Insofar as yoga practice is a form of bodily movement (and sometimes effortful absence of bodily movement), it does not require much theoretical knowledge. Although yoga is not mere exercise, intellectually it’s often only a matter of knowing the meaning of words that refer to basic body parts and motions, like lifting your arms and holding your palms together. A yoga teacher conveys skills, mastery of the body, breath, and so on from his or her own first-person point of view. It’s “knowledge how” rather than “knowledge that,” like how to ride a bicycle or to swim as opposed to certain facts or laws that obtain. Asanas or postures and the transitions between them in a class require little theoretical knowledge, no knowledge of aerodynamics, for instance, although all movement is governed by aerodynamic laws.
Of course, in yoga practice not every body part needs to be known and identified, only those capable of being moved as targeted in the instructions of the teacher—the left hand, for example, as opposed to the spleen. One of the purposes of doing the posture called Corpse Pose, shavasana, is to learn to identify body parts, but not as one would in an anatomy class.1 The main purpose of the asana is to relax the entire body and psychological system consciously, as you lie flat on your back on the floor without going to sleep. Learning to locate and relax a specific part mentioned is a means to this end and is how the asana is taught to beginners in some traditions: toes, arches, ankles, heels, calves, upper and lower thighs, fingers, hands, arms, shoulders, and (to quote a contemporary teacher) “loosening hip sockets and relaxing the buttocks, moving from the tailbone and relaxing through the lumbar, the thoracic vertebrae, relaxing the back of the neck, and softening the throat, releasing any tension from the muscles of the jaws, lips, and tongue, relaxing the cheeks” [parting the lips and moving the tongue to lie away from the teeth], “feeling the eyeballs grow heavier and softer as they drop down away from the eyelids, the eyelids floating lightly above the eyes as you relax the eyebrows and forehead and make the temples grow soft and hollow, relaxing the scalp and crown of the head.”2 Let me stress that these two are not the same: the ability to identify and move or relax a body part as required to do yoga, and knowing the location and function of an anatomical part, such as the pineal gland, as explained in medical science. The distinction is of enormous importance to Yoga philosophy.
Yoga teachings engage, like a “how-to” book of practical instruction, a first-person point of view as opposed to the externalist, third-person point of view of science. Thus Yoga philosophy has a touchstone in the utility of its ideas for the practices. Medical science does not have the same orientation, and although often scientific hypotheses overlap with Yoga principles, the phenomenology (how they appear or are present to consciousness) of the practices as well as of the experiences to which they lead carries Yoga philosophy into its own special area of psychological theory and, as we shall see, metaphysics.
To move more slowly, let us ask whether knowing the body’s anatomy, the bones and muscles, the pulmonary, digestive, and cardiovascular systems, could be of help in yoga practice. Shouldn’t the ideal yoga instructor, if not the weekend practitioner, know the body parts and their functions as explained in medicine? The answer is complex, and surely not entirely negative. Some such knowledge could prevent injury in imaginable circumstances (though few get injured in yoga since, unlike in sports, we attend closely to bodily feedback). Nevertheless, Yoga instructors need not be medically trained. The direction of the question is misleading. We should not lose sight of the fact that in yoga practice, as in sports, our intellectual knowledge is in the service of what we are doing.
Consider the illiterate yogin or yogini. Many unschooled in letters have without question thrived, being accomplished in the practices—for instance, the revered Sri Ramakrishna, the nineteenth-century illiterate Bengali mystic and guru of Swami Vivekananda (Vivekananda taught Vedanta to William James, among other achievements, at the Chicago 1893 Congress of World Religions, and translated the Yoga Sutra). To be able to pull the shoulder blades down away from the ears and relax them, for example, or to spread the toes requires no scientific knowledge whatsoever.
Let us look at instructions and descriptions of Corpse Pose, shavasana, in three current yoga manuals: first one that tries to explain scientifically the relaxation process in the midst of instructions, and then two other, more traditional renditions of instructions for the same asana.
Relax completely, allowing your body to rest on the floor under the influence of gravity. When you first lie down most of the motor neurons that innervate the skeletal muscles are still firing nerve impulses, but your breathing gradually becomes even and regular, and the number of nerve impulses per second to your muscles starts to drop. If you are an expert in relaxation, within a minute or two the number of nerve impulses to the muscles to your hands and toes goes to zero. Then, within five minutes the motor neuronal input to the muscles of your forearms, arms, legs, and thighs diminishes and also approaches zero. The rhythmical movement of the respiratory diaphragm lulls you into even deeper relaxation, finally minimalizing the nerve impulses to the deep postural muscles of the torso. The connective tissues are not restraining you. Pain is not registered from any part of the body—the posture is entirely comfortable. This is an ideal relaxation.3
There are at the very least two referential expressions in this passage that are not phenomenological, not identifiable in a yoga practice from the inside, from a first-person point of view: “motor neurons” and “nerve impulses.” These are part of a theory, of an explanation, not of instructions telling the yoga student what to do or watch for. If they were pared away, you could be told to do the same thing. The term “respiratory diaphragm” is phenomenological; it can be identified proprioceptively in direct inner feeling and control. But in this passage the diaphragm is mentioned as part of a mechanism that, with this asana, is dissociated from conscious control. In a traditional teaching, in contrast, the diaphragm would not be in such sharp focus, the emphasis being instead on “breath energy,” prana, sometimes translated “life energy,” as will be explained.
Next, two “how-to” presentations of Corpse Pose that are woven into traditional Yoga theories.
In what has become the most popular asana manual in the United States, B.K.S. Iyengar, who has trained yoga teachers in Pune, India, for more than fifty years, quotes, on shavasana, three verses from the Hatha Yoga Pradipika (HYP 1.32, which describes shavasana, and then 4.29 and 4.30, which provide occult interpretation) along with another classical text. Having just previously spelled out the physical positioning, Pandit Iyengar provides a translation of the verses along with some commentary. In the ideal Corpse Pose, one draws in the senses into a generic sense awareness (called pratyahara), which has no particular objects. This in turn is drawn into the breath or prana and then the prana into a deeper, essentially blissful consciousness:
In good relaxation one feels energy flow from the back of the head towards the heels and not the other way around.…
[From the Hatha Yoga Pradipika:] “The mind is the lord of the Indriyas (the organs of senses); the Prana (the Breath of Life) is the lord of the mind. When the mind is absorbed it is called Moksha (final emancipation, liberation of the soul); when Prana and Manas (the mind) have been absorbed, an undefinable joy ensues.”4
In Iyengar’s usage and translation, “Prana” is not just the breath but an energy that flows in occult cavities and canals, not only the lungs. It animates the physical but also a subtle body. Normally the main pranic energy has an upward buoyancy, but, as the master teacher says, in Corpse Pose one begins to feel flow in the reverse direction. This is an important yogic experience. Deep breathing and shavasana help eliminate restlessness, agitation, and “stress,” Iyengar says, but getting rid of these in turn is part of a larger process of controlling and harmonizing the “Breath of Life,” as he translates prana.
Philosophers might expect that this “Prana” is bad theory. But it is clearly more a matter of direct experience than the earlier “motor neurons.” The concept may have a theoretic side, but here the word even in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika’s expanded sense has concrete meaning for yoga practice and in yogic experience.
Gestalt psychologists and others have taught us about “seeing as,” about how our beliefs and conventions influence our perceptual language, even basic depictions of that which we perceive. Do you see the faces in the trees, the duck or the rabbit? A doctor will see a hairline fracture in an x-ray if she thinks there is one on other evidence, and not if not. Standing on a cliff overlooking a movie set, the uninformed will see an old western town. But when told it’s just a set, a person will suddenly see the façades. Perception is theory-laden. This does not mean that we should be skeptical about tables and chairs, but it might mean that we should be skeptical about “Prana.” For theory impinges on even the lowest-level use of names to pick out something of which we are directly aware, and not everyone talks about prana as they do about tables and chairs.
