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Tier 2 · Vedic system 4

Yoga

योगदर्शनम्

Take Sāṅkhya's metaphysics unchanged. Add two things it lacks: a method, and a God who does not create. What results is the only classical Indian school whose central text is a training manual — 195 aphorisms describing what happens to a mind that is progressively stilled, stage by stage, with the obstacles and the false summits marked.

Chapter 13 treated the eight limbs as a health regimen. This page treats the whole system as philosophy.

The name
From yuj, to yoke or join. But the goal is kaivalya, aloneness — so the yoking is of the mind, not a union with anything
Root text
Yoga-sūtra योगसूत्र of Patañjali, c. 350–450 CE — 195 aphorisms in four chapters
The four chapters
Samādhi-pāda (51) · Sādhana-pāda (55) · Vibhūti-pāda (55) · Kaivalya-pāda (34)
Inseparable commentary
The Yoga-bhāṣya attributed to Vyāsa, c. 5th–6th century. Many scholars now argue that sūtra and bhāṣya are a single composition, the Pātañjala-yogaśāstra
Later commentaries
Vācaspati Miśra's Tattva-vaiśāradī · Bhoja's Rāja-mārtaṇḍa (11th c.) · Vijñānabhikṣu's Yoga-vārttika (16th c.)
Metaphysics
Sāṅkhya's, entire: twenty-five principles, two irreducibles, satkāryavāda, the three strands
What it adds
A graded practice; a theory of mental activity; and Īśvara — hence the old labels seśvara sāṅkhya, Sāṅkhya with a Lord
Goal
kaivalya कैवल्य, reached through viveka-khyāti, unwavering discriminative discernment

1Three sūtras that set everything upयोगलक्षणम्

The second, third and fourth aphorisms state the method, the result, and what happens the rest of the time. Nothing in the remaining 191 is not an unpacking of these.

Yoga-sutra 1.2 to 1.4 Yoga is the stilling of mental activity; then the seer rests in its own nature; otherwise it takes the form of the activity. 1.2 · THE DEFINITION योगश्चित्तवृत्तिनिरोधः । yogaś citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ “Yoga is the stilling of the activities of the mind.” Not the emptying of the mind, and not its destruction — the restraint of its turnings. 1.3 · WHAT THEN HAPPENS तदा द्रष्टुः स्वरूपेऽवस्थानम् । tadā draṣṭuḥ svarūpe'vasthānam “Then the seer abides in its own nature.” 1.4 · AND OTHERWISE वृत्तिसारूप्यमितरत्र । vṛtti-sārūpyam itaratra “At other times, it takes the form of the activity.” Why 1.4 is the load-bearing one Sāṅkhya said the witness is never involved. So what is the problem? Sūtra 1.4 names it: the seer appears to take the shape of whatever the mind is doing. You are angry, and you take yourself to be angry. Nothing has actually happened to the witness; but there is no difference, from the inside, between being angry and appearing to oneself to be angry — and that is the whole of bondage. Still the activity and the appearance stops.
Note the economy: three sūtras give a definition, a goal state and a diagnosis, and each is a single compound. The commentary is not optional — “citta”, “vṛtti” and “nirodha” are all technical, and the rest of the first chapter defines them.

2The five kinds of mental activityपञ्च वृत्तयः

If yoga is the stilling of vṛttis, the list of vṛttis must be exhaustive — otherwise something could be left running. Patañjali gives five.

