The world that isn’t really there: the Mokṣopāya’s philosophy of an illusory reality.

‘Consciousness is only a dream with one's eyes open’ — Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy.

‘Why could the world which is of any concern to us — not be a fiction? And he who then objects: ‘but to the
fiction there belongs an author?’ — could he not be met with the round retort: why? Does this ‘belongs’ perhaps
not also belong to the fiction?’ — Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Section 34.

‘Quidquid luce fuit, tenebris agit: but also the other way round. That which we experience in dreams, if we
experience it often, is in the end just as much a part of the total economy of our soul as is anything we ‘really’
experience.’ — Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Section 193.

yathā svapne tathodeti paralokadṛśā citiḥ /

paraloke yathodeti tathaivehāpy udeti sā // MU_3,20.38

bhāvanāmātram evāsyās svarūpaṃ kartṛtāṃ gatam /MU_3,102.31/YV 3.84.13.

Introduction

What is this world, if it is deemed to be an illusion? The Moksopayasastra/Yogavasistha, like many other classical
Indian philosophical texts, declares that the world of discrete identifiable objects and individual subjects doesn't
really exist. Instead it claims that it is a creation of the mind, and that the only true reality is pure consciousness
(cit). Yet it also contains what are recognisable as ontologies in its elaborate cosmogonies, descriptions of mental
and physical processes and elaborate fictional universes replete with detailed worlds and characters. In its vision
for human life it similarly advocates for complete renunciation and non-attachment, as well as a life of engaged
action and enjoyment. Understanding the relationship between these two seemingly opposing forces in the YV
involves asking how the text builds an ontology of an illusory reality, i.e. what it means for the world to be an
illusion; as well as examining how such a world can be the basis for a life of jivanmukti. Through this
investigation, we hope to offer an intellectual-historical perspective on the particularity of the philosophy of the
YV, as a 10th-century work of Sanskrit literature. At the same time, through a global philosophical approach
(outlined below), this study also hopes to formulate the YV’s philosophy in terms relevant to contemporary
debates surrounding truth and human transformation.

We often hear that we are living in a post-truth age.1 This is often expressed as a concern over public truth-claims
that arises when the institutions and authorities that have acted as bases for common understanding and
discussion in a given society lose their stabilising effect. Though these institutions may only ever have enjoyed
the semblance of universality, today it is often lamented that in the diverse realms of religion, morality, the arts

1
footnote on the various discussions here.
and even the sciences, there is a progressive vanishing, catalysed by new media, of even this semblance. Though
the conversation here usually orbits concerns over public discussions on the widest scales, parallel currents of
post-truth have been building within the more esoteric enclosures of academia. Post-Nietzschean philosophy,
which has gradually become the theoretical basis for much of the humanities and the social-sciences, has, in
various ways, attempted to critique the idea that human knowledge can discover the timeless essences that would
constitute ‘truth’ in a strong objective sense.2 Within the sciences too…3

At the same time as essences are being critiqued, new paradigms for what truth means are arising that seek to
account for truth that doesn’t fall into an enlightenment critique of essences. As well as the wealth of work on
the social and political conditions for human knowledge production, recent emphasis on embodiment, rooted
in phenomenological theory (primarily Merleau-Ponty) and developed, for example, in Feminist and effect
theories, and enactivist and embodied cognition literature, emphasise knowledge as rooted in various bodily
contexts. These developments open the gate to various conceptions of truth as something that cannot be
captured in any particular theory or set of theories about the world, but concerns the whole of a human life,
including affective and bodily states.

The YV can contribute to these developments by offering an ontology of the world as radically constructed,
malleable and lacking in essence, but also a vision of human life as approaching truth through a progressive
cognitive transformation4 that allows for a life of creative and playful engagement. Specifically it will look at how
the YV denies the world as an illusion in the realm of ontology, and sees it as a mere construction of the mind
(and thus advocates vairagya, tyaga), but affirms the world as the playful domain of the jivanmukta who has
gone beyond concepts of truth and falsity (thus advocates bhoga and karma), as well as affirming proactive effort
and the possibility of radical creation. This involves asking what it understands ‘the world is an illusion’ to
substantively mean, what is ultimately true, what knowledge of ultimate truth looks like and what
transformation looks like in the face of this illusory world.

