Realism and Omniscience in the Yogasūtras

In the final chapter of the Yogasūtras (YS), the Kaivalya-Pāda (4:14-4:17), Pātañjala Yoga

refutes Yogācāra idealism (broadly construed as vijñānavāda or cittamātra).1 Patañjali, with the

help of his commentator (or perhaps alter-ego, Vyāsa)2 establishes a pluralist-realist position,

while accepting the possibility of yogic omniscience and the existence of an omniscient Lord

(Īśvara) at 1:25, 3:33, and 3:54. These positions seem prima facie incompatible, which compels

us to reconceive the concept of omniscience while illuminating the contentious and crucial role

the concept plays in realist/idealist debates over the nature of the external world. Part of what

we will show here is that the Yoga-Saṃkhya commitment to dualism plays a key role in

connecting realism to the employment of omniscience in the Yogasūtras. The realist believes

that there are objects and aspects of objects that exist independently of human perception and

knowledge. And, under the standard interpretation, something exists independently of

someone’s knowledge only if that someone can be utterly unaware of that something without

the something going out of existence. If someone has no ignorance of anything then how can

things exist independently of their knowledge? Thus, the realist contends that necessarily for

1
The “consciousness” or “mind-only” Buddhist schools, of which distinct and competing textual traditions abound.
For the purposes of this essay, we will gloss Yogācāra as subjective idealism all the while keeping in mind other
compelling and competing glosses. Dan Lusthaus, for example, proposes a phenomenological-Husserlian gloss,
contending that the term, “vijñapti-mātra,” or, “consciousness only” is not a subjective idealist pronouncement;
but rather, in the style of French and German phenomenologists, refers to the arguable claim that “all our efforts
to get beyond ourselves are nothing but projections of our consciousness” (p. 5). This means that “Yogācārins treat
the term vijñapti-mātra as an epistemic caution, not an ontological pronouncement” (p. 6). See Dan Lusthaus,
Buddhist Phenomenology: A Philosophical Investigation of Yogācāra Buddhism and the Ch’eng Wei-shih lun (New
York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002).
2
See Philipp Mass, “A Concise Historiography of Classical Yoga Philosophy,” in Periodization and Historiography of
Indian Philosophy, ed. Eli Franco (Vienna: Publications of the De Nobili Research Library, 2013), 53-90. Mass
proposes that Vyāsa’s bhāṣya might actually be the collected auto-commentary of Patañjali himself, who may have
collated older sūtras from an enduring Yoga and Saṃkhya tradition while authoring his own sūtras that would
collectively comprise the Yoga-sūtras.

1
any object, it is possible that the would-be knower is ignorant of the object or ignorant of some

aspect of the object. This is modal formulation of external world realism, we argue, crucially

connects the role of omniscience in a pluralist-realist gloss of the Yogasūtras. The veridical

experience of externality thus implies mind-independence, and in that way reveals the

independent “power” or “dignity” (māhātmya) of the object. For the external world realist, the

external world is greater than our knowledge of the world. With respect to knowledge of other

persons, thinking externality in terms of power (māhātmya), self-nature (svarūpa), and dignity

(māhātmya) resounds with ethical overtures. Hence, realism fosters epistemic (and perhaps,

moral) humility: there are things in and about the world that one contingently or necessarily

does not know; and there is inherent dignity implied by the real independence of another, this

“other” who cannot be fully mastered—for knowledge, after all, is a form of mastery. If realism

is the view that things and facts can exist unknown or knowledge-independently, then the idea

of possible—and more so—actual omniscience appears to be incompatible with such realist

modesty. Hence anti-realism and omniscience sound like allies, as they were in the case of

Buddhist idealist logicians who constructed the world out of self-aware vijñānas.3 For anyone to

be omniscient is for them to know all things, events, and facts, which would entail that nothing

would exist unknown or beyond their knowledge.

3
We are referring to the position known as svasaṃvedana. The scholastic Buddhist logicians, Dignāga and
Dharmakīrti famously argue that for any perception, the form (ākāra) of that perception is entirely immanent to
the stream of consciousness. Thus, the subject and object are single in nature, and awareness of an object would
therefore simultaneously be self-awareness. Kellner has argued that svasaṃvedana functions in distinct
theoretical ways for the two Buddhist philosophers. For Dignāga the self-congition of a perception is required to
make sense of memory. For Dharmakīrti svasaṃvedana is required if an object is to be cognized at all. Both
thinkers employ regress arguments to reject higher-order theories of consciousness. See Birgit Kellner, “Self-
awareness (svasaṃvedana) and Infinite Regresses: A Comparison of Arguments by Dignāga and Dharmakīrti,”
Journal of Indian Philosophy, 39 (2011): 411-426.

2
 For the subjective idealist (of the Berkeleyian and traditionally glossed Yogācārin stripe),

objects are not only mind-dependent, but mind-generated and immanent to the stream of

consciousness which we loosely term a mind. Thus, any perception of an object will exhaust the

properties or qualities of that object in that momentary perception. We can thus not only say of

objects that their “esse est percipi,” as Bishop Berkeley did, but also that “to exist is to be

known.”4 For the omniscient being who knows all things in all their modes of being—past,

present, and future—anything that is, has, or will exist is immediately known. Can Patañjali, or

any philosopher drawn to the belief in an omniscient being “than which nothing more

knowledgeable can be conceived” propose a pluralist-realist metaphysics while embracing the

possibility of such an all-knower? The idealist opponent (pūrvapakṣin) might capitalize on this

point to reject the Yoga system and its Sāṃkhyan metaphysics. We therefore need to unpack

how omniscience operates in Patañjali’s text and examine whether a credible gloss on the

concept (at least in case of Īśvara’s omniscience) unwittingly amounts to the idealist claim that

esse est percipi in the sense that “to be is to be perceived” and “to be perceived is to be

known.” If the implication proves cogent, then omniscience construed as maximal knowing

entail a species of idealism, while naïve realism amounts to a rejection of omniscience.

Whether or not we can convincingly gloss Pātañjala yoga as realist, the Yogasūtras is

undeniably dualist in its metaphysics. Puruṣa is the light of awareness, which in its most

4
This is not to say that the idealist lacks a theory of error. The Buddhist-idealist commitment to arthkriyākāritva,
the Occam-like view that to exist is to produce some conventionally accepted effect—or have some explanatory
use—is one component of a theory of error. Some forms of perception miss that mark and are thus not considered
real by conventional standards. Dharmakīrti explains in Pramāṇavārttika 3.1c, “The means of knowledge is of two
kinds because the object of knowledge is of two kinds. [The latter is of two kinds] because it is capable or incapable
of efficient action. The [illusory] hair and so forth are not [real] objects (artha), for they are not determined as
[real] objects.” See Eli Franco and Miyako Notake, Dharmakīrti on the Duality of the Object: Pramāṇavārttika III 1-
63 (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2011), 29.

