Hinduism: A Short History (50 page)

The second part of the
Yoga Sūtra
dealing with
sādhana
, the means to liberation, begins with the aphorism: “The
yoga
of action is constituted by
tapas
or austerities,
svādhyāya
or scriptural study, and
isvara prani-dhāna
or meditation with the Lord as object.” Its goal is to attain
samādhi
, “trance,” complete inner peace, and to terminate the
kleśas
, the frustrations and afflictions. The root-cause and source of all suffering is identified as
avidyā
, lack of insight and wisdom. It manifests itself in four principal forms, as
asmitā
, egoism,
rāga
, attachment,
dveṣa
, aversion, and
abhiniveśā
, love of physical life.
Avidyā
is further explained as mistaking the non-eternal for the eternal, the impure for the pure, the painful for the pleasurable, and the not-self for the Self.
⁴⁶
To combat these afflictions the
Yoga Sūtras
commend
dhyāna
(meditation). The actual vehicle of liberation is
viveka
, discrimination, implying understanding of the Self as the only true and worthwhile being and the rest as illusory. This knowledge arises only after the impurities of the mind have been destroyed by the practice of the eight
yogāṅgas
, limbs of Yoga. These are
yama
and
niyama
, ethical commands and prohibitions,
āsana
(bodily postures),
prāṇāyāma
(breath control),
pratyāhāra
(withdrawal of the senses),
dhāraṇā
(concentration),
dhyāna
(meditation), and
samādhi
(trance).

The
Yoga Sūtras
find that the cause of all sin lies in
lobha, moha
, and
krodha
– greed, delusion, and anger – whereas with the practice of the virtues many side effects are produced that are helpful either for the Yogi’s own realization or for his fellow-men. Thus when
ahiṃsā
, nonviolence, is firmly established, others too will give up their enmity and violence in the presence of the Yogi; not only people but also animals will live peacefully with each other. When
satya
, the love of truth, is perfected it enables a person to perform great deeds. When
asteya
, abstention from misappropriation is practiced, the treasures from which the Yogi runs away will run after him. When
brahmacarya
, perfect continence, is practiced, great strength will come to the Yogi. The practice of
aparigraha
, of generosity in the widest sense, brings with it a knowledge of the round of births and rebirths.
Śauca
, disgust with one’s own body, is accompanied by the end of the desire to have bodily contact with others. Purity also helps to attain physical well-being, control over one’s senses and concentration.
Santoṣa
, contentment, brings inner peace and happiness to the Yogi.
Tapasya
, practice of austerities, purifies from sins and makes the Yogi acquire
siddhis
or supernatural faculties. Through
svādhyāya
, scriptural study, one can reach the
Īṣṭadevatā. Īśvara praṇidhāna
, surrender to the Lord, brings about
samādhi
, “trance,” peace and illumination.

Āsana
, posture, is defined as a way of sitting that is agreeable and enables the practicant to sit motionless for a long time without falling asleep or straining himself. It is intended to overcome the distraction caused by the
dvandvas
, the pairs of opposites like heat and cold, hunger and thirst, comfort and discomfort. While
Haṭha Yoga
manuals develop a veritable science of the
āsanas
, enumerating altogether eighty-four extremely difficult bodily postures for curing or preventing diseases or attaining certain other results, Patañjali is of the opinion that any position will serve, provided that it allows a person to practice continued concentration and meditation: his aim is neither self-mortification for its own sake, nor the cure of bodily ailments, but spiritual realization.
⁴⁷

In the third
pāda
Patañjali speaks about the extraordinary or miraculous faculties of the Yogi,
siddhis
or
vibhūtis
which appear as side effects of Yoga. Despite Patañjali’s warning that they should not be cultivated, because they detract from the principal aim of Yoga as spiritual realization, a number of Yogis at all times have practiced Yoga for the sake of those
siddhis
– becoming invisible, reducing one’s size to that of a grain of sand or increasing it to the volume of a mountain, adopting a radiant body or leaving the body and reentering it at will.

Patañjali stresses the moral aspects of the preparation for
kaivalya
. If evil desires and intentions are not completely purged, there is the danger that the increased power which a Yogi wins through concentration may be used for evil purposes, rather than for realization of the highest aim.

Dietetic rules are prominent in many books on Yoga; whatever is sour, salty, or pungent should be avoided. Non-stimulating food will allow the body to come to rest; milk alone is the ideal food for Yogis.

In the
Yoga Sūtras
one of the most important topics is
prāṇāyāma. Prāṇa
, or life-breath, has always played a significant role in Indian philosophical speculation.
Prāṇāyāma
is one of the most widely practiced disciplines and one of the most ancient methods of purification. Perfect breath-control can be carried so far that to all appearances a person does not breathe any more and the heart-beat becomes imperceptible. Thus we hear quite frequently about Yogis who get themselves buried for days or weeks and let themselves be admired on coming out from their graves. According to all indications there is neither fraud nor miracle involved. The secret lies in the consciously controlled reduction of metabolism to the minimum required for keeping the life-processes going and in the overcoming of fear through concentration; for fear would increase the need for oxygen. The
Yoga Sūtras
end the explanations on
prāṇāyāma
with the statement: “The mind’s ability for concentration.” Breath control is the basis of body control and of mental realization.

Pratyāhāra
, withdrawal of the senses, is dealt with immediately afterwards: “When the senses do not have any contact with their objects and follow, as it were, the nature of the mind.”
⁴⁸
The senses, in this condition, not only no longer hinder the intellect, but the power invested in them actively helps it.

