems:
Patanjali wrote 195 Yoga Sutras in Sanskrit. Here is a book which gives literal translation and an approach to the Sutras. Copying the approach here for better study. The book shares it over four chapters.
The Sutras are about meditative states, consciousness itself. In a way continuing forward the conversation that began with Chalmer's paper.
Before I go to the approach from the book, here's summary of the eight limbs of Yoga:
The Eight Limbs of Yoga (Ashtanga Yoga):
- Yama (ethical restraints): Moral codes like non-violence, truthfulness, non-stealing, etc.
- Niyama (observances): Self-discipline and personal growth principles like purity, contentment, etc.
- Asana (postures): Physical postures that promote physical and mental well-being.
- Pranayama (breath control): Techniques to regulate the breath and calm the mind.
- Pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses): Turning attention inward, away from external stimuli.
- Dharana (concentration): Focusing the mind on a single point.
- Dhyana (meditation): Sustained concentration, leading to a state of deep contemplation.
- Samadhi (absorption): A state of profound absorption and union with the object of meditation.
It is eventually about practice, but let the following inform the practice as well. Even if it be simple act of correcting the posture, breathing a few conscious breaths and concenterating on the now whatever's at hand.
**
(Other notes - I find the first two chapters more accessible. The second two chapters talk of higher states, way beyond my grasp or understanding.
I think as often happens with many fundamentals, the early stages are perhaps wider, foundational and more time-tested, and hence more approachable than the slow specialisation or sort of weight of latter chapters which show a particular inclination and culmination of the author. One studies widely (across disciplines) the different basics to learn the more widely applicable. From there I guess multiple paths open up. The latter two chapters become more of a particular, author-preferred path I think. Commenting without understanding so anyhow...!!)
Chapter 1- Transcendence Accomplishment
1. Now Sri Patanjali gave the explanation of Yoga and its practice.2. Yoga is accomplished when as a yogin, you can stop the creative urges of your mind and emotions.
3. Then you can become familiar with your bare self.
4. But otherwise, whatever you do is regulated by the urges.
5. There are five types of those creative urges. Each type has troublesome and non-troublesome interactions.
6. The five types are experienced when you gage external things correctly, when you gage them incorrectly, when you imagine anything, when you sleep and when you experience memory.
7. Your correct assessments occur by accurate sense perception, by efficient analysis or by using a reliable reference.
8. When you gage something incorrectly, that occurs through false information or by mistaking one factor for something else.
9. When you hear of something or read of it, ideas concerning it usually form. When these concepts misrepresent the actual thing, that misconception is imagination.
10. Sleep is that creative urge which operates without your awareness.
11. Memory operates anytime you visualize something which was experienced before.
12. By not having an interest in the mental ideas and emotional feelings, you may develop the power to stop their influence.
13. You should persistently cultivate that lack of interest.
14. However you should be reverential in the practice and it must be sustained for a long time.
15. Note well, that the lack of interest in one’s own ideas and emotions is achieved only by one who has mastery over his psychological nature. Such a person would not crave things mundane which are perceived by his own senses or which is heard of by his own ears.
16. Please realize that the required lack of interest is exhibited when one attains a resistance to urges which usually compel one to fulfill mundane desires. That lack of interest results in the development of a thorough awareness of the spiritual self.
17. At first, after you develop that lack of interest, you will notice that your attention becomes linked to higher psychological states, but there will still be some analysis, reflection, inner joy and focus on self-consciousness.
18. Periodically and with good luck, you will experience the transcendence in which the memory of things mundane seems not to exist at all.
19. That will give you a glimpse of the status of the released souls, who are diffused into the subtle material nature requiring no gross existence and those divine beings who exist without a subtle or super subtle material body. Their mind and emotion does not comprise of subtle energies of material nature.
20. Since you have neither the diffused status nor the divine one, and since you still have a fixation with the memory of things mundane, your success in cultivating the required lack of interest hinges on confidence in what Sri Patanjali recommends. You would be required to have stamina. You should train yourself to retain any transcendental experiences, even the slightest. You should study this text so as to recognize the characteristics of samadhi which is continuous and spontaneous contact between your attention and someone or some energy which is beyond your normal range of perception. By this, a profound insight will develop in your psyche.
21. Know with certainty that those of you who practice forcefully in a very intense way, will be masterful yogis in the near future.
22. But not everyone can apply themselves with intensity. One person might be mediocre. Another might practice infrequently.
23. There is a special method to be mentioned. That is the profound religious meditation upon the Supreme Lord.
24. This person is that special individual who is not affected by troubles, actions, developments or by subconscious motivations, which are based on the urgings of subtle material nature.
