What’s the ultimate goal of yoga? According to Patanjali—it’s liberation.
In this episode, I dive deep into Kaivalya Pada, the final and most mystical book of the Yoga Sutras, to explore how we disentangle from the mind’s illusions and return to our true nature as pure consciousness (Purusha). We unpack the mechanics of karma, the role of Dhyana in neutralizing mental patterns, and how to finally recognize yourself as the witness, not the mind.
You’ll learn:
🔹 The difference between Purusha and Prakriti
🔹 How karma shapes our thoughts, habits, and reactions
🔹 Why meditation (Dhyana) is key to neutralizing karmic patterns
🔹 The role of the gunas in shaping perception and suffering
🔹 How to live from the clarity of the witness, not the chaos of the mind
If you’ve ever sensed there’s more to you than your thoughts, this episode offers a map back to your freedom.
💖 Ready to deepen your practice and live from your true nature? Explore the Uplifted Membership here => https://www.brettlarkin.com/uplifted/
📱 Join my 90-Day Profitability Roadmap for Yoga Teachers webinar–so you create income without confusion and burnout: https://www.brettlarkin.com/live-90day/
Translations Mentioned:
Reverend Jaganath Carrera: Inside the Yoga Sutras: A Comprehensive Sourcebook for the Study & Practice of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras
Barbara Stoler Miller: Yoga: Discipline of Freedom: The Yoga Sutra Attributed to Patanjali
BKS Iyengar: Light on the Yoga Sutras
Alan Finger: Tantra of the Yoga Sutras: Essential Wisdom for Living with Awareness and Grace
Edwin F Bryant: The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary
Sri Swami Satchidananda: The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
FREE Practice: KUNDALINI YOGA TO RELEASE ENERGY & EMOTIONS WITH MUSIC | Kundalini Yoga for Depression and Anxiety
Relevant Blog: What Are The Gunas In Yoga? A Complete Overview
Relevant to Today’s Episode:
✅ 200-hour Online Yoga Teacher Training
🔮 300-hour Online Yoga Teacher Training
🎧 Also Listen to:
#297 – What is Samkhya Philosophy and How is it Different from Yoga?
#279 – Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Summary – BOOK ONE Explained
#282 – Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Summary – BOOK TWO Explained
© 2025 Uplifted Yoga | BrettLarkin.com
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Transcript:
Brett Larkin:
Welcome to the Uplifted Yoga Podcast, where ancient yogic wisdom meets modern business strategy. I’m Brett Larkin, creator of Uplifted Yoga, where I’ve certified thousands of yoga teachers, built a multi-seven figure business, and guided over half a million students on YouTube. Here’s the truth.
You don’t have to choose between embodying deep yogic wisdom and building a thriving freedom-based business. This podcast is your space to integrate both, because yoga isn’t just what you do on the mat. It’s how you show up in every part of your life.
Whether you’re here to deepen your yoga practice, grow your teaching career, or align your energy with your purpose, you’re in the right place. Let’s dive in. Hello, yoga family.
Today we’re diving into the heart of yoga’s ultimate promise, liberation. What does that really mean, to disentangle from the mind’s illusions and return to your true nature as pure consciousness? Well, that’s exactly what we are going to unpack and explore and make practical in today’s episode as we unpack Kaivalya Pada, the final and most mystical book of the Yoga Sutras. This is where Patanjali takes us beyond physical practice, beyond even the mind, and into the mechanics of freedom itself.
We’ll explore the difference between purusha, pure consciousness, and prakriti, the material world, how karma shapes your thoughts and reactions, and why meditation, dhyana, is the key to neutralizing these karmic patterns. And of course, just to make it fun, we’ll also talk about the role of the gunas in shaping your perception of suffering, and how to finally live from the clarity of that witness consciousness, not the chaos of the mind. This episode on Book 4 of the Yoga Sutras, which is often overlooked, was highly requested.
