The Encyclopedia of World Religions

yoga S 483

amount of time; second, to prolong these equal phases, so that the retained breath can circulate as much as possible. When one’s posture is stable and one’s breathing is rhythmic, one’s sense of awareness of one’s surroundings is heightened. The next stage addresses these heightened senses. Using the met aphor of a turtle, Patanjali suggests that we must withdraw our senses from the world. This involves more than simply closing one’s eyes. Rather, one must learn how to turn one’s senses on and off, so that, for example, one can turn off one’s sight even though one’s eyes are open. The goal of the sixth stage is to dissolve the mind. The practitioner learns to concentrate the mind solely on a single point. He or she meditates on a MANTRA (saying) or YANTRA (diagram) that has been given by one’s teacher, analyzing its constitu ent parts and the role of the mind in conceiving the object. The seventh stage moves beyond the analyti cal mind to a continuous awareness of the object of MEDITATION as a whole. At this stage practitioners are said to receive special powers. An example is the ability to project a lotus, have it levitate in the air, and to sit upon it. Practitioners are urged to try these powers to test the quality of their meditation. Finally, practitioners enter a state in which consciousness of a distinction between subject and object disappears. What is ultimately left is pure self ( ATMAN ), without distinctions. This state, known as samadhi, is the goal of yoga practice. It is equivalent to ultimate release ( moksha ). The state of samadhi does not at first per sist indefinitely. Those who have attained sama dhi but remain in the body are known as jivan mukta, liberated but still living ( see JIVANMUKTI ). They teach others who wish to achieve the same results. When liberated persons die, there is no need to cremate their bodies. Cremation signals purifi cation in preparation for rebirth, which the liber ated do not experience. Indeed, it is questionable whether one should describe these liberated beings as being dead at all. Throughout their careers as

In any case, Patanjali gave the royal yoga its ulti mate form as a path with eight “limbs” or stages. The basic idea behind the royal yoga is concen tration. The practitioner concentrates successively on different elements of the personality, calming them until they are at a state in which they require no attention. The process of concentration moves progressively inward, until the practitioner reaches the very core of his or her being. An extended metaphor helps make sense of applying the term “yoking” to these practices. The self is envisioned as a passenger in a chariot run ning out of control. The driver of the chariot, the intellect or ego (there is no good translation) takes hold of the reins of the mind and uses it to bring the chariot to a halt. Then the self may step off and be in isolated purity. The first two limbs of Patanjali’s yoga— yama and niyama —deal with what is most external to the self: the way in which it acts in the world. These “restraints” and “observances”—like not injuring, not stealing, studying the SCRIPTURES , and turning over the fruits of one’s actions to G OD —prepare the practitioner for the steps to come. It is said that they must not be observed simply in waking con sciousness but in every form of consciousness that a person experiences, dreams included. The next two limbs deal with the body: pos ture ( asana ) and breath-control ( pranayama ). The stage of posture does not aim at contorting the body into marvelous shapes. Rather, a prac titioner should adopt a posture that is stable and that can be maintained for a long period of time with a minimum of discomfort. In traditional India, where European-style chairs were not used, the well-known LOTUS position met those goals perfectly. As concerns the act of breathing, Yoga theory identifies at least three phases: inhaling, retain ing the breath, and exhaling. The second phase is extremely important, because Indian tradition thought that at this point the breath circulated throughout the body and animated it. The goal of breath-control is twofold: first, to regulate the breathing so that it is rhythmical, that is, so that the three phases of breathing each take the same