YOGA AND INDIAN PHILOSOPHY.

A REJOINDER

[Editor's Comment. It is not the practice of our Journal to print Rejoinders. In this
case, the editor has accepted this Rejoinder after much deliberation for two reasons:
(1) The reviewer himself accepted the rejoinder and felt that he should have re-written
the review. (2) The author concerned felt strongly that he should answer the point,
raised by the reviewer. In any ease, this method of publishing rejoinder will not be
repeated in future. ]

As Andrew Rawlinson sent me a copy o f his review, it became a subject o f

correspondence between us. As a result he admitted that he had overstated
his case and had not been very fair to what the b o o k was trying to do. There-
fore he decided to rewrite it, but it was, meanwhile, sent off to the printers
by the editor who then agreed to publish this rejoinder.
It is heartening to see so much space devoted to a review o f one's book,
save that this one does not even touch on most o f the contents. For example,
the readers o f this journal will not guess that the book discusses some specific
issues o f Mah~y~na, such as the conception o f sams~ra, Nirvana, Buddhahood,
Bodhisattva path, also Aurobindo's Yoga and his cosmic philosophy and a few
other items. The topics that are discussed, become too simplified and even
distorted. Thus I did not say that it was Greek search for substance which
caused man to be regarded as a mere accidental product o f natural processes,
but that it was the whole extraverted attitude o f the Western mind eager to
conquer nature. And that started in Greece with reflections on the nature o f
the world and a search for the underlying substance. I do not agree that m y
first chapter reviews disasters o f Western philosophy. It certainly criticizes its
inadequacies, though in less forceful terms, but points out also its achieve-
ments, e.g., in Socrates, Stoics, Kierkegaard, Husserl and Jaspers.
In treating the relation between Yoga and mysticism I am sure I have
not given a full or definite account o f this complicated question, but Dr.
Rawlinson's way o f reviewing it is sketchy and missed some important
passages (listed, by the way, in the index), e.g., the following one: "Mysticism
and Yoga both aim at a suprasensory and suprarational encounter with the
transcendent. But while every form o f mysticism grew up within a particular

Journal o f Indian Philosophy 8 (1980) 199-203. 0022-1791/80/0082-0199 $00.50

Copyright © 1980 by D. Reidel Publishing Co., Dordrecht, Holland, and Boston, U.S.A.
200 A REJOINDER

religious tradition so that its goal, the transcendent, was deffmed for it by
'that tradition, Indian Yoga in its original pure form seems to have been
independent of religion and has always avoided defining the transcendent in
very definite terms. Of course, mysticism can also reach to these heights
of independence: on rare occasions a mystic within one particular religious
tradition will attain to such a high vision of the transcendent that he is no
longer able to refer to his experience in the language of his religious tradition
if he wants to convey some glimpse of it to other people, and then a striking
resemblance to some Yogic formulations can be detected in his descriptions."
And Eckehart is quoted as an example. I think this is not an unclear state-
ment about the relation of the two disciplines. Dr. Rawlinson also seems to
have overlooked that I dealt with Yoga (1) "in the broad sense" as do many
other authors, and this accounts for his "mixed bag" complaint, but was
concerned, throughout the book, with Yoga (2) "proper", i.e., with Indian
Yoga and its specific techniques (cf. pp. 96-97), which is distinct from
mysticism and all other practices which may share with it the aspiration to
reach in some way beyond sensory perception and rational understanding.
Terminology is always a certain problem and I did not see the need for
defining all the expressions which Dr. Rawlinson found unclear: philosophical
speculation, I would have thought, is a creative process of thinking informed
by insights which are not derived purely from sense perception (e.g., Plato's
hierarchical system of ideas). It may sometimes be based on mystical vision
(as in some work of St. Augustine) or its inspiration may be a direct vision
(e.g., of "oneness" as in Plotinus) or some other form of intuition (of.
Bergson's intuitional philosophy). It is the way Dr. Rawlinson takes his
quotations inorganically out of context which creates the "higgledy-piggledy"
impression and makes him suffer from "a kind of mystical overkill", surely a
highly philosophical terminology. I do not really believe that the terms
"ascetic and Yogic trends" can be so confusing as he indicates. While in some
respects they meet and overlap, they have also distinct characteristics of their
own.
The section of the review dealing with the Vedas is the weakest one. Dr.
Rawlinson failed to take into account my earlier paper, referred to in the
book, on which the relevant passages are based, although he had seen it when
its draft had been circulated by SOAS prior to the Symposium where it was
read and although he could have consulted its published version. His view of
the Vedas is outdated. Sacrificial ritualism (mainly in .Rg Veda and the two
 A REJOINDER 201

