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www.CSEcenter.org

In Yoga and the Luminous, you have written, 

“Thought has become the primary locus for personal identity in  
the modern world. We cherish our thoughts. We hold them to be  
our own. We are trained since infancy to think for ourselves, to 
develop our own opinions and to respect the opinions of others. 
However, the great yogic philosopher, Patanjali, held another 
perspective on thought. Rather than lauding thought as the base-
line for identity, rather than holding thought to be something 
sacrosanct and definitional, he maintained that thought must be 
used judiciously and cautiously, always directed toward a higher 
goal. For Patanjali, the greatest insight into the nature of things, 
the highest skill that a human can attain lies in the conquest of 
thought through the careful application of yogic techniques.” 

 

One of the most powerful teachings of Yoga is that we can and should direct our 

thoughts, so that we can use various techniques to quiet them. Patanjali’s Yoga 

Sutra begins with the definition of Yoga as the cessation or control of thought, 

the restraint of mental modifications. Our essential spiritual nature, no longer 

obscured by those thoughts, can then be directly experienced.
What does Patanjali’s definition of yoga tell us about the nature of the mind and 

thought?

Dr. Chapple:

 The first is that we can see things as they are. The second is that we 

can make egregious mistakes—just plain not “get it” from time to time. The third 

is that we can imagine things; we can put things together and think creatively— 

sometimes for good, sometimes for ill, imaginatively. The fourth is that we are 

able to go to sleep; we are able to go into a place where we are able to take a deep 

rest, but without self awareness. And the fifth is that we can remember things. 

By fine tuning all of these through the practices of yoga, we are able to put those 

modalities into service of a path that will direct us to peace. 
And the first pathway is a twin pathway, abhyasa, which means we have to do our 

yoga practice every day and vairagya, that we can’t be attached either to the good 

things or the bad things. We need to develop equanimity. We can’t even expect