The first chapter, on Cosmic Consciousness, described the seven-fold path to this highest stage of wisdom:
- Sutras 1.1-1.15 Separating your identity from your mental vortexes until you are no longer susceptible to your cravings and triggered reactions.
- Sutras 1.16-1.22 Getting free of the impulse to judge things by their various qualities by using devotion, energy, perfect concentration, mindfulness and discernment to access states of awe, wonder, bliss and conscious awareness.
- Sutras 1.23-1.32 & 1.39 – Overcoming the obstacles of illness, lack of energy, doubt, impaired judgment, burnout, overconsumption, low self-esteem, failure and relapse—and the grief, despondency, trembling of the body and irregular breathing that accompany these obstacles—by surrendering to Loving Awareness. You can do this through the repetition of its onomatopoeia mantra Om or by wish or will wherever desire leads.
- Sutras 1.33-1.38 – Calming the mind with pranayama and meditation, so that you can cultivate loving kindness, compassion, delight and equanimity in pleasure or pain, fortune or misfortune.
- Sutras 1.40-1.42 – Turning your mind into a wish-granting jewel, a genie within, through the power of thought transformation. This is possible when you stop feeding your mental vortexes and they start to waste away.
- Sutras 1.43-1.46 – Contemplating that which has no characteristic marks. Loving Awareness can’t be described because it doesn’t have any qualities, but it exists within you and you can see through its eyes. You are the Creator observing its Creation. You know you have taken the seat of Loving Awareness when you have no judgments and feel only love and gratitude. This happens once you have emptied yourself of your ego. Only your essence shines forth.
- Sutras 1.47-1.51 – Accessing the unlimited truth and wisdom of Cosmic Consciousness.
तस्य सप्तधा प्रान्तभूमौ प्रज्ञा ॥ २.२७ ॥
tasya saptadhā prāntabhūmau prajñā || 2.27 ||
This [Khyāti, knowledge gained through discernment] is a seven-fold path to the highest stage of wisdom.
Tasya https://sanskritdictionary.org/tasya
“Of that,” i.e., of the produced discriminative knowledge, the “enlightenment” (prajñā), with the understanding of what should be known is, to its “utmost stage,” (prāntabhūmi) i.e., to the stage of Samādhi, along with all its accessories, of seven kinds.
Google Translate: His wisdom is in the sevenfold province
tasya—his. saptadhā—is sevenfold. prānta–bhūmiḥ—final at each stage. prajñā—discrimination.
The Sankhya-pravachana commentary of Vyasa
[English translation of the 7th century commentary by Vyāsa called the Sāṅkhya–pravacana, Vyāsabhāṣya or Yogabhāṣya]
[Sanskrit text for commentary available]
“His” in whom discrimination has come up into consciousness, consideration of attainments is sevenfold. “Sevenfold,” i.e., of seven descriptions only is the conscious discrimination of the thinker when at each stage the mental notion is not further produced, on account of the removal from the mind of the dirt which constitutes the veil of impurity.
This is as follows:—(1) The pain to be removed is known. Nothing further remains to be known of it. (2) The causes of pain to be removed have been done away with. (3) Removal has become a fact of direct cognitionby means of inhibitive trance. (4) The means of knowledge in the shape of discriminative knowledge has been understood.
This is the four-fold freedom of conscious discrimination from external phenomena. The freedom from the mind itself is three-fold. The Will-to-be has done its duty. The ‘qualities’ tending to become latent into their cause, disappear along with it, finding no support as they do, like stones rolled down from the edge of a hill-top. Nor once passed into latency, do they come back to life again, there being no object for it. In this state the Puruṣa, having passed beyond the limits of the relation with the ‘qualities,’ remains only the light of his own pure nature and is free.
