The Yoga Tradition

by Georg Feuerstein

  From the perspective of the Self, which is one without a second, there can be no question of contact with anything. There is no outside or inside, and there are no multiple objects or beings that could be contacted through the senses. Only the unenlightened mind, which distinguishes between subject and object, thinks in terms of separation or union, disconnection or contact. It is our presumed separation from other beings and things that causes us much anxiety. Where there is no duality, there also is no fear. Gaudapâda’s Yoga is the realization of that fearless Condition, the “Fourth,” which is none other than the all-comprising Self. It can be attained in every moment that the mind is obliged to relinquish the illusion that there is a world of multiplicity outside itself and, instead, is brought to rest in the native state of Selfhood. In his commentary on the Mândûkya- Kârikâ (4.2), Shankara calls Asparsha-Yoga the Yoga of the nondualist vision, or advaita-darshana-yoga.

  Asparsha-Yoga is synonymous with Jnâna-Yoga in its highest form. As such it represents the crowning achievement of the entire nondualist tradition of the Upanishads. In Shankara’s skillful hands it became the greatest rival of Buddhism and also of Patanjali’s school of Classical Yoga.

  IX. MORALITY AND SPIRITUALITY— PRE-CLASSICAL YOGA IN THE ETHICAL-LEGAL LITERATURE

  Overview

  In addition to the two epics and the Upanishads, elements of Pre-Classical Yoga also can be met with in a number of other semireligious works of Hinduism, notably the ethical-legal literature known as dharma-shâstra. Why is there this connection between ethics or morality (dharma) and spirituality (yoga)? According to an old brahmanical model of human motivation, there are four great values to which people can dedicate themselves. These are known as the human goals (purusha-artha): material welfare (artha), pleasure (kâma), morality (dharma), and liberation (moksha). They form a hierarchical continuum, with liberation as the highest possible value to which we can aspire. Morality and the quest for emancipation, or spiritual freedom, stand in a special relationship to each other, for the higher spiritual life can blossom only when it is securely founded on morality.

  Thus, it is not surprising that we should find many references to Yoga in the manuals on ethics and law, which also regard liberation as the highest possible virtue, just as the Yoga scriptures mention all kinds of moral virtues in which the yogin must be established or which he must cultivate. For instance, in his Yoga-Sûtra (2.30-31), Patanjali lists the following five virtues that comprise the great vow (mahâ-vrata): nonharming, truthfulness, nonstealing, chastity, and greedlessness. These compose the first of the eight limbs (anga) of the eightfold path of Classical Yoga but are also an integral part of the morality espoused in the Dharma-Sûtras and Dharma-Shâstras.

  The dharma-shâstra literature is quite extensive, and it appears that many of the original Sûtras were lost long ago. It is clear from even a cursory glance at the manuals on right behavior by the juristic and spiritual authorities that asceticism (tapas) and Yoga were an integral part of India’s cultural and moral life long before the Common Era. The numerous references to tapas clearly point to the great age of the spiritual teachings transmitted in these works. There are comparatively few references to Yoga, and these typically connect Yoga with the discipline of restraining the senses and breath control. With the growing acceptance of Yoga into orthodox Brahmanism, this far-flung tradition was destined to play an ever more important role in the emergence of the great religious culture of so-called Hinduism. The practical orientation of Yoga proved a constant grounding force for the metaphysical flights, as well as the continuing ritual preoccupations, of the Hindu intelligentsia.

  At the same time, the emphasis on personal experience in Yoga, especially such approaches as Karma-Yoga and Bhakti-Yoga, appealed to the religious-minded individual who was not born into the brahmin class with its privileged access to the sacred scriptures. Especially with the rise of Tantra around the middle of the first millennium C.E., class and caste barriers began to be tom down in the spiritual arena. In the Tantric circles, everyone—regardless of social status, education, or skin color—was at least in principle granted access to the highest teachings. The only qualification was that of spiritual readiness.

