Spiritual Alternative # 4: Raja Yoga

Raja Yoga refers to the system of yoga taught in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, and is otherwise known as Ashtanga or “Eight-Limbed” Yoga.  The Yoga Sutras represent the first systematized exposition of yoga in South Asian history, though the practices and beliefs they describe predate the composition of the text, possibly by many centuries or even millennia.  These sutras were composed sometime between the third century BCE and the fifth century CE, but scholars have not been able to date them with certainty.  These sutras are to the Yoga tradition (or traditions) what the Brahma Sutras are to the schools of the Vedanta tradition: the foundational texts of the tradition.*   

  

The aim of ashtanga yoga, as delineated in the Yoga Sutras, is citta-vriddhi-nirodha, or “stilling of the mind’s fluctuations” (Chapple 2003, p. 15), or “cessation of the turnings of thought” (Miller 1995, p. 29), so that “the spirit [or purusha, defined below] stands in its true identity as observer to the world” (Miller 1995, p. 29).   

The practice of ashtanga yoga consists of eight limbs:

(1) yama, or the basic moral precepts of ahimsa (non-violence, a concept made famous in ancient India by Jains, and in the modern world by Mohandas or “Mahatma” Gandhi), satya (truthfulness), asteya (non-stealing), brahmacharya (abstention from sex), and aparigraha (not coveting or not desiring material things – these precepts are exactly the same as the five basic precepts of Jainism; 

(2) niyama, or the observances of bodily purity, contentment, the practice of austerities, studying and reciting sacred scriptures, and dedicating oneself to Ishvara Yoga or the Lord of Yoga – the Lord of Yoga, at least in the Yoga Sutras, does not refer to a personal god, but to a mode of purusha, or one’s true nature, which is pure consciousness, beyond all manifest things, including the mind or inward sense, ego or sense of distinct self-identity, and intellect or faculty of knowledge/illumination – purusha is the observer of all things that occur within the purview of consciousness, but is not itself observed, and Ishvara Yoga is a pure, untainted, unmanifest mode of purusha (Miller 35-36);

(3) asana, or proper posture, which can consist of any one of the many postures of yoga popular in the contemporary world, but historically the primary posture of yogis practicing in the tradition of Patanjali has been padmasana, or the lotus posture;

(4) pranayama, or breath-control, i.e. consciously and precisely regulating inhalation and exhalation until the calm, natural breathing necessary for further success in the practice of yoga becomes automatic;

(5) pratyahara, or turning the senses inward, i.e. isolating the five senses from their objects, thus allowing for pure inward concentration;

(6) dharana, or keeping one’s concentration in one place;

(7) dhyana, or unwavering focus on a single object (one might call it a “deepening” of dharana); 

(8) samadhi, or the loss of any sense of subject-object duality and abiding in pure consciousness or pure contemplation – at the apex of the path of yoga is nirbija samadhi, where thought ceases and one effortlessly abides in pure consciousness or pure contemplation at all times, even in everyday life.  

The theoretical underpinnings of the system of yoga articulated in the Yoga Sutras are provided by the Samkhya school of Hindu philosophy.  I have already discussed the twenty-five tattvas, or elements of the world, in the section on Advaita Vedanta.  This list of twenty-five tattvas was first provided by the Samkhya Karika, the foundational text of the Samkhya school, and embraced by Vedantins and other adherents of other Hindu philosophical traditions at a later date.  (Shaivites have a list that includes these twenty-five and an additional eleven tattvas.)    

