Yoga dictionary. Vikalpa

Translated from Sanskrit “vikalpa” means “fantasy”, “imagination”. In the yoga sutras Patanjali gives a detailed explanation of such phenomena as Vritti. In the Sutra of the fifth Chapter of the first, Patanjali describes their effect on the mind. In A. Bailey’s version of the translation, the Sutra reads:”there are five States of mind, and they are subject to pleasure or pain, they are painful or not painful.” Later in the sixth Sutra of the same Chapter, Patanjali enumerates the five kinds of Vritti. In A. Bailey’s version of the translation, the Sutra reads: “These modifications are right knowledge, wrong knowledge, fantasy, passivity and memory.” Among the other five types of Vritti, Patanjali mentions here such a phenomenon as Vikalpa, which in A. Bailey’s translation means “fantasy”. In Swami Vivekananda’s version of the translation, “vikalpa “is”verbal illusions”. Krishnamacharya offers the meaning “of vikalpa” as “imagination”. Continue reading →