Neuroscience of the yogic theory of consciousness
Vaibhav Tripathi, P. Bharadwaj
Neuroscience of Consciousness January 1, 2021 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.1093/nc/niab030 via Semantic Scholar
Summary
Yoga, practiced for over 4,500 years, has growing scientific evidence for benefits on mental and physical well-being. This review presents the yogic theory of consciousness (YTC) based on the dualistic Sankhya school and Patanjali's yoga sutras. YTC models external modulations and internal states of the mind, including attention, sleep, mind wandering, meditation, samadhi, and disorders of consciousness. The authors propose testable neuroscientific hypotheses from YTC and analyze its benefits and limitations.
Study at a glance
| Design | review |
|---|---|
| Key finding | The yogic theory of consciousness (YTC) provides a cohesive framework to model both external modulations and internal states of the mind, including attention, sleep, mind wandering, meditation, samadhi, and disorders of consciousness. |
Abstract
Abstract Yoga as a practice and philosophy of life has been followed for more than 4500 years with known evidence of yogic practices in the Indus Valley Civilization. The last few decades have seen a resurgence in the utility of yoga and meditation as a practice with growing scientific evidence behind it. Significant scientific literature has been published, illustrating the benefits of yogic practices including ‘asana’, ‘pranayama’ and ‘dhyana’ on mental and physical well-being. Electrophysiological and recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have found explicit neural signatures for yogic practices. In this article, we present a review of the philosophy of yoga, based on the dualistic ‘Sankhya’ school, as applied to consciousness summarized by Patanjali in his yoga sutras followed by a discussion on the five ‘vritti’ (modulations of mind), the practice of ‘pratyahara’, ‘dharana’, ‘dhyana’, different states of ‘samadhi’, and ‘samapatti’. We formulate the yogic theory of consciousness (YTC), a cohesive theory that can model both external modulations and internal states of the mind. We propose that attention, sleep and mind wandering should be understood as unique modulatory states of the mind. YTC allows us to model the external states, internal states of meditation, ‘samadhi’ and even the disorders of consciousness. Furthermore, we list some testable neuroscientific hypotheses that could be answered using YTC and analyse the benefits, outcomes and possible limitations.