3
unobstructed form is pure consciousness without intentional content. Prakṛti is the ultimately

non-sentient matrix by which puruṣa is obstructed from recognizing itself as pure, unchanging

witness or seer (sākṣin/draṣṭṛ). Made up of three primary psychophysical strands, or, affect-

stuff (guṇas)—intelligence, initiative and inertia (alternatively describable as tranquility, tension

and torpor)—prakṛti accounts for the experience of dynamic change, ego-hood (asmitā), and

psycho-cultural personal identity (among other things). The otherwise non-sentient buddhi, or,

first cognitive principle of prakṛti that hosts, mimics, and reflects puruṣa’s awareness and

constructs thought, in a poetic sense, borrows the light of puruṣa’s awareness, thus confusing

itself for that light and leading to an entanglement (and confusion of identity) between puruṣa

and prakṛti. It is the agenda of clearing up that confusion by dis-identifying object-directed

intelligence from pure subjective consciousness that drives the soteriology of Pātañjala yoga.

When after persistent psycho-spiritual mind-stilling labor the yogin stays the whirling of the

mind (citta-vṛtti-nirodaḥ), puruṣa rests in its own “mere-seer” self-nature: tadā draṣṭuḥ

svarūpe’vasthānam.5 If this dualism is best glossed as realist and pluralist, and if prakṛti and the

evolutes shaped from the primary ingredients of the three strands (guṇas) present

independently real physical and mental objects (desks and chairs and thoughts and feelings) for

the benefit of a primary seer-subject (puruṣa), then accomplished yogins and their exemplary

Lord (Īśvara) cannot be omniscient (at least not by a surface reading). In other words, the

extraordinary accomplishments (siddhi) of the yogi and yoginī upon achieving samādhi (total

equanimity and one-pointedness of the mind), and the purported omniscience of Īśvara are

incompatible with the realist metaphysics arguably endorsed by the text.

5
YS 1:2-3.

4
 By offering what we think is a resolution to this surface incompatibility we will argue

that omniscience makes the most sense in the Yogasūtras when the text is glossed as pluralist

and realist in its metaphysics. Moreover, external world realism accords best with Pātañjala

Yoga’s commitment to metaphysical dualism. Thus, our argument articulates the theoretical

connection between realism, dualism, and possible omniscience. In section 1.1, we will closely

examine 4.14 of the Yogasūtras, along with Vyāsa’s bhāṣya (YSBh). When examined closely,

Vyāsa’s realist gloss on 4.14 provides crucial insight into the conceptual and linguistic

constraints that subjective idealism seems to directly flout. While Vyāsa does not provide so

much in the way of direct argument here, he scratches at a deeper descriptive metaphysics that

we argue informs and supports his positive arguments against subjective idealism in 4:15-4:17.

In sections 1.2 and 1.3, we provide analysis of Vyāsa’s objections to idealism and argue that it

leaves him open to the sort of idealist strategy outlined in this introduction; either the

omniscience described in the Yogasūtras must be taken seriously, and thus requires an idealist

metaphysics, or it must be rejected to support a pluralist-realist metaphysics. However, we will

counter in section 1.4 that the Yogasūtras employment of omniscience is compatible with

pluralist-realist metaphysics after all, as our modal analysis of realism and its tight connection

with the Saṃkhya-Yoga commitment to dualism allows for possible omniscience in a world of

independently real, external objects.

1.1 Conditions for Talking About Inter-Subjectively Shared Objects in YS 4:14 and YSBh

Vyāsa’s commentary to the final chapter of the Yogasūtras, the Kaivalya-Pāda, counters

subjective idealism in 4:14-4:17. What we have in the last half of the commentary to 4:14,

where the idealist’s thesis is first introduced, is a version of what has been styled,

5
sahopalambha-niyama (invariable co-arising of cognition and object), attributed broadly in the

Indian commentarial tradition to Yogācāra Buddhism:6 “There is no object that arises without

cognition (vijñāna), but there is the apprehension (jñāna) of ideas without objects, such as

those fabricated in dreams during sleep.”7 The crucial point for this form of the idealist thesis is

that a constant relationship always holds between positing the existence of objects and

apprehending those objects in cognition. Positing the existence of an object means positing the

existence of an accompanying cognition; but sometimes we experience and falsely believe in

external objects that turn out to be purely mind-dependent, as in dreams. To claim the

cognition is distinct from the object, so the argument goes, we must be able to establish the

nature of each item independently of that relation.8 But we can’t.9 To this, Vyāsa responds with

6
See Dharmakīrti’s Pramāṇaviniścayaḥ 1.54ab:
Sahopalambhaniymād abhedo nīlataddhiyoḥ |
Bhedaśca bhrāntivijñānair drṣyetendau ivādvaye||
Because of invariable co-apprehension, cognition of blue and blue itself are not distinct.
One should see such difference as due to false cognition, like in the moon [when falsely seen as double] being
actually single (my translation).
7
YSBh. 4:14.
Nāstyartho vijñānavisahacarosti |
Tu jñānamarthavisahacharaṃ svapnau kalpitamitam...|
8
This form of the argument combines sahopalambha-niyama with the so-called knowability (vedyatva) argument.
See Jadunath Sinha, Indian Realism (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Press, 1972), 81: “The rule of knowability means
this. That which is known by a cognition does not differ from it in the same way as a cognition does not differ from
cognition itself. The object is known by an act of cognition. So it does not differ from it. The known object is
identical with the act of knowledge.”
9
Dharmakīrti’s position is complicated to say the least. He has been glossed from a Sautrāntika
(“representationist”) Buddhist perspective, which would posit external support for cognitions—by inference—but,
like Kant, would not give us direct access to the nature or forms (ākāra) of the external supports. Thus, his
sahopalambha-niyama would claim at least that we do not directly encounter external objects. The forms of such
objects are internal to consciousness, a view known as sākāravāda. This is directly tied up with his commitment to
svasaṃvedana: since the perceiver and the form of the perceived are one, any act of awareness is at the same
time an act of self-awareness. For further development on Dharmakīrtian sākāravāda and svasaṃvedana and its
critique by the Śaiva Siddhānta commentator, Bhaṭṭa Rāmakaṇṭha see: Alex Watson, “Bhaṭṭa Rāmakaṇṭha’s
Elaboration of Self-Awareness (svasaṃvedana), and How it Differs from Dharmakīrti’s Exposition of the Concept,”
Journal of Indian Philosophy (2010) 38: 297-321, at 311 at fn. 46. There is controversy, then, over which way to
gloss Dharmakīrti or whether to read him on a “sliding scale of analysis” where he provides views that are prima
facie incompatible but employed pragmatically where didactically or soteriologically preferable. More refined
ontological positions, on this reading, do not so much replace earlier views as they do interpolate clearer

6
a single, terse declaration: “The object arises by its own dignity (māhātmya). How can they

dismiss the independent nature of the object attributing it entirely to the power of fabricated

cognition and then go on talking10 [or prattling] about it? How can their words be trustworthy?

