The historical setting of the Upanishads is outlined at the beginning of the third section of chapter 1. There are two translations that I recommend: Roebuck (2000), which is the more accurate, and Easwaran (1987), which is the more poetic. Here I translate and discuss only those passages in the very earliest Upanishads where the word yoga is used in the sense of self-discipline1 (see the list of early Upanishads in figure 1A in chapter 1). My style is occasionally to include a short explanation in parentheses within the translation. In other words, expressions in parentheses are not on the surface of the Sanskrit text. But as glosses they are practically synonyms with the words glossed, and so are visible just below it. It is also my practice throughout these five appendices to restore ellipsis and sometimes to substitute for pronouns their referents.
Every Upanishad is a text that, like the Yoga Sutra, relates to yoga practices philosophically. So practically any selection is arbitrary, from the perspective of Yoga. No thematic criterion is available for homing in on the most important passages. Even only the Upanishads that the earliest commentators knew—which indologists consider the oldest, numbering 13 or 14 out of 108 counted traditionally, or more than 200 by the largest count2—present more than one theory about a spiritual reality. Classical Vedanta assumes, erroneously, that there is a single metaphysical view. Unfortunately, this assumption defines the school, which from the Brahma Sutra (c. 200 B.C.E.) on takes its task to be extraction of the single philosophy of the Upanishads. However, Upanishadic unity lies elsewhere than in a Vedantic system spun around the conception of Brahman or God. In fact, some Upanishads are theistic; some are not. Some have one view of the relation of Brahman to the individual; some another. Upanishadic unity comes from other quarters—from yoga advocacy and occult discoveries through yoga.
Not all Upanishadic passages are explicitly Yogic or yogic, however, in that there are puns, jokes, and stories with morals for everyone, not only for yogins and yoginis, at least now that the Upanishads have been brought out from their secret lineages. Nevertheless, Upanishadic psychological claims and doctrines of self and self-consciousness, as well as the metaphysics of Brahman, all presuppose yoga practice. This is not just an epistemological point (the third section of chapter 4 addresses the epistemology of yogic experience) but also pedagogical, according to Vedantic as well as Yogic traditions: only by yoga practice does one become capable of understanding the Upanishads, the “secret doctrines.”3
The twelve or thirteen or fourteen earliest and principal Upanishads are old texts, some very old, whose abstract metaphysical claims are susceptible to multiple interpretations, as is shown by the very existence of Vedanta subschools. There is less possibility of controversy with passages about methods of yoga, so less commentary is required, although all Upanishadic readings need a little contextualization and commentary. The passages rendered here pertain to yoga practice and psychology in the first place and speculative philosophy in the second place.4
The translations here are not of the very most famous Upanishadic passages. Through the eyes of Yoga philosophy, they (or any other passage from the early Upanishads, for that matter) carry significance other than what classical Vedantic commentators find. Views about Brahman, the Absolute, and the relationship to the self or Self, atman, and our psychology as individuals are the Vedantic stock-in-trade. From a Yoga perspective, these doctrines are interesting. Vedanta is a philosophy encouraging yoga practice. However, it is also exciting to find practice teachings in the Upanishads typically ignored by Vedantins.5
To begin, there is a story about how different yogas are appropriate for different psychologies that shows especially well several concerns of ours, including the background of all Upanishadic teaching, though it is only a minor part of the overall case for highlighting yoga.6 The passage occurs in what scholars consider the oldest or one of the two or three oldest Upanishads, the Brihadaranyaka (c. 800 B.C.E.), 5.2.1–3. Made famous in the West by T. S. Eliot’s 1922 poem, The Waste Land, it shows yoga eligibility conditions while setting out different “disciplines” for different personality types or distinct parts of ourselves. It is also a forerunner of the Gita’s teaching of karma yoga.
