Foundation of Yoga

Yoga through repeated experiments throughout its history of more than 9,000 years came to the conclusion that consciousness is the most fundamental essence of creation at macrocosmic as well as microcosmic level. This viewpoint has been formed not through pronouncements of a single individual but is the result of profound investigation by a number of seers and sages of the Vedas, independently through tapas since aeons. What they did through their tapas was not only introspection but by diving deep within themselves and saw however everything tangible was explicable in terms of consciousness. This consciousness pervaded not only in their psychic being but also in their vitality, physicality also the entire cosmos and each manifestation is pervaded by it.

Introspection is only an outer façade of their approach, just a beginning. Mind for them is a tool of understanding and whatever dawned before the introspecting mind could not be sheer physical. The seer turned his consciousness within with the result that he was able to reach the root of consciousness lying in his self-transcendence. On reaching that state, he found out consciousness as all in all in transcendence as well as in immanence. In transcendence it remained in its pure form and in immanence it assumed all possible forms the world consists of. Thus, while the purusa of Patanjali and that of introspecting psychologists remained confined to his individual being as totally exclusive of the universal, the Vedic seer rose in transcendence beyond the universal. He realised in him the individual and the universal as two phases of the transcendent with which he came to identify himself by virtue of his sharing in the transcendent consciousness.

This is also evident from multitude seers who produced huge archetypal ideas, myths, legends and principles that are common with less possibility of mutual give and take in most of the cases. This uniformity in their experience has no explanation except for the commonness of the psychic ground happening to have been struck by them so large in number and with so many spans of time amongst them in terms of both space and time. On analysis of Jung’s Theory of Archetypes, one finds that it is quite possible for people belonging to different nationalities and ages to produce similar archetypal images but in no case quite identical. The similarity in such cases is due to inherence of the collective unconscious in common within the whole mankind, the dissimilarity is due to the possibility of variations in the composition of that unconscious itself, as it is formed out of varying experiences of mankind throughout the globe right from its animal ancestry.

This was the one of the extraordinary event in the history of mankind since it involved so much absorption on the part of the aspirant of knowledge so as to become completely coincident to the very object of knowledge. In fact, we cannot deny that the more deeply we get ourselves involved in intricacies of the composition of an object, the better we understand it. It is only through such an involvement with the area of research that scientists have come to understand so much of life and the world at the physical level. Now at the end of their investigation from this standpoint, they are beginning to realise the extent to which consciousness contributes in determining the shape of things not only on the commonsense but also on the scientific. This is evident from the fact that when a scientist starts his investigation into the shape of the ultimate constituent of matter with the presupposition that it may be something like a particle, it appears to him like that and when he starts the same with the probability of it being wave-like, it appears exactly as such in before him. This experimentation on the scientific level bears out not only the supremacy of consciousness vis-à-vis matter but also its creativity in shaping its notion of the physical.

When we ponder over the creative capability of consciousness as working within us, we find it hard resist the conclusion that this capability must have its source in corresponding creativity of consciousness in its pure form. It this creativity of consciousness can handle and mould matter anyway it chooses, as we learn from the experiments of scientists, we are left with no option but affirm that consciousness must have come to have evolved these capabilities on the human level by virtue of being the real source of matter. This is what the Vedic seers contend through their admission of the origin of the physical in pure consciousness as Atman and Brahman representing it in its concentricity and extensity respectively.

The primacy of consciousness becomes more evident in the first chapter of Aitareya Upanisad, wherein it is said that after manifestation of the world, the Brahman entered into the body of man through the skull at the aperture called vidrti or seam or suture of the head. This suture is the state of bliss and the Brahman divides himself further into three states of dreaming, namely, wakefulness, dream, and deep sleep. He dwells during the wakefulness in the sense perceptions, in the manas during dreaming and vacuum of the heart during deep sleep. That is why he is called idan-dra pervading the everywhere (Aitareya Upanishad, I.3.11 and 14). This point gets further clarified in the third chapter of same Upanishad when it is asked who is that whom Vamadeva knew? The reply is the Atman or consciousness, which manifests itself in everything, In man it manifests itself as sight, sound, smell, duality, thinking, contriving, reflection, imagination, understanding, insight, understanding, resolution, desire, passion, remembrance, ideation, love, will, prana and this Atman is known as Brahman, Indra, Prajapati. It further adds that all that is there in cosmos organic or inorganic, all of them are grounded in consciousness and are directed by consciousness because it is the basis of all and this consciousness is Brahman. On ascending by this conscious self, Vamadeva attained immortality (Aitareya Upanisad, III.1-4). Similarly, Taittiriya Upanisad validates the primacy of all pervading consciousness from whom everything emanates and it itself is contained in all (Taittiriya Upanisad, Chapter II).

Kashmir Saivism also upholds the primacy of all-pervading consciousness, in texts such as Malinivijaya Tantra, Siva Sutras, Isvarapratyabhijna, Pratyabhijnahrdayam Spanda Karikas, Vijnanabhairava, and Tantraloka. They uphold that the entire creation is the manifestation of the absolute consciousness stirred into motion by icchasakti. According to these texts, when an individual is involved in creativity, it is the same icchasakti, which is identical with consciousness that operates through the individual who is also a part of the same consciousness, and this consciousness that is the foundation of both instruments used in the creativity as well as the material used in its creation. Thus, both cause and effect are ultimately the effects of the absolute consciousness which is the ultimate cause of the entire cosmos. Vijnanabhairava states that the same self in the form of consciousness is present in all the bodies and there is no exception to this rule. Therefore, a yogin who realises that everything is identical with that consciousness, he then rises above transmigratory existence (Vijnanabhairava. 100).

In regard to the primacy of consciousness, Abhinavagupta, one the greatest geniuses of India in the fields of philosophy, aesthetics, poetics, dramaturgy, yoga, tantra and mysticism, observes, “Because of its freedom and due to the absence of limitation of space, time and form, prakasa is omnipresent, permanent and possess all forms while at the same time is without any specific form. This power of freedom of prakasa is identical with its power of bliss, the delightful wonder of bliss is identical with its will power and its quality of being the nature of prakasa is identical with its power of consciousness, its all-inclusive awareness is identical with its power of knowledge and its property of being united with all forms is its power of action. Although this all-pervading consciousness is being associated with these main powers, prakasa is in reality united with the powers of will, knowledge and action.” (Abhinavagupta: Tantrasara, Chapter I.)

Thus organic and inorganic are only manifestation of consciousness which is both transcendent and immanent.