Petanjali and Yoga
Petanjali and Yoga
S C H O C K E N B O O K S • N E W Y O R K
First published by schocken books 1975
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 86 87 88 89
French Edition Copyright © 1962 by Editions du Seuil
Translation Copyright © 1969 by Funk & Wagnalls
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
ISBN 0-8052-0491-1
Contents
Introduction 3
CONCLUSION 195
CHRONOLOGY 201
BIBLIOGRAPHY 205
Index 211
Acknomedgments
Yoga is one of the six darsanas, one of the six Indian orthodox
“systems of philosophy” (in this context orthodox means tol
erated by Brahmanism, in contrast to such heretical systems as,
for example, Buddhism or Jainism). And this “classical” yoga,
as it was formulated by Patanjali and interpreted by his com-
Patanjali’s Yoga 13
“creative not-knowing”
UNIVERSAL SUFFERING
“All is suffering for the wise man,” Patanjali wrote (Y.S., II,
1 5 ) . But Patanjali was neither the first nor the last to take
cognizance of universal suffering. Long before, Buddha had
proclaimed: “All is anguish, all is ephemeral.” This is a leit
motiv of all Indian post-Upanishad speculation. The redemptive
techniques, as well as the metaphysical doctrines, found their
basic origin in this univeral suffering; for they are of value only
in the measure to which they deliver man from “suffering.”
Human experience, whatever its character, engenders suffering.
“The body is pain because it is the seat of pain; the senses,
objects, perceptions are suffering, because they lead to suffering;
even pleasure is suffering because it is followed by suffering”
(Aniruddha, commenting on S.S., II, 1). And Isvara Krishna,
Patanjali’s Yoga 21
In this world the hearer listens only to the speaker who deals with
facts the knowledge of which is necessary and desired. No one pays
attention to those who expound doctrines that no one wants, as is
the case with madmen or with ordinary men who are good at their
practical affairs but ignorant of.the sciences and the arts [Tattva-
Kaumudi, published by G. Jha, Bombay, 1896, p. 1].
THE “SELF”
THE SUBCONSCIOUS
Padimgushtasana
(asana on the ball of the foot)
Virasana (asana of the hero)
RESPIRATORY DISCIPLINE
BURIED ALIVE
HESYCHASM
As for you, as I have told you, sit down, collect your spirit, intro
duce it—I mean your spirit—into your nostrils; this is the route
taken by the breath in order to reach the heart. Push it, force it to
descend into your heart at the same time as the air that you
breathe. When it is there, you will see the joy that will follow:
you will have nothing to regret. As a man who returns to his home
after a long absence can no longer contain his joy at being reunited
with his wife and children, so the spirit, when it is united with
the soul, overflows with unspeakable joy and rapture. My brother,
accustom your spirit then to be in no haste to depart from there.
The Techniques of Yoga 77
In the beginning it will be lacking in zeal, that is the least that can
be said of this inner reclusion and enclosure. But, once it has ac
quired this habit, it will no longer find any pleasure in the outside
circuits. For “the kingdom of God is within us” and to him who
turns his eyes toward it and pursues it with pure prayer all the
outer world becomes vile and despicable.”
And one must also quote the basic text, The Method of Holy
Prayer and Concentration, which was long attributed to Simeon
the New Theologian. “This little work could well have been
contemporary with that of Nicophoros, if it was not written
Posture and respiration in Hesychastic prayer (from a twelfth-century
Greek manuscript)
The Techniques of Yoga 79
“knowledge states”
“miraculous powers”
brick from the altar) coincides with the “Whole" (the god
Prajapati), Non-Being with Being. Looked at from this point of
view (that of the phenomenology of the paradox), samadhi is
part of a well-known tendency in the history of religion and
mysticism: that of the coincidence of opposites. It is true that
this time the coincidence is not merely symbolic but concrete
and experimental. Through samadhi the yogi transcends oppo
sites and in a single experience he unites the empty and the
overfull, life and death, being and non-being. And more:
samadhi, like all paradoxical states, is equivalent to a reintegra
tion of all the different modalities of the real in a single
modality: the undifferentiated plenitude of the pre-Creation,
primordial unity. The yogi who attains to asamprajnata samadhi
also realizes a dream that has obsessed the human spirit since
the dawn of its history: union with the Whole, the reconquest
of Unity, the re-creation of the original nonduality, the abolition
of time and the Creation (that is, cosmic multiplicity and
heterogeneity); above all, the elimination of the bisection of
the real into object and subject.
