Silence Unheard: Deathly Otherness in Pātañjala-Yoga

Notes

123 Notes Introduction 1. This is the import of YS 2.15. 2. Considering the imagery of separation and falling apart underlying yoga, the name of viyoga would be more appropriate. 3. The Science of Yoga, p. 445. 4. See, for example, Yoga, Immortality and Freedom, p. xx. 5. Ibid., p. 97. 6. Yoga; Discipline of Freedom, p. 2. 7. Ibid., p. 1. 8. Ibid., p. 3. 9. See The Vedånta-s¥tras, with the commentary of Ía£karåcårya, pp. 55–56. 10. Yoga-S¥tras of Patañjali with the Exposition of Vyåsa, p. xii. 11. See W. Halbfass, “The Therapeutic Paradigm and the Search for Identity in Indian Philosophy,” in Tradition and Reflection, pp. 243–64. 12. See my “Yogic Revolution and Tokens of Conservatism in Vyåsa-Yoga,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 25, 129–38, 1997. 13. YS 1.48. 14. In accordance with the famous YS 1.2: “Yoga is the cessation of the mind- fluctuations” (yogaß citta-v®tti-nirodha‡). 15. References to “empty words” (vikalpa) and ordinary, valid, verbal source of knowledge (ågama) as mind-fluctuations to be eradicated indicate the overall perception of verbalization in opposition to an accomplished, yogic condition. 16. See YS 3.50. 17. R. Thapar, A History of India, p. 15. 123 124 Notes to Chapter 1 18. See YS 3.16; YS 2.39; YS 3.18. 19. YS 4.5. 20. YS 2.15. 21. YS 3.21. 22. YS 2.39. 23. YS 2.40. 24. YS 2.49–51. 25. YS 3.30. 26. Encyclopedic Dictionary of Yoga, p. 258. 27. S. Dasgupta, Yoga as Philosophy and Religion, p. ix. Chapter 1. Eight Characters in Search of the Yogas¥tra 1. Yeats quotes as his source “a man from Malabar,” who said: “Buddha tried to put down both Brahman and soldier, failed against the Brahman, was too successful against the soldier, for he destroyed our power of self-protection. We have been conquered by race after race, Syrian, Persian, French, English” (see his introduction to Yoga Aphorisms of Patañjali, p. 14). 2. See his Yoga: the Art of Integration, 1986. 3. YS 2.9: sva-rasa-våh¤ vidu™o ’pi tathå r¥‹ho ’bhiniveßa‡ (“The will to live, flowing by its own force, is thus ingrained even in the wise”). 4. The roots of misery (kleßa) are five: avidyå (wrong mode of knowledge), asmitå (ego sense), råga (attachment), dve™a (aversion), and abhiniveßa. (See YS 2.3.) 5. Råja-Yoga, p. 111. 6. See YS 2.40. 7. See, for example, Eliade’s view of the various types of yogic meditation as “Techniques for Autonomy,” in Yoga: Immortality and Freedom, pp. 47–100. 8. Among the topics discussed by Rawcliffe in Occult and Supernatural Phenomena : stigmata, poltergeists, seances, ESP, telepathy, hypnotism, firewalking, mystical experience , lycanthropy, peyotl visions, auras, levitation, automatic writing, and more. 9. Occult and Supernatural Phenomena, p. 280. 10. M. Eliade strongly opposes such a view of yogic bliss and superconsciousness (samådhi); he says: “[From] time immemorial India has known the many and various trances and ecstasies obtained from intoxicants, narcotics, and all other means of Notes to Chapter 1 125 emptying consciousness; but any degree of methodological conscience will show us that we have no right to put samådhi among these countless varieties of spiritual escape. Liberation is not assimilable with the ‘deep sleep’ of prenatal existence, even if the recovery of totality through undifferentiated enstasis seems to resemble the bliss of the human being’s fetal preconsciousness. . . . [The yogin] enters into ‘deep sleep’ and into the ‘fourth state’ (tur¤ya, the cataleptic state) with the utmost lucidity; he does not sink into self-hypnosis.” See Yoga: Immortality and freedom, p. 99. 11. Pp. 280–81. 12. P. 297. Rawcliffe sums up his consideration of the Indian rope trick as follows: “It is safe to say that the traditional rope-trick has never been performed in actual fact. It has never been anything other than one of the stock hallucinations suggested by the itinerant oriental magus or fakir to the credulous and highly suggestible audiences of the East” (p. 301). 13. Rawcliffe acquired his knowledge of yoga from K. Behanan’s book, Yoga: a Scientific Evaluation (1937). 14. G. Feuerstein—a Spiritual Seeker—sums up his opinion of ideas such as Rawcliffe’s: “There is...