The five vrttis Valid cognition, error, conceptual construction, sleep and memory, each defined. 1 · pramāṇaप्रमाण valid cognition — perception, inference, reliable testimony Note what this means: knowing something correctly is itself a disturbance to be stilled. Truth is not the goal; quiet is. 2 · viparyayaविपर्यय error — a false cognition not resting on the form of its object The rope taken for a snake. The commentary identifies the five afflictions of §4 as species of this. 3 · vikalpaविकल्प conceptual construction — following on words, with no object at all “The rabbit's horn.” “Consciousness is the nature of the puruṣa” — the example Vyāsa gives, and it is his own school's sentence. 4 · nidrāनिद्रा sleep — a state resting on the cognition of absence Deep sleep is a positive mental state, not the absence of one. You know on waking that you slept well, so something was registering. 5 · smṛtiस्मृति memory — the retention of an experienced object, not letting it slip away
The list is unusual and the first entry is why. A system aiming at truth would keep valid cognition and remove the rest. Yoga removes all five, because the target is not a mind with correct contents but a mind with no contents — the condition under which the witness can be seen not to be the mind.
Each vṛtti is kliṣṭa or akliṣṭa

Every one of the five may be “afflicted” or “unafflicted” — that is, may or may not be entangled with the five afflictions of §4. Unafflicted vṛttis are the ones used to remove the afflicted ones: correct knowledge, disciplined memory, useful conceptual work. The practice is not against mental activity as such but against a particular grip it has, and the last of the unafflicted activities dissolves itself at the end.

3Practice and dispassionअभ्यासवैराग्ये

अभ्यासवैराग्याभ्यां तन्निरोधः ॥

Yoga-sūtra 1.12 — “Their restraint is by practice and dispassion.”

Abhyāsa अभ्यास — practice

Defined as the effort toward steadiness (1.13). Sūtra 1.14 gives the three conditions under which it takes firm hold, and they are the least mystical sentence in the text:

स तु दीर्घकालनैरन्तर्यसत्कारासेवितो दृढभूमिः ॥

dīrgha-kāla — over a long time · nairantarya — without interruption · satkāra — with earnest attention. Long, unbroken, and taken seriously. Miss any of the three and it does not become ground you can stand on.

Vairāgya वैराग्य — dispassion

The mastery of one who has ceased to thirst for objects, seen or heard of (1.15). Note the second clause: it is not enough to be free of what you have had; you must be free of what you have been told about.

And a higher grade. Sūtra 1.16 defines para-vairāgya as the cessation of thirst even for the guṇas — that is, for anything nature can offer at all, including the states this practice produces. Ordinary dispassion gives up objects; the higher gives up the practice's own rewards.

The pair is exactly balanced and the balance is the point. Practice alone builds an ambitious, striving mind. Dispassion alone produces indifference and no capacity. The text keeps them yoked, and every subsequent stage requires both.

4The five afflictionsपञ्च क्लेशाः

अविद्यास्मितारागद्वेषाभिनिवेशाः क्लेशाः ॥

Yoga-sūtra 2.3

The five afflictions, growing from ignorance Ignorance is the field for the other four: egoism, attraction, aversion and clinging to life. 1 · avidyā अविद्या — ignorance, and the field in which the other four grow Sūtra 2.5 defines it with a fourfold precision that is worth memorising: taking the impermanent for permanent · the impure for pure · what is suffering for pleasure · what is not the self for the self Not the absence of knowledge. A positive, structured misidentification — and the fourth clause is the one that matters. 2 · asmitāअस्मिता egoism Treating the power ofseeing and the instrumentof seeing as one thing. The technical form of “I am my mind”. 3 · rāgaराग attraction What follows on thememory of pleasure. Not desire in general — desire specifically as a residue of what 4 · dveṣaद्वेष aversion The same structure, builton remembered pain. Symmetrical with the third, and 5 · abhiniveśaअभिनिवेश clinging to life “Flowing on by its ownmomentum, establishedeven in the learned.” 2.9 — the only one the wise also have. was already enjoyed. no less a bond for being negative. Sūtra 2.4 says the afflictions exist in four conditions: dormant, attenuated, intercepted, fully active — which lets the text explain why an affliction can seem absent for years and return intact.
The fifth is the most interesting. Abhiniveśa — the will to go on living — is said to be self-sustaining and present even in the wise, which the commentary reads as evidence of past deaths: the fear could not have been learnt in this life by anyone who has not yet died.