It would be a vulgar mistake to regard this supreme reinte
gration as a mere regression into the primordial chaos. It can
never be repeated often enough that yoga, like so many other
mysticisms, leads to the plane of paradox and not to a banal
and easy extinction of consciousness. Since time immemorial
India had known the innumerable “trances" and “ecstasies"
obtainable through intoxication, narcotics, and all the other
primitive means of emptying the consciousness. One has no
right to include samadhi among these countless varieties of
spiritual escape. Deliverance cannot be equated with the “deep
sleep" of prenatal existence, even if it would appear that the
reconquest of Totality obtained through undifferentiated en-
stasis resembles the bliss of the human being’s fetal reconscious
ness. One fact, which is of major importance, must always be
taken into account: The yogi works on all levels of consciousness
and the subconscious in order to open a path for himself to the
transconscious (knowledge-possession of the Self, the purusha).
The Techniques of Yoga 121
man after death. The descent into hell and the three days spent
there are well known initiatory themes: one is naturally re
minded of the shaman initiations and of the mysteries of an-
tiguity. Yama gives Naciketas the secret of the “fire that leads
to heaven" (I, 14 ff.); a fire that can be regarded either as a
ritual fire or as a “mystic fire" produced by tdpas. This fire is
“the bridge to the supreme brahman” (III, 2). The image of
the bridge, already so frequent in the Brahmana, recurs in the
most ancient Upanishads (cf. Chand. JJp., VIII, 4, 1-2); more
over, it is evidenced in many traditions and usually means the
initiatory passage from one to another mode of being (cf. my
Chamanisme, pp. 355 ff., 419 ff.). But above all it is the teaching
dealing with the “great journey" that is important. After vain
attempts to divert Naciketas from this problem by offering him
countless earthly rewards, Yama reveals to him the great mys
tery, the atman, which “eannot be attained by exegesis, or by
intellect, or by much study. Only he whom it chooses can
attain it” (II, 23, Renou’s translation). The last line shows a
mystic trace, again marked in the next chapter by the reference
to Vishnu (III, 9).
The man in complete possession of himself is compared with
a skilled charioteer who knows how to dominate his senses: It
is such a man who gains deliverance.
Know that the ’atman is the master of the chariot, that the body is
the chariot itself, that reason is the charioteer, and that thought is
the reins. The senses are the horses, it is said, and the objects of the
senses are their course. ... He who has knowledge and whose
thought is always harnessed has control of the senses: They are
like good horses for the driver. . . . He who has knowledge armed
with thought, who is always pure, will reach that place where one
is no longer born again [III, 3-4, 6, 8; Renou’s translation].
the yoke” (the same image occurs in the Maitrayani Up., II, 6).
And besides another verse makes it clear: “It is known under
the name of yoga, this firm control of the senses. Then one be
comes concentrated . . .” (VI, ii; cf. VI, 18: “Then, having re
ceived this knowledge and total prescription of yoga, as imparted
by Death, Naciketas acceded to brahman and was exempt from
old age, exempt from dying”).
“The man who has knowledge for his driver and thought for
his reins reaches the other bank of the journey, the supreme
place of Vishnu,” the Katha Upanishad says (III, 9). This is
not yet the Vishnu of the epic poems or that of the Purana, but
his part in this first Upanishad, in which yoga is employed in
order to gain the knowledge of the atman as well as immortality,
already points out the direction to be taken by the later great
syntheses. The three dominant avenues of deliverance—the
Upanishads’ knowledge, yoga’s technique, and bhakti—were
little by little to be homologated and integrated. This process
was even more advanced in an Upanishad of the same period,
the Svetasvatara, but instead of Vishnu it venerated Siva. No
where is the identity between mystic knowledge and immortality
more often expressed.