  The oldest legal works are the various Sûtras composed by sages like Gautama, Baudhâyana, Vashishtha, and pastamba. Portions of them are as old as the late Brâhmanas, such as the Shata-Patha, but in the main they belong to a more recent period. These works served as the foundation for the more elaborate legal scriptures known as the Dharma-Shâstras, which are usually assigned to the period from 300 B.C.E. to 200 C.E. The most important of these scriptures is the Mânava- Dharma-Shâstra, also called the Manu-Smriti, which is written in the shloka meter. Its reputed author is Manu Vaivasvata, who is traditionally hailed as the progenitor of the present human race and the ancestor of the ruling families of Vedic India. He is mentioned in the archaic Rig-Veda (1.80.16) as “our father.” The later Purâna literature speaks of Manu as the survivor of a great flood. This legend, resembling the Middle-Eastern story of Noah, is first told in the Shata-Pata-Brâhmana (1.8.1- 6), which is over four thousand years old. The story is not found in the Rig-Veda, but the Atharva-Veda (19.39.7-9) makes reference to a golden ship stranded on the top of the Himalayan mountain range.

  Ikshvâku, one of Manu’s nine sons, is remembered as the founder of the solar dynasty. Manu was himself a son of the Sun God Vivasvat (hence Manu’s epithet Vaivasvata). Manu’s daughter Ilâ (who underwent a sex change) was the founder of the lunar dynasty, among which the Pândavas headed by Prince Arjuna, devotee of the God-man Krishna, were the most illustrious.

  While Manu, if he existed at all, belongs to the earliest phase of the Vedic civilization (perhaps to the fifth millennium B.C.E.), the Manu-Smriti attributed to him is certainly the product of a much more recent age. Some of its ideas, however, unquestionably derive from Vedic times. Be that as it may, the Manu-Smriti illustrates the widespread influence of the Yoga tradition by the beginning of the Christian calendar.

  Yogic Teachings in the Legal Literature

  Apart from the moral code, captured in the rules of yama in Yoga, the Dharma-Shâstras emphasize breath control as a means of expiation. Thus, in the Manu-Smriti (6.70ff.), there is a passage that speaks of the benefits of breath control (prânâyâma). It is meant to be performed with the appropriate Vedic mantras, especially the syllable om. This is considered the highest form of austerity, which “bums away” all kinds of physical and psychic blemishes.

  The Vâsishtha-Dharma-Shâstra describes Yoga in Chapter 25, which consists essentially in the practice of breath control. Retention is defined in verse 13 as the suppression of the breath for the duration of three repetitions of the gâyatri-mantra together with the syllable om, the vyâhritis or “declarations” (viz. bhûh, bhuvah, svah), and the shiras (“head”)-utterance (“water, fire/light, essence, immortal”).29 Breath control is said (vs. 6) to generate air, which in turn kindles the inner fire, through which water is formed. All three elements bring about the desired purification without which wisdom cannot dawn. In verse 8, Yoga is stated to be the sum of the sacred law (dharma) and the highest and eternal austerity.

  An almost identical passage can be found, for instance, in the Baudhâyana-Dharma-Sûtra (4.1.23ff.), which is a much-respected work whose nucleus was presumably created during the centuries prior to the drying up of the Sârasvatî River around 1900 B.C.E.

  The Shânkhâyana-Smriti (12.18-19), another ancient scripture dealing with Hindu law and custom, makes the exaggerated claim that sixteen daily cycles of breath control absolve even the slayer of a brahmin from his heinous sin. The Yâjnavalkya-Smriti (3.305) prescribes one hundred prânâyâmas for the expiation of all sins.

  The Manu-Smriti and other kindred scriptures also recommend concentration (dhâranâ) as a means of atoning for one’s sins, and meditation (dhyâna) for combating undesirable emotions like anger, avarice, and jealousy. The author of the pastamba-Dharma- Sûtra (1.5.23.3ff.),
which in its extant version belongs perhaps to the third century B.C.E, quotes a verse from an unidentified work, according to which the wise person eliminates all “taints” (dosha) of character through the practice of Yoga. He enumerates fifteen such taints, or defects, including anger, greed, hypocrisy, and even exuberance.

  The Yâjnavalkya-Smriti ranks in importance next to the Manu-Smriti, though in its available form it may have been composed several centuries later. This scripture is traditionally attributed to the illustrious Sage Yâjnavalkya, who lived at the time of the Brâhmanas. In one passage (3.195ff.), the entire yogic process is described—from assuming the right posture, to withdrawing the senses from the external world, to performing breath control, concentration, and meditation. This work also lists (3.202f.) several of the yogic powers (siddhi), such as the ability to become invisible, to remember past lives, and to see the future.

  With the Manu-Smriti we approach the Common Era, which proved to be a most fertile phase in the evolution of the Yoga tradition. The person who gave Yoga its recognizable philosophical shape in the first or second century C.E. was a seer (rishi) by the name of Patanjali. We will turn to him and his famous aphorisms next.

