Patanjali

One has to give utmost importance to and differentiate emotions in the mind from the state of the mind. If an emotion is fleeting, state is longer in time per se. For example, if fear is an emotion, phobia is a state.

To elaborate, a thought which passes through one’s mind seldom is an emotion, while a thought which nests itself in one’s mind for a longer duration is a state.

In the previous stage, happiness which was an emotion, transforms into a state here. The happiness generated out of the performance is allowed to unify with the existence of an Individual.

Sense of ‘I’ness or sense of connecting with one’s own Identity is Ego, which is an imperative human experience.

Having ‘Ego’ (Developing consciousness of one’s own identity) should not be confused with being ‘Egotistic’ (Characteristic of those having an inflated idea of their own importance).

Consider an example for sense of ‘I’ness - If an individual consumes his afternoon meal, he/she would not attribute the experience of consumption to his/her colleague. In a similar way, if an individual teaches his/her students for about an hour, he/she wouldn’t say, that his/her colleague taught his/her students.


Allowing the happiness generated of a performance become an indivisible part of one’s personality is the highest form of existence. Here the innate nature, skill and other abilities of a man meets with the external performance. The accomplishment of any consummate performer is a state, where the core of the inner consciousness meets the larger collective consciousness.

All-inclusiveness of this theory:

The implication of this theory can occur at multiple levels. One another example will be cited here to demonstrate the exhaustiveness of the theory in the context of parent-child relationship.

Generally, an adolescent’s lifestyle, thoughts and practices are at the level of Vitarka, whereas parents who are more settled in comparison to their children are at level of Vichara or sometimes much beyond that. It is in such circumstances, when a parent implements this theory and sees the struggle of an adolescent, the solutions to parenting becomes simpler. Any clash in such a relationship would be the result of children and adolescents operating from two different operational planes of a performance called Vitarka and Vichara Thus the above model when implemented at every stage of any given performance the individual’s personal effectiveness is optimized tenfold. Thereby the enhanced effectiveness translates into the construction of a stable and secure society.

The performance theories of the West:

• Setting predominantly quantitative goals
• Evaluating performance and identifying deficiencies
• Evaluating whether the deficiencies are a result of
• Skill
• Motivation
• If former, focus on training. If trainable, train the individual, or else let go. If latter, try monetary and non-monetary steps of motivation.

The above mentioned contemporary theories seldom generate in one a sense of ownership towards the performance. Further, the Western theories of performance generally influence to think, organize, and execute any activity by steps and decisions made by a centralized force pertaining to accomplish set goals in a particular order. Here, the path to reach the set goal is usually very unidirectional. There is not much scope to rethink, reorganize or re-execute if the wished outcome is not gained. For example, theory of self-efficacy by Albert Bandura explains an individual’s performance as a representation of the perception of external social factors in determining influential outcome. The expectancy theory by Victor Vroom emphasizes the need of any organization to relate reward as end result to catalyse better performance.

Last but not the least Western theories have confined themselves to workplaces, which makes them incomplete and incompetent considering the fact, life is much larger and broader than the workplaces