Last month we saw that there are three passages in which Patañjali offered devotion to God as a key practice for the yoga practitioner. Patañjali therefore clearly believes that devotional practices can assist us in finding spiritual freedom. This perhaps raises questions in your mind: Does one have to believe in God to practice yoga? If so, is there a particular God that one should follow? What role does God play in our ultimate destiny? Does this make yoga a religion? There will be no simple answers, but exploring these questions can be fruitful for a broader understanding of yoga.
Do you have to believe in God to practice yoga?
One thing that attracts people to the contemporary practice of yoga is that it aspires to be open to everyone. Classes are advertised as being non-sectarian. As yoga’s net is cast ever more widely, a typical yoga class today most likely includes students from a range of faith traditions. In my classes, for example, I have students from many different religious traditions—Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Christian and Muslim. Some students are suspicious of adopting any specific religious identity, preferring to see themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” Others might have no interest at all in following either a religious or spiritual path and come to yoga solely for a “good stretch.” All are welcome to the practice. Contemporary yoga scholar Elisabeth De Michelis has noted that today’s posture-based yoga practices are well suited for a global audience, and despite the fact that in any given class different students might hold a wide variety of religious beliefs, it will be likely that the practice “will be able to offer some solace, physical, psychological or spiritual, in a world where solace and reassurance are sometimes elusive.” (HMY, p. 260)
Therefore, there is no requirement in the standard contemporary yoga class that you embrace a belief in God or assent to any specific beliefs about such a being. Individuals are pretty much left to their own devices to explore the philosophical teachings of yoga and to work out how to incorporate those teachings into their own lives and belief systems. The benefits of the practice span a broad enough spectrum (physical, psychological and spiritual) that a good number of these benefits can be enjoyed by practitioners regardless of faith commitments.
The term “yoga” is really an umbrella word, covering a wide range of practices and beliefs that go by the name of yoga. Our next task will be to investigate whether or not Patañjali thought that a belief in God is necessary to attain ultimate spiritual liberation.
In order to address his question, it will be helpful to distinguish between means and ends. As a means, we saw last time that Patañjali strongly advocated for devotion to God (īṡvara praṇidhāna) within the broader practice of yoga, especially for those at the beginning of their yoga journey. There are a couple of reasons why he did so. First of all, any practice that is oriented towards another being is a psychologically helpful tool insofar as it directs our attention away from our own ego self. Secondly, and this is emphasized more in the commentaries, it seems that Patañjali believed in the actual power of a loving God to help us achieve spiritual liberation. This introduces an element of grace into the practice of yoga—that is, we are not on our own in our spiritual quest, but can seek the help of a divine being.
Last month we saw that in the first pāda, īśvara praṇidhāna is given as an optional, but effective means to achieve samādhi, a position abandoned in the second pāda where it is included as an obligatory practice in both kriyā yogā (II.1) and in the eight limbs of yoga (II.32). The commentators explain what might otherwise be seen as a discrepancy by arguing that the second pāda is directed more towards practitioners at the beginning of their yoga journey, whereas the first pāda is directed more towards advanced practitioners. It would seem, therefore, that Patañjali leaves open the possibility of an effective but Godless yoga practice—but pursuing such a path is tantamount to discarding a powerful tool from the practitioner’s toolbox. This position is echoed in the Bhagavad Gītā, an important yoga text composed around the same time as the Yoga Sūtras. The Bhagavad Gītā emphasizes the devotional path (bhakti yoga) as a means to liberation and is a more overtly devotional text than the Yoga Sūtras. In the course of that text Arjuna’s charioteer, Krishna, reveals himself to be God incarnate. Krishna proclaims that He has the power to liberate his devotees, and because of his love for them, will do so. Moreover, he declares that the devotional path is open to all, requiring no esoteric knowledge, just simple devotion. Yet Krishna too acknowledges the legitimacy of a non-devotional path, though warns that such a path is much more difficult for practitioners to follow.
What role does God play in our ultimate destiny?
