# Yoga and the mind

*The oldest engineering manual for awareness, read by someone who builds minds for a living.*

![Stillness](/figures/stillness.svg)![Stillness](/figures/stillness-dark.svg)

Topic · Stillness

The oldest engineering manual for awareness, read by someone who builds minds for a living.

4 pieces

-   **Essay** Oct 17, 2026 [Every mind has a material cause](/writing/every-mind-has-a-material-cause)
    
    Samkhya says the effect pre-exists in the cause, the substrate is inert, and discernment comes before the self. Read as a design note for AGI, it says most of our alignment vocabulary is pointed at the potter and the clay decides more.
    
    [AI and agents](/topics/agents) [Science and technology](/topics/science)
    
-   **Vedānta** Feb 22, 2026 [The seer who saw both](/darsana/vedanta)
    
    The end of the Veda and, its teachers insist, the end of thought. One set of texts read four ways: the world as appearance, as God's body, as God's dependent, as God himself.
    
    [Philosophy](/topics/philosophy) [Beauty](/topics/beauty)
    
-   **Yoga** Oct 8, 2023 [A road out of the clay](/darsana/yoga)
    
    Sāṃkhya explained how consciousness gets caught in matter, and admitted it had no way out. Patañjali's Yoga is that way: a discipline rather than a theory, and the word does not mean what the studios think it means.
    
    [Philosophy](/topics/philosophy) [The human experience](/topics/human)
    
-   **Sāṃkhya** Mar 12, 2023 [The clay before the pot](/darsana/samkhya)
    
    The oldest of the six and the one most often called scientific. Its first move is the question every creation story skips: a maker can shape a pot, but where did the clay come from?
    
    [Philosophy](/topics/philosophy) [Science and technology](/topics/science)
    

Other topics

-    [![Mandelbrot](/figures/mandelbrot.svg)![Mandelbrot](/figures/mandelbrot-dark.svg) Mathematics](/topics/mathematics)
-    [![Descent](/figures/descent.svg)![Descent](/figures/descent-dark.svg) Optimization](/topics/optimization)
-    [![Phyllotaxis](/figures/phyllotaxis.svg)![Phyllotaxis](/figures/phyllotaxis-dark.svg) Beauty](/topics/beauty)
-    [![Society](/figures/society.svg)![Society](/figures/society-dark.svg) AI and agents](/topics/agents)
-    [![A tree](/figures/tree.svg)![A tree](/figures/tree-dark.svg) Philosophy](/topics/philosophy)
-    [![Interference](/figures/interference.svg)![Interference](/figures/interference-dark.svg) Science and technology](/topics/science)
-    [![Knight's tour](/figures/tour.svg)![Knight's tour](/figures/tour-dark.svg) Chitrakāvya](/topics/chitrakavya)
-    [![A walk](/figures/walk.svg)![A walk](/figures/walk-dark.svg) The human experience](/topics/human)

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https://emergence.live/topics/mind