25. He is, for all practical purposes the ultimate knower. He is the most experienced person.
26. This God, being unconditioned by time, is the teacher even of the ancient masters of yoga, the pioneers of the process of release.
27. The teachers before me designated the sacred syllable AUM (Om) as being related to Him.
28. Many ancient teachers constantly repeated and murmured AUM (Om) for realizing it’s effects and meaning.
29. Thus when uttered correctly, one’s sense energy develops the urge to turn away from objects outside of one’s material body. The sense energy then seeks psychological inner objects. Thus the extrovert tendency which is an obstacle to progress, is greatly decreased.
30. The obstacles to the practice of yoga are: physical and mental diseases, idleness, doubts about the power of the practice, inattentiveness while practicing, lack of energy to invest in an intense practice, proneness to sensuality in terms of always being drawn to forms in this world, mistaken views due to the inability to side-step cultural activities and scattered mental and emotional energy which is due to being influenced by the subtle material energy.
31. It would be necessary to remove the tendency for distracted states of mind. These come about by distress, depression, nervousness and labored breathing. All of which are triggered by impulsive emotional states.
32. To remove any of these obstacles, one should practice a standard method, which was effective for a more advanced yogi and which he recommends.
33. When the obstacles to the practice of yoga temporarily subside or when they are removed altogether, an abstract meditation ensues. In that state, the creative urges disappear. This is directly related to the successful cultivation of friendliness, compassion, cheerfulness and non-responsiveness to happiness, distress, virtue and vices.
34. That abstract meditation may be caused by practicing a method of breath manipulation wherein the vital energy of the gross and subtle body is enhanced, causing the creative urges to subside, so that the higher nature is experienced.
35. One may attain fusion to higher states or steadiness of mind by directing the mind towards a supernatural or spiritual object. Such an object would be just as real and objective as a physical one.
36. That may be achieved by attaining sorrowless and spiritually-luminous states.
37. One may attain super-consciousness by linking one’s attention to a person who is without craving.
38. In some cases, super-consciousness may occur after one takes recourse to dream experiences or to the dreamless sleep.
39. It may be achieved by a spontaneous linkage of the attention to a higher concentration force or person which was dearly desired.
40. The mastery over the functions and movements of the urges, results in the control of one’s relationship to the smallest portions of energy or to the largest conglomerations.
41. For the great reduction of the urges in your mind and emotions, one has to sort between the perceiver in the mind, the flow of ideas or images, which are perceived by him and the objects from which the perception originated. This is similar to knowing the status of a transparent jewel, the light which it absorbs from a colorful source, and that colorful source itself. In that comparison the perceiver is like the jewel. His ideas and images are like the colored light which is reflected in the jewel.
42. Even in ordinary usage of consciousness, one may deliberately link one’s attention to a higher concentration force by a careful observation of how the mind-attention mechanism operates when a word, it’s meaning and the knowledge of the object alternate within the mind, blending as it were, with one of those facets permeating with the other.
43. Even though analysis is useful in material existence, it does not serve the purpose in higher yoga practice. In fact such analysis is discarded completely in the highest stages. When the memory is completely purified where it no longer reminds the self to pursue vices and when the inquiring inquisitive nature disappears as it were, then the higher concentration forces and the divine personalities are experienced objectively.
44. One may investigate very subtle objects after dropping the usual analysis, and after mastering the linkage of the attention as stated above.
45. But the insight gained by that mystic research terminates, when one becomes linked to the higher concentration force which has no gross characteristics and which is not directly linked to a gross object.
46. Initially, all of this is motivated by the creative urges, in the sense that they caused the inquiring tendency in the first place. Thus the previous descriptions were of higher experiences which were to a degree, motivated, because the spirit made contact with the creative urges of the mental and emotional energies.
47. In the advanced states however, those urges lose their hold on the self. Thus that self is no longer motivated by them and no longer reacts to them, either for fulfilling the urges or for becoming indifferent to them. Thus the motivations come from the Supreme Soul to whom the limited soul becomes linked. That association brings on clarity and serenity.
48. There, with that competence, the yogi develops the reality-perceptive insight, which is so natural to the Supreme Soul and which the limited soul develops in the supreme association.
49. This is different to the normal perception, which is based on what is heard of, what is reasoned out in the material world, since that limited perception is restricted to a partial aspect of an object and never does it reveal comprehensively.
50. Once the association of Supreme Soul is repeatedly attained, the impressions of that contact which forms in the mind, acts as the preventer of the other impressions which used to contravene yoga practices.
