Quotes from Barbara Stoler Miller

The aim of yoga is to eliminate the control that material nature exerts over the human spirit, to rediscover through introspective practice what the poet T.S. Eliot called "the still point of the turning world."

The turnings of thought" (citta-v?tti) refers to the totality of mental processes—conscious, subconscious, and hyperconscious—not simply to the faculties of intellect, recollection, or emotion.

Patanjali's method for achieving insight is far from the mystical ecstasy of a poet like St. John of the Cross or the ritual ecstasy of a shaman in a trance. It is instead a contemplative intensity that unbinds the constraints of everyday experience.

For one whose thought is tranquil, mastery extends from the most minute particle to the vast expanse. -Patanjali

It is in a total state of involvement that one finds liberation from time.