However, in yoga it is common to become aware—directly, intimately—of objects of which formerly, before the practice, we were unaware. And this is true even though these things or phenomena are parts of ourselves, of our very own bodies or consciousness! Thus, in good faith Iyengar and many others, including myself, say that in yoga we become aware of prana—which is at a minimum more than filling and emptying the lungs—phenomenologically. This is perhaps most readily evident in breath and attention being directed and merging at specific spots. In any case, the claim is that pranic energy, which includes but is more than breath, is a matter of as immediate an experience as anyone’s own inner feeling of legs and arms.5
Before moving on to another traditional explanation of Corpse Pose, let us note that whatever the precise nature of “Prana” in Iyengar’s usage, the object of which the yogin or yogini is aware stands outside science. You will not find prana mentioned in any medical textbook, no “Breath of Life” as understood by Iyengar or any other traditional yoga master. Though not all agree with Iyengar overall, there is a common phenomenology of prana, of “life energy,” in yoga shastra, the traditional literature that teaches yoga practice and Yoga philosophy.
By reputation the most popular asana manual nowadays in Europe, Asana Pranayama Mudra Bandha, by Swami Satyananda Saraswati of the Bihar School of Yoga, provides instructions for Corpse Pose that include a dramatic and even more controversial example of a mysterious but reputedly phenomenological item, i.e., a “spiritual center of consciousness,” or chakra. Chakras are crucial to tantric occult psychology. The instructions also include a nicely complementary uncontroversial phenomenon of yogic awareness, pratyahara (also mentioned by Iyengar; see above), “pulling the senses back from their objects.” We’ll take up the uncontroversial first.
Relax the whole body and stop all physical movement.
Become aware of the natural breath and let it become rhythmic and relaxed.
Begin to count the breaths from number 27. Mentally repeat, “I am breathing in 27, I am breathing out 27. I am breathing in 26, I am breathing out 26,” and so on to, back to zero.…
Duration: According to time available. In general, the longer the better, although a minute or two is sufficient between asana practices.
Awareness: Physical—first on relaxing the whole body, then on the breath and counting.… Spiritual: on ajna chakra [the “third eye,” or center of consciousness located between the eyebrows].
Benefits: This asana relaxes the whole psycho-physical system. It should ideally be practiced before sleep, before, during and after asana practice, particularly after dynamic exercises such as surya namaskara [Sun Salutation, an asana series that marries breath and movement]; and when the practitioner feels physically and mentally tired. It develops body awareness. When the body is completely relaxed, awareness of the mind increases, developing pratyahara.6
This “pratyahara” is limb number five of the eight-limbed yoga, ashtanga yoga, of the Yoga Sutra, literally “pulling back.” At YS 2.54– 55, it is spelled out as “the disconnection of the sense organs from their objects as if in imitation of the talent of the chitta,7 ‘thought and feeling’ (to be still). From that comes supreme control of the sense organs.” The Bhagavad Gita also has several verses on this (e.g., 6.24–27; see appendix B), as do other yoga manuals, old and new.
Such “withdrawal (of the senses from the objects of sense)” is the yogic equivalent of phenomenology as practiced in philosophy, it seems to me. Philosophy students, I think, will naturally like the exercise. Something similar is taught in the tradition of Descartes. It involves paying attention not to the dog that is barking but to the sound of the bark and the “canoid shape” (in the phrase of Bertrand Russell); the smell of the flower, not the flower itself; the “sense data” of colors and so on, taken altogether, multidimensionally, regarded as mere objects of the senses. In classical India as in the West, a presentation dissociated from its objective indication is viewed as having a type of objecthood (vishayata) where veridical experience is the same as illusion. The snake that is a rope looks real. In pratyahara, the rope that is real looks like an illusion. We witness sense presentations as though their objects were not there, “pulling back (the organs of sense)” into a generic “sense mind” (manas).
In the yoga studio, a modified pratyahara seems all that is possible, since one has to hear and trust the words of the instructor transmitted through the sound of his or her voice. One can, however, close the eyes, as one does normally with at least certain postures, and while practicing breath control, pranayama, by itself (as opposed to in conjunction with a flow or sequence of postures). And closing your eyes heightens other capacities, as is traditionally taught. With Corpse Pose, shavasana, though, mastery requires pratyahara, at least according to Swami Satyananda and other traditional teachers.
Just how to interpret the sense data of yoga will occupy us in the next chapter, on the mind-body problem, where we will look at top-down approaches to the relation of theory and practice. Now, in contrast, let us look at Yoga theories from the bottom up. Through pratyahara and other practices, changes occur in experience; there are new phenomena. How should we think about these?
For example, consider the obviously controversial term, “ajna chakra,” in the last quote on shavasana. I say it is controversial because I presume not everyone is aware of this “center of consciousness.” I would guess that among the entire human population, few would report being conscious of anything such. But there are many yogis and yoginis who are committed to its existence as a matter of immediate experience, prototypically a yoga master such as Satyananda in line with a confluence of traditional texts. It is hard to know how to interpret such experiences. But any self-respecting Yoga philosophy has to defend their possibility and their value. Of course, not everything traditionally imputed to the center of consciousness has to be endorsed. But one point of Yoga philosophy is to remove intellectual blocks (granthi, pratibandhaka) we might have to this or another line of yogic self-development. The ajna chakra is traditionally taught as the “third eye,” a mystic center of consciousness in a subtle body somehow connected with the center of the forehead, between the eyebrows (see figure 4C). It is traditionally described as luminescent, bluish or camphor white (as seen in inner vision), and comprised of two lobes or petals spanning the body’s midline. In Yoga psychology and cosmological theory, the third eye is not itself made of matter but is capable of transmitting spiritual influences on us and our physical selves. Such influences or energies are said to originate in other worlds or planes of being or from a deeper or higher self. Yoga philosophy does not necessarily endorse all of this, but it legitimates intellectual as well as practical exploration of such ideas.8
In much the same vein of occult psychology are the bandhas of hatha yoga. These, however, are physical contractions, certain muscle tightenings, which are under our direct control. Masters of yoga talk about them as both bodily and spiritual—unlike ajna chakra, which is said to be only spiritual and not ordinarily under our direct control. The bandhas are, furthermore, much exercised in hatha yoga, especially in advanced practices. They are locks (bandha = [psychic] lock) said to enable transition to a sense of energy flow in occult pathways and between or in and out of chakras such as the third eye. Again, unlike chakric centers of occult consciousness, bandhas are voluntarily exercised in asana practices as well as in breath control, pranayama. One does not have to believe in or be able to identify chakras in order to exercise a bandha. Ordinarily we do not pay them much if any attention. But we do not “awaken” to their activity. We initiate their activity through conscious engaging or letting go.
There are three bandhas prominently referred to in hatha yoga: mula bandha, uddiyana bandha, and jalandhara bandha, respectively Root Lock, Stomach Lock, and Throat Lock. A fourth, maha bandha, the Great Lock, is the simultaneous practice of all three. Let us look again at our three manuals, in reverse order this time, starting with Satyananda explaining the bandhas in the tantric psychology of chakras, then Iyengar on Stomach Lock, and finally our contemporary anatomist on Root Lock.
From Asana Pranayama Mudra Bandha (see figure 4C for the chakric system that Swami Satyananda mentions and figure 4A for the theory of vital and mental bodies or “sheaths,” kosha, which he refers to obliquely):
These three bandhas directly act on the three granthis or psychic knots [which block the flow of psychic energy].… The granthis prevent the free flow of prana along sushumna nadi [the central channel of tantric psychology: see figure 4C] and thus impede the awakening of the chakras and the rising of kundalini [psychic energy asleep in the lower chakras].
Brahma granthi is the first knot and… when brahma granthi is transcended, the kundalini or primal energy is able to rise beyond mooladhara and swadhisthana [the first two of seven chakras, linked to the base of the spine and the area above the genitals, respectively, which are said to control the survival and sexual instincts] without being pulled back by the attractions and instinctual patterns of the personality.
