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Chapter 26
AN OV ERV IEW OF
C L AS S IC AL YOGA
P HIL OS OPHY AS
A P HI LOSOPHY
OF E M BOD IED
S E L F- AWAR ENESS
Ana Laura Funes Maderey

Abstract
A common element in many classical Indian philosophies is the acceptance of a “yogic
perception” as a direct and immediate means of knowledge. While the debate on this
type of perception is relevant for the history of Indian epistemology, the purpose of
this chapter is to show that there is a non-reductionist conception of embodiment
and a multilayered process of self-awareness implicit in the possibility of a “yogic per-
ception”, especially as those two elements were expressed during the initial stages of
orthodox Yoga philosophy up to its classical formulation in Patañjali’s Yogasūtra.

Introduction
In the wider sense of the term, yoga refers to a method or a set of different physical
and mental disciplines that were practiced throughout South Asia to attain human
liberation even before it became a philosophical orthodox system approximately in
the second or fourth century CE with the appearance of the Yogasūtra of Patañjali. Not
only what we now call Hindu, but also Buddhist and Jaina, traditions incorporated
the practice of yoga as a means to realizing an enlightened state of being. We could
say that it was due to the different ways in which these groups related to the practice
of yoga that their varied philosophical traditions developed. The influence of a self-
discipline is of such importance to the formation of Indian philosophies that some

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scholars like Stephen Phillips refer to most of the classical philosophical schools of
India as ‘Yoga philosophy’ (Phillips 2009, 31). This idea finds its precedent in Mircea
Eliade’s Patañjali and Yoga where he states that: ‘No one knows of a single Indian spir-
itual movement that is not dependent on one of the numerous forms of yoga’ (Eliade
1969, 5).
With some exceptions, like the materialist heterodox school of the Cārvākas and
the Mīmāṁsā orthodoxy, a common element in classical Indian philosophies is the
acceptance of a ‘yogic perception’, that is, a special type of pramāṇa (means of know-
ledge) distinguished from the one provided by the senses, reasoning, analogy, or testi-
mony. Yogic perception can be defined as the immediate presentation to awareness of
an object or truth through meditation, i.e., through a practice of concentration and
contemplation (samādhi) that is not mediated by the senses or thoughts. Indeed, the
debate on the veracity of this type of perception is relevant for the history of Indian
epistemology. However, the purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate the develop-
ment of a non-reductionist conception of embodiment and a multilayered process of
self-awareness implicit in the possibility of such ‘yogic perception’, especially as these
developments were articulated during the initial stages of orthodox Yoga philosophy
and up to its classical formulation in Patañjali’s Yogasūtra.

The anatomy of a chariot

The practice of yogic meditation probably first developed within the context of rit-
ual and world-affirming values like those present in Vedic culture. The elaboration
of Vedic rituals in ancient India involved many elements that we would recognize as
precursors of Yoga doctrines and practices, such as the recitation of mantras, purifica-
tory practices and austerities in preparation for the ritual, rigorous breathing and con-
centration techniques, precise movements of the body and hands in connection with
the instruments used for the sacrifice (yajña), and devotional invocations to obtain
the blessing of a god. The term ‘yoga’ appears in the Rig Veda where it is used with
its etymological meaning derived from the root ‘yuj’, to yoke, join, fasten, or harness
(White 2012, 3). Initially, ‘yoking’ emerged in the context of harnessing warhorses to
a chariot or yoking oxen to a plow, both of which required a certain degree of skill and
mastery. It was during a later stage of the Vedic scriptures, in the Upaniṣads, when the
former image became a clearer metaphor for the embodied self, used to convey a ‘yok-
ing’ of the senses and mental processes in order to experience mastery of the self over
the body–mind complex.
We can first see a concise articulation of yogic ideas on embodiment and self-
awareness in the Katha Upaniṣad. A young brahman, Naciketas, asks Yama, the Lord of
Death, about the destiny of a person when she dies. Yama refuses to answer the ques-
tion, and tries to distract Naciketas by offering him worldly pleasures, but Naciketas
remains undisturbed by them. Yama is pleased with Naciketas’ level of detachment and
determination demonstrated and reveals to him the truth about death that lies beyond
the senses and immediate gratification of desires. Then the metaphor of the chariot is
introduced as an injunction to: ‘Know the self as the one who possesses and rides the

