4.2 · The Overflowing

Transformation into another kind comes from the overflowing of nature.

Word by word

jāti-antara

another kind, another birth

pariṇāmaḥ

transformation

prakṛti-āpūrāt

from the overflowing, the filling-in, of nature

Where it fits

Vyāsa introduces this sūtra as being about bodies and senses that change into another kind, as in the powers of 4.1. The answer is that nature itself fills in the new form, with merit only an occasion. That leaves the question 4.3 answers: what, then, does merit actually do?

Reading

How can one kind of being become another? Patañjali says the new form comes from nature flowing in to fill it. Vyāsa explains that when the old form passes, body and organs take on a new arrangement, with nature supplying what is needed. Read literally, this is about rebirth and yogic transformation. Read closely, it is also hopeful: nature already holds the capacity for change. The next sūtra says what our part is.

Vyāsa

“The earlier transformation passes away and the later one arises because new parts enter into them. The natures that make up body and senses each support their own product by overflowing into it, depending on merit and the like as their instrumental cause.”

Vyāsa's Yoga-bhāṣya, the oldest commentary. New translation from the Sanskrit, with reference to Woods (1914), p. 300.

Practice

Think of a real change in yourself over the years, something you could not have forced. Write down what you actually did, and what simply grew once there was room for it. Notice how much of it came on its own.

A question to sit with

What in you is ready to fill a new shape?

Key ideas

prakṛti (nature, the seen), siddhi (powers), karma (action and its residue)