The second knot is vishnu granthi, associated with manipura and anahata chakras [the next two chakras, at the level of the navel and of the heart, respectively].… Manipura sustains… the physical body, governing the digestion and metabolism of food. Anahata sustains… the mental body and the energy body. Once vishnu granthi is transcended, energy is drawn from the universe and not from the localised centres within the human being.
The final knot is rudra granthi which is associated with vishuddhi and ajna chakras [the next two chakras, at the level of the throat and in the middle of the forehead, respectively]. Vishuddhi and ajna sustain… the intuitive or higher mental body.… When rudra granthi is pierced, individuality is dropped, the old ego awareness is left behind and the experience of unmanifest consciousness emerges beyond ajna chakra at sahasrara [the seventh chakra located just above the crown of the head].9
From Iyengar’s Light on Yoga:
Uddiyana means flying up. The process in Uddiyana Bandha is to lift the diaphragm high up the thorax and to pull in the abdominal organs against the back of the spine. It is said that through Uddiyana Bandha the great bird prana is forced to fly up the sushumna nadi, the main channel for the flow of nervous energy, which is situated inside the meru-danda or the spinal column.10
From the Anatomy of Hatha Yoga by H. David Coulter, quoted earlier:
mula bandha (the root lock) is a gentle contraction of the pelvic diaphragm and the muscles of the urogenital triangle. It… seals urogenital energy within the body, controlling and restraining it during breathing exercises and meditation (again, this is a literary rather than a scientific use of the word “energy”). What actually happens is more easily sensed than described, so we’ll begin with a series of exercises.11
Here such “literary” usages are unavoidable, dare we say? Of course, according to the two traditional teachers, the literary is literal in an experiential sense. But the explanation tying the practices to occult energies and chakras is at least one level of theory higher, or more abstract, than the system of terms used to teach the exercise. Nevertheless, as with breath exercises, there can be little question that these do indeed expand one’s sense of bodily energies—Iyengar’s “nervous energy” and the like—to the point of developing special yogic “powers” or siddhis (a theme and major preoccupation of this book). The difficulty of how to square different interpretations of these phenomena is pretty apparent.
Our contemporary Yoga philosophy cannot avoid the conflict between the tantric and other traditional explanations, on the one hand, and science, on the other. One of many common texts Iyengar and Satyananda share is the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, which belongs to the fifteenth century but summarizes and echoes yogic and tantric texts of more than two millennia. In the university setting, the instinctive suspicion would be that the rich tradition of common sources would be responsible for an identical confusion on both gurus’ parts, despite the insistences that chakras, etc. are experiential. Let us call this the historicist worry. We shall return to it along with the issue of a partial intersubjectivity in chapter 4 and again in appendix E.12
For the present, it is sufficient to note that the conflict is not just about theories, since the one camp takes as experiential what the other rejects as explanatory and wrong. The distinction between the phenomenological and the theoretical applies to traditional Indian theories as much as to anatomical accounts, but no one tries through practices of controlling the breath to master medical science. The theory of the chakras, et cetera, is supposed to be backed up by rather immediate and convincing experience brought about by, or facilitated by, breath control, bandha mastery, asanas, and other practices, so experts tell us.
Without worrying about all the intricacies of Yoga psychology at the beginning, I should like to point out to close this section that it is the path of wisdom to give the benefit of the doubt to yogic testimony, like all testimony, especially from experts, about things with which we are unacquainted. This maxim holds for philosophers but is all the more imperative for practitioners. “Innocent until proven guilty” is to be the by-word.13 The alternative, “Guilty until proven innocent,” is unworkable, and slightly crazy in the context of ongoing training.
We must trust our teachers. Theories range from the concrete and particular to the abstract and general, and we are not called to believe every bit of Yoga metaphysics or even psychology. However, we should not be mindlessly skeptical of claims just because we personally have not had the experience (yet!). There are of course contexts and subjects, such as God, where we might legitimately be suspicious of the interests of the testifier or guru. Consider, for example, testimony about sexual relations or religious commitment. But we shall not be able to learn very much if we should have to have a very high level of epistemic or justificational confidence in order to pay attention. (Imagine an obnoxious student in the yoga studio questioning the evidence for prana. “Just breathe!” my teacher would say.) Indeed, classical Nyaya (a venerable Yoga philosophy that specializes in questions about the acquisition of knowledge) holds that all knowledge from testimony fuses belief with uptake, and that unless there are abnormal conditions, real grounds for doubt, we all naturally accept—as is our right—the information we receive by being told.14
In sum, while there may be real and interesting issues for philosophy, including Yoga philosophy, concerning testimony, it is at least not unreasonable to have as policy giving the benefit of the doubt. Some rather reasonable-seeming doubts will be dispelled in later chapters, in particular chapter 2. But as we turn to a description of a contemporary yoga class, please bracket—as one would (appropriately) if one were actually to attend such a class—doubts about the objects and movements mentioned.
There are several styles of yoga class in modern studios. Probably, classes in India classically were simpler than anything now. They were without rubbery “sticky mats,” for instance. However, incense may have been used (an uncommon practice now, I gather). In any case, here we shall attend a few minutes of a class of “hatha flow,” which can be described as a dancelike meditation comprised of asanas and deep regular breathing, regulating movements by breath and pausing to hold—or to flow through—a series of asanas. We might like to say that all flow classes combine asanas with pranayama, but many teachers restrict proper pranayama to practices where breath work is the primary focus.15 There are many such practices that isolate the breath and make it the target of the exercise,16 and in a flow class awareness includes more than deep, focused breathing. The breathing is nonetheless the soundtrack of the asana sequences, a rhythm and control challenged by the movements and postures.
The most famous flow series practiced traditionally is called surya namaskara, Sun Salutations, and practically all flow classes, including Ashtanga or Power Yoga (at least the Ashtanga Primary Series), incorporate a variation of the sequence. Indeed, many “hatha” classes begin with Sun Salutations, in order to warm up. Personally, I find a flow series called Moon Salutations, chandra namaskara, equally good for the challenge to the breath and for the rasa (delightful relish) of the asana sequence (surely too the Moon is quite deserving of salutations).17 But surya namaskara is the modern vernacular. We shall follow only part of one variation and then skip to the end of the class, which closes with a breath-control exercise and a mantra.
Music is an important feature of many flow classes, although not all teachers use it. The rhythm of the class with or without music is provided by maximal breathing coordinated by “Inhale” and “Exhale” commands from the teacher. But when used, music ideally blends and interweaves with both the collective breath and the level of muscular and emotional intensity (in, for example, facing pain, which changes collectively as well as for the individual as the teacher leads everyone to attend to it properly, to breath into it, as is said). Music can provide a collective emotional and mental object that both fuses class unity and inspires effort. Furthermore, music can facilitate engagement of an emotionally bhakti (devotional love) dimension in asana practice, as it has and does in rituals and singing of bhajans, devotional songs, in classical and modern India. Indeed, I daresay no asana teacher, no matter how filled with bhakti, can communicate it as well as can music and devotional singing (as performed by Pandit Jasraj, Krishna Das, M. S. Subbulakshmi, Sheila Chandra, Jai Uttal, and others). Music can also be distracting, and no teacher should have to compete with catchy lyrics. For a flow class, a teacher needs to have good timing, but that is a matter of knowing where peoples’ breath is, the timing of inhale and exhale commands. Probably for many students music can be distracting, and perhaps should not be used with beginners who need to concentrate on what the teacher is saying. A flow class, however, presupposes asana familarity, so that minute instructions are unnecessary (despite the impression that may be given below).
Among other difficulties in using music is the unfortunate fact that almost any tune can become stale. Not every yoga teacher is a talented DJ. And clearly some music is more appropriate than other, melodious chanting, for example, although the criteria of successful selection are a little elusive (it seems that any style can suffuse a bhakti element). In any case, combining music and asana flow to bring up bhakti seems legitimately yogic, bhakti being a major inheritance from our yoga forebears. Music is not necessary for bhakti, of course. In the modern Anusara yoga of John Friend, for example, many teachers try to engage the heart in devotion in asana practice without music. Sun Salutations, Power Yoga, etc., are often done without it. The presentation of Sun Salutations below cannot of course include music along with the teacher’s instructions. But occasionally I should like to return to the topic in comments, imagining its use in the class.
