PATANJALI'S VISION OF ONENESS
AN INTERPRETIVE TRANSLATION BY SWAMI VENKATESANANDA
SRI PATANJALA YOGA DARSANAM
2. 11.
Both when these elements of psychic distress are mere ripples on the surface of the mind-stuff and when they become gross and operative, they can be dispelled by contemplation.
II. 12.
All actions bear to the five-fold psychic disturbance or distress a mutual cause-and-effect relationship, thus sustaining a chain reaction. Hence, actions lead to afflictions (notions of ego-sense) which manifest in the obvious physical life as experience of pleasure, pain, etc., and also in the subtle mental states (likes and dislikes), here in this life span or in other not so obvious life-states and such afflictions (the ego-sense and ignorance) generate further actions. However, this need not forever be so; for from these effects the causes can be known, and the root-cause made inoperative.
II. 13.
As long as the roots of these psychic disturbances exist generating their consequent actions, their expansion and fruition are inevitable. Their fruition takes place in different life-spans, perhaps in different species, and in diverse experiences. Such fruition is therefore an unmistakable pointer to the persistence of spiritual ignorance and its offspring which are the fountain-source of sorrow.
II.14.
These experiences which are the results of virtue and vice are the sweet and bitter fruits (causing happiness and agony respectively) that are found all along the path of life.
II.
15.
However, the wise (though their own mind is totally free of all sorrow) consider all experiences painful as they are all the fruits of the actions of ignorance. The very pleasures are accompanied by the painful realization that they are subject to change. Constant and violently painful craving for repetitive experience of pleasure in a vain attempt to cancel the change fills the interval with pain. All of this leaves an enduring impression on the mind, which (impression) creates the painful tendency to crave for the avoidance of pain which alone is therefore continuous. And, there is constant conflict in oneself as the psychological mood changes, with every change in the thought-form in the mind-stuff; and the conflict is sorrow.
II.
16.
Yet, all is not lost. For, sorrow that has not yet "arrived", not yet reached the field of experience, can be avoided; unhappiness that has not yet befallen may be avoided, by avoiding psychic contact with it.
II. 17.
How to avoid contact with the experience of pain? By understanding the structure of this experience. What is the structure of experience? The division or the polarization of experiencing into the experiencer and the experience, and the subsequent conjunction or contact of the subject and the object of the experiencing - and this can be avoided. Experiencing being the sole reality, the subject and the object are of identical nature, and thought is the dividing agent. Thought is of pain, pleasure, etc.; and thought experiences pain, pleasure, etc., by the psychological action of division and contact. The possibility of the avoidance of pain is because of the unity of the seer (experiencer) and the seen (experience), without a division.
II. 18.
What is the object and how does it come into being? T he object of the experiencing is threefold in nature - (1) the light of intelligence, (2) dynamic activity, and (3) material existence. While the external cosmos is the object of the senses they themselves are regarded as the object of experiencing by the ignorant, both the external cosmos and the internal experiencer being indivisible from the experiencing. Yet, the "object" helps the intelligence to realize its true nature by intelligent experiencing, and thus be freed from ignorance.
II. 19.
Such objects may even be of different kinds or categories: (1) they can be special -supernatural experiences, (2) they can be commonplace and routine experiences, (3) they may have distinguishing marks or characteristics, or (4) they may be subtle, without any distinguishing marks: and their qualities may be in different stages of development. Simply, the entire cosmos including the external world and the internal sensory system, is the object.
II. 20.
The truth concerning the seer (experiencer) is that there is only the ever-pure act of seeing (experiencing). Yet, there arises a polarization on account of which a concept (which then becomes the subject or the experiences) seems to experience (the reaction of the senses to the eternalized world - all such externalization being the result of the polarization and the consequent apparent movement in the subject). An apparently independent entity called experience therefore becomes the object.
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