5Why everything is sufferingदुःखमेव सर्वम्

परिणामतापसंस्कारदुःखैर्गुणवृत्तिविरोधाच्च दुःखमेव सर्वं विवेकिनः ॥

pariṇāma-tāpa-saṃskāra-duḥkhair guṇa-vṛtti-virodhāc ca duḥkham eva sarvaṃ vivekinaḥ

Yoga-sūtra 2.15

Four reasons why pleasure is suffering for the discerning Change, anxiety, residues, and the conflict of the three strands. pariṇāmaपरिणाम change Whatever is enjoyedis going to stopbeing enjoyed. The pleasure has an end built in. tāpaताप burning, anxiety Holding it is uneasy.Every enjoyment isshadowed by the fearof losing it. saṃskāraसंस्कार residue Enjoyment lays downa trace that producescraving, which producesaction, which produces more. guṇa-vṛtti-virodha the strands conflict Sattva, rajas and tamasare always contending,so no state of the mindis ever stable. The two words that keep it from being nihilism vivekinaḥ — “for the discerning”. The claim is not that pleasure is not pleasant; it is that once you see the structure, the pleasure no longer looks like the solution. And 2.16 gives the target precisely: heyaṃ duḥkham anāgatam — “the suffering yet to come is what is to be avoided”. Not present pain, which is already here and cannot be helped. The practice is preventive medicine.

6A God who creates nothingईश्वरः

Sāṅkhya argued that no God is needed. Yoga takes the same metaphysics and inserts one — but look at what it is.

Isvara in the Yoga-sutra A special purusa untouched by afflictions, the unsurpassed seed of omniscience, teacher of the ancients, denoted by Om — and not a creator. 1.24 · WHAT HE IS kleśa-karma-vipākāśayair aparāmṛṣṭaḥ puruṣa-viśeṣa īśvaraḥ “A special puruṣa, untouched by afflictions, actions, their fruits, and the deposits they leave.” 1.25–1.26 · WHAT HE HAS In him the seed of omniscience is unsurpassed. And being unbounded by time, he is the teacher even of the ancients — the first term of every lineage of instruction. 1.27–1.28 · HOW HE IS APPROACHED tasya vācakaḥ praṇavaḥ — “his designator is Oṃ.” Repetition of it, with reflection on its meaning, is the practice — and 1.29 gives the result: inward turning, and obstacles removed. AND WHAT HE IS NOT He does not create the world, does not sustain it, does not judge, does not allot the fruits of action, and did not make the souls or the matter. None of that is in the text. So what is he for? Two things, and only two. He is a model: a puruṣa that was never entangled, showing that non-entanglement is a real condition and not a theoretical limit. And he is an object of practice: sūtra 1.23 offers īśvara-praṇidhāna — devotion to the Lord — as one route among several to absorption, introduced with the word vā, “or”. It is an alternative method, not a doctrine you must hold.
This is the most minimal theism in Indian philosophy, and it is doing exactly the work Sāṅkhya's objections leave room for. Sāṅkhya's arguments in §12 of the previous page are all against a creator. None of them touches a puruṣa who never got involved.

7The eight limbsअष्टाङ्गम्

Chapter 13 gave the sequence. Here are the contents of the first two, which are where most of the actual instruction is, and which modern practice mostly skips.