51. When there is linkage of the attention to the higher concentration force, this must be effortless and continuous (not with effort and not momentarily). When it is like that it is considered to be samadhi, the highest stage of yoga. In that state there is a complete departure from the memory and so its power of reminding the self of its contents is nullified completely. The self then becomes freed.
Chapter 2 - Practice Accomplishment
1. Kriya yoga is strongly recommended because it is definite. It is a hands-on personal process. It is not reliant on mere good luck nor on accidental process. Kriya yoga has scientific austerity, careful introspective study of the psyche and religious meditation on the Supreme Lord, as it’s practice.
2. That kriya yoga causes a reduction of the mental and emotional conflicts and their short-termed or long-termed negative effects. It is the definite way for attaining samadhi, which is the continuous effortless linkage of the attention to higher dimensions and their contents
3. There are five general headings of the mental and emotional conflicts which are stored in the psyche. These are the inability to know the difference between one’s spirit and its subtle sensing tools, the compelling tendency to react to other influences, the tendency to link with other factors emotionally, the strong urge to dislike certain other factors, and the instinctive fear of death which sponsors a strong focus on mundane existence.
4. The inability to know the difference between one’s spirit and its subtle sensing tools, is not just that lack of knowledge, but it serves as a mental and emotional environment, which is productive of and supportive of the other conflicts of identity, and energy. These conflicting energies may be dormant, reduced, appearing periodically or expanding fully.
5.That spiritual ignorance is revealed to someone when he realized that what he considered to be eternal was temporary, and what was pure was actually impure, what was joyful was in fact distressful and what was spiritual was mundane.
6. The compelling tendency to react to other influences occurs when one cannot distinguish between the viewing-sensing power and what is seen through it.
7. The impulsive urge to link with other factors emotionally creates as a result, a craving for repeated contact with those factors and a devoted attachment to any pleasure experienced by such contact.
8. The strong urge to dislike certain factors arises as a need for conflict and disharmony. It is an attachment to distress.
9. The instinctive fear of death is the subtle body’s way of showing its dislike for having to repeatedly give up gross forms in an unpleasant way. To counteract the effects of this, the subtle form exhibits a strong focus on mundane existence. These energies operate even in the psyche of a wise man.
10. The mental and emotional conflicts are to be nullified by squelching their eruptions so that when they arise within the mind or emotions, their urges are inhibited or forced back into dormancy or potentiality.
11. The mental or emotional eruptions are to be squelched by developing a meditation habit whereby the attention effortlessly links to a higher concentration force or person.
12. Impressions of everything encountered do lodge in the mind and are stored there but this stored energy is itchy and troublesome. An advanced yogi may perceived those stored impressions which erupts into mental and emotional distress and is even felt by persons who are not yogis.
13. Those bodies which are assumed as well as the various climatic and geographic environments come about on the basis of those stored impressions. They are the origin. Thus the control of that stored energy is vital in terms of liberation of any limited being.
14. With those bodies functioning in the outcome-environments like this earth, we perform austerities which produce a culture or way of life. And this in turn causes happiness and distress as results, all occurring on the basis of merits and demerits which are defined by the relationship of the energies.
15. An advanced yogi has a special discriminating ability, whereby he can sort between his spirit and his psychological viewing aids. Thus he recognizes the potential for distress which cultural activity and the resulting impressions pose. There will be circumstantial changes which are beyond the performer’s control and which may aid or frustrate his enterprise. He must exert himself on many occasions. He must submit to impulsive motivations from time to time, and he must react to some clashing aspects whether he wants to or not. Finally, he cannot at all times suppress the urges which grow out of his mind and emotions.
16. But distress which is not manifested is to be avoided. Thus one should develop power to thwart the impressions which would produce that.
17. Remember that the cause which can definitely be adjusted is the indiscriminate association of the observer and what is perceived. But since that linkage is impulsive and most natural, efforts will have to be made to change it.
18. What is perceived in this world with this psychology is of the nature of the mundane elements and the sense organs, and is formed in clear perception, action or stability. Its purpose is to give experience or to allow liberation. But to gain liberation, one has to abandon the need for the experiences in this world.
19. Some of the experiences afforded by material nature occur in clear perception, some in the fervor of action, some in any of the states of stability which make one form regrettable decisions. These experiences may be specific, regular, indicated before hand, or not anticipated at all.
20. Even though the perceiver is the pure extent of his consciousness, his conviction, once formed in any way, is patterned by what he perceived.
21. The individual spirit who is involved in what is seen exists here for either purpose. He may either accept the experience presented to him and react to it as he is urged and biased, or he may side-step the experiencing mechanism and move in the direction of liberation.
