Yogaśāstra 1.5–11: Activities of Citta

The Vyāsa-Bhāṣya gives no separate explanation of this Sūtra. It adopts the five technical terms pramāṇa, viparyaya, vikalpa, nidrā, and smṛti and explains them in the following sections.

The Vyāsa-Bhāṣya defines the three means of valid cognition more precisely:

1. Pratyakṣa is citta's coloration by an external object through the channels of the senses; its vṛtti primarily determines the object's particularity. Its result is Puruṣa's awareness of that citta-vṛtti.
2. Anumāna primarily determines a universal through a relation that occurs among similar cases and is excluded from dissimilar ones—for example, inferring motion from change of place.
3. Āgama is the cognition produced in a hearer by words concerning what a trustworthy speaker has personally perceived or inferred. If the speaker has neither perceived nor inferred the matter, or is not credible, the testimony is unstable.

Viparyaya is false cognition because it is sublated by an object-conforming pramāṇa—as seeing two moons is sublated by the correct perception of one. The Bhāṣya also equates this error with fivefold ignorance: avidyā, asmitā, rāga, dveṣa, and abhiniveśa; their traditional names are tamas, moha, mahāmoha, tāmisra, and andhatāmisra.

Vikalpa belongs neither to valid cognition nor to error. Although it lacks a corresponding object, the force of verbal cognition makes meaningful discourse possible. The Bhāṣya uses statements such as “consciousness is the nature of Puruṣa,” “Puruṣa is inactive,” and “Puruṣa is unproduced”: language treats an identity, or the absence of action or production, as though it were a positive property.

According to the Vyāsa-Bhāṣya, sleep is a distinct kind of cognition, not merely the absence of cognition. This is shown by retrospective awareness upon waking: one remembers having slept happily, unhappily, or deeply and dully, and accordingly describes a clear, disturbed, or heavy condition of mind and body. Without a cognition at the time, no memory directed toward it could arise. Nidrā is therefore a vṛtti and, like other vṛtti, must be restrained in samādhi.

TKVD2019 has the compound tamovṛtti, while CYS2026 has the separate form tamaḥ vṛttiḥ. Both add tamas as a qualifier of vṛtti, explicitly defining sleep as a darkening or obscuring mental activity. The Āgāśe-based KYM Bhāṣya view KYMV2026 instead agrees with the shorter base text. The extra word materially affects interpretation without creating a grammatical problem. The Sūtra meter label supplies no additional criterion, and PE1904 remains the translation base.

A cognition colored by its object displays both the object and its apprehension and produces a corresponding saṃskāra. When reactivated, that saṃskāra gives rise to a memory containing the same two aspects. Apprehension is foregrounded in the original cognition, the object in memory. The Bhāṣya distinguishes imagined remembering in dreams from unimagined remembering while awake. Every memory arises from experience of one of the five kinds of vṛtti; all these vṛtti embody pleasure, pain, or delusion and must be restrained.