sinari on yoga and phernomenology

8/22/2019 Sinari on Yoga and Phernomenology

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sinari-on-yoga-and-phernomenology 1/13

The Method of Phenomenological Reduction and YogaAuthor(s): Ramakant Sinari

Source: Philosophy East and West, Vol. 15, No. 3/4 (Jul. - Oct., 1965), pp. 217-228Published by: University of Hawai'i PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1397061 .

Accessed: 03/05/2011 07:59

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless

you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you

may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at .

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=uhp. .

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed

page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

University of Hawai'i Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Philosophy

East and West.

http://www.jstor.org

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=uhp

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1397061?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp



http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1397061?origin=JSTOR-pdf




RAMAKANT SINARI

T h e M e th o d o f Phenomenologic

Reduction a n d Y o g a

IT IS NOWBEINGINCREASINGLY RECOGNIZED hat the greatest

contribution ofphenomenology

to the scientificdiscipline

inphilosophy

is its

attempt to record, as uncommitted witnesses of the world, all that we ex-

perience. From Edmund Husserl to Jean-Paul Sartre, phenomenologists,whatever their language-oriented differences, have always concentrated their

attention on the study of the constitution of human consciousness and its

encounter with itself and with the world. Although there is sufficient evidence

in support of the thesis that some of the ancient philosophies of the Orient

engaged in a similar task, their motivation was an eternal escape from life and

the world, and, therefore, their influence was not considerably felt outside the

realm of religion, mysticism, and philousia.l The most obvious reason whythe apparently phenomenological search of Hindu and Buddhist sages did not

take the shape of a method is that it ever remained with them a moral and

highly diffused cult. The credit for establishing, for the first time, the most

radical procedure of studying every experience by the withdrawal of one's

consciousness toward its "roots"as such goes to Husserl.

As a matter of fact, Husserl's slogan "Back to the things themselves"la (Zuden Sachen selbst) is much more rigorous than even the positivists' insistence

in philosophy on remaining within the verifiable "given." For he not only

made the world of sense-perception the starting-point of his philosophizing,but also, by advancing deeper, rejected all the conventional attributes given to

it, until he could come upon a presuppositionless origin of experience-formation. What he aimed at is that primordial reflection by which conscious-

ness is linked with its very objects, and at the entire structure of the "essences"

(Eidos) of things acquiredby mind. The phenomenological reduction that he

performed was free from any preconceived notions about the reality of the

1The word is coined by William Haas in his The Destiny of the Mind (London:

Faberand Faber, 1956), p. 134,and is definedby him as "the desire for Isness."la Quoted by Marvin Farber, "Phenomenology," n Living Schools of Philosophy,D. D. Runes, ed. (Ames, Iowa: Littlefield,Adams & Co., 1962), p. 312.

217



RAMAKANT SINARI

world and was with a view to inquiring into the total mental domain "by an

attitude of pure reflection.'2

Through phenomenology, says Husserl, the whole world, with its indi-viduals, psychic entities, beliefs, and relations, falls into "brackets," and the

experiencing consciousness that has been figuring so far as placed in the

natural world is now posited as "absolute" and "pure."3With the implicationthat there is no unit of experience that cannot be reconstructed and perceived

fundamentally from the position of pure consciousness, Husserl suggests that

the only way to do this is by radical reflection, which is the very backbone of

the phenomenological method. "It is ideally possible for every experience not

included in the glance4 to be brought under it; a reflective act of the ego is

directed towards it, and it now becomes an object for the ego."5

No impression is "bracketed" or suspended by the phenomenologicalattitudeforever. When all the things appearing in consciousness are suspended,it may be the case that they are still used for the purpose of deriving their

ultimate essences. Even when the act of suspension is carried to its most

extreme limit and the very "forms" of judgments are withheld, certain re-

flective awareness would remain in function. Indeed, as Husserl emphasizes,reflection itself is never bracketed, for its relation to all other experiences is

such that it goes on ceaselessly as the primary expression of pure consciousnessor ego.