22. The experiences have little impact on one to whom its purpose is fulfilled but it has a common effect on all others, and keeps them occupied and enthralled.
23. Even though the conjunction of the individual spirit and his psychological energy is condemned, still its ultimate purpose is justified, when the person attains liberation. Then he appreciates that it afforded him the objective experience of his own form through blending and then contrasting itself with his core self.
24. Always keep in mind that the inability to know the difference between one’s spirit and it’s sensing tools, is the very cause of their conjunction in the first place. Kriya yoga is designed to remove that inability.
25. One must practice the kriya discipline because it affords a detachment whereby the perceiver is separated from his sensing tools.
26. The unification with the sensing tools is to be avoided. If achieved, one develops the discriminative insight, which affords one freedom from identity with the urges of the mind and emotions.
27. There are seven stages of progress when developing the discriminative insight, which gives one the ability to differentiate between the self and it’s sensing tools.
28. The radiant organ of perception becomes available to one who has consistently practiced the kriya yoga process. It is experienced when there is elimination of the psychological impurities.
29. Restraining from vices and sensual addictions (Yama) , becoming habituated to a disciplined life which accelerates yoga (Niyama), doing bodily postures which enhances health (Asana), performing breath enrichment and control processes (Pranayama), removing one’s attention from the things pertaining to this existence (Pratyahara), shifting one’s attention to higher concentration forces or persons (Dharna), holding one’s attention there long enough for it to become habituated to the higher forces or persons (Dhyaana), and experiencing the resultant fusion of the attention into the higher dimension encountered (Samaadhi).
30. The moral restraints.consist of the following: Non-violence: The avoidance of violence towards other life forms, the avoidance of psychological violence towards other spiritual entities, the practice of a calm, detached mood as professed by Sri Krishna in the Bhagavad-gita, if one is duty bound to discipline or apply violence to anyone. Realism: The practice of studying the situations carefully before acting or reacting to them. The practice of assessing the defects of one’s intellect to gage its reliability in perceiving truth. Relieving oneself of the need for a favorable or palatable truth. Non-stealing: Curing oneself of the natural urge to steal by carefully observing and monitoring the psychological mechanisms of stealing which is innate to nature. Sexual non-expressiveness which results in the perception of spirituality (brahman): Becoming detached from expressive sexuality and from normal exhibitions and demonstrations of sexuality either as a male or female. Investing the energy usually used in sexuality for the perception of spirituality Non-possessiveness: Carefully studying the sense of possession. Suppressing it effectively while studying methods of its eradication and spiritually supportive uses.
31. Even though one may be pressured to adjust the moral restraints, one should strive to side-step those causes and justifications for deviation. The pressures come on from the status, the location, the time and the condition. Since the moral restraints are applicable in all stages of yoga, they are the great commitment for all yogis.
32. The recommended behaviors are as follows: Purification: Psychic cleansing which is achieved by mastery of kundalini yoga for purifying the subtle body and its energies. Contentment: This is the practice of detachment from desire for the mundane life. It means to find an effective way of changing one’s nature to eradicate the desire for mundane experiences. Austerity: This means to practice kriya yoga under the guidance of a more advanced yogi. These austerities should suppress unwanted desires to the point of eliminating them. Such desires are those which cause extroversion and which discourage the quest for liberation. Profound meditation on the Supreme Lord: One can meditate on the Person God, if one has a functional relationship with Him. Over all, this is impractical for most practitioners since they either have an imaginary relationship with their preferred deity or a very meager connection. To be realistic one has to develop a relationship with a person who is more advanced on this spiritual path laid out by Sri Patañjali.
33. There may be doubts about the claims of yoga made in this text of Sri Patanjali and made in other yoga books, however one should cast these doubts aside and practice. When the doubts arise, one should ignore the doubtful ideas and push ahead with practice.
34. One may doubt that one can exist without committing some minimal violence. For instance, even if one refrains from eating animal flesh, one will have to eat something else, vegetables or fruits for example. And in that case there will be violence against trees, insects and microbes. Still one should minimize such violence and hold faith that ultimately it can be removed by transfer to another dimension where the violence will be absent. If one does not succeed at yoga practice, the implication is that one will be condemned to material existence, with endless distress and continued misidentification with the mundane energy in any of its gross or subtle formations.
35. When a yogi is firmly established in non-violence, that is exhibited by his life style. Then even hostile creatures abandon their aggressive stance in his presence.
36. When a yogi is established in realism, his actions serve as a basis for desired results. He is not easily frustrated because he acts in accordance with reality, is subordinate to it, respects it and rarely makes unrealistic plans in attempts to contravene it.
