THE YOGA TRADITION

First published in 1998, The Yoga Tradition by Georg Feuerstein is the most comprehensive and authoritative account of the history and philosophy of yoga available. It distils 'nearly 30 years scholarly and practical preoccupation with the tradition of Yoga' by the author and draws heavily on his earlier works – in particular Yoga: The Technology of Ecstasy (1989). Apart from revisions and updating of the material in that book, the main addition is the inclusion of much more source material - English translations of Sanskrit scriptures on yoga. The Yoga Tradition is organised in five parts. Part One - Foundations - introduces key concepts, including what yoga is and an exposition of the view, common to all schools of yoga, that there is a transcendental reality underpinning the phenomenal universe. The importance of the teacher-student relationship in yoga is emphasised and a brief introduction given to different branches of yoga. This Part also discusses the relationship of yoga to other Indian traditions, such as asceticism and renunciation, and its relationship to Hindu philosophy, to Ayur-veda (the traditional Indian system of medicine) and to Hindu religion. The rest of the book explores the historical development of yoga, largely through the spiritual literature of the times. Part Two covers pre-Classical yoga, in particular the proto-yoga of the creation myths and sacrificial rituals of the Vedic era (4,000-2000BC) and yoga in the early Upanishads (from around 1000BC) with their non-dualist philosophy of the unity of the (internally realised) transcendental self with the universal transcendental ground of being. It also explores yoga in the Indian epics - the Ramayana, Mahabharata, and the Bhagavad Gita (first millennium BC) - and the rise of Jainism and Buddhism (also in the first millennium BC). Part Three looks at Classical yoga (100BC-500AD) – Patanjali's seminal Yoga Sutras and the dualist philosophy of the separation of spirit and nature. Part Four explores the diverse strands of (non-dualist) post-Classical yoga: the Puranas - popular "encyclopaedias", (500-1300AD, but with roots in the Vedic period), the devotional yoga of followers of the Hindu gods Shiva and Vishnu (1300-1700AD), the Yoga Upanishads and Yoga and Sikhism. This post –Classical period also produced the Yoga Vasishtha– an important text (compiled and modified over the 9th -11th centuries AD) which propounds the view that all is consciousness and that experienced objects are ideas "conjured by the mind". Part Five concludes the historical journey with the rise of Tantrism in the middle ages and the subsequent development of Hatha Yoga (14th -17th centuries), itself greatly influenced by the Tantric philosophy that the phenomenal world is co-essential with the transcendental ground of being. The Hatha Yoga tradition has inspired much of the yoga popular in the West today, but Feuerstein has little to say about the modern period because there have been few, if any, significant philosophical developments.

For Georg Feuerstein the essence of yoga is an ecstatic state or, as he prefers to call it, an enstatic state of pure awareness, in which normal states of consciousness are transcended. He views this yogic quest for "Reality" as an expression of an "intrinsic human evolutionary impulse to transcendence"; an impulse that is implicit in all religion, science, philosophy and art. For him, the hidden dimension of the macrocosmic universe – what he calls its "inner depth"- and the inner depth of the microcosm of the human mind are the same ultimate reality. This leads him to the view that India's spiritual discoveries as a result of exploring the inner world of human consciousness are "at least as remarkable as electric motors, computers, space flight, organ transplants, gene splicing (of Western science)". Such comparisons are difficult to make because of the difficulty of agreeing on a common yardstick against which to measure achievements. This is not surprising given the fundamental differences between science and yoga. Science seeks to understand the processes and relationships which explain the phenomenal world, whilst yoga seeks to realise the ultimate reality underlying the phenomenal world - providing a direct route, as it were, to a truth which can never be validated, except by itself! But this does not mean that science and yoga must necessarily be in opposition to each other. There are many who share Georg Feuerstein's view that Western science, with its emphasis on deductive reasoning, needs the "counter technology of India" to convert rationality into wisdom – or, as others might put it a little more kindly, to leaven it with a little more humanity. This is something for which the practice of yoga is exceptionally well suited. The Yoga Tradition is a big, scholarly work covering an enormous canvas. Its objective is to give the lay reader a "systematic and comprehensive introduction to the multi-faceted phenomenon of Indian spirituality and……the evolution of Yoga thus far". It certainly meets this remit, although I suspect it will be of interest mainly to the serious student of yoga philosophy and history rather than the layman. For many yoga students it is already serving as an invaluable source of reference, including an excellent chronology and bibliography, that they can dip into as and when the need arises. But it is a book that deserves to be read from beginning to end, at least once and ideally several times, in order to appreciate fully the richness, the complexity and the essential thread of continuity running through the yoga tradition.