Culture, Spirituality and Science in Yoga

The Case for Common Ground

“The stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine.” – Sir James Jeans, physicist

How do we begin to understand the meaning of life, the universe and everything? Do we seek direct perception by cultivating our intuition through meditation, or do we evaluate it using the scientific method?

Scientific Materialism

Sāṃkhya Philosophy

Sāṃkhya philosophy, which reflects the key knowledge and cosmology of both Vedic and Upaniṣadic thought, accepts both material knowledge (aparāvidyā) and transcendental knowledge (parāvidyā) as sources of knowledge. Sāṃkhya, the origin of classical Aṣṭāṅga yoga, expounds twenty-four cosmic principles to explain all universal processes, with a twenty-fifth that refers to pure consciousness, beyond manifestation. With perfect simplicity these principles explain the nature of existence and humankind’s place within it.

Yoga was designed as a direct technology to reveal the knowledge of Sāṃkhya, the Vedas and the Upaniṣads. To explain the relationships of the systems, consider Sāṃkhya the ‘what’, Vedānta the ‘why’ and yoga the ‘how’ in providing answers to the meaning of life, the universe and, yes, everything.

The true practice of yoga is about going from our outer nature as a physical being to our inner nature as pure conscious awareness. It is not about the denial of our natural tendencies, rather the map by which we can rise step by step towards the goal of Self-realisation.

The practice of meditation is the key to direct perception through the mystical state. Successful practice offers knowledge of the true nature of the self, outside the realms of time, space, death, and suffering. It takes the aspirant beyond the sense-fuelled ego identity, inwards to their immortal self which resides in the spiritual heart (hṛdaya).

The highest purpose of the spiritual sciences is to attain the state of self-realisation, and on the way there exists a rich philosophy that elucidates the purpose of life, how to live it, the nature of the universe and the cosmos, the reality underlying all matter, God, and the laws of cause and effect. Everything, as promised. It is worth acknowledging, though, that while the ancient teachings provide many examples of this attainment, most people who practise yoga today will not have attained it, nor encountered a person who has.

A Leap of Faith

Seen from this perspective, opposed in orientation as they are, scientific materialism and spiritual science both rely on a leap of faith. Materialists seek validation of the truth from the outside, through sensory perception and sophisticated instruments that can measure matter, light and energy, while yoga seeks knowledge from the inside, through the direct experience of the practitioner’s effort using yoga technology and, until then, the testimony of the ancient seers who achieved direct perception through the mystical state.

The world has become more complex through scientific advancement, and at the same time there has been a spiritual devolution, where the majority lack the power of direct intuitive perception expounded by the ancient teachers. The testimonies of those seers in the spiritual texts, however, reveal consistent results. Despite the spiritual poverty of the current day, Gregor Maehle believes there is hope, that what was “confirmed by the liberated masters and ancient ṛṣis can be tried and tested by any meditator.” Direct experience attained through successful practice overcomes the conviction of materiality.

Differences aside, the materialist and the yogi can agree on many levels of existence. Both agree the human being is a physical being, a social being and a psychological being. The one place of contention is that yoga asserts a human being is also a cosmic or spiritual being.

The Materialist Yogi

So can a materialist practise yoga, or teach it? They certainly can, but only up to a certain point, or in yogic language, up to a certain limb. Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras map out the eight-fold path of Aṣṭāṅga yoga:

• Yamas, ethics that allow one to live in harmony with their community.
• Niyamas, observances that provide the foundation for spiritual growth.
• Āsana, physical postures to harmonise the body.
• Prāṇāyāma, breathing practices to harmonise the physical and subtle body.
• Pratyāhāra, arresting of the sense organs from involvement in the phenomenal world.
• Dhāraṇā, single-pointed concentration.
• Dhyāna, yoga meditation proper.
• Samādhi, absorption in the mystical state.

The materialist can make wonderful use of yoga up to the sixth limb, dhāraṇā, or concentration. Dhāraṇā is the practice of generating momentum to override the dissipated energies of the mind and convert them into a stream of highly focused awareness, vital for all spheres of life and a valuable attainment for all practitioners. From the materialist’s perspective there is no progress to be made beyond the sixth limb, because of the belief that nothing exists beyond the physical mind.

