6. Sanyama is to be employed in stages.

7. These three – dharana, dhyan, and samadhi – are internal compared to the five that precede them.

8. But the three are external compared to seedless samadhi.

9. Nirodh parinam is the transformation of the mind in which the mind becomes permeated by the condition of nirodh, which intervenes momentarily between an impression that is disappearing and the impression that is taking its place.

10. This flow becomes peaceful with repeated impressions.

I have been told that traditionally there are two schools of thought in Germany. The industrial, practical northern part of the country has this philosophy: The situation is serious but not hopeless. In the southern part of Germany, more romantic and perhaps less practical, the philosophy seems to be: The situation is hopeless but not serious. If you ask me, then the situation is neither – neither is it hopeless nor serious. And I am talking about the human situation.

The human situation looks serious because we have been taught and conditioned to be serious, for centuries. The human situation looks hopeless because we have been doing something with ourselves which is wrong. We have not yet found that to be natural is the goal, and all the goals that we have been taught make us more and more unnatural.

To be natural, to be just in tune with the cosmic law, is what Patanjali means by sanyama. To be natural and to be in tune with the cosmic law is sanyama. Sanyama is not anything forced upon you. Sanyama is not anything that comes from the outside. Sanyama is a flowering of your innermost nature. Sanyama is to become that which you already are. Sanyama is to come back to nature. How to come back to nature? And what is human nature? Unless you dig deep within your own being, you will never come to know what human nature is.

One has to move inwards; and the whole process of yoga is a pilgrimage, an inward journey. Step by step, in eight steps. Patanjali is bringing you home. The first five steps – yam, niyam, anga, pranayam, pratyahar – they help you to go deep in you beyond the body. The body is your first periphery, the first concentric circle of your existence. The second step is to go beyond the mind. The three internal steps of dharana, dhyan, samadhi, lead you beyond the mind. Beyond the body and beyond the mind is your nature, is your center of being. That center of being Patanjali calls seedless samadhi – kaivalya. That he calls to come face to face to your own grounding, to your own being, to come to know who you are.