Prajapati, father of creatures, becomes the guru for three groups of children: gods, humans, and demons. At the end of a period of service and self-discipline—a first stage of a two-stage yoga—all three receive a special mystic teaching and prescription called an upanishad—in each case the single syllable da, but each group understands it differently. The gods take da to mean that they should restrain themselves (damyata), and Prajapati says, “Yes (om), you have understood.” The humans are then also confirmed by him in their hearing that they should give (datta). And the demons say it means they should be compassionate (dayadhvam), with Prajapati again concurring. The thunder repeats the message endlessly, da, da, da, and the passage closes with the refrain, “Peace, peace, peace” (shantih shantih shantih). Shankara and other classical commentators differentiate types of person and dispositions as targets of Prajapati’s injunction: gods have desires, men are afflicted by greed, and demons are prone to anger. But the unity of da’s message is also emphasized: yoga, yoking or self-discipline, as appropriate according to your nature, is a prerequisite for mystical knowledge of your highest self, the Brahman.
Despite all the disagreements among Vedantins of the various subschools, the message that through yoga we can have mystical knowledge of the Absolute, the Brahman, can hardly be missed, in this or in any other early Upanishad. Knowledge of Brahman, which is a single self of everyone, atman, brings freedom from fear (see the beginning of section 3.2). Cosmologically opinions differ, but insofar as any individual consciousness remains, it is no longer subject to an otherwise inevitable reincarnation or any other natural force or law. There is liberation, moksha. Yoga makes this possible if it does not directly bring it about. Katha 2.23 is interpreted by some to mean that the grace of the higher self is the trigger, making itself known to the lower self, which has been made ready by yoga. But yoga would still be necessary prep.
As mentioned in chapter 1, the word yoga derives from the verbal root yuj, which comes to be used in the Upanishads in the sense of restraining or yoking the mind (manas).7 The sense of yoga as union, as in union with God or union with the higher self, which is a later usage, seems to be introduced in the Maitri Upanishad, though the passage may be an interpolation and, in any case, it is difficult to date that Upanishad or know the linguistic history with much confidence.8 Despite that and other stray occurrences of the meaning of (spiritual) union, self-discipline is the sense common among Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Yoga Sutra, and other classic texts.
Now the word itself in this precise sense is used in the early Upanishads relatively rarely, compared with more than one hundred occurrences in the Bhagavad Gita alone and hundreds more in later sections of the Mahabharata. But yoga practices go by many names; tapas, heat, the spiritual heat generated by asanas, etc., is a general word that is practically a synonym as employed in many Upanishads (cf. the later usage of tapasya, asceticism).9 Furthermore, often the focus is on yogic experiences and realities revealed, not on the practices which are presupposed.
One final remark before we turn to the texts. The Vedantin Shankara identifies eighteen “great statements” (mahavakya) throughout ten or eleven Upanishads, among which is a line from Brihadaranyaka 4.5.6 that has wide resonance within all the classical schools: “Verily the self is to be learned about (from scripture), thought about, and made immediate in meditation.”10 Practices of yoga are implied in the final prescription. This is not, let me emphasize, an uncommon reading. Almost all of the philosophers of the classical schools on record, including, notably, Nyaya philosophers as well as Vedantins, read it this way.11 It’s as though the three (only marginally) separate classical darshana (ways of viewing the world)—Vedanta, Nyaya, and Yoga—are each sanctioned: Vedanta with its emphasis on learning from scripture, Nyaya with its emphasis on intellectual reflection, and Yoga with its emphasis on practice and immediate meditational experience.12
From the Taittiriya Upanishad (2.4–5)13
In what may be its first recorded occurrence in the sense of self-discipline, the word yoga is used in the midst of explanation of the kosha (sheath) theory that we reviewed in chapter 4 (see figure 4A). This is the teaching of five sheaths or bodies dwelt in simultaneously by the self or soul: the physical or made-of-food sheath, the breath or pranic sheath, the lower mind, the higher mind, and the bliss-made kosha. Specifically, the word yoga is used in connection with description of the fourth sheath, the higher mind, vijnanamaya, understood by Shankara as the understanding, buddhi, as opposed to the synthesizing sense mentality, manas (the stuff of the third sheath). The word for that of which the fourth sheath is made, vijnana, is commonly translated “understanding.” Shankara says that through it we understand truths. He also says that such understanding guides action. The overall message of the Upanishad is that by tapas—as noted, usually translated “austerity” but definitely including practices we know as yogic, such as meditation—one discovers that each of the sheaths is the Brahman, the Absolute, progressively, beginning with the food sheath. But first we have to be able to identity the sheath itself, and in the following passage we are told about that which is made of knowledge or the higher mind.
