The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali – A Visual Meditation

Book Three, Vibhūti Pādaḥ

On Remarkable Manifestations

Paintings, Translations, and Commentary

by Melissa Townsend

COMPARED TO BOOKS ONE AND TWO of the Yoga Sūtras, not much is written about Book Three. There is often little commentary for many of the sūtras, which can be explained in part by the fact that about two-thirds of the sūtras in Book Three are about the siddhis, the seemingly supernatural powers that can appear or be developed as one advances in the practice of Yoga. Given how much verbal real estate is devoted to these superpower-like accomplishments, the siddhis, it can seem like they are what Book Three is about. But that is far from true. Book

Three is about the Internal Practice of Yoga – the deepest level of the practice of Yoga – and it is about the profound transformation of consciousness that results from this internal practice. When you engage with Book Three, you might not fly or turn invisible or travel at the speed of thought, but you will encounter an experience of reality that challenges your understanding of what it means to occupy time and space here on Earth. Even if you were to experience one (or all!) of these remarkable manifestations, if you were to walk on water or see through walls – that would be incidental and even irrelevant in light of the expansiveness of consciousness that results from the internal practice of Yoga and that is the source of these seemingly miraculous occurrences.

As with the previous books in this series, Books One and Two (Samādhi Pādah and Sādhana Pādah), this Book, Book Three, Vibhūti Pādah, is both a traditional translation of the Yoga Sūtras with commentary and an art book. It features full-color, full-page reproductions of the paintings, one for each sūtra, created as meditative guides as part of the author’s years of work, studying and translating the Yoga Sūtras. The sūtras are given in the original Devanāgarī (Sanskrit), with transliteration, translation, and clear, informed commentary.