So if you are here and you felt like there’s more to you than just your thoughts, this episode is your map back to freedom, back into the Yoga Sutras. And before we dive in, don’t forget to check out the Uplifted membership at brettlarkin.com forward slash uplifted. I’m also going to put the link in the show notes, but it’s the perfect space to deepen your practice and gain lots of Yoga Alliance continuing education with all the courses that are in there.
So if you want instant access to over $800 worth of courses on somatic yoga, kundalini, yoga nidra, perfect for sparking fresh ideas and maybe inspiration for your teaching, join today to go deeper into all things yoga with me at the link in the show notes. Hello my friends, I’m so excited to dive into Book 4 of the Yoga Sutras with you. This is the most skipped over section of the Yoga Sutras, but it is very profound and also challenging.
So I’m going to start by introducing some backstory because I really don’t think we can get through this book and it’s not long or this section of the book, Padaphor, without this backstory. So let’s talk about a couple of the core themes before I actually do what I typically do, which is like the read aloud and we go through the sutras and pause at some of the more interesting ones and compare translations. First of all, this book is called Kaivalya Pada.
Kaivalya means liberation or spiritual freedom. In Sanskrit, this word can translate to mean aloneness, absolute independence, liberation. And let’s just clarify that this isn’t about loneliness.
It’s about actually disentanglement of the consciousness, your consciousness from the fluctuations of your mind and the material world. So the big idea in this book is that the seer, Purusha, stands alone, free from the activity of nature or the material world, prakriti, the backstory that we need to unpack before we even go into the themes. So book four is just going to sound like gibberish to you unless you know the two ingredients of reality.
Whoo. So we’re cooking up reality. We’re going to make a world.
And from Samkhya philosophy, which underpins the Yoga Sutras, there are two ingredients that make up the world. Ready? Are you listening? Okay. The first one is Purusha.
Purusha. And that means pure consciousness or what we’re going to hear Patanjali or many translators of Patanjali refer to as the seer. So think of Purusha as the sky.
And then the other ingredient that makes up reality is prakriti, nature, the material world, the chair that I’m sitting on, the device through which you’re hearing this podcast, your mind, your beautiful brain and all the neurons firing in it would also go under prakriti. Or if we want to use the sky as a metaphor for Purusha, the seer, pure consciousness, prakriti would be the weather, the winds, the clouds. So there’s so many beautiful ways to talk about this.
There is that which is unfolding, that which is always changing. And then there is that which is witnessing all of that, that is unchanging and unmanifest. So everything that you can see right now or feel or think about or touch or experience, all of that is prakriti.
It’s everything on this material plane and the one who sees it all, that witnesses all of it, that is Purusha. And book four is about disentangling these two entities or to put it another way, in yoga, the goal isn’t about becoming a better manager of our thoughts. It’s to realize that you are actually not your thoughts at all.
You’re the person who’s seeing your thoughts. Some of you may have heard this before as referred to as a witness consciousness. And if you’re interested in learning more about this, I did an entire podcast on Samkhya philosophy, this philosophy.
So I will link that up in the show notes so that you can listen to it. And if you want to really go deep, do 300 hour teacher training with me because we dive even more deeply into this philosophy and how we can actually also use this to manage the energy within us and actually help us succeed as soulful, entrepreneurial yoga business owners. The second backstory or word that we really need some context around before we go into the book four of the sutras is this idea of karma, karma, this loop that we’re all in and Patanjali defines karma as cause and effect.
It’s the cause and effect impressions that are stored in our mind. You may be familiar with that word samskara. These are like grooves in our mind that drive our perception about the world and drive our behavior.
So if I have coffee every morning, that is a, you know, neurons that fire together, wire together. That is a groove in my brain. We could maybe say, sure, that’s a samskara of like waking up and needing that caffeine.
Now, that’s kind of an innocuous example. The karma that I think many of us are more interested in are some of these deeper emotional patterns or ways that we show up in the world. Are we anxious and attached to other people? Are we avoidant? Think of karma as like the software running in the background of your life.
