Last night this book called Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra was at hand, and I picked it up absentmindedly and opened a page that described the time lag between perception and cognition. Specifically verse 9 of the Vibhuti Pada. I’ll skip the sanskrit verse and straight to Taimini’s translation:
Nirodha Parinama is that transformation of the mind in which it becomes progressively permeated by that condition of Nirodha which intervenes momentarily between an impression which is disappearing and the impression which is taking place.
Nirodha = restraint+suppression / Parinama = transformation+result
Now this kind of bounced me, because I’m fresh from reading about Dr. David Eagleman’s research on Time perception and I immediately recognised the connect that it had to the last part of the sutra.
… intervenes momentarily between an impression which is disappearing and the impression which is taking place.
See a video by Eagleman labs about how the brain dilates time.
Patanjali is discussing perception, and he’s plainly making the distinction between mediate and immediate perception as well as pointing out the serial order of the impressions. Now, I know that the rest of the book is about modifying the mind to learn how to integrate it’s falsely conceived dualism, and Patanjali in the very begining makes the distinction between the atheist and the theist by claiming that you could either use a deity or not to practise yoga. Just so we know that religion isn’t being pushed in the name of science here.