The five restraints and the five observances Non-violence, truth, non-stealing, continence and non-grasping; purity, contentment, austerity, self-study and devotion. YAMA · यम · THE FIVE RESTRAINTS · 2.30 ahiṃsāअहिंसाnot harming satyaसत्यtruthfulness asteyaअस्तेयnot taking what is not given brahmacaryaब्रह्मचर्यcontinence aparigrahaअपरिग्रहnot accumulating Sūtra 2.31 calls these the mahā-vrata, the great vow — binding regardless of birth, place, time or circumstance. NIYAMA · नियम · THE FIVE OBSERVANCES · 2.32 śaucaशौचcleanliness, outer and inner santoṣaसन्तोषcontentment tapasतपस्austerity, endurance svādhyāyaस्वाध्यायstudy of texts, and of oneself īśvara-praṇidhānaईश्वरप्रणिधान devotion to the Lord — the same practice offered in 1.23 The last three recur at 2.1 as kriyā-yoga, the yoga of action, for beginners. Pratipakṣa-bhāvanā · प्रतिपक्षभावनम् · 2.33–2.34 — the technique “When troubled by thoughts contrary to these, cultivate the opposite.” And 2.34 tells you what to cultivate: reflect that the contrary thoughts — whether done, caused to be done, or approved; whether from greed, anger or delusion; whether mild, middling or intense — result in endless suffering and ignorance. A cognitive technique, stated as one: do not fight the thought, replace it, and replace it specifically with an accurate view of where it leads.
Ten commitments before a single posture. Sūtra 2.31's insistence that the restraints hold “regardless of birth, place, time and circumstance” is pointed: it explicitly refuses the exemptions that Dharmaśāstra grants — a soldier's licence to kill, a priest's to sacrifice.

8What each limb is said to yieldफलानि

Sūtras 2.35 to 2.45 attach a specific result to each restraint and observance. The list is worth reading whole, because it mixes the plainly psychological with the frankly extraordinary — and the text does not distinguish them.

Established in…SūtraThe stated result
ahiṃsā2.35In his presence, hostility is abandoned
satya2.36Actions come to rest on their fruits — what he says comes about
asteya2.37All jewels present themselves
brahmacarya2.38Vigour is gained
aparigraha2.39Full knowledge of the how and why of births
śauca2.40–41Distaste for one's own body and disinclination to contact others; and then purity of essence, cheerfulness, one-pointedness, mastery of the senses, and fitness for seeing the self
santoṣa2.42anuttamaḥ sukha-lābhaḥ — the gaining of unexcelled happiness
tapas2.43Perfection of body and senses, through the removal of impurity
svādhyāya2.44Communion with one's chosen deity
īśvara-praṇidhāna2.45Attainment of absorption
How to read this list

Two readings are defensible and a third is not. You may take the results literally, as the tradition largely did. Or you may read the extraordinary ones as descriptions of how things look from inside a transformed condition — the non-grasping person for whom jewels have lost their pull may reasonably say that all jewels are now available to him. What is not defensible is quietly keeping 2.42 and discarding 2.37 because one is comfortable and the other is not. The text gives them in the same register and the same grammatical form.

9Saṃyamaसंयमः

Limbs six, seven and eight are not three practices but one practice at three depths, and Patañjali gives the compound a name.

Dharana, dhyana and samadhi as one continuous act Binding attention to a place, an unbroken flow toward it, and the shining forth of the object alone. 6 · dhāraṇā · 3.1 deśa-bandhaś cittasya Binding the mind to one place. Attention keeps escaping and is repeatedly brought back. 7 · dhyāna · 3.2 pratyayaika-tānatā One unbroken flow of the same idea toward that place. No longer being brought back, because it no longer leaves. 8 · samādhi · 3.3 artha-mātra-nirbhāsaṃ svarūpa-śūnyam iva The object alone shines forth, as if the act of attending had emptied itself of its own form. 3.4 · trayam ekatra saṃyamaḥ — “the three together, on one object, is saṃyama” One continuous deepening, not three techniques. And the third chapter then does something unexpected: it treats saṃyama as an instrument. Direct it at this and you learn that; direct it at something else and you learn something else. Sūtra 3.6 adds the constraint — tasya bhūmiṣu viniyogaḥ, its application is by stages, and 3.5 says its mastery yields prajñā-āloka, the light of insight.
The Vibhūti-pāda is a catalogue of what saṃyama on various objects is said to reveal: on the three transformations, knowledge of past and future; on the sound of a word distinguished from its meaning, the speech of all creatures; on the residues, knowledge of former births; on the navel wheel, the arrangement of the body; on the sun, knowledge of the worlds.