The task of the present paper is to examine whether the "unbracketability"of the reflective ego is some kind of ontological impossibility which imposesfundamental limitations on its attempt to transcend reflection. Also, it is

necessary to see whether the inevitable outcome of a method to suspend all

reflection-which would be quite in compliance with the phenomenological

procedure, stretched beyond any restraint-would be to "plunge" oneself into

a state of "unconscious consciousness" similar to one describedby the followers

of the Yoga school as sam4dhi or turiya. That Husserl consistently adheres to

the unbracketabilityof the reflective self and feels no necessity to move toward

a stage antecedent to it is more than clear from his writings. However, it

would not be legitimate to dismiss the question of whether the process of

suspending the entire physical and mental world, except one's own reflective

2Marvin Farber, "On the Meaning of Radical Reflection," in Edmund Husserl

(Refueil Commemoratif) (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1959), p. 155.3Edmund Husserl, Ideas, W. R Boyce Gibson, trans. (New York: Collier Books,

1962), p. 195.4 This word is intendedto suggest that every experiencecan be penetratedby theexercise of intuition.

6Husserl, Ideas, p. 197.

218



PHENOMENOLOGICAL REDUCTION AND YOGA

consciousness, is a matter of exigency governed by man's being in the world of

hard facts.

With the main purpose of proving that the naturalworld is "the correlate ofour factual experience," Husserl, with a sense of doubt surpassing that of

Descartes, begins with the remark that "it is quite conceivable that our ex-

periencing function swarms with oppositions that cannot be evened out either

for us or in themselves, that experience shows itself all at once obstinately set

against the suggestion that the things it puts together should persist har-

moniously to the end ... that a world, in short, exists no longer." "Thus no

real thing," he goes on, "none that consciously presents and manifests itself

through appearances,is necessary for the being of consciousness (in the widest

sense of the stream of experience)."6Husserl sees no necessity to regard the pattern of the world given to our

natural knowledge and experience as something unconditional and universal.

Only "eidetic" judgments, that is, judgments emanating from the essences of

things and possessing unrestricted and pure validity, are beyond contingency.It is due to this fact that there are, according to him, "pure sciences of

essential being,"7 such as pure logic, pure mathematics, pure theory of space,

etc., the primary concepts of which are confirmedper se.

Husserl's main task is not to explain how the contingency of the world leadsus to the certainty of the essences. His attempt is not like that of a psychologist,to whom the observed pattern of responses in an organic system is sufficient

to determine that a corresponding pattern of stimuli is independently existent

as its cause. He is predominantly interested in comprehending that line of

demarcationwhich separatesconsciousness in the act of positing essences from

consciousness reflecting this or that. It is this interest in returning again and

again to the path between consciousness apprehending basic "Eidos" of the

world and the day-to-day world-consciousness that, many a time, compels him

to allude to a super-phenomenological reduction, called by him "transcen-

dental-phenomenological reduction."

The phenomenological reduction draws upon an attitude to which real

vision of the world is not obtainable by means of natural understanding; such

a vision is aligned with our "essential intuition" or transcendental subjectivity.". . . essential insight is intuition," writes Husserl, "and if it is insight in the

pregnant sense of the term ... it is a primordial dator intuition, grasping the

essence in its 'bodily' selfhood."8 In natural understanding, any fact is ob-

served as a "spatio-temporal existence." It is obviously conceivable that a

6 Ibid., p. 137.7Ibid., p. 55.8Ibid., p. 49.

219



RAMAKANT SINARI

fact x, instead of occurring in this time-spot and at this place, could have

occurred otherwise. It is therefore "accidental" inasmuch as it entails the

possibility of being other than what it actually is. In the primordial dator

intuition, on the contrary, the pure essence of the fact discloses itself and

becomes inseparably united with the transcendentalconsciousness.