The Taittiriya is an early prose Upanishad (see figure 1A) that has come down to us through the Taittiriya lineage of the Yajur Veda. In fact, all the passages that follow, except for those from the Mundaka, come from that lineage, from that school of keepers, to be precise, of the “Black,” Krishna Yajur Veda as opposed to the “White.” (The former has explanatory prose intermixed with its poems, while the latter does not.) There is much overlap in Vedic literature among lineages and repetitions of the Rig Veda in particular, including other forms and derivations from the root yuj occurring in the Brihadaranyaka and Upanishads from other lineages. Thus nothing much should be made of the fact that all the early and principal Upanishads (except the Mundaka; see below) in which the word yoga is used in the sense of self-discipline belong to this Taittiriya line. As mentioned, yoga practices are referred to as tapas and named in a variety of manners. Perhaps with the noun yoga, however, it was in this shakha, this branch or Vedic school, that the linguistic convention originated.
There is, interior to and other than the body made of mind (manas), a body made of knowledge (vijnana). By that this is filled. This too has just the form of a person. According to that one’s personal form, this one has personal form. Just trust (shraddha, faith) is its head. The right way (rita = dharma) is its right side. Its left side is truth. Its body (trunk) is yoga. The great unmanifest is its lower part, its base.
The point here concerning the assimilation of yoga to the fourth sheath seems to be that yoga requires mental direction, a plan intellectually understood. Cognition directs action. Yoga (tapas) is to be carried out in the terms of the other sheaths too, the body, the breath, and so on. But in all cases there are mentally discernible rules. Furthermore, our knowing faculty, despite its confusions and the difficulties it makes for other parts of our being, is also the Brahman—so the Upanishad goes on to conclude.
From the Katha Upanishad (2.12, 2.23–24, and 6.7–18)
The Katha or Story Upanishad, unlike the Taittiriya, is written in verse. Its poetry is nevertheless antique, complex, and ideatively dense and imagistic in comparison with, for example, the Bhagavad Gita, which often echoes it. The teacher or guru is Yama, God of Death, the Controller. His pupil is Nachiketas, a young man in ancient India whose father, in accordance with prevailing religious practice is, as the Upanishad opens, sacrificing his possessions, offering all to the gods in the hope of attaining heaven.
As the grand procession is led past, Nachiketas argues that his father’s efforts are useless. “Giving away everything will get you nowhere,” he tells him. When the father ignores the impertinence, the son asks, “Then to whom will you give me?” The father doesn’t respond. Nachiketas taunts him with the question a second and a third time. In exasperation, the father shouts (“Go to hell”) “To Death, I give you to Death.”
Nachiketas, being a serious and dutiful son, follows his father’s orders and travels to the gates of the afterworld through a yogic trance. (The notion of yogic prerequisites is thus built into the plot.) There he waits for three days on the doorstep of Yama himself, Lord of Death. Now Nachiketas is not only a guest but a Brahmin, of the priestly caste. Yama violates a higher law, it seems, by ignoring him, particularly for so long a time. To make amends, he grants Nachiketas three wishes or boons, one for each day he had to wait. The boy’s first wish is that his father no longer be angry with him. Yama readily grants the request. For the second, Nachiketas asks about the meaning of the sacrificial ritual. Death gives him an explanation in which fire is symbolic of a divine being concealed in matter. Nachiketas’s inner fire of discontent or aspiration is “the immortal in the world of mortals.” Whoever lights this sacrificial flame, Yama says, crosses to the farther shore. When the boy seems to grasp what his teacher is talking about, Death, pleased at finding so receptive a pupil, names it the Nachiketas fire.
For his final boon, Nachiketas asks: “When a person dies, is he there or not?” Death complains that not even the gods or the rishis can answer the question. He begs him to choose some other boon: elephants and gold, beautiful wives, sons and grandsons, a kingdom, long life. Nachiketas dismisses these as transitory. He insists that only Yama can reveal the mystery and that this is his single wish. Death, who cannot go back on his word, instructs Nachiketas in a yoga of immortality.