37. When the yogi has subdued the stealing tendency in human nature, material existence endeavors to serve him. Thus it seems that all precious things become available to him.
38. When the yogi has practiced effective methods of sex activity reduction and elimination, his vigor to perform yoga increases proportionately. Thus his perception of spirituality is actuated.
39. Due to the development of non-possessiveness, the yogi intuits into the causes of his birth. By mystic skill he reviews actions from past lives which caused him to take the present birth.
40. From purification of the subtle body, comes a disgust for one’s own gross form and lack of desire to associate sexually with others.
41. Purification of the subtle energy results in a great reduction in emotional needs. From that stability one finds it easy to link the attention to one concentration force or person. After much practice one acquires conquest of the sensual energy. One gets vision of the spirit and becomes fit for abstract meditation.
42. With the reduction of sensual life in this world, with a developed resistance to desires, one gains contentment. From that, the very best in happiness is obtained.
43. Kriya yoga austerities which are highlighted by mystic actions in and with the subtle body, do result in elimination of emotional impurities. That gives perfection of the subtle form in which the troublesome, vice-seeking sensual energy is housed.
44. An in-depth mystic research into the nature of the subtle body causes the yogi to make contact with more advanced mystics. This leads to communication with divine beings, and eventually he gets in touch with the cherished divine beings, one of whom is the Supreme Lord.
45. From the profound religious meditation upon the Supreme Lord or upon any of the divine beings, comes a full time communion with that divinity.
46. As for bodily posture, it should be steady and comfortable.
47. When mastered, it results in relaxation of the effort to subdue the body and make it serve the spiritual aims. That assists in the quest of meeting with the infinite.
48. Once the body is mastered, comfortable or uncomfortable climate, pleasant or unpleasant emotions, no longer bother the person.
49. Once this is accomplished, the body’s anxiety for air is greatly decreased, then there are pauses between the flow in inhalation and exhalation.
50. Breathing has internal, external and restrictive operations, which are regulated according to the place, time and accounting, being prolonged or hardly noticed. A change in lifestyle affects all this.
51. But a more advanced condition is realized, which has nothing to do with physical breathing. This is the energy consumption of the subtle body. That regulation of the subtle energy or prana is the fourth type of pranayama energy intake.
52. When a yogi shifts his attention to that subtle plane of consciousness, the darkness within his mind becomes dissipated, resulting in perception of light in real subtle objects,
53. and the establishment of always being able to link his attention to a higher concentration force or person.
54. The self should learn how to subsist on the bare sensual energy by itself without its usage procuring objects in this world. This is called pratyahar or sensual energy withdrawal. After mastering this, the yogin notices that the withdrawal of the senses is as it were, their assumption of the form of unformed psychological energy which is quiescent when it is not contacting the objects of perception.
55. From that accomplishment comes the highest degree of control of the senses because they are powered by the inner sensual energy which a human being identifies as his emotions and mental force.
Chapter 3 - Glory displayed
1. The yogi must be so familiar with the realm of mind and emotions, that he should begin to recognize where thoughts, ideas, images and memories arise. Their particular location in the mind environment and emotional atmosphere should be known. Then he may practice the sixth stage of yoga, which is linking of the attention to a concentration force or person through a restricted location in the mento-emotional space.
2. But in the seventh stage of yoga, the next stage, that of dhyana, the yogi experiences that there is a continuous threadlike flow of his instinctive interest to the selected location in the mind or emotions. This is the effortless linkage of the attention to a higher concentration force or person.
3. When, however, that sense of effortless linkage of the attention joins continually to a particular location in the mind or emotions or outside into a higher dimension, it is the highest stage of yoga, that of samadhi. It may be a link to a greater yogi or to a divinity. This is experienced as illumination of the higher concentration force or person while the yogi feels as if devoid of his conditioned self.
4. The three higher stages of yoga, when practiced in sequence, are considered as the complete restraint; then the sixth stage directly progresses into the seventh and seventh into the eighth and final stage.
5. By regular practice of the sequential three higher stages, one gains mastery over the mental and emotional urges, and then the illuminating insight becomes available for usage.
6. But this development occurs in stages
7. This higher yoga concerns voluntary control over the psychological organs in the mind and the creative urges in the emotions.
8. But even that initial mastership of the three higher stages of yoga is external in reference to meditation which is not motivated by the mental and emotional energy. Therefore you should strive to reach the advanced stages.