Ordinarily, the notion of transcendencehas helped a number of philosophersto evolve doctrines which are on the brink of mysticism. The word "transcen-

dence," again, has sometimes been so carelessly used in Occidental and

Oriental philosophy that it has come to betray any fixed rule of its purport. In

not a few cases it has signified a wholesome experience of that being or realitywhich lies as the

self-explanatory groundof all

immanent happenings. Whilefor Kant it characterized the a priori and necessary factors that make exper-ience itself possible, for Hegel, as for Sarmkara,t meant the absolute and trans-

empirical justification of all that appears in the world of phenomena. Even

among the metaphysical evolutionists, such as Bergson, S. Alexander, and

Nietzsche, there is hardly any agreement as regards the nature and region of

transcendence.

Since Husserl's proclamation of the method of transcendental-phenomeno-

logical reduction, with its sharply defined contours, phenomenologists and

existentialists have adhered to a certain uniform usage of the word "tran-scendence." Of course, this need not suggest that existentialist literature is

free from a temptation to twist this word. However, for Husserl, "transcen-

dence" comprises the grasp of the "natural" constitution of the world, as

against its empirically observed set-up. This "natural" constitution, once ap-

prehended, would destroy our ordinary and unreflected-on conception of

experience.

According to Husserl, pure ego and its "cogitationes"are at the backgroundof our

experienceof the natural

world,and are

continually presupposed by it.9At the same time, just as the phenomenological suspension (phenomenological

epoche) of the empirical or objective world, as the first step of the method,

places one outside the domain of perceiving consciousness, the transcendental

suspension (transcendental epoche), as the next step, puts one exclusivelywithin the innermost domain of one's subjectivity. The difference between the

two steps is not only of degree and intensity but also of perspective. That is to

say, by achieving the suspension of the empirical world par excellence, one

eliminates oneself as sensing, desiring, representing, acting, and, in general, as

a consciousness environed by spatio-temporalreality. For Husserl, it is evident

9Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, Dorion Cairns, trans. (The Hague:MartinusNijhoff, 1960), p. 21.

220




that as a result of such an elimination one comes to touch the psychologicalsource of the very norms and axioms which govern one's experience.

It is very significant that the phenomenological reduction is suggested byHusserl as a "breakthrough."10The word is intended to indicate that anytotal suspension of natural experience would still recognize a certain geometryof essences, numbers, signs, judgments, and relations, the "seeing" of which

is planned to be attained by phenomenology. If one proceeds to disconnect

oneself even from this geometry, a further and more radically oriented per-

spective would be necessary. Husserl argues that to name the suspension or

reduction that brings about this latter perspective as transcendental is not to

assume that there is agrading

in reduction." It seemsquite

convincing,

however, that he did devise the two reductions to be stages of a disciplinewhose gradual ascent toward pure consciousness is completed when the

transcendental suspension is undertaken. Another reason why this seems

plausible is that the extent to which phenomenological reduction goes is not

determined by the phenomenological consciousness itself, but by a more pre-

ponderant insight which, rather figuratively, keeps a watch on itself and on

the entire kingdom of post-natal, conventional, and acquired mind-stuff.

Husserl's interest in the exploration of the psychological powers of the

human mind is as clearly evident from his outstanding analysis of ego-con-sciousness as from his minute observation of the mind's configurational at-

tributes in his Philosophy of Arithmetic. While in this work he is seen busy

with the unfolding of the most orderly "furniture"of an adding, subtracting,

multiplying, and dividing consciousness, in the Ideas his main activity is to

make transparent the most hidden channels of a perceiving and reflecting

mind. It would not be inappropriate to say, therefore, that, knowingly or un-

knowingly, while examining the original functions of consciousness, he hap-

pened to contribute to what can be called the psychology of transcendence.

This does not mean that he made the psychology of transcendencehis vocation,

by subordinating logic and epistemology to it. He is the first thinker who

demonstrated, by the rigor of his method, that, if an undiluted precision and

mathematicalcertitude are to be attained in philosophy, the only point to begin

with is the "atomic" components of experience and the emergence of their

meaning in the blankest possible consciousness.