Verse 2.23 is extremely important to Yoga theism, including tantric readings of the Upanishads, for its apparent reference to God’s choice and activity. If one takes the supreme self, atman, of the Upanishads to be Brahman in the theistic sense of a Supreme Lord and Inner Controller, antaryamin, who emanates all the worlds by voluntary choice, then yoga is not in itself sufficient to attain the supreme good. God’s grace, the self’s “choice,” is also necessary. Indeed, it is the trigger of enlightenment. (The idea recurs in the Mundaka; see below.)
In all the following verses except the last, the speaker is Yama, Death. The last verse closes the Upanishad by telling us in effect that Nachiketas, by following the teaching, attained the supreme state of consciousness called the Brahman, the Absolute. The first verse rendered, 2.12, tells us that as a first step to this knowledge one knows by yoga the immortal, indwelling self or soul (as discussed in the last section of chapter 5).
2.12. That one that is difficult to know, hidden, immanent, set in the cavern (of the heart), resting in the depths, / A wise man realizing it through knowledge of yogic method with respect to the self leaves behind joy and grief.…
2.23. Not through words is this the self (atman) to be got. Not by being smart. Not from wide learning (in scripture). / Just by whom the self chooses is the self obtainable. Only the one the self chooses gets the self’s own form.
2.24. (Not by everyone) not by one who still behaves badly, not by one who is not calm and peaceful (ashanta), not by one incapable of samadhi (yogic concentration and trance), / Nor even by someone wise and insightful if the mind is not calm and peaceful, would this one (the self) be got.
6.7. Higher than the sense faculties is the manas, the mind (the organ of inner sense). Essence (the sattva mode or guna embodied in intelligence) is superior to the manas. / The great self is above essence. Beyond the great (self) is the unmanifest.
6.8. But the (supreme) person is superior to the unmanifest, pervasive and without distinguishing mark—/ By knowing whom a creature is liberated and goes not again to the estate of death.
6.9. The form of that one (the supreme person) lies not within the expanse of vision. No one sees that one with the eye. / Through the heart and mind and intelligence is that one apprehended—by them who by knowing that one have become immortal.
6.10. When the five (sense) cognitions are stilled along with the sensual intelligence, / And the (higher) mind does not wander (in thought), the highest state that is called.
6.11. This they consider (true) yoga, the firm control in concentration of the organs and faculties. / Then one becomes vigilant; for yoga is the origin and ending.
6.12. Never by speech, not by the sensual intelligence, not by vision is that one got. / How is it to be known except by one proclaiming, “It is (real)” (as a matter of immediate experience)?
6.13. “It is (real)” is just the way that it is to be known, and it is to be known in its essential principles—both. / For the person who knows indeed “It is (real),” the essential principles become clear.
6.14. When all the desires that dwell in the heart have been let go, / Then the mortal becomes immortal. He enjoys here (in this life) the Brahman (the Absolute).
6.15. When all the knots of the heart have been cut through here (in this life), / Then the mortal becomes immortal—this is the teaching.
6.16. A hundred and one are the channels (nadi) of the heart. One of them issues at the crown of the head. / Through it departing, one goes to immortality. The others lead out in all directions.
6.17. The inner self (atman) is a conscious being (purusha), thumb-size, forever dwelling in the heart of creatures. / It is to be extracted from the body patiently, with diligence, like the cane shaft from the munja reed. / The bright, the immortal, it should be known. The bright, the immortal, it should be known.
6.18. Nachiketas, having obtained this knowledge proclaimed by Death (Yama) and all the principles of yoga (yoga-vidhim… kritsnam, the entire method of yoga), / Attained the Brahman. He became free from passion, free from death. Any other would do so too, who likewise knows about the self.
The edition glossed by Shankara has one more line, a ritual closing. The fact that verse 6.18, which is the last with real content, mentions yoga, using our word, indicates that we are to understand the entire teaching to be about that which is attainable through yoga. Rather arbitrarily, we have begun at 6.7 the stretch that culminates in 6.18. But in these dozen verses there are in summary form several key theses: the Samkhya disidentification theme (also called the “elusive I”) in verses 6.7 and 6.8 (ideas that also occur at Katha 3.10–14); the practice of pratyahara, sense withdrawal, which is the fifth limb of the Yoga Sutra’s eight-limbed yoga, ashtanga, in verse 6.11; the mental silence idea in 6.10 and other verses; suggestions of the tantric occult psychological system in verses 6.14–16; and the doctrine of the psychic individual in verse 6.17.
