3.16 By self-control over these three-fold changes (of property, character and condition), knowledge of the past and the future arises.

Guess what? You can control the flow of time! Not only does yoga tell you about the nature of time, but it gives you a guide on how you can influence its passage. The thing about Yoga, is that it does not give a direct step by step guide on how to accomplish this. Quit the contrary, it’s very general on HOW to do it. If you want to know all kinds of Yogic techniques, go pick yourself up a copy of “The Spiritual Science of Kriya Yoga” by Goswami Kriyanda. Those are basically the ones that I have used, combined with Advanced Yoga Practices and the Self Realization Fellowship lessons. The bottom line here is that you need to experiment and find out what works best for you. There are thousands of yogic practises out there and any one guru that tells you they have THE ONE way to do it is selling you a line of bullshit.

Now back to the core of this sutra: What are the three fold changes of property charter and condition? Now don’t get lost on my here, this is a technical sutra, but it’s not as difficult as you might think. The property of any object refers to it’s pancha mahabhuta, or element: fire, earth, air, water, space. Now before you go and say that I am summoning Captain Planet, realize that before we had elemental chemistry, the ancient practices divided up chemistry into these five properties. The character of a particular object refers to the Guna, which I wrote about at length in chapter 2. The condition of the object simply refers to how the mind perceives it, or what point that object is relative to your perspective.

If you are a detail junkie, then Yoga is probably not the area of study for you. I would suggest going and checking out Jyotish, or Vedic Astrology. There are thousands of aspects to any one particular person’s birth chart. The whole point of Yoga is to get over all those details and reach a state of one pointed consciousness called samadhi. Once you are at that level, the passage of time becomes irrelevant because you have realized the true nature of time itself. We truly exist as timeless consciousness beings trapped within time itself, working to free ourselves of it. Pretty trippy, huh?