And most of us don’t even know it’s there. We don’t know the lessons that we’re here to learn on this plane of consciousness. But karma is those obstacles, those lessons that we have to learn.
It’s essentially what makes up our unconscious life. And in 300 hour teacher training, we talk about how you can move through your karma smoothly, integrating the lessons that you need to learn in this lifetime. Or you can just repeat the same lesson over and over and over again as life presents you with like the same circumstances to work out that karma.
For example, maybe you break up with someone, move across the country, swear to never date someone like that again. And then two months later, you are dating that person’s doppelganger in terms of like the emotional dynamics in the relationship. Whoopsie.
Right. That would be an example of these samskaras or you not having learned what you needed to learn from that karmic lesson. And therefore, life is presenting you with the same circumstances again.
So when we talk about karma in book four, it’s like every action, every thought, every experience has a karmic impression. Like we can’t get out of karma if we’re living on this plane of consciousness and karma is shaping our desires, our reactions, how we’re interpreting the world around us. And so book four is about really seeing this code, these underlining karmic patterns and stepping outside of them.
Another big concept is that the mind, citta, is the Sanskrit word for what would refer to as our brain, our intellect. So a big concept is that the mind, citta, is not you. It’s not who you are.
The mind is a tool. The mind is not the self. And this book will describe how the mind can even generate other minds, aka like protector personalities and all the cool stuff we do in internal parts work and somatic coaching or parts of us that have experienced trauma or are wounded.
The key idea here is that your mind is like a lens and that lens can be clear or cloudy or a tinted pink. But you are not the lens. You are the light behind the lens.
And then kaivalya, we’ve already touched on that, but that’s the name of this book for kaivalya pada, kaivalya meaning total freedom, disentanglement. Kaivalya might look like going off to a cave to meditate and be alone, like the classic ascetic yogi. But you could also think of it as the moment when you stop being entangled with the movie of your life and you realize that you’re the light who’s actually projecting that movie.
So to review, before we dive into the verses of book four, Patanjali is speaking from a philosophical tradition called Samkhya philosophy, which says everything in existence is made of two things, consciousness, purusha and matter or nature, prakriti, your mind, your body, your habits, even your thoughts, everything is prakriti. But the real you, the one who sees and witnesses all of these things, the part of you that remains unchanged is purusha. And there’s this really beautiful meditation that I teach in the somatic coaching program, embodied yoga life coaching, where we’re actually tapping into feeling the part of you that’s always moving, the heart pumping, the blood circulating, little twitches, you’re breathing.
The part of you that’s always moving. And then we also identify with the part of us that’s never moving, that’s totally still, that’s witnessing all of that. And it’s essentially an embodied manifestation of these two philosophical concepts.
Day to day, most of us live completely identified with our mind. But yoga is here to tell us we are not our mind. We are not our reactions.
We’re actually the one who is seeing and observing all of that. And I’ll never forget, I had a very vivid moment one day in my bedroom when I realized that my mind was a very unsafe place. It was just kind of crazy.
I was like, my mind, all these thoughts I’m thinking, worries, anxieties, I don’t want to be here. Like there’s too much energy up in here. This mind, spending time in here thinking is not safe.
It is not a safe place. It is not good for me. And I started, that was like a huge moment for me that really led into my journey much deeper with embodiment and somatic work, because that’s about coming back to the body and to the senses and what we call in the somatic training, exteroception, orienting more with sight, smell, touch, the safety of our environment in order for our nervous system to come back into balance.
Okay. Back to Patanjali. In book four, he is describing how karma, the subtle residue of all of our past experiences, according to some like past life experiences, keep looping in our subconscious.
And even when the surface of our mind seems still or that lens seems clear, often the patterns beneath are actually still present and still running. But when we practice viveka, key vocab word from book three, those of you who listened to that episode, viveka means discernment or clarity. When we practice viveka and really understand the difference between the seer and the seen, we step into this kaivalya, this complete freedom.
