Home > Article Index > Yoga Philosophy > The Early Yoga Upanishads

The Early Yoga Upanishads

The Yoga Upanishads are a wonderful group of Indian texts that share a common theme of yoga and yet have received far less attention than they deserve.

Although the Yoga Upanishads are part of an orthodox Indian yoga tradition, they are little known to practitioners of yoga. They are an important set of texts that document the development of a system of non-dual yoga from India’s medieval period (800 and 1200 CE). The Yoga Upanishads bridge the interval between the early Classical Upanishads and Patanjali's Yoga Sutras to the later developments in Hatha Yoga and Bhakti Yoga.

The first of the Yoga Upanishads emerged after the composition of the Classical Upanishads (1,000 BCE to 600 CE) and the Yoga Sutras, (second century CE) but prior to the development of Hatha Yoga (10th to 14th century CE). It is surprising that the early Yoga Upanishads show no signs of being influenced by the Yoga Sutras despite being written after them. Instead, the Yoga Upanishads appear to be a separate and active tradition, since new works continued to be written and old ones revised.

References to yoga first appear in the early Classical Upanishads. These early references provide little detail, but indicate the basic elements of yoga such as sitting posture, breathing and the importance of mantra, set within largely non-theistic and non-dual metaphysics.

It is only with the formulation of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras that a full account of yoga, as both a theory and a practical method for salvation (soteriology) was established. This resulted in the recognition of yoga as one of the six main systems of orthodox Indian philosophy, darshana. It is this Yoga Darshana that came to be called Classical Yoga and which has subsequently become the most widely recognized basis for yoga philosophy in the West.

Yoga came to be incorporated as a comprehensive system within the tradition of the Upanishads, being first mentioned in the early texts and then more substantially through the creation of the Yoga Upanishads. There was most likely a conscious effort to maintain this tradition of learning and scholarship, and to keep the teachings of Vedanta (another classical Indian philosophy or darshana) relevant and current as yoga developed.

The period in which the early Yoga Upanishads were composed was also the time that Tantra emerged in India, yet they reveal only limited tantric influences, such mantras, chakras and energy channels. The later expanded revisions of the early Yoga Upanishads incorporate more features and material from works on Tantra and Hatha Yoga.

The Yoga Upanishads require us to re-evaluate the common understanding of the meaning of the word ‘yoga’.

One of the first steps authors often take in writing about yoga is to provide a definition of ‘yoga’. However, such definitions are often over-simplified and fail to allow for the wide range of contexts in which the word Yoga has been used in Indian literature. The failure of authors to recognize these multiple contexts perpetuates inaccurate and confused usages. 

Many popular books on yoga provide confused explanations as to the meaning of the term word ‘yoga’. It is frequently explained defined as ‘union’, yet such a definition does not accord with the Yoga Sutras. The meaning there is rather ‘dis-union’, that is, to separate the individual self, enmeshed in the world of experience and rebirth, from Nature.

Investigation of the older Yoga Upanishads (the 'Northern Revisions') indicates that yoga is not used to mean union. Yoga is instead used throughout these texts to refer to the practical method of meditation for the purpose of attaining liberation. The context is that of achieving the experience or realization that Brahman (the absolute) and Atman (the Self) are identical; that the everyday experience of difference is illusory. In this sense, yoga could be said to mean union, however, the philosophical argument is made that there was never any separation of Brahman and Atman, and therefore there is nothing to reunite.

The essential purpose of the early Yoga Upanishads is to realize Brahman.

Some of the texts are largely concerned with theoretical principles concerning the nature of Brahman, while others are oriented more to the actual techniques involved in realizing Brahman. The practical texts present a systematic approach to establishing a meditative state through a series of steps, such as posture, breath control and withdrawal of the mind from the senses, followed by concentration that leads into meditation.

An example of a practical text is the Yoga Upanishad called the Kshurika Upanishad, which describes a complete yoga practice. It is perhaps one of the oldest recorded yoga techniques to achieve transcendence.

The Kshurika establishes a breathing and concentration practice that incorporates controlling the breath with mental repetition of the mantra Om to withdraw the energy flowing in the body (prana) into the central channel (sushumna nadi) and, through this process, achieve the ultimate state. This Yoga Upanishad does not explain the components of Om or provide any metaphysical discussion of its meaning.

This Upanishad instructs the yogin to select a silent place and appropriate posture for the practice. He then withdraws the mind from the senses (pratyahara) using the tortoise metaphor as, like a tortoise, one draws in the limbs whilst repeating the mantra Om. He then controls the breath (pranayama). The awareness and the breath are directed sequentially to nominated parts of the body, a concentration practice (dharana).

Maintaining the attention on all the above elements of the meditation practice (breath, mantra and the parts of the body) fully occupies the mind restraining it from thinking about other things.

The practice proceeds from the physical body to more subtle stages. The awareness is cut away from the breath and channeled into the pranic body. It is then withdrawn into the three main nadis, ida, pingala and sushumna. These nadis are then also cut-away. By cutting away both the gross and subtle form of tethers that bind one to this material plane, the individual is freed from the cycle of birth and rebirth. In this way the true self is released and liberation is attained.

Immortality, which here probably means freedom from rebirth, is achieved by separating away from common aspirations and desires. Vedanta teaches that the self (Atman) is immortal anyway, but it becomes enmeshed in the world (samsara). The practice of yoga provides the means to attain the goal of liberation. This text is not a critique of the mind (as is the case in the Yoga Sutras). Instead the mind is a tool that is used to cut away the gross physical body inwards to the subtle body, and then to ascend upwards, cutting off the different parts of the being in order to be free from them.

		Del.icio.us |		email
Print Friendly Version

About the Author(s):  Roger Bodman is currently a post-graduate research student in the Department of Philosophy, The University of Melbourne. His research topic is on yoga philosophy, examining the early Yoga Upanishads with a focus on the philosophical significance of sound and mantra. More...