The predominance of the “theme of immortality” leads one
to believe that the Svetasvatara Upanishad was composed in a
“mystic” environment, or, rather, that it was rewritten in such
a circle, for its text has undergone numerous additions through
the centuries. The word deliverance is found less often in it
(IV, 16). But some passages speak of the joy that comes from
“the eternal happiness” gained by those who know Siva (VI,
1.2), an expression that, like so many others, reveals a concrete
content of true mystic experience. Brahman is identified with
Siva, whose name is also Hara (I, 10), Rudra (III, 2), and
Bhagavat (III, 11). We need not concern ourselves with the
composite structure, “sectarian” (Sivaist) in shading, of this
130 Patanjali and Yoga
Holding his body firm in the three erect parts (the trunk, the neck,
the head), sending his senses and his thought into his heart, a
wise man in the boat of brahman would cross all frightening rivers
[II, 8]. Having compressed the breath within the body, controlling
the movements, you must breathe through your nostrils at a reduced
rate; like a chariot drawn by bad horses, the wise man should
repress his thought without distraction [9]. Yoga should be prac
ticed in a single pure place, without pebbles, fire, or sand, pleasing
to the inner sense in its sounds and its water, etc., which does not
offend the eye, protected from the wind by a hollow (in the
earth) [10]. Fog, smoke, sunshine, fire, wind, phosphorescent in
sects, lightning, crystal, the moon are the preliminary aspects that
produce the manifestation of brahman in yoga [11]. When the
quintuple quality of yoga has been produced arising out of earth,
water, fire, wind, and space, there is no longer disease or old age or
death for him who has gained a body made of the fire of yoga [12].
Lightness, health, the lack of desires, clarity of skin, excellence of
voice, pleasant aroma, a reduction in the excretions—these are said
to be the first effects of yoga [13; all Silburn’s translation].
The bindu [which in the secret language means semen virile] does
not issue from the body as long as one practices khecarimudra.
When the bindu reaches the genital area, it turns back, having
been forced to do so by the power of yonimudra. This bindu is of
two kinds: white and red. The white is called sukla [semen], wdiile
the name of the red is maharajas. The rajas, similar in color to
coral, is found in the genital organs [Note: in the Yogic-Tantrist
texts rajas means the secretion of the female genital organs.] The
semen lives in the seat of the moon, midway between the ajnacakra
[frontal region] and the lotus of a thousand petals [sahasrara].
Their union is most rare. The bindu is Siva and the rajas is Sakti;
semen is the moon, rajas is the sun; through their union one gains
a perfect body.
Samkhya and yoga alike flaunt each its own method as the best
means . . . Those who choose to be guided by yoga base them
selves on an immediate perception [of mystic essence]; those who
follow Samkhya base themselves on traditional teachings. I consider
both these doctrines true. ... If their instructions are followed
with precision, both will lead to the supreme end. They have in
Ascetics, Ecstatics, and Contemplatives in Ancient India 141
common purity, repression [of desires], and pity for all beings; the
strict respect for oaths is common to both of them; but the
opinions [darsanas] are not the same in Samkhya and in yoga.
the cosmic order. Now, as Krishna points out, only those acts
the object of which is sacrifice do not bind: "Act, then, only
when casting off every tie” (III, 9). Prajapati created sacrifice
in order that the cosmos might be able to manifest itself and
human beings might be able to live and reproduce themselves
(III, 10 if.). But Krishna reveals that man too can collaborate in
the perpetuation of the divine work: not only by sacrifices prop
erly so-called (those that constitute the Vedic ritual) but by
all his acts, whatever their nature. For him who "busies himself
in works of sacrifice, all activity is dissolved into nothingness”
(IV, 23). 'Phis means that activity no longer "enchains,” no
longer creates new karmic nuclei. It is in this sense that the
various ascetics and yogis "sacrifice” their physiological and
psychic activities: They detach themselves from these activities,
they give them a transpersonal value; and, by so doing, “all
enjoy the real concept of sacrifice, and, through sacrifice, they
erase their stains” (IV, 25-30).
This transmutation of profane into ritual activities is made
possible by yoga. Krishna reveals to Arjuna that the “man of
action” can be saved, can escape the consequences of his par
ticipation in the life of the world, even while continuing to act.
The “man of action” means the man who cannot withdraw
from secular life in order to gain his salvation by means of
knowledge or mystic devotion. The only thing that he should
observe is this: He should detach himself from his acts and
their consequences; in other words “renounce the fruits of his
acts” (phalatrishnavairagya), act impersonally, without passion,
without desire, as if he were acting as a proxy, on behalf of
another. If he conforms rigorously to this rule, his acts will
implant no further seeds of karmic potentialities, nor will they
longer subjugate him to the circuit of karma. "Indifferent to
the action’s fruit, always satisfied, free of all attachments, how
ever occupied he may be, in reality he is not acting . . .”