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chariot; the body as the chariot itself. Know the intellect as the charioteer; and the
mind as the reins’ (Katha Upaniṣad, 3.3–6 in Olivelle 1998, 389). The senses are the
horses which, if not trained, follow the path of desire and ignorance. Only someone
with a disciplined mind can govern the senses. With these under control, then one is
able to look within and become aware of the layers of one’s own being. Only then can
the truth be known and immortality achieved (ibid., 3.10–16.)
The ultimate goal for cultivating an extrasensory insight of oneself is to liberate the
Self from its attachment to the chariot, that is, from the body (s%arīra), which, in the
full sense of the term, includes the organs of perception and action (indriya-s) as well
as the intellect (buddhi) and mind (manas), and thus gain mastery over it. Those who
accept the possibility of a yogic perception do it on the grounds that verbal statements
are not enough to know and experience those objects that are beyond the range of
senses (such as the true nature of the self; the identity between the individual self and
Brahman; the law of cause and effect of actions, or spiritual liberation). Yogic philoso-
phies consider that if a statement is true, then we should be able to experience those
truths directly through adequate means.

Yogic perception, self, and embodied awareness

Mīmāmsaka philosophers argued that yogic perception cannot be a means of know-
ing the truths transmitted by tradition, because, even if possible, it would be useless.
People who are not yogis would not be able to distinguish whether someone is a
yogi or not (McCrea 2009, 56). In other words, it would be impossible to determine
whether someone knows what they claim to know unless we knew it ourselves, in
which case, we would not need the teacher or the tradition. But we do need them,
so yogic perception seems to be useless after all. Those who claim their traditions to
be founded on yogic perception or meditative insight face the problem of explain-
ing why their founder’s vision is so different and contrary to the vision of another.
They end up, according to this objection, arbitrarily validating a private perception
as universal.
Certainly, the traditions arising from the Upaniṣads, the Buddha, and the Jaina are
seen as being founded on a yogic meditative experience; and true enough, at least as
far as their metaphysical views go, they diverge considerably. For example, the image
of the chariot is used in Milindapañha (II.1.25), a Buddhist dialogue between King
Milinda and Nāgasena, to show, contrary to the Upaniṣads, that there is no self that
commands the chariot. Nāgasena argues that, if the human being is analogous to a cha-
riot, then there is nothing in the chariot that would correspond to a ‘self’, for what we
call ‘self’ is but a convenient designation of the ephemeral parts, their organization and
functions, and the chariot itself is nothing beyond that. Within the Buddhist context,
yogic perception is the capacity by which we directly experience the impermanence of
all things and the non-existence of the self; the only experience that is able to bring
liberation according to Buddhist philosophy.
Rich and heated philosophical debates regarding the content of yogic perceptions
developed within orthodox Indian philosophies and Buddhism reaching no formal

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agreement. For the Mīmāmsākas, the only way to avoid the arbitrariness of personal
yogic insights was to postulate an authorless, non-human source for the tradition and
deny any meaningful epistemological validity to yogic perception, for knowledge of
the tradition is available to everyone in their normal capacities, and not just for those
with yogic capacities (McCrea 2009, 57). Even though it is true that the content of
yogic perception or, perhaps better said, the interpretation of the experience given by
yogic insight, might diverge from one tradition to another, all Yoga philosophies admit
the following: that there is an extrasensory insight available to anyone who undergoes
a process of self-awareness, whatever the ultimate sense of ‘self’ may be. Although
personal, a process of self-awareness is not private, for it is not a mere mental process,
but a practice that engages the body–mind system as a whole in a methodical way,
and it is this which gives the yogic experience its intersubjectivity. The specificities of
the method may depend on the tradition, but it is presupposed by all Yoga philosophy
that such method is needed for the simple reason that to know one’s self (or non-self)
is something that cannot be done just by the senses, reason, or speech, but by direct,
unmediated self-perception, in other words, through meditation (Manduka Upaniṣad,
3.8, in Olivelle 1998, 451)