Are we ready to read? I think we are. 4.1, I’m starting with Reverend Carrera’s translation. And I have to say, I don’t, I don’t get the opening line of this book.
I mean, we’ll look at it, but it’s not my favorite opening line. I feel like the opening lines of the other books of the Yoga Sutras are pretty profound and you’re like, yeah, I get why Patanjali made this the opening line. In part of four, book four of the Yoga Sutras, he kind of does a summary.
He’s like, before moving on to new things, I just want to let you know. So 4.1, siddhis, so siddhis, if you didn’t listen to book three, no big deal if you didn’t, but siddhis are like these superpowers that we can get as yogis. The ability to shapeshift, the ability to be invisible, the ability to warp time or see the future.
We talk a lot about what this literally and might more metaphorically mean in the book three podcast. But he goes back to that at the top of book four, 4.1 or Alan Finger’s translation, 4.1, one is either born with the siddhis or they arise from using herbs, repeating mantras, mental focus and purification and being in the state of samadhi. So he’s kind of saying not all yogic superpowers come from deep practice.
Some people are naturally born with them. And then the next two sutras deal with evolution and reincarnation. I’ll read from Alan Finger’s translation, 4.2, going through the natural cycles of birth and death is the process by which an individual’s consciousness evolves.
4.3, like the flow of water, the evolution of consciousness is effortless. All we need to do is remove the barriers within us that block it from flowing as a farmer removes rocks and trees that block the flow of water into the fields. That is a very loose translation from the Sanskrit.
So let’s look at Barbara Stoller Miller because she tends to be extremely literal. She says, there is no efficient cause of these material forces, but a breaching of the barriers that contain them as when a farmer irrigates fields. And then I actually like Reverend Carrera’s translation the most, I think here for 4.3. He says, incidental events do not directly cause natural evolution.
They just remove the obstacles as a farmer removes the obstacles in a watercourse running to his field. In other words, this is Reverend Carrera’s add on, but it’s like the heart of Buddha lies in everyone or within each sinner. There’s like a saint who’s waiting to manifest, who’s waiting to come out.
This is this core idea, right? That our true nature is divine. Nothing needs to be added for us to reach enlightenment. Instead, we need to work on removing the obstacles.
Who remembers the word for obstacles? We did a whole podcast on this pop quiz. Anyone? The kleshas. Remember the kleshas are those obstacles.
So yoga is very much about klesha removal. 4.4. The form that consciousness takes in an individual is always shaped by asmita, which is our tendency to identify with sense experiences. Asmita is a very interesting word because it is often translated to mean ego.
That pesky ego that has us identifying with worldly experiences. 4.5. Consciousness that has not been shaped by asmita or consciousness that has not been shaped by our ego is the same in all beings. Where there is asmita or ego consciousness takes on many forms and functions.
So let’s just clarify the ego isn’t bad. The ego is what happens when we are manifest. We have an individual identity motivated by karma that forms and that taints or colors the information potentially coming in from our senses.
Essentially, as our consciousness goes through the process of manifesting, it undergoes a series of limitations. Those are Allen’s words. One of which is having a separate identity.
The way I talk about this is we pay the price. We pay the price of polarity, this split, this fragmentation in order to become manifest, in order to come into being. We can’t just come into being and be manifest on this plane of consciousness and be like happy jellyfish blobs that only experience pleasure and bliss.
Like, no, that’s not what happens. If we want to be manifest and we want to be here, we have to pay the piper. We have to have an ego, have a karma, you know, in Catholicism, this would be like original sin, right? But we’re not naturally happy.
We have this fragmentation. And at the very beginning of Padawan, Patanjali told us that the mind has this tendency to actually identify with the images it creates, so to make up realities in its head. And now in book four, Patanjali is saying, well, listen, if you can actually learn how to not identify with all the images and stuff your mind’s creating, then you can actually start to set yourself free from the effects of karma or these effects of being manifest.