While it is clear that Patañjali strongly believes in the power of devotion as a means to achieving the goal of yoga, spiritual liberation or Self-realization, we may still question whether God has a role in the ends towards which yoga is directed. Is God integral to Patañjali’s vision of spiritual liberation? At first glance, it might seem that the answer is not. The Yoga Sūtras closes with the following sūtra:
puruṣārtha-sūnyānāṃ guṇānāṃ pratiprasavaḥ kaivalyam svarūpa-pratiṣṭhā vā citi-śaktir iti (IV.34)
Ultimate liberation is when the guṇas, devoid of any purpose for the puruṣa, return to their original [latent] state: in other words when the power of consciousness is situated in its own essential nature. (translated by EB, p. 457)
This last sūtra takes us back to the opening sūtras where Patañjali describes yoga as a practice in which the Seer will be established in its own true nature (I.3 tadā draṣṭuḥ svarūpe’vasthānam). Bryant notes in his commentary on IV.34 that, “What exactly the eternal experience of liberation consists of is not a topic that Patañjali has chosen to attempt to address” (EB, p.458). As Bryant notes, Patañjali has fulfilled his mission, to show how we can liberate ourselves from bondage and suffering. Devotionally minded philosophers in India, however, pick up the puruṣa’s narrative from where Patañjali left off. Philosophers affiliated with the devotional traditions of India view the ultimate human destiny to be essentially relational, one in which the liberated puruṣa is “eligible to enter into a divine relationship with God.” (EB, p. 458 ) According to this view, Patañjali is seen as laying out a path that prepares us for this ultimate encounter with God. Bryant speculates that with the eternal liberation of puruṣa from prakṛti, Patañjali saw his mission to be complete, and he was happy to leave it for others to speculate on what might come next. In conclusion, Patañjali’s yoga accommodates both the theistically minded practitioner and those who eschew the idea that our ultimate destiny is to be in an eternal relationship with God.
Is there a particular God that one should follow?
Patañjali did not direct us towards any specific deity, nor did he reveal his own iṣṭa devatā (chosen God). This might seem remarkable to a contemporary western readership since, in traditions such as Judaism and Christianity, God has a very specific identity which is central to the faith of the tradition. Yet, in the context of his own tradition, Patañjali’s stance is not so unusual. Patañjali lived at a time when the devotional energies of people inhabiting the Indian sub-continent were growing and coalescing around three major deities: Viṣṇu, Śiva and the Goddess. As Hinduism developed in the centuries subsequent to the Bhagavad Gītā and the Yoga Sūtras, it maintained this pluralistic stance. Within the umbrella of Hinduism, you will find those who follow Viṣṇu as their ultimate deity, those who follow the Goddess in some form and those who follow Śiva. Hinduism also allows for those who wish to follow a less theocentric path. In the Bhagavad Gītā, Krishna acknowledges the existence of this plurality of Gods and declares: “When devoted men sacrifice to other deities with faith, they sacrifice to me, Arjuna.” (BG 9.23) Krishna’s statement here is an expression of the idea that a single divine reality can be refracted in different ways through the prism of different cultures. Such differences are to be seen more as cultural artifacts, human attempts to make the divine concrete and tangible. We may approach God in different ways, ways that are shaped by the cultures in which we live, but beneath these surface differences, there is only one divine reality.
Patañjali too seems to recognize how our religious beliefs and affiliations are shaped by what our culture makes available for us. Patañjali tells us that the niyama of svadhyāya, (scriptural study) results in the practitioner forming a closer bond with their chosen deity (II.44). Thus, if someone devotes their time to studying the Bhagavad Gītā, they will likely bond with Krishna, whereas someone studying the New Testament will likely form a bond with Jesus. For Patañjali, having a strong relationship to some particular and concrete manifestation of the divine was an effective means to reach a deeper underlying divine reality that transcends such concrete manifestations. Because of this, he didn’t see the need to promote any one concrete form of God over another.
Is yoga a religion?
Yoga is often classified as an art, a science and a philosophy, but not so much a religion. Indeed, I have found that for some there is a resistance to the idea that yoga is a religion. Some of the resistance to classifying yoga as a religion comes from practitioners who have had negative experiences of institutionalized religions and, understandingly so, come to yoga eager for an escape from the problems generated by such institutionalization. Because of this, some worry that viewing yoga as a religion will put people off from taking up the practice.