(s’raddheya-vacanāḥ)?”11

While we must await 4:15, 4:16, and 4:17 for positive arguments against absolute

idealism, Vyāsa’s quick dismissal of the pūrvapakṣin (the Yogācāra Buddhist) in 4:14 is

underwhelming, and from a surface read, merely table-pounding. However, lest we

underestimate the subtlety of his point, we propose reading his initial response in the spirit of a

descriptive metaphysics. Analysis and clarification of folk-concept of a material external object

and an ordinary language statement about it commit us to a conceptual scheme where the

external object does not pop into existence thanks to our thought and talk. We can

communicate with each other as we talk about a shared world because the world is

independent of our subjective ideas and perceptions. In other words, to talk about an object’s

understanding at the level of instruction appropriate to the soteriological context. Thus, we may read Dharmakīrti
in a subjective idealist mode or mitigated idealist—Sautrāntika—mode. Deeper ontological commitments are
presumably eschewed, which is why Dunne calls Dharmakīrti’s Yogācāra gloss, “epistemic idealism.” See John
Dunne, Foundations of Dharmakīrti’s Philosophy (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2004). Dan Arnold contends that
the epistemology between the two idealisms are in essence the same; so, their only relevant difference lies in
deeper ontological-metaphysical commitments to the presence or absence of external objects. Thus, the Yogācāra
portion of Dharmakīrti’s text is “simply his making explicit that epistemological commitments the Sautrāntika does
hold are compatible with idealism”: Dan Arnold, “Buddhist Idealism, Epistemic and Otherwise: Thoughts on the
Alternating Perspectives of Dharmakīrti,” Sophia 47 no. 1 (2008): 3-28. In any event, Vyāsa is clearly attacking
subjective idealism, and as we are concerned with the logic of that position as it pertains to omniscience, realism,
and dualism, we need not engage exegesis on Dharmakīrti too deeply here. Dharmakīrti’s gloss on sahopalambha-
niyama presents us with one of many general argument forms of which the subjective idealist may appeal.
10
My emphasis.
11
Pratyupasthitamidaṃ svamāhātmyena vastu kathamapramāṇātmakena vikalpajñānabalena
vastusvarūpamutsṛjya tadevāpalapantaḥ śraddheyavacanāḥ |
I have construed “lapantaḥ” as the more neutral “talking.” By doing so, I emphasize the indelible commitments
inherent to speech-acts and meaningful communication. However, there is a polemical sense of “lap” that
connotes “prattling” or talking nonsense. For the latter, see Rāma Prasāda’s translation, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras
(New Delhi: Munishiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1998). Conflating the two allows for a more charitable and
philosophically rich polemic.

7
purported externality, and to distinguish it from the projections experienced in a dream

foregrounds a basic commitment between both disputants, namely, that we can ordinarily

distinguish a dream projection from the experience of externality we, together, enjoy in our

waking state. Assuming, as both disputants do, that such a distinction is prima facie legitimate,

we can only make sense of it based on a different relation between cognition and its intentional

content in a dream from its relation in a waking state. We will not directly engage this point

here, but it’s worth pointing out that the idealist thesis must at least employ the prima facie

view—that we dream, and we often confuse the objects of dreams for real objects only to

recognize this as error—in order to motivate skepticism of the purported externality of objects

in the real world. This is crucial for the idealist, because we can make the obvious point that our

incapacity to know (or come into perceptual contact with an object) outside of our own

awareness is an epistemic point which does not have a direct bearing on the ontological status

of objects; at best, it motivates agnosticism or some sort of Kantian distinction between the

ding an sich and the object as we represent it.12 But if the idealist can appeal to circumstances

in which we recognize that self-generated intentional content is sometimes mistakenly believed

to be mind-independent, then she can motivate, along with her epistemic point, the larger

ontological thesis that objects (all contents of experience and thought) are solely mind-

dependent. For clearly it is possible that objects believed to be mind-independent are not since,

in many cases, they are actually mind-dependent (as in the case of hallucinations and dreams).

12
“Sahopalambhaniyama demonstrates that the object can never be experienced apart from the consciousness of
it. The analysis of dreams completes the argument by showing that consciousness can create and perceive even in
the absence of a real object. It shows that consciousness is not transparent or nirākāra, but it is
creative...Sahopalambhaniyama supplies an epistemological refutation to realism; to show that the concept of the
object is riddled with inherent contradictions, even apart from its relationship to the knowing consciousness being
unintelligible, is to refute realism on metaphysical grounds.” A.K. Chatterjee, The Yogācāra Idealism (Varanasi:
Motilal Banarsidass Press, 1962), 80-81.

8
 Vyāsa’s rhetorical response only hints at the positive reasons he will charge against

subjective idealism in 4:15-4:17. However, rhetoric and polemics aside, we submit that even

Vyāsa’s undefended declaration in 4:14 is subtler than it initially appears. Not only does it

target idealism’s ready use of the very distinction it undermines, but it also emphasizes the

mismatch between talking about and having ordinary commerce with an object, or, “really

existing thing” (vastu) that is entirely “imaginative fabrication” (vikalpa), while also taking for

granted the ordinary fact that we are talking about the same thing! That is, the dispute

between the external world realist and idealist gets off the ground on the assumption that

whatever theory we develop for external objects, we actually engage disputes over shared

objects (in a shared or shareable language), which of course requires a convincing error theory

that explains the fact that we call them “external” and shared in the first place. But given that,

according to subjective idealism, the subject’s vikalpa-generating capacities are not only

egocentrically represented, but radically self-contained and insulated from any other subject’s

experience of an external object, beginning our analysis of the ontology of medium-sized goods

from such an ineradicably partitioned vantage point elides the obvious phenomenology of

shared experiences, something basic to any sort of meaningful communication.

Construing Vyāsa’s response as an emphasis on the conditions for talking about objects

can’t help but remind us of Donald Davidson’s so-called triangulation theory of meaning. The

absolute idealist who appeals to sahopalambha-niyama and is motivated by our capacity to

generate faux objectivity in things like dreams still avails herself of the concept of objectivity.

9
While this is not the place to deeply explore Davidson’s perceptual externalism,13 a few

features of the view he developed throughout his work are material to this discussion.

First, in order for a subject to recognize the relevant causes (and relevant features, both

proximal and distal) of an utterance or thought, the subject must be able to distinguish

between what seems like a causal source and what, in fact, plays the appropriate role.14 This

distinction between appearance and reality is therefore crucial to thought and meaningful

communication; it is crucial because, without it, we cannot individually or collectively

disambiguate the features of the environment that fuel and imbue what we are talking about.

For example, we must be able to disambiguate whether an utterance points out the structure,

surface, shape, or color of an object. When the contents of utterances are communicated, the

speakers must be able to have some concept of the probable content, as it relates to features

of a (cultural and physical) environment, and the speakers must be able to rule out what would

not make sense. So, the concept of objectivity allows us to navigate correct and incorrect

responses to an environment and a linguistic community.15 This implies that a ground-level

notion of objectivity is already at play in both meaningful introspection and social

communication.16 This does not beg the question so much as provide a transcendental

argument that articulates the conceptual conditions for introspection and communication.

13
This refers to the view that meanings and thoughts are partly determined by what typically causes them. See
Claudine Verheggen, “Triangulating with Davidson,” The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 57, No. 226 (July 2007): pp.
96-103 at 97.

14
See Donald Davidson, “Emergence of Thought,” Erkenntnis, Vol. 51, No. 1 (1999): pp.7-17.
15
Claudine Verheggen, “Triangulating with Davidson,” p. 99.
16
See Donald Davidson, “The Second Person,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Sept: 1999): pp. 255-
267.

10
 Similarly, Vyāsa is not begging the question or table-pounding against the subjective

idealist here. Vyāsa is contending that the very invocation of epistemological and external

world skepticism through vikalpa, as particularly exhibited in dreams or sensory error, operates

against a background of meaningful utterances that collectively fix such meanings through a

shared sense of mere appearance versus objectivity. Thus, his imagined pūrvapakṣin must

employ and therefore reinforce the validity of the very concept she enjoins us to ultimately

dismiss.

