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342 CH APTER T W ENT Y-FI V E Hindu Metaphysics and Psychology Sāṁkhya-Yoga Absolute freedom comes when the guṇas, becoming devoid of the object of the puruṣa, become latent; or the power of consciousness becomes established in its own nature. —Patañjali, Yoga Sūtra IV, 34 Yoga is one of the most popular and most ambiguous words in Indian literature, a word with which everybody seems to be familiar, as the advertisements of numerous Yoga schools suggest. Etymologically the word is derived from the root yuj-, to join, to unite. Pāṇini, the grammarian, explains the meaning of yoga as virtually identical with that of our word religion, union with the Supreme. Patañjali, in his Yoga Sūtra, defines yoga as “cessation of all fluctuations in consciousness.” According to the Vedāntins yoga means the return of the jīvātman, the individual being, to its union with the paramātman, the Supreme Self. In a more general sense Hindu scriptures use the word yoga as a synonym to mārga, denoting any system of religion or philosophy, speaking of karma-yoga, bhakti-yoga, jñāna-yoga. We propose here only to deal with yoga in its technical and classical sense, with the Yoga system as explained by Patañjali. The system is called Rāja Yoga, the “royal way,” in contrast to Haṭha Yoga, the tour de force1 of most Western Yoga schools, or the Kuṇḍalinī Yoga of the Śāktas, mentioned before. It is also called Sāṁkhya-Yoga, because of its intimate connection with the darśana known as Sāṁkhya.2 A BR IEF HISTOR ICAL SURV EY Sāṁkhya-Yoga has become, in one form or another, part and parcel of most major religions of India: thus we find Sāṁkhya-Yoga combined with Vaiṣṇavism, HINDU M ETA PH YSICS A ND PSYCHOLOGY 343 Śaivism, and Śāktism, and most of the Purāṇas contain numerous chapters on Sāṁkhya-Yoga as a path to salvation.3 It fell into disfavor at a later time, when Vedānta became the predominant theology of Hinduism. The reasons for this development are twofold: Sāṁkhya does not base its statements on scripture; it even explicitly rates śruti no higher than reasoning. And it does not recognize a Supreme Lord above Puruṣa and Prakṛti, an idea that was crucial to the theistic systems of medieval Hinduism. Some seals from the Sindhu-Sarasvatī civilization show figures that were interpreted as depicting yoga postures. The basic idea of Sāṁkhya philosophy, the male-female polarity as the source of all development, does not need a specific “inventor”; it can easily be considered a “natural system.” In some of the earlier Upaniṣads we find allusions to doctrines that could be termed Sāṁkhya, leaving open the question whether the Upaniṣads made use of an already developed philosophical system or whether the system developed out of the elements provided in the Upaniṣads. In order to explain the name Sāṁkhya—in modern Indian languages the word means “number”—some scholars have resorted to the hypothesis of an original Sāṁkhya that, like the school of Pythagoras , was concerned with numbers and conceived of the world as being constructed from harmonious proportions.4 S. N. Dasgupta sees, moreover, a close inner relationship between Sāṁkhya-Yoga and Buddhism. He writes: “Sāṁkhya and the Yoga, like the Buddhists, hold that experience is sorrowful. Tamas represents the pain-substance. As tamas must be present in some degree in all combinations, all intellectual operations are fraught with some degree of painful feeling.”5 The original meaning of Sāṁkhya must have been very general: understanding , reflection, discussion, so that the name simply came to connote philosophy or system. Kapila, its mythical founder, figures in the Indian tradition quite often as the father of philosophy as such. Vedāntins who assume a different position on many basic issues, especially with regard to the place that prakṛti holds, quite frequently attack the Sāṁkhya system, but there is hardly a book that does not deal with it or that would not betray its influence by using Sāṁkhya terminology. The basic ideas of Sāṁkhya may be found already in the cosmogonic hymns of the Ṛgveda, in sections of the Atharvaveda, in the notion of the evolution of all things from one principle, dividing itself, in the Upaniṣads and also in...

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