Sutra 4.6, when an individual’s consciousness is effortlessly held in a state where there is no fragmentation of thought, this is dhyana, back to the limbs of yoga, in this state, karmic impressions are deactivated. Ooh, I like that word deactivated. How does Barbara translate this? She says, a thought born of meditation leaves no trace of subliminal intention.
4.7, back to Alan, in dealing with the material plane, the mind constantly defines one thing in opposition to the other. This is the polarity planet that I was talking about, friends. In this dual state, the mind sees things as either black or white, which are really two poles of the same continuum.
The yogi, remaining in the state of dhyana, sees things from another dimension of perception, governed not by this duality. So this is this very, I was going to call it a basic idea, but I guess it’s a profound idea, we talked about this a lot in 300 hour teacher training. We have a couple of meditations specifically around this, but this idea that from a tantric viewpoint, we go up the chakra system, we connect with universal intelligence, we experience the samadhi, and then we bring that non-dual awareness down through our body and integrate it so we can live like a genius in our day-to-day life.
And for his translation, he says, living from the perspective of dhyana is the key to remaining unaffected by the duality created by the mind and to becoming free from the effects of karma. Who needs a reminder of what dhyana is? It is meditation. It’s the uninterrupted flow of concentration.
It’s the second to last limb before samadhi. So remember in book three, or if you haven’t listened, it’s fine, book three talks a lot about these upper three limbs, dharana, dhyana, and samadhi. Dharana being that concentration, fixing the mind on a single point of focus.
Dhyana, meditation, when that state of concentration becomes effortless. And then samadhi, absorption, merging with universal consciousness or the object of our focus. So being in dhyana, that meditative state can neutralize karma.
4.8, how we perceive and act on our perceptions has a direct impact on how our samskaras will manifest in the future, according to the conditions we are in. And Allen says, karma is the seed that motivates manifestation. If you’re here, if you’re manifest, it’s because we’re here on what I call earth school, and we’re working out some sort of karma, our mind tends to function in this state of duality, someone, a friend or foe is something good or bad.
But in this stage of meditation that we’re calling dhyana, the mind moves into an effortless focused flow, and we can transcend duality. We can transcend these limitations. The mind can kind of dip into a realm beyond the patterns that we’re used to and bring in a new, fresh perspective, actually a perspective that we desperately need in order for our karma to resolve.
4.9, samskaras, which are karmic impressions that are linked with memory, persist and manifest at some point in the future, whether in a different time or place, or even a different lifetime. Sutra 4.10, karma exists outside of time and creates the samskaras that drive us in time. 4.11, samskaras are part of the subtle substratum of the causal plane.
When samskaras are resolved, our karmic experience is resolved. 4.12, the past and future both exist in the present moment. How past and future are perceived depends on the conditions of the moment.
So in book three, when we talked about the cities and how the yogi might be able to predict the future, we talked about how in the present moment, first of all, this could refer to a flow state, like entering a flow state where you just totally lose track of time. But I think I gave the example in that previous podcast of like a moment where I almost said something to my husband, my partner, like a habitual reaction, samskara, but I was able to catch myself and see like, oh, if I see, if I say that thing, this is how he’ll react. And then this is how I feel.
And this is how the rest of our day will unfold. And so I remember when I said something like that before, and it was like, I was the witness and I didn’t say the thing, I didn’t do the pattern, but do you see how like the past and the future were alive in that single moment because of my level of awareness? 13. Let’s switch to Reverend Carrera.
Whether manifest or subtle, these characteristics belong to the nature of the gunas. So remember we have the three gunas, which are what govern everything that’s manifest. So if something is prakriti and manifest, well, the gunas are fluctuating.
The gunas are in a constant state of interaction. Tamas, rajas, and sattva. We talked a bunch about the gunas in book three.