A second feature of Davidson’s thought that might help us unpack what we’ve

suggested is implicit to Vyāsa’s dismissal in 4:14 is an appeal to the inherently social nature of

meaning and communication. The way we read Davidson on this point is that given the

necessity for the concept of objectivity in fixing meaning, communication and thought already

appeals to a world external to the particular speaker (or thinker), which includes other

speakers. Certainly, in his early formulation of triangulation, Davidson argues that fixing the

relevant features that cause a thought requires a feedback sequencing (“triangulation”)

between multiple speakers, because the solitary person cannot, alone, disambiguate the

relevant features of an object her utterances pick out. But obviously, and as Claudine

Verheggen has pointed out,17 the problem of disambiguation does not just magically disappear

as a result of speakers collectively navigating an environment. However, this early formulation

of the problem may be more of a diagnosis than a solution.18 The crucial facet of Davidson’s

triangulation developed in his later work is the point that a kind of feedback loop must exist

between having a concept of objectivity, which allows us to identify and communicate the

17
Verheggen, “Triangulating with Davidson,” p. 99.
18
Ibid., p. 99.

11
causal sources of beliefs, and having some interaction with objects and events to bolster our

concept of objectivity. The transcendental argument with Vyāsa’s gloss might look something

like this: in order to successfully speak to one another (and we do often successfully speak

to/interpret one another), a concept of objectivity must be operative; thus, in order to motivate

and communicate a skeptical attitude, we must be able to distinguish between what seems to

be the case and what is the case. And this, we’ve suggested, is at the heart of Vyāsa’s brief

dismissal in 4:14. The pūrvapakṣin cannot “keep talking” about objects (the distinction of which

is crucial for invoking dream objects and sensory illusions from ordinary objects we have

commerce with in our waking states), and then propose a thesis that globally collapses the

distinction between subject and object, not if we’re to take her seriously, anyway.

So 4:14 might seem like table-pounding realism when we abstract it from the larger

context of 4:15-4:17, but in the larger context (to be developed in the proceeding portions of

this essay) it nicely sets up three important claims. The first, as we’ve suggested, calls the

idealist to task to provide a cogent and non-self-refuting error theory without undermining the

agreed upon conceptual framework that makes communication possible. This is not question-

begging because it is more an attempt to establish a basic starting point for meaningful dispute

rather than a bald declaration that objects are independent of the respective senses (indriya)

through which we engage them. The second claim, which we draw out of the first, is that the

conceptual framework that accounts for shared meaning includes the concept of a shared

world, and hence shared commerce with the objects of that world, which already speaks to

objects that are independent of the particular observer. The third claim is that non-pluralism

and subjective idealism undermines our ordinary mereological commitments. This can also be

12
construed as a transcendental argument: we experience/perceive parts of whole objects; in

order to have such experiences, we must also simultaneously experience the absence of other

parts of such objects (in a non-Cubist reality!); but if esse est percipi holds, then an experience

of an “absent part” should have no bearing on an occurent perception, which would undermine

our ability to experience wholes and parts. We will develop the second and third points in our

analysis of 4:15-4:17. Taken together, we will argue that Vyāsa offers a compelling objection to

the subjective idealism of the ostensibly Yogācārin pūrvapakṣin (which of course assumes that

we read Yogācāra Buddhism as a precursor to Berkeleyian idealism rather than a nuanced and

ontologically non-committal phenomenology of Husserlian flavor).19 We will also resolve the

larger problem that the degree to which Patañjali and Vyāsa develop a compelling realist

metaphysics is the degree to which the concept of omniscience is destabilized in the

Yogasūtras.

1.2 Vyāsa’s Arguments from Many Minds: A Response to the Yogācāra Pūrvapakṣin

Glossing Vyāsa as a naïve realist, the Yogācārin may parry Vyāsa’s point with a

particularly damning objection. As already stated in our introductory remarks, this objection

points out how the concept of omniscience, as developed in the third chapter of the

Yogasūtras, the Vibhūti-Pāda is not consistent with naïve realism. If this is the case, then Vyāsa

(and Patañjali) must either reject omniscience or accept some variety of idealism or

constructivism (“representationism”). One might even argue that what we are calling the

constructivist position—the view that we must infer the existence of objects that support our

perceptions, but we have no direct access to such objects—is highly unstable and leaves itself

19
See Dan Lusthaus, Buddhist Phenomenology.

13
open to precisely the sort of arguments Berkeley leveled against Locke’s proposal of primary

versus secondary qualities. In other words, a mitigated realism/idealism, where the forms

(ākāra) of perceptions are immanent to consciousness itself unravels into a full-blown

subjective idealism. Hermeneutically speaking, and given the principle of charity, this presents a

strong case against reading Pātañjala philosophy as naïve realism. However, before examining

this line of objection, we will further develop Vyāsa’s glosses on 4:15 and 4:16.

In YSBh 4:15, Vyāsa invokes objects (vastūni) that are said to be common to all

(sādhāraṇa).20 In ordinary commerce with the world we may both speak of our separate

rickshaws having to divert the same cow in the road, although you’ve approached it from the

opposite side as me. In this sense, the cow is common to us both, and yet apprehended from

distinct vantage points and perspectives. Vyāsa argues in this regard that “the object has not

been fabricated by one mind, or by many minds, but is established in itself” (svapratiṣṭham).21

Clearly then he reads the root text at 4:15 through the lens of a naïve realist. The text reads,

vastu-sāmye citta-behdāt tayor vibhaktaḥ panthāḥ, which we can translate: “When the object

is the same, the divergent paths of the object are accounted for by there being different

minds.”22

What problem are Patañjali and his commentators (Vyāsa and Vācaspati Miśra)

addressing here? We speak of our distinct views of some object O. I laugh at the fact that I

mistook the tall pole for a person, because I was standing some distance away from the pole

which is shrouded in darkness and barely illuminated by moonlight. You assure me that it is not

20
Hariharānanda’s edition of the YS translates this as, “common interest” for multiple minds.
21
YSBh (4:15):
Tat-khalu na-ekacittaparikalpitaṃ na-api-anekacittiparikalpitaṃ kintu svapratiṣṭham |
22
My translation.

14
our common lanky friend, and as I approach it at the distance from which you stand, I recognize

that you’re correct. Without begging any ontological questions, we at least experience

ourselves speaking about a common object, the same O of which we’ve had distinct

experiences. The common object under discussion must afford a sense of being shared by many

individual minds to account for our ability to communicate our shared but distinct experiences.

How do we account for the fact that a single thing affords distinct (and unshared) aspects of

itself? If it is an independent object with objective properties—if it has its own essential nature

(svarūpa/svabhāva)—then shouldn’t it afford identical aspects of itself to any observer? If O

objectively possesses the property P, then how can we explain someone seeing O but not

seeing P? Vācaspati examines this point in 4:17, when he considers this the objection of an

idealist pūrvapakṣin.23 If O has an independent nature, and it is not simply the mind’s construct,

then all minds should in principle be able to perceive the object’s self-same objective attributes.

