tatra śabdārtha-jñāna-vikalpaiḥ saṅkīrṇā savitarkā samāpattiḥ
tatra śabda-artha-jñāna-vikalpaiḥ saṅkīrṇā savitarkā samāpattiḥ
“There, savitarka samāpatti is [the saturation which is] mixed with word, meaning, knowledge, and conceptualization. It is samāpatti ‘with thought.'”

Tatra (“there”), links back to I.41, where Patañjali has introduced the idea of samāpatti. He defines samāpatti (which literally means “fall together”) as the ability to stay focused on an object and “be saturated” by it. He also suggests in I.41 that a growing awareness of “the seer, what is seen, and the act of seeing” is integral to this process. That is, as we practice nirodha, as we move toward samāpatti, we gain insight into the mechanism of seeing itself. We gain perspective on the limit of what we see.

In today’s sūtra, Patañjali begins a discussion of the different stages of samāpatti. Savitarka means “with thought,” and in savitarka samāpatti,  word and sound (śabda), object (artha), knowledge (jñāna), and conceptualization (vikalpa*) mix together to support the renewal of the mind–undoing fixed ideas, directing the attention, opening up possibility.

Language is central to how we teach and how we learn. And it is central to Patañjali’s yoga. The sūtras are, of course, themselves language. However, they map out a journey that takes us somewhere beyond language.

Language, for all its power, contains its own constraints. In some sense, it always fails. In the Jewish tradition, one does not call God by name. When Moses stands before the burning bush, he asks, “What do I call you?” The answer: “I am that I am” (Genesis III.13).  It is as though God says, You can’t name what is unnameable, what is before language and beyond creation.

In yoga, as we seek to come into better knowledge of what is, a step in the process is coming to see how we are influenced by language and conceptualization, how our perceptions are “mixed” with words. Studying other languages reveals this. Sanskrit in its beautiful unfolding and building of ideas expresses things differently than English. It carries with it a sense of its own transitoriness. Bharati Devi, of Ānanda Ashram, says that in Sanskrit, nouns are crystallized verbs. It is as though the verb, pure energy, has taken temporary form as object. Every language carries its own meanings, its own version of things.

Perhaps no one has as acute a sense of the limit of language as the writer–the beingness of something more than words, the vibration of  words overpowering concept, the usefulness and frustration of speech.

I wonder what it is that I will accomplish today
If anything can be called that marvelous word.
It won’t be
My kind of work, which is only putting words on a page,
The pencil
Haltingly calling up
The light of the world,
Yet nothing appearing on paper half as bright
As the mockingbird’s verbal hilarity
In the still unleafed shrub in the churchyard-
Or the white heron rising over the swamp and the darkness,
His yellow eyes and broad wings wearing
The light of the world in the light of the world-
Ah yes, I see him.
He is exactly the poem I wanted to write.
–Mary Oliver, “White Heron Rises Over Blackwater”

*(Vikalpa means imagination or conceptualization. Earlier in the chapter, Patanjali defines it as one of the five vṛttis. He describes it as following śabda-jñāna, the knowledge of word or sound. See I.9.)

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“Savitarkā samāpatti is the samādhi in which one apprehends physical objects of the universe by means of the mixture of word or sound (śabda), meaning (artha) and direct feeling vibration, knowledge (jñāna), together.” Sri Brahmananda Sarasvati, The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali, p.22

“Kant maintained, quite rightly, that the ‘thing-in-itself’ cannot possibly be known by the senses or the reasoning mind, since the senses and the reason can only present us with their own subjective reactions. ‘It remains completely unknown to us,’ he wrote…. Patañjali tells us that there is a higher kind of knowledge, beyond sense perception, by which the ‘thing-in-itself’ can be known. And this is, of course, the fundamental claim made by the practicing mystic of every religion.” – Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, How to Know God, p. 81

“There is the external reality of a cow, the word ‘cow’ that we use to think about matters bovine, and ideas about cows—that they moo, give milk and chew their cud. We are not normally aware of the three distinct factors. We just ‘see’ a cow, and all sorts of related ideas appear in the mind. In savitarka samādhi, the mind gradually learns to isolate and focus on the object itself, leaving behind the relativities of our knowledge of it and its name. This prepares the mind for the next step in samādhi nirvitarka.” –Reverend Jaganath Carrera, Inside the Yoga Sūtras, p. 87

Questions:
• Has yoga practice helped you see the apparatus of your mind? Are you aware of distortions that your mind introduces?
• What kind of learner are you–auditory, kinesthetic, or visual? What role does sound or vibration play in your practice? Touch? Visual observation?
• In your experience, what is the interplay between language and direct observation?
• Are you more comfortable with analysis or synthesis?