are capable only of knowing objects as ‘generals’ [YBh 1.49]. Taimni’s
commentary on YS 1.49 clarifies the relation between ‘particular’ and
‘general’ objects of knowledge. Objects of knowledge are cognized as
‘particulars’ not because they are known in isolation from other objects
of knowledge, but because their particular nature is revealed in their
being known within a broader context:
It is... this inability to see things in the background of the whole which
is the greatest limitation of intellectual perception [ordinary knowl-
edge], and intuitive perception [higher knowledge] is free from this limi-
tation. In the higher realms of consciousness each object is seen not in
isolation but as part of a whole in which all truths, laws and principles
have their due place.^23Higher knowledge is attainable in samadhi ̄ , the culmination of
Yoga’s eight accessories. Sam ̄adhiitself has a number of successive
knowledge-states leading to final liberation. Swami Adidevananda re-
marks that “The empirical soul is sick as long as it is isolated from the
universal spirit.”^24 Religious liberation in Yoga overcomes the sickness of
this isolation by seeking a desirable form of isolation, kaivalya: indepen-
dence of the Self from body/mind and materiality. The means to this in-
dependence is discriminative higher knowledge, attained by systematic
cultivation of body/mind and consciousness.
Soteriology
Self-realization by Healing the Afflictions (Kle ́sas)
Central to the Yoga-sutras’ ̄ analysis of human suffering is the theory of
the kle ́sas, ailments or afflictions (the main one being ignorance) that af-
fect the body and mind, and also affect the person at a more fundamen-
tal level of being: the buddhior faculty of knowing. Buddhior intelli-
gence (√budh, ‘to know’, ‘to wake’) is the first evolute of prakÓrtiand the
faculty most similar to puruÓsa, because puruÓsa’spower of pure con-
sciousness gives buddhi the power to know. In classical Yoga’s metaphys-
ics and soteriology, healing at the most fundamental level applies to the
draÓsÓtÓr,the Seer or experiencer. The draÓsÓtÓris the human being inclusive of
buddhi(the content-free power of intelligence) along with manas, the
mind (with its contents and personal patterns of meaning-constitution).
Also part of draÓsÓtÓrare the body and the sensory-perceptual capacities,
which are functions of cooperating physicality and mentality.
Liberation as healing consists in the draÓsÓtÓr’s“establishment in its
classical yoga as a religious therapeutic 99