19th Century Transcendentalism
and The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: Separate Paths, Same Destination
Teacher Training Paper by
Annie Moyer
January 2, 2003
The philosophies expressed in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
contain timeless wisdom. If not, we wouldn’t still
be reading and contemplating its teachings thousands of years
after it was first handed down by the sages of ancient India.
Though the practice of yoga didn’t reach this side
of the Atlantic until the late 19th century, there were philosophical
schools of thought prevalent in the U.S. even prior to then
which were consistent with the philosophy of yoga. In particular,
the Transcendentalists’ writings of the mid-1800s are
strikingly similar to yogic teachings. Although there is
no evidence to suggest that Ralph Waldo Emerson, the father
of Transcendentalism, and his most famous disciple Henry
David Thoreau actually practiced yoga, their essays and poetry
contain ideas and perspectives which clearly mirror those
found in the Yoga Sutras. Furthermore, both Emerson’s
and Thoreau’s writings make several references to Hindu
texts, which lends even more validity to the suggestion that
they knew—if not in practice, than certainly in intellect—what
the ancient yogis knew.
Transcendentalism emerged in the 1830s with writings and speeches
by a former clergyman named Ralph Waldo Emerson as an expression
of his own differences with the Unitarian Church. Specifically,
Emerson believed that traditional Unitarianism, and Christianity
in the larger sense, alienated humanity from divinity. Instead
of supreme enlightenment as something that could only be
found through believing in such things as miracles performed
by Jesus Christ, Emerson believed that one could find God
through one’s own “inner striving toward spiritual
communion with the divine spirit.” Writings describing
the movement even make reference to the ideal of a “conscious
union of the individual psyche, or Atman in Sanskrit,
with the “over-soul, life-force, or prime mover and
God, or Brahman in Sanskrit.”
In an introduction to his translation of the Yoga Sutras of
Patanjali, Sanskrit scholar and meditation teacher Alistair
Shearer explains the ideas behind Book One. The first challenge
in the practice of yoga says Patanjali (via Shearer), is
to understand and gain control over one’s own “mental
modifications.” In doing so, the aspiring yogi must
not let his own perceptions of reality cloud his true nature,
or he will never find truth or happiness. “The individual
intellect is merely the result of infinite consciousness
being reflected through a particular nervous system . . .
if the intellect is . . . purified by yoga . . . it becomes
able to discriminate between itself and the unlimited consciousness
it reflects. The petty limitations of egoism are transcended
. . . we no longer make the mistake of seeking security outside
ourselves.” Sutra 1.8 refers to “the delusion
that stems from a false impression of reality” (Shearer
translation). Thoreau says virtually the same thing in an
essay called “Life Without Principle,” published
in 1863. He decried what he called a “devotion to trade
and commerce,” in which he observed his peers worshiping
primarily material possessions, and believing that happiness
could be found therein. He says “we do not find at
home our standards; because we do not worship truth, but
the reflection of truth.”
Thoreau often advocated the contemplation of things non-material.
One of the reasons Thoreau went to live for two years in
a cabin he built in the woods of Walden Pond, an experience
he describes in his famous essay “Walden,” was
to escape the grind of living in a community ceaselessly
concerning itself with commerce and all things associated
with the production, sale, purchase, and consumption of material
goods. He describes this lifestyle as a world filled with
nothing but “the noise of my contemporaries...all transient
and fleeting,” and he says he would prefer not to “walk
in procession with pomp and parade, in a conspicuous place,
but to walk even with the Builder of the universe – not
to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth
Century, but to stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by.” (If
Thoreau saw his own times as restless and trivial, just imagine
what he would say about our world today!)
The second book of the Yoga Sutras contains the practical “recipe” for
those on the path to enlightenment, and each ingredient seems
to have lent its flavor to Transcendentalism. As described
more generally in Book One, the aspiring practitioner must
eliminate the causes of suffering, and the root of this suffering
is the previously described tendency to perceive as “real” or “permanent” things
that are not. Thoreau has clearly mastered this challenge,
shown in his description of his peers and their “fleeting” lifestyles.
Another cause of suffering that must be eliminated, according
to the Sutras, is egoism and attachment to pleasure, whereby
people ascribe their happiness to the worldly things which
give them pleasure. Thoreau was the master of letting go
of selfish attachment to worldly pleasures, demonstrated
by his two-year stint in the woods. Ralph Waldo Emerson makes
direct reference to this same “letting go” in
his 1836 essay “Nature,” when he describes the
essence of his own transcendence as the moment when “all
mean egotism vanishes.”