10The stages of absorptionसमाधिभेदाः

The most technically precise part of the text, and the reason it is a philosophical document rather than a devotional one. Patañjali distinguishes the stages by what remains present at each.

The ladder of samadhi Four grades of cognitive absorption, then the seedless state, distinguished by what content remains. vitarkaवितर्क absorption on a gross object Two grades: savitarka, where the word, the object and the idea of it are still mixed together; and nirvitarka, where memory is purified and the object alone shines, without the name attaching to it. vicāraविचार absorption on a subtle object The tanmātras and beyond, up to the unmanifest root. Again in two grades, savicāra and nirvicāra, on the same distinction. 1.47: clarity in nirvicāra brings adhyātma-prasāda — the serenity of the inner being. 1.48: and there, ṛtambharā prajñā, insight bearing truth. ānandaआनन्द absorption in which only joy remains as content The bliss of a mind in which sattva is unopposed. Still a state of the mind, and still to be passed through. asmitāअस्मिता absorption in which only the bare sense of “I am” remains The last content. Note that this is also the second affliction of §4 — the subtlest stage of the path is a refined form of the disease. ALL FOUR ARE SAMPRAJÑĀTA — COGNITIVE, AND SABĪJA — WITH SEED, SINCE AN OBJECT REMAINS asamprajñāta · असम्प्रज्ञात · nirbīja · निर्बीज nothing remains as content 1.18: reached by the practice of the idea of cessation, and what is left is only the residues — saṃskāra-śeṣa. The seeds are still there. They are not yet burnt, which is why this state can be lost, and why §12 is a further step.
Read the ladder downwards and it is a progressive stripping: first the word goes, then the gross object, then the subtle one, then the joy, then the sense of being someone, then content altogether. What makes it philosophy rather than description is that each rung is defined by a stated residue, and each residue is one of the items in the metaphysics of the previous page.

11The powers, and the warningविभूतयः

The third chapter lists what saṃyama yields, and the list is long: knowledge of past and future, of former births, of others' minds; invisibility; strength; knowledge of the stars' arrangement; the ability to enter another body. Then, in the middle of the catalogue, sūtra 3.37:

ते समाधावुपसर्गा व्युत्थाने सिद्धयः ॥

te samādhāv upasargā vyutthāne siddhayaḥ

Yoga-sūtra 3.37 — “These are obstacles to absorption, though they are attainments in the outgoing state.”

Why the warning is philosophically serious

It is not modesty. It follows from §10: every power is a capacity of a mind, and every capacity of a mind belongs to prakṛti. To acquire one is to become more richly equipped, and being equipped is precisely the entanglement the practice exists to undo. A yogin who can read minds has a more impressive intellect and is no closer to kaivalya — arguably further, since he now has something to lose.

The point is made again at the end. Sūtra 3.51 says that on being invited by the celestials, one should feel neither attachment nor pride, since the undesirable consequence would recur. And 4.29 defines the final absorption as arising in one who, having discriminative insight, has no interest even in that.

12Kaivalyaकैवल्यम्

The last two steps to kaivalya The cloud of dharma samadhi burns the residues, and the strands return to their source having served their purpose. dharma-megha-samādhi · 4.29 “the cloud of dharma” Reached by one who has no interest even in the highest insight. 4.30: from it, the afflictions and actions cease. The image is a raincloud that has stopped withholding. kaivalya · 4.34 puruṣārtha-śūnyānāṃ guṇānāṃ pratiprasavaḥ kaivalyam “Kaivalya is the return of the strands to their source, now empty of purpose for the witness — or, the power of consciousness abiding in its own nature.” Two descriptions of one event, given in one sūtra From prakṛti's side: the strands have finished the job of §9 on the Sāṅkhya page, and go home. From puruṣa's side: consciousness rests in itself. Nothing has been added, attained or joined. The final word of the text is svarūpa-pratiṣṭhā vā citi-śaktir iti — “or, the power of consciousness established in its own nature” — which is the same phrase as sūtra 1.3. The text ends exactly where it began, having explained what the third aphorism meant.