The tree might be tamasic in winter, frozen, no flowers, rajasic in springtime, lots of flowers, blossoming, and then sattva guna would be the dynamic balance point between those two extremes. Some might argue that sattva guna is this dynamic point of homeostasis in a landscape that’s always changing. So even though you’re always changing and everything in your body is always moving, heart pumping, blood moving, you might have, you know, this state of sattva guna where things overall feel balanced and regulated for you.
And when you’re in that state, it allows you to access greater intelligence than potentially you might have the ability to see in the other two states. I digress. So 4.13, how the present moment presents itself is dependent on the state of the gunas.
4.14, at the most subtle level, everything in the material world is always transforming. Objects only appear to exist because of how the gunas mold and manifest our reality. Carrera says the reality of things is due to the uniformity of the gunas transformation.
And then I really love 4.15, this is Reverend Carrera, due to the differences in various minds, perception of even the same object may vary. I think that like describes pretty much like every argument or marital spat in the history of the world. Two people could look at the same thing and have a very different perception of what’s going on or what’s happening.
Some people might look at a messy house and be like, this is a disaster. Some people might look at a messy house and be like, wow, this looks so much fun. Like let’s play more.
So 4.15, how an object appears is dependent on the state of the mind of the perceiver. Due to differences in minds, perceptions of even the same thing may vary. Some people might see a dog and think it’s super cute and want to cuddle it.
Some people might see a dog and feel terrified because they were bit by a dog as a child. 4.16, an object exists independently of whether a mind is perceiving it. So the dog is a dog or the clutter, the mess in the house is messy, whether someone’s looking at it and perceiving it or not.
The way the mind is conditioned affects how it will perceive an object, or whether it’ll even be capable of perceiving that particular object. Maybe a different person doesn’t even notice that the house is messy or cluttered because, dah, they always grew up in an environment that looked like that and they’ve never seen anything different. 4.18. Pure consciousness, parusha, is changeless and considered to be the master of the mind because it forms the background in which the vritti, the mind chatter, the ever-changing thoughts, and moods of the mind arise.
Reverend Carrera’s translation is interesting here, too. 4.19. The mind receives impressions from the senses and puts them together as perceptions, but it is not the mind that does the perceiving. Let’s look at Reverend Carrera.
The mind stuff is not self-luminous because it is an object of perception by the parusha. 4.20. The mind stuff cannot perceive both the subject and object simultaneously, which proves it is not self-luminous. Reverend Carrera uses this analogy of the mind stuff being like a flashlight, and you can direct the flashlight on an object, like I’m going to think about this dog or I’m going to think about this clutter, or we can direct the flashlight on myself, like what am I thinking about this dog or what am I thinking about this clutter, but I can’t necessarily do both of those things simultaneously.
The point here is that parusha, the witness consciousness, is the light itself. Carrera caveats that in daily life, we may think that we can be self-aware and aware of an object simultaneously, but we actually can’t. It’s just that our mind works incredibly fast, and we can go between multiple thoughts at incredible speed.
The next couple of sutras are a bit of a challenge, but remember, the overarching idea here is that the mind is not consciousness. It is perceived by the parusha. You are not your thoughts.
You are the observer of them. 4.21 says, while pure consciousness can hold any and all possible perceptions, even the most subtle and discriminating aspects of the mind cannot support multiple perceptions at once. This is a good thing because if the mind were able to perceive all things at once, memory and cognition would become confused and overwhelmed.
It’s basically like would need a reboot, would be overloaded. 4.22, unchanging pure consciousness can only be reflected by a mind without vritti. When there are no vritti, the mind naturally reflects pure consciousness, and we can enter into the awareness of jiva-atman.
However, note that’s an addition from Allen’s translation, which tends to be a little bit looser from the exact Sanskrit. We don’t see the words jiva-atman in the Sanskrit itself, but the idea he’s getting at here is that when there are no vritti, the mind naturally reflects pure consciousness, and we can enter into awareness of being the perceiver or witness of our spirit. That’s what he means by jiva-atman.
