Viveka Khyati — The Constant Discrimination of the Realized
Viveka Khyati (discernment/discriminative knowledge) in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras is the near-final stage of liberation — the sustained, effortless discrimination between consciousness and its modifications that precedes complete liberation.
Patanjali's Yoga Sutras describe the penultimate stage of liberation as Viveka Khyati (discriminative knowledge) — the sustained, moment-to-moment discrimination between Purusha (pure consciousness) and Prakriti (nature/matter) that is no longer achieved through effort but arises spontaneously as the natural mode of awareness. This corresponds to the Advaita state of Sahaja Samadhi — the natural state where the recognition of Brahman is continuous rather than requiring deliberate effort. In Viveka Khyati, the Yogi/Jnani no longer mistakes the movements of mind, emotion, and body for their own nature — these are seen as Prakriti/Maya arising within consciousness, not as the consciousness itself. This natural discriminative awareness does not require maintenance (as earlier stages of practice did) but sustains itself — it is the recognition that was always the case, now no longer obscured by Avidya's habit of superimposition.
In Viveka Khyati, the discrimination between consciousness and its modifications is no longer an achievement but the natural, effortless mode of being.
Research on 'automatization' of expertise (Ericsson, Anderson) documents that with sufficient practice, what was initially effortful attention becomes automatic and effortless — parallel to the Vedantic concept of Viveka Khyati as the state where discriminative awareness has been sufficiently practiced to become one's default mode.
Yoga Sutras of Patanjali