9. It may be asked: What is the description of the mind and emotions when the creative urges cease? The answer is this: The mind energy and emotional feelings periodically assume of their own accord, a stillness wherein there is no activity. This happens just after an idea or image subsides, and just before another one begins. The interim period may be long or momentary. When this happens impulsively, a yogi has no control over it, but he should still observe it and focus sharply on the blank interval. He should carefully note the location where the idea or image subsides. He should attach his attention to that place in the mind or emotion environment. When practicing however, he should, with attention, suppress any emerging idea or image and hold his mind or emotion in that blank state so that no other idea or image expresses itself.
10. When one learns how to use the attention to suppress any emerging idea or image, and to hold the mind and emotions in that blank state, that mastership causes a flow of spiritual peace. Impressions from that restraining activity do enter the memory. Those records of it, aid, and support the yogi, giving him more and more power over the impulsive creative urges.
11. When a yogi first gets a foothold on this mastership, he notices a decrease of the various impulsive objectives of the mind and emotions and an increase in the blank duration which occurs between the emergence and the dissolution of ideas.
12. The blankness of the mind and emotions is the desired objective for that initial samadhi practice, even though perception will develop later in it.
13. By this practice one gets personal experience of the changes, the quality, shape, changing conditions of the various states of matter and the sensual energy. Thus the mental and emotional provinces are clarified and are no longer a muddlement or vague environment. Nor does one confuse oneself with it.
14. When the emerging, manifesting, collapsing or not-yet-manifested ideas, images or emotions push back into the mental or emotional energy, and when that energy has a blankness or quiescence, that is the most basic condition.
15. But when there is expression of ideas, images or emotional feelings, these are usually different because of the sequential changes in the emotional energy which produces them.
16. When the yogi repeatedly pushes back the images or emotions into the mental and emotional energy, he gains access to the deeper layers of the memory, even to those from previous lives and he gains perception of those future possibilities which would be based on past impressions.
17. The yogi removes himself from biases which relate to sound and when he can steady his attention on that alone, getting beyond words, sounds and their formation, he makes contact with the object being described by any creature. Thus their different languages do not confuse his perception.
18. The yogi gains knowledge of his previous lives by developing direct intuitive perception of the subtle impressions stored in his own or another’s memory.
19. Though he can know the mental or emotional content of a person, he should not seek to use that skill. Unless he is advised to do so by a senior yogi, he should not exercise that skill.
20. The tendency of the memory and imagination, is to check, recheck, create and recreate opinions and conclusions. An advanced yogi eliminates this tendency because it hampers higher yoga. Thus he does not allow his mind to project one idea after another in an endless sequence which entertains or keeps one occupied without any increased control over the emotions.
21. When the receptive energy of the subtle body is curbed, the yogi develops a resistance to social contact. This causes him to have some invisibility.
22. This imperceptibility may be applied to the other sensual perceptions.
23. By applying his attention to current or destined cultural activities, when no other ideas, images or memories occur in the mind, the yogi gains insight into the hereafter, or he may apply his attention to supernatural occurrences which cause his perception of worlds in other dimensions.
24. By applying his attention to friendliness within his nature and in the subtle cosmic environment, he develops universal benevolence.
25. By applying his attention to strength, personally or generally, he acquires the power of an elephant. This type of application is effective in other aspects.
26. When after much practice, a yogi develops the supernatural insight he would, of course, apply it to the force which produces cultural activities. Thus he gets information about what is subtle, concealed and what is remote from him.
27. He may apply his supernatural insight to the sun god or the sun planet. Thus knowledge about the solar system is gained.
28. From an application to the moon or moon-god, he gets knowledge about the system of stars.
29. By application to the Pole Star he can know of the course of the planets and stars.
30. By supernaturally focusing on the navel energy-gyrating center, the yogi gets knowledge about the layout of his subtle body.
31. By focusing on the gullet, he causes the suppression of appetite.
32. By focusing on the kurmanadi nerve which runs from below the gullet down the inner center of the subtle body, he acquires steadiness of his psyche.
33. By focusing on the shinning light in the subtle head, he gets views of the perfected beings.
34. By focusing on the shining organ of divination in the head of the subtle form, he gets the ability to know all reality.
35. By focusing on the causal body in the vicinity of the chest, he gets thorough insight into the cause of the mental and emotional energies.
36. Experience in the material world results from the inability to distinguish between the individual spirit and the intelligence energy of material nature, even though they are in fact, very distinct. By complete restraint of the mental and emotional energies while focusing on self-interest distinct from the other concerns, a yogi gets knowledge of the individual spirit.
37. From that focus is produced supernatural smelling, tasting, seeing, touching and hearing, through the shining organ of divination
38. But those divination skills may prove to be obstacles in advanced yoga practice. But to worldly people they are considered as spectacular powers.
