Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Book IV

Sutra 1 states that psychic and spiritual powers may be inborn, or gained by drugs, incantations, fervour, or Meditation, and distinguishes the spiritual man from the counterfeit psychic man of dreams. Sutra 2 attributes the transfer of powers to the flow of natural creative forces, rooted in the Self, Atma. Sutra 3 holds that the apparent cause is not the true cause but, like the husbandman, only removes obstacles. Sutra 4 describes vestures of consciousness built according to the feeling of selfhood—physical, finer, causal bodies, then the Self. Sutra 5 states Consciousness is one, the elective cause of many states. Sutra 6 declares the state born of Contemplation free from the seed of future sorrow. Sutra 7 states the works of followers after Union make for neither pleasure nor pain. Sutra 8 explains that force in works manifests dynamic mind-images, illustrated by a murderer wounding his enemy and his own psychic body. Sutra 9 states works separated by nature, place, or time are joined through memory and dynamic impression. Sutra 10 holds the series of mind-images beginningless because Desire is everlasting. Sutra 11 states that when desire, reward, habit, and outer support cease, self-reproduction of mind-images ceases. Sutra 12 treats the difference of past and future as depending on phase of properties, citing time as illusion. Sutra 13 identifies properties as the Three Potencies—Substance, Force, Darkness; Goodness, Passion, Inertness. Sutra 14 links external manifestation to transformations in the same phase. Sutra 15 distinguishes the paths of material things and states of consciousness. Sutra 16 states objects do not depend on a single mind. Sutra 17 states an object is perceived as the mind is tinged with its colour, citing Emerson. Sutra 18 states psychic movements are perpetually objects of perception, the Spiritual Man unchanging. Sutras 19–21 argue the Mind is not self-luminous, cannot know itself and external things at once, and cannot be an endless series of perceiving minds. Sutra 22 states that when the purified psychical nature reflects the spiritual intelligence, the Self becomes self-conscious.

The psychic nature, taking the colour of the Seer and things seen, leads to perception of all objects; the unregenerate man is saturated with images, and through the Soul's fiery power sin is washed away, the vesture taking the Soul's colour as the Spiritual Man puts on fair raiment. The psychic nature now builds for the Spiritual Man, the mind become slave; he dwells in heaven and earth, finding the world's sin his to atone. For him who discerns between Mind and Spiritual Man comes fruition of longing after the Self, with promises of immortality, love, power, and companionship. The whole being bends toward illumination and Eternal Life. Other thoughts arise through mind-images; the battle is long, new foes coming from past ages, overcome by ceaseless renewal, since the Soul is invincible. He who is free from self reaches the essence of all knowable, gathered like a cloud, through sacrifice and obedience attaining oneness with God. Thereon comes surcease from sorrow and toil, freedom from Karma, and entry into joy. When veils are rent—separateness from the great Soul, then from other selves—knowledge becomes infinite. The transformations of the three nature potencies complete; time gives place to duration; the Spiritual Man enters eternal Being. Pure spiritual life is the inverse resolution of Nature's potencies, or the return of Consciousness to its essential form.