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The trained Yogi is able to exercise saṃyama with regard to any idea—that is to say his mind becomes identified with that idea to the exclusion of all others. Sometimes this saṃyama implies simply a thorough comprehension of the object of meditation.
They are attained according to the Yoga Sûtras by the exercise of saṃyama which is the name given conjointly to the three states of dhâraṇâ, dhyâna and samâdhi when they are applied simultaneously or in immediate succession to one object of thought . The reader will remember that this state of contemplation is to be preceded by pratyâhâra, or direction of the senses inwards, in which ordinary external stimuli are not felt.
In the Hindoo books he appears as Krigagva, the son of Samyama, and is called king of Vaigali, or Bengal! From these specimens the general character of the early Iranic legends appears sufficiently. Without affording any very close resemblances in particular cases, they present certain general features which are common to the legendary lore of all the Western Arians.
Thus by making saṃyama on the saṃskâras or predispositions existing in the mind, a knowledge of one's previous births is obtained; by making saṃyama on sound, the language of animals is understood. But in other cases a result is considered to be obtained because the Yogi in his trance thinks it is obtained.
It precedes emancipation as the morning star precedes the dawn. When this light has once come, the Yogi possesses all knowledge without the process of saṃyama. It may be compared to the Dibba-cakkhu or divine eye and the knowledge of the truths which according to the Pitakas precede arhatship.
And though the Yoga Sûtras represent superhuman faculties as depending chiefly on the hypnotic condition of saṃyama, they also say that they are obtainable—at any rate such of them as consist in superhuman knowledge—by pratibhâ or illumination. By this term is meant a state of enlightenment which suddenly floods the mind prepared by the Yoga discipline.
Thus if saṃyama is made on the throat, hunger and thirst are subdued; if on the strength of an elephant, that strength is obtained: if on the sun, the knowledge of all worlds is acquired. Other miraculous attainments are such that they should be visible to others, but are probably explicable as subjective fancies.
As regards, again, the person who is conversant with Brahma, as long as he continues to enjoy and endure the unexhausted remnant of his acts of previous Kalpas, it is said that all creatures and the two stainless sciences live in his body. When his Chitta becomes cleansed by Yoga, and when he practises Samyama, this perceptible universe appears to him as only his own fivefold senses.
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