From the Mundaka Upanishad (3.1.1–10 and 3.2.3–6)
The Mundaka—which has three main sections or chapters, each with two subsections—is composed in elegant verses. It belongs to the Atharva Veda, the “fourth” Veda, which is not mentioned in some Upanishadic passages that mention the other three. Atharva hymns have impressed scholars as distinctive, and are usually dated a few centuries later (c. 1000–800 B.C.E.) than other Vedic hymns. But there are repetitions and echoes that unify Vedic literature—including the presence of the subgenre of Upanishads.
Stylistically, the Mundaka seems separate from the oldest group of Upanishads. Its concept of Brahman borders on paradox: see below, 3.1.7, which directly echoes the koanlike Isha. The Advaitin Shankara lucidly glosses each verse, commenting on practically every word, occasionally polemically (but only occasionally), seemingly letting his Advaita commitment distort his reading (e.g., of 3.2.3, below).
The yoga or self-discipline recommended in this Upanishad seems severe, extreme heat, tapas, built up through renunciation (samnyasa, 3.2.6) presumably of hunger, thirst, and desire for sex. But 3.1.8 seems to recommend balance along with meditation, and 3.1.5 says that the rishis, the mystic knowers of self, would be “ones whose desires have been obtained” (apta-kamah). Also in 3.1.8, as in the Katha (above, 2.23), what Vedantic theists call Grace seems to be thought the trigger for self-discovery, yogic prerequisites being in place.
At the beginning of this stretch of text, an image of two birds occurs, one absorbed in eating, the other watching, and it recurs at Shvetashvatara 4.6–7 and reverberates throughout Yoga and Vedantic literature. Here we have an icon of self-monitoring consciousness. Shankara glosses the word sayuja as sarvada yuktau, joined, or united (yukta), all the time, a word thus fraught with overtones (our two selves forever yoked in yoga). The yogin transcends both good and bad karma, according to Mundaka 3.1.3, but nevertheless has flawlessly moral character. The distinction between yogic immediate knowledge and intellectual understanding seems implied in 3.1.4. The word yati, striver, in 3.1.5 and 3.2.6, refers to the yoga practitioner. It derives from the root yat, to strive after, to devote oneself to, and in the Gita is used synonymously with yogin (e.g., Gita 5.26). Verse 3.1.10 anticipates the siddhi theme of the Yoga Sutra.
The word yoga occurs in our sense in 3.2.6, within a context, it seems, of a world-denying mysticism in that the yogin would enter “Brahman worlds.” But the word in Sanskrit translated “world” is loka, sometimes used in the sense of field of vision.14 The verse may be interpreted as saying that whatever world the yogin finds himself in will be a “Brahman world” in the sense that he or she sees everything as the Brahman.
3.1.1. There are two birds (with beautiful wings) who are constant companions (as though always together yoked), clutching the same branch of a tree. / One of them eats the sweet berry; the other, not eating, watches.
3.1.2. On a common branch, a person (a conscious being, purusha) sits sunken in sorrow at his helplessness, deluded. / The other sits contented. When the first person sees him to be (self-)lord, magnificent, his grief departs.
3.1.3. When he becomes a seer, seeing the golden-hued doer, the lord, the conscious being (purusha, person) born in the womb of Brahman, / Then as the Knower shaking off good deeds and bad, of flawless character, he attains the supreme equality (samya, equanimity; unity [with Brahman]).
3.1.4. This is the life energy (prana) that radiates out from every being. Knowing this, the Knower tends not to excessive disputation. / Playing and relishing the self (atman), with self as his delight, doing works this one becomes the best of Brahman knowers.
3.1.5. This is the self (atman) obtainable by truthfulness (satya), by tapas (heat of yogic austerities), by right cognition, by the constant practice of the student’s life of chastity (brahmacharya). / For there is within the body something made of light, beautifully radiant. They perceive this one, the strivers (yati) do, whose faults have been diminished (by these means).
