Classical Yoga avows a strict dualism between Spirit (purusha) and cosmos (prakriti), which is reminiscent of Gnosticism, the esoteric movement that rivaled Christianity and flourished in the Mediterranean around the same time that Patanjali composed his aphorisms. On the strength of this uncompromising dualism, King Bhoja of the eleventh century C.E., who wrote a commentary on the Yoga-Sûtra, was able to propose that yoga really means viyoga, or “separation”: The basic technique of Classical Yoga, argued King Bhoja, is the yogin s “discernment” (viveka) between the transcendental Self and the “nonself’ (anâtman), which is the entire psychophysical personality, belonging to the realm of matter.
Having understood this all-important distinction between Spirit and mind, the yogin next attempts to withdraw, step by step, from that which he has recognized as not constituting his essential nature, namely from the body-mind in its entirety. This gradual separation from the phenomenal reality is completed when the yogin has recovered his true Identity, the transcendental Witness-Consciousness.
Interestingly, this procedure is adopted even in the nondualist schools of Yoga and Vedânta, where it is known as “annulment” (apavâda). It is the method of neti-neti (“not thus, not thus”), as invented by the sages whose innovative teachings are recorded in the ancient Upanishads. This method consists in a progressive withdrawal of attention from the various aspects of psychophysical existence, thereby leading to a gradual dismantling of the false sense of identity with a particular body-mind-ego. This approach is illustrated strikingly in the Nirvâna-Shatka, a well-known didactic poem ascribed to Shankara, who lived in the eighth century C.E. and is widely recognized as the greatest authority on nondualist Vedânta:
Om. I am not reason, intuition (buddhi), egoity (ahamkâra), or memory. Neither am I hearing, tasting, smelling, or sight; neither ether nor earth; fire or air. I am Shiva, in the form of Consciousness-Bliss. I am Shiva, (vs. 1)
This describes the via negativa of Hindu spiritual-ity. At the same time it affords a good example for the alternative, and often complementary, method recommended by the authorities of Vedânta: Rather than “dismembering” himself or herself, the yogin or yoginî presumes fundamental identity with the transcendental Being-Consciousness. Thus, he or she affirms “I am the Absolute” (aham brahma asmi, written aham brahmâsmi) or, as in the above-quoted text, “I am Shiva” (shivo’ ham from shivah aham). Shiva is here not a personal deity but the Absolute itself. This affirmative procedure is extolled in the Tejo-Bindu-Upani- shad (3.1-43), in which God Shiva himself at some length instructs the sage Kumâra in the highest spiritual realization. Here is an excerpt of Shiva’s ecstatic confession-instruction:
I am the supreme Absolute. I am supreme Bliss. I am of the form of unique Knowledge. I am unique and transcendental. (3.1)
I am of the form of unique tranquillity. I am made of unique Awareness (cit). I am of the form of unique eternity. I am everlasting. (3.2)
I am of the form of unique Being (sattva). Having relinquished the I, I am. I am of the essence of That which is devoid of all. I am made of the space of Awareness. (3.3)
I am of the form of the unique “Fourth” (turya).6 I am the unique [Reality] transcending the Fourth. I am ever of the form of Consciousness (caitanya). (3.4)
We may assume that Shankara composed the above-cited Nirvâna-Shatka in the ecstatic or enlightened disposition. He was not in an “altered” state of consciousness, nor was he simply making a pious declaration. He was also not merely submerged in the condition of unqualified ecstasy (nirvikalpa-samâdhi), for in that condition no body-awareness and therefore no speech is possible. Rather, he spoke as that singular Being-Consciousness. His enlightenment was not a momentary flash but a permanent plateau realization. He spoke as an enlightened or liberated adept, a self- transcender of the highest order.
Liberation (mukti, moksha) is the continuous ecstatic enjoyment of the transcendental Self. It is the raison d’être of all authentic Yoga. The technology of Yoga fulfills itself in its own transcendence. For liberation is not a technique but a way of being in the world without being of it. After climbing to the topmost rung on the ladder of Yoga, accomplished yogins kick off the ladder and abandon themselves to the infinite play of Reality.
II. WHAT’S IN A NAME? —THE TERM YOGA
Our world, the sages of ancient India tell us, is but a wonderfully bewitching collage of “name” (nâma) and “form” (rûpa). In this they anticipated contemporary philosophy. Reality is a continuum that we ourselves divide up into a multitude of discrete phenomena, and we do so by means of language. Our naming of things in a way creates them. Our words reify, or “thingi- fy,” reality. For the most part, this is of practical usefulness when we want to find our way about in our rather complex universe. However, it can also be a handicap, because our words may set up barriers that block understanding and stifle love. Nevertheless, so long as we remember that words are not identical with the reality they are meant to denote, they can be useful.