But we obviously do not always—and sometimes, never—perceive the same aspects of the

object (or, to avoid begging any questions, we do not always experience the object of

perception in the same way). Already anticipating this sort of objection in 4:15, Patañjali

provides a reasonable if not “naïve” solution: different minds and their independently

conditioned natures account for distinct perceptions of a single thing. The object will not

appear identically to us, because we do not perceive it under identical conditions. Still,

something must account for our experience of sharing a common object under distinct

conditions and perceptions.

23
In Rāma Prasāda’s edition with the commentary of Vyāsa and Vācaspati Miśra.

15
 Vyāsa stresses the implication that the object must be single (if it is indeed the same

object shared in discussion), and it must afford some sense of commonality that allows us to

agree that we are speaking about the same thing. Thus, it must have its own external and

independent nature. If Devadatta sees something about O that Maitra does not (and vice

versa), that is because they have different minds conditioned in different ways.24 That also

implies that aspects afforded by the object are external to the subject, because for some

property P that Devadatta perceives and Maitra does not, P is at least external to Maitra.

Now, we can object that P is not necessarily an external and objective aspect of the

object; it may be a construct immanent to Devadatta’s mind, and that is precisely why Maitra

does not perceive it. But then, of course, if the intentional content of Devadatta’s mental state

fully constitutes the nature of the object, then his perceiving P and Maitra not perceiving P

entails that they are perceiving two distinct objects. Either there is one object perceived in

distinct ways, or there are two distinct objects, and we need a cogent explanation as to why

Devadatta and Maitra assume they are talking about the same thing. A reasonable explanation

for their assumption (and, consequently, their capacity to communicate) is that the object is

external to them both. Given the conditions of their independent minds and their particular

vantage points on O, they will perceive distinct properties.

As Vācaspati drives the point home, a sattvic (“pure” or dispassionate) personality will

experience O with dispassion to the degree that her rajasic (“active” or impassioned)

dispositions are absent or firmly quelled in her personality. On the other hand, the rajasic

personality might perceive the same O with pleasure and desire. Moreover, every O has some

24
In Rāma Prasāda’s edition, see Vācaspati’s commentary at 4:15.

16
distinct mixture of sattva, rajas, and tamas (“passivity” or inertness), and this will in turn

condition how O is perceived.25 Vyāsa and Vācaspati thus offer a straightforward pluralist-

realist gloss on the root text. Owing to obvious and subtle differences among individual

agents—their various dispositions and character qualities—and the various ways in which the

guṇas manifest themselves, the world shows up in divergent ways. But how can a shared object

be the same for different minds? While the root text takes for granted the shared nature of

objects, it seems to puzzle over how something always-already shared can show up with such

different qualities and serve such different interests and purposes. As we’ve previously stated,

Patañjali provides an obvious answer to the puzzle: different minds (or, citta, which includes

buddhi, ahaṅkāra, and manas) 26 affected and shaped by different transformations in prakṛti

account for a shared object showing up with different qualities. However, we can reverse the

emphasis of this puzzle and ask how it is that such divergent views can agree enough to

consider O the focal point of difference. Why not, instead of the object, just say, “My object

matters to me in this way, and has these qualities”? Vyāsa offers a rather basic, if not elegant

solution: svapratiṣṭham—the object is self-situating such that through its independent nature

we each connect with the shared object through aspects it affords us from our particular

emotional, axiological, embodied and cognitive standpoints.

Admittedly, we need not follow Vyāsa’s and Vācaspati’s lead and read naïve realism into

the root text. Just as the Buddhist would argue that difference is a function of the unique

25
In Rāma Prasāda’s edition, see Vyāsa’s YSBh at 4:15 and Vācaspati’s commentary.
26
Ian Whicher, The Integrity of the Yoga Darśana, (New York: Suny Press, 1999), 93: “...Citta, which is used a total
of twenty-two times in the Yoga-sūtra, is a comprehensive concept that can be seen as embracing the various
functionings of the ontological categories of buddhi, ahaṃkāra, and manas, and yet as reflected consciousness in
total it is a nonstructural or ahierarchical concept and cannot be equated or reduced to any one or more of the
above evolutes in themselves.”

17
continuity among the dispositions (saṃskāras) and values and history of a particular stream of

consciousness (saṅtāna) as distinct from some other bundled psychophysical stream, the guṇas

and karmic dispositions of individual agents do the work in the Yogasūtras of explaining how

the world shows up in diverse ways. For the Yogasūtras, which more or less appropriates

Sāṃkhyan metaphysics, the tattvas and the guṇas provide the explanatory conditions for

making sense of prakṛtic reality, which we can at least define as non-sentient, non-reflexive

reality (that which is not the pure witnessing subject, puruṣa). The idealist-oriented philosopher

might agree that the sattvic mind might approach O with proportion and dispassion, while the

rajasic mind might approach O as an overwhelmingly beautiful object that must be possessed

at all costs. The patterns of saṃskāras and the mind’s latent impressions (vāsānas) will shape

what the environment affords to the particular agent in her particular psychophysical condition.

However, the analysis of these constitutive conditions need not force us to come down in any

particular direction on the question of mind-independence and the externality of objects:

difference, and communication of such difference, is not enough to establish external world

realism.

But this is precisely why we have emphasized reading Vyāsa’s commentary in 4:14 as a

credible gloss from the standpoint of linguistic commitments and background conceptual

schemes. While a Cartesian-inspired philosophy of mind tries to find isomorphic fit between

mental representations on the one hand, and the physical-material world they represent on the

other, as though the shared institution of language would have no bearing on such a conceptual

scheme, we might read into Vyāsa and the Yogasūtras a concern with how ordinary “talking”

presupposes indelible conceptual constraints. In YS 4:14, Patañjali writes: pariṇāma-ekatvāt-

18
vastu-tattvam, which can be translated, “From the oneness of the transformation [of prakṛti

through the guṇas and tattvas], the that-ness of the object [is established].” But reading, as the

anti-realist might, “that-ness” as an inscrutable ding an sich already brings into the discussion

an added layer of interpretation. As an indexical pronoun, “that,” which becomes the common

thing of interest and communication requires a shared world that disambiguates the shared

object from a host of distinct experiences that might otherwise never allow us to point to the

same thing. While this may not provide straightforward ontological leverage, it presupposes the

kind of ordinary (or oblique) realism that Putnam was getting at in the lectures collected in his

volume, The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body, and World.27 The problem he acutely identifies here is

the interpolation of representational medium between the seer and the seen. When we

envision ourselves as homunculi in a Cartesian theatre populated by “sensory data,” then we

must naturally concoct a conceptual bridge between representation and object; one that

Putnam fears we can never satisfactorily devise. The skeptic avails himself of the same

representationist assumption. But the very “that” (tat) of which we speak already reveals a

basic oneness, both in the elements that allow an object to show up to multiple observers at

the same time, and in the mind’s (cittyāḥ) inclusion, without “sensory screen” or “medium,” in

the very process of that shared but admittedly distinct view of the object. However, this

“oneness” is not the sort of collapse between subject and object the idealist would appeal to. It

27
In his first lecture of the volume, Putnam diagnoses his early anti-realism as implicitly subscribing to early
modern assumptions about “sense data.” However, abandoning such a problematic model opens up a clearer
picture, so he argues, of how we actually directly experience/see the objects we perceive rather than the “sense
data” that supposedly act as a screen between seer and object. Putnam more specifically writes that what drove
his early anti-realism was his commitment to the model that “our mental functioning was just the ‘Cartesian cum
materialist’ picture, a picture on which it has to seem magical that we can have access to anything outside our
‘inputs.’” See Hillary Putnam, The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body, and World (New York: Columbia University Press,
1999), p. 19. Also, see especially his afterword, “Are Appearances ‘Qualia’” at 151-175.