There is also a political dimension to the question of whether or not yoga is a religion. You may have encountered reports in the news media of clashes between yoga and other faith traditions. Examples include Christian parents protesting that teaching yoga in the public schools of Encinitas, California, violates the First Amendment, since it breaches the wall of separation between church and state; vicars employed by the Church of England fretting over the use of their church halls for yoga classes; Indonesian clerics instructing good Muslims to avoid the practice. Some, believing that yoga is nothing more than exercise, may wonder what all of the fuss is about—how could stretching one’s body at the gym have any relevance at all to one’s religious beliefs? Some counter that yoga is “spiritual but not religious” as a way to avoid conflict with other religions, yet not abandon the idea that yoga is more than stretching. Given that people have widely different conceptions of what constitutes yoga and what constitutes a religion, and given that how we define yoga and religion may be subject to political agendas, there will be no simple answer to the question of whether yoga is a religion.
The very concept of “religion” is complicated. Some people equate the different religious traditions with different sets of beliefs. According to this view, belonging to any specific religion is based on individual assent to a set of creedal beliefs. Yet, this is a narrow and reductionist view of religious identity, ignoring the cultural and practical aspects of belonging to a religion. We also have to be careful not to essentialize religious traditions, since the boundaries between traditions can be fluid. The Benedictine monk, for example, may have more in common with a Buddhist monk than he does with a Southern Baptist.
Theologian Paul Tillich (1957b.) defines religion as a state of being grasped by an ultimate concern which contains answers to the question of the meaning of life. This idea captures an important dimension of a religious beliefs—they are beliefs about our most fundamental values, beliefs about the nature and purpose of the cosmos and our place within the grand scheme of things. In this view, Patañjali’s vision as presented in the Yoga Sūtras would seem to qualify it as religion. Patañjali’s views about the ultimate nature of the cosmos include beliefs that go beyond anything currently established by the natural sciences. Patañjali believes that the material world has a purpose, to liberate the human being from ignorance and suffering. He believes that within each individual there is an eternal, transcendent Self that survives death. These are the kinds of beliefs that qualify as being religious in nature. It is true that, like other mystical traditions, Patañjali claims that these beliefs can be verified through practice on the basis of personal experience, but prior to such experiences they have to be taken on faith.
Concluding thoughts
Perhaps the great thing about the practice of yoga is that none of these questions have to be settled in advance of taking up the practice. As B.K.S. Iyengar notes (TOY p. 37), so long as you believe in your own existence and have a desire to better your existence, then that is sufficient to set out on the path of yoga. Patañjali shows himself to be a remarkably open and pragmatic philosopher, with a preference that we discover for ourselves the deepest truths about our own existence. He offers us his vision of the cosmos and our place within it, and he gives us a path which he believes will free us from our suffering and bring us to a direct experience of our own divine nature. Then it is up to us to follow this path and figure out for ourselves how it fits with our most deeply held beliefs.
Joy Laine taught philosophy at Macalester College for over thirty years and teaches Iyengar Yoga around the Twin Cities.
Selection of Sources Used
Edwin Bryant, The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali, abbreviated as EB. North Point Press, 2009.
Elizabeth De Michelis, A History of Modern Yoga, abbreviated as HMY. Continuum, 2005.
B.K.S. Iyengar, The Tree of Yoga, abbreviated as TOY. Shambala, 2002.
Barbara Stoler-Miller, The Bhagavad Gita: Krishna’s Counsel in Time of War, abbreviated as BG. Bantam Classics, 1986.
If you are interested, you can read the two opposing testimonies of the expert witnesses in the Encinitas court case in the following links:
Witness Testimony for the Plaintiffs: Dr. Candy Brown
http://www.nclplaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/DECLARATION-OF-CANDY-BROWN-FINAL.pdf
Witness Testimony for the Defense: Dr. Christopher Chapple
https://yogaencinitasstudents.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/declaration-of-dr-chapple.pdf
