10 • Chapter Two: Sādhana-Pada: comprises of 55 sūtra-s on ‘practice in the Science of Mind’ of
Yoga • Chapter Three: Vibhuti-Pada: comprises of 55 sūtra-s on ‘attainment of the powers of the
mind through practice’ of Yoga • Chapter Four: Kaivalya-Pada: comprises of 34 sūtra-s on ‘state of aloneness’ or liberated
state The first four
sūtra-s of the text can be considered as the foundational ones for the entire darśana. For our purpose we choose to include verses five and six as the basis of elaborating on Science of
Mind and the roots of human suffering in relationship to these foundational ideas in the first four verses. Philosophically the third
sūtra is of utmost importance as it identifies the true nature of the pure immortal consciousness or
purușa and the abidance in this identity through the practice indicated in second verse of cessation
nirodha of the modifications vŗtti of the mind citta . A more detailed analysis of the verses in the commentaries of
Vyāsa and the sub-commentary of San Śa
ṁ
kara will be taken up in section III of this work.
c. Yoga Psychology i. Introduction
We can begin to situate Yoga psychology within the Hindu traditions by consideration of some background to Indian psychology in general. By Indian psychology we mean the area of classical
Indian thought from the perspective of psychology. This was brought to the forefront with pioneers in the field such as Jādunath Sinhā writing in his three volumes entitled Indian Psychology 1958.
The first two volumes were published in 1933. These volumes were followed by Ra ghunāth Sāfayā’s
one volume Indian Psychology 1976 and B. Kuppuswāmy’s book Elements of Ancient Indian
11 Psychology 1985. Although these mention Pātānjali in their writing, none of them deal with the
Yogasūtra as a Science of Mind. Psychology in the Indian traditions draws on a variety of sources and interpretations and has a wider
scope than in the West
17
The existential quest, from the point of view of the Indian traditions, is to overcome suffering and in the process to raise the person to higher levels of awareness and achievement. The Science of Mind
in Pātānjali ’s Yogasūtra not only to provide an understanding of the nature of person, the causes
and consequences of her conduct but also to explores the methods and means of transforming the person in pursuit of perfection in being, certainty in knowing and happiness in feeling. We will look
at these aspects in detail in the following sections. . It is contained within the larger framework of philosophy and metaphysics
and contains postulates related to epistemological and ontological perspectives and at the same time practical formulations for the discipline and control of the mind and behaviour. This is all within
the soteriological context of achieving the true purpose of human existence – liberation from the cycles of birth and death.
ii. Psychological understanding of the Yogasūtra
When we speak about the ‘psychological’ understanding we mean in the first place the mental constructs, experience and phenomena which occur in the human being.
Pātānjali , within a common assumptive base with the
Sā
ṁ
khya , outlines the nature, processes and products of the function of the
citta . This is the starting point for the Yogin to understand what the nature of this citta is and what the psychological means are by which one can cease nirodha its fluctuations vŗtti-
s. Here we also consider the ego identity, the various components of the citta and the underlying
causes of the modifications with which it is afflicted.
17
S Kiran Kumar, ‘ Indian Thought and Tradition: A Psychohistorical Perspective’ in K Rao, A Paranjpe, A Dalal,
Editors, Handbook of Indian Psychology, Cambridge University Press, , 2008, India, p 19-52
12 Feuerstein cautions against the ‘compartmentalisation’ of the homogenous structure of Yoga theory
into divisions of ‘psychology’, ‘ethics’ or ‘philosophy’
18
For our purposes, we will look at the most significant psychological concepts in the first six verses in the
Yogasūtra and build a coherent model within the overall metaphysic of Classical Yoga as We will also consider the model from a different perspective of the
Advaita Vedānta metaphysic through the sub-commentary of
Śa
ṁ
kara on the Yogasūtra, An analysis of the semantic, psychological and philosophical content of these key concepts will allow us to create a detailed picture of the
psychological being as envisaged by Pātānjali . Three of the concepts have been briefly introduced in
the section above. . In a way this approach is an ‘artificial means
of promoting the analysis and understanding’ from a particular perspective. It is true that there is a prominent element of a psychological orientation in Yoga and there have been comparisons with
western psychological theories and procedures but this can only be considered as ‘conditional’. As mentioned in the first section, however, a comprehensive psychological understanding of Yoga is a
relatively untraveled territory and of significant value.
d. Summary