Below, meanings of Sanskrit words and historical observations are provided in notes indicated by superscripted numerals (as usual). My voice as pupil (with chattering mind and tape recorder) is squarebracketed, and comments are not in real practice time but rather in the less restricted space of reflection.
The teacher is fictional, perhaps a composite of many with whom I have been privileged to practice. This teacher, however, probably knows more Sanskrit than most. Also, her style may be a tad pedantic and dry, considering that yoga teachers tend to be full of the rasa, the delight, of yoga practice. This teacher is expert not only in asanas but also in knowing, by inner sense, lines of pranic energy along which attention may flow in unison with “breath” (in a sense larger than just breathing). Proficiency in yoga flow requires attention (manas) to merge with breath in the foreground so that one leads with breath in all movements and changes of direction and body position. Feeling pranic lines and movements is this and more, a peculiar kind of abstraction and disconnection from one’s own body in action while paradoxically at the same time identifying with the energy that controls the body. The key is being able to absorb the mind in the effort. An analogy to dance is not accidental. Our ideal teacher gives her instructions between breaths, so to say, never failing to conduct the breathing correctly according to the flow, whether communicating by voice or with her own breath made demonstrative and loud-sounding. Once a rhythm is firmly set, however—with, say, students of intermediate asana ability—our teacher speaks across breaths, in longer sentences. Individual students may have slightly different breath patterns depending on a variety of circumstances, and they are told to try for as full and regular breathing as possible even if that means missing the beat. Everyone’s full extension apparently differs slightly from everyone else’s. Nevertheless, in fact people bring their breathing back into unison with the class at various points, especially on the teacher’s commands.
As a pupil, I have at least one flaw or peculiarity worth mentioning (compare telling the teacher about injuries before class): I try to practice a kind of “sense withdrawal,” pratyahara (the fifth limb of Patanjali’s eight-limbed yoga), by drawing in the vision and closing the eyes (better to attend to the teacher’s voice and my own breath and bodily movement), whereas others are (correctly) positioning the gaze, the drishti, with eyes open, as called for by a particular asana, or are looking at the teacher for a model to imitate. Of course, mine is not a genuine or entire pratyahara, which would require not attending to the words of the teacher but only to the sound of her voice. The point is that the following presentation is oriented around verbal instructions, not visualization, with no modeling by the teacher (with the exception of loud breathing). However, all the asanas about to be mentioned may well best be learned by looking at someone actually demonstrating or from pictures. All good manuals have drawings or photographs. Here I attempt something different.
[Fourteen or fifteen men and women of different ages enter quietly a sunny room with a polished wooden floor and a dais for the instructor, each unrolling a yoga mat (about six by two-and-a-half feet) in a pattern that respects the placement and surrounding space of other students, all facing the front. Some sit cross-legged with hips raised on a blanket or yoga block. Others sit in Hero’s Pose, virasana, legs folded with the heels under the sit-bones and the knees together, with spine straight. Those sitting in Easy Seat, sukhasana, are noticeably a little more slouching, but most also seem to be trying to sit back properly, tucking the chin in with shoulders back. The teacher enters (everyone straightens a little) and puts a CD into a player (the room is equipped with a sound system) so that she can discreetly begin the music after the invocation. She sits about a minute in Lotus Pose, padmasana, on the dais. Opening her eyes, she gets up and closes the door, then returns to her cross-legged seat and greets the class.]
Namas te. Let’s begin today standing, Mountain Pose, tadasana, bringing our hands together, thumbs touching the heart, each fingertip feeling its partner, in anjali mudra,18 chin tucked, feet hips’ distance apart and parallel, weight distributed equally in four corners on each foot, the left and right corners of the front of the heels, the little-toe mound and the big-toe mound pressing down on the floor, on the earth, noticing the rebound of energy, shoulders down and back, chest up feeling the thumbs, elbows up and out, lifting through the crown of the head. Rock a little left and right and up and back to feel your balance. The Gita says that yoga is balance.19 Let’s begin with three rounds of om. We’ll take a full inhale and exhale and then inhale to chant. Inhale. Slowly. Fully. Exhale. Inhale to chant.
[Class in unison chants om three times, with three full inhales and the chant lasting as long as the exhale. There is a harmony of voices, though a few remain silent and many chant only in low volume. The teacher’s individual voice is discernible above or through the collectivity, and she chants clear and long with an audible interval of silence during each inhalation.]
You may begin ujjayi pranayama.20 Breathe through your nose, restricting the glottis, making a sound like the ocean. You should be able to hear your breath and maybe your neighbor’s if you listen. Offer your full breaths into the room, giving their sound over to our collective effort. Let’s make this class our puja, our offering to whatever we think the highest in ourselves or the universe, our best possibilities. Yoga teaches that puja makes bridges and crossings. So, breathe to the very top of your lungs and exhale completely, pushing all the air out as you draw the navel in. Try to maintain full and complete breaths while we celebrate with our bodies and hearts.
Bring your hands down to your sides, stretching your fingers and brightening your fingertips, in this variation of Mountain Pose. On an inhale slowly take your arms up, spreading them out wide—be aware of people on either side—to reach the ears, elbows straight but not locked, shoulder blades down the back, urdhva hastasana, Raised-Hands Pose. Let’s take one breath here. Inhale. Feel yourself connecting heaven and earth. Exhale. Inhale and lean back and lift with your heart. Exhale slowly and just as slowly bring your arms down, completing your exhalation when your hands reach your sides. Two more times. Inhale, arms up. Hold and lean back, tucking your chin and then, if you can, leaning the head back, gracefully, not hurting the neck, extending from the top of the head, joining the palms in offering. Exhale, bringing the hands all the way down. One more time. Inhale up. Hold and lift. Exhale down.
[Doing this leaning back with arms up can have an effect on the emotional center, bringing a smile. A line of energy flows out the fingertips. Imagine also devotional music, a voice singing gurave, to the guru, with tremelos on the “vay” sound just as the class is all leaning back the third time. The accompanying awareness can augment effort, make you try harder to bring the arms down very slowly, eyes closed. Sometimes the teacher says, “Feel your heart center, anahata chakra, as you gently lean back.”
In many religious ceremonies as well as art performances in both traditional and contemporary India, activities commence with saluations to the guru. Feeling gratitude to the guru is traditionally one of the sources of bhakti. The “guru” can be the living teacher in front of you; Shiva, the founder of yoga; an intermediary such as Patanjali, the author of the Yoga Sutra; or an entire lineage. This is taken up in chapter 5.
The psychology of puja, ceremonious worship and offering to a divinity—to make a stab at definition—will, however, not be much addressed. The yogic connection is said to be the maintenance of occult connections—which tantrics would also view as the purpose of asanas. So the puja metaphor is appropriate.]
Inhale up to end with an arched back. Exhale and this time swan dive down with straight back, head up but chin tucked, all the way down to the floor, leading with your heart, chest out, joyful, breathing out with control with your stomach muscles, hands to the floor, ankles, or shins. At the next-to-last moment of the exhale, release the head and the neck and then exhale completely. Hold a half count, kumbhaka,21 and breathe slowly in, enjoying the forward bend. Bend your knees as necessary. Let’s take another breath here.
Now inhale and lengthen your spine, lifting your chest slightly. Exhale and fold under. Inhale. Raise up again and hold in the gentlest of heart openings and backbends, knees bent if necessary, fingers on the floor. Exhale and release into Standing Forward Fold.
