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

consciousness can either be object-aware or subject-aware

Yoga differs from most comparable Western schools of dualism by regarding not just the physical body but also the mind, ego, and all cognitive functions as belonging to the realm of inert matter.

In his Tree of Yoga, Iyengar presents āsana, yogic posture, as not just the third of the eight limbs of yoga but also as a self-contained object of meditation that can itself bring about samādhi, the ultimate goal of yoga, if approached and undertaken correctly.

There is thus a radical distinction between the mind, which is considered to be very subtle but nonetheless inanimate matter, and pure consciousness, which is the actual animate life force. Animated by consciousness, it is the mind that imagines itself to be the real self rather than a material entity external to consciousness.

what serves as the cohesive mental factor such that a person can retain sanity and functionality by thinking of the same object for a prolonged period of time,

The momentary slides or stills of a movie require the reel to connect them. Only if the mind is a permanent entity that endures from one moment to the next does the notion of a distracted mind, and hence the viability of a practice of concentration to focus it, become meaningful.

the Yoga school, while using the terminology of (especially) buddhi, but also ahaṅkāra and manas, differs somewhat from that of Sāṅkhya in conceiving these three as interacting functions of the one citta, mind, rather than as three distinct metaphysical layers.

All aspects of mind, intellect, and cognition in Yoga psychology are external to or distinct from the true self, or soul. As will become clearer, the soul, which is pure consciousness, is autonomous and separable from the mind, and lies behind and beyond all forms of thought.

just as the previous sūtras indicated that attachment or aversion to something is caused by positive or negative memories of that thing, aversion to death likewise indicates that one’s memory retains unpleasant recollections of past deaths, although these are latent or subconscious in the present life.