Here is a list of the twenty-five tattvas: 

(1) Purusha, pure consciousness or the witness of the arising of all manifestation, of all the other tattvas – it is often translated as “spirit” in English; 

(2) Prakriti, the primal principle of manifestation, that out of which all the other tattvas arise, often translated as “nature” or “matter” in English – Samkhya posits absolute dualism between Purusha and Prakriti, and the Yoga Sutras affirm this doctrine of dualism – there are three qualities (or gunas) of Prakriti that exist in different proportions in all of its manifestations, lucidity (sattva), passion (rajas), and dark inertia or obscurity (tamas); 

(3) buddhi, the intellect; 

(4) ahamkara, the ego or sense of distinct self-identity; 

(5) manas, the mind or inward sense or mind’s eye; collectively buddhi, ahamkara, and manas constitute manifest or conditioned consciousness, known as chitta (which is not to be confused with the similar-sounding word chit, which refers to pure consciousness or supreme awareness, beyond prakriti or manifestation, and is one of the three components of the description of Brahman as sat-chit-ananda discussed in my post on Advaita Vedanta); 

(6) – (10) the tanmatras, or the five senses considered inwardly, prior to their appearance in or interaction with the physical world: shabda, corresponding to sound or hearing; sparsha, corresponding to touch rupa, corresponding to sight or visual form; rasa, corresponding to taste; and gandha, corresponding to smell; 

(11) – (20) the indriyas, or the five faculties of sensation and the five faculties of action, the former including the ears, skin, eyes, tongue, and nose, the latter including the excretory organs, procreative organs, hands, feet, and larynx or voice; 

(21) – (25) the bhutas, or five physical elements: ether, air, fire, water, and earth. 

The Yoga Sutras reaffirm this list of twenty-five tattvas, and chart out a course of action that leads to the transcendence of prakriti and its twenty-three emanations or evolutes, and to abiding in pure consciousness, where all contents of consciousness are witnessed by the observer (drashtri, which is none other than is purusha), and where subject-object duality ultimately ceases, in the state or stage of samadhi.  The idea of the “unseen seer” or “unobserved observer”) has its origins in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (3.7.23), and because of this is also prominent in monistic and non-dualistic Hindu traditions, particularly Advaita Vedanta.  However, it was fully articulated in the more dualistic Yoga Sutras of Patanjali before, as well.  

Yoga, as it is described in the Yoga Sutras, includes much more than postures and breathing exercises.  It incorporates several types of what most Westerners would call meditation (and Hindus too: the Sanskrit word for “cultivation,” especially mental or spiritual cultivation, is bhavana), as well as a fairly rigorous moral code that has a lot in common with the moral codes of early Jainism and Buddhism.  In my experience, breath control while sitting in the lotus posture calms the mind better than any other practice.  Coupled with the regular practice of mindfulness or naked awareness of what is currently occurring in the stream of one’s consciousness (a practice that originates in Buddhism, and which was taught by the Buddha himself in several of his early discourses), it is probably the most effective preliminary practice for training the mind to engage in more advanced spiritual cultivation.  If one keeps at it, it is possible to reach the highest echelons of spiritual development through its practice, although it takes quite a long time in some cases, and so requires great patience and resolve.  The most difficult thing to do is to practice regularly in the early stages, but one who sincerely seeks spiritual advancement or development can most likely succeed at it.  This is true of most forms of spirituality or mental cultivation.    

A final note: the contemporary forms of yoga that are popular in South Asia and the West, and which emphasize postures and breath control, are almost all derived from the revived form of Hatha Yoga spearheaded by Tirumalai Krishnamacharya (1888-1989).  Krishnamacharya was a brilliant man who was not only the great reviver of Hatha Yoga, but was also familiar with all six Hindu darshanas and a practitioner of traditional Indian ayurvedic medicine.  However, none of the foregoing discussion deals with any of the forms of yoga derived from this revived tradition of Hatha Yoga.     