(IV, 20).
The great originality of the Bhagavad-Gita is its emphasis on
this "yoga of action,” which is achieved by "renouncing the
Ascetics, Ecstatics, and Contemphtives in Ancient India 151
tion in the Gita achieves its supreme goal only if the yogi con
centrates himself in Krishna.
“His soul serene and without fear, constant in his vow to
keep to the path of chastity [brahmacari], his intellect firm and
thinking unceasingly of Me, he should practice yoga taking Me
as his supreme end. Thus, his soul constantly devoted to medita
tion and his intellect subjugated, the yogi gains the peace that
dwells in Me and whose ultimate limit is nirvana” (VI, 14-15).
The mystic devotion (bhakti) whose object is Krishna gives
him an infinitely greater role than Isvara’s in the Yoga Sutras.
In the Gita Krishna is the sole goal; it is he who justifies yogic
practice and meditation, it is in him that the yogi “concentrates
himself”; it is through his grace (and in the Gita the concept
of grace is already beginning to take shape, foreshadowing the
luxuriant development that it was to have in Vishnuist litera
ture) that the yogi gains the nirvana that is neither the nirvana
of later Buddhism nor the samadhi of the Yoga Sutras, but a
state of perfect mystic union between the soul and its God.
A true yogi easily attains to the infinite blessedness produced
by contact with Brahma (VI, 28). The invocation of Brahma
in a text that is an apologia for Krishna should not surprise us.
In the Bhagavad-Gita Krishna is the pure Spirit: the “great
Brahma” is only his “matrix” (yoni) (XIV, 3). “I, I am the
Father, he who gives seed” (XIV, 4). Krishna is “the support
of Brahma,” just as he is that of immortality, of imperishability,
of eternal order and perfect happiness (XIV, 27). But, although
in this context Brahma is transplanted to the “feminine” con
dition of prakrti, his nature is of a spiritual character. The muni
attains to him through yoga (V, 6). The “infinite blessedness”
that results from the union with Brahma enables the Yogi to
see “the soul (atman) in all beings and all beings in the atman”
(VI, 29). And, in the next strophe, it is specifically in Krishna’s
identification with the atman of beings that the mystic bond
between the yogi and the god finds its basis: “Him who sees
Me everywhere and sees all things in Me I will never abandon,
and never will he abandon Me. He who, having fixated himself
Bhakti
154 Patanjali and Yoga
BUDDHIST ASCETICISM
Rejecting thirst for the world, he is left with a heart free from desire
and he purges his spirit of covetousness. Rejecting the desire to
harm, he is left with a heart free from enmity, with good will and
compassion toward all beings, and he purges his spirit of ill will.
Rejecting laziness and sloth, he is left delivered from both; con
scious of the light, lucid and master of himself, he purges his
spirit of laziness and sloth. . . . Rejecting doubt, he is left like
one who has gone beyond perplexity; no longer uncertain what is
good, he purges his spirit of doubt [Dighanikaya, III, 49].
•
Although it includes "moral” elements, this meditation has
no ethical meaning. Its aim is to purge the ascetic’s conscious
ness, to prepare it for loftier spiritual experiences. Yogic medita
tion as it is construed by Buddha in certain passages of the
Dighanikaya has as its specific purpose to "remake” the ascetic’s
consciousness; that is, to create for him a new "immediate ex
perience” of his psychic and even of his biological life. Through
all his concrete actions—his gait, the position of his body, his
breathing, etc.—the ascetic must rediscover in concrete fashion
the “verities” revealed by the Master; in other words, he must
transform all his movements and all his actions into pretexts
for meditation. The Dighanikaya (II, 291 ff.) stipulates that,
having chosen a solitary place for his meditation, the bhikku
should take cognizance of all his physiological acts that hitherto
he carried out automatically and unconsciously. "By drawing
long breaths he will thoroughly understand this long inhalation;
by exhaling briefly, he will undersand, etc. And he exerts him
self to be conscious of all his exhalations, ... of all his inhala
tions; and he exerts himself to retard his exhalations . . . and
his inhalations.”
