In a yogi who is perfect, the potency of nature flows abundantly.
(B.K.S. Iyengar, The Tree of Yoga p. 48)
tadā draṣṭuḥ svarūpre’vasthānam (I.3)
Then the seer stands in its own nature.
The Yoga Sūtras is generally regarded as a philosophical text, but Patañjali’s philosophical interests were always closely tied to his therapeutic project, alleviating human suffering, rather than pursuing philosophical speculation for its own sake. We have already seen that Patañjali’s approach to suffering is analogous to how a physician views disease, as a practical problem to be solved. Viewing suffering in this way hints at a broad and deep connection between philosophy and medicine, which was common in the ancient world. That was a time when philosophy and medicine formed a seamless whole, an intimacy that speaks to conceptions of both medicine and philosophy that differ from our current understanding of them. Medical practitioners and philosophers saw themselves as partners in healing human beings from their ailments, whether psycho-physical, existential or spiritual in nature.
Galen (b.129CE), one of the most celebrated doctors in the ancient Greek world and a near contemporary of Patañjali, believed that the best doctor is also a philosopher. He viewed the doctor’s role as going beyond medicating individual diseases or fixing broken parts. Like a true mathematician who goes beyond mere accounting in search of a deeper understanding of numbers, Galen argued that good doctors need to consider the whole human organism and the broader cosmos in which we exist, in order to formulate a deeper understanding of what it means to be a truly healthy individual. This led doctors into territory inhabited by philosophers who also sought to understand both the nature of the cosmos and our place within it. Conversely, philosophers in both ancient India and Greece understood philosophy to be a sort of medicine for the soul, providing therapy for our existential ailments and making important contributions to our overall understanding of health and well-being.
In Patañjali, we see this connection between philosophy and medicine to be particularly strong. As we have already seen, Patañjali drew from the medical texts of his time to structure his overall response to human suffering around their fourfold model of healing. Yet there are numerous other ways throughout the Yoga Sūtras where we see Patañjali operating in a philosophical terrain that is closely tied to medicine. In I.3, for example, he describes our condition, once we have achieved the goal of yoga, as one in which the Seer will abide/stand (avasthānam) in its own nature (svarūpe). In choosing the word avasthānam, Patañjali is choosing a term that has the same verbal root (√sthā ‘to stand’) [Note 1] as the Sanskrit terms for health—svāsthya and svasthatā (sva oneself + √sthā ‘to stand’), which can be translated as self-abiding or coinciding with oneself. This shows a close connection and continuity between conceptions of health and spiritual liberation, as being a restoration to one’s true self. In our everyday discourse, we often say “I feel myself again” after we have recovered from some illness. Patañjali is taking this a step further—when we truly become ourselves, we will no longer suffer and will be cured of all that ails us.
Patañjali’s thought therefore embodies an understanding of health that goes beyond fixing or replacing broken parts, or just being free of specific ailments. Patañjali has a vision of the human being restored to a natural state of spiritual health in which we are free from the disease of suffering itself. Furthermore, yoga is distinctive in making the cultivation of psycho-physical well-being intrinsic to the spiritual path. Most obviously, psycho-physical well-being in the yoga system has an instrumental value insofar as good health supports the spiritual practitioner in her practice. Indeed, Patañjali lists illness as one of the primary obstacles to following a yogic path (I.30).
The importance of pursuing psycho-physical health goes beyond its instrumental value because, as we will see in the coming months, the cultivation of psycho-physical well-being constitutes the core of the path to spiritual wholeness. In addressing our specific psycho-physical ailments, we will thereby be making progress along the yogic path towards the end goal of freedom from all suffering. There is no question that the popularity of yoga today is linked to a desire for whole-ness, for viewing health in terms of the whole person, in psycho-physical and spiritual terms. Yoga is part of a broader movement that is seeking to repair the broken links between medicine and spiritual well-being.
Despite these close connections, it is important to understand the distinction between medical and spiritual healing. It is customary to begin Iyengar Yoga classes with Bhoja Raja’s invocation to Patañjali. In addition to honoring Patañjali’s contributions to yoga, the invocation celebrates, and thereby distinguishes, Patanjali’s contributions to bodily health through medicine. Although Patañjali saw suffering through the lens of disease, the Yoga Sūtras is not a medical treatise in an orthodox sense. Patañjali’s intention was not to usurp the medical traditions of his time, but to build on them. In offering a cure for suffering he is not advocating that we abandon medical treatments when needed. You should still go to your orthopedist if you break your ankle, for example, and not rely on the Yoga Sūtras for a cure. In posing the question, “Why do human beings suffer?” Patañjali is asking not about specific types of suffering, but asking a more fundamental question about the general cause of suffering itself.
