All is suffering to discriminating persons, because of pain resulting
from change, anxiety, and their subliminal impressions (samskÓ aras ̄ ), and
because of conflict between the mind’s activities (vÓrttis) and the basic
constituents of materiality (guÓnas).
YS 2.15Yoga’s knowledge-based remedy for the dis/ease of human bondage is the
dispersion of ignorance, permitting the dissociation of puruÓsa and
prakÓrti. This is liberation from the pain of the human condition. How is
ignorance to be dispersed? By ‘unwavering discriminative knowing’:
viveka-khayti ̄ [YS 2.26]. ‘Discriminative knowing’ means distinguishing
between the experienced world and Self as experiencer. Viveka-khy ̄atiin
turn produces discriminative knowledge: prajña ̄ [YS 2.27].
Yoga ̄ng ̇ ̄anuÓsÓt ̄an ̄ad a ́suddhi-kÓsaye jñ ̄ana-d ̄ıptir a viveka khy ̄ ̄ateÓh.
By practice of the limbs of Yoga, which destroy impurity, higher
knowledge (jñ ̄ana) shines forth, reaching up to discriminative knowing
(viveka-khayti ̄ ) [i. e, the power to distinguish Self from materiality].
YS 2.28Liberative knowledge is not only therapeutic for transcending suffering,
it engenders attainment of the human’s soteriological potential: “The
genuine yogin is a metaphysical doctor, who can not only cure the dis-
eases of the mind, but also who can help us in discovering the possibilities
of human consciousness.”^30
On the basis of Yoga’s metaphysical view of the person as a psycho-
physical being at the empirical level, but ultimately an entity of the nature
of pure consciousness, health as wholeness and well-being can be ascribed
of the person as puruÓsa, and the term ‘healing’ may properly denote the
process of liberative self-realization. Yoga practice spontaneously pro-
motes physical and psychophysical health. However, more significant
about classical Yoga is the way cultivation of the psychophysical person
and health contributes to ultimate transcendence of the body/mind.
Value Theory and Ethics
Health and the Good in Yoga
Value theory is an aspect of Yogic religious therapeutics that clearly ex-
hibits the reciprocal relation of Yoga’s soteriology and its therapeutic im-
petus. The highest good in the classical Indian systems “is attained when
all impurities are removed and the pure nature of the Self is thoroughly
and permanently apprehended.”^31 The means to Yoga’s highest good,
classical yoga as a religious therapeutic 105