The Essence of Yoga by Georg Feuerstein Ph.D

Author:Georg Feuerstein, Ph.D. [Georg Feuerstein and Jeanine Miller]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inner Traditions / Bear & Company
Published: 2012-08-01T16:00:00+00:00

The above considerations throw new light on the gradual mastery (krama-nirodha) of the diverse contents of consciousness, revealing it as a threefold process:

The kliṣṭa-vṛttis or mind activities conditioned by the kleśas are substituted by

the akliṣṭa-vṛttis or mind activities counteracting the kleśas;

these are finally exterminated by para-vairāgya or supreme abandonment resulting in the asaṃprajñāta-samādhi.

The reason that also the akliṣṭa-vṛttis have to be abandoned lies in the fact that there is some element of sorrow even in them. Though they are conducive of emancipation, since they act counter to the kleśas, they are still within the radius of nescience or avidyā which has its root deep in the subconscious and which can only be dissolved by the continuous practice of the asaṃprajñāta enstasis, that samādhi in which all subconscious ‘seeds’ (bījas) are burnt out.

In this radical analysis of the subconscious, Yoga goes far beyond the S&mkhya which rests content with a mere empirical realisation of the distinction between puruṣa and prakṛti. The yogins have, at an early time, recognised the dominating role the subconscious plays in human life thus anticipating 20th-century psychoanalysis.

In conclusion we would like to remind the reader of the words of Geraldine Coster, psychotherapist:

In the east experimental psychology has gone as, far as if not much farther than with us... although yoga is perhaps an essentially eastern method, it nevertheless contains the clue needed by the west if the analytical method and theory is to reach its fullest scope as a regenerating and re-creating factor in modern life.36

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