3.1.6. Only truthfulness wins, not falsehood. By truthfulness was the divine path laid out. / By following it, rishis, having obtained their desires, come to that which is for truthfulness the highest home.
3.1.7. And that is the vast. Its form inconceivable, divine, subtly that radiates, so subtly. / Farther away than that which is far and at the same time right near at hand, it is here and now for those who see (it), set in a secret place.
3.1.8. It is not grasped by the eye, nor through speech. Not by other faculties, nor by tapas, nor action. / With (inner) being (sattva) purified through knowledge and serenity, then in meditation one perceives that one, the partless (the imperceivable).
3.1.9. This minute self is to be known by a consciousness into which prana (breath, life energy) has in five ways entered (and become controlled). / The intelligence (chitta) of creatures is altogether shot through with prana (that is out of control). Once purified, in it this self appears.
3.1.10. Whatever world the person of purified (inner) being turns to, illuminating mentally, and what desires he makes his own, / He wins just that world and those desires. Therefore, if you want (true) prosperity, you should hold the self-knower as the ideal.
3.2.3. Not through words is this the self (atman) to be got. Not by being smart. Not from wide learning (in scripture). / Just by whom the self chooses is the self obtainable. Only the one the self chooses gets the self’s own form.
3.2.4. This the self is not to be realized if you are not strong, and not if there is distraction or carelessness, nor if the discipline (tapas) is off the mark, flawed. / But if by these methods and means you strive, a knower you become. For you, the self has its home in Brahman.
3.2.5. Rishis having realized that one, satisfied in their knowledges, perfected in the self, free of passion, calm and serene, / These wise ones find the Omnipresent everywhere. Disciplined in yoga (yuktatman), they enter the All.
3.2.6. Ascetics, strivers (yati), who know well the meaning of the Upanishads (vedanta) through their own experience, purified in their (inner) being through renunciation and yoga practice—/ All of them become at the end absolutely liberated into the worlds of Brahman, having passed beyond death (possessing the supreme nectar of immortality, amrita).
Five varieties of breath are introduced in the Brihadaranyaka (3.9.26) and other Upanishads: prana proper as well as inhalation, apana, down-breath, vyana, wide-breath, udana, up-breath, and samana, equalizing breath. The translations are problematic in that for yoga practice these are terms of art and perhaps best left untranslated or anglicized.15 Probably these are the five breaths that are referred to in Mundaka 3.1.9. However, the word prana is also used in the sense of life energy in general (see, e.g., 3.1.4), energy that in tantric teaching can be redirected up the central channel of the occult body, sushumna (see appendix E, Hatha Yoga Pradipika 2.41–42).
As noted, verse 3.2.3 repeats the theistic idea of grace that we encountered in the Katha (2.23)—at least in the theistic interpretation of Ramanuja and company. Shankara takes the verse to express the idea of the self’s power of self-illumination in such “choosing.” Verse 3.2.4 goes on to spell out yogic prerequisites in general terms. The last two verses give us a conception of the goal of yoga.
From the Shvetashvatara Upanishad (1.1–3 and 2.8–17)
The Shvetashvatara is referred to generously by Ramanuja and other classical Vedantins, including Advaita Vedantins, although, like the Katha’s, its philosophy is theistic. The oldest commentary is by Shankara, as for almost all the early and principal Upanishads. According to expert indological opinion, the Shvetashvatara is in style like the Kena, the Mundaka, and the Katha, and thus probably belongs to a second period of Upanishadic composition, around 400 B.C.E., although some would assign it a still later date. In any case, it is older than the Gita, which borrows lines from it and dates from 300 or 200 B.C.E. at best estimate. All four Upanishads appear to be prior to the advent of Buddhism and the Gita afterward.
The Shvetashvatara repeats ideas and phrases from other Upanishads, the long prose Brihadaranyaka and the cryptic and short Isha as well as several others. In it philosophy and yoga coalesce in a theistic vision that is world-affirmative, precursing tantra (though this is not true according to Shankara’s reading). The directness of the metaphysical questioning at the beginning is striking. The passage constitutes part of the evidence that there were public debates about the Brahman in kingly courts and elsewhere in Upanishadic times.
