Neuroscience of the yogic theory of consciousness

Yoga, a practice and philosophy with roots over 4500 years old, has gained renewed scientific interest. This review outlines the dualistic Sankhya philosophy of yoga as summarized by Patanjali, describing the five vrittis (modulations of mind), practices like pratyahara and dhyana, and states of samadhi. The authors propose a yogic theory of consciousness (YTC) that models both external modulations and internal mental states, suggesting attention, sleep, and mind wandering are unique modulatory states. YTC can model external states, meditation, samadhi, and disorders of consciousness. The article lists testable neuroscientific hypotheses and discusses benefits and limitations of this framework.

Study at a glance

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.