Dvivedi, Manilal Nabhubhai [Komm.]: The Yoga-sūtra of Patanjali: (translation, with introduction, appendix, and notes based upon several authentic commentaries) (Bombay, 1890)

possible knowledge by free communion with nature, as Vachas-
patimisra puts it.

III. Then the seer abides in himself.

Then, i. e., at the time of Yoga. For if Yoga means complete
suspension of the transformations of the thinking principle,
what is it that the soul, here called the seer, perceives ? That
which takes different forms is not the real seer, it is only vrtti
or kfojati, whereas that which stands unchanged through the
series of transformations which it witnesses, is the proper
ultimate seer—the soul, Puruia. So even seems the rule of the
Saiikhya. Darsana (consciousness) is ever one. When all the
Vrttis or transformations of the thinking principle are suppress-
ed, there remains only the never-changing eternal seer, Puruia,
in perfect sattva, being the only perceiver. The ultimate fact
of consciousness is itself and nothing else. This unalloyed bliss
is the proper state of the highest Yoga (called Nirbijasamadhi).
All misery arises from allowing the thinking principle to
cover, or take the place of, this immutable source of bliss
and knowledge, and then assume as many forms as objects
presented to it, either within or without. This very point is
carried further in the next Sutra.

IV. But otherwise (he) becomes assimilated with
transformations.

Otherwise, i. e., when Yoga is not acquired or reached. The
thinking principle transforms itself into objective and sub-
jective phenomena, and the immutable seer is for the time
obscured by it, or, which is the same thing, is assimilated into
it. It is only when the state of Yoga is reached that the