ABSTRACT
The Yoga of Patañjali is a meta-psychological technique based upon the philosophy of the Sāṅkhya. Its metaphysics is metapsychology based upon the principle that the outward reality has its roots in the inward and that the realization of the ultimate truth is, therefore, the realization of the most inward being in man, namely, the ātman. And by the time the ātman is realized, every stage of reality lower than it must have been realized. The Sāṅkhya maintains that everything evolves out of Prakṛti through its first evolute, reason (buddhi, Mahat). Buddhi is called citta by Patañjali. And it is conscious, because it reflects the consciousness of the ātman; it is the highest stage of our conscious being, the deepest, and the infinite, since it is the source of all that we are conscious of, including our ego. The world, the Sankya and the Yoga maintain, is due to the evolutionary process of reason, due to its transformation. 1 The bondage of the ātman is due to its being entangled in this transformation; its liberation lies in disentangling itself from that process.
