Once a man walked into the backyard of his house during twilight. All of a sudden, in a dark corner, he saw a coiled snake. Frightened, he yelled: “Snake! Snake!” His voice roused a number of people who came running with sticks. They advanced slowly toward the corner, and one bold fellow with a particularly long, pointed stick gave the snake a hard blow. Nothing happened. And then an old man arrived with a lantern. He brought the lantern near the corner where the snake was. The light revealed nothing but a coiled rope. The old man laughed: “Look at all of you blind people groping in darkness. There’s nothing but a rope there, and you took it for a snake.” In order to understand the rope as a rope, a light was necessary. We, too, need a light—the light of wisdom.

From Sri Swami Satchidananda, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Commentary to Book II, Sutra 5, Buckingham, Virginia: Integral Yoga Publications, 2007 (first published in 1978), p. 88.