The Yoga Sutra has four chapters: four cornerstones upon which it stands, like a table on four legs.

The first chapter describes five crucial steps that we all pass through during our spiritual journey. This journey always begins from pain: we see death, we see people suffer, we dream of saving them. And the journey ends when we change, finally, into a sacred being who actually has the power to save them.

In between its beginning and its end, the road we travel has five parts: five paths, each one leading into the next, each one marked by its own special milestones. Stepping up to each new path from the one before it can only be done in one way. We must be in deep meditation; we must learn to meditate.

Thus it is that the first chapter, the chapter on the five paths, is called the Chapter on Meditation.