Now one of the means of attaining Yoga is Īśvarapraṇidhāna, or worship of God. This word, according to the commentators, is used in two senses in the first and the second books of the Pātañjala Yoga aphorisms. In the first book it means love or devotion to God as the one centre of meditation, in the second it is used to mean the abnegation of all desires of the fruits of action to Īśvara, and thus Īśvarapraṇidhāna in this sense is included under kriyāyoga. This dedication of all fruits of action to Īśvara, purifies the mind and makes it fit for Yoga and is distinguished from the Īśvarapraṇidhāna of the first book as the bhāvanā of praṇava and Īśvara in this that it is connected with actions and the abnegation of their fruits, whereas the latter consists only in keeping the mind in a worshipful state towards Īśvara and his word or name praṇava. By devotion (bhakti) Īśvara is drawn towards the devotee through his nirmāṇa citta of pure sattva and by his grace he removes all obstructions of illness, etc., described in I. 30, 31, and at once prepares his mind for the highest realisation of his own absolute independence. So for a person who can love and adore Īśvara, this is the easiest course of attaining samādhi. We can make our minds pure most easily by abandoning all our actions to Īśvara and attaining salvation by firm and steady devotion to Him. This is the sphere of bhaktiyoga by which the tedious complexity of the Yoga process may be avoided and salvation speedily acquired by the supreme grace of Īśvara. This means is not, however, distinct from the general means of Yoga, viz. abhyāsa and vairāgya, which applies to all stages. For here also abhyāsa applies to the devotion of Īśvara as one supreme truth and vairāgya is necessarily associated with all true devotion and adoration of Īśvara. This conception of Īśvara differs from the conception of Īśvara in the Rāmānuja system in this that there prakṛti and purusha, acit and cit, form the body of Īśvara, whereas here Īśvara is considered as being only a special purusha with the aforesaid powers. In this system Īśvara is not the superintendent of prakṛti in the sense of the latter’s remaining in him in an undifferentiated way, but is regarded as the superintendent of dharma and adharma, and his agency is active only in the removal of obstacles, thereby helping the evolutionary process of prakṛti. Thus Īśvara is distinguished from the Īśvara of Saṅkara Vedānta in this that there true existence is ascribed only to Īśvara, whereas all other forms and modes of Being are only regarded as illusory.