- (Knowledge of) everything from intuition.
It is well known that all the Siddhis can be acquired by methods other than
those outlined in the Yoga-Sutras so far. For example, a Bhakta who follows the path
of love comes in possession of many Siddhis though he has done nothing to develop
them deliberately. This shows that there is a state of spiritual consciousness in which
all these powers are inherent and, therefore, anyone who attains to this state by what-
ever method acquires the Siddhis automatically. The Bhakta attains to this state by un-
ion with the Beloved through love, Jnani through discrimination. Patanjali has given in
the next two Sutras the method of developing this state of consciousness by the strictly
Yogic method.
This state of consciousness in which Siddhis of all kinds are inherent also con-
fers the power to perceive truth directly without the help of any instruments. The latter
faculty which is called Pratibha here has really no equivalent in English. The word
which comes nearest to it in meaning is intuition. But this word intuition as used in
Western psychology has a rather vague and general sense of apprehension of truth by
the mind without reasoning. The emphasis is on the absence of reasoning and not on
the transcendent nature of what is apprehended. It is true that some Western philoso-
phers have used the word intuition in a more specific sense which comes nearer to that
of Pratibha but that is not the generally accepted meaning of the term.
The word Pratibha as used in the Yoga-Sutras stands for that transcendent spiri-
tual faculty of perception which can dispense with the use of not only the sense-organs
but also the mind. It can perceive everything directly mirrored, as it were, in con-
sciousness itself and not through the instrumentality of the senses or the mind. Intui-
tion, on the other hand, is at its best a vague and weak reflection of Pratibha and may
be (called an echo or lower reverberation of Pratibha in the realm of the mind. It lacks
the directness and definiteness of perception implied in Pratibha.