39. The entrance into another’s body is possible by slackening the cause of bondage to cultural activities, and by knowing the channels which the mental and emotional energies use to entertain and dominate the self.
40. By mastery over the air which rises from the throat into the head, in the subtle body, a yogi can cause his gross form to rise over or not have contact, with water, mud or sharp objects.
41. By conquest of the digestive force in the gross body, a yogi’s subtle form blazes or shines with a fiery glow.
42. By special focusing on the hearing sense and space, a yogin develops supernatural and divine hearing.
43. By linking the mind to the relationship between the body and the sky and linking the attention to being as light as cotton fluff, a yogi acquires the ability to objectively pass his subtle form through the atmosphere.
44. By restraining his response to the mental and emotional energy, which is universal, a yogi achieves the great bodiless state. From that, the great mental darkness which veils subtle light is dissipated.
45. By restraining his mind and emotions, while linking the attention to gross forms, real nature, subtle distribution and supersubtle states of matter, a yogi gets conquest over them.
46. From the assumption of minuteness and other related mystic skills, come the perfection of the subtle body and the non-obstruction of its functions.
47. Beautiful form, charm, mystic force, diamond-like definition come from the perfection of the subtle body. This is attained by mastership of kundalini yoga.
48. From supernatural linkage to sensual grasping, to the form of the sensual energy, to its identifying powers, to its connection instinct and to its actual worth, a yogi acquires conquest over his relation with the sensual energy.
49. Subsequently, he progresses into conquest over the influence of subtle matter and over the parting away or dispersion of the mental and emotional forces, having the required swiftness of mind.
50. Only when there is distinct discrimination between true perception of material nature and the spiritual personality, does the yogi attain complete disaffection from the same nature and all-applicative intuition to whatever he encounters.
51. By a lack of interest, even to that skill, when the cause of that defect is eliminated, the absolute isolation of the self from the lower psyche, is achieved.
52. On being invited by a person from the gross or subtle mundane place one would attain, if the body died, a yogi should be non-responsive, not desiring their association and not being fascinated, otherwise that would cause unwanted features of existence to arise again, and he would again take birth in this world or appear in a dimension near to this one, from which he would be transferred here again.
53. By supernatural linkage of his attention to the moment in time and to the sequence of moments, the yogi has detailed supernatural information.
54. Subsequently, the yogi clearly distinguishes between two similar realities which otherwise, could not be sorted due to lack of definition in terms of their general category, individual characteristic and location.
55. Thus the yogin need no longer take recourse to the normal methods of perception and analysis. For him the distinction caused by subtle discrimination is the crossing over or transcending of all subtle and gross mundane objects in all ways they are presented.
56. When by mastership of kriya yoga, there is equal purity between the intelligence energy of material nature and the spirit, then there is total separation from the error-prone, spiritually-misleading mundane psychology.
Chapter 4 - Segregation Accomplished
1. The mystic skills are demonstrated on the material plane through the various abilities of the varying species of life one may assume. Each species facilitates a particular ability of the subtle body. One may be empowered with a mystic skill by taking drugs which alter the chemistry of a particular form. Skills may be exhibited after pronouncing certain special sounds which affect the constitution of a body. Physical austerities may change a body to make it do what is normally impossible for the particular species. And supernatural linkage of one’s mystic attention may affect changes which are unusual for one’s body.
2. The transformation from one life form to another or from one dimension to another, from one existential status to another, occurs by saturation of the subtle body with the energy from that other species, dimension or status that is to be adopted.
3. The motivating force of the subtle material energy, whereby it appears to inspire the yogi to endeavor for liberation, is not used except for the disintegration of impediments, hence it is compared to a farmer who is not the real cause of growth of cultivated plants.
4. A yogi is shown how the various parts of his mind and emotions come into existence because of the involuntary application of his sense of identity to the subtle material nature.
5. The one mento-emotional energy is that which is very much used in numberless different dispersals of energy, which occur as ideas and images, arising from memory and sense perception.
6. In that case, only subtle activities which are produced from linkage to higher realities, are without harmful emotions; for the others are rooted in the subtle material nature, which always affords reversals.
7. Due to their effective detachment and their ability to push the emerging ideas and images back into the pad of the mind or the territory of the emotions, the cultural activity of the advanced yogins is neither rewarding nor penalizing, but others have three types of such action.
8. Subsequently for those cultural activities of common people, there is development according to corresponding features only, bringing about the manifestation of the tendencies within the mento-emotional energy, which causes harmful emotions to be experienced by them.
9. Even though circumstances are separated by status, location and time, still the impressions which form cultural activities and the resulting memories, are of one form and operate on a full time sequence. Thus all who are involved in worldly life meet with unfavorable circumstances and are fatigued by favorable occasions, which endorse the vices which bleed out their sensual energies.
