The Ishvara to whom the fifth niyama surrenders is one of the stranger gods in Indian thought. Patanjali defines him in the first book of the Yoga Sutras: a special purusha, a self untouched by affliction, action, its fruits or their residue; in him the seed of omniscience is unsurpassed; he is the teacher even of the most ancient teachers, being unlimited by time; his designator is the pranava, the syllable Om. What the definition omits is as pointed as what it contains. This Lord does not create the world; Patanjali's system, closely allied to Samkhya, needs no creator, since nature unfolds by its own dynamics. He does not judge, punish, redeem or intervene. He is, so to speak, the one self that was never entangled, held up before selves that are: proof of concept for liberation, and a teacher whose instruction is his existence.
Scholars have long debated whether this austere figure is a concession, a devotional element grafted onto an atheistic psychology to suit the times, or the system's secret center, and both positions have textual footholds; the sutras give Ishvara exactly enough attention to sustain the argument and not enough to settle it. What is not disputed is the practice: repetition of Om with attention to its meaning, and the dedication of one's practice to this untangled witness. The theology may be minimal, but the psychological act, orienting effort toward a perfection one did not invent, is load-bearing, and Patanjali promises it removes obstacles and turns consciousness inward.