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Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Book II · 3 of 55 · tr. Charles Johnston

Sutra 3

These are the hindrances: the darkness of unwisdom, self-assertion, lust hate, attachment. Let us try to translate this into terms of the psychical and spiritual man. The darkness of unwisdom is, primarily, the self-absorption of the psychical man, his complete preoccupation with his own hopes and fears, plans and purposes, sensations and desires; so that he fails to see, or refuses to see, that there is a spiritual man; and so doggedly resists all efforts of the spiritual man to cast off his psychic tyrant and set himself free. This is the real darkness; and all those who deny the immortality of the soul, or deny the soul's existence, and so lay out their lives wholly for the psychical, mortal man and his ambitions, are under this power of darkness. Born of this darkness, this psychic self-absorption, is the dogged conviction that the psychic, personal man has separate, exclusive interests, which he can follow for himself alone; and this conviction, when put into practice in our life, leads to contest with other personalities, and so to hate. This hate, again, makes against the spiritual man, since it hinders the revelation of the high harmony between the spiritual man and his other selves, a harmony to be revealed only through the practice of love, that perfect love which casts out fear. In like manner, lust is the psychic man's craving for the stimulus of sensation, the din of which smothers the voice of the spiritual man, as, in Shakespeare's phrase, the cackling geese would drown the song of the nightingale. And this craving for stimulus is the fruit of weakness, coming from the failure to find strength in the primal life of the spiritual man. Attachment is but another name for psychic self-absorption; for we are absorbed, not in outward things, but rather in their images within our minds; our inner eyes are fixed on them; our inner desires brood over them; and so we blind ourselves to the presence of the prisoner, the enmeshed and fettered spiritual man.
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Themes
Evil As Privationtheology

Augustinian and Plotinian doctrine that evil has no positive being of its own but is a lack, distortion, or absence of the good — denying ontological dualism while preserving moral seriousness.

Hate and lust are described as fruits of weakness rather than positive entities, aligning with the view that evil lacks independent being.

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Higher Selfanthropology

The deeper aspect of the individual's own consciousness aligned with divine or spiritual truth, distinct from the ego or everyday personality — a locus of guidance and identity that can speak with its own recognisable 'voice' in moments of crisis, carrying memory or knowledge the ordinary self lacks. Distinct from inner_light (a static luminous quality or spark, not an alternate seat of identity and agency) and kingdom_within (the claim that the divine realm generally is present inside the individual, not this specific personal higher consciousness).

The 'spiritual man' is described as a distinct inner locus of identity and agency — a 'prisoner' within the psychical self whose voice is smothered and whose freedom is the goal of the path — functioning as a deeper consciousness aligned with spiritual truth.

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Kingdom Withinanthropology

The claim that the divine realm is present inside the individual, accessible without external mediation.

The text emphasizes the presence of a 'spiritual man' within the individual who must be revealed through practice.

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Pneumatic Electsoteriology

A spiritual elite who possess the divine spark and are predestined for salvation, contrasted with psychic (faithful) and hylic (material) persons.

The passage draws a sharp distinction between the 'psychical man' (self-absorbed, mortal, sensation-driven) and the 'spiritual man' (the true higher self), mirroring the Gnostic psychic/pneumatic classification of persons by spiritual substance.

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Self Knowledgesoteriology

The recognition of one's own true divine nature as the primary path to liberation; 'know thyself' as soteriology.

The passage centrally argues that failing to see the spiritual man due to self-absorption is the root of all hindrances.

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Separation From Sourcesoteriology

The felt condition of exile from one's divine origin — Rumi's reed flute torn from its bed, Plotinus's 'we have forgotten,' the Gnostic forgetfulness; the affective wound that complements return_to_source and gives the return its motive.

The spiritual man is explicitly described as 'the prisoner, the enmeshed and fettered spiritual man,' a state of captivity and exile from his own true nature that constitutes the affective wound motivating liberation.