Vedas derived from it) and magical ritualism (mainly in Atharava Veda which
stems from Vratya tradition) are certainly there, but the application of the
multi-level method of interpreting Vedic texts points also very clearly to
mystical (suprasensory and suprarational) insights, i.e., to a cognitive experi-
ence on a higher level. I have since argued the case in four published papers
and the recent publication of "The Vedic Experience" by Panikkar is a
strong support for it as well. Whether the accomplished ancient .r.sis,legendary
already at the time of the compilation of the safnhitas, were in direct line of
what later became Yoga, is arguable. But I do agree with Aurobindo that the
fullness of their vision presupposes a discipline such as became later known
as Yoga.
The question of non-~xryan origin of Yoga, of Safakhya, and, as Dr.
Rawlinson seems to suggest, of Jainism and Buddhism as well, is not a fruitful
one at present, because it can be argued both ways inconclusively. As to the
Indus Valley, Alpine racial types have been identified among excavated
skeletons along with three other types and although Prof. Hrozn3~'s Indo-
European hypothesis for the script on the seals is not supported by conclusive
proofs, it has not yet been disproved either. When Vedic civilisation flourished,
it did not include all ,~ryan tribes in its fold; those who arrived first, were
later pushed eastwards to Magadha and modem Bengal by subsequent waves
of Aryan immigration which populated Pufijab. The eastern tribes remained
outside the sphere of early Vedic civilisation, preserving their early Indo-
European tribal organization with semi-sacred fighting brotherhoods
(Vrdtyas). Hauer pointed out parallells to Vratyas in ancient Greece. Outside
the Vedas with its .rsi tradition there was also the independent muni tradition. I
do not think that the suggestion of non-Aryan elements in Jainism, Buddhism,
k.sat~ya teachings in the Upan~sads and in Sfiftkhya requires serious con-
sideration.
Besides failing to appreciate the relation between mysticism and Yoga as
outlined in the quotation given earlier, Dr. Rawlinson also disregards the
distinction I make between Yoga and philosophy (Chapter V, particularly,
pp. 111-112) and then blames me for underplaying important philosophical
issues and even for not adopting Therav~da terminology when talking about
sammasamddhi. But Yoga by its very nature aims at the final experience
which reaches beyond concepts (which are the sole means of expression
in philosophy) and consequently leaves behind philosophical issues. Different
schools of Yoga, though having the same aim, i.e., the apprehension of the
202 A REJOINDER

ultimate reality, must differ and even contradict each other when they try to
express what they themselves usually say is the inexpressible. Indeed, the
contradictions are often used as a deliberate devise within one and the same
system. I do not see the need for a historian of religion or philosophy to use
the terminology of the system which he is interpreting. Using a comparative
method, he must draw his conclusions regardless of possible embarassment
to orthodox teachings. It may be the Buddhist and Dr. Rawlinson's view, as
elaborated in secondary Theravhda literature, that there are two types of
Yoga practice, viz. the absorption (]hana) type and the awareness (vipassana)
type. But within the Vedic-Upanisadic tradition and in Patahjali dhyana (in
the Vedas also dhg, dhgti) designates a meditative or contemplative state of
mind (as distinct from the ordinary distracted state) which gives access to
deeper knowledge. The question of the relation between dhyana and ]hana
would merit a special investigation, but it is possible to say that the strict
Therav~da classification ofjhana as samatha and therefore non-cognitive state
of mind throughout has to be treated with caution. It is late and probably has
never been universally Buddhist. The basis tbr the three liberating knowledges
of the Buddha was the fourth ]hana and there is no clear evidence in the Phli
Canon for vipassana as a separate practice. The Ch'an and Zen school certain-
ly do not accept that theirs is sarnatha practice only, so there must have been,
within early Buddhism, a school of thought which regarded ]hana practice
as leading to higher cognition as in the Vedas, Upanis.ads and Pataiijali.
Another example of Dr. Rawlinson's rash judgment and bias towards
exclusively Buddhist interpretation is his failure to see the connection be-
tween Vedic r.ta and the Buddhist understanding of the universal law. His
quotation from p. 59 of my book is cut short, leaving out the statement that
according to Buddhist interpretation both the ritual aspect of the universal
law and its validity as the law of nature is subordinate, in human life, to its
moral aspect (as the law of karma). Surely, "'yai~i~abecomes dana" is only
another way of saying the same. A Buddhist may regard ancient .rsis as
inferior in knowledge and so may a Christian who would probably include
the Buddha as well. That is-why we need a historical and comparative disci-
pline with academic standards to study ancient and contemporary religious
and philosophies.
To the small points: Since prana is one of the many devatas, i.e., cosmic or
universal forces, "vital cosmic force" is not, perhaps, an altogether unclear
interpretation of it. Vedanas are, of course, only three; the second "or" is an
 A REJOINDER 203

uncorrected erratum to be changed into "i.e.". The notion of the Buddha

went through several stages of development in Mah~y~na, as indicated on pp.
8 6 - 8 7 ; the earliest one overlaps with the I-l$nay~na notion, regarding the
achievement of the status of a Buddha as a result of the development of the
pdramitds on the Bodhisattva path. It makes no sense to say that pdramitds
are never associated with Buddhas in Mah~yana.
Perhaps I can paraphrase Dr. Rawlinson and say that his is a frustrating
review. It creates more problems and hardly clears any existing ones. But it
does underline the extreme difficulty of the subject matter and its accom-
panying terminological problems. In this respect it draws attention to the
areas, covered in the book, in which more precise and more considered
formulations are necessary and that is a great help.

DR. KAREL WERNER