In Sutras 18 through 21 of Book Two, Patanjali describes the
interaction of the gunas, or “universal energies
of light, motion, and mass,” and how they form sensual
(e.g. relating to the senses) experiences for human beings
to discern, experience, and then rise above in order to find
liberation. Sri Swami Satchidananda, in his 1978 commentary
on the Sutras, explains how “all life is a passing
show,” and we should learn to enjoy each change and
recognize beauty in each phase, but not to become wrapped
up in any one phase. “It is only for the sake of the
Self that the world exists,” states Sutra 2.21 (Shearer
translation). In “Nature,” Emerson concurs. “In
its ministry to man, [nature] is not only the material, but
also the process and the result. All the parts incessantly
work into each other’s hands for the profit of man
. . . in divine charity.” He is not saying that man
owns nature, but that each event in the cycle of nature (he
describes the wind sowing the seed, the sun evaporating the
sea, the rain feeding the plant, the plant feeding the animal,
etc.) is one in which man can rejoice, appreciate, and from
which man can then move on. “The catalogue [of acts
of nature] is endless . . . this mercenary benefit is one
which has respect to a farther good. A man is fed, not that
he may be fed, but that he may work,” says Emerson.
In other words, the bounties of nature exist not for selfish
enjoyment or glutinous consumption, but to nourish man along
his quest for enlightenment.
The opening of Emerson’s essay consists of a six-line
verse which encapsulates this idea:
A subtle chain of countless rings
The next unto the farthest brings;
The eye reads omens where it goes,
And speaks all languages the rose;
And, striving to be man, the worm
Mounts through all the spires of form.
Nature is simply one act of God after the next. The “eye” to
which Emerson refers is comparable to Patanjali’s Purusha (seer
in Sanskrit), which sees each of these acts/results of nature,
but must not get stuck in any one of them in particular.
Each act of nature – each rose—speaks to all
of us equally with simple, fleeting beauty. Our challenge
as enlightened beings is to see the events of beauty (and
of darkness) as they come, and let them flow through us without
hindering us. The basic substance of truth, like Emerson’s
worm taking on different forms, never changes.
Also found in Book Two of the Sutras is the description of
the “eight-limbed path of yoga,” including the yamas and
the niyamas, often regarded as the “yogic” Ten
Commandments. The first of those paths lists the yamas,
or ethical disciplines. Topping this list is the practice
of non-violence, stated in the Sutras as ahimsa,
meaning without harming. Satchidananda explains that it does
not simply mean to avoid direct violence to others, but to
consciously and purposefully avoid any word, deed, or thought
which has the capacity to cause pain.
The practice of non-violent protest made so famous by Mahatma
Gandhi’s fight for India’s independence from
English colonial rule, and later in the U.S. by Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr., and the civil rights movement, was widely
credited to Henry David Thoreau’s actions in protesting
his government’s stand on slavery. Although Thoreau’s
home state of Massachusetts was a non-slaveholding state,
it did not specifically outlaw slavery; furthermore, it supported
the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, in which a runaway slave could
be legally returned to that slave’s home state, and
state of slavery. This infuriated Thoreau. In his widely
noted 1849 work Civil Disobedience, Thoreau narrates
his experience of being jailed for a night for his refusal
to pay his state taxes, and he explains his reasons for not
doing so: “If a thousand men were not to pay their
tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody
measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State
to commit violence and shed innocent blood . . . Is there
not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded?
Through this wound a man’s real manhood and immortality
flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death. I see this
blood flowing now.” It is not enough for Thoreau to
avoid literally shedding another man’s blood. He sees
consequences in all of his actions, and he refuses to engage
in any action from which the end result would bring harm.
In addition to ahimsa, another of the yamas comes
across clearly in the transcendentalists’ writings.
This is aparigraha, which means to be free from
hoarding or collecting. The Sutras teach us not collect things
we do not need or cannot use. In a poem titled “Each
and All,” first published in 1839, Emerson describes
the lesson of aparigraha, which is that so often,
once we acquire things we think we want or need, they lose
their ability to please or satisfy us, and we simply move
on to acquiring the next thing we believe will bring us happiness.
I thought the sparrow’s note from heaven,
Singing at dawn on the alder bough;
I brought him home, in his nest, at even;
He sings the song, but it cheers not now.
The delicate shells lay on the shore;
The bubbles of the latest wave
Fresh pearls to their enamel gave . . .
I wiped away the weeds and foam,
I fetched my sea-born treasures home;
But the poor, unsightly noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore
With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.
In this poem, he falls in love with the beauty of the sparrow’s
song and the treasures he finds on the beach, so much so
that collected them all in a 19th century poetic equivalent
of a shopping spree. But as soon as he owned the things that
brought him so much joy, that very joy and beauty were gone.
By the end of the poem, after narrating half a dozen similar
experiences, Emerson concludes that he cannot, nor should
not endeavor, to own what his senses desire:
Beauty through my senses stole;
I yielded myself to the perfect whole.