10.Those memories and impressions are primeval without a beginning. Hope and desire energies are eternal as well. Thus the proposal which makes sense, recommends a removal of the individual spirit from this unalterable environment.
11. The memories, the impressions, the hope and desire energies, exist by what holds them together in terms of what produced them and what they generate, as well as the supportive basis and the lifting influences which reinforce their production. Otherwise, if their causes were not in existence, they would have no register at all. Thus without supernatural perception and action one cannot become freed from their influence. Hence the practice of kriya yoga is essential.
12. There is a true form of the past and future, which is denoted by the different courses of their particular characteristics. And one is subjected to the future unless one escapes from time’s dominance.
13. The manifestations which are to a greater degree preset, are gross or subtle, all depending on their inherent nature.
14. The actual composition of an object is based on the uniqueness of the transformation which produced it, but this can only be viewed supernaturally.
15. Because of a difference in the prejudices of the mento-emotional energy of the two persons, separate opinions manifest in their viewing of the very same object.
16. An object is not dependent on one person’s view of it; otherwise what would happen if it were not being perceived by that viewer? Would it cease to exist? But we find that this is not so.
17. An object is known or unknown, all depending on the mood and expectation of the particular mental and emotional energy of the viewer in reference to it. Thus each person must endeavor separately and individually for liberation.
18. The operations of the mind and emotions are always conducted by empowerment taken from the governing spirit. This is because of the spirit being a perpetual energy source. However, the spirit is usually bewildered and is entertained by the usage of his powers.
19. The separation of the mind and emotions are not self-generated by the mind nor the emotions. For these are only capable of being perceived by a real viewer. It is like a viewing instrument which cannot see for itself even though it is useful to the vision of a human being.
20. It cannot by itself execute the focus of itself or something else.
21. If it were possible for the mind or emotions to view themselves, then one mind would perceive another mind independently without involvement with a spirit or one emotional reserve would interact with another in the same way. That is not possible. It is an absurd idea.
22. The perceptions of a spirit’s intellect occurs when the intellect operates to create an image but as soon as the image begins to dissolve, it seems as if the intellect itself vanishes.
23. When the mental and emotional forces are quieted, they do not display a prejudiced reaction. Under these conditions, their biases remain dormant. But as soon as there is an activation of the urges, the predispositions are displayed. These are attitudes and responses which were created previously by interactions of the perceiver, his sense energy and what was perceived.
24. Although the mind and emotions seem to combine to exhibit habits and unique behaviors, still those exhibitions only entertain the perceiver. It is that seer whose radiant energy causes the activation. The mind and emotions absorb his energy to entertain him.
25. When someone can distinguish between himself and his auxiliary shadow-self, his detachment or ability to distance himself from the sensuality, empowers him to push away the creative urges which may arise in his psyche.
26. Then a strange but glorious observation is made. One notices that the troublesome and once hard-to-control mind and emotions, begin acting cooperatively, as if to actually please the self and do as told. It exhibits a habit of discrimination, loosing its impulsive tendency, and it gravitates towards total separation from the self, a thing which before it was fearful of.
27. However, whenever the self relaxes vigilance, that now-cooperative psychology is again forced into the old behaviors, which were based on the old subtle impressions.
28. When the yogi applies an effective method to remove the old impressions, his resulting condition is exactly like that experienced, when the mental and emotional afflictions are no longer actuated.
29. The super discrimination, the highest degree of disinterest, is achieved by one who sees no gain in material nature, even in very abstract but potent conditions. Such a person attains an insight whereby he perceives the mento-emotional clouds of energy which dictate the laws of responsibility. Subsequently, he can side-step such obligations.
30. Unless instructed by a divine being, he stops the participation of his auxiliary shadow-self, which has the mind and emotions as its chief components. These are restrained from generating further cultural activities. Thus ending potential afflictions.
31. Obviously then, the yogin considers his former insights and feelings to be trivial, when compared to his newly-earned visions.
32. Thus the subtle material nature having served a useful purpose, its progressive alterations which sometimes perplexed and sometimes entertained the spirit, come to an end.
33. The once free and own-way (aniruddha) auxiliary self stops its mental, sensual and emotional dominance, those rhythmic displays which the self was once forced to enjoy or endure.
34. When he sheds off the human type of character which was a combination of mentality, sensuality and emotions, he gains a neutrality in reference to the subtle material nature. That separation from his auxiliary self, is established. Thus he discovers his segregated real self, which empowers the auxiliary shadow character.
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