Meditation, embodiment, and self-awareness in classical Yoga philosophy

Yoga is defined as ‘a state of meditative contemplation or absorption (samādhi)’ by
Vyāsa (yogah samādhih, YBh I.1), the earliest known commentator of the Yogasūtra
of Patañjali (YS). Later commentators called this work the Sāṁkhyapravacanabhas%ya
(A  Commentary on an Interpretation of the Sāṁkhya) because, philosophically, it
was always understood within the metaphysical framework of the Sāṁkhyan system
and, historically, because it seems to have been originated as a creative elaboration on
the old Sāṁkhya philosophy (see Larson and Bhattacharya 2008; Frauwallner 2008).
Sāṁkhya philosophy had argued for the need of knowing one’s self (puruṣa)—pure
consciousness, infinite and immutable—as metaphysically distinct to matter (prakrti)—
mutable and insentient—in order to eradicate suffering from its root. Without discrim-
inating self from matter, the individual undergoes a process of misidentification where
there is no knowledge of one’s own nature as pure consciousness, and thus the person is
subjected to and affected by the changes and limiting conditions of matter. Both prin-
ciples, although ontologically distinct, are always co-present and all-pervasive, and it is
precisely this conjunction (samyoga) which creates the evolutionary process (Sāṁkhya
Kārika [SK] 21). The self, by its very nature, cannot help but to observe the changes
and transformations of the material principle which, without an observer, would not
have any purpose at all (SK 17). One of the very first combinations of the qualitative
substances (guṇa-s) that constitute the material principle gives origin to the intellect
(buddhi), from which egoity or the I-sense (ahaṁkara) emerges (SK 22). From egoity
matter reconfigures itself in five subtle elements (tanmātra-s)—sound, touch, smell,
form, and taste— which will then constitute the gross elements (bhuta-s)— ether or
space, air, earth, fire, and water—on the objective side of the process. On the subject-
ive side, egoity gives rise to the mind (manas), the five sense organs and the five action

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organs (indriyas). Although Yoga does not take the functions of the intellect, egoity,
and the mind to be separate ontological elements, but rather aspects of the same men-
tal capacity or citta, it agrees with Sāṁkhya in that these material elements or tattvas
constitute the whole realm of experience (physical and phenomenal), and thus, the
embodiment with which sentient beings experience such realm.
With few variations, Yoga philosophy assumed the same evolutionary process as
described by the classical Sāṁkhya school. However, in working out the distinction
between puruṣa and prakrti—the seer and the seen— the YS does not depart from a
metaphysical point of view that focuses on the dualistic relationship between these
principles. (See Whicher 1998 and his chapter in this volume.) The distinction is
found instead through an embodied approach to self-awareness (svarūpadars%ana). The
knowledge of one’s self as distinct from that which is constantly changing is the result
of an effort that involves becoming aware of all aspects of the body, clearly outlined by
Patañjali in the eight parts of Yoga (YS II.28–29).
Samādhi is the culmination of a process that starts with the purification of our bod-
ies and actions, both in the physical and moral sense (with the yama-s and niyama-
s, YS II.30–32); followed by a practice of physical stillness and steady posture that
allows for the mental faculties to rest and focus despite distractions posed by opposite
sensations (YS II.46–48). The yoga posture (āsana) is understood as a position of
the body that creates the conditions for meditation. Keeping the physical body still
and steady is an embodied way to become aware of the more subtle internal trans-
formations that normally go unnoticed, like the constant movement of our breath.
The aim is to achieve a moment of stillness within the movements of inhalation and
exhalation (prāṇāyāma) so that even subtler movements of matter become noticeable
(YS II.49–52). Then sensations may come to the forefront, but the tendency of the
sense organs to go after them is also to be withdrawn (pratyāhāra) so that an internal
and even more refined awareness can emerge (YS II.54). Having withdrawn the fac-
ulties of sensory perception, the movements of the mind —cittavrtti, i.e., perceptions,
thoughts (correct and incorrect), images, dreams, memories—become more evident.
At this point, the process of self-awareness follows the same structure as before: the
observation of objective mutations and the detachment from them until a point of
arrest is achieved.
The self reaches an awareness of the movements of the mind because the mind has
a natural capacity for fixation. Every time the mind perceives, thinks or remembers
something, it becomes fixated on a particular object. A distracted mind switches its
point of focus continuously. However, when focus is maintained and a similar flow of
ideas and attention is given to one object, then the mind enters in a meditative state
(dhyānam). The continuous and steady practice of meditation gives rise to samādhi,
or the yogic state of contemplation. To place the mind in a point of focus or dhāraṇā
(YS III.1); to maintain a constant flow of attention towards an object or dhyānam (YS
III.2); and samādhi, to let the object shine forth in the mind as if it was empty of its
own form, constitute the three final most internalized processes of the practice of clas-
sical yoga, in which complete integration (saṁyama) of the cognitive faculties is meant
to occur.