Inhale now with your fingers on your shins or the floor, and straighten your back to look up, leading with the heart. Hold it there for a moment, feel the energy in your breast. Exhale and fold back down, letting your arms hang loosely on the outside of your legs. Hold out just a second, kumbhaka, after you push all the stale air and energy out of your nose and top of the head. Push. Feel your crown. Inhale and come all the way up, lean back, elbows by the ears, fingertips touching, trying to feel each vertebra as you come up. Feel your spine or central channel as you just for an instant hold. Feel the upward flow of prana. Exhale and swan dive slowly all the way down, with straight back, chest up, exhaling with control, uttanasana, Standing Forward Fold. Inhale and look up, hands to shins, ardha uttanasana, half uttanasana. Exhale and fold. Good. Beautiful.
Inhale and step the left foot back into a long lunge, right knee bent, thigh perpendicular to the floor, fingertips lightly touching your mat, toes spread pushing into the floor on both feet, heel pushing back, lifted kneecap on the left. Head and heart up. Let’s take three breaths here. Feel the line of energy from your left heel to the crown of your head, neck and back in line, making space between the vertebrae. Exhale and push back into Downward-Facing Dog, adho-mukha shvanasana. Inhale and step the left foot forward, keep the right foot back, and keep the left thigh perpendicular; looking slightly up, focus on the crown of your head, in the movement leading with your heart and breath. Three breaths. On an exhale, push back into Downward Dog. Five breaths. Feel the energy lines. Move your heels up and down, stretching out slowly your calf muscles, even if you are able to put heels on the floor. Make sure your fingers are spread. Outer rotation in the upper arms. Shoulders down. Inner rotation with the upper thighs. Spread your toes. Check your alignment. Feel your head and neck in line with your spinal column. Om.
Now this time let’s repeat the series adding Warrior One, vira bhadrasana one. Don’t worry about the Platonic Form, the perfect pose, but do your best to have the right alignment: forward knee perpendicular so that you can just see your toes, but then gently tilt your head back into a graceful backbend. Okay, starting from Mountain Pose. Inhale up and exhale swan dive down. Inhale and look up. Exhale and step back to Down Dog. Inhale and lift your left leg even with your spine, three-legged Down Dog, toes pointing toward the floor, and exhale to a long lunge, left foot forward. Inhale and swing your arms up to your ears and lean back, Warrior One, lifting your heart. Let’s hold here a couple of breaths. Inhale and lift, exhale and swing the leg gracefully back and then on into Downward-Facing Dog. Take a breath. Now the other side.…
[On the swan dive down, often I keep my hands together in anjali mudra and trace the midline. Since my eyes are closed, this prevents accidentally bumping into somebody, among other virtues.
To pick up the bhakti theme, there are occasions when the teacher’s encouragement is crucial, when a phrase like “Good, beautiful” feels authentic and inspirational and not routine. Sometimes she talks with en thusiasm about the beauty of the poses we are collectively making, which, she says, she feels privileged to see.
I like the feature of yoga classes that no one is supposed to see you except the teacher—at least, the usual rule is that no one is supposed to look at you. We do nonetheless get a sense of the class working together, doing the same pose, breathing together, feeling lines of energy in the same ways. It’s as though each of us is nothing but a universal body and being, individual quirks ignored (or accepted), individual identity gone. Admittedly, this sense is more likely to come at the end of a class than at the beginning, unless the group is advanced.]
On an inhale pass through Plank—the push-up variation of Four-Limbs Pose, chaturangasana—arms straight, eyes or insides of the elbows looking out, outer rotation in the upper arms, elbows hugging the ribs, and then exhale into Knees, Chest, and Chin, Eight-Points Bowing, ashtanga namaskara, saluting the Earth, the Mother, touching your mat or the floor with feet, knees, palms, chest, and chin. Stay on your toes, not the top of your feet. Hold and then inhale, rolling over your toes into—your choice—Upward-Facing Dog or Cobra. Hold here a few breaths. Don’t throw the head back but lift into a gentle backbend in both poses. If you’re in Up-Dog, lead with your heart, push the ground with the top of the feet, move gracefully into a backbend of lightest intensity, chin tucked at first and head back last, eyes up. If in Cobra, lying on your stomach, palms on the floor at breast line, elbows in, tops of the feet on the floor, be aware of your little toes and try to push the whole foot evenly into the floor. Work with the legs and the stomach and back muscles; don’t push too hard with your hands. Let the breath do the work as you rise slowly with control. Hold and sway up and down a bit with the rhythm of the breath. Lift on an inhale. Pull your shoulder blades down and back on an exhale. Extend your chest. Lower slowly down on an exhale. Let’s do this two more times. Inhale up and hold. Take a couple of breaths. Exhale down. Again. Inhale. Exhale. Now everyone inhale and push back, raising your hips, up on your tiptoes, and exhale down into Down-Dog.
In Down-Dog, while you are breathing five full and deep breaths, try engaging a bandha. Let’s do Stomach Lock, uddiyana bandha. Engage it on the exhale, holding the navel in against the backbone and practicing retention, kumbhaka, and then release, but still hold the navel back a little when you inhale, slowly. Try a few times.
[For me, Down-Dog, though maybe the most basic pose, clearly will remain imperfect this lifetime. But I try as best I can to follow the instructions. Stomach Lock I find more difficult to get and hold than Throat Lock and also Root Lock, although Root Lock, everyone seems to say, is generally the most difficult to hold for much duration.]
On an inhale, step or jump to the front of your mat, keeping your hands in place, into ardha uttanasana, Half Standing-Fold. Exhale into uttanasana. Inhale and sweep all the way up into Raised-Hands Pose. Exhale and trace the midline with your hands in prayer position into anjali mudra. Take a couple of breaths. Feel your energy. Let’s go again, this time with the first lunge on the left side.…
[Our class continues in the same pattern, incorporating several further standing poses, then a sequence of seated poses followed by a few on the stomach and then the back, Bridge Pose (setu bandhasana), along with Shoulder Stand (sarvangasana, All-Limbs Pose), shirshasana (Headstand), Fish Pose (matsyasana), a few twists and leg lifts, and then finally shavasana, Corpse Pose (about which see the previous section). With each change of sequence, standing, sitting, etc., our tuned-in teacher changes the background music appropriately, in part at least according to tempo. In Corpse Pose, we are treated to soft sounds of gently breaking waves and a barely audible ocean roar and then no music, and no music for the breath work and the rest. We pick up with the instructor bringing the class to life, out of Corpse Pose, to sit cross-legged in sukhasana, Easy Pose, me with my hips raised by a folded blanket or two (if handy) so that my knees are below my waist and each is supported by a foot or the floor. We are instructed to keep our eyes closed as much as possible as we change positions and to sit quietly for a minute or two, hands in chin mudra,22 and our focus—our choice—on the heart chakra, the forehead chakra, or the crown chakra.]
Let’s open our eyes and do a little pranayama. We’ll do nadi shodana, Cleansing the Channels, the left and right channels of breath energy, which begin at the nostrils.23 Sit in a comfortable pose, with your spine straight and shoulders above your sit-bones.24 Easy Pose, Hero’s Pose, Lotus, and siddhasana are some that are recommended. With one hand comfortably in the lap or on the knee in chin mudra, place the other hand on the forehead, the forefinger and middle finger gently resting against the middle of the forehead, symbolically activating the third eye, ajna chakra. Position the thumb above one nostril and the ring finger joined by the pinkie over the other nostril. Try to keep some peripheral attention on the forehead center as you keep your main focus on the breath. At the beginning of an exhale, close the right nostril and breathe out the left. Pause after all air is expelled. Keeping the right nostril closed, breathe in gently and smoothly through the left nostril. Hold and retain, closing the left nostril. Open the right nostril and exhale slowly and completely with control, trying to balance the inhales and exhales in length as you balance the flow of air through the separate nostrils into the lungs and corresponding pranic energies. Let’s do this silently, at your own pace, for three minutes. Begin. [Three minutes pass.] Okay, now stop on an exhalation through the right nostril and breathe normally.