As mentioned above, this study will employ a global philosophical methodology which makes use of a wide
range of philosophical resources — though this study will primarily draw from the work of Gilles Deleuze.
Current scholarship is debating comparative methodologies in philosophy and religious studies and the extent to
which they are illuminating or distortive or beholden to global power structures. The methodology of this study
distinguishes itself from ‘comparative philosophy’ by denying that merely finding similarities or differences is a
substantial philosophical goal in itself, and rather hopes to use philosophical comparison for the dual purposes
of sharing philosophical resources in the project of philosophical reconstruction, and using the value of
‘hermeneutic distance’ (Garfield 2002, 235), to highlight implicit presumptions within the texts in question.

2
Perhaps also reference Rorty and his anti-foundationalism and the analytic philosophical developments
in Sellars, Quine, and Davidson.
3
This is not to deny many new attempts to find objectivity, we can detail some of these.
4
Here cognitive, in line with the theoretical developments noted above, does not exclude embodied and
affective factors.
The Moksopaya/Yogavasistha: an Indian philosophy of illusion.

The idea that the world is an illusion is a key facet of Indian intellectual history, though it doesn’t appear
explicitly in its earliest sources. The Vedas do talk of mAyA (a Sanskrit word often translated as illusion and one
that the YV makes frequent use of), but mainly as a power, possessed by particular and localised agents —
humans, rituals or gods — to create appearances.5 It is never applied to the world as a whole. In a similar way, the
early Upanishads ‘generally do not contain the assumption that life is… illusion (māyā), or ignorance (avidyā)’.6
though the Svetashvatara — the latest of what are usually considered the early Upanishads — has a conception
of Rudra creating the entire world as mAyA, it is not a developed on, and, as Gopal Gupta argues, likely is more
to do with God’s magical power of creation rather than the cosmic illusion of later Advaitic philosophies.7

Despite their lack of this idea, the Upanishads serve as the jumping off point for subsequent Indian
philosophies, arguably both Hindu and Buddhist, and their different conceptions of the world as an illusion.8
Vedantic illusionism as a systematic philosophy finds its origins in Gauḍapāda (c. 500 C.E), in whose
commentary on the Mandukya Upanishad we find a philosophy of the world as illusion (mAyA) arising from
ignorance (avidyA), as well as some of its foundational metaphors: the rope-snake (rajju-sarpa), the city in the
sky (gandharva nagara) and the sky covered with dust (gaganaṁ malinaṁ malaiḥ),9 all of which are used by
the YV. In traditional Advaitic lineages, Gauḍapāda is considered the grand preceptor of Śaṅkara, who is widely
hailed as the most influential systematiser of Vedantic illusionism, indeed his philosophical opponents — such as
RamAnuja — pejoratively labelled Śaṅkara as the paramount mAyavAdin. Yet this picture is overly simplistic:
despite his frequent denials of the reality of the world and his appeals to its dependence of ignorance, he uses the
term mAyA relatively little (see Hacker 1995). Moreover, on the level of conventional reality, Śaṅkara puts
forward a strongly realist epistemology that has rigid criteria for what counts as a valid means of knowledge
(pramAna)10 and that denies the subjective idealism of the Yogacara buddhists and their use of the dream
analogy.11 Indeed Thomas O’Neil and Jaqueline Hirst both argue that Śaṅkara depends on this realist
epistemology (at the conventional level), as well as his appeal to Vedic authority and the associated the eternality
of linguistic forms, to justify his claim that Brahman is the ultimate reality (O’Neil 1980; Hirst 2005). So while
the world is ultimately an illusion for Sankara, at the level of conventional reality, he is committed to realism.

