Path to Freedom: observe senses → investigate identity → practice non-acting on impulses → cultivate mental impressions of stillness.
Yoga, in its simplest form, is an approach to finding inner happiness through understanding the mind and its functions. At its highest, it is a pathway to spiritual liberation. According to 11th-17th century Hatha Yoga texts, Yoga is the process of uniting the individual self with the universal self. The Sage Patanjali, 200-400 AD, defined yoga quite differently, describing an inverse process of the mind that culminates in pure seeing, pure witness consciousness. The defining characteristic of Yoga is well known from the sutra yogascittavritti nirodhah (1.2), often translated as “yoga is the cessation or restraint of the modifications of the mind” or similar wording. I’d like to touch on some other aspects of mind that aren’t discussed quite as much, and perhaps look at this sutra from a slightly different angle.
Let’s look at this sutra as an equation:
Yoga = the nirodhah of the cittavrittis
Nirodha means cessation, and also to restrain, slow, still, or selectively eliminate. It does not mean, in this context, to stop or control, but is an active process of coming to know your mind and how it operates. Knowing your mind means that you can eventually be purposeful about what is “in” it, and how you would like it to function. However, as we’ll discuss below, there is really nothing “in” our minds.
Cittavṛtti is a compound word: citta names the substance of mind, while vṛttisare its inherent energetic forces—which can be dormant, stilled, or active. A vṛtti also means “that which rolls forward,” building momentum as it goes. Defining vṛtti merely as a “fluctuation” or “modification” suggests the mind is a vessel that thoughts occur in. This leads us to imagine we can “empty” the mind of thoughts or get them “out of our heads.” However, in Yoga philosophy, the mind is made of nature and has a substance to it, it is material, though subtle. Further, mind is not limited to our brain. For example, our mind is within every cell of our body.
Translating citta and vṛtti as separate words—”mind” and “thoughts,” or “mind” and “modifications”—reinforces the illusion of two distinct things. But in this sūtra, cittavṛtti is a single compound, pointing to mind and thoughts as one unified process. That’s a key idea I want to emphasize: mind and thoughts contain each other. They’re not separate; there are no thoughts “in” the mind. A thought is an inherent potential of the substance of the mind.
A common analogy likens thoughts to waves rising and falling in an ocean. Yet if we dig deeper into how waves actually form, the picture gets even more interesting.
Waves arise from the ocean’s energy potential. Wind blowing across the water’s surface creates friction, forming ripples that the currents below amplify. This chain—wind to friction to currents—transmits energy, birthing waves. Crucially, waves carry energy, not water itself. The water simply moves in a circular motion as energy passes through it. Recall: a vṛtti “rolls” in just this circular fashion, inseparable from citta.
When we observe a wave, we notice the water and its form, not the unseen energy driving it forward. Thoughts work the same way: we perceive them as solid, discrete things, buying into their shape and content. Emotions and feelings ride along, often making them hard to face. But if we reframe cittavṛttias energy waves—propelled by friction and subsurface currents—we can learn to ride them out, even when they’re rough. Amid intense feelings, we might say, “There’s a lot of energy moving through me right now,” sensing the energy directly rather than grasping the thought. This takes practice, but success loosens the thought’s hold, revealing its true nature as it dissipates. Meaning, we might understand something deeper about where the thought, feeling, or emotion comes from when we are not under a wave. And usually we learn something unexpected.
Thus, cittavṛtti manifests as energy transmissions from the ocean of mind. Mind and thoughts share the same substance; they’re not separate. They build force through circular motion, fueled by the world’s “winds”—its friction—and our subconscious currents, those hidden impressions from the past.
If we want to calm the ocean, we can contemplate this:
Thoughts are energy patterns.
If we can sense our subconscious currents, we can change the force and energy of our thoughts.
How do we get to know what our subconscious patterns are? According to Patanjali, by freeing ourselves from our history, and planting seeds for a predictable future.