This procedure is in no way a mere exericise in pranayama,
it is a meditation on the Buddhist “verities,” a permanent ex-
162 Patanjali and Yoga
When the bhikku perceives that the five fetters [sensuality, ill will,
laziness, agitation, doubt] have been destroyed in him, he is glad;
glad, he is joyous; joyous, he feels at ease in his whole person;
having this feeling of well-being, he is happy; happy, his heart is
appeased. Released from desires and from all evil conditions, he
enters into and he remains in the first jhana, a state that is born of
detachment [vivekaja: “born of solitude”], in which reflection and
understanding continue, in which one knows joy and bliss. Then
the idea of the desires that he formerly had ceases in him and there
arises the subtle, real idea of the joy and the peace that are born of
detachment; and he remains in this idea.
Then,
I
And now, going beyond the notions of form, putting an end to the
notions of contact, ridding his spirit of distinct ideas, thinking:
“Space is infinite,” the bhikku reaches and remains in the region of
the infinity of space, Proceeding next beyond the region of the
infinity of space and thinking: “Consciousness is infinite,” he
Buddhism , Tantrism, Hathayogi 167
In truth, once the bhikku has had these ideas from himself [being
in dhyana, he cannot derive ideas from without], he goes from one
degree to the next, and so on, until he has attained to the supreme
idea. And, when he has arrived there, he says to himself: “To
think is worse; not to think is better. If I think, I fashion. It is
possible that these ideas may vanish and that other ideas, which
would be coarse, may be born. That is why I will no longer think
or fashion.” And he no longer thinks or fashions. And, since he
no longer thinks or fashions, the ideas that he had disappear
without other, coarser ideas coming into being. He has achieved
cessation [Dighanikaya, I, 184; Oltramare’s translation].
in other words, nirvana] with their bodies. Rare too are those
who see the profound reality [arthapada] by penetrating it
through prajna, through the intelligence.” The text emphasizes
the extreme difficulty of both “ways”: that of gnosis and that
of meditative experience. Rare indeed are those who have an
experience of nirvana; and no less rare are those who “see”
reality as it is and who—by means of this intellectual vision—
gain deliverance. In the course of time all ways of approaching
Buddha on the path of “experience” will become the same: He
who learns and understands the Canon assimilates the “doctrinal
body” of Buddha; the pilgrim who travels to a stupa containing
the relics of the Enlightened One has access to the architectonic
mystic body of the same Buddha. But, in the first stage of
Buddhism, the problem that arose was the same as that posed
in Samkhya and yoga: Between “intelligence” and “experience,”
which has primacy?
There is proof enough to show that Buddha always closely
connected knowledge with a meditative experience of the yogic
type. Knowledge was not worth very much to him until it had
been “realized” in one’s personal experience of it. As for the
“meditative experience,” it was the “truths” discovered by Bud
dha that gave it validity. Take the example of the statement:
“The body is perishable.” It is only by contemplating a corpse
that one can assimilate the truth of the statement. But this con
templation of the corpse would lose all its salutary value if it
were not based on a truth (this body is perishable, every body
is perishable, there is no salvation except in Buddha’s law, etc.)
All the truths revealed by Buddha should be experienced in the
yogic manner: that is, meditated and experimented.
That is why Ananda, the Master’s favorite disciple, even
though he had no peer in his erudition (according to the
Theragatha, verse 1024, he had learned eighty-two thousand
dhammas from Buddha himself and two thousand from his
fellow-disciples), was nevertheless excluded from the council:
for he was not arhat—that is, he had not had a perfect “yogic
experience.”
Buddhism, Tantiism, Hathayoga 171
With his heart serene, made pure and translucent, emptied of evil,
supple, prepared to act, firm and imperturbable, he (the bhikku)
applies and inclines his spirit to the modes of the Marvelous Power
(iddhi). He enjoys the Marvelous Power in its various forms: Being
one, he becomes many, being many, he becomes one again; he
becomes visible or invisible; without meeting any resistance he goes
through a wall, a fortification, a hill, as if each were made of air;
lie penetrates from top to bottom through solid earth as if it were
water; he walks on the water without sinking into it, as if it were
solid ground; his legs crossed and bent beneath him, he journeys
through the sky like the birds on their wings. Even the moon and
the sun, as strong and powerful as they are, he can touch and feel
with his hand; remaining in his own body, he reaches even
Brahma’s heaven. . . . With that clear, celestial ear that surpasses
the ear of men, he hears at once human and heavenly sounds, be
they distant or close. . . . Penetrating the hearts of others with
his own heart, he knows them. . . . With his heart thus serene,
etc., he guides and inclines his intelligence toward the knowledge
of the memory of his previous existences [Dighanikaya, I, 78 ff.j.