The Puruṣa who has seen successively these seven stages of discrimination is called ‘adept’ (kuśala). He remains free and wise even when the mind is resolved into its cause, because he has passed beyond the sphere of the ‘qualities.’—78.
sūtra 2.27:
तस्य सप्तधा प्रान्तभूमिः प्रज्ञा ॥ २.२७ ॥
tasya saptadhā prāntabhūmiḥ prajñā || 2.27 ||
(27) Seven kinds of insight come to him (the Yogī who has acquired discriminative enlightenment).
Awe
Wonder
Bliss
Conscious awareness
Beyond Awe
Beyond Wonder
Samadhi
1.15
An emblem of the mastery of detachment is to hear or see something without craving it. [Or, to be triggered without reacting.]
1.16
The highest state of individual consciousness is to be free from the impulse to judge things by their various qualities.
1.17
There are four states of mind that naturally and effortlessly disrupt the impulse to judge and we can enter them intentionally, through our intellect. They are awe, wonder, bliss and I-am-ness (being conscious of being conscious).
1.18
To live in a constant state of awe, wonder, bliss and conscious awareness, is a purifying ritual that cleanses us of the residues of our past experiences, frees us from our cravings and judgments, and ends our identification with the vortexes of consciousness.
1.19
When our consciousness is purified of the residues of all past experiences, we are freed from physical bonds and dissolve into our essential nature.
1.20
We deepen our practice of awe, wonder, bliss and conscious awareness by adding devotion, energy, perfect concentration, mindfulness and discernment.
1.30
The obstacles that cause our minds to wander and disturb our inner peace—illness, a lack of energy, doubt, impaired judgment, burnout, overconsumption, low self-esteem, failure and relapse—
1.31
And the grief, despondency, trembling of the body and irregular breathing that accompany these obstacles…
1.32
Can be overcome by chanting Om. It is the practice of the highest tattva. That-thou. Perfect oneness in Īśvara.
1.33
By calming the mind, you can cultivate loving kindness, compassion, delight and equanimity in pleasure or pain, fortune or misfortune.
1.34
Through the release and retention of the breath, which is the vital energy, the life force… (Pranayama)
1.35
And focusing the mind to witness the sensory experiences arising from the inner realm… (Meditation)
1.36
…you will become free from grief, happy, radiant with divine light, as if you were illuminated like the stars.
1.37
You will go to a place free from desire.
1.38
Even as you sleep and dream, you will be rooted in the knowledge that leads to the liberation from human suffering.
1.39
Or, you can just meditate on Īśvara, according to wish or will, at pleasure, wherever desire leads.
1.40
You will become the master of your relationship with everything from the smallest atomic particle to the great cosmos.
1.41
When you stop feeding the vortexes and they slim down, consciousness becomes like a wish-granting jewel, like a genie within. It is the giver, the receiver and the gift. The knower, the act of knowing and what is known. No longer caught up in the vortexes, consciousness can take the shape of any form. Here, on the verge of ecstasy, you obtain the power of thought transformation.
1.43
When the mind is refined to the extent that it is no longer involved in or affected by the replaying of recorded thoughts, it empties itself of the ego and only its essence shines forth. Through awe, we go beyond awe to a state where the mind is no longer limited by words, meanings, observations and perceptions.
1.44
Likewise, contemplation of the intangible realm can also be refined to a state that is beyond wonder. This has been described as…
1.45
Contemplating that which has no characteristic marks. This is the highest and final stage of contemplation.
1.47
A further refinement is inner peace, the most blissful state, a state where the mind is perfectly soft, pure, unaffected by anything, with no thoughts at all.
1.48
In this state resides the intuitive wisdom that transcends the limitations of space and time, a state of consciousness saturated with the most basic principle of existence, which can never be distorted, violated or altered, and gives meaning and definition to “truth.”
1.49
This wisdom goes beyond what can be learned through and inferred from the scriptures because it comes something totally unique, being one with cosmic consciousness.
1.50
The experience of being one with cosmic consciousness neutralizes the effects of all other experiences.
1.51
When that is mastered, all is mastered. This is limitless ecstasy.
Patanjali's yoga sutras 
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