In Sutras 22-26 of Book Two, Patanjali describes the relationship
between Purusha, the seer, or the conscious human
mind, and Prakriti, what is seen in nature, e.g.
everything in the material world. He instructs that once
humans learn to discriminate between their true Self and
everything else in the physical world, they will experience
liberation. Satchidananda elaborates: “If we think
we are bound, we are bound. If we think we are liberated,
we are liberated . . . It is only when we transcend the mind
that we are free from all these troubles.” In Civil
Disobedience as he describes his night behind bars,
Thoreau elaborates on this idea of the transcendent power
of the mind: “I did not for a moment feel confined,
and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar .
. . I could not but smile to see how industriously they locked
the door on my meditations, which followed them out again
without let or hindrance . . . As they could not reach me,
they had resolved to punish my body.”
Emerson, too, writes about the power of the mind to affect
one’s own reality in his 1857 poem “Brahma.” Here
are the first two quatrains:
If the red slayer thinks he slays,
Or if the slain thinks he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.
Far or forgot to me is near;
Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanished Gods to me appear;
And one to me are shame and fame.
The title itself, a Sanskrit word translated by Satchidananda
as the “un-manifest supreme consciousness or God,” suggests
the idea expressed in yoga that this divine power is one
which resides within each human being, accessible to all
who tread the path toward enlightenment. Those who believe
they are bound by their relationship to the physical world—being
a slayer, or one who has been slain, perceiving objects as
far, forgotten, dark or light, or being attached to feelings
of shame or pride – will be trapped by this belief.
Those who know the “subtle ways” to achieve freedom – by
adopting meditative, transcendent states of mind – will
never be imprisoned by circumstance or emotion.
In the introduction to his book Light on Yoga, B.K.S.
Iyengar, one of the foremost practitioners and teachers of
yoga in the world, speaks to the concept of freedom. He refers
to it as a “deliverance from contact with pain and
sorrow,” which one can achieve only when one’s “mind,
intellect and self are under control, freed from restless
desire.” Thoreau, too, speaks of freedom in his 1862
essay “Walking.” He quotes ancient Hindu scripture
on the topic of knowledge and its relationship to liberation: “The
man who takes the liberty to live is superior to all the
laws both of heaven and earth, by virtue of his relation
to the Law-maker. ‘That is active duty,’ says
the Vishnu Purana, ‘which is not for our bondage; that
is knowledge which is for our liberation; all other duty
is good only unto weariness; all other knowledge, is only
the cleverness of an artist.’” So man has the
ability to know many things – facts, figures,
other people, and any other superficial aspect of his own
world. But this sort of knowledge is simply a reflection
of true knowledge. And true knowledge can come only from
act of turning inward (active duty – the practice of
yoga – or, in Thoreau’s terms, “taking
the liberty to live”). This is the way – the
only way – to achieve true freedom. Sutra 1.13 states, “The
practice of yoga is the commitment to become established
in the state of freedom.” And Sutra 1.16: “Supreme
freedom is that complete liberation from the world of change
that comes with knowing the unbounded self.” (Shearer
translations).
In “Nature,” Emerson he explains how important
it is for human beings to take time away from daily society
and contemplate not only nature, but the supernatural. He
speaks of adjusting his “inward and outward senses,” and
creating a mental state for himself in which “nothing
can befall me in life . . . Standing on the bare ground,
-- my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite
space . . . I become a transparent eyeball. I am nothing.
I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate
through me; I am part or particle of God.” The most
important concepts of yoga are found in this short passage:
grounding the physical body, letting go of the ego, allowing
the prana and the consciousness to rise up through
an unhindered body, and becoming one with a divine spirit.
I can just picture Emerson now, in a tadasana-like
stance, gazing out at a beautiful New England sunset, chakras
aligned, mind turned inward, having found that so-often elusive
free-flowing union of body and spirit.
Bibliography
Reuben, Paul P, “Chapter 4: Early Nineteenth Century
- American Transcendentalism: A Brief Introduction.” PAL:
Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference
Guide. URL: http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap4/4intro.html
(login Dec. 17, 2002)
The American Tradition in Literature, 5th edition. Ed. Sculley
Bradley, Richmond Croom Beatty et. al. 1956, Random House,
New York, NY.
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Translated and introduced by
Alistair Shearer. 1982, Bell Tower, New York, NY.
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Translation and commentary by
Sri Swami Satchidananda, 1978, Integral Yoga Publications,
Yogaville, VA.
“ The Thoreau Reader.” Richard Lenat. http://eserver.org/thoreau/thoreau.html
(login Dec. 20, 2002)
American Literature: Readings and Critiques. Ed. R.W. Stallman
and Arthur Waldhorn G.P Putman Sons, New York, NY 1961
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