Finally, let’s do a kriya from the Hatha Yoga Pradipika.25 Just sit quietly if you don’t want to try this. We’ll attempt to engage all the locks, the bandhas, in a certain order and in connection with in-breath, out-breath, and retention. First, tuck your chin and engage Throat Lock (jalandhara bandha), on an inhale. Keep it engaged and breathe slowly a couple of breaths. Then on an exhale engage in rapid succession Root Lock (mula bandha) and Stomach Lock (uddiyana bandha). That is, with Throat Lock in place, do Root Lock, complete exhalation, and finally Stomach Lock. Try a couple of times and then pay attention to the energy flow along your spine or the central channel. Just watch. Breathe normally.
Let’s end with one round of the peace mantra, om shantih shantih shantih. Recall your intention and resolve to carry it out with you off your yoga mat. Now the mantra. Inhale. Exhale completely. Inhale to chant.
[The class chants beautifully, emphasizing the final syllable, “hee,” the visarga (written ḥ in the standard transliteration), of the last shantih. The session ends with the teacher bowing to everyone from her seat in Lotus Pose and uttering what has come to be the traditional closing, the mantralike greeting, Namas te, “Salutations to thee.”]
Namas te.26
The early and classical literature of Yoga theories as well as of yoga practices is in Sanskrit, an Indo-European language akin to Greek. Current speculation has it that Sanskrit-speaking tribes began invading the Indian Subcontinent from the northwest as early as 1500 B.C.E. Or, possibly, tribes speaking early Indo-European languages migrated from India to the West (there is little archeological evidence). In any case, Sanskrit verses known as the Vedas—Revealed Knowledge—were composed over many centuries, and came to be regarded as sacred within an early culture located first near the Indus River (now in Pakistan) and then in the Gangetic plain. Four Vedas are the oldest documents in Sanskrit. Theirs is an archaic, preclassical Sanskrit, just a little less distant from classical Sanskrit (which begins around 500 B.C.E.) as the English of Beowulf is from modern English.
Vedic poems and hymns express various themes, some of which are precursors of Yoga doctrines and possibly yoga practices. The earliest usages of the word yoga, however, are restricted to the meanings yoking and joining, joining a pair of oxen, for instance, and more abstractly a connection between any two things.27 The meaning of self-discipline that is continuous with practices of yoga today occurs in “secret doctrines” appended to the Vedas called Upanishads, which are foundational texts for both yoga practice and Yoga philosophy.
In forms of the root yuj from which the word yoga is derived, our meaning of self-discipline also occurs in Brahmana and Aranyaka literature that was also appended to the Vedic Samhitas or core texts prior to the Upanishads. See figure 1. Both temporal and textual priority in the sense of the sequence of materials as traditionally preserved runs: Veda (Samhita), Brahmana, Aranyaka, and Upanishad, as determined in the first case by academic indology and in the second by Vedic schools.
To be precise, although the word yoga is used for a yoke or any connection between two things in the Samhitas and is not reported occurring in our sense of self-discipline, gradually the verbal root yuj comes to be used in this way, for example, to restrain or yoke the mind (manas, attention).28 The tantric sense of yoga as union, as in union with God or union with the higher self, is a later usage suggested by the content of Upanishadic teachings but not appearing in at least the earliest Upanishads. (See appendix A, Maitri Upanishad 6.25, the last Upanishadic verse rendered, for an early usage in the sense of divine “union.” There are also certain verses in the Bhagavad Gita which at least suggest the sense of a divine “connection” or “oneness.”) “Self-discipline” or “spiritual discipline” is the sense common among Upanishads, the Gita, the Yoga Sutra, and other classic texts—up to the emergence of tantra, where often the sense of self-discipline becomes secondary to that of union.
Now legitimate Upanishads number more than two hundred, but most collections are much smaller. Different sets have been preserved in different recensions and Vedic or Hindu lineages (including some called Yoga Upanishads). Upanishads were apparently gradually appended to Vedic literature, eleven or twelve or thirteen being the oldest, according to indologists, as well as the most important, according to practically everyone.29 Recensions follow lineages of teachers and pupils whose religious life early on included rituals employing chants called mantra and later broadened to include many forms of yoga in our sense. However, Vedic culture encouraged marriage and family life and practices that contrast with ascetic patterns of life endorsed in some Upanishads, though there are many lines of continuity with Vedic teachings.
The timeline represents currrent indological opinion which is quite a bit less than certain. Indeed, for the older texts all opinion rests on scanty evidence. For our purposes, the precise dates matter less than order, chronological order, about which there is less dispute. That is to say, whatever is correct about the date of the Vedas, etc., the Rig Veda is older than the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. The columns would remain the same if the numbers were altered.
FIGURE 1 Yoga Authors and Literature.*
Early Upanishads (from 800 to 300 B.C.E.) show most of all a new intelligence that is at once abstract and mystical, free from myth and ritual as well as honed by yoga practice and experience. Prose appears, and Upanishadic poetry is usually discursive, didactic, and less imagistic than that of the Vedas. There is also punning, along with stories that read like jokes. Although argument and elaborations of positions are not nearly as pronounced and professionalized as in later periods of classical thought, even the earliest Upanishads employ self-conscious argumentation, which is rare in the Vedas. Furthermore, much of the reasoning seems self-consciously based on yogic experience. Early Upanishads are above all mystical texts. They are also regarded as revelation, in particular by the classical Vedanta school of philosophy, whose texts stretch from the Brahma Sutra (c. 200 B.C.E.) through the classical commentaries of Shankara (c. 700 C.E.), Ramanuja (c. 1050), and others and numerous subcommentaries and other Vedantic literature extending into the modern period.30
The Vedanta school takes itself to speak for the Upanishads, but other schools take different attitudes, especially about Upanishadic authority. Most importantly, there are distinct views within the Upanishads themselves about human nature and psychology as well as about reality. Nevertheless, there is a pretty well discernible core message, namely, that there is possible for us a self-discovery—a discovery of a true self or atman—which is, or leads to, awareness of the Absolute, Brahman. This state of consciousness is called brahma-vidya and deemed our “supreme personal good,” parama-purushartha, Brahman being the One, God, the fundamental reality. The thesis that Brahman is your self as well as somehow the universe has enormous influence on Yoga philosophy.
See the introduction to appendix A for background to the particular passages translated from the early Upanishads. Concerning the dates of individual Upanishads, the best that can be said is that on the basis of archaisms, quirks of style, and repetitions, scholars identify an oldest group of prose Upanishads along with several later clusters. Much, however, remains controversial, and we should keep in mind that the mainstream classical position (though of course rejected by Buddhists and other groups) is that the Upanishads were “heard” (shruta, revealed in yogic experience) immemorially, with no question of chronology. That they speak timelessly may be deemed a genre requirement, an attitude embedded in the Upanishads themselves. Vedantic theists take them to have been uttered by God. Similar genres, such as tantric scriptures (see the introduction to appendix D), which scholars concur are much later than the early Upanishads, are also considered by their advocates to have such a revealed character.
Excluding the early Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita (c. 300 B.C.E.) is the most important early Yogic text, itself seeming to be a little Upanishad inserted into a massive epic poem. The Gita is composed in verses that are stylistically continuous with the larger poem, the Mahabharata, but the tract is exceptional in its content. This “Song of the Blessed One” is devoted to yoga teaching within a theistic framework. Philosophical in thrust and subject matter, it is not written in the argumentative style of classical philosophy but rather as a yogic teaching, a secret teaching or upanishad (as the word is used within the Upanishads themselves and elsewhere), conveyed from guru to student. Krishna, the Blessed One, is the guru in the Gita, and lays out several methods of yoga. These will be elaborated later, especially in the third section of chapter 3 and the second of chapter 5, and the Gita’s philosophic ideas will engage us throughout.
Table 1 lays out the principal schools and divisions of Yoga philosophy abstractly, independently of the chronologies of the textual traditions, showing certain key commonalities and differences.
TABLE 1
CLASSICAL YOGA PHILOSOPHIES
*All these schools and traditions value, with qualifications, yogic self-monitoring consciousness along with self-determination and other theses about karma and rebirth. The five questions track important differences. But the chart glides over distinctions within sub-schools and other nuances. The answers are general and mainstream.