  “Yoga is a perfectly structured and integrated world view aiming at the transformation of a human being from his actual and unrefined form to a perfected form … It can be said that Yoga aims at freedom from nature, including the freedom from human nature; its flight is to the transcendence of humanity and the cosmos, into pure being.”

  —Ravi Ravindra, “Yoga: The Royal Path to Freedom,”

  Hindu Spirituality, p. 178

  I. PATANJALI—PHILOSOPHER AND YOGIN

  Most yogins, like most ordinary people, do not have an intellectual bent. But yogins, unlike ordinary people, turn this into an advantage by cultivating wisdom and the kind of psychic and spiritual experiences that the rational mind tends to deny and prevent. And yet there always have been those Yoga practitioners who were brilliant intellectuals as well. Thus, Shankara of the eighth century C.E. is not only remembered as the greatest proponent of Hindu nondualist metaphysics, or Advaita Vedânta, but also as a great adept of Yoga. The Buddhist teacher Nâgârjuna, who lived in the second century C.E., was not only a celebrated Tantric alchemist and thaumaturgist (siddha) but also a philosophical genius of the first order. In the sixteenth century C.E., Vijnâna Bhikshu wrote profound commentaries on all the major schools of thought. He was a noted thinker who greatly impressed the German pioneering indologist and founder of comparative mythology Max Muller. At the same time he was a spiritual practitioner of the first order, following Vedântic Jnâna-Yoga.

  Similarly, Patanjali, the author or compiler of the Yoga- Sûtra, was obviously a Yoga adept who also had a great head on his shoulders. As Yoga researcher Christopher Chappie wrote:

  Some have said that Patanjali has made no specific philosophical contribution in his presentation of the yoga school. To the contrary, I suggest that his is a masterful contribution communicated through nonjudgmentally presenting diverse practices, a methodology deeply rooted in the culture and traditions of India.1

  The Yoga of Patanjali represents the climax of a long development of yogic technology. Of all the numerous schools that existed in the opening centuries of the Common Era, Patanjali’s school was the one to become acknowledged as the authoritative system (darshana) of the Yoga tradition. There are numerous parallels between Patanjali’s Yoga and Buddhism, and it is unknown whether these are simply due to the synchronous development of Hindu and Buddhist Yoga or are the result of a special interest in Buddhist teachings on the part of Patanjali. If Patanjali lived in the second century C.E., as is proposed here, he may well have been exposed to the considerable influence of Buddhism at that time. But perhaps both explanations apply.2

  Disappointingly, we know next to nothing about Patanjali. Hindu tradition identifies him with the famous grammarian of the same name who lived in the second century B.C.E. and authored the Mahâ-Bhâshya. The consensus of scholarly opinion, however, considers this unlikely. Both the contents and the terminology of the Yoga-Sûtra suggest the second century C.E. as a probable date for Patanjali, whoever he may have been.3

  In addition to the grammarian, India knows of several other Patanjalis. The name is mentioned as a clan (gotra) name of the Vedic priest surâyana. The old Shata-Pata-Brâhmana mentions a Patancala Kâpya, whom the nineteenth-century German scholar Albrecht Weber wrongly tried to connect with Patanjali.4 Then there was a Sâmkhya teacher by this name whose views are mentioned in the Yukti-Dîpikâ (late seventh or early eighth century C.E.). Possibly another Patanjali is credited with the Yoga-Darpana (“Mirror of Yoga”), a manuscript of unknown date. Finally, there was a Yoga teacher Patanjali who was part of the South Indian Shaiva tradition. His name may be referred to in the title of Umâpati Shivâcârya’s fourteenth-century Pâtanjala- Sûtra, which is a work on liturgy at the Natarâja temple of Cidambaram.

  Hindu tradition has it that Patanjali was an incarnation of Ananta, or Shesha, the thousand-headed ruler of the serpent race that is thought to guard the hidden treasures of the earth. The name Patanjali is said to have been given to Ananta because he desired to teach Yoga on Earth and fell (pat) from Heaven onto the palm (anjali) of a virtuous woman, named Gonikâ. Iconography often depicts Ananta as the couch on which God Vishnu reclines. The serpent lord’s many heads symbolize infinity or omnipresence. Ananta’s connection to Yoga is not difficult to uncover, since Yoga is the secret treasure, or esoteric lore, par excellence. To this day, many yogins bow to Ananta before they begin then- daily round of yogic exercises.