Husserl's endeavor to establish transcendental subjectivity as an intuitive

realization or as the absolutely certain "seeing" is expressively metaphysical.His curiosity about the genesis of our world-experience is not restricted

10 See Marvin Farber, The Foundation of Phenomenology (New York: Paine-Whit-man Publishers,1962), p. 204.

11 Husserl, Ideas, p. 103.

221



RAMAKANT SINARI

merely to the question of how our understanding of the perceptual data occurs

-which data, incidentally,for subjectivists, form the only reason for the "esse"

of the world-or to the scrutiny of crude sense-perceptions-which, for em-piricists, are the raw material of understanding-but extends to the inertia of

the mind by which its awareness itself springs up. The fact that by pursuingthe exploration of consciousness qua consciousness he did come to many onto-

logical findings, which have proved to be so germane to moder existential

psychoanalysis, strengthens our conviction that any strictly positivistic inquiryinto the foundation of experience is bound to be grounded, at a certain point,on subjective intuition.

The proof for the existence of the world, for Husserl, lies in absolute sub-

jectivity. And there is no test of the authenticity of absolute subjectivity other

than "seeing." Marvin Farber explains that Husserl considered phenomenologya way of empowering "seeing" in philosophy and psychology.'2 Again, with

this notion of "seeing" is fused Husserl's doctrine of "intentionality" or "di-

rectedness" of consciousness. For instance, to say that every experience is an

experience to consciousness is to imply that consciousness not only perceivesitself as experiencing this or that, but also registers it as its own.

Intentionality has a twofold nature, depending upon its being related to the

immanent and the transcendent reality. Although immanent intentionality andtranscendent intentionality can roughly be described as "outer" and "inner"

perception, respectively, Husserl prefers the former expressions, since what is

felt as immanent is not so in the sense that it is outside of consciousness, and

what is seen as inner is inside it. Actually the problem as to whether one can

speak of something as being outside of consciousness does not bother him, for

it is extraneous to his method's conduct. Moreover, the moment the empirical

reality is suspended it ceases to exist, at least temporarily, and to be con-

cerned about it or to raise questions regarding its structure is, at that stage,

unwarranted. However, despite the fact that his suspension of the empiricallyreal is definitely provisional, and is guided by the purpose of acquiring a vision

for the reconstruction of the world, he shows himself to be deeply engrossedwith the unfolding of transcendent intentionality. "Transcendental sub-

jectivity," "pure consciousness," "the pure ego," and "the being of conscious-

ness"--expressions which frequently occur in his analysis in an entirely

synonymous way-indicate that his passion is to bring to reflection that state

which would be the very raison d'etre of our immanent consciousness. It is

12 Farber, The Foundation of Phenomenology, p. 216. Farber narrates an incidentfrom Husserl's period of teaching at Freiburg. When Husserl asked the wife of one ofthe visiting scholars what she learned from his technical lectures in phenomenology,hewas told that the lectures gave her "so many new eyes."

222




this passion that induced him to build the idea of transcendental reduction,

which, as was said before, is the most concentrated and, ontologically the

most allusive part of his thought. He does not hesitate to remark, at one place,that "the reflections in which we have been indulging also make it clear that

no proofs drawn from the empirical consideration of the world can be con-

ceived which could assure us with absolute certainty of the world's exis-

tence."13

It may be asked: if no proof drawn from the empirical consideration of the

world could give us the certainty that the world exists, in what way would a

proof drawn from its transcendental consideration produce such a guarantee?If one asks for the necessity and certainty of the world's existence, one is

perhaps more likely to get it by controlling the transcendental intentionalityand remaining confined primarily to the immanent phenomena than by actingthe other way around. For, as empiricists and naturalists may argue, there is

nothing conceivably self-evident and necessary in transcendental subjectivitythat warrants our experience of the world. The very field of transcendence to

be realized by transcendental reduction is such that it would be authentic-

as the phenomenological method desires it to be-only when the entirety of

world-experience lies in parentheses to it. In case this world-experience is

preserved, it is likely to prevent reduction from reaching its most extreme

point, at which one would be able to claim the total elimination of natural im-

pressions and conventional meaning.That Husserl is not in favor of any moderation of the method is evident

from the simple fact that, not being fully content with the magnitude of the

phenomenological epoche,he commends the transcendentalepoche, with the ob-

vious motive that it would be able to carry on the process of re-examining the

universe without any compromise. Indeed, at no stage in its development has

he extended the process of epoche to an extremity at which it can discern the

"emptiness"of consciousness. Consciousness is always "consciousness-of"; it isreflective and self-manifesting. He writes, "To the extent ... that every con-

sciousness is consciousness-of, the essential study of consciousness includes

also that of consciousness-meaning and consciousness-objectivity as such."14

Much of the misunderstanding Husserl's reasoning has given rise to is due

largely to his thesis that if reduction is made to go beyond "consciousness-of"

it may evolve into an ontology utterly divorced from, and, consequently, in-

competent to account for, the natural world.