5
Gupta Maya in the Bhagatava purana, 2020, 15.
6
Brian Black IEP section 5.
7
Gupta 2020, 16.
8
Kapstein 1988, argues that the early Upanishads’ relation to later Indian philosophy (including early
Buddhist philosophy) should be seen as similar to how scholarship has viewed the relationship between
pre-Socratic and classical Greek philosophy. For other arguments for the historical-intellectual link
between the Upanishads and early Buddhism see Bhattacharya 1998, Pratap 1971and Ross Reat 1977.
For counter arguments see Horsch 1968 and Oldenberg 1991.
9
Devanathan Jagannathan IEP “Gaudapada”, section 4b.
10
Deutsch 1969, 82.
11
Deutsch 1969, 31. This is in contradistinction to Gaudapada, who seems to use dream scepticism in a
less qualified way.
These Vedantic conceptions of the world as an illusion developed out of Buddhist versions of the idea. The Pali
Suttas contain seeds of illusionism, for example in the Phena Sutta the Buddha encourages his monks to see the
five skandhas as void and without substance, like a glob of foam on the ganges river,12 or a magic trick (SN
22:95). With the development of the Mahayana, specifically the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras, we get the first Buddhist
claims that the entire world and all its appearances are illusions. The Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, for
example, states that ‘All objective facts… are like a magical illusion, like a dream.’ (II.3).13 This illusionism finds
its first zAstric expression in the Mulamadhyamakakaraika of Nagarjuna, whose arguments that all things lack
intrinsic existence (svabhava), have been variously interpreted with different degrees of realism, for example the
Tibetan commentarial tradition divided interpretations into prasangika and svatantrika, with the latter
accepting that Madhyamaka had an independently assertable thesis.14 Contemporary commentators are also
divided, there are those, for example, who see Nagarjuna as a universal anti-foundationalist (where
anti-foundationalism applies not only to objects but to representations, thoughts, theories and truths too),15 as a
dialetheist who accepts the validity of true contradictions and their application to ontology,16 or as advocating
the abandonment of all belief whatsoever.17 The Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras also formed the basis for Yoagacara
thought, which emphasised the illusory nature of the external world, and has variously been interpreted by
modern commentators as a form of idealism (Garfield 1998) or a form of phenomenology focused on
epistemological issues (Lusthaus 2002; Duckworth 2019). Though debates between the Buddhists and the
Veda-allied ‘Hindus’ were fierce, both Madhyamaka and Yogacara schools of philosophy were deeply influential
on the philosophies of both Gaudapada and Shankara.18

The Mokṣopāya’s historical context.

The Moksopaya’s philosophy of illusion weaves together dimensions of all of these streams of thought. Recent
textual scholarship has dated the earliest versions of the YV to the second half (Slaje 1994) and the first half
(Hanneder 2006) of the 10th century,19 and has located it, similarly to most previous scholarship, to Kashmir.20
Kashmir was a particularly vibrant intellectual centre, home to Brahmanical, tantric, Buddhist religious

12
The image of the world as akin to foam on water is also used by Sankara, see, for example, his
commentary on Gaudapada’s Mandukya Karika 3.7.
13
Edward Conze translation.
14
There are also debates over whether this distinction divides different ontological positions, or whether it
merely divides opinions on the value of specific forms of argumentation. See Dreyfus and McClintock
2003.
15
Westerhoff 2009
16
See Deguchi, Priest and Garfield various articles on the issue. For example, this 2013 article ‘HOW WE
THINK MĀDHYAMIKAS THINK: A RESPONSE TO TOM TILLEMANS’, which argues that Nagarjuna can
be legitimately read as a dialetheist.
17
Stepien 2019.
18
See King 1995.
19
Though it should be noted that previous Indian scholarship has offered a range of dates: ranging from
the 5th century (Atreya 1933, 55), 7th century (Dasgupta 1975, 233), between the 12th and 13th centuries
(Manikar 1977, 181), middle of the 10th (Divanji) and between 11th and middle of the 13th (Raghavan).
20
In fact Slaje argues that the author wrote it in city of zrInagar, ‘on the slopes or at the top of the
Pradyumna hill’ (Slaje 2005, 35).
traditions among others. Because of this, it seemed to have produced a culture of religious and philosophical
intellectual debate, (the arguments of Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta are good examples) as well as various
attempts to create grand pluralistic/inclusivistic visions of religions (c.f. Gavin’s latest lecture on the Netra
tantra).

There has been a huge amount of philological work done recently on the different versions of the text done by
the “Moksopaya project” led by Hanneder and Slaje, which has resulted in the critical edition of the Moksopaya
text (Slaje 2011-18). There are lots of different versions of the text, in the long version we have the Kashmirian
recension of called the Moksopaya with the eighteenth century commentary called the Mokṣopāya-Ṭīkā of
Bhāskarakaṇṭha, as well as a Nāgarī recension known as the Yogavāsiṣṭha with a seventeenth/eighteenth-century
commentary, the Vāsiṣṭha-mahā-rāmāyaṇa-tātparyaprakāśa of Ānenbodhendra Sarasvatī.21 As Slaje notes, and
as is accepted by this recent scholarship, the Moksopaya text is an earlier version (though not original) that was
summarised as the LYV. Both of these texts were sources for a later Yoagavaistha, which was redacted to better
reflect Advaita-Vedanta ‘orthodoxy’ (Slaje 200, 171, Hanneder 2006, 13).22

