Alice Bailey & Djwhal Khul - The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali - Book 3 - Sutra 4







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The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali - Book 3 - Union achieved and its Results





4. When concentration, meditation and contemplation
form one sequential act, then is sanyama achieved.This is a most
difficult idea to express for we have not in the English language the equivalent [251] of
the Sanskrit term "sanyama." It is the synthesis of the three stages of the
meditation process and is only possible to that student who has learnt and mastered the
three states of mind control. Through that mastery he has produced certain results, which
are as follows:
He has freed himself from the three worlds of mind, emotion and physical plane
existence. They no longer attract his attention. He is not concentrated upon, or engrossed
by them.
He can focus his attention at will and can hold his mind steady indefinitely, whilst
working intensively in the mental world, should he so choose.
He can polarize or center himself in the consciousness of the ego, soul or spiritual
man, and knows himself as separate from the mind, the emotions, desires, feelings and form
which constitute the lower man.
He has learnt to recognize that lower man (the sum total of mental states, of emotions
and physical atoms) as simply his instrument for communicating at will with the three
lower planes.
He has acquired the faculty of contemplation or the attitude of the real Identity
towards the realm of the soul and can look out on the soul-realm in a sense corresponding
to the way a man can use his eyes to see on the physical plane.
He can transmit to the brain, via the controlled mind, that which he sees, and can thus
impart knowledge of the self and of its kingdom to the man on the physical plane.

This is perfectly concentrated meditation and [252] the power so to meditate is called
sanyama in this sutra. It is the attainment of the power of meditation which is the
objective of the Raja Yoga system. Through this achievement, the yogi has learnt to
differentiate between the object and that which the object veils or hides. He has learnt
to pierce through all veils and contact the reality behind. He has achieved a working
knowledge of duality.
There is yet a higher consciousness than this, that realization which is covered by the
term unity, but as yet it is not his. This is, however, a very high stage and produces in
the physical man astounding effects and introduces him to various forms of phenomena.





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