19
is, rather, a coordination between the integrity of distinct things sharing in a common world

that includes embodied mental activity. Commonality and distinctness presuppose coalescence

and independence. Assuming that we cannot make sense of a strictly solipsistic language, we

remain conceptually committed, through communication, to the externality and independence

of objects that may directly impact us. Thus, while Patañjali in 4.14 might not give us enough to

make bold declarations on the side of naïve realism, there is a more primary naïveté here that

dares speak of a common “that-ness” (tattva) that while requiring a shared world does not

necessarily require the interpolation of “sensory data” between the seer and the seen.

1.3 Vyāsa’s Second Argument Against Subjective Idealism: Mereological Sums in YSBh 4:16

Now, at 4:16 the root text asks, “If the object that is dependent on one mind were not

cognized, then would it exist” (na ca-ekacitta-tantraṃ cet-vastu tat-pramāṇakaṃ tadā kim

syāt)? This is best glossed as rhetorical interrogative. Vyāsa unpacks the implicit argument

here.28 Assuming the object is fully mind-dependent, then not attending to or perceiving O for

some mind would amount to O not existing for any mind! While that is a deep problem the

idealist must account for, even deeper problems tax the credibility of the belief that the object

is entirely mind-dependent.

Following that thread, Vyāsa examines the mereological implications of subjective

idealism. Objects may not only be experienced as external to the perceiver, but the perceiver

experiences external objects as complex wholes made up of distinct parts, the latter of which

may be external, in the sense of being unperceived, to an occurent perception of the object. I

experience the monitor in front of me as a three-dimensional object because I recognize the

28
YSBh 4:16.

20
object to have occurently unperceived parts that foreground the aspects of it that I occurently

perceive. I see the front of my smooth flat monitor precisely because I differentiate it from the

back. Following the logic of Vyāsa’s first point, if the intentional content of my mental state fully

constitutes the object, then not only do I not perceive the back, but that absence has no

positive role in shaping my perception. In other words, the back does not exist for that

perception, and thus I cannot be looking at the “front” of anything.

One might object that the fronts and backs of things are constructed out of experiences

and the recalled impressions of those experiences. Experiences are like seeds (bīja) that sprout

and thereby shape future perceptions. Through constructive (and ultimately falsifying)

imagination (vikalpa), the mind fashions a world of wholes and parts, of front-sides and back-

sides out of the stuff of its dynamic, momentary, and serial experiences. The mind constructs

universals and category-concepts when what it ultimately experiences are absolute particulars,

or, property-tropes. Strictly speaking, the empiricist-minded idealist might argue, the object

does not have a back when I do not perceive the back. I construct the categories “front” and

“back” due to latent impressions of past perceptions exerting their influence on my current

perception. But of course, this line of reasoning is weak. Why I should consistently synthesize

distinct impressions, however contiguous and continuous, as parts of a whole is unclear.

Perhaps I always see the left-over coffee cup that in my experience has never been moved

pushed up against the lower right corner of my partner’s computer monitor. The contiguity of

that perception with the perception of the monitor does not (or at least has not yet) led me to

assume that the coffee cup is somehow essentially or conceptually linked to my partner’s

computer monitor. Also, when unbeknownst to me, the coffee cup is moved by my partner, I do

21
not sense that somehow that part is still operative in foregrounding my three-dimensional

experience of the monitor. So why exactly do I associate the glossy silver perception that I learn

to call “the back of the monitor,” in such a way that it becomes a part of a whole (the back to

some front) of which sometimes one part is absent from perception while at other times that

same part is visible? Constant co-cognition might be one answer. However, nothing about co-

cognition is intrinsically organizational or holistic enough to account for my differentiating parts

that belong to a whole. After all, we might account for associating light with fire because of the

constant co-cognition between the two; but we never assume the light is a part of the fire, the

way my back is a part of my body or my left thumb is a part of my left hand. The deeper

significance here is that the back affords a positive absence, in the sense that it is not directly

perceived when I face the monitor, but it constrains and conditions how I experience the

monitor. Constant co-cognition does not provide a robust account of this phenomenon.

1.4 “As If” the Universe Could See: Omniscience, Realism, and Dualism

The third chapter of Patañjali’s Yoga-sūtras, the Vibhūti-Pāda, establishes the nature

and scope of the yogin’s omniscience. This is a controversial section, because of its transition

from the soteriologico-philosophical appropriation of Sāṃkhyan metaphysics into descriptions

of the yogin’s obtained powers, an endeavor often philosophically derided or apologetically

“tolerated” as it elaborates on the intimate relationship between the meditative condition of

samādhi/saṃyama and the extraordinary achievements, or, supranormal powers (siddhis)

presumably arising from such a condition.29 Omniscience is one such achievement described,

29
Grinshpon addresses the scholarly assessments and controversies surrounding the role of siddhis in the YS. The
yogin’s soteriological aim to achieve pure freedom from object-intentionality (even the subtlest one-pointedness
of mind in samprajñāta-samādhi), and the yogin’s aversion to duḥkha produced through the confusion between

22
for example, in 3:33 and 3:54. In 3:33, Patañjali claims, prātibhād-vā sarvam (“as a result of

prātibha [intuitional knowing], all is known”). In the YSBh, Vyāsa adds, prātibhannām tārakam

tad-vivekajasya jñānasya pūrva-rūpam yathodaye prabhā bhāskarasya, which can be

translated, “prātibha [may be glossed as] tāraka, which is a heralding of discriminative [object-

directed] knowledge, just as the light of dawn heralds the sunrise.” We have in prātibha as

“tāraka” (or intuitional prescience) something heralded, or, anticipatory of the final gnosis

promising ultimate liberation from suffering-cyclic living (saṁsāra). What comes then, as 3:33

promises, is knowledge of all. The omniscience achieved by the yogin on his way to achieving

final identification with puruṣa in asamprajñāta-samādhi (object-free, pure awareness) is

described in YS 3:54 as, tārakaṃ sarva-viṣayaṃ sarvathā-aviṣayam-akramaṃ ceti vivekajaṃ

jñānam, which says that omniscience born of tāraka is “knowledge of all objects (sarva-viṣaya),

knowledge of all modalities of objects (sarvathā-viṣaya), and non-sequenced (akrama)

knowledge [knowledge all at once].” Yogic accomplishment thus includes timeless knowledge of

all objects in all modalities. If omniscience, as situated in the text, is incompatible with

epistemic humility, as it certainly seems to be, then it seems to amount to something like the

vijñānavāda claim that an object cannot enjoy independent existence; for, as a knowable,

known in every way and in every possible state, its ontological independence (as per the

buddhi/prakṛti and puruṣa envisions something akin to an aspired-for death, or, disintegration through guṇic
balance. The sudden introduction of siddhis in YS:3, which includes omniscience, presents to some scholars an
embarrassing worldliness that strays from the philosophical-practical efforts described by Patañjali in YS: 1 and 2.
As Grinshpon points out, this spurred thinkers like S. Radhakrishnan and M. Müller to respectively speculate a
“popular cult” infiltrating the Yogasūtras and to speculate the existence of “two Patañjalis.” But, as Grinshpon
points out, “The teaching of the siddhis is extensive, spanning one-quarter of the text, and is evidently important.
It refers to the most obvious fruit of yoga training, consequent upon the consummation of yoga transformation.”
Moreover, “these ‘denigrating myths’ of the ‘siddhi embarrassment’ facilitate an evasion of the teaching of the
siddhis and understanding of their meaning and place in the Yogasūtra.” See Yohanan Grinshpon, Silence Unheard
(New York: Suny Press, 2002), 60-61.

