Silence Unheard: Deathly Otherness in Pātañjala-Yoga

6 The Dying Yogin’s Challenge; Homelessness and Truth

91 6 The Dying Yogin’s Challenge; Homelessness and Truth Silence and understanding are homeless; they have no precise location. According to Så£khya, true knowledge is extremely paradoxical; it must exist but cannot be situated, since the mind, obviously, cannot contain or sustain it. Silence seems similarly ungrounded. Both knowledge and silence imply cessation, elimination, abnegation. Påtañjala Yoga is preoccupied with this condition, samådhi, which “carries truth.” Indeed, the yogin’s stark otherness is humanized in the Yogas¥tra by its preoccupation with truth and knowledge. After all, the naked yogin is divested of almost all human traits. Thus, in the scholarly jargon, he “transcends the human condition.” He is not subject to the law of gravitation, he does not need food and drink, he renounces family, friends, and offspring; he does not respond to immediate sensory reality, he knows the moment of his death, seeing, as if with his own eyes, his future and past. Moreover, the yogin resists the most powerful predispositions of thought and emotion allegedly inherent in the human condition. The yogin does not say “I” and “me”; he does not even wish to live on, and is thus, indeed, different from the rest of humankind. Thus Patañjali conceives the yogin and his world in the Yogas¥tra; thus he makes sense of the yogin’s terrible silence. But Patañjali’s main point is not consummated in the explanation of the yoga universe, silence, and wonders, for he is relentless in proposing that there is truth in the yogin’s silence, or that this silence is truth. Such an assertion coming from a sober and sophisticated mind is disturbing. Indeed, by making use of the concept of truth in reference to the yoga universe, Patañjali humanizes the yogin and posits his life as disconcertingly relevant. It is easy (and rational) to dismiss the yogin’s pathological silence if it is part of a collection of dumb fakir techniques; it is more difficult if the yogin’s silence is associated with “truth.” The connection of enlightenment and silence is one of the central themes in Patañjali’s conceptualization of the yoga universe. The road to the silence 92 Silence Unheard of samådhi is also the road to understanding. Harsh discipline is rewarded, according to YS 2.28: “From the application of the eight practices of yoga, as the contaminations are reduced, there emerges light of knowledge (jñånad ¤pti), up to the ultimate discrimination (between subject and object).”1 Samådhi, yogic silence, upholds cosmic truth (®ta¢-bharå).2 By virtue of mastering yogic meditation the light of knowledge dawns (taj-jayåt prajñåloka‡).3 Samådhi is the condition in which things are seen “as they are” (yathå-bh¥ta).4 Samådhi is the condition in which the highest knowledge , puru™a-jñåna, emerges.5 Indeed, predominant among the unusual experiences and feats described in the Yogas¥tra are attainments of cognition and knowledge. Knowledge of the universe,6 of anatomy,7 astronomy8 emerges in a silence charged with objects (sa-b¤ja-samådhi). The description and corroboration of silence as charged with understanding and illumination, coexisting with healthy and productive homelessness , is pivotal to the Yogas¥tra. All of a sudden, Patañjali penetrates the yogin’s thick otherness, mitigating the burden of silence with light. Silence charged with truth and understanding becomes a challenge; an audience emerges, eager to listen. Herein is the meaning of the Yogas¥tra, providing an occasion for thought and reflection on the dying yogin who, though utterly silent, communicates in accordance with Patañjali’s deepest need and interest . Patañjali includes the yogin within the ken of humanity, transforming dumb into enlightened and eloquent silence. Understanding or enlightenment, however, are neither reasoning nor wellestablished , traditional knowledge nor even correct perception. As suggested above, Patañjali emphatically rejects normal consciousness and its operation as relevant measures of the yogin’s truth.9 In the technical and conventional terminology, the normal functions of the body and mind are not standards of truth (pramåªa). Thus, people who venture to approach the yoga universe and stay normal and intact are not deemed equal to the task by Patañjali. Universal Philosophers, Complacent Outsiders, Bodily Practitioners, Seekers, Mere Philologists, and even Ultimate Insiders who wish to compromise the yogin’s truth with science cannot have access to the truth of yoga. Heavier, deeper, more resonant silence is...