PATANJALI'S VISION OF ONENESS
AN INTERPRETIVE TRANSLATION BY SWAMI VENKATESANANDA
SRI PATANJALA YOGA DARSANAM
2. 21.
The existence or the very meaning of the object is but the sum and substance of the subject's fragmentary experience, brought on by the ignorant polarization. This fragmentary experience is the contact with pain.
II. 22.
To him who has attained fulfillment, when the (unreal nature of the polarization of experiencing is truly understood, the contact with pain ceases: the only way to avoid pain is never to be separated from it (as the experiencer)! Yet, the potentiality of polarization (separation) and the consequent contact with pain exist in other, ordinary circumstances. Hence, even an enlightened person may still experience pain when not in the total awareness of non-separation.
II. 23.
When the polarization of the experiencing has taken place, the subject's desire for awareness of its own nature and its own voluntary and involuntary powers of action causes or acts as a link or contact between the subject and the object (Here the "subject" is the fragmented concept of self, and the "object" is both the sense-experience and the external sense-object.)
II.24.
Obviously, all this is due to the ignorance of the spiritual truth or oneness. Ignorance alone is the cause for the polarization the fictitious separation which is the sole cause for the desire to become aware of "another" and for the contact of "the other".
II. 25.
When that ignorance is dispelled, the polarization, (separation, division or fragmentation and the consequent conjunction or contact of the experiencer and the experience is rendered meaningless. It is given up. This is liberation for the seer who is pure experiencing or the undivided homogeneous consciousness, which alone existed. Liberation is not isolation nor independence from another, but union in the sense of non-division.
II.
26.
Briefly, the constant unbroken awareness of this truth alone is the means to the ending of this ignorance and its retinue.
II. 27.
This awareness is keen, intense and operative even in the field of the first seven of the eight states or limbs of yoga-practice whose description follows: this practice should therefore not be a mechanical, unintelligent, dull routine.
II. 28.
This awareness shines resplendent with the light of intelligence, when the inner psychic impurities that becloud the vision of truth have been eliminated by the intelligent practice of the "limbs" of yoga.
II. 29.
Discipline, observances, posture, exercise of the life-force, introversion of attention, concentration, meditation and illumination (at-onement) are the eight limbs of yoga or the direct realization of oneness. Hence, these limbs should all be practiced together, intelligently, so that the impurities of all the physical, vital and psychological limbs maybe eliminated.
II. 30.
When the light of intelligence or the awareness of the truth illumines the mind-stuff, psychological order comes to prevail which is manifest as the following articles of natural self-restraint or discipline: non-violence, perception of what is or truth, non-hoarding, an effortless movement of the total being in cosmic homogeneous essence, and non-covetousness. (The fourth article also specifically refers to continence or chastity.)
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