Reasons and causes
We like to think that if we do the right things—eat healthy foods, practice yoga, exercise—we can live a long and healthy life. Yet we know that life doesn’t work this way. We all know the stories of the two-pack-a-day smoker who lives a long and seemingly healthy life, versus the non-smoking marathon runner who dies of lung cancer. This doesn’t mean, however, that our lives are totally capricious—everything that happens is caused to happen. Thus, the fact that one particular heavy smoker doesn’t succumb to lung cancer doesn’t undermine a statistical truth, that smoking is a contributing cause of lung cancer, but speaks to the idea that we live in a causally complex world, one that is not yet fully comprehended by us. We need to be cautious of conflating lack of knowledge, not knowing why X happened to Harry and not John, with the idea that there is no explanation. Although it is a statistical truth that smoking causes lung cancer, the complexity of each human being means that smoking will have different causal consequences in different individuals. It is the job of science to carry out the investigative work to understand this real-world complexity.
The idea that there is a cause for each event is not equal to the claim that everything happens for a reason. Although often used interchangeably, it is important to recognize a conceptual distinction between cause and reason. A cause produces an effect, whereas reasons are invoked to support a decision or a belief, or to give a moral justification for why something happened. We may accept that every event has a cause but reject the claim that everything happens for a reason. Those who have experienced tragedy in their lives are often angered by hearing from others that everything happens for a reason. It can come across as platitudinous in the face of tragedy. In a recent newspaper article about the stillbirth of her son, Finn, Katie Hill writes in response to someone who told her that everything happens for a reason: “The phrase infuriated me. With all the pain and injustice in the world, how could someone believe that?” Since Patañjali is most interested in finding a cure for suffering, he is naturally drawn to looking for a causal explanation for suffering rather than seeking some cosmic justification for suffering. Patañjali is therefore going to be more interested in causes than reasons why, since it is the removal of the cause that brings about the removal of the effect.
Thus, for each bad thing that happens to us, there is a complex causal story to be told, an unfolding sequence of events that bifurcates again and again into different paths. Why did Harry get lung cancer? Because he smoked—but now there are two different questions we can ask: (i) Why does smoking cause lung cancer? and (ii) What caused Harry to smoke in the first place? In addition to the causal story multiplying into these different threads, it also seems to be a story that never ends if we go on the premise that nothing is a cause of itself. Why does smoking cause lung cancer? Because chemicals in cigarettes, such as benzene and polonium-210 cause changes in the structure of cellular DNA? Why do these chemicals cause these changes? Why did these chemicals cause Harry to contract lung cancer but not John? In attempting to answer question (i), we may look to experts in the field for an explanation and perhaps even cure the lung cancer.
The different ways in which we suffer have a multiplicity of causes, and if we are seeking to alleviate the problem, we will seek out the appropriate experts. If my car is causing me grief, I’ll seek out the expertise of a car mechanic. But if I am suffering from lung cancer, I will seek out the expertise of an oncologist. It wouldn’t make sense for me to visit my car mechanic if I had a bad cough just because she did a good job of fixing my car. Suffering comes in a variety of forms with a variety of causes, and it seems that for each form of suffering we would do well to seek out the specialist best qualified to treat it.
One point of departure then is that whereas doctors seek specific cures for specific ills, Patañjali sought a generic cure for all ills and argued for one generic cause of all of our suffering. This seems odd. How can one solution address all of the varieties of human suffering? The idea that there might be one solution may seem like magical thinking, inviting our skepticism. Is Patañjali offering a “cure-all” to suffering that removes the need for doctors, psychiatrists, financial advisers and the like? Patañjali’s answer to suffering differs from the kind of answer we would expect from an expert in the field and has more to do with the kind of answer we are looking for in response to question (ii): What caused Harry to smoke? In answer to this kind of question, we may look to Harry’s desire to be accepted by his friends, by his need to calm his nerves and so forth. Following this storyline leads us to a place where the kind of generic solution offered by Patañjali begins to make sense. We begin to see that the cause of Harry’s suffering lies deep in Harry’s own psyche.