13Husserl, Ideas, p.

132.14 Edmund Husserl, Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy, Quentin Lauer,

trans.(New York:Harper&Row,1965),p. 90.Thetranslator'sote on the samepageadds: "Sinceobjectivitys a function f pureconsciousness,he role of philosophys togroundobjectivity y investigatingonsciousness."

223



RAMAKANT SINARI

In a certain sense, in a sense in which most of the phenomenologists think

that phenomenology is only a method and, as such, cannot be an end in itself,

Husserl's thesis islegitimate. Nevertheless,

it must be admitted that a

phenomenologist, insofar as he follows a radical and unrestrictedly rigorous

method, is most likely to pass beyond consciousness at some stage or other

in his transcendental investigation. The dismissal of such a possibility is not

epistemologically justifiable.Husserl at one place makes the ultimate objective of the phenomenological-

transcendental epoche most precise. He remarks that the aims of phenom-

enological analysis are essentially no different from those which are embodied

in epistemology. But, unlike the already prevalent epistemologies, phenom-

enological epistemology is entirely free from presuppositions; that is, ". . . itdoes not seek to follow up the real connections of coexistence and succession

in which the acts of knowing are interwoven, but it seeks to understand the

ideal meaning of the specificconnections in which the objectivity of knowledge

proves itself; it seeks to raise to clearness and distinctness the pure knowledge

forms and laws through return to the adequately filling intuition."'5 It is

needless to mention that the "pure knowledge forms and laws" Husserl speaksabout pertain strictly to the level of reflective consciousness illumined bytranscendental intuition.

To state that the phenomenological-transcendentalsuspension does not com-

prise a complete cancellation of the reflective activity is not to suggest that

what some existentialists refer to as the "pre-reflective" or "pre-conscious"

nothingness is only a fig of imagination. As a matter of fact, Sartre's assertion

that consciousness is fundamentally "nothingness," that is, it is a "locus" of

fresh beginnings, absolute freedom, seems to be the logical consequence of

an unrestricted transcendental reduction-a reduction stretched to its "zero-

limit." Whether such an extreme reduction is of any "use" toward constitutinga

theoryof

knowledge,or whether it is at

any stage productiveof

insightor

perspective, for which phenomenology works, is a different question. It cannot

be denied, however, that reduction practiced to its last degree, to reach noth-

ingness beneath consciousness, is a conceivable hypothesis.The experience of transcendental subjectivity, disconnected from and taken

"behind" reflection, is exactly what yoga has been aiming at. Its religious

aspects and the paraphernaliaof its bodily technique apart, yoga is principallya discipline of attention, directed toward what James Woods has called "the

restriction of the fluctuations of mind-stuff."16

15 Quoted by A. D. Osborn in his Edmund Husserl and His Logical Investigations(Cambridge,Mass.: HarvardUniversity Press, 1949), pp. 73-74.

6James Woods, The Yoga System of Pataiiali (Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard Uni-versity Press, 1927), p. 8.

224



PHENOMENOOLOGICAL REDUCTION AND YOGA

Yoga begins with the training of respiration (prdnayama). Since respirationand consciousness have a very close relationship, a control on the former

would produce the desirable channeling of the latter. The rhythms in therespiration and the states of consciousness can be made to loom together by

practice. As the practice becomes more and more pointed and inner-directed,the activity of consciousness begins to attain an extraordinary lucidity, and a

direct penetration through the experience-content is achieved.