As we move beyond the sixth limb into the terrain of dhyāna and samādhi, sensory input recedes, and transcendental input becomes the principal direct source of knowing. This opens the door to transcendent realities that are always present but inaccessible to us through the sensory awareness of the physical mind alone.

Any modern discipline can coexist with, enrich, and add clarity to the traditional yogic sciences, up to the point they share the same reference points, across the physical, social, psychological and metaphysical spectrum.

For example, we can view yoga through a socio-cultural lens. The growing awareness of cultural appropriation and appreciation has encouraged practitioners to engage with yoga with a deeper reverence and respect for its original source and custodians, the great nation of India and its people. This is the practice of ethics (yamas) and observances (niyamas) in Patañjali’s eight-limbed system, which when adopted encourage harmony within community and humility within the heart, and so spiritual growth. But there is no guarantee everyone will take up these principles with purity, and they can be weaponised to exclude or prove superiority.

Sanātana Dharma

When we pursue the deepest purpose of yoga, Self-realisation, reducing yoga to purely a socio-cultural activity prevents progress. Yoga places itself within a universal approach to spiritual knowledge called sanātana dharma, the eternal tradition. David Frawley beautifully explains that these teachings are eternal, perpetual, and universal, beyond any local limitation. He teaches that only an enduring and eternal truth is real, and that “true spirituality works with the entire conscious universe and seeks grace and guidance everywhere.” Eternal truths, he believes, are always impersonal, transcending all personal and cultural bias, and available to all who are receptive.

Reducing yoga to simply a cultural activity might start us along the self-improvement path, but it will not take us all the way. Gregor Maehle says that when one studies and understands the yogic sciences, ethics arise of their own accord and need no imposing from outside.

The ancient ṛṣi Kapila, who contributed the Sāṃkhya philosophy, taught that pure consciousness is the absolute source of the subjective and the sense of self. Immutable and unchangeable, this source can only witness and cannot act. The subjective self, that is, your ethnicity, your skin colour, your nationality, your identity, are products of the creative force of prakṛti, the world ground of manifestation, enlivened by the pure light of consciousness. Put plainly, the spiritual sciences are, ultimately, concerned with the parts of us that are the same, our true source and nature, not our differences, our subjective selves.

Sometimes such limitations are appropriate. A physiotherapist should follow a strictly evidence-based approach when dealing with a patient and prescribing yoga āsana as a treatment. Psychology, too, can contribute so much to yoga via research, up to their fundamental disagreement about the nature of consciousness. The former asserts that consciousness is the result of biochemical processes of the brain, and the latter that consciousness is not contained in the brain, rather that it exists beyond matter. Clarifying your own reference point, as a teacher, trainer, practitioner, researcher, or academic, should also involve being honest about the limits of that discipline’s ability to intersect with the yogic sciences, to foster civil and honest discussion. If you teach yoga and you’re also a scientific materialist, it is better you reconcile that within yourself than reduce yoga to your worldview and then berate others for disagreeing with you.

Common Ground

When we dig a little deeper, we may find even more common ground. Even the materialist can pay homage to energy, because they realise this whole world is, by nature, a play of energy. The Australian physicist Paul Davies wrote in Superforce (1984), “to the naive realist the universe is a collection of objects. To the quantum physicist it is the inseparable web of vibrating energy patterns in which no one component has reality independent of the entirety; and included in that entirety is the observer.” Maybe we are simply using different language to explain the same things?

The theoretical physicist Professor Brian Josephson of Cambridge, a 1973 Nobel Prize recipient well known for his work on superconductivity and quantum tunnelling, states that “Vedānta and Sāṃkhya hold the key to the laws of the mind and thought processes, which are correlated to the quantum field, that is, the operation and distribution of particles at atomic and molecular levels.”

It has taken perhaps five thousand years for scientific materialism and the yogic sciences to coalesce to a point where they can find common ground, and I anticipate that one day we will arrive, through the new language of science, right where the ancient ṛṣis have been pointing us for millennia.

I hope these ponderings have left you, at the least, open to the possibilities beyond scientific materialism. As John Ablett, Senior Curator of Molluscs at the Natural History Museum in London, puts it, “Awe and wonder doesn’t cover it… it kind of keeps you in your place, in a nice way.”