One of the causes of our identity with thoughts (which create the storehouse of our history) is the subject-object relationship with objects of the world, the things we perceive with our sense organs. Patanjali spends a lot of time discussing the nature of the relationship between the perceiver and objects, the seer and the seen. He taught that when we don’t see the distinction between the seer and the seen, we identify with the objects we see and we suffer. This non-distinction creates our constructed identity.
In day-to-day life, we gather knowledge from the “outside” world and form personal identities based on our perceptions of it. The yogic conception of identity understands that it is natural for us to assume identities based on the influences around us, but that we also have the agency to consciously shift the way we build an identity, so that our reference of self is from sensing within, rather than being constantly influenced by the ideas and opinions of others. This makes it possible to have a healthy, balanced sense of self, and this is what the initial steps of Yoga lead towards.
Often, it seems like our entire self-identification is based on just the incoming information of the sense organs. Many people simply go through life like this, unless something wakes up inside of them and they question whether or not there is something more. Sometimes it is not even a question but can come in the form of an internal demand – “Yes! There is something beyond this, and I will somehow seek within myself and find it.” After that, we begin to seek inside of ourselves.
Seeking or looking within is hard, and we need a little guidance to understand how and where to look. That guidance usually takes the form of an outer container—yoga, meditation, dance, music, chanting, poetry, art, being in nature, or simple sitting still and paying attention, are all ways in. Our bodies play a part in all of these approaches, and we learn how to be present with inhabiting our bodies in such a way that we develop inner awareness. Sometimes there is an experience of a blending between the body and our awareness, and we enter a state where for a period of time where there is a complete sense of harmony. We aren’t aware of time or space, we are neither here nor there, in or out. We move outside of the realm of thought.
This can happen spontaneously, or, when we gain the skills to do so, purposefully. Patanjali is interested, so it seems, in the purposeful skill of transcendence, and so he lays out several road maps. One map describes the difference between a full knowledge of self and the partial knowledge of things.
Knowledge gained from people, books, the internet, or teachers is empirical and objective: it can be collected, stored, measured, and categorized as ideas, facts, and figures. Such learning yields vast information about the world, yet the objects of knowledge are infinite—we can grasp only a limited fraction of them. We can’t possibly know everything. Avidya is not ignorance, it just means that we mainly know about things. Knowing who we are, without reference to external things, is vidya.
The five kleshas, or reasons why we suffer, describe what happens when avidya is where we are at, and what happens because of it. All five together are basically the friction that comes from wind of the world blowing over the surface of the ocean of our mind. When they are thinned, the transcendental states come easier.
The five kleshas, or reasons we suffer, are from sutra 2.3:
Avidya: not knowing who we are
Asmita: our assumed narratives
Raga: our likes
Dvesha: our dislikes
Abhinivesha: clinging to life through our stories
The kleshas are the root of samskaras, which by definition fix us to the past. Vasanas propel us toward a repetitive future, while karma unfolds in the present as our actions that are often repetitive and reinforce the cycle of samkara and vasana, impressions and desire. Patanjali’s Yoga counters this by suggesting non-acting on the suffering-bound samskaras, replacing them with impressions of stillness—freeing the past to cultivate inner quiet in the future. This means to sit and be present with pain or suffering, not try to push it away or think your way out of it.
Patanjali teaches that kaivalya, or freedom, emerges from releasing the past’s bondage—our personal history. To do that, we direct awareness firmly inward to the timeless, transcendent self, a consciousness that simply allows all things to be. Contemplating or inhabiting our boundless nature challenges us deeply, as we cling to stories for a sense of existence; spiritual practice experiments with being without them—who am I story-free? We honor what happened without being bound by it. With time and a steady inner compass, we arrive—and discover, as the texts affirm, we were never elsewhere.
Patanjali viewed yoga not as union with the cosmic, but as upāya—a path traversing the individual mind to uncover a transcendent principle of being. Our essential consciousness only seems limited when identifying with our subtle impressions.
The path to freedom, according to this model, is to release our identity with our stories through stillness and presence. When we do this, something new emerges, and it is usually an unexpected realization. It is always worth the work.