These lists of the siddhi are most often stereotyped, and they
are found in all the literature of Indian mystic and ascetic
schools. The yogis who were contemporaries of Buddha did not
challenge their authenticity, any more than they doubted the
genuineness of their yogic ecstasies. But Buddha did not en
courage his disciples to strive after the siddhi: The only true
problem was deliverance, and the possession of the “powers”
threatened to distract the monk from his original purpose,
nirvana. Reacting against mystic and magic excesses, Buddha
did not omit to point out that both the terms and the solution
of the problem lay within man as he is. “In truth, my friend, I
tell you that in this very body, mortal as it is and only a fathom
in height, but conscious and endowed with intelligence, there
is the world, as well as its increase and its decline and the road
that leads to the transcendence of it” (Anguttara, II, 48;
Samyutta, I, 62).
Furthermore the possession of one or another “miraculous
power” in no way implemented the propagation of the Buddhist
message: Other yogis and ecstatics could perform the same
miracles; what is more, one could acquire “powers” by magic
without any inner transformation. The unbelieving might think
that it was simply a matter of some magic charm.
Among the many meanings of the word tantra (from the root
tan, “to extend, to continue, to multiply”), one in particular
concerns us: that of “succession, derivation, continuous process.”
Tantra would be “what broadens knowledge.” No one knows
for what reason or as a result of what circumstances this word
came to designate a major philosophical movement that
emerged in the fourth century of the Christian Era and assumed
the form of a pan-Indian “mode” beginning in the sixth century.
For it was indeed a question of “mode”; suddenly Tantrism en
joyed a tremendous popularity as much among the philosophers
and the theologians as among the “communicants” (ascetics,
yogis, etc.), and its prestige also reached the “popular” classes.
In a relatively short time philosophy, mysticism, ritual, morality,
iconography, and literature itself were influenced by Tantrism.
It was a pan-Indian movement, for it was assimilated by all the
great religions of India and by all the “sectarian” schools. There
is an important Buddhist Tantrism and there is also a Hindu
Tantrism, but Jainism too accepted certain Tantrist methods
(though never that of Tantrism of the “left hand”), and one
finds strong Tantrist influences in Kashmiri Sivaism, in the
great movement of the Pancatras (about a.d. 550), in the
Bhagavata Purana (c. 600), and in other Vishnuist devotional
tendencies.
According to Buddhist traditions, Tantrism was supposedly
introduced by Asanga (c. 400), the eminent yogacara master,
and Nagarjuna (second century a.d.), the illustrious representa
tive of madhyamika and one of the most celebrated and most
mysterious characters in medieval Buddhism; but the problem
of the historic origins of Buddhist Tantrism is still far from
having been clarified. It is permissible to suppose that the
Vajrayana (“vehicle of the Diamond”), the name by which
176 Patanjali and Yoga
which, on the one hand, his ideal is that of the Indian alchemist
and the Hathayogi, and, on the other hand, it recalls the famous
equation of the Upanishads: citmcin equals brahman. In Tan-
trist metaphysics, both Hindu and Buddhist, absolute reality,
the Urgrund, contains in itself all dualities and polarities, re
united, reincorporated in a state of absolute unity (advava).
The Creation and the process of becoming that derives from it
represent the explosion of the primordial unity and the separa
tion of the two principles (Siva-Sakti, etc.); consequently one
experiences a state of duality (object-subject, etc.)—and this is
suffering, illusion, “enslavement.” The goal of Tantrist sadhana
is the reunion of the two polar principles in the disciple's soul
and body. “Revealed” through the knowledge of kali yuga,
Tantrism is above all a practice, an action, * a realization
(sadhana). But, although the revelation is intended for every
one, the Tantrist path entails an initiation that can be given
only by a guru; whence the importance of the master, who
alone, “from lip to ear,” can transmit the secret, esoteric doc
trine. In this respect too Tantrism offers striking analogies with
the mysteries of antiquity and the various forms of gnosis.
i
200 Patanjali and Yoga
YOGA APHORISMS
OF
PATANJALI.
