3.17 The sound of a word, the idea behind the word, and the object the idea signifies are often taken as being one thing and may be mistaken for one another. By self-control over their distinctions, understanding of all languages of all creatures arises.

I swear, every time that I go to Starbucks, they screw up my order. Even when I go to the same one and they can remember my name, they never seem to get the order right. How hard can it be to put together a one pump pre-warmed no whip mocha with sprinkles on one layer under another layer of sugar with a slightly heated chia foam filler? I hope you got the sarcasm in that, but it does serve to prove a larger point in this sutra.

Communication between humans is a complicated thing. Not only do we have words themselves, but we also have ideas and meaning behind the words. Certain words mean different things in one context, but could mean something completely different in another. The way we say a word can convey different meanings or ideas. Now with digital communications being such a part of our lives, we add emojis and memes to communication to convey feeling. Still, even with all this innovation, things get lost in translation all the time. According to Yoga, this is only a natural result of how the consciousness interprets data. So, with that being said, let’s deconstruct this rather complicated sutra one part at a time.

The ultimate goal of yoga is to become one with the pure source consciousness be working to remove all impressions from the subconscious mind, however, the same untainted consciousness is the root of all communication and has a particular order. Under what I will refer to as the Source Consciousness from here on out, is the first level of though, where all ideas originate. In Yoga, we all share this same plane of thought, meaning that no thought that you have is your own, you just had access to a thought at any particular time according to your karma. After the layer of thought, also called the Causal Plane, the idea reaches the next level called the Astral Plane. In this form the thought has emotional impressions attached to it, which then forms the basis of how an individual will convey the word on the final physical plane. It makes a lot of sense in practice, I mean, how else can you explain why people see the same object, but then form completely different opinions on the same object? So that is what the first part of the sutra is saying: We take these three levels and confuse them as being one, when in reality, there are three. It all just happens so fast that unless you have trained the mind through meditation, you would never know it. Once you understand the process, you understand everything.