What is Chitta?
Chitta is a Sanskrit word meaning “consciousness,” derived from the root word cit, meaning “to perceive.” It is all that is perceived and all that can be perceived—the space that holds all perceivable things. Unlike the English word “mind,” chitta encompasses far more: it is the “mind-stuff,” the storehouse of impressions and past memories, and one of the four components of antahkarana (the fourfold mind), serving as the ground floor from which arise the other three components: manas (perceiving mind), buddhi (discriminating intellect), and ahamkara (ego).
Chitta is one of the four aspects of consciousness that allows for subjectivity—one’s emotional reaction, affected by what it sees and its own nature. Chitta is the pool of unconscious mind-stuff into which all impressions gathered by the senses are thrown, from the bottom of which they rise to create a constant stream of random thoughts and associations. Everything is stored within chitta: all your habits, desires, attractions, aversions, memories, and identities.
In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, chitta is central to the definition of yoga itself. The very second aphorism defines yoga as the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind—Yogas Chitta Vritti Nirodha. The fluctuations (vrittis) are the mental modifications that constantly disturb the field of consciousness, preventing direct perception of reality.
Origins & Lineage
The concept of chitta is systematically developed in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, a compilation of 195 or 196 Sanskrit sutras (aphorisms) compiled in India in the early centuries CE by the sage Patanjali, who collected and organized knowledge about yoga from Samkhya, Buddhism, and older Yoga traditions. Philipp A. Maas assessed Patanjali’s Pātañjalayogaśāstra’s date to be about 400 CE, based on synchronisms with the Yogācāra Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu (4th–5th centuries CE). This dating was proposed as early as 1914 by Woods and has been accepted widely by academic scholars.
Patanjali did not invent yoga or the concept of chitta. When Patanjali came, yoga had evolved into over 1800 schools; over 1800 varieties of yoga were practiced in India at that time. His genius was systematization: distilling a vast oral tradition into a coherent framework. The term chitta appears throughout Vedantic, Samkhya, and Buddhist literature prior to Patanjali, but he provided the most precise technical definition for yogic practice.
The classical commentator Vyasa (possibly Patanjali himself, according to recent scholarship) outlined five states (chitta bhumi) of consciousness. According to Vyasa, there are five states of chitta: Kshipta (Distracted), Mudha (Dull), Vikshipta (Partially Concentrated), Ekagra (One-Pointed), Niruddha (Controlled). These five levels or grounds of consciousness describe where your mind stands at any given moment, outlined by Vyasa in his Bhashya on the Yoga Sutras, serving as both a diagnostic tool and a roadmap for spiritual progress.
How It’s Understood in Practice
Chitta is not practiced—it is observed, purified, and ultimately stilled through yoga. The important functions of chitta include storing experiences and impressions, memory, attention, enquiry, investigation, concentration, meditation, reflection, contemplation, maintaining awareness, removal of the veil of ignorance, and causing vritti in order to notice the world and its experiences.
Patanjali says that yoga “neutralizes” or calms chitta, rather than destroying it. Yoga results in the experience of the vortices of feeling—whirlpools of desire and attachment—as a calm ocean of feeling. This stills the mind and allows one to perceive God. Practitioners work with chitta through the eight limbs of Ashtanga yoga: ethical observances (yama, niyama), physical posture (asana), breath regulation (pranayama), sense withdrawal (pratyahara), concentration (dharana), meditation (dhyana), and absorption (samadhi).
The Sanskrit term “chitta” encompasses far more than the English word “mind.” In Patanjali’s framework, chitta includes the intellect (buddhi), the ego-sense (ahamkara), and the thinking mind (manas)—the entire field of consciousness in which thoughts, emotions, memories, and perceptions arise. The practitioner develops witness consciousness, learning to observe chitta’s fluctuations without identification.
Chitta Today
Modern yoga practitioners encounter chitta primarily through meditation, self-inquiry, and philosophical study. Most contemporary yoga classes emphasize asana (posture), but serious students explore chitta through:
- Teacher training programs that include Yoga Sutra study, particularly Book I (Samadhi Pada), where Patanjali defines yoga in relation to chitta.
- Meditation retreats in traditions like Vipassana, where practitioners observe mental formations arising and passing.
- Advaita Vedanta and non-dual teachings, where chitta is examined in relation to pure awareness (atman).
- Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and secular meditation, which apply chitta theory without Sanskrit terminology.
The mindfulness movement, cognitive behavioral therapy, and various secular meditation programs all echo principles that Patanjali articulated centuries ago. The concept that we are not our thoughts, central to many modern therapeutic approaches, is precisely the distinction between purusha and chitta that the Yoga Sutras teach.
Common Misconceptions
Chitta is not just “the mind.” Western psychology’s concept of mind is far narrower. Patanjali is not talking about what modern psychology calls mind, but about something far more comprehensive—the totality of all mental functioning. Chitta is the field in which the rest of the mind functions.
Stilling chitta does not mean stopping all thought. According to Swami Kriyananda, “feeling” is a more precise translation than “mind-stuff” or “the lower mind,” because feeling can go either outward to ego consciousness, which creates lower aspects of the mind, or inward and upward to higher consciousness qualities like self-control, devotion, and calmness. The goal is not mental blankness but conscious direction of awareness.
Chitta is not inherently negative. It becomes problematic only when dominated by the five kleshas (afflictions): ignorance (avidya), egoism (asmita), attachment (raga), aversion (dvesha), and fear of death (abhinivesha). A purified chitta is an instrument of clear perception.
Controlling chitta is not suppression. It is not by restraining the mind that it will move and become involved in a particular direction of choice. It is the other way round: so strongly and intensely the mind has moved toward one area and has become absorbed in one area that there is no “infiltration.” Therefore, nirodha, meaning “restraint,” is just an effect of nirodha meaning “complete absorption.”
How to Begin
Read a translation of the Yoga Sutras. Edwin Bryant’s The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (2009), Swami Satchidananda’s The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (1978), or B.K.S. Iyengar’s Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (1993) offer accessible commentary. Focus on Book I, sutras 1–12.
Practice dharana (concentration). When we do the japa (chanting) of a mantra, then chitta does the remembrance of mantra. Whenever we say to someone, “concentrate your mind,” we mean “concentration of chitta.” Choose a single object—a candle flame, the breath, or a mantra—and return attention to it repeatedly.
Observe the five vrittis. The five vrittis (mental modifications) described in Yoga Sutra 1.6—right knowledge, misapprehension, imagination, sleep, and memory—are the specific fluctuations that chitta undergoes. Notice which type of mental activity is arising moment to moment.
Seek a qualified teacher. Chitta work is subtle. Find a teacher versed in classical yoga philosophy—not just asana—through lineages like Krishnamacharya’s descendants (Iyengar, Desikachar, Pattabhi Jois), Satyananda Yoga, or traditional Vedanta centers.
Cultivate svadhyaya (self-study). For a day or a week choose to be aware of chitta in everything you do. Observe how chitta relates to thoughts, actions, and speech. Journal what you notice about your mental patterns and emotional reactions.