13Yoga against Sāṅkhyaभेदाः

SāṅkhyaYoga
PrinciplesTwenty-fiveTwenty-five — plus Īśvara, a twenty-sixth that is not a new kind of thing
GodArgued againstA special puruṣa; not a creator; an optional object of practice
Means of releaseDiscriminative knowledge, reached by reasoning and instructionThe same knowledge, reached by a graded discipline
MindAntaḥkaraṇa: intellect, ego and mind as threeCitta: usually treated as one thing with three functions
Attitude to powersBarely discussedCatalogued in detail — and then warned against
Attitude to the bodyAlmost nonePosture, breath and purification are limbs of the path
What it is forUnderstanding what is the caseBringing about a change in a particular mind

The last row is the real difference. Sāṅkhya is a description; Yoga is an intervention. That is why Yoga needs Īśvara — not as a metaphysical necessity but because a practice needs an object and a model, and Sāṅkhya's austere scheme provides neither.

14The Buddhist questionबौद्धसंवादः

The overlap with Buddhist meditation literature is close enough that it has to be addressed directly.

Parallels between the Yoga-sutra and Buddhist meditation Shared terms and structures, and the point at which the two part company. WHAT IS SHARED · The four immeasurables. Sūtra 1.33 prescribes friendliness, compassion, gladness and equanimity toward the happy, the suffering, the virtuous and the non-virtuous. These are the Buddhist brahmavihāras, in the same order, with the same objects. · Vitarka and vicāra as names for stages of absorption — the same two terms that structure the Buddhist jhānas. · A momentariness-flavoured analysis of change in the fourth chapter, and technical use of dharma, saṃskāra, vāsanā and nirodha. WHERE THEY PART The whole of it is the witness. Yoga stills the mind in order that something else — permanent, unchanging, never involved — may stand out. Buddhism stills the mind and finds no such thing, and holds that the expectation of finding one is the last and hardest form of the disease. How to state the historical question Who borrowed from whom is not settled and probably cannot be. The Yoga-sūtra is later than the early Buddhist meditation literature and contemporary with the Yogācāra, which it argues against in chapter four. The safest description: a shared contemplative culture, with a shared technical vocabulary, put to incompatible metaphysical use.
The fourth chapter contains an explicit refutation of the Yogācāra position that objects are not distinct from cognitions — so the text knows its Buddhist neighbours, cites their view accurately, and rejects it. That is better evidence of engagement than of dependence.

15Haṭha yoga is a different thingहठयोगः

The postures most people mean by “yoga” come from a later and largely separate tradition, and the Yoga-sūtra has almost nothing to say about them.

Patanjala yoga compared with Hatha yoga The classical text's minimal treatment of posture against the elaborate body technology of the Hatha corpus. Pātañjala yoga · c. 4th–5th c. On posture, the text says this and stops: स्थिरसुखमासनम् । 2.46 “Posture is steady and comfortable.” No list of postures. No names. No sequence. Then 2.47: it is perfected by relaxing effort and dwelling on the infinite. And 2.48: then the pairs of opposites cease to trouble. That is the whole treatment. Haṭha yoga · c. 11th–17th c. A distinct tradition, from the Nāth lineage of Gorakṣanātha. Its texts are the Haṭha-yoga-pradīpikā of Svātmārāma, the Gheraṇḍa-saṃhitā, the Śiva-saṃhitā. Content: named postures, cleansing procedures, breath retentions, locks and seals, and a subtle physiology of channels, wheels and the coiled energy — none of which appears in the Yoga-sūtra at all. Its own goal is stated as preparation for rāja-yoga. Neither tradition is diminished by the distinction. The Haṭha corpus is a serious body of practical knowledge with its own literature and lineages; the Yoga-sūtra is a philosophical treatise on the mind. Conflating them makes both harder to read — and it makes the Yoga-sūtra look like a book that forgot to include its own subject.
The modern postural forms taught worldwide descend mainly from twentieth-century developments in Mysore and elsewhere, drawing on the Haṭha corpus, on Indian physical culture and on European gymnastics. That history is well documented and worth knowing; it is not the history of this text.