The text’s philosophical position in relation to other classical Indian currents is much harder to pinpoint.
Hanneder notes a historical tendency, which continued into 20th century Indian scholarship in the YV, to see it
as simply an elaboration on Sankarite Advaita Vedanta (Hanneder 2006, x). Beginning with Sivaprasad
Bhattacharrya and B. L. Atreya (who thought it predated even Gaudapada (Atreya 1936, 17)), Indian scholars
began to break away from this view. Mainkar thought that it is an ‘expressly Vedantic work’ (1977, 27), that is
based on the Upanishads and presupposes a thorough knowledge of Sankara’s philosophy (129), while
substantially differing from it. Dasgupta seemed to see it as a Vedantic work, but throughout the course of his
scholarship questioned this more and more (c.f. Hanneder 2006, ). From an early time however, scholars have
also been aware, however, of influences from Buddhism, especially the vijnanavada of the lankavatara sutra, and
Kashmiri shaiva themes, especially spanda (Chenet 2015, 471). An early example of this is (Bhattacarya (In
Atreya, 26 Bhattaccarya recognizes Buddhist influence) and he has an article on Shaiva influence.) Hanneder
concludes that we cannot say anything about the author’s particular religious allegiance, other than he
propounded a particular type of inclusivism (Slaje 1992) (Hanneder 2006, 67).

21
There are also medium length versions caled the Laghuyogavasistha, the Jnanavasistha, and the
Moksopayasamgraha, as well as short versions called the Brhadyogavasistha, another called the
Laguyogavasistha and the Vastshasara. For more details on these versions, see Hanneder 2006, 9-13.
22
For all the main text critical works see P. Thomi, “Das groβe und das kleine Yogavāsisṭha,” Zeitschrift
für Indologie und Südasienstudien 29 (2012): 155–166; W. Slaje, Vom Mokṣopāya-Śāstra zum
Yogavāsiṣṭha-Mahārāmāyaṇa. Philologische Untersuchungen zur Entwicklungs—und
Überlieferungsgeschichte eines indischen Lehrwerks mit Anspruch auf Heilsrelevanz, Österreichische
Akademie der Wissenschaften, Sitzungsberichte, 609 (Wien, 1994), Osterische: Wissenschaften; J.
Hanneder, ed., The Mokṣopāya, Yogavāsiṣṭha and Related Texts (Aachen, 2005) Aachen: Shaker; J.
Hanneder and W. Slaje, “Noch einmal zur langen und kurzen Version des Yogavāsiṣṭha in ihrem
Verhältnis zur Mokṣopāya-rezension,” Asiatische Studien 59 (2005): 509–531; J. Hanneder, Studies on
the Mokṣopāya (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006).
While the scholarship here is far from conclusive, it seems to me to demonstrate how, similarly to the YV’s own
take on human subjectivity and individual essence, the work is intrinsically a plurality that expresses both no
single essence as well as a living tradition of redaction that sought to incorporate it into various worldviews and
philosophical leanings.

Debates within the Mokṣopāya.

One of the first things to note about the philosophy of the YV is that it is not consistent (c.f. Törzsök 2017, 86),
which opens the door to various debates over its philosophical positions.

One of these relataes to idealism in the text. hent hold that it promotes an ‘uncompromising idealism’ that is
very similar to Dṛṣṭi-sṛṣṭi-vāda (the doctrine of creation through perception) (472). This is also the position of
Timalsina who says that its philosophy can be described as a form of drsiti-srsti. (2006, 87). Indeed many verses
attest to this.

sarvaṃ sat tac ca niśśūnyaṃ nakiñcid iva saṃsthitam /

tatra vyomni vibhāntīmā nijā bhāso 'ṅga dṛṣṭayaḥ // MU_4,13.33

Everything that is, is totally empty, there is as if nothing at all. In that void, these perceptions
which appear are subjective manifestations.