23
realist’s position) evaporates, because there are no aspects of it for the observer (grāhaka) in

that moment of present grasping (grāhya) that resist full disclosure.

One key to resolving this tension lies in YS 1:51. The root text reads, tasya-api nirodhe

sarva-nirodhān-nirbījaḥ samādiḥ, which can be translated, “also, upon the cessation of

[saṃskāras, or latent mental impressions], and owing to the cessation of all [contents of

consciousness], equanimity without residue [asamprajñāta-samādhi] is achieved.” Thus, the

final goal is the complete dissipation of all knowables that keep one tethered to prakṛtic reality!

The siddhis, then, remain a final barrier to ultimate liberation, and thus omniscience must be

abandoned to achieve asamprajñāta-samādhi.

Why does Patanjali map the yogin’s extraordinary accomplishments (siddhi), and the

powers that result from such accomplishments in samprajñāta-samādhi, and then eschew such

powers? The ultimate liberation, he argues, is asamprajñāta-samādhi; that is, freedom from all

content-laden knowing. Why? If puruṣa is, in fact, ontologically distinct from the tri-guṇic

reality, and the ultimate goal of yoga is the fully lived realization of that fundamental

distinction—the purest sort of gnosis that does not so much conceptualize this distinction, but

in some sense experiences such distinction—then liberation cannot be fully accomplished if the

mind of the yogin is still attached (however subtly) to the objects of its experience, objects that

are prakṛtic in their essence. To remain tethered to prakṛtic content is to remain misidentified.

Still, samprajñāta-samādhi is the most refined stabilization within the misidentification itself—it

is an extraordinary accomplishment that nears the perfected gnosis that culminates in kaivalya.

Metaphorically, it may be the outermost sheath shed on the way to realization of the total

ontological distinction between puruṣa and prakṛti.

24
 The text conceptualizes omniscience as concept-based: omniscience is positive

knowledge of the entire workings of the matrix called prakṛti. Sāṃkhya-Yoga is committed to

satkāryavāda—the belief that all manifestations are latent in their primary causes, and thus

nothing ontologically novel is ever born or caused, nor is anything of the primary prakṛtic

substance (dravya as mūlaprakṛti) ever essentially vanquished. This commitment lends itself to

conceptualizing omniscience as maximal understanding of all the possibilities and

manifestations of prakṛti, especially since the mind principle as a kind of fractal and

fundamental evolute of prakṛti may holographically reflect all the constitutive elements of

prakṛti itself.30 Understanding the matrix in this way would be like understanding the primary

palette of colors and all the possible combinations of such colors (which appear as though they

were wholly novel colors). It makes sense, then, that this sort of knowledge, as described in

3.54, would be “all at once,” and why at 3.16 it would be knowledge of the past and future

since it is knowledge of the transformational (pariṇāma) possibilities of the entire matrix that is

guṇic-prakṛti.31 The prakṛtic mind, then, does not so much create its reality—as the subjective

idealist would have it—but it traces and tracks its constitutive roots.

While the concept of “tracking truth” lends itself to realism in epistemology, the issue is

a bit more complicated in the Sāṃkhya-Yoga system. Mind (citta) is of prakṛti. Thus,

satkāryavāda would imply that mind—insofar as it is a constitutive manifestation of prakṛti—

30
Whicher writes in The Integrity of the Yoga Darśana, p.106: “The Yoga school formulated a doctrine of an all-
pervasive mind to explain the very possibility of knowledge of all things or omniscience (sarva-jñātṛtva) and
sovereignty over all states of being (adhiṣṭhātṛtva).” The “all-pervasive mind,” we argue, should not be the sort of
idealist “all-mind” the Yogācārin would call ālāyavijñāna, or, “storehouse consciousness.” We stress that this mind
is prakṛti and thus distinct from puruṣa, who is the ultimate subject/seer.
31
YS (3:16): Pariṇāma-traya-saṃyamat-ātīta-ānāgata-jñānam
“Owing to saṃyama on the transformation of the three strands, knowledge of the past and present is
established.”

25
contributes, by reflecting its contents in buddhi (which misidentifies its non-sentience with the

sentient light of puruṣa) to the illusion that the entire universe is in some sense conscious. This,

we can see, is a result of prakṛti emerging as buddhi and asmitā (the subtle pervading essence

of “I am-ness”). In other words, the whole charade of misidentification between puruṣa and

prakṛti is a result of prakṛti manifesting as buddhi (the sattvic capacity to mirror the light of

puruṣa’s consciousness) and manifesting the sense of differentiation between subject and

object through asmitā (“I am-ness”) as if it were a grand, self-conscious universe.32 So, perhaps

omniscience at this level might be confused for an esse est percipi sort of idealism, where what

is thought produces the very reality that it thereby inherently knows.

However, if we take seriously the idea that buddhi in some sense borrows its light from

puruṣa, and, likewise, the mind (citta) is a capacity to generate content that is illuminated by

such borrowed light, then knowledge still turns out to be a kind of tracking. By Yoga’s dualism

we would have to say that the content is distinct from the light that illuminates that content. If

something like yogic-omniscience were possible, it would be the mind’s capacity to have the

entire matrix of possibilities as its content (for the mind is of the same substance as the entire

prakṛtic matrix), while the light of something ontologically distinct, puruṣa, would allow for such

content to show up. Thus, there is still a kind of tracking relationship between the true

experiencer/subject (puruṣa) and the object (the contents of prakṛti); however, this is a

specialized sort of tracking insofar as what we would ordinarily call mind is not an essential

aspect of the experiencer/subject. That is, consciousness in this system is not fundamentally

32
Ian Whicher, The Integrity of the Yoga Darśana, 69: “The cosmos itself is experienced as if pervaded by
consciousness [and this] ...describes prakṛti in terms of how the world is experienced by one who is ensconced in
the condition of ignorance.”

26
discursive or ego-laden. The tracking is, as it were, between the ontological principle of

illumination/awareness and the ontological principle of all that is not fundamentally that

awareness (prakṛti as mahat/buddhi, ahaṅkāra, and citta).

It now becomes clear why Patañjali enjoins the empowered yogin to forgo extraordinary

powers like omniscience. If one were to remain tethered to the content of such omniscience,

the danger of puruṣa’s light falling into misidentification with the conscious-like but ultimately

insentient matrix that is prakṛti would still loom.

