Observations placeholder
Yoga Sutras of Patanjali - Book IV - 03. The Husbandman
Identifier
008311
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
The Sutra is shown as a heading, the comment underneath is by the translator, in this case, Charles Johnston, [1912]. I have included the comment simply because it provides an interesting perspective on the sutra.
A description of the experience
3. The apparent, immediate cause is not the true cause of the creative nature-powers; but, like the husbandman in his field, it takes obstacles away.
The husbandman tills his field, breaking up the clods of earth into fine mould, penetrable to air and rain; he sows his seed, carefully covering it, for fear of birds and the wind; he waters the seed-laden earth, turning the little rills from the irrigation tank now this way and that, removing obstacles from the channels, until the even How of water vitalizes the whole field. And so the plants germinate and grow, first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear.
But it is not the husbandman who makes them grow.
It is, first, the miraculous plasmic power in the grain of seed, which brings forth after its kind; then the alchemy of sunlight which, in presence of the green colouring matter of the leaves, gathers hydrogen from the water and carbon from the gases in the air, and mingles them in the hydro-carbons of plant growth; and, finally, the wholly occult vital powers of the plant itself, stored up through ages, and flowing down from the primal sources of life.
The husbandman but removes the obstacles. He plants and waters, but God gives the increase.
So with the finer husbandman of diviner fields.
He tills and sows, but the growth of the spiritual man comes through the surge and flow of divine, creative forces and powers. Here, again, God gives the increase. The divine Self puts forth, for the manifestation of its powers, a new and finer vesture, the body of the spiritual man.