> > Patanjali, the author of the Yoga Sutras, said next > > to nothing about 'religion' - there was no 'Hinduism' > > at that time (cica 200 BC). From what I've read, > > there was 'Brahmanism', 'animism', and the atheist > > sects, Charvaka, etc. But I've seen no evidence that > > Patanjali was a teacher in a 'religious tradition'. > > If he was, he would have said so...duh! > > Kirk wrote: > Not so. Patanjali is also known as a proponent of > Shaivaism. And he has authored a well known sutra to > this effect. > Patanjali lived around 200 B.C., Kirk, long before the rise of the sects such as 'Shaivaism' in India. Mircea Eliade says that "the role of God in man's acquisition of freedom is of no importance." Thus Patanjali and Vyasa say almost nothing about religion or God as a means of obtaining yoga.
Eliade on the role of Ishvara: "Unlike Sankhya, Yoga affirms the existence of a God, Ishvara. This God is, of course, no creator, the cosmos, life, and man having, as we have already noted, been "created" by prakrti, for they all proceed from the primordial substance. But, in the case of certain men, Ishvara can hasten the process of deliverance; he helps them toward a more speedy arrival at samadhi. This God, to whom Patatnjali refers, is more especially a god of yogins. He can come to the help only of a yogin-that is, a man who has already chosen Yoga. In any case, Ishvara's role is comparatively small. He can, for example, bring samadhi to the yogin who takes him as the object of his concentration. According to Patanjali, this divine aid is not the effect of a "desire" or a "feeling" - for God can have neither desires nor emotions - but of a "metaphysical sympathy" between Ishvara and the purusa, a sympathy explained by their structural correspondence. Ishvara is a purusha that has been free since all eternity, never touched by the klesas. Commenting on this text, Vyasa adds that the difference between Ishvara and a "liberated spirit" is as follows: between the latter and psychomental experience, there was once a relation (even though illusory); whereas Ishvara has always been free. God does not submit to being summoned by rituals, or devotion, or faith in his "mercy"; but his essence instinctively "collaborates," as it were, with the Self that seeks emancipation through Yoga. What is involved, then, is rather a sympathy, metaphysical in nature, connecting two kindred entities. One would say that this sympathy shown by Ishvara toward certain yogins - that is, toward the few men who seek their deliverance by means of yogic,techniques - has exhausted his capacity to interest himself in the lot of mankind. This is why neither Patanjali nor Vyasa succeeds in giving any precise explanation of God's intervention in nature. It is clear that Ishvara has entered Sankhya-Yoga dialectics, as it were, from outside. For Sankhya affirms (and Yoga adopts the affirmation) that Substance (prakriti), because of its "teleological instinct," collaborates in the deliverance of man. Thus the role of God in man's acquisition of freedom is of no importance; for the cosmic substance itself undertakes to deliver the many "selves" (purusa) entangled in the illusory meshes of existence. Although it was Patanjali who introduced this new and (when all is said and done) perfectly useless element of Ishvara into the dialectics of the Sankhya soteriological doctrine, he does not give Ishvara the significance that late commentators will accord to him. What is of first importance in the Yoga-sutras is technique" (Eliade 73-74). Work Cited: "Yoga: Immortality and Freedom" By Mircea Eliade Princeton University Press, 1970 http://tinyurl.com/c38klm