If realism claims that necessarily it is possible to be ignorant of some O or some P of O,

then yogic omniscience is compatible with realism after all. Necessarily it is possible for puruṣa

to remain empty of the entire manifested universe that is prakṛti; if it weren’t possible for

puruṣa to do so, then the dualism of Sāṃkhya-Yoga would be upended. If puruṣa is, indeed,

ontologically distinct, then it should be separable from prakṛti, and the misidentification should

be resolvable. Thus Sāṃkhya-Yoga’s dualism is implicated in the debate between realist and

idealist metaphysics. Moreover, knowing everything—if such a thing is possible—need not

entail that the content of such knowledge is generated by the knower. As stated, this is

complicated in Yoga, because the mind—as prakṛti—is implicated in the manifestations of

prakṛti; however, the actual knower is the witness/seer puruṣa, which is presumed to be

ontologically distinct from prakṛti. Thus, puruṣa does not generate this reality—it tracks it as

light reveals a landscape at dawn that was once shrouded in darkness. Even if the accomplished

yogin can be omniscient in this special sense, it not only remains necessarily possible that he

can be ignorant of the objects of prakṛti (which include the mental vṛttis), but he must actually

forgo such knowledge to achieve kaivalya.

27
 Independently real objects that are tracked as the intentional content of the intellect

can escape the would-be knower in two important ways. First, although the yogi can achieve

omniscience, it is possible that the object or some aspect of the object escapes the yogi. Why

this can remain realism is because of the claim that necessarily the world must be such that

some aspects of it can possibly escape the purview of the would-be knower. If omniscience is

among the extraordinary outcomes of yogic accomplishment, this is not because the yogin’s

seer/self generates its world; instead, the seer, as the ultimate unchanging witness, merely

tracks what is made plain by the prakṛtic intellect. Indeed, without the borrowed light of puruṣa

the contents of such an intellect would only remain potentially knowable; precisely what the

realist argues.

Now, suppose we view Pātañjala Yoga as a species of anti-realism (bracketing subjective

idealism), but maintain its strictly dualist metaphysics. If puruṣa is indeed unchanging,

witnessing consciousness—the light of illumination that shines through an otherwise non-

sentient prakṛtic reality, which will include what we ordinarily call, “mind”—then in what sense

can we maintain such core metaphysical dualism while contending that consciousness is deeply

implicated in prakṛtic manifestations? We can explain how mind (citta, etc.) is importantly

implicated in how and what prakṛtic manifestations show up, because mind is ultimately of the

same stuff as all other objects in the prakṛtic domain. And speaking to this point, we can glean

an important insight from the classic mind-body problem here. Mind-body dualism leaves us

with the problem of making sense of how a totally distinct mind-stuff might interact with a

totally distinct extended-physical stuff. However, inverting the problem, we can also ask how a

mind-generated reality could possibly be dualist at its core. After all, one of the attractions of

28
monism is its capacity to explain interaction by positing a single type of stuff. Thus, to best

maintain dualism, Patañjali and Vyāsa keep the objects manifested in prakṛtic reality as

independent, and they can only be independent if they can possibly be unknown. The very

essence of witness consciousness (sākṣin) is its capacity for a special sort of tracking

(illumination) that can remain free of the independent reality it tracks. Thus, we can defend the

realist modal claim that necessarily it is possible for objects or aspects of objects to escape the

purview of a would-be knower, because it would not make sense to hold fast to metaphysical

dualism while at the same time claiming that no objects have independence from the workings

of the mind.

Second, since kaivalya requires giving up omniscience, it is, again, possible (since it can

presumably be actual) that the world (prakṛtic reality) remains independent of, and in that

sense, “greater than” what is encompassed by puruṣa. In both cases, a subject might have

omniscience while the world is necessarily such that it is possible for one to remain ignorant of

it.

1.5 Conclusion

The omniscience of Berkeley’s God indeed would be incompatible with hardcore realism

about the external world, for no object can exist minus God’s knowing it. As Michael Dummett

remarks in Thought and Reality: “God apprehends things as being...how they are in themselves.

But now we must say the converse: how things are in themselves consists in the way that God

apprehends them.”33 But the Yoga God/Lord (Īśvara) is never mentioned as a creator or even

architect of the universe. He is postulated as the superlative pinnacle of all gradations of

33
Michael Dummett, Thought and Reality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 102.

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knowledge, as the primordial teacher of all previous teachers.34 In some other forms of Tantric

or Kaśmiri Shaiva Idealism, not just God but even a perfected yogin can make a world by

imagining it—like a mirror in a city where the mirror does not need any source of light or

images outside of itself. But in a Saṃkhya-Yoga world, it is logically possible to know

exhaustively every bit of a knowledge-independent world. The maximum limitless knowledge of

such a non-creator God or accomplished yogin would still track the world as it really is; the

world would not track his knowledge. Especially when we notice that attaining such God-like

omniscience is not the final goal of the contemplative samādhi program, it is easier to

understand why the material world of objects remains outside the supremely knowledgeable

mind, even if it is God’s mind. In so far as even such omniscience has to be set aside as un-

liberating before one achieves complete isolation (kaivalya), total disidentification from even

unblemished but intentional intellect, final freedom has little to do with finding the world inside

one’s mind: it consists in finding nothing at all, and, as the Sāṃkhya Kārikās remind us, realizing

one is no-one. Thus, nothing—not even omniscience—belongs to one.35 If the goal is to realize

that the self does not possess anything, then the objective world is also ontologically

independent of the self or its pretended omni-intentional intelligence. The apparent

incompatibility between Yoga realism and the Yoga doctrine of omniscience disappears.

34
YS 1.24-25
Kleśa-karma-vipāka-āśayaiḥ āparāmṛṣṭaḥ puruṣa-viśeṣa īśvaraḥ|
Tatra niratiśayaṃ sarvajña-bījam|
“Īśvara is a distinct puruṣa that is untouched by the vehicles of affliction and the outcomes of karma. In him, the
seed of omniscience is not exceeded.”
35
SK 64:
Evam tattva-abhyāsān nāsti na me nāha mitya apariśeṣam|
Aviparyayād viśuddhaṃ kevalam utpādhyate jñānam||
“Indeed, by the study of the tattvas knowledge is obtained which is complete, doubtless, and absolute, by which I
am not and nothing is mine and I do not exist.”

30
 We have argued that maintaining the integrity of Saṃkhya-Yoga dualism requires

thinking the system (and Patañjali’s text) as realist at its core. However, unlike Cartesian

dualism, mind (as an umbrella for buddhi, manas, and ahaṅkāra) is fully situated in the prakṛtic

ontological domain. While there may be some evidence or compelling reasons to understand

perception under a sākāravādin model, such worldly knowledge (even the maximum of such

knowledge, which Patañjali calls omniscience) would remain prakṛtic at its core. In

samprajñāta-samādhi, the ego-hood of the yogin is near perfectly dissipated; however, the

distilled and pure sattvic element that nearly resembles puruṣa here is still fixed on the objects

of the prakṛtic world, of which it is an evolute itself. It is as though the mind-principle, when the

ego is nearly completely dissipated settles like the turbulent waters on a great lake, thus

revealing in its transparency all at once what has settled and will settle beneath the water. If

kaivalya, the ultimate soteriological goal, is total distillation of puruṣa’s light of awareness from

the duḥkha of confusion and “I am-ness,” then knowledge episodes with even maximal

intentional content would miss the final gnosis, which is realization of the unchanging, eternal

seer behind the seen. So, it is not only possible that puruṣa’s light remain independent of a

world of independently fashioned objects available to perception, but it remains necessary if

the metaphysics of Saṃkhya-Yoga prove fruitful for the aspiring sadhu.

31
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