Excerpt from Markandeya Purana
Canto 40
The Yogi's bliss
Dattatreya spoke:
I will succinctly declare to thee the ailments that prevail in the soul of a yogi when it is viewed: harken to me. He longs for rites performed with a view to future fruition, and the objects of human desire, for women, the fruits of alms-giving, for science, for supernatural power, for the baser metals and riches, for heaven, god-head, and supreme god-head, for actions that yield copious supplies of elixir vitae, for flying on the storm-winds, for sacrifice, and the power of inhabiting water and fire, for the fruits of sraddhas that contain every gift, and religious mortifications. Thus he longs when mentally ailing by reason of fasting, meritorious acts and worship of the gods, and by reason of those several actions.
A yogi should strenuously restrain his mind when beset with such thoughts. By making his mind cling to Brahman he is liberated from ailments. When these ailments are overcome other ailments still beset a yogi, arising out of goodness, passion and ignorance.
Ailments arising from illusive vision, from hearing, and from the deity, and mental aberration, and enthusiasm -- these five are roots of bitterness which tend to embarass the religious meditations of yogis. The ailment arising from illusive vision is such for a yogi because in it appear Vedic matters, poetic matters, science, and the mechanical arts without end. The ailment connected with hearing is so called because he perceives the meaning of sounds in all their completeness, and he receives sound from thousands of yojanas. The wise call this ailment one from the deity, as in the case of a madman, when like a god he sees all around and in the eight directions. When the yogi's mind wanders without support through his own fault by reason of his fall from all rules of good custom -- that is well known as mental aberration. When the seething whirlpool of knowledge like a whirlpool of water engulfs the mind -- that ailment is called enthusiasm. All beings of divine origin, when their religious meditation is destroyed by these great and terrible ailments, revolve again and again.
Therefore the yogi, having clad himself with a mental white blanket, should cast his mind prone on supreme Brahman, and meditate on him. A yogi should always be intent on religious meditation, he should eat sparingly, he should subdue his sense. The yogi should contemplate in his head the subtle conditions of the seven objects, viz., earth etc.; he should contemplate the subtle earth to be his soul, until he comprehends its subtlety. He deems the earth to be his soul, and he quits its bonds. Moreover he quits the subtle in water, and also the form in the fire; and he likewise quits touch in the wind, as he bears the subtle form in mind; and he quits the subtle activity of the sky, and likewise its sound. When he enters with his mind into into the mind of all created things, his mind bearing a mental subtle condition of them becomes subtle also. Likewise a man, conversant with religious devotion, on attaining to the intellect of all creatures, gains and relinquishes the most perfect subtlety of intellect. For the man conversant with religious devotion, who relinquishes these seven subtle things after having thoroughly comprehended them, there is no retrogression, O Alarka! The soul-cognizant man, after fully seeing the subtlety of these subtle condition of the seven objetcs, then utterly abandoning it may proceed to supreme bliss. And toward whatever thing he evinces feeling, O king! to that very thing becomes attached, and he perishes. Therefore the corporeal being, who after perceiving the mutually-associated subtle things abandons them, may gain supreme bliss. Having conjoined these very seven subtle things, O king! passionlessness towards created and other things tends to the final emancipation from existence of the man cognizant of the entities.
