Yoga: Original Concepts and History

Abstract

Yoga is not that new to the Western world. In fact, studying about the Transcendentalist Movement in the eighteenth-century West, one can see the deep influence of the ancient Indian Yogic scriptures (Upanishad) on notable Western philosophers like Arthur Schopenhauer, author of the famous book, The World as Will and Representation (Payne 1958). Schopenhauer’s deep considerations that a lifestyle of negating desires, similar to the ascetic teachings of Upanishads, was the way to attain liberation and he keeping a copy of the Upanishad by his side all the time attest to the above fact. Unfortunately, despite its immense popularity, Yoga is a profoundly misunderstood subject, more so in the West. The experiential essence of Yoga is to pass beyond the world of intellectual distinctions and into the world of the unthinkable, where reality appears as undivided and undifferentiated. For most, this seems too difficult to grasp. Yoga is often mistaken for unclearness or un-objectiveness, mainly due to its experiential nature. Ancient Indian philosophies elude even the greatest Western thinkers. For example, in his letters to Romaine Rolland, Sigmund Freud’s mystic friend, Freud himself comments on his own difficulty with the philosophy and practice of Yoga. He writes: “…let me admit once more that it is very difficult for me to work with these almost intangible quantities…” (Freud 1930, p. 72). Being exclusively experiential and subjective in nature, Yogic experiences, while documented over many centuries and millennia, cannot be verified using concrete measures. Unlike scientific methodology, Eastern mysticism regards intellect as merely a means for clearing the path to direct mystical experience. This is called direct because it is experiential and thus bypasses the interpretive and intellectual interference of the ordinary mind. Yogic experiential knowledge is intuitive and non-conceptual and not based on a concrete sensorial experience. In essence, one must transcend taxonomies and multiplicity in order to experience a reality void of arbitrary distinctions. Yoga’s disregard for concrete concepts, reductionism, and the mind/body dichotomy is partially responsible for the grave misunderstanding of Yoga. Here follows the fundamental difficulty with understanding Yoga. As Suzuki (1963, p. 11) writes: “… the scientific method in the study of reality is to view an object from the so-called objective point of view. For example, suppose a flower on the table is the object of a scientific study. The chief characteristic in this scientific (or objective) approach is to put this object (flower) to all kinds of analyses, to talk about it, to go around it, to catch anything that attracts our sense–intellect and abstract it away from the object (flower) itself, and, when all is supposedly finished, to synthesize these analytically formulated abstractions and take the outcome of the analysis for the object (flower) itself. But the question still remains: Has the complete object really been caught? The answer is no. These objective observations are mere descriptions of the object, in this case the flower, but in reality not the flower itself.

When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.

—Sage Patanjali of ancient India (in the Mahabhasya)