Susanta Bhattacharya, a doctoral candidate in Indian philosophy in Kraków, Poland, published in Journal of Indian Philosophy earlier this year and asked us to share a summary. The full title of the piece is “Does Liberation Entail Disembodiment? Re-examining the Concept of Pratiprasava in the Yogasūtra“. Feedback is welcomed.
Some interpret the goal of Patañjali’s yoga philosophy as a world-denying one which signifies that the ultimate goal of yoga cannot be attained while living. Some interpret the goal of yoga as a world-affirming one which means that the ultimate goal of yoga is attainable even in this world living a life with physical body and mind. One of the central concepts in understanding the spiritual goal of yoga is pratiprasava. Patañjali uses the term pratiprasava to explain the nature of Kaivalya. So, the concept of pratiprasava is bound up with that of Kaivalya. Without a proper understanding of the concept of pratiprasava we cannot understand the idea of Kaivalya in the Yogasūtra. According to sūtra 4.34, there is a process called pratiprasava which is necessary for the attainment of Kaivalya. But scholars have interpreted these two terms in two different ways: from an ontological standpoint and from an epistemological standpoint. According to the ontological interpretation, pratiprasava means the literal dissolution of the empirical world including one’s physical body and mind. So, kaivalya is achieved when the puruṣa obliterates all the entanglements of prakṛti. Ontologically understood, Kaivalya is liberation after the death of the body. According to the epistemological interpretation, pratiprasava means the dissolution of the misidentification of puruṣa with prakṛti. It is the separation of puruṣa’s original self from puruṣa’s misidentified psychophysical self which is the manifestation of avidyā. So, Kaivalya is attained when the puruṣa ceases to identify with prakṛti. Upon the attainment of Kaivalya, the afflictions and impurities of the mind are dissolved, but not the mind itself. Epistemologically conceived, Kaivalya is liberation while living in this physical body.
I argue that both the ontological and epistemological approaches are partially true and partially false. In this paper, I combine aspects of both interpretations. I suggest that pratiprasava has two sequential stages: the epistemological stage and the ontological stage. Pratiprasava, in an epistemological sense, is the first stage of freedom (kaivalya) from all sorts of physical and mental bondages. This type of freedom is derived when all negative and positive effects of prakṛtic manifestation do not affect the yogi while living in this physical body. Pratiprasava, in an ontological sense, is the second or the final stage of freedom from existence altogether, including the physical body and mind. Based on this understanding of the two stages of pratiprasava, I will contend that there are correspondingly two types of Kaivalya: the citi-śakti type of liberation and the puruṣa-artha-śūnya type of liberation (see figure 3). Citi-śakti means the power of pure consciousness, which in the kaivalya-state abides in its own essence (sva-rūpa pratiṣṭhā). The citi-śakti type of liberation is grounded in the epistemological interpretation. The Puruṣa-artha-śūnya type of liberation means that for puruṣa nothing remains purposeful and necessary when prakṛti resolves into its unmanifest form. The puruṣa-artha-śūnya type of liberation is based on the ontological interpretation. The citi-śakti type of liberation is Jīvanmukti. Patañjali defines Kaivalya by saying that when sattva and puruṣa are of equal purity, this is kaivalya (sattva-puruṣayoḥ śuddhi-sāmye kaivalyam iti 3.56) and the puruṣa-artha-śūnya type of liberation is videhamukti when Patañjali says that the turning back of the guṇa-s to their source brings kaivalya (guṇānāṃ pratiprasavaḥ kaivalyaṃ). These two types of liberation are the two sides of the same coin (kaivalya). These two types of liberation are not conflicting but complementary.
The details of the arguments of may be found in the article, at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10781-025-09594-y#citeas
Hi Susantha,
The reading of Sāṃkhya in the earlier nineteenth century was formative for Indology in Poland, and the reading you offer follows consistently in that way. Within those constraints, what you offer is interesting and useful, converging through the process that comes to rest in awareness with the best current teaching of teachers in the UK and UDA.
Yet such teaching i(as by Daniel Simpson in the UK and Edwin Bryant stateside) is squarely devoted to familiar hatha-yoga practice, and makes no claims to philosophical interest as such. Your final position can reasonably be described as a psycho-spiritual parallelism, giving a spiritual twist to the neutral monism of William James. As I remarked earlier with Amod, one can reach this kind of position also by following the theme of he person in Buddhism, in the way of subsequent Advaita.
Such ideas are certainly current in academic Indian Philosophy, but also controversial. Thus Gerald James Larson spoke of Sāṃkhya foisted on Yoga, in his preface for the Encyclopedia. My concern is anachronism, placing Patañjali prior to systematic Sāṃkhya. And in India today, teaching of teachers is focussed on pranayama, which scarcely gets mentioned in the academic discourse. From that perspective I come to understand kaivalya as autonomy, in the sense of moral agency; and the duality you usefully highlight resolves in the terms of deontology. Your artful way with the duality already exceeds the terms of the tetralemna, and to track the logical burdens of the implications seems to me to require modal logic.