In verse 1.3, there is mention of yoga and meditation together in a compound (dhyana-yoga), and it is impossible to say whether the Sanskrit is to be rendered “the yoga of meditation” or “yoga and meditation.” I think the ambiguity does not matter much, for everything is spelled out in verses 2.8–15. Clearly, the method prescribed includes meditation. Note, however, that it is with bhakti yoga that the passage ends, verses 16–17, which are the last lines of section 2 (the Upanishad is divided into six sections or chapters).
1.1. They say who debate about Brahman: “What is the cause (of the phenomenal display)? Is it Brahman? From what are we born? By what do we live? And on what are we based? / We live experiencing pleasures and their opposites—governed by what or whom? (Tell us) you Brahman-knowers.
1.2. “Should we think time is the answer? Each thing’s own nature? Necessity? Chance? The elements? A (cosmic) womb? A (cosmic) person? / No, not these nor a combination of them, since there is the (individual) self (which is something other than these and their combinations). The self too is not the answer, since it cannot determine its own pleasures and pains.”
1.3. Those who follow the yoga of meditation have perceived the hidden energy (shakti) of the divine self (devatman), hidden its own workings and strands. / Who governs all those causes including time on through the (individual) self, it is this one.
2.8. Holding the body balanced and steady (sama), the three upper parts (torso, neck, and head) erect, pulling the senses with the mind into the heart, / The knower would cross all fear-carrying currents by the boat of Brahman.
2.9. Squeezing the pranas (the five breaths) here (in the heart), let the yogin of disciplined movement, the knower, breathing through the nose with constricted breath, undistractedly control the mind like a vehicle yoked (yukta) to wild horses.
2.10. In a clean level spot, free from pebbles, fire, and sand, which is pleasing to the sensuous intelligence (manas), not paining the eye, by such qualities as sounds of water, let yoga be practiced by one who lives in a secluded and sheltered place.16
2.11. Mist, smoke, rays, (vital) air (anila), (interior) fire (anala), fireflies, lightning, crystal, the moon—/ These forms are precursors of Brahman awareness in yoga, manifesting (by its imminence).
2.12. (The elements) earth, water, the fiery element (tejas), air, and ether (kha, sky) are presented (subtly) when yoga practice is under way in its fivefold character. / For the accomplished whose body is made of the fire of yoga, there is no disease nor old age nor death.
2.13. Lightness (or clarity of mind), health, steadiness, clarity of complexion, and excellence of voice, / A beautiful smell, slight urine and stool—they say these come first in the processes of yoga.
2.14. With a knife smear a mirror with clay, and just as when cleansed it shines again brilliantly, / So the embodied who knows the reality of the self (atman) becomes integrated, purposes fulfilled, parted from grief.
2.15. One disciplined in yoga would perceive here in this life the reality of Brahman by the reality of the self that is like a lamp. / Then knowing the unborn, the constant, that which is untouched by all (other) realities, the God, he becomes liberated from all bondages.
2.16. For this God extends in all directions. Everything follows in accord with him. For he was born before. In the womb in the end it is just he. / It is he who has been born and who will be born. In front of all creatures, he faces in all directions.
2.17. Who is in fire, who is in the waters, the God who is everything has entered the world. / Who is in plants, who is in the forests, to this God salutations, let there be salutations (namo namah).
The yogic progression seems to be from asanas and the body through meditation and control of the mind to discovery of an indwelling self. That discovery then becomes the means, the lamp (2.15), whereby the God is discovered.
The bhakti sentiments at the end are not spelled out as a method of yoga. They belong rather to the substance of the discipline.
Along the way, siddhis come as signs of progress, indicators of imminent yogic experience and spiritual transformation. Apparently in this way a practitioner would receive feedback from the higher self and keep confidence in the end to be achieved, not let up or fall away from the path. The precise nature of the conveyance seems less important than the fact simply that there would be such encouragement. The mist, fireflies, and so on mentioned in 2.11 comprise nonetheless a (fascinating!) sequence of events in meditation, according to the common interpretation.17