The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary

Self-mortification reduces attachment to the body. When pushed to explain this, yogis use the language of devotion.

In other words, Īśvara is all-knowing and is knowledge itself.

Let me clarify that here “worship” means—at the very least—the actual evocation of the power of the Deity and interaction with it. More commonly, it means becoming that deity through techniques of ritualized meditation and/or meditative ritual, either temporarily or as part of a process by which any perception of difference between oneself and the

It may seem that these two basic insights, the psychological and the spiritual, are two sides of a single coin. Yet, in my experience, we do not automatically have one when we have the other. No insight is so total, no experience so thoroughly once-and-for-all, that there are not residues of our old fantasies and organizing principles left behind.