So remember, the mind is considered to be not spirit, not you. The mind is considered to be part of the manifest world, part of what is perceived by purusha. 4.23, because the field of background consciousness contains all possibilities, a mind that is reflecting pure consciousness can perceive all of these possibilities, which allows one to live from inspiration and intuition within the world of the senses.
So this is a great example of me in that moment where I described where I didn’t say the thing to my husband that I know would end us up in the same old dance, the same old jig. I was in this like background conscious awareness that noticed the pattern, saw other possibilities, and therefore I was able to live from inspiration and intuition, even though I’m trapped here on earth school in the world of the senses. I was able to make a different choice.
Sutra 4.24, although the mind fills with countless impressions, it only exists as an instrument of pure consciousness. Boy, okay, let’s hear Revan Carrera on that one. 4.24, though colored by countless subliminal traits, the mind stuff exists for the sake of another, the purusha, because it can act only in association with it.
So the idea here is that the mind doesn’t exist just so you can satisfy your own personal desires. The mind, as everything created within bhakti on this plane of consciousness, is actually in existence to fulfill a higher purpose than just personal gratification. The mind actually exists to link us to the realization that who we really are is bliss, that who we really are is this light.
So the mind is really a tool for self-realization, but most of us are not using our minds very effectively or efficiently, especially when we’re on our phones and social media. Okay, continue. 4.25, when there is a clear distinction between pure awareness and the mind’s actions in the world of sense perceptions, one no longer gets confused between the mind, which thinks, and the jiva atman, which perceives.
Ooh, actually, this is interesting. Barbara translates this as one who sees the distinction between the lucid quality of nature and the observer ceases to cultivate a personal reality. You know, I actually really like that translation.
Instead of creating our own little personal reality with our own little stories and our own stuff going on, we’re able instead to see the distinction between nature and the observer. Let’s keep going with Barbara. 26, 4.26, then in deep, deep indiscrimination, thought gravitates towards freedom.
And this sutra does include the Sanskrit word viveka. And Alan says, 4.26, this is the state of viveka, where the mind is able to discern between pure consciousness and the mind’s experience of the world of the senses. So we need that discernment.
We need that clarity. We can’t buy into the mind’s stories. But even if we achieve that, it’s not a smooth path.
Enter sutras, the next set of sutras, 4.27, even once viveka has been experienced, new obstacles can still arise in moments of distraction, as karmic impressions from the past resurface. Barbara says, when there are lapses in discrimination, distracting concepts arise from the store of subliminal impressions. 4.28, staying with Barbara, like the forces of corruption, these ideas can be eliminated by reversing their course and by meditation.
4.29, for one who seeks no gain, even in vast knowledge, perpetual discrimination is called the essential cloud of pure contemplation. 4.30, on account of this, forces of corruptions and actions cease to exist. So when you’re able to be discerning, have that viveka all the time, even when the siddhis, those superpowers are arising, that’s when you achieve what they say, or what is called in 4.30, that Dharma Megha Samadhi, where there’s just a cessation of all of the karma and all the patterning of the mind is neutralized.
And then this pure light, this pure consciousness can resonate through each moment of our day. And this is what’s being described in 4.31 and 4.32. It’s basically, once we get to this state, the gunas actually come to a point of rest and no longer initiate new karma. And in 4.33, with this transcendence of the gunas, we don’t experience time the same way.
We’re free, and we are existing beyond misperception and illusion. And I like how Reverend Carrera describes this. He describes prakriti, this manifest plane of consciousness, as a never-ending play of objects and events that enchant the mind’s attention.
It’s not so much that the ego is gullible, although often it is, but rather that it is prakriti show that is so convincing. It’s a show that’s designed perfectly to fool our senses, causing errors in perception. And then he says that the world we’re living in isn’t a malicious practical joke, but it’s actually a show that’s meant to entertain and educate us and give us the experiences we need to overcome our karma so we can attain self-realization.