The goal of the yogin is to "see" different modalities of consciousness in

their very source. The initiates in yoga maintain that irregularities in breath

create blurred psychic states and a diffusion of moods. Total suspension of

respiration, therefore, is bound to sever consciousness from all transitional

moments and posit it as "pure," the state in which the ultimate forms of all

that exists are most genuinely presented. Pure consciousness is the result of

samddhi.

The term "samadhi" is one of those terms in Indian philosophy the inten-

sion of which has been understood in diverse fashions. Generally, "samddhi"

signifies a fusion, or a totality, or an absolute absorption of mind within itself.

But it need not be confused with terms, psychologically akin to it, such as

"samyama" (to go together), "dharana" (concentration), and "dhyana"

(meditation).Samadhi is an

ontologicalrealization of the most

primordialessences of objects, which, in a sense, are not fully describable. It gives us an

access to that point of consciousness at which an object reveals itself "in

itself" (svarapa), in its true being, and becomes absolutely transparent to the

knowing faculty. The purpose of samrdhi is to "see" the world through "tran-

scendental subjectivity."l7

According to Pataiijali, the founder of the Yoga school, every perceptionarouses the ego-sense and the judgments of the ego. As long as this ego-sense

persists, the succession of the states of mind is experienced. The registering

power of the mind (manas), the discriminating power (buddhi), and thethought-impressions (vrtti) are all due to the ego-sense, and when this is

abandoned, the total existence ceases to be present to consciousness. What is

realized by means of samadhi, therefore, says Patanjali, is the cessation of this

ego-sense and the possession of "pure," "seedless," "undifferentiated,""tran-

scendental," "non-attached" consciousness.

It should be remarked,in the present context, that yoga, unlike the phenom-

enological reduction, aims at carrying consciousness down to its "zero-limit."

While, for Husserl, the transcendentalconsciousness can never be transmuted

to a state at which it would cease to operate as empirically-oriented,the yogins

17VijnfinabhiksuGangiantha Jha, ed., Yogosara-saigraha of Vijiinabhiksu (Ma-dras: TheosophicalPublishingHouse, 1933), p. 44.

225



RAMAKANT SINARI

invariably maintain that samadhi is an "ecstatic" stage, similar to self-revela-

tion, and constitutes a complete removal of the distinction between conscious-

ness and its object.There is an outstanding resemblance between Husserl's doctrine of the

phenomenological and the transcendental reduction, on the one hand, and the

Yoga teaching of samprajiata (differentiated) and asampraiiata (undiffer-

entiated) samadhi, on the other. Vijinnabhiksu18 tells us that samprajiuita

samadhi is a way of comprehending truth and of destroying suffering. Through

its several steps, such as "argumentative" (savitarka), "non-argumentative"

(nirvitarka), "reflective" (savicara), and "super-reflective" (nirvicara),

thoughtis made to

goclosest to its object, so much so that the cognitive act

of consciousness is able to grasp the object in its bare existentiality. When this

happens, the impressions coming from the object are so neutralized and kept

uninfluenced by the logical and the psychological categories that it is as if

localized as simply "there." Again, the object localized in this manner is not

known by means of any associations, representations, or relations, but as a

"self-shining" entity with the simplest and most obvious form. It would not

be impertinent to state, therefore, that the notion of the object Husserl is in

search of, through the method of phenomenological epoche, is not at all dif-

ferent from its most original figure (svaripa), which the yogins aspire toapprehend.

There is, however, a great hiatus between the "width" of asamprajnata

samadhi and that of the transcendental epoche. And, psychologically at least,

asamprajiita samadhi intends to acquire that ultimate annulment of conscious-

ness which the Husserlian path of bracketing would realize only if it were

stretched to a point at which some kind of pre-reflective, pre-conscious, inane

stuff is "touched." While Husserl never alludes to a state of this kind, and

recommends phenomenology merely as a logical-epistemological device, a

"breakthrough," Pataiijali and his followers consistently affirm asamprajaita

samadhi as the crown of all concentrationand meditation, and as the vanishing

of all consciousness.

