Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Book IV · 18 of 34 · tr. Charles Johnston

Sutra 18

The movements of the psychic nature are perpetually objects of perception, since the Spiritual Man, who is the lord of them, remains unchanging. Here is teaching of the utmost import, both for understanding and for practice. To the psychic nature belong all the ebb and flow of emotion, all hoping and fearing, desire and hate: the things that make the multitude of men and women deem themselves happy or miserable. To it also belong the measuring and comparing, the doubt and questioning, which, for the same multitude, make up mental life. So that there results the emotion-soaked personality, with its dark and narrow view of life: the shivering, terror driven personality that is life itself for all but all of mankind. Yet the personality is not the true man, not the living soul at all, but only a spectacle which the true man observes. Let us under stand this, therefore, and draw ourselves up inwardly to the height of the Spiritual Man, who, standing in the quiet light of the Eternal, looks down serene upon this turmoil of the outer life. One first masters the personality, the 'mind,' by thus looking down on it from above, from within; by steadily watching its ebb and flow, as objective, outward, and therefore not the real Self. This standing back is the first step, detachment. The second, to maintain the vantage-ground thus gained, is recollection.

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Themes

Detachment Gelassenheitpraxis

Eckhart's Abgeschiedenheit/Gelassenheit — radical letting-go of will, image, and grasping that opens the soul to God; distinct from inner_silence (quietness) and from material renunciation, and adjacent to Sufi tark and Buddhist non-grasping as a practice rather than a metaphysical claim.

The first step to mastering the personality is described as standing back and detachment from it.

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Meditationpraxis

Disciplined inward attention — sitting, focused, or open-awareness practice — as a stand-alone term that umbrellas active_contemplation, inner_silence, and dhyana-style sitting.

The practice involves standing back and watching the ebb and flow of emotion as a disciplined inward attention.

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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 emphasizes understanding that the personality is not the true man to master it through standing back and looking down from within.

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