Patanjali's yoga sutras

4.1 You can attain all of that by birth, psychedelics, incantations, purification, or Cosmic Consciousness.

4.2. The transition into states of higher consciousness arise through Grace, the inflowing of the manifestation of the divine power of creation in the physical realm.

4.3 You facilitate your transformation, but you do not cause it. Like the farmer who irrigates the field by removing a dam that blocks the flow of water to it, you remove your obstacles so Grace can pierce through.

4.4 Every mind was created from the sense of I-am-ness alone.

4.5 Every mind is busy with different activities, but one director, one singular awareness, underlies the many vortexes of consciousness.

4.6 Of these, consciousness born of meditation is not bound by the law of cause and effect and doesn’t accumulate new personality traits, habits, or conditioned behaviors.

4.7 The practice of yoga is to understand that the law of cause and effect isn’t all black and white. There’s a third factor at play…

4.8 The conditions you create through merit or qualities. The habitual tendencies or dispositions imprinted on you from your experiences, that predispose you to particular patterns of behavior, will only come to fruition and manifest under certain conditions.

4.9 The ego carries its memories and personality traits with it even as you change your appearance, live in different places, and go through every phase of your life. The memories and personality traits accumulate without interruption, always causing the same issues.

4.10 There’s no beginning or end to them and you can’t wish them away.

4.11 They’re held together by the tangle of cause (ignorance), effect (the law of cause and effect), the actor (the ego), and the stimulus (the experience of separateness). When any of these disappear, the memories and personality traits dictating your behavior disappear.

4.12 In the flow of existence, in the past and the future, your true form (Loving Awareness) is always there to be experienced. What makes the difference is your actions and way of life.

4.13 Your actions and way of life manifest subtle differences in your qualities.

4.14 But, the reality of Oneness is that, at your core, you remain the same (Loving Awareness), despite these changes.

4.15 Consciousness and Existence are the same. The two seem separate because of the way Oneness manifests itself in this apparent duality.

4.16 Does this oneness of Consciousness with its objects not create an interdependence? Existence depends on and owes its existence to Consciousness. If there were no Consciousness to conceive of it, it would not exist.

4.17 Every object is known or unknown (comes in or out of existence) according to the need of Consciousness to know itself in every possible mode.

4.18 And, yet Loving Awareness is unchangeable and it is its unchangeability that allows it to know every possible mode, every mental vortex of every mind at all times.

4.19 Because of being knowable, your mind does not illuminate itself.

4.20 Likewise, Consciousness cannot be cognized. It is cognition. It is impossible to be both at the same time.

4.21 There is only one Consciousness. If it were knowable by another Creator with its own consciousness, those would be infinite, creating confusion and chaos.

4.22 Consciousness doesn’t mix with the human mind, but it does transform it, allowing you to perceive your own intelligence.

4.23 Reflecting both the knower (Consciousness) and the known (Existence), your mind perceives the whole, the Oneness.

4.24 Your mind may accumulate the residues of countless experiences, but it has only one reason for being, to serve Consciousness, the source of its power.

4.25 You are an integral, essential, inextricable aspect of the whole of existence, and your individual consciousness has the same relationship with Cosmic Consciousness.

4.26 Discernment is keeping the reality of being one with everything in your field of awareness. As you become more constantly mindful of this, you gravitate toward independence from the ego.

4.27 Don’t be surprised or discouraged when you experience breaks in this discernment. This will happen any time your thoughts or actions are triggered by the memories and personality traits that have habitually dictated your behavior.

4.28 Diligently work to remove each and every last one of these, just as you work to remove your obstacles and afflictions, through the continued practice of the seven stages of the wisdom gained through discernment and the eight limbs of yoga.

4.29 Eventually, you will lose your interest in even the highest thoughts and you will attain the state of Cosmic Consciousness known as the Cloud of Virtue, an uninterrupted state of discernment.

4.30 It is a state beyond the reach of the vortex of actions driven by the obstacles of ignorance, egoism, craving, aversion, and attachment.

4.31 With all impurities removed, the knowable (the ego) shrinks and wisdom is infinite.

4.32 With that, comes the last in the succession of changes necessary to expand your consciousness. Even the gunas (the three qualities) will have fulfilled their purpose and cease their fluctuations.

4.33 This final stage in the evolution of discernment is the uninterrupted stream of conscious awareness unfolding moment by moment.

4.34 Absolute freedom comes when the qualities of the ego dissolve, leaving nothing in the way of Cosmic Consciousness and Loving Awareness shines in its own pure light.