But idealism is not that simple. It is not simply a subjective idealism (though the text does seem to attest at times
to different people having different experiential worlds), Atreya notes a lot of places where the YV argues against
subjective idealism and instead for what he calls ‘Absolute Idealism’ (Atreya 1936, 172). Including this:

bāhyārthavādavijñānavādayor aikyam eva naḥ /

vedanaikātmarūpatvāt sarvadā sadasatsthiteḥ // MU_6,195.423

For us realism (bāhyārthavāda) and idealism (vijñānavāda) are the same (eka) since everything
has the one form of mind (vedanā), which is both truth and untruth.

While this may seem like merely an attempt to include realism into idealism, the text consistently seems to
eschew the dualism between mind and matter. It seems to have a conception of atman as pure consciousness,
and then manas/citta as the mediating factor between pure consciousness and inert matter. This at least requires
further investigation — subjectivity as commonly understood is definitely not what the YV takes to be
ontologically primordial.

23
Atreya actually has the last compound as sadasaMsthiteH, which I cannot make sense of.
Moreover, Chapple makes the argument that rather than being some sort of idealist ‘dogma’ that is primarily
invested in offering a metaphysical position on the nature of the external world, it is aimed at promoting
philosophies that loosen ‘our grasp on any ideas of reality’ and affirm ‘the power and importance of meditation’
(Chapple 1986, 52). Chapple also observes that since the purpose of idealism in the YV is to ‘uproot all
thinking’ (Chapple 1981, 38), the YV in the end also deconstructs the mind. For example:

ato manye manaḥ karma tac charīreṣu kāraṇam /

jāyate mriyate tad dhi nātmanīdṛgvidho guṇaḥ // MU_3,97.9

From this I think that mind is action, it is the causal factor in the bodies [of people]. It is born
and it dies, this quality is not in the Atman.

mana evaṃ vicāreṇa manye vilayam eṣyati /

manovilayamātreṇa tataś śreyo bhaviṣyati // MU_3,97.10

I think that the mind is destroyed by investigation (vicāra). The excellent [liberation] arises only
through the destruction of the mind.

We see here that though manas is a creative principle that creates the world, but is nonetheless ultimately
inexistent and must be overcome in order to attain liberation.24 As Chapple states: ‘the mind-only doctrine is
twofold: First, all “things” are denied inherent reality separate from the mind; everything is said to proceed from
the mind. Second, the mind itself is negated, allowing for the dissolution of all conceptualisation and, hence
world creation. Objectivity in any form — even in the form of the mind-only doctrine — is negated’. (Chapple
1981, 39). This in some ways brings it closer to anti-foundational dimensions of buddhist thought (c.f.
Westerhoff 2009). Similar philosophical sentiments arise in the text's stories, in both the story of Lila and the
story of the hundred Rudras we get a picture of reality as dreams within dreams with no final objective reality.
All objective frames of reference in the narratives are shown to be constructed and dependent on something else.

It seems that this universal contingency applies even to the texts conception of supreme reality qua supreme
reality — cit, brahman or atman. Though the YV distances itself from a Madhyamaka view of universal
emptiness by arguing against the ultimacy of sunyatA,25 Hanneder notes how the text indicates that ultimate
24
This cannot be resolved through separating the different Sanskrit words for ‘mind’. C.f. manomātraṃ
jagat kṛtsnaṃ manaḥ parvatamaṇḍalam / mano vyoma mano bhūmir mano vāyur mano mahān //
MU_3,110.15.
25
C.f. anutkīrṇā yathā stambhe saṃsthitā sālabhañjikā / tathā viśvaṃ sthitaṃ tatra tena śūnyaṃ na tat
padam // MU_3,10.7 ‘The world exists like images carved upon a sal-wood pillar. Thus the ultimate cannot
be said to be void’. In fact I think there is a potential interesting inquiry into different strategies for negating
emptiness. While the Madhyamikas opt to argue for the ‘emptiness of emptiness’, the YV negates both
emptiness and non-emptiness as conceptualisations: c.f. aśūnyāpekṣayā śūnyaśabdārthaparikalpanā /
aśūnyatvāsambhavataś śūnyatāśūnyate kutaḥ // MU_3,10.14. Not sure what to make of the
‘aśūnyatvāsambhavataś’ here, so no translation.
reality is only sat in relation to the unreal world. From its own perspective, and once unreal reality has been
overcome, the ultimate is beyond both sat and asat (Hanneder 2006, ). There is thus no consensus on the
ontology of the YV, and further investigation could be insightful.