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It is through meditation and the awareness of one’s subjectivity that our body–mind
system (‘the chariot’) is ‘yoked’ to the will. The sensory and mental faculties are not
permitted to function as they would normally do: when affected by the object, they
cannot help but chase it when moved by desire (rāga) or to avoid it when moved
by aversion (dveṣa), thus creating the illusion that it is the self who enjoys and suf-
fers. Yogic practice brings this normal tendency to a point of arrest (nirodha). It is by
exercising the power of not being automatically affected by the object that we have
experience of our will. The power of detachment (vairāgya) is experienced throughout
the different levels of awareness arising in the eightfold yogic process just described,
and becomes more refined during the stages (samāpatti-s) that constitute the structure
of yogic meditative absorption (YS I.17): absorption in the awareness concerning the
empirical objects (vitarka); absorption in the rational awareness concerning the subtle
elements (vicāra); absorption in bliss or awareness concerning the faculties of sensing
(ānanda); and absorption in the sense of I-ness or awareness concerning the faculty of
self-knowledge (asmitārūpa). The specific content of these levels of awareness varies
within commentaries, but what is relevant in all of them is the process that takes place
in samādhi. The object appears directly in the mind and is liberated from the ‘grasping’
of the cognitive faculties, especially when concentration on the object is done with-
out verbal or conceptual construction. Through meditative absorption, the subjective
function is gradually arrested, letting the object be in its own form (be it a physical
object, a thought, an emotion, a sensation, or the mere sense of being oneself) at the
same time that the self is liberated from the willingness to act towards it.
A deeper form of absorption called asamprajñāta sāmadhi arises when the medi-
tative mind has no object as its content (YS I.18). At this level, even the sense of
I-ness that accompanies every act of fixation and concentration is surrendered. With
the subjective and cognitive apparatus arrested, one would suppose that any sense
of awareness would completely black out. However, the state that remains is one of
‘arrested-experience’, an experience characterized by surrendering the will to know
or act on an object. In the absence of mutation or a changing object to observe, even
the arresting-experiences vanish, leaving the self in a state of pure awareness where
it realizes itself in its own form, unmediated by the senses, thoughts, or words, distin-
guishing itself (vivekhyāti) from the intellect and the rest of the cognitive and sense
capacities. Asamprajñāta samādhi is thus the ultimate liberating state of self-knowledge
(svapuruṣadars%ana) even though, paradoxically, there is no knowledge beyond the dis-
cerning point for even this is arrested at the end of the process (YS IV.25). The self,
then, rests alone in self-aware freedom (kaivalya) (YS IV.34).