* There are four darshanas or traditions of Hindu philosophy besides Vedanta and Yoga that also have foundational texts in the form of sutras.  These other four traditions are the Purva Mimamsa (note that Vedanta is also called Uttara or “Later” Mimamsa, and complements Purva or “Earlier Mimamsa – Vedanta deals primarily with attaining moksha or liberation, while Purva Mimamsa deals primarly with proper ritual behavior), Nyaya, Vaisheshika, and Samkhya (the latter of which provides the theoretical basis for most of the concepts in the Yoga Sutra, and so is often considered continuous with the tradition of Yoga).  Note that unlike modern Western philosophy, in Hindu “philosophy,” there is no distinction between theology and spirituality or religion one the one hand, and philosophy proper on the other, or even between science and philosophy or mathematics and philosophy.  This was also the situation in the West prior to the modern period, but no longer is.  The important point here is that Hindu views of the world are not (or at least not exclusively) based on faith in the Christian sense, that is, assurance of the truth of things that one does not see, or belief in that which is not evident, or belief in what one hopes to be true rather than what one knows to be true (to paraphrase Chapter 11 of the Epistle to the Hebrews).  Hindu traditions, while they acknowledge a broader set of sources of knowledge than most traditions of contemporary Western thought – namely perception, including sensory perception and perception with the mind’s eye or inward sense; inference; analogy; and testimony of the wise or trustworthy, especially the seers (rishis) who composed the Vedas or had the eternal truth of the Vedas revealed to them, and human commentators on the Vedas – provide a greater place for reason than most (though certainly not all) Christians have historically done.  At the same time, it is true that the standard historical Hindu belief that a proposition is true because it is recorded in the sacred texts of the Hindu tradition (i.e., the Vedas, or shruti - “heard texts” – and sometimes the smriti, or “remembered texts”) or in authoritative commentaries on those texts sure seems a lot like faith in the Christian sense.

RECOMMENDED READING:

Yoga: Discipline of Freedom, which is a translation of the Yoga Sutras and a commentary on them by Barbara Stoler Miller, one of the greatest Sanskrit to English translators.  This is a translation of the sutras into simple, everyday English (although admittedly this approach has its dangers, it is still beneficial to those who have only a cursory or minor interest in understanding the foundations of yoga).  

There are multiple translations of the Yoga Sutras with commentaries available in English.  Miller's is excellent for those with a cursory or beginner's interest, but the more detailed translation and commentary by Professor Edwin Bryant is better for those with a stronger interest.  This translation and commentary provides a highly detailed translation of the aphorisms of the text (which are provided in Sanskrit, in both Devanagari and Latin transliteration, as well), as well as a general history of yoga and an overview of the intellectual background of the Yoga Sutras.  It is ideal for a person who wants a more in-depth overview of the text and the history of yoga.     

As everyone who has ever even casually perused the self-help and fitness sections of virtually any North American bookstore knows, there are seemingly countless books on yoga by different yoga teachers from South Asia, the West, and other parts of the world.  Many such writers have written their own translations and commentaries on Patanjali's sutras.  While all writers inevitably have certain biases, many of these translations and commentaries are written with a very blatant ideological (and pedagogical) agenda in mind, and do not even attempt to provide accurate information about the system delineated in Patanjali's sutras.  Thus, while many of them are quite good, I recommend approaching them with at least some skepticism.  Of course, one should take this approach with scholarly translations, as well.  

There are two books on comparative yoga that I also recommend.  First, there is The Crown of Life: A Study in Yoga by Kirpal Singh, a guru of Surat Shabad Yoga.  This book provides an excellent catalog of different types of yoga, and, unsurprisingly, ultimately argues for the superiority of Surat Shabad Yoga to all other types of yoga.  Second, there is Reconciling Yogas by the great Jain philosopher Haribhadra (the linked version was translated, with commentary, by Professor Christopher Key Chapple), who lived sometime between the sixth and eighth centuries CE.  Haribhadra is notable for being one of the first (and perhaps the first, though the Rig Veda vaguely alludes to the idea as well) thinker to argue that multiple paths of spiritual practice are capable of leading to the same goal of liberation or moksha.  This is the text in which he presented this argument, although predictably Haribhadra believed that his own Jain tradition was the most effective or direct means of achieving moksha, as well as the most correct in terms of doctrine and practice.