The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: Commentary on the Raja Yoga Sutras by Sri Swami Satchidananda

Yoga is a method for restraining the natural turbulence of thoughts, which otherwise impartially prevents all men, of all lands, from glimpsing their true nature of Spirit. Like the healing light of the sun, yoga is beneficial equally to men of the East and to men of the West. The thoughts of most persons are restless and capricious; a manifest nee

since all forms or activities of the mind are products of prakṛti, matter, and completely distinct from the soul or true self, puruṣa, they must all be restrained in order for the soul to be realized by the yogī as an autonomous entity distinct from the mind.

Puruṣa is eternal and therefore not subject to changes such as bondage and liberation;5 in the Yoga tradition, the quest for liberation, in other words human agency, is a function of the prākṛtic mind, not of puruṣa.