  In the benedictory verse at the beginning of the Yoga-Bhâshya commentary to the Yoga-Sûtra, the serpent lord, Ahîsha, is saluted as follows:

  May He who rules to favor the world in many ways by giving up His original [unmanifest] form—He who is beautifully coiled and many-mouthed, endowed with lethal poisons and yet removing the host of afflictions (klesha), who is the source of all wisdom (jnâna), and whose circle of attendant serpents constantly generates pleasure, who is the divine Lord of Serpents: May He, the bestower of Yoga, yoked in Yoga, protect you with His pure white body.

  Whatever we can say about Patanjali is purely speculative. It is reasonable to assume that he was a great Yoga authority and most probably the head of a school in which study (svâdhyâya) was regarded as an important aspect of spiritual practice. In composing his aphorisms (sûtra) he availed himself of existing works. His own philosophical contribution, as far as it can be gauged from the Yoga-Sûtra itself, was modest. He appears to have been a compiler and systematizer rather than an originator. It is of course possible that he has written other works that have not survived.

  Hiranyagarbha

  Western Yoga enthusiasts often regard Patanjali as the father of Yoga, but this is misleading. According to post-classical traditions, the originator of Yoga was Hiranyagarbha. Although some texts speak of Hiranyagarbha as a Self-realized adept who lived in ancient times, this notion is doubtful. The name means “Golden Germ” and in Vedânta cosmomythology refers to the womb of creation, to the first being to emerge from the unmanifest ground of the world and the matrix of all the myriad forms of creation. Thus, Hiranyagarbha is a primal cosmic force rather than an individual. To speak of him—or it—as the originator of Yoga makes sense when one understands that Yoga essentially consists in altered states of awareness through which the yogin tunes into nonordinary levels of reality. In this sense, then, Yoga is always revelation. Hiranyagarbha is simply a symbol for the power, or grace, by which the spiritual process is initiated and revealed.

  Later Yoga commentators believed that there was an actual person called Hiranyagarbha who had authored a treatise on Yoga. Such a work is indeed referred to by many other authorities, but this does not necessarily say anything about Hiranyagarbha. The most detailed information about that scripture is found in the twelfth chapter of the Ahirbudhnya-Samhitâ (“Collection of the Dragon of the Deep”), whi
ch is a work of the medieval Vaishnava tradition. According to this scripture, Hiranyagarbha composed two works on Yoga, one on nirodha-yoga (“Yoga of restriction”) and one on karma-yoga (“Yoga of action”). The former apparently dealt with the higher stages of the spiritual process, notably ecstatic states, whereas the latter is said to have been concerned with spiritual attitudes and forms of behavior.

  There may well have been a work on Yoga of this nature, and if it did exist, it might even have antedated Patanjali’s compilation. In any case, Hiranyagarbha’s work is not remembered to have been a Sûtra, though it is quite possible that other Sûtras on Yoga existed prior to Patanjali’s composition. It is a fact, however, that Patanjali’s Yoga-Sûtra has eclipsed all earlier Sûtra works within the Yoga tradition, perhaps because it was the most comprehensive or systematic.

  II. THE CODIFICATION OF WISDOM—THE YOGA-SÛTRA

  Patanjali gave the Yoga tradition its classical format, and hence his school is often referred to as Classical Yoga. He composed his aphoristic work in the heyday of philosophical speculation and debate in India, and it is to his credit that he supplied the Yoga tradition with a reasonably homogeneous theoretical framework that could stand up against the many rival traditions, such as Vedânta, Nyâya, and not least Buddhism. His composition is in principle a systematic treatise concerned with defining the most important elements of Yoga theory and practice. Patanjali’s school was at one time enormously influential, as can be deduced from the many references to the Yoga-Sûtra, as well as the criticisms of it, in the scriptures of other philosophical systems.

  Each school of Hinduism has produced its own Sûtra, with the Sanskrit word sûtra meaning literally “thread.” A Sûtra composition consists of aphoristic statements that together furnish the reader with a thread which strings together all the memorable ideas characteristic of that school of thought. A sûtra, then, is a mnemonic device, rather like a knot in one’s handkerchief or a scribbled note in one’s diary or appointment book. Just how concise the sûtra style of writing is can be gauged from the following opening aphorisms of Patanjali’s scripture: