Parinama Vada — The Philosophy of Transformation
Patanjali's cosmological framework: the universe consists of Prakriti (primal nature) which undergoes constant transformation (parinama) across three qualities (gunas) — tamas, rajas, and sattva — while Purusha (consciousness) remains eternally still.
Drawing on Samkhya philosophy, Patanjali's system posits that all manifestation arises from Prakriti — primal matter-energy characterized by three qualities (gunas): Tamas (inertia, darkness, heaviness), Rajas (activity, passion, dynamism), and Sattva (clarity, purity, luminosity). Everything in the experienced universe — including the mind, body, emotions, thoughts, and subtle bodies — is made of these three gunas in varying proportions. The goal of yoga is to cultivate sattva until it becomes predominant, then to transcend even sattva to reach the pure consciousness (Purusha) that witnesses the entire play of the gunas without being touched by it. This cosmological framework makes yoga simultaneously a physical, psychological, and metaphysical practice: working on the body, emotions, and mind are all working on different proportions of the same gunas.
The seen has the qualities of brightness, activity, and inertia, is of the nature of the elements and the sense organs, and exists for the purpose of experience and liberation.
Quantum physicist David Bohm's concept of the implicate order — an undivided wholeness underlying the explicate order of manifest phenomena — provides a modern parallel to Patanjali's Prakriti: both describe a ground of being from which all manifest phenomena emerge through a process of transformation.
Yoga Sutras of Patanjali