sam ̄adhiand vyadhi ̄. In this chapter’s final section, “Liberation as Heal-
ing in Classical Yoga,” conclusions about the therapeutic elements of
Yoga’s soteriology are informed by analysis of a web of concepts pre-
sented to demonstrate the following:
- Commonalities of holiness and wholeness
- The role of integration as a corollary of wholeness
- Freedom and identity as goals of both religion and medicine
LIBERATION AS HEALING IN CLASSICAL YOGAIn classical Yoga, liberation is healing in an ultimate sense. With few ex-
ceptions, the Hindu traditions hold that the human body is different
from the true Self that is eligible for liberation. The person’s fundamen-
tal nature is understood as spiritual, rather than physical, psychologi-
cal, rational, or otherwise, and the Hindu traditions offer religious pre-
scriptions for attaining well-being at the most fundamental level, the
spiritual. The term ‘health’ in its ordinary meaning pertains to physical
and psychological well-being, but integral to the claim that liberation is
healing is the premise that the extension of the word ‘health’ can be le-
gitimately broadened to apply to the well-being of the person’s ultimate
nature.
Healing and Yoga’s Therapeutic Paradigm
Analysis of Yoga reveals two major domains of the relationship between
health and religiousness:
- Health as an aid to religious progress:purification and conditioning
of the body and mind in order to support greater spiritual awareness
and progress.
2.Liberation as healing: attainment of freedom from limitations and
suffering, resulting from realization of one’s true Self-nature as
consciousness.
According to Vy ̄asa’s Yoga-bha ̄Ósya, Yoga and medical science have a
common therapeutic paradigm, as shown on the next page. Vy ̄asa’s thera-
peutic paradigm conveys the fundamental meaning of health in Yoga: ulti-
mate well-being consisting in freedom from limitations and suffering, and,
foundational to this, the unimpaired manifestation of Self-identity. A
one line longclassical yoga as a religious therapeutic 131