The next section is probably the most crucial one: it deals with three stages of realization. They are briefly explained as follows:
“Dhāraṇā
is the fixation of the intellect on one topic.
Dhyāna
is the one-pointedness in this effort.
Samādhi
is the same (concentration) when the object itself alone appears devoid of form, as it were.”
⁴⁹
The commentaries explain the first stage as a concentration of the mind on certain areas in the body: the navel, the heart, the forehead, the tip of the nose, or the tip of the tongue. In the second stage all objects are consciously eliminated and the union with the absolute is contemplated. In its perfection it glides over into the third and last stage. Here the identification has gone so far that there is no longer a process of contemplation of an object by a subject, but an absolute identity between the knower, that which is known and the process of knowing. Subject-object polarity disappears in a pure “is-ness,” a cessation of the particular in an absolute self-awareness.

The three stages together are called
saṃyama
. They are understood not as something that incidentally happens to someone but as a practice that can be learned and acquired and then exercised at will. It is the specific schooling of the Yogi to acquire those tools with which one masters the world. Though we must omit the details here, suffice it to say that as with the mastery of any science, so Yoga requires a certain talent, hard work and progress through many small steps, avoiding numerous pitfalls on the way, before one can competently use the appropriate instruments. If the training is applied to the various objects and the various levels of reality, the Yogi can win knowledge of the future and the past, obtain a knowledge of all languages and the sounds of all living beings, understand the language of the animals, know about former births, read other people’s thought, become invisible, foresee the exact time of death, become full of goodwill toward all creatures, gain the strength of an elephant, have knowledge of what is subtle, distant and hidden, know the regions of the firmament, the stars and their orbits, and the whole anatomy of the human body, suppress completely hunger and thirst, see the
devas
, have foreknowledge of all that is going to happen, receive extrasensory sight, hearing and taste, acquire the ability to enter other bodies mentally at will, walk freely on water without even touching it, walk across thorny and muddy ground without getting hurt or dirty; acquire a body which is bright and weightless; leave the body and act without it, become master of all material elements; obtain a body which is beautiful, strong and as hard as a diamond; have direct knowledge of the
pradhāna
, the ground from which all beings come, and mastery over all conditions of being as well as omniscience.
⁵⁰

More than anything else those
vibhūtis
have been described and dreamed about in literature about Indian Yogis. Biographies and autobiographies of Yogis are full of reports about such feats. In actual life one hardly ever encounters any miracles of this sort. Living for years in a place where thousands of holy men and women dwelled and where countless rumours about
siddhis
circulated, I never witnessed a single incident corresponding to this idea of the miraculous. Not too many years ago a Yogi called a press conference in Bombay and announced that he would demonstrate walking on water without wetting even his feet, against a purse of one million rupees. The bargain was agreed upon and a tank was built and filled with water. The Yogi could choose the auspicious time for his performance. When the hour had come, scores of journalists and hundreds of curious onlookers were present to watch the Yogi win his million. He lost it, being unable even to swim like an ordinary mortal. Later “unfavorable circumstances” were blamed for the Yogi’s failure and another attempt was announced for an undisclosed future date.

According to Patañjali the purpose of many of these
vibhūtis
is fulfilled if the Yogi experiences in trance those miraculous happenings as if they were real. In the overall context of
rāja-yoga
the
siddhis
are an obstacle on the way to
samādhi
.

The fourth and last
pāda
of the
Yoga Sūtras
deals with
kaivalya
, the goal of Yoga. The introductory aphorism states that the above-mentioned
siddhis
are brought about either by imprints left in the psyche from previous births, by drugs, by
mantras
, or by
samādhi
. The proper thrust of
samādhi
, however, is not backward into the world of objects, from which it is freeing the spirit, but forward into the discrimination of
puruṣa
from the
guṇas
that belong to
prakṛti. Viveka
, discriminatory knowledge, means freedom from the influence of the
guṇas:
they return to their source as soon as their task is fulfilled.
prakṛti
withdraws as soon as
puruṣa
has seen her as
prakṛti
. When the
guṇas
cease to be effective, activity and passivity, action and suffering also cease.
“Kaivalya
is realized when the
guṇas
, annihilated in the objectives of a person, cease to exert influence, or when
citta-śakti
, the power of consciousness, is established in her own proper nature.”
⁵¹

Yoga is the reversal of the evolutionary process demonstrated in the Sāṁkhya system, it is the entering into the origins. It is not, however, simply an annihilation of creation. Sāṁkhya does not think in terms of the model of the genetic method of modern science, but phenomenologically.
prakṛti
, “matter,” is not an object of physics but of metaphysics. Her eternity is not the non-destructibility of a concrete object but of potentiality.
⁵²
When
puruṣa
combines with her, there is no need for any additional cause from outside to set evolution going. It is an unfolding of primeval matter which until then had existed as mere potency, but which is always there. Yoga comes close to what we today would call psycho-science, that is, a detailed observation of human nature, but with a deep conviction of an ultimate that is missing in modern psychology.

Yoga has become part of our spiritual world culture and many Westerners, who have received training from Hindu masters, opened up Yoga schools of their own, often modifying the original teaching and adapting it to Western minds and bodies. One of the best known representatives of Yoga in the West today is Georg Feuerstein, founder and director of the Yoga Research and Education Center in Lower Lake, California. He has written numerous books about Yoga. His latest,
The Yoga Tradition. Its History, Literature, Philosophy and Practice,
⁵³
is a most comprehensive and exhaustive survey of Yoga not only in the Hindu but also in other traditions. He also publishes
Yoga-World
, an international newsletter for Yoga teachers and students, with many useful and insightful articles and news items. The Indian Government runs a scientific Yoga Research Centre in Lonavla (Mahārāṣṭṛa) where Yoga treatment is clinically supervised by modern-trained physicians.