The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali summary

If you have a purely scientific outlook, you might be put off by all this talk of God, the cosmic mind, or whatever else some yogi wants to call the mysterious something supposedly underlying the universe. 

But consider this: If a scientist told you that everything is ultimately just energy manifesting itself in various ways, would the idea of something underlying the universe seem more reasonable? 

At this point, you might be eager to jump straight into the practice of yoga. After all, that’s what it’s all about, at the end of the day.

But to understand the practice of yoga on an intellectual level, it helps to know the philosophy behind it. Now, depending on your background and sensibilities, that philosophy might seem a bit arcane – but don’t get hung up on it. Think of it like a ladder: it’s useful for getting to the top of something, but once you arrive where you want to go, you can leave it behind. 

Think about it like a math equation: Subtract your body, your mind, and everything else that’s external to you – things like your job, wealth, gender, and so on. What remains? Well, there’s just you. To put it more philosophically, all that’s left is the pure “I,” cleansed of all false identifications with everything that’s not your self – that is, non-self. Let’s call this pure “I” the True Self. 

This applies to every other person, too. Shorn of false identifications, each of them is also just a pure “I.” For them, that’s the True Self as well.

“But wait,” a skeptic might object. “That still doesn’t answer the question, ‘What is the True Self?’ Sure, it can be given other names, like ‘spirit,’ and it’s the same spirit in everything and everyone – but what exactly is it?” 

Good question – and the very fact that you might feel a need to ask it poses a problem in itself. If the True Self exists, how can you even be wondering what it is? After all, if you are the True Self, then presumably no one should know what it is better than you! So why the mystery? And why do people normally identify themselves with things that aren’t the True Self? 

Okay, so let’s recap: there’s the mind, which is like the surface of a lake. There’s the True Self, which is reflected on that surface. And then there are things like negative thoughts and emotions making the surface distorted. As a result, the mind produces the ego, which is a distorted reflection of the True Self. 

Now, if you look at the surface of the lake – in other words, if you look at your own mind – what do you see? Who’s there? “Well, it’s me,” you might say. But it’s not really you. It’s the ego, rather than the True Self. 

So how do you transcend your ego and escape your suffering? 

Well, it’s simple – at least in theory: make the turbulent, tainted “mental water” of your mind calm and clear. Then you’ll see the truth: an accurate reflection of your True Self. Replaced by this reflection, your ego will then disappear from your mind, along with your egoism and the suffering it produces. 

The moral and ethical principles of the yamas and niyamas might seem easy to follow. For instance, unless you’re a pathological shoplifter, stealing doesn’t seem that hard to avoid. 

But this is a simplistic, overly literal understanding of what it means to steal. Stealing is more than just running off with an item from a store. It’s taking away anything that doesn’t or shouldn’t belong to you, misusing it, or keeping it to yourself.