INTRODUCTION.
rrôm i n
s)
. ° o
SAMKHYA TEXTS:
on hathayoga:
ON TANTRISM :
In Tibet:
Bacot, J., Milarepa, Paris, 1925, pp. 200 ff.; W. Y. Evans-Wentz,
Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines, Oxford, 1935 (second edi
tion 1958); Alexandra David Neel, Mystiques et magiciens du
Tibet, Paris, 1929, pp. 245 ff.
In Mongolia:
Pozdnezhev, A. M., “Dhyana und Samadhi im Mongolischen
Lamiasmus,” in Zeitschrift für Buddhismus, VII, 1926, pp. 378—
421.
Bibliography 209
In China:
Blofeld, John, The Path of Sudden Attainment: A Treatise of the
Ch’an (Zen) School of Chinese Buddhism by Ilui Hai of the
Tang Dynasty, London, 1948.
(
pamsha continued) Samkhya-pravacana-Sutra (Kapila,
reflected through intelligence, 38- Aniruddha, and
40 Vijnanabhikshu), 16
in samadhi, 114—115 Samkhya-tatva-kaumudi (Misra), 16
Samkhya proof of its existence, 37 samprajnata samadhi (enstasis
see also atman “with support”), 93-100
see also samadhi
samsara (existence), 53
raga (passion, attachment), 54
samskara (subconscious residue),
Rajamartanda (Bhoja), 14
6, 62, 100-101
rajas (motor energy and mental ac
samyama (last stages of yogic
tivity), 31
technique), 84, 100-103
see also gunas
types of, 84
recaka (exhalation), 71-72
and “miraculous powers,”
respiratory rhythm, see pranayama
100-103
restraints (yama),~63-65
sattva (luminosity and intelligence),
31, 38-40
saccidananda (“blessed conscious be see also gunas
ing”), 27 Self, see purusha
salvation, see mukti; suffering sensory activity (indriya), 62
samadhi (supreme concentration, emancipation from, 79-83
enstasis), 52, 90-100, 109-115 siddhi (“marvelous powers”), 65
achievement with “support,” 93 achieved through samadhi, 100
coincidence of opposites, 118-119 in Buddhism, 171-175
hypnosis, difference from, 92-93 in Hathayoga, 189-190
meanings of, 90-91 spirit, see purusha
see also asamprajnata samadhi, sraddha (faith), 53
samprajnata samadhi srshti (this world), 18
Samkhya (“discrimination”) suffering, 17-26
and the Creation, 34-38 creates thirst for salvation, 20, 21
deliverance through knowledge, denial of by Samkhya and yoga,
21-22,41-43,47-50 41-42, 47-50
differs from yoga, 16, 26, 42, human experience, as cause, 20
140-141 metaphysical ignorance, as cause,
gunas, interpretation of, 34 25,41
individuation through conscious participation in Nature, as cause,
ness of self, 33-34 18
oldest darsana, 16 three anguishes posited by
philosophy of, 17-26 Krishna, 21
relation of spirit and nature, 38-
42 tamas (static inertia and psychic
spirit, attitude toward, 27 obscurity), 31
Samkhya Karika (Krishna), 16 see also gunas
Index 215
Mircea Eliade
Pa tan j ali and Yoga
Patanjali and Yoga is a clear and straightforward look at
the history, development and meaning of yogic thought
now proving of such interest to the West. It is not just an-
othgj; book of methods and practices.
Yoga originated in archaic magical means intended to
overcome human anguish and suffering. These methods
were known long before Patanjali, but Eliade has chosen
to focus on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, who was the first
to write down and codify “classic yoga.” Following in Pa-
tanjali’s path, Indian thinkers have been quick to distin
guish true yoga from trances, self-hypnosis and false
ecstasies. The many forms and aspects of yogic practice
constitute a major part of India’s history.
From earliest times, India has concerned itself with what
we in the modern West call altered states of consciousness.
Yoga allows a release from deterministic conditioning and
permits the yogi to release himself into the true, indescrib
able freedom of liberation. With that release comes the
appearance of extraordinary powers baffling to modern
scientists and easily confused with “magical” or “occult”
powers. Here is a comprehensive introduction to the foun
dations of yogic thought and practice.
Mircea Eliade is one of the great figures of comparative
religion. He is the author of the monumental Yoga, Immor
tality and Freedom.