This is a lot, but we’re almost there. Final sutra, 4.34. When one is no longer driven by one’s karma, the gunas come to rest, and one is reabsorbed into the absolute awareness of pure consciousness. This is kaivalya, the awareness of pure consciousness expressed in every moment.
Alan writes, when you have reached a stage of yoga, when the constant inspiration from samadhi becomes the way that you live, you are free to move through your karma without any attachment to how it unfolds. You’re just in it, however it goes, enjoying the trip. Whether a baby is being born or a parent is dying.
So this isn’t something we can achieve overnight. This is something that comes when we’ve experienced samadhi enough through much practice, much meditative practice, that our brain and our nervous system have actually been completely repatterned so that instead of our personal karmic patterns, this new pattern of samadhi governs how we live. And then life starts to feel effortless from a tantric perspective or at a more meta level as described by Barbara Stoller-Miller.
We’re achieving this omniscience that allows the observer to become independent from the temporal constraints of the changing world of nature. Basically like you’re able to be cool and feel good no matter what is going on around you. So Patanjali’s solution that he’s offering us is for our spirit to achieve its rightful true identity as an observer of the world, an observer of our mind, an observer of all the phenomenon that we’re experiencing, and to be a witness rather than a suffering participant in it.
So when it’s talking about the gunas returning to their source, it’s like nature, prakriti, has no purpose for the liberated person. That’s why the seer is alone and in total freedom. So here are some reflection prompts for you to integrate.
What would it feel like to live without reacting or repeating the same karmic patterns but to live instead from clear awareness? And what practices might help you get there? Maybe you also want to think about what identities, yogic or otherwise, feel entangled with who you are. Can you begin to disassociate a little bit with your mind or see your mind as an instrument, not your actual identity, and not believe that everything you think is true? And what if freedom actually is your natural state and you’ve just been distracted from it? This is something that I’m feeling into a lot right now. When I do less, I actually feel quite good.
So remember, the path of yoga ends not in insight and achieving more, but actually in dissolution, the dissolving of the false selves into this freedom, this stillness. And a meta question that we probably need a whole separate episode for would be like, do we even want kaivalya? Do we want what Patanjali is describing here in book four? Do we want to become totally disentangled from nature? Do we want to identify only as pure awareness, completely separate from the body, the senses, the emotions? So the classic yoga goal would be yes. Yes, we do want to be the unchanging witness.
We want to be pure consciousness. We want to be forever free from the entanglement. Alan kind of tries to straddle the middle line that tantric view of, you know, like we’re living samadhi in the moment.
So it’s like we still get to be in nature. But the liberation that I think is really being described here is like there’s no clinging to beauty or pleasure or identity or anything of the material world. So that would be very different from an embodied or somatic path, right, which would be about reclaiming safety in the body, awakening the senses and becoming fully present in the here and now.
That would be a more tantric feminine somatic view where we’re saying we don’t want to transcend the body or the mind, but we’re here to fully inhabit it. We don’t want to escape prakriti, but we want to actually experience shakti, that life force energy with full aliveness. I don’t think it has to be an either or.
I also think both have value. And no matter what, I think my big takeaway from this book, book four, is that you are not your mind. You are the light behind it.
So if you ever feel yourself entangled in drama or a reaction, that can be a very powerful idea to tap into. If you are interested in more of the somatic embodied approach, I will link up some of those popular somatic yoga episodes in the show notes, as well as the Samkhya philosophy one. And of course, you can listen to all of my read alouds of the sutras, book one, book two, book three.
And thank you so much for being here all the way to the very end for our exploration of book four. Until next week, take care of you. Loving what you’re learning on the podcast? Apply the ancient science of yoga to your daily life surrounded by incredible peers in my uplifted 200-hour online yoga teacher training.
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Don’t forget to prioritize your well-being and get on your mat today. From my heart to yours, namaste.