The Lord of the Adamantine Chariot

In the third book of the YS entitled ‘on Power (vibhūti pāda)’, Patañjali says that
when the distinction between the self and the intellect is realized, one attains
supremacy over all beings, becomes omniscient and free from affliction (YS III.49).
Omnipotence and omniscience are clear attributes of God. Yoga considers that the
only thing that distinguishes God from us is that God was never deluded about its

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own self, thus, never afflicted (YS I.24). The role of God or īs%vara—better translated
as Lord or Master (White 2014, 177)—in Yoga philosophy is rather limited without
the function of being creator of the universe. God is, instead, the first teacher, the first
source of insight for the realization of one’s true nature (YS I.25). The inclusion of
the Lord in the Yoga system of Patañjali has traditionally been taken to be one of the
main differences between Yoga and Sāṁkhya philosophies. But the role of the Lord
in Yoga philosophy seems to go beyond the mere possibility of providing a ‘theistic
yogic concentration’. The inclusion of īs%vara as a possibility for directing our minds in
contemplation brings to the practice an emphasis in discernment (viveka). Without
surrendering the mind to something or someone higher than oneself, the yogic dis-
cipline would turn into a product of egoistic effort. Like mental contents, actions are
also to be purified, detached from the idea that it is the ego or the ‘I’ who acts. By
meditating on God, the mind is pulled to acknowledge a power that is not coming
from one’s own faculties alone.
A theistic yogic concentration includes God as the object of contemplation and
devotion (īs%varapraṇidhāna) in the form of reciting the sacred sound OM, which is
the name that traditionally embodies the Lord (YS I.27). The sustained effort of the
mind that is focused in the sacred mantra will eventually subside until the appearance
of the object alone remains. When the vision of God is established, Vyāsa explains,
the yogi acquires the vision of his or her own self (YBh I.29) as similar to God’s: pure,
clear, and free from afflictions. In the end, the vision and realization brought about by
asamprajñāta samādhi and theistic contemplation is, according to Yoga, the same: self-
aware embodied freedom, detached even from the knowledge of its own omniscience
and omnipotence.
The injunction to detach from the highest yogic knowledge occurs in the same
chapter that lists more than twenty powers that can be attained by yogic knowledge
and perception. The third chapter is replete with different objects towards which yogic
concentration can be directed and describes the results that can be achieved from
each. Famous yogic powers (reading minds, becoming invisible, etc.) are considered
to be a natural consequence of the yogic process. The most important philosophical
aspect of this chapter lies in that what is usually taken as an ‘eccentric’ dualist system
can actually be read as advocating for the complete integration of mind, body, and
reality. The basic assumption behind the possibility of yogic ‘supernatural’ attainments
is that by transforming the mind, there is also an immediate transformation of reality,
for the world that we normally perceive is based on a limited perception mediated by
the senses. We see in this section of the YS, more than in any of the other chapters,
a philosophy of the body that does not reduce it to the mechanical and biological
body, and which will be elaborated later in other types of Yoga systems like Tantra and
Hatha Yoga.
The body (kaya) on which the meditations of the third book focus includes the
physical body (YS III.24, 29–31), the body image (YS III.21), the willful body (YS
III.38), the visualized subtle body (YS III.32, 34, 39–40), and the cosmic body (YS
III.26–27). In this section, Patañjali mentions that one of the results of practicing
yoga is the perfection of the body (kāyasampat) which consists of beauty, charm,

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strength, and adamantine hardness (YS III.46). In the previous sūtra, Vyāsa explains
that yogis who have achieved a perfected body attain powers such as mastery over
the natural elements—the ability to control the appearance and disappearance of
those elements— but also, paradoxically, the stronger power of not using them.
The perfect adamantine body is, thus, the body freed from its own will to know and
act in the same way that the discerning self is freed from its own omnipotence and
omniscience.
Only within the body–mind unit can the experience of self-awareness be liber-
ating, for it is within this that the self experiences the spontaneous exercise of its
will and, at the same time, the supreme power to withdraw it. This is the supreme
yogic insight (prajñā) and the attainment of the supreme mastery (vas%ikara) over
one’s embodiment, the ‘lordship’ (ais%varya) of the chariot (YS I.40). Through
the  phenomenological analysis of embodiment implicit in the yogic process of
self-awareness, we find a conceptually rich notion of the body that transcends the
dualist–materialist categories. In the multilayered process of yogic perception, the
highest attainment that results from it is not only the absolute freedom of the self,
but also the liberation from a reduced and limited conception of one’s own embodi-
ment (body–mind unit).

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