Thus, it seems appropriate enough to start this section by inquiring into the meaning of the word yoga. In its technical sense, yoga refers to that enormous body of spiritual values, attitudes, precepts, and techniques that have been developed in India over at least five millennia and that may be regarded as the very foundation of the ancient Indian civilization. Yoga is thus the generic name for the various Indian paths of ecstatic self-transcendence, or the methodical transmutation of consciousness to the point of liberation from the spell of the ego- personality. It is the psychospiritual technology specific to the great civilization of India.
By way of extension, the word yoga has also been applied to those traditions that have been directly or indirectly inspired by the Indian sources, such as Tibetan Yoga (=Vajrayâna Buddhism), Japanese Yoga (=Zen), and Chinese Yoga (=Ch’an). It is, however, somewhat misleading to speak of Jewish Yoga, Christian Yoga, or Egyptian Yoga unless the word yoga is employed as a straightforward substitute for “mysticism” or “spirituality.” Both Jewish and Christian mysticism have sprung up largely independent of the Indian spiritual adventure, and only in this century has there been some attempt to utilize yogic ideas and practices within the Judeo-Christian tradition.7 While there are intriguing parallels between Vedic spirituality and Egyptian religious beliefs, practices, and symbols, Egypt’s spirituality bears the unique stamp of the genius of the Nilotic peoples.
In a more restricted sense, the term yoga stands for the system of Classical Yoga, as propounded by Patanjali in the early post-Christian era. It is counted among the six great traditions or “viewpoints” (darshana) of Hinduism. The other five orthodox traditions are Nyâya,Vaisheshika, Sâmkhya, Mîmâmsâ, and Vedânta. The relationship of the Yoga tradition to these systems is treated in Chapter 3.
It should also be noted that, at times, the term yoga is used in the Sanskrit scriptures to denote the actual goal of Yoga. Thus, in the Maitrâyanîya-Upanishad (6.28), a pre-Christian scripture, the word refers to the realization of the transcendental Self. In the Tattva-Vaishâradî (3.9) and in the Amrita-Nâda-Bindu-Upanishad (23), the word yoga is employed to signify the temporary state of ecstasy (samâdhi). In some rare contexts, as in the Mahâbhârata (12.293.30), the word is also used to refer to the adherent of the Yoga tradition. This term, as well as the cognate yauga, can also refer to the follower of the Nyâya and Vaisheshika traditions.
The term yoga is frequently used in the Sanskrit literature. It is already employed in many ways in the ancient Rig-Veda, which is to the pious Hindu what the Old Testament is to the Christian. The Rig-Veda is a collection of archaic hymns, some of which were probably composed in the third to fourth millennium B.C.E. The word yoga is etymologically derived from the verbal root yuj, meaning “to bind together” or “to yoke,” and can have many connotations, such as “union,” “conjunction of stars,” “grammatical rule,” “endeavor,” “occupation,” “team,” “equipment,” “means,” “trick,” “magic,” “aggregate,” “sum,” and s
o on. It is related to English yoke, French joug, German Joch, Greek zugos, Latin iugum, Russion igo, Spanish yugo, and Swedish ok.
As mentioned before, in the Yoga-Bhâshya (1.1), the oldest extant commentary on the Yoga-Sûtra, Vyâsa proffers the equation “Yoga is ecstasy.” He thus indicates precisely what kind of “yoking” is implied, namely the harnessing of attention, or consciousness, to the point of reaching the ecstatic condition (samâdhi) in which the mechanics of the mind are at least temporarily transcended.
In the ninth century C.E., Vâcaspati Mishra composed a scholarly subcommentary on Patanjali’s aphorisms, which he entided Tattva-Vaishâradî. At the beginning of his work, Vâcaspati Mishra notes that the term yoga should be derived from the root yuja (in the sense of “concentration”) and not from yuji (in the sense of “conjunction”). Perhaps he felt called to make this comment because, as we have seen, in the nondualist tradition of Vedânta, the term yoga is frequendy explained as the union (samyoga) between the individual self and the transcendental Self. This definition does not stricdy apply to Classical Yoga, which is dualist, distinguishing as it does between the transcendental Self and multiform Nature.