There are also debates over the interpretation of the YV’s vision for human life. One example of this is the
apparent contradiction between the text’s non-dual philosophy and its emphasis on the effectiveness of human
endeavour or creativity (paurusa) and the ineffectiveness of fate (daivya). Scholars such as Pranati Ghosal (2015)
and particularly Christopher Key Chapple (1986) have discussed the uniqueness of the YV’s claim that all
liberative attainment and knowledge can be achieved through paurusa, and that belief in fate is not only false,
but an active hindrance if one hopes to make progress toward moksha.

pravṛttir evaṃ prathamaṃ yathāśāstraṃ vihāriṇām /

prabheva varṇabhedānāṃ sādhanī sarvakarmaṇām // MU_2,5.1

Activity is the highest, [so say the] the śāstras to those who wander. It is the instrument [for
accomplishing] all action, [and thus] is like the shining light within different colours.

But this is complicated in two ways. One is that it seems to run counter to the idea that the individual self is
merely a manifestation of the universal brahman, and that in the ultimate analysis both subject and object are
non-existent. How can free will exist when there is no individual self? Moreover, Hanneder (2006) has found
passages that seem to conflate causal order (niyati) and free will (paurusa), and argues that the position of
advocating for effort is simply a perspective affirmed for its instrumental value and cannot be the ultimate
position of the YV. This will necessarily have links to the metaphysics of the YV, so by discovering an ontological
theory, we can clarify its views on free will.

A related issue concerns the role of yogic practice in the YV. The title of the work (in its pan-Indian version)
includes Yoga, and thus has often been seen as a fundamentally yogic text. Indeed Andrew Fort in his
monograph on jivanmukti argues that we can see the YV as an early example of ‘yogic Advaita’ (1998, 85ff).
Against this Walter Slaje argues that the YV actually devalues the effectiveness of yogic practice, particularly
nirvikalpa samadhi, and instead elevates ‘discursive thinking’ or vicara as the only sufficient means for liberation
(Slaje 2000, 173). ‘Reflection (vicAra) was doubtlessly understood as discursive thinking in the sense of rational
reasoning. This becomes clear from the sentence constructions with the instruments of such reasoning, namely
the mind (buddhi, cetas) or the means of knowledge (pramâna), used mainly - though not exclusively - in the
instrumental case.16 Thus the process of reflection is put in sharp contrast to contemplation.’ (Slaje 2000, 173).
Yet this does not settle the case. For one concepts such as buddhi and cetas should not be quickly associated with
notions of ‘intellect’ in Western thought. Moreover, it is not certain that the YV has a solid theory of pramanas,
and even if it does, it seems to advocate for pratyaksa over and above all others.
 nātmāsty anumayā rāma na cāptavacanādinā /
sarvadā sarvathā sarvaṃ sa pratyakṣānubhūtitaḥ // MU_5,73.15

The self [is not attained], Rama, by inference or the attainment of words etc. Always,
completely and in every way it is experienced through perception.

If the primary pramana is perception, then the link between vicara and pramana in the YV, can hardly indicate
that the former is a form of ‘discursive thinking’. It seems as though Slaje has a particular notion of meditative
absorption that pits it against worldly activity, which biases his view of the YV’s understanding of liberation
toward philosophical certainty rather than phenomenological transformation.

More than this, the stories also contain detailed examples of liberation through yogic practice. The
Bhusuṇḍopākhyāna in the first half of the sixth book narrates the story of the crow Bhusuṇḍa, who is a master
of pranayama, and who offers detailed guidance on these practices. Tamara Cohen (2020) has also argued that
the story of Uddālaka can be read as a ‘precursor to systems of praxis outlined in later Haṭha Yoga texts’ (p 111),
and thus pushes against the idea that the YV is ‘a philosophical text that teaches the perception of consciousness
and not a text about Hatha Yoga.’ (120).

There is definitely a need to clarify this.

Why Deleuze?

We can see thus that there are a whole lot of philosophical debates within Mosopaya studies that need
clarification on their won term. But this thesis also wants to read the YV as a living philosophical work, one that
is still being used today as a manual for philosophy and spiritual practice. To do this I hope to make use of a
range of philosophical resource, particularly the work of Gilles Deleuze. As I mentioned above, this is not with
the intention of doing ‘comparative philosophy’ that seeks only to find identities or differences, this is rather to
allow the YV to enter contemporary discourses by using philosophical resources to aid in making sense of its
thinking, and to show the YV’s particularity through contradistinction.

