Indian Philosophy v2.c24.s35.2

v2.c24.s35.2

That we can secure many physical and mental powers which are not found in ordinary men, by means of discipline, that restraint of bodily and mental activities helps us to gain release from suffering, is an old view in India. Crude conceptions of the value of ecstasy and hypnotic trance are to be met with in the Ṛg-Veda, which also mentions the word "muni."¹ According to it, the meditation on the divine light is a sacred act of devotion.² In the *Atharva Veda* the idea is very common that supernatural powers can be obtained through the practice of austerities.³ Soon the conception of *tapas* appears, giving a more ethical character to the discipline. One has to give up all worldly enjoyments to fix one's mind on the eternal. The *Upaniṣads* assume the Yoga practice in the sense of a conscious inward search or striving after a true knowledge of reality. Meditation and concentration are insisted on,⁴ since a direct knowledge of the self as subject is not possible. The *Upaniṣads* regard *tapas* and *brahmacarya* as virtues productive of great power.⁵ Those *Upaniṣads* which speak of the *Sāṃkhya* theories refer to the Yoga practices as well. The *Kaṭha*, the *Śvetāśvatara* and the *Maitrāyaṇī* refer to the practical side of religious realisation, as distinct from the theoretical investigation of the *Sāṃkhya*. Yoga, as a technical term, occurs in the *Kaṭha*, the *Taittirīya*, the *Maitrāyaṇī*⁶ *Upaniṣads*, but it cannot be said that the Yoga mentioned in them is identical with the Yoga of Patañjali. The idea of *samādhi* may have developed out of the *Upaniṣad* doctrine that compares the realisation of the Absolute or freedom from the things of empirical life to the deep dreamless sleep. The *Kaṭha Upaniṣad* speaks of the highest condition of Yoga as a state in which the senses, with mind and intellect, are brought to a standstill.⁷ Not unnaturally, there were people who tried to induce artificially such states of trance. The *Maitrī Upaniṣad* speaks of a sixfold Yoga, and mentions the technical terms of Patañjali's system.⁸ Apparently the Yoga of Patañjali was not perfected at the time of the early *Upaniṣads*, though we see its gradual growth in the later ones.