In the Mahâbhârata (14.43.24), the distinguishing mark of Yoga is said to be “activity” (pravritti). This reminds one of the definition in the Bhagavad-Gîtâ (2.50), the Hindu equivalent of the New Testament, according to which “Yoga is skill in action” (yogah karmasu kaushalam). This means that yogins or yogints perform their allotted work and discharge their obligations without hankering for any reward. This attitude is further explained in Chapter 2.
The Bhagavad-Gîtâ (2.48) also defines yoga as “equanimity” (samatva). The Sanskrit word samatva means literally “sameness” or “evenness” and has all kinds of overtones, including “balance” and “harmony.” Essentially it is the attitude of looking dispassionately at life and being unruffled by its ups and downs.
Thus yoga is a word that can apply to a multitude of things, and when reading the Yoga scriptures it is good to bear this flexibility in mind.
III. DEGREES OF SELF-TRANSCENDENCE— THE PRACTITIONER (YOGIN OR YOGINÎ)
The word yogin (nominative: yogi) is derived from the same verbal root as yoga, namely yuj, and denotes the practitioner of Yoga, who may be a novice, an advanced student, or even a full-fledged, God- or Self-realized adept.
A female practitioner is called yoginî. This word is also applied to the female partner in the ritual sexuality (maithunâ) of certain schools of Tantra, as explained in Chapter 17. The term yoginî also can refer to a member of the group of sixty-four female deities particularly associated with Tantra, who are regarded as manifestations of the universal creative energy (shakti). The cult of the sixty-four yoginîs dates back to the sixth or seventh century C.E.8
The term yogin is generally loosely applied to all spiritual practitioners, but sometimes a distinction is made, for instance, between the yogin and the sam- nyâsin (“renouncer”), or between the yogin (as a practitioner of a particular discipline) and the jnânin (“gnostic”), who purports to follow no ideology or method, but lives on the basis of spontaneous spiritual understanding, or intuition. For example, in the Mândûkya-Kârikâ (3.39), an authoritative work on Advaita Vedânta, we find the following stanza:
The intangible Yoga (asparsha-yoga) [of nondualism] is difficult to realize by all yogins. The yogins are afraid of it, perceiving fear in [that which is really of the essence of] fearlessness.
Here the author Gaudapâda, who was the teacher of Shankara’s teacher, distinguishes between yogins and those who have realized the intangible, nondual Reality, that is, the jnânins. The distinction is somewhat idiosyncratic, because there are also realized adepts among the followers of Yoga. But then, what is in a name? Gaudapâda simply wanted to establish the superiority of the jnânins, free of self and fear, over those who anxiously strive to realize God, not understanding that their very search is their stumbling block. For as long as there is a goal, there is also a seeker— and thus an ego-personality trapped in the condition of unenlightenment.
The spiritual maturation of the yogin is thought to take place in a series of distinct phases, or stages (bhûmi). In the third chapter of the Jîvan-Mukti- Viveka (“Discernment about Living Liberation”), the medieval scholar and Yoga practitioner Vidyâranya speaks of two classes of yogins; those who have transcended the self and those who have not—a simple and effective classification. The famous Vedânta philosopher Vijnâna Bhikshu, who lived in the sixteenth century, distinguishes in his Yoga-Sâra-Samgraha (“Compendium on the Essence of Yoga”) between the following grades:
ârurukshu — one who is desirous of spiritual life
yunjana — one who is actually practicing
yoga-ârûdha — one who has ascended in Yoga; also called yukta (“yoked one”) or sthita-prajnâ (“one of steady wisdom”)
The Bhagavad-Gîtâ, undoubtedly the most popular work on Yoga, characterizes the aspirant (ârurukshu and yunjana) and the adept (yoga-ârûdha) in these words:
For the sage who desires to ascend in Yoga, action is stated to be the means. For him who has ascended in Yoga, serenity (shama) is said to be the means. (6.3)
When he does not cling to the sense- objects or to deeds and has renounced all desires, then he is called “one who has ascended in Yoga.” (6.4)
When he has controlled the mind and is established in the Self (âtman) only, devoid of all desires, then he is said to be a “yoked one” (yukta). (6.18)
The perfected yogin of “steady wisdom”—sthita- prajnâ—is described in the Bhagavad-Gîtâ (2.56) as follows:
He whose mind is not affected in sorrow and is free from desire in pleasure and who is without attachment, fear, or anger—he is called a sage of “steady insight” (sthita-dhî).