With this in mind, we can now turn to II.17 and 24, the second step of the fourfold model, in which Patañjali reveals what he sees to be the underlying and generic cause of human suffering.
draṣṭṛ-dṛśyayoḥ saṁyogo heya-hetuḥ (YS II.17)
The cause of that [suffering] which is to be avoided is the conjunction/confusion of the seer and the seen.
tasya hetur avidyā (YS II.24)
The cause of that [conjunction/confusion] is ignorance.
In order to grasp the meaning of II.17, we need to examine Patañjali’s views about the nature of reality. Patañjali understands the cosmos as being dual in nature, consisting of two fundamental principles, puruṣa and prakṛti. This is a dualism between consciousness (puruṣa) and non-conscious matter (prakṛti). The human being is a microcosm of the macrocosm and these two fundamental cosmic principles are present in us, where they are experienced as a binary of seer (draṣṭṛ) and seen (dṛśya). Patañjali’s distinction between the seer and the seen, between the subject and the object, is the distinction between the material world and the observer or seer of that world. The material world is in a state of constant flux and rearrangement. Consciousness is aloof from this constant flux of the material world, witnessing but not participating in it. Consciousness is transcendent, permanent and free from suffering. Patañjali teaches that this is where our true identity resides.
In sūtra II.17, Patañjali is locating the source of human suffering in how we experience the conjunction (saṁyoga) of these two principles. Some commentators choose to translate “saṁyoga” as “confusion”—a confusion that occurs, however, because of their conjunction. Human suffering grows from a profound case of mistaken identity, our tendency to identify with our ever-changing and mortal material nature instead of that part of us which is unchanging and everlasting. Note that Patañjali describes a two-step causal process here. The immediate cause of suffering is the coming together (saṁyoga) of puruṣa and prakṛti, but this itself is caused by avidyā, ignorance. Ignorance therefore, is the fundamental cause of human suffering. If we track the logic of the fourfold model, by removing ignorance we remove the conjunction of puruṣa and prakṛti (or the confusion of puruṣa with prakṛti) and, following the process to its end, by removing the confusion we remove the suffering.
In a cosmos without consciousness (sentience, awareness) there would be no suffering. Suffering arises from the juxtaposition of consciousness with the churning world of matter. It is our entanglement with this world that causes our misunderstanding about our essential nature, making us lose sight of what we are. We are drawn into the material world and seek fulfillment there, but lasting fulfillment cannot be found in the temporal world of change. Our understanding is tinged with a deep-rooted ignorance—instead of identifying with that part of ourselves which is transcendent and not subject to change, we identify with who or what we are at any moment in time, that is, with the ego self. Patañjali is suggesting that we shift our subjectivity away from the ego self.
This idea is at the heart of the Yoga Sūtras and is an idea that obviously requires further reflection. It raises many questions about where the boundary between puruṣa and prakṛti falls within human experience, and how these two principles engage with each other to produce this profound misunderstanding in us about our true identity. It is an idea that Patañjali expresses in words in these two sūtras, but if we situate them in the context of the whole of the Yoga Sūtras, we come to see that it is only through practice that we will experience it as a transformative and lived reality. You could say that these sūtras give us a road map, acting as a kind of polestar to guide our yoga practice. We will explore the nature of puruṣa and prakṛti further next time.
Joy Laine teaches philosophy at Macalester College and Iyengar Yoga around the Twin Cities.
[Note 1] The symbol √ is used to show a shared verbal root that is the source for a set of related terms.
Sources and Further Study
Allen, Katie “’Your baby’s heart has stopped’: hell and healing after the stillbirth of my son.”
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/jun/10/your-babys-heart-has-stopped-hell-and-healing-after-the-stillbirth-of-my-son
Fields, Gregory Religious Therapeutics (SUNY, 2001)
Galen: In Our Time BBC Radio 4 Melvyn Bragg in discussion with Vivian Nutton, Helen King and Caroline Petit (October 10, 2013). https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03c4dys
B.K.S. Iyengar The Tree of Yoga (Shambala, 2002) especially, “The Depth Of Āsana,” “Health and Wholeness,” “Yoga and Āyurvedic Medicine,” and “The Healing Art.”