Vedanta is a school of philosophy that derives its name from an epithet for the Upanishads. “Vedanta” means literally the end (anta) of the Veda, in both the sense of the sequence of Vedic texts as traditionally preserved and in the sense of the goal or fulfillment of Vedic teaching. Advaita Vedanta is a classical Vedanta subschool that upholds a non-duality (advaita) between the individual consciousness and the supreme Brahman (“Thou art That,” “I am He”). There is also a second sense of nonduality championed by Advaita: our deepest consciousness is immediate and nondual in the sense of self-illumining (svayam prakashamana). These claims are aired in chapter 2.
A second broad division of Vedantic philosophies is the theistic, which holds that Brahman and the individual are in some way distinct though also, in many versions, in some way identical. Theistic Vedanta will also often occupy us.
Then there is Mimamsa, Exegesis, which is Vedanta’s sister school focused on the Veda and Brahmanical rituals (as opposed to the Upanishads). Though there are yogic themes among the Exegetes, yoga is not the school’s forté (which is philosophy of language), and it will not receive from us much attention. Furthermore, Kumarila (c. 700) and other Mimamsa philosophers reject yogic perception in favor of testimony as the way we comprehend the most important truths as well as dharma, the teaching of the way we should live. Endorsement of yogic perception, in contrast, is practically a defining mark of Yoga philosophy.
Buddhism originated a little earlier than the Gita, although the earliest Buddhist texts do not predate the Gita. The Buddha, who lived in the sixth century B.C.E., preached doctrines similar to the Upanishads and encouraged certain mainstream yoga practices. He rejected, however, what he saw as the imbalances of too much asceticism as well as the Upanishadic doctrines of self, atman, and Brahman. He espoused a goal of a supreme personal good, nirvana, enlightenment, which is nevertheless comparable to the “Brahman knowledge” of Upanishadic philosophy. Buddhism was socially revolutionary, rejecting caste (as did its sister religion of Jainism; see below).
Like Krishna in the Gita, the Buddha-to-be, Gautama Siddhartha of the Shakya clan, was a prince in northern India, or perhaps what is now southern Nepal, in the Gangetic valley. He preached sermons and gave spiritual advice for years after his enlightenment. The oldest texts date to the reign of the Buddhist emperor Ashoka in the third century B.C.E., when an enormous canon sacred to “southern” Buddhism (the Buddhism of Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia) was compiled. Known mainly in its Pali version, it is sometimes called the Pali canon. A distinct literature in Sanskrit, much of which was translated into Tibetan and Chinese, belongs to “northern” or Mahayana Buddhism (practiced in Nepal, Tibet, China, Korea, Japan, etc.), though it does not entirely reject the teachings of the southern canon.
Buddhism flourished in India for some seventeen centuries before succumbing to the intolerance of Islamic conquerors. And Buddhism matured in India for some seven or eight centuries before becoming prominent in the courts of China and elsewhere in Asia. Buddhist thinkers were great innovators in many areas of philosophy, including logic, theory of knowledge and justification for what we believe, the assumptions implicit in everyday speech, and causal reasoning. Buddhist yoga coalesces and overlaps with the practice teachings of other schools and movements.
Mahavira, who was roughly contemporary with the Buddha (c. 550 B.C.E.), founded Jainism, another religion and religious philosophy that is concerned with enlightenment and yoga practice, in particular practices connecting with the premier virtue of nonharmfulness, ahimsa. Though not historically as prominent as Buddhism, the religion has an extensive literature, and its defenders in the classical period were among the most astute minds.
The formation of the great Hindu or Vedic schools and systems of philosophy (Mimamsa, Vedanta, Samkhya, etc.) occurred at about the same time as the earliest Jaina and Buddhist literature, what we might call the epic period of classical Indian civilization in honor of the massive poem, the Mahabharata, of which the Gita is a part. Unfortunately, we have little direct record of the debates and efforts of those highly creative intelligences responsible for the wide-ranging explanations—of the world and its ground, of the human in relation to nature and God, of the meaning of existence, as well as of perceptual experience and conventions of everyday life along with, to be sure, yogic abilities and experiences—that make up the six or seven earliest of the major philosophies of classical India, the great schools. The work of the earliest system makers has become inseparable from centuries of later interpretation and advocacy. We know what we know about their formation primarily through their embeddedness in the Mahabharata and the earliest Buddhist literature, in particular, the “Third Basket” of the Pali canon, which is centered on metaphysical controversy.
Within the first two centuries of the Common Era, philosophy in India made another quantum leap, this one captured in texts expressly devoted to philosophy and exposition of worldviews. This second jump centered on argument, patterns of argumentation, and the metaissue of what counts as good and bad reasoning. Argument and defense of positions appear in earlier literature, but there is not the attention to details of reasoning—what precisely follows from what and why—that became the obsession by the midst of the classical age. The Yoga philosophies formulated in this period—including that of the Yoga Sutra (more about which just below)—are world explanations defended by increasingly intricate strategies.
A pivotal figure in the second revolution was the Buddhist philosopher, Nagarjuna, of the second century C.E. Bent upon establishing that our everyday world, naïvely assumed to be real and captured by the words we use in ordinary discourse, is not in fact real, Nagarjuna won fame as a philosopher because of the penetrating questions he put to all the schools of his time, Buddhist and non-Buddhist, and indeed to much common, nonscholastic opinion.31
It was also around the time of Nagarjuna that the sutra texts of the earliest schools appeared in their final forms. The Sanskrit word sutra means literally thread, and by extension an aphorism that captures a philosophical tenet in a most succinct statement. The sutra texts are systematic expressions of entire worldviews (darshana, world vision), although they are also digests that usually require commentary—probably oral at first—by a guru to students (shishya).
Thus much later than the Gita is the Yoga Sutra (YS, c. 400 C.E.) (the subject matter of appendix C). It is written in this new and different style or genre of literature, the sutra collection, threads strung together into a textbook of science, shastra, or a handbook for a craft. Though portions of the YS probably date way back and are contemporaneous with the Gita or even earlier, the final version (what has come down to us) belongs to the period after Nagarjuna. Scholars date the YS at about the same time as a similar text, the Samkhya Karika (c. 400 C.E.), which presents a similar worldview (a dualism of purusha, the conscious being, and prakriti, nature, as explained in chapter 2). Further introduction to the YS is provided in appendix C.
The Samkhya school is famous for a trenchant metaphysical dualism of nature and consciousness but also for three other teachings that influenced Yoga philosophies. First, there is a disidentification practice theme that relies on dualism, encouragement to pull back into one’s true self apart from nature, including one’s own nature, one’s body, life, and mind. Second, there is emanationism on the part of nature, an evolution of primordial undifferentiated stuff into various forms, principles (tattva) or stages of the unfolding of the cosmic display continuing down to the five gross elements, ether, air, fire, water, and earth. The emanationism influenced later tantric conceptions in particular—though tantric principles (tattva) are viewed as coming from God (Shiva/Shakti), not an unconscious nature—at least not in the monistic tantra of Abhinava Gupta, which will be our main focus. Third, there is the notion of the subtle body, linga sharira, comprised of subtle elements (such as internal sights, sounds, etc., as well as thought and emotion), which is incorporated into tantra but also Vedanta. Early versions of these Samkhya ideas are found in the Upanishads and the Gita and in some dualistic tantras as well. But they were only later systematized into a worldview, as explained. In late classical thought, Samkhya was eclipsed by the much greater prominence of Nyaya, or absorbed, as mentioned, into tantric philosophies.
The long-running school of Nyaya philosophy endorses yoga practices and indeed the value of yogic trance, samadhi, in much the same fashion as the YS, but its fame derives from a hard-headed realism and careful analysis particularly of methods of knowledge. It originated earlier than Nagarjuna, as we know since Nyaya views are among those targeted by the Buddhist dialectician. Nyaya texts span almost two thousand years, with much reflection on yoga and defense of “yogic perception” as a special source of knowledge. The school’s primary focus is on knowledge, the means thereto, and right procedures in debate and critical inquiry. Perhaps because of its realist position in metaphysics, it does not enjoy the Yogic reputation of some of its idealist rivals, such as Advaita Vedanta. But Nyaya makes solid recommendations in defense of the reality of the self against materialism as well as other opponents, and in chapter 2 we shall learn much on that score.
