Key idea of the Yoga Sūtras
pratyāhāra · withdrawal of the senses
The senses, freed from their objects, follow the mind inward.
Pratyāhāra is the fifth limb and the hinge between outer and inner practice. Withdrawal is when the senses, no longer engaged with their objects, seem to follow the mind's own nature (2.54). The word 'seem' (iva) matters: the senses are not shut down by force. They follow the mind's lead. Then comes supreme mastery of the senses (2.55). It follows from breath control, which has made the mind fit for concentration (2.53), and it opens onto concentration itself, binding the mind to one place (3.1). In ordinary life the experience is familiar: absorbed in something, we stop hearing the room. Patañjali makes that into a practice, so that attention is no longer dragged outward by every sight and sound. The senses are not treated as enemies. When the mind is settled, they settle with it.
Vyāsa
“When there is no conjunction with their own objects, the organs in imitation of the mind-stuff, as it is in itself, become, as it were, restricted. When the mind-stuff is restricted, like the mind-stuff they become restricted”
Vyāsa's Yoga-bhāṣya in J. H. Woods' translation (1914), p. 197.
How it has been read
Vyāsa records five views of mastery of the senses and calls Jaigīṣavya's the complete one: when the mind is one-pointed and restricted, the senses are restricted with it, and need no further effort (on 2.55).
A common misreading
Pratyāhāra is sometimes taken as cutting oneself off from the world. The sūtra describes senses that follow a settled mind (2.54), not senses forced shut.
Where the text defines it
- 2.53 And the mind becomes fit for concentration.
- 2.54 Withdrawal is when the senses, no longer engaged with their objects, seem to follow the mind's own nature.
- 2.55 Then comes supreme mastery of the senses.
- 3.1 Concentration is binding the mind to one place.