Chapter FourTANTRA ANDAESTHETICTHERAPEUTICS
The various yogas give different priority to the role of the body. HaÓtha
Yoga, part of the T ̄antric tradition, is the form of yoga that most strongly
emphasizes physical health and the soteriological role of the body. But
even in HaÓtha Yoga, the body is a vehicle for the attainment of spiritual
aims. The currents of pra ̄Ónaor vital energy are directed by means of phys-
ical disciplines such as ̄asanaand pra ̄Ónay ̄ ama ̄ , but the yogin controls these
currents of vital energy for the sake of religious realization. The HaÓtha
text GheraÓnÓda SamhitÓ a ̄ opens with a verse praising HaÓtha Yoga as the
first rung on the ladder to R ̄aja or classical Yoga. Eliade observes that the
HaÓtha texts’ repeated assurances that their physical practices “destroy
old age and death... illustrate the real meaning and final orientation of
these techniques.”^1 Specifically, liberation and not physical health is
HaÓtha yoga’s ultimate goal.
Classical Yoga assumes the existence of two primordial kinds of
being: materiality and consciousness. Yoga does not reconcile this meta-
physical dualism by argumentation. Instead, a pragmatic justification is
offered for the conjunction and ultimate separation of consciousness and
materiality. Metaphysical dualism is integral to classical Yoga’s soteriol-
ogy. Materiality—comprising mind/body and world—is necessary for the
Self’s experiencing itself and realizing that Self is not of the nature of mat-
ter. While Self-realization entails dualism—independence of conscious-
ness from material and psychological nature—at the same time, practice
of classical Yoga is paradigmatic of mind/body holism. Yoga’s pragmatic
holism, however, does not solve the ontological split between materiality
and consciousness. Classical Yoga disvalues material nature, the body,
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