In the literature of the vast spiritual movement of medieval India known as Tantra, or Tantrism, a distinction is made between the “realizing aspirant” (sâdhaka) and the “perfected one” (siddha)—or adept—who has attained emancipation or perfection (siddhi), the pinnacle of the “path to Realization” (sâdhana). Other classifications are employed in the various Purânas (popular quasi-religious encyclopedias) and gamas and Samhitâs (both sectarian works of encyclopedic scope), as well as in the scriptures of Hatha-Yoga, the “forceful” Yoga of physical discipline. Furthermore, the great religious traditions of Buddhism and Jainism, which have incorporated and contributed to the development of Yoga, also have their own scales of spiritual achievement and adeptship.
An interesting fourfold division is found in the Yoga-Bhâshya (3.51). The legendary author, Vyâsa, makes these distinctions:
prathama-kalpika — the neophyte in the first stage
mâdhû-bhûmika — “he who is in the delightful [lit. ‘honey’] stage”
prajnâ-jyotis — “he who has attained the light (jyotis) of wisdom”
atikrânta-bhâvanîya — “he who is about to transcend [all of conditioned existence]”
Vyâsa (Yoga-Bhâshya 3.51) sheds some light on these four degrees of spiritual attainment. He explains:
The first is the practitioner (abhyasin) for whom the light is just dawning. The second has “truth-bearing” transcendental wisdom. The third is he who has subjugated the elements and sense organs and who has developed means for securing all that has been and is yet to be cultivated … While the fourth, who has passed beyond that which may be cultivated, has as his sole aim the resolution (pratisarga) of the mind [into the primordial matrix of Nature, whereupon the Self shines forth in its original purity.]
The last stage of transcendence leads directly to the realization of the supreme goal of Classical Yoga— “aloneness” (kaivalya), in the sense of actualizing the transcendental Self (purusha), the eternal Essence of the human being, beyond the ever-changing dimension of the cosmos. Kaivalya is the highest degree of spiritual perfection and the consummation of the life of the yogin who follows the path taught by Patanjali.
In his Yoga-Bh�
�shya (1.21), Vyâsa also explains that there are nine classes of yogins, according to the intensity (samvega) of their quest, which may be mediocre, average, or extremely vehement. Vâcaspati Mishra elucidates that the degree of intensity depends on previously acquired subliminal impressions (vâsanâ) as well as on invisible (karmic) influences, called adrishta (lit. “unseen”). In other words, our commitment to Yoga practice is not entirely a matter of conscious decision. The depth of our attraction to God, or the transcendental Self, is not subject to our will but is preconditioned by our karmic past: Our actions and intentions in past lives determine our future state of being (e.g., our genetic makeup, social circumstance, and therefore to some degree our psychosocial personality). This explains why sometimes our best intentions on the spiritual path are foiled, especially at the beginning of our practice, and why we must continue to persist in disciplining ourselves.
A frequent synonym of yogin is yoga-vid, meaning “knower of Yoga,” which is widely employed particularly in the literature of Hatha-Yoga. The advanced practitioner is sometimes referred to as a yukta, or “yoked one,” whereas the novice is occasionally known as a yoga-yuj, “one joined in Yoga.” The perfected yogin is often styled “king of Yoga” (yoga-râj) and “lord of yogins” (yoga-indra, written yogendra).
The term “yogist” is of modern coinage and describes the Western enthusiast, who is primarily interested in the physical aspect of Yoga—especially the postures (âsana)—rather than in Yoga as a spiritual discipline of Self-realization.
IV. GUIDING LIGHT—THE TEACHER
As Mircea Eliade pointed out in his well-known study on Yoga, “What characterizes Yoga is not only its practical side, but also its initiatory structure.”9 Yoga, like all forms of esotericism, presupposes the guidance of an initiate, a master who has firsthand experience of the phenomena and realizations of the yogic path. Ideally, he or she should have reached the ultimate spiritual destination of all yogic endeavor—enlightenment (bodha, bodhi), or liberation (moksha). Thus, contrary to the “pop” Yoga espoused by a large number of Westerners, authentic Yoga is never a do-it-yourself enterprise. “One does not learn Yoga by oneself,” observed Eliade.10 Rather, Yoga involves, as do all other traditional Indian systems, an actual pupilage during which a master imparts his or her secrets to the worthy disciple or devotee. And those secrets are not exhausted by the kind of knowledge that can be expressed in words or printed in books.
The Yoga Tradition Page 5