16Self-checkपरीक्षा

Check your reading

1 · Why is valid cognition listed among the mental activities to be stilled?

The first of the five vṛttis. A system aiming at truth would keep it; Yoga is aiming at something else.

2 · What are the three conditions under which practice takes firm hold?

Sūtra 1.14: dīrgha-kāla · nairantarya · satkāra. Miss any of the three and it does not become ground you can stand on.

3 · What is Yoga's Īśvara, precisely?

Which is why he survives Sāṅkhya's objections: all of those are directed at a creator, and none of them touches a puruṣa who never got involved.

4 · Why does the text warn against the powers it has just catalogued?

Sūtra 3.37. The warning follows from the metaphysics, not from modesty.

5 · How should the relation between the Yoga-sūtra and modern postural yoga be described?

“Posture is steady and comfortable” is the whole of the definition. The Haṭha corpus is a genuine and separate body of knowledge, not a commentary on this one.

Questions worth arguing about

Does the eighth limb belong on a ladder with the first?

The eight are presented as a sequence, but they are not obviously the same kind of thing: the first two are ethical commitments, the next three are trainings, and the last three are stages of a single state that arrives rather than being done. Vyāsa treats the first five as “external” and the last three as “internal” limbs, which concedes the point. Whether a single numbered list obscures more than it organises is a fair question, and the tradition itself never treated the numbering as sacrosanct.

Is a state with no content a state of anything?

The Buddhist presses exactly here. If in nirbīja samādhi nothing whatever is present, in what sense is it a condition of a subject rather than simply a gap? Yoga's answer is that the witness is present — but the witness is by definition not an object, so nothing distinguishes its presence from its absence from the inside. The text's own last word is a phrase repeated from its beginning, which may be a sign of a closed circle or of a genuine return.

Can the practice be separated from the metaphysics?

Modern practice mostly assumes it can, and there is a reasonable case: the techniques are described precisely enough to follow, and their proximate effects do not depend on believing in puruṣa. But the text's criterion for progress is metaphysical throughout — each stage of §10 is defined by which tattva remains as content, and the warning of §11 makes sense only if prakṛti is what you are trying to get free of. Strip that out and you still have a discipline; you no longer have a way of telling whether it is working.

17Glossaryशब्दकोशः

IASTDevanāgarīSense
abhyāsa / vairāgyaअभ्यास / वैराग्यSustained practice; dispassion. The two means of restraint.
asamprajñātaअसम्प्रज्ञातAbsorption with no object remaining; also nirbīja, seedless.
cittaचित्तThe mind, taken as one thing with several functions.
dharma-meghaधर्ममेघ“Cloud of dharma”: the final absorption, from which the afflictions cease.
kleśaक्लेशAn affliction; there are five, rooted in ignorance.
nirodhaनिरोधRestraint or stilling — of the mind's activities, not of the mind.
pratipakṣa-bhāvanāप्रतिपक्षभावनाCultivating the opposite of an intrusive thought.
ṛtambharā prajñāऋतम्भरा प्रज्ञा“Insight bearing truth”, arising in clarified subtle absorption.
samāpattiसमापत्तिCoalescence: the mind taking the form of its object in absorption.
saṃyamaसंयमConcentration, meditation and absorption on one object, taken together.
siddhi / vibhūtiसिद्धि / विभूतिAn attainment or power; and an obstacle to absorption.
vṛttiवृत्तिA turning or activity of the mind; there are five kinds.
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