And this contradistinction seems very apparent with Deleuze. While the YV empasises the unity of reality, and
promotes the abandonment of desire, Deleuze focuses on the ontological value of difference and sees desire as a
vital force that must be affirmed. So the question arises, why this comparison at all?

Well for one there is a similarity in their concerns of their ontologies. We have seen that the YV thinks that the
world is an illusion, and is working in a philosophical context in which there are plenty of ideas that the world is
an illusion. Yet despite this it still constructs what can be recognised as an ‘ontology’, a picture of what the world
is like.
Something similar is happening in Deleuze. He is working is 20th century france, and has a load of different
influences around him. Huge amount of details here, but I will simplify a lot in this paragraph. Two important
ones were structuralism and existentialism. Structuralism, in a variety of different ways, sees people as products
of the structures that they find themselves in. De Saussure's linguistic theories laid the foundation for the early
Lacan’s view of the structures of the unconscious, Althusser’s conceptions of economic arrangements, and
Levi-Straus anthropological theories of kinship structures. Another important force, especially in early 20th
Century Paris was Satre’s existentialism, which privileged the individual subject and argued that human life is
ultimately determined by the arbitrary power of freedom. Out of these two deeply antagonistic philosophical
trends, arises the thinkers that are often retrospectively labelled the ‘post-structuralists’, who reflected the
structuralists’ interests in understanding any particular individuality in the context of its relations to a broader
structure, but sought to highlight the ways in which that broader structure is historically contingent and based
on unstable categories, and thus sought to align their thought with emancipatory social critique. While
Deleuze’s work is largely true to these philosophical concerns, one thing that separates his philosophy from, say,
Foucault’s and Derrida’s, is that while the latter two thinkers were sceptical of ontology in general as a search for
a-historical essences, Deleuze calls embraces ontology and calls himself a ‘pure metaphysician’, and attempts a
radical rethinking of ontology’s relation to essence.

So in his desire to revivify the task of ontology even in the face of deconstructive criticisms of essence and Being
he can serve as a useful resource for understanding how the YV offers ontology whilst denying that the world is
ultimately real (sat).

In terms of the specific of this ontology too we can find resources. Deleuze has a strong focus on difference
which he sees as misconcieved by all prior philosophy and the genetic force behind actual reality. He sees one of
the main tasks of Difference and Repetition as follows:

That identity not be first, that it exist as a principle but as a second principle, as a principle become; that it
revolve around the Different: such would be the nature of a Copernican revolution which opens up the
possibility of difference having its own concept, rather than being maintained under the domination of a
concept in general already understood as identical. (DR 41)

This might seem radically different to the YV’s emphasis on a single unitary reality behind everything.

● Univocity
○ Draw a line through this essay. Two interpretations of spinoza.
○ But the YV pushes against this in some ways, they clearly show similar concerns.
○ In fact Badiou sees Deleuze as a ‘philosopher of the one’.
○ And univocity has far reaching implications.
■ Also about degrees of power. Mind and matter are part of the same process (Deleuze is
a panpsychist).
 ○ Also the YV may be able to substantiate Isayeva’s thesis against the criticism of Jeff Glesea.
There is more of an explicit discussion here of the nature of the vibrating consciousness. It is a
kind of bridge between Saivism and Gaudapada.
■ But nonetheless the unmoving nature of the ultimate brahman is maintained, and this
needs to be explained — transformation.
● Also the idea of difference.
○ The YV is always describing manas as between being and non-being.
● Virtuality and Actuality may offer an interesting understanding of how the unmanifest becomes
manifest and vice versa — an important point in Indian phil.
○ Constantly uses organic metaphors, in both stories and philosophy.
○ Also this can help us answer the question of how the YV creates a unique answer to the
question of vasana and karma, different from the Kashmiri’s and the vijnanavada thinkers.
● Larval subject.
○ Deleuze has this idea of the subject being many, and the soties of the YV also display this in
interesting ways.
● But there is a huge difference in 1) whether the world is real or not 2) the world is mental or not and 3)
how they look at the role of desire.
○ These differences can then serve as the centre piece of some chapters, that will look at how the
YV aims to be transformative.
■ As Chappelle says, the idea that the world is an illusion is intrinsically bound up with
transformation.
■ This can offer an alternative to Matthew Bagger.