Book Three: The Extraordinary Powers
When you practice yoga in a certain way what do you experience?
III. 1 Concentration locks consciousness on a single area.
III.2 In meditative absorption, the entire perceptual flow is aligned with that object.
III.3 When only the essential nature of the object shines forth, as if formless, integration has arisen.
III.4 Concentration, meditative absorption, and integration regarding a single object comprise the perfect discipline of consciousness.
III.5 Once the perfect discipline of consciousness is mastered, wisdom dawns.
III.6 Perfect discipline is mastered in stages.
III.7 These three components - concentration, absorption, and integration - are more interiorized than the preceding five.
III.8 Even these three are external to integration that bears no seeds.
III.9 The transformation toward total stillness occurs as new latent impressions fostering cessation arise to prevent the activation of distractive, stored ones, and moments of stillness begin to permeate consciousness.
III.10 These latent impressions help consciousness flow from one tranquil moment to the next.
III.11 Consciousness is transformed toward integration as distractions dwindle, and focus arises.
III.12 In other words, consciousness is transformed toward focus as continuity develops between arising and subsiding perceptions.
III.13 Consciousness evolves along the same three lines - form, timespan, and condition - as the elements and the senses.
III.14 The substrate is unchanged, whether before, during, or after it takes a given form.
III.15 These transformations appear to unfold the way they do because consciousness is a succession of distinct patterns.
III.16 Observing these three axes of change - form, timespan, and condition - with perfect discipline yields insight into the past and future.
III.17 Word, meaning, and perception tend to get lumped together, each confused with the others; focusing on the distinctions between them with perfect discipline yields insight into the language of all beings.
III.18 Directly observing latent impressions with perfect discipline yields insight into previous births.
III.19 Focusing with perfect discipline on the perceptions of another yields insight into that person’s consciousness.
III.20 But not insight regarding the object of those perceptions, since the object itself is not actually present in that person’s consciousness.
III.21 When the body’s form is observed with perfect discipline, it becomes invisible: the eye is disengaged from incoming light, and the power to perceive is suspended.
III.22 Likewise, through perfect discipline other percepts - sound, smell, taste, touch - can be made to disappear.
III.23 The effects of action may be immediate or slow in coming; observing one’s actions with perfect discipline, or studying omens, yields insight into death.
III.24 Focusing with perfect discipline on friendliness, compassion, delight, and equanimity, one is imbued with their energies.
III.25 Focusing with perfect discipline on the powers of an elephant, or other entities, one acquires those powers.
III.26 Being absorbed in the play of the mind’s luminosity yields insight about the subtle, hidden, and distant.
III.27 Focusing with perfect discipline on the sun yields insight about the universe.
III.28 Focusing with perfect discipline on the moon yields insight about the stars’ positions.
III.29 Focusing with perfect discipline on the polestar yields insight about their movements.
III.30 Focusing with perfect discipline on the navel energy center yields insight about the organization of the body.
III.31 Focusing with perfect discipline on the pit of the throat eradicates hunger and thirst.
III.32 Focusing with perfect discipline on the ‘tortoise channel’, one cultivates steadiness.
III.33 Focusing with perfect discipline on the light in the crown of the head, one acquires the perspective of the perfected ones.
III.34 Or, all these accomplishments may be realized in a flash of spontaneous illumination.
III.35 Focusing with perfect discipline on the heart, one understands the nature of consciousness.
III.36 Experience consists of perceptions in which the luminous aspect of the phenomenal world is mistaken for absolutely pure awareness. Focusing with perfect discipline on the different properties of each yields insight into the nature of pure awareness.
III.37 Following this insight, the senses - hearing, feeling, seeing, tasting, smelling - may suddenly be enhanced.
III.38 These sensory gifts may feel like attainments, but they distract one from integration.
III.39 By relaxing one’s attachment to the body, and becoming profoundly sensitive to its currents, consciousness can enter another’s body.
III.40 By mastering the flow of energy in the head and neck, one can walk through water, mud, thorns, and other obstacles without touching down, but rather floating over them.
III.41 By mastering the flow of energy through the solar plexus, one becomes radiant.
III.42 By focusing with perfect discipline on the way sound travels through the ether, one acquires divine hearing.
III.43 By focusing with perfect discipline on the body’s relationship to the ether, and developing coalesced contemplation on the lightness of cotton, one can travel through space.
III.44 When consciousness completely disengages from externals - the ‘great disembodiment’ - then the veil lifts from the mind’s luminosity.
III.45 By observing the aspects of matter - gross, subtle, intrinsic, relational, purposive - with perfect discipline, one masters the elements.
III.46 Then extraordinary faculties appear, including the power to shrink to the size of an atom, as the body attains perfection, transcending physical law.
III.47 This perfection includes beauty, grace, strength, and the durability of a diamond.
III.48 By observing the various aspects of the sense organs - their processes of perception, intrinsic natures, identification as self, interconnectedness, purposes - with perfect discipline, one masters them.
III.49 Then, free from the constraints of their organs, the senses perceive with the quickness of the mind, no longer in the sway of the phenomenal world.
III.50 Once one just sees the distinction between pure awareness and the luminous aspect of the phenomenal world, all conditions are known and mastered.
III.51 When one is unattached even to this omniscience and mastery, the seeds of suffering wither, and pure awareness knows it stands alone.
III.52 Even if the exalted beckon, one must avoid attachment and pride, or suffering will recur.
III.53 Focusing with perfect discipline on the succession of moments in time yields insight born of discrimination.
III.54 This insight allows one to tell things apart which, through similarities of origin, feature, or position, had seemed continuous.
III.55 In this way, discriminative insight deconstructs all of the phenomenal world’s objects and conditions, setting them apart from pure awareness.
III.56 Once the luminosity and transparency of consciousness have become as distilled as pure awareness, they can reflect the freedom of awareness back to itself.
For the full Sanskrit and English Translation
https://www.arlingtoncenter.org/Sanskrit-English.pdf