These are perhaps the most important words of the entire Yoga Sutra. Here the Master tells us another meaning of yoga, which is learning to stop the Great Mistake.

And what is the Great Mistake? Our mind turns; meaning it turns things around the wrong way. A mother takes her small child to a movie. On the screen, a man is hurting a puppy.

The child cries out, and reaches to stop the man. Perhaps the child can even get up to the screen, and try to hit the man.

But this doesn't stop the man; it has nothing to do with the man. And the child hurts her own hand in the process.

Our mind makes this same kind of mistake, every day, every moment of every day. We need to stop the mistake, and that is yoga. Pain is real—yes—and it really hurts people. But we can only stop it if we can stop misunderstanding where it comes from. And this is what the Yoga Sutra teaches us to do.