The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali is the codifying text of classical, or raja, yoga. Almost nothing is known of Patanjali as a historical person, and the dating of the work is genuinely disputed, ranging across the early centuries around the turn of the common era. Whatever its origin, the text gathers an older meditative inheritance into a concise, systematic manual built upon the framework of Samkhya philosophy.

Its second aphorism supplies the definition that governs the whole: yoga is the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind. When these turnings cease, the seer rests in its own nature. To reach this stillness the text lays out the eight limbs, a graded discipline running from ethical restraints through posture and breath-control to concentration, meditation, and absorption.

The work also describes samyama, the sustained and combined application of concentration upon a single object, which it holds to yield extraordinary powers, an ancient charter for the claim that disciplined attention produces effects. Its lasting importance lies in condensing a vast oral tradition into a portable, teachable system that locates freedom in mastery of one's own awareness and underlies later yoga worldwide.