In asamprajfiata samadhi, according to Vijnafnabhiksu,"impressions of all

antecedentmental functions" become extinct, the further occurrence of mental

forces is arrested, and mind's engagement with the world disappears. What

remains behind, then, is a vague aftermath of impressions (samskaras). This

aftermath is the only link between consciousness at the samadhi level and the

world;and it endows

uponconsciousness even a possibility of regaining its

"life" in the world. But, since the regaining of the world is not felt to be

s1 Ibid., p. 4.

226




necessary by the yogin, he rightly bears a feeling that he does stay detached

from all "is-ness," that his dissolvement in nothingness is beyond all restraints

from and compromises with the matters of fact.

Vacaspatimisra's19explanation that samprajnatasamadhi and asamprajintasamadhi are so interrelated that the former is only a means to the latter is

widely accepted. Besides, the consistency of the yogins' preaching with the

principal spirit of the Upanisads warrants that sanmdhi be practiced as a way

leading to the emancipation of consciousness from worldly reality. It has not

even been hinted by Husserl, or, for that matter, by any other Western phe-

nomenologist or existentialist, that the ultimate objective of transcendental

reduction is to be cherished as apanacea

for mundane ills.Therefore,

when

one studies the goal of asamprajnatasamadhi, one is bound to acknowledge it

as a total emptiness, a permanent arrest of all psychophysical experiences, a

state of complete withdrawal (nirodha) from the world. It is never suggested

by the yogins that a returnfrom this sphere back to natural existence is, in any

sense, desirable. Life's deliverance, moreover, demands a closure of the pos-

sibility of new experience-a jivan-mukti-in which consciousness posits it-

self as indistinguishable from being and nothingness.20 For the Yoga school,not only is this deliverance into full inanity realizable,but, when actually at-

tained, it transforms even one's view of one's own self, recreating thereby a"twice-born" free personality.

It was said above that the transcendental consciousness at which Husserl

aims is a region where the entire inherited conception of the world ceases to

function. Husserl is tacit in maintaining that the transcendental consciousness

or the transcendental intentionality is still reflective. In his second Cartesian

Meditation, he draws a distinction between "natural" and "transcendental"

reflection. The former, he says, is of everyday life and represents a psychical

process to which the world is the "given" content. The latter, which he also

calls "transcendental-phenomenological reflection," "consists in lookingat and describing the particular transcendentally reduced cogito, but without

participating, as reflective subject, in the natural existing-positing that the

originally straightforwardperceptioncontains...."21 He remarks in the Ideas

that reflection is the name given to "acts in which the stream of experience,with all its manifold events (phases of experience, intentionalities) can be

grasped and analysed in the light of its own evidence."22

The word "reflection,"in the phrase "transcendentalreflection,"is intended

19 The author of the famous Sahskhya-tattva-kaumudi9th century).20 Accordingto Sartre,nothingness s the metaphysicalgroundof humanexistence.21 Husserl, CartesianMeditations,p. 33.22Husserl, Ideas, p. 200.

227



RAMAKANT SINARI

by Husserl to denote only a grade of consciousness higher than that of the

consciousness in natural reflection;but one to which the most "real" essences

of the world are present. To "re-create" the world from the ground of theseessences is to own absolute certainty about the universality of that re-creation,

and about its syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic laws. Moreover, such a re-

creation would never be susceptible to questioning from any scrutinizing

agency. In short, the re-constituted world would be beyond all skepticism, ex-

ercised by one's intellect and understanding, since these very processes are

"seen" now with a certainty and transparence never met with before.

Yoga discipline does not put forward any epistemological plan for the "re-

constitution" of the world. This isclearly

due to the fact that itsexponentswere exclusively keen on finding an answer to the riddle of suffering, which,

they believed, accrues solely from man's relationship to the world. Husserl

takes every precaution against his method's reaching a distrust in the realityof the empirical world. He is constantly held back from as subjectivistic a

transcendentalizationas the one which has pushed yogins toward "supercon-sciousness"-the abode of final liberation. Strictly speaking, therefore, yoga

boldly carries Husserl's transcendental reduction to its inevitable logical end.

228

sinari on yoga and phernomenology

Documents