Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali

Author(s): Prabhavnanda Swami, Christopher Isherwood
Publisher: Ramkrishna Math Madras

Page 79

68
PATANJALI YOGA SUTRAS
plete union with the Atman. Patanjali lists four conditions or degrees of ignorance, as follows.
The obstacles may be potential; as in the case of very young children, whose already-existing tendencies will only manifest themselves in later life. This is said to be true also of those yogis who fail to concentrate with non-attachment and therefore become merged in the forces of Nature (chapter I, aphorism 19). When they return, as they finally must, to mortal life, they will be confronted by those obstacles which caused their original failure.
Then there are the spiritual aspirants, whose minds still contain obstacles to enlightenment, but only in a vestigial form. Their samskaras continue to operate by the momentum of past karmas, but the power of these samskaras is greatly diminished, and they do not present any serious danger, as long as the aspirant is on his guard against them.
Then, again, the obstacles-or at least one group of them may have been temporarily overcome through the cultivation of ignorance-eclipsing thoughts and virtues. If we persevere in cultivating such thoughts and virtues, we shall gradually reduce the obstacles to the vestigial form which has just been described.
Finally, the obstacles may be present in a fully developed form. This is the normal, tragic condition of all ordinary wordly minded people. अनित्याशुचि-दुःखानात्मसु नित्य शुचि
सुखात्मख्यातिरविद्या ॥५॥ 5. To regard the noneternal as eternal, the impure as pure,
the painful as pleasant and the non-Atman as the Atmanthis is ignorance.
दृगदर्शनशक्त्योरेकात्मतैवास्मिता ॥६॥ 6. To identify consciousness with that which merely reflects
consciousness—this is egoism.