Nyaya’s root text is the Nyaya Sutra (NyS), c. 200 C.E., which is also the oldest extant Nyaya text. Commentators elaborated its theses over many centuries, and with Udayana (c. 1000) and Gangesha (c. 1325), a New Nyaya school was launched and solidified. It came to have wide influence throughout the late classical culture, providing in particular the terminology for debates and serious inquiry. Nyaya had a sister school in Vaisheshika (Atomism) that was totally merged into the Nyaya stream by Udayana, and thenceforth had practically no separate literature.
Late Upanishads (“late” according to secular scholarship; see above), the epic poem the Ramayana, as well as various minor epics and didactic poems called Puranas contain yogic themes and colorful stories about yogins and yoginis in addition to gods and goddesses, contributing to a rich culture. Some Puranas, the Bhagavata Purana, for instance, c. 900 C.E., contain stories of the divine guru Krishna when he was a child; the Bhagavata is revered in sects of Vaishnavism as much as any Upanishad. Puranas are nonetheless solidly within what we might call a Vedic or Vedantic fold, and in this way differ from another cultural movement of great moment for yoga, tantra, which broke from Vedantic orthodoxy. Here we may also mention the Yoga Vasishtha, a long work of more than 25,000 verses also composed about 900 C.E., which combines Buddhist idealist philosophy with themes from Samkhya.
The word tantra in Sanskrit can be used for any systematic instruction; a tantra is a web or (more literally) woven fabric of belief. It is not the name of a single school of philosophy or yoga practice. Tantra as a movement presupposes Vedanta: texts are called tantras—along with views concerned with yogic experiences, practices, and philosophy—that deny the exclusive right of Vedanta to pronounce on these topics in general and to classify sacred texts in particular. Tantra expanded the base, at a minimum, of yogic and spiritual authority, beyond the Upanishads as “revealed” in yogic experience.
In other words, tantric traditions usually recognize the authority of the Upanishads, etc., but find a greater or more accessible authority in later revelations, the instructions of one’s own guru, and personal yogic experience—in reverse order, so it is said, in a notably empiricist temper (per a parallelism argument that is aired in the last section of chapter 4). Among the clusters of features characterizing most if not all tantric views is an emphasis on a feminine divine being or principle, called the Goddess or Shakti, Divine Energy, who secures enlightenment and transformation. Further, not only is bhoga, enjoyment, important as part of the goal of yogic practice, but the opposition between bhoga and worldly life, on the one hand, and yoga and liberation, mukti, on the other, is dissolved on a tantric path: “Enjoyment (bhoga) becomes yoga, misbehavior the good deed [or ‘art,’ sukrita], and all of life liberation,” says the Kularnava Tantra (see appendix D), “for one following the [tantric] Kula Way.”
Tantric literature is complex, having emerged in Kashmir and South India at about the same time, clearly by the eighth century C.E., with some texts earlier. But to talk of “emerging” tantra and “novel” practices of yoga and ritual, as scholars do, is to go historically by the standards of the Upanishads, the Gita, the Yoga Sutra, and Sanskrit literature in general. In truth, who knows how old are the various tantric practices? Some texts say that they, like the Upanishads, reveal the “secret of the Veda,” and there are discernible connections with Vedic symbolism. But probably tantra has roots as much in the cultures of people speaking non-Indo-European languages as in the culture of Sanskrit. Perhaps very ancient traditions surface in the Sanskrit of the tantric Agamas, which are the earliest tantric texts (sometimes called instead Tantras, as with the Malini Vijaya Tantra, etc.), although as compositions scholars believe they are no earlier than the Yoga Sutra (c. 400 C.E.) and many are much later. There are, by the way, more than 700 Agamas and Tantras, by one scholarly count, including texts not only in Sanskrit but also in related languages.32 When one includes the commentarial and noncommentarial literature, the result is staggering, a broad and complex history of texts and traditions. If then one throws Tibetan (Buddhist tantra, which parallels Hindu tantra) and texts in other non-Indo-European languages into the mix, a series of rebirths would be needed by even the greatest pundit to take them all in. Appendix D, which is devoted to tantric yoga, includes by necessity a small sample, focusing on Kula Tantra and the teaching of the great tantric system maker and synthesizer, Abhinava Gupta, who lived in the tenth century C.E. in Kashmir.
While all tantra is connected to yoga practices, it is not just asanas, breath control, and meditation that are advocated. Indeed, tantra emerged on the classical scene not as something new in doctrine as much as something new in ritual. Classically, tantric practice involved elaborate pujas, ceremonies of worship, centered on the Goddess or powerful female divinities or yoginis. These tantric ceremonies, in turn, did not add just new mantras, new ways of mantric recitation, or renewed emphasis on mantra, although this did occur, along with occult gestures (mudra) and diagrams (yantra), the contemplation of which is said to absorb thought and quieten the mind. Tantra also added new forms of bhakti and karma yoga (to be elaborated in chapter 3), which are enormously important. But some of the novel practices of tantra, which we may call “transgressional” practices, seem to have offended, for instance, Vedantins, although all late Vedanta shows tantric influence. The most famous, or infamous, of these “immoral” practices involve wine (or bhang, which is made from marijuana), meat, and/or sex. Thus does the word “tantra” even in English carry the sense of the illicit and taboo. Personally, I imagine even the so-called Left-Hand rites (compare the connotation of the Latin word for “left,” sinister) as pretty tame. That tantra emerged against a background of a rather puritanical Vedanta seems a healthy guess (and the transgressional practices directed to the overly self-righteous, not as a palliative to the self-indulgent, as says the Kularnava Tantra; see appendix D).
Despite the importance of ritual and practice more generally in the culture of tantra, there are distinctive doctrines running practically throughout all its varieties. Perhaps most notably, there is, as mentioned, belief in a Divine Mother, a cosmic Shakti, Divine Energy, who is cosmologically the active and creative side of Shiva, in Shaiva philosophies the Great God, maha deva. In Vaishnavism, a similar role is given to Shri or Lakshmi, the feminine side or consort of Vishnu. In Shaiva philosophies, Shiva embraces the omnipresent Brahman—at least according to Abhinava Gupta and company, who will be our main focus. The great tantric master lived in Kashmir at the end of the tenth century (c. 975). He reformulated a Shaiva Siddhanta present in various Agamas that imported the dualism of Samkhya as an interpretative framework (somewhat in the fashion of Patanjali in the case of the Yoga Sutra; see chapter 2). Abhinava thus originated a spiritual philosophy of a divine creatrix, a philosophy that is monist yet also world affirmative, as will be explained (in chapter 5 along with appendix D).
Within the classical culture, we may mention finally the more specialized yoga manuals such as the fourteenth-century Hatha Yoga Pradipika (HYP), which is focused on practices but presupposes many theses of Yoga philosophy and psychology (see appendix E). Like all late yoga texts, the HYP draws upon centuries of earlier literature, in this case with admirable conciseness and brevity. It focuses on asanas, bandhas, and the breath, along with the benefits of yoga.
The history of modern yoga literature is beyond the scope of this book. The modern era may be defined by a global culture, science and technology, and a global sense of history, but there are modern yogins and yoginis such as Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902), Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950), Swami Muktananda (1908–82), Pandit Iyengar, and Swami Satya nanda Saraswati, who write in line with traditional perspectives and to whom I will sometimes refer. There will also be references to modern scholarship, including philosophy and psychology as well as indology. But I shall attempt no overview of trends and tendencies beyond saying that we moderns are the inheritors of all the ancient and classical traditions, and modern Yoga philosophers may be defined as trying, as in this book, to preserve and champion traditional theories—usually in fact with a tilt toward tantra, at least in outlook if not also in name.