Uploaded April 2017 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Philipp A. Maas (University of Leipzig):
"Rasāyana in classical Sāṅkhya-Yoga"
AyurYog Workshop: Rejuvenation, Longevity and Immortality
Perspectives on Rasāyana, Kāyakalpa and Bcud Len Practices
21 - 22 October 2016
University of Vienna, an ERC-funded Project.
Abstract:
Classical Sāṅkhya-Yoga is a strongly soteriologically orientated premodern South Asian system of knowledge, which in the early 5th c. CE appears fully developed in the Pātañjalayogaśāstra (PYŚ). According to this work, the world consists of two fundamentally different kinds of entities. On the one hand there exists an infinite number of transcendental “selves,” who are conceived as pure inactive and unchangeable consciousness, bare of any content. Besides the selves, the world consists of the products of primordial matter, which is completely unconscious, active and changeable. The products of matter not only make up all things of the outside world, but in human beings they also fashion the sense-capacities as well as the mental capacity which is most frequently called citta. Mental processes are thought to depend upon the existence—and as it were “interaction”—of both kinds of entities. The mental capacity supplies the content of a mental process to the self, which by “seeing” it “provides” the mental content with consciousness. Everyday experience, of course, contradicts this analysis, because we neither experience consciousness without content, nor do we experience content without consciousness. According to Sāṅkhya-Yoga, however, the analysis of mental processes in every day experience as being of a uniform nature is wrong. It is caused by nescience, which deludes the self about its own ontological status. The self—pure consciousness—is attracted by the mental capacity like iron is attracted by a lodestone. The self becomes erroneously convinced to be affected by the content of experience. It feels happiness and suffers pain, although these, as well as all other kinds of mental events, exclusively take place within the mental capacity. In reality, the self, due to its peculiar ontological status, is incapable of being anything else than it is, viz. pure, contentless, and unchanging consciousness. The aim of Sāṅkhya Yoga in its soteriological dimension is to end the wrong identification of the self with its mental capacity once and for all, which amounts for the practicing yogi to the final liberation from the cycle of rebirths and its innate suffering. The means to this end is the realization of the ontological difference between the self and matter in meditative absorption, which is called “knowledge of the difference.” Due to its strong soteriological orientation, classical Sāṅkhya-Yoga apparently does not leave much room for the perusal of life extending practices like rasāyana. Nevertheless, rasāyana practices are mentioned at two instances of the PYŚ, namely in PYŚ 3.51 in the context of the encounter of advanced yogins with heavenly being, and in PYŚ 4.1 with regard to superhuman abilities resulting from herbal substances. The presentation analyses these two text passages in their respective contexts by taking into consideration different interpretations of mediaeval yoga commentators. Moreover, it compares the attitudes towards rasāyana as reflected in the PYŚ with Upaniṣadic, epic, and early āyurvedic notions of life extending practices in order to arrive at a novel understanding of the complicates relationship between spiritual liberation and life extension as legitimate aims of human pursuits in premodern South Asia.
Philipp A. Maas (University of Leipzig):
"Rasāyana in classical Sāṅkhya-Yoga"
AyurYog Workshop: Rejuvenation, Longevity and Immortality
Perspectives on Rasāyana, Kāyakalpa and Bcud Len Practices
21 - 22 October 2016
University of Vienna, an ERC-funded Project.
Abstract:
Classical Sāṅkhya-Yoga is a strongly soteriologically orientated premodern South Asian system of knowledge, which in the early 5th c. CE appears fully developed in the Pātañjalayogaśāstra (PYŚ). According to this work, the world consists of two fundamentally different kinds of entities. On the one hand there exists an infinite number of transcendental “selves,” who are conceived as pure inactive and unchangeable consciousness, bare of any content. Besides the selves, the world consists of the products of primordial matter, which is completely unconscious, active and changeable. The products of matter not only make up all things of the outside world, but in human beings they also fashion the sense-capacities as well as the mental capacity which is most frequently called citta. Mental processes are thought to depend upon the existence—and as it were “interaction”—of both kinds of entities. The mental capacity supplies the content of a mental process to the self, which by “seeing” it “provides” the mental content with consciousness. Everyday experience, of course, contradicts this analysis, because we neither experience consciousness without content, nor do we experience content without consciousness. According to Sāṅkhya-Yoga, however, the analysis of mental processes in every day experience as being of a uniform nature is wrong. It is caused by nescience, which deludes the self about its own ontological status. The self—pure consciousness—is attracted by the mental capacity like iron is attracted by a lodestone. The self becomes erroneously convinced to be affected by the content of experience. It feels happiness and suffers pain, although these, as well as all other kinds of mental events, exclusively take place within the mental capacity. In reality, the self, due to its peculiar ontological status, is incapable of being anything else than it is, viz. pure, contentless, and unchanging consciousness. The aim of Sāṅkhya Yoga in its soteriological dimension is to end the wrong identification of the self with its mental capacity once and for all, which amounts for the practicing yogi to the final liberation from the cycle of rebirths and its innate suffering. The means to this end is the realization of the ontological difference between the self and matter in meditative absorption, which is called “knowledge of the difference.” Due to its strong soteriological orientation, classical Sāṅkhya-Yoga apparently does not leave much room for the perusal of life extending practices like rasāyana. Nevertheless, rasāyana practices are mentioned at two instances of the PYŚ, namely in PYŚ 3.51 in the context of the encounter of advanced yogins with heavenly being, and in PYŚ 4.1 with regard to superhuman abilities resulting from herbal substances. The presentation analyses these two text passages in their respective contexts by taking into consideration different interpretations of mediaeval yoga commentators. Moreover, it compares the attitudes towards rasāyana as reflected in the PYŚ with Upaniṣadic, epic, and early āyurvedic notions of life extending practices in order to arrive at a novel understanding of the complicates relationship between spiritual liberation and life extension as legitimate aims of human pursuits in premodern South Asia.