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Related passages · 13 parallels
neoplatonism|Select Works of Plotinus|Select Works, Section 85 (part 1)
“Section 10 10. But if Matter is devoid of quality how can it be evil? It is described as being devoid of quality in the sense only that it does not essentially possess any of the qualities which it admits and which enter into it as into a…”
Shared concept: Evil As Privation — Augustinian and Plotinian doctrine that evil has no positive being of its own but is a lack, distortion, or absence of the good — denying ontological dualism while preserving moral seriousness. (derived)
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“When humanity has completed its physical evolution, the empty shell of materiality left behind will be used by other life waves as steppingstones to their own liberation. The trend of man's evolutionary growth is ever toward his own essent…”
Shared concept: Self Knowledge — The recognition of one's own true divine nature as the primary path to liberation; 'know thyself' as soteriology. (derived)
neoplatonism|Select Works of Plotinus|Select Works, Section 489
“Section 11 11. Similarly any one, unable to see himself, but possessed by that God, has but to bring that divine- within before his consciousness and at once he sees an image of himself, himself lifted to a better beauty: now let him ignore…”
Shared concept: Kingdom Within — The claim that the divine realm is present inside the individual, accessible without external mediation. (derived)
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“The human selfhood will then follow in its perceptions the Spirit of God, tremblingly and in the joy of humility, and become able to see what is contained in time and in eternity. Everything is near to a soul in that state, for the soul is…”
Shared concept: Kingdom Within — The claim that the divine realm is present inside the individual, accessible without external mediation. (derived)
theosophy|The Secret Doctrine|Page 54 (part 3)
“It is those who are unable to create the spiritual immortal man, who project the senseless model (the Astral ) of the physical Being; and, as will be seen, it was those who would not multiply, who sacrificed themselves to the good and salva…”
Shared concept: Higher Self — The deeper aspect of the individual's own consciousness aligned with divine or spiritual truth, distinct from the ego or everyday personality — a locus of guidance and identity that can speak with its own recognisable 'voice' in moments of crisis, carrying memory or knowledge the ordinary self lacks. (derived)
theosophy|The Secret Doctrine|Page 55 (part 2)
“T HE Progenitors of Man, called in India "Fathers," Pitara or Pitris, are the creators of our bodies and lower principles. They are ourselves, as the first personalities, and we are they. Primeval man would be "the bone of their bone and…”
Shared concept: Higher Self — The deeper aspect of the individual's own consciousness aligned with divine or spiritual truth, distinct from the ego or everyday personality — a locus of guidance and identity that can speak with its own recognisable 'voice' in moments of crisis, carrying memory or knowledge the ordinary self lacks. (derived)
theosophy|The Secret Doctrine|Page 67 (part 9)
“The inner, or real man, who personates those characters, knows the whole time that he is Hamlet for the brief space of a few acts, which represent, however, on the plane of human illusion the whole life of Hamlet. And he knows that he was,…”
Shared concept: Higher Self — The deeper aspect of the individual's own consciousness aligned with divine or spiritual truth, distinct from the ego or everyday personality — a locus of guidance and identity that can speak with its own recognisable 'voice' in moments of crisis, carrying memory or knowledge the ordinary self lacks. (derived)
western_esoteric|Tertium Organum (P.D. Ouspensky)|Chapter XIX (part 7)
“In the reduction of your soul to its simplest self, its divine essence, you realize this union—this identity. But this sublime condition is not of permanent duration. It is only now and then that we can enjoy this elevation above the limi…”
Shared concept: Separation From Source — The felt condition of exile from one's divine origin — Rumi's reed flute torn from its bed, Plotinus's 'we have forgotten,' the Gnostic forgetfulness; the affective wound that complements return_to_source and gives the return its motive. (derived)
hermeticism|Corpus Hermeticum 10: The Sermon on the Mount|Section 1a
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Shared concept: Pneumatic Elect — A spiritual elite who possess the divine spark and are predestined for salvation, contrasted with psychic (faithful) and hylic (material) persons. (derived)
neoplatonism|Iamblichus: On the Mysteries|Chapter VIII-r
“But there are a certain few who by employing a certain supernatural power of intellect, are removed from nature , &c. The class to which these few belong is beautifully unfolded, as follows, by Plotinus, in the beginning of his Treatise on…”
Shared concept: Pneumatic Elect — A spiritual elite who possess the divine spark and are predestined for salvation, contrasted with psychic (faithful) and hylic (material) persons. (derived)
sufism|The Masnavi, Book I (Rumi)|PROLOGUE-a
“HEARKEN to the reed-flute, how it complains, Lamenting its banishment from its home: "Ever since they tore me from my osier bed, My plaintive notes have moved men and women to tears. I burst my breast, striving to give vent to sighs, And t…”
Shared concept: Separation From Source — The felt condition of exile from one's divine origin — Rumi's reed flute torn from its bed, Plotinus's 'we have forgotten,' the Gnostic forgetfulness; the affective wound that complements return_to_source and gives the return its motive. (derived)
western_esoteric|The Secret Teachings of All Ages (Manly P. Hall)|The Zodiac and Its Signs-h
“While the ignorant multitudes worshiped the house of the sun's reflection, which in the case described would be the Bull, the wise revered the house of the sun's actual dwelling, which would be the Scorpion, or the Serpent, the symbol of th…”
Shared concept: Pneumatic Elect — A spiritual elite who possess the divine spark and are predestined for salvation, contrasted with psychic (faithful) and hylic (material) persons. (derived)
western_esoteric|Transcendental Magic II: The Ritual (Éliphas Lévi)|9. The Ceremonial Of Initiates-c
“Life is a warfare in which we must give proofs if we would advance; power does not surrender of itself; it must be seized. Initiation by contest and ordeal is therefore indispensable for the attainment of the practical science of Magic. W…”
Shared concept: Pneumatic Elect — A spiritual elite who possess the divine spark and are predestined for salvation, contrasted with psychic (faithful) and hylic (material) persons. (derived)