Realizing the Self in Integration, Not Separation: Bhakti Appropriations of the Pātañjala Yoga Model of Liberation

This paper argues that the sixteenth century Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition appropriates, reformulates, and re-evaluates the soteriological model of the Pātañjala Yoga tradition within their theological framework of Kṛṣṇa bhakti in two key ways: (1) they reinterpret the Pātañjala Yoga liberatory model of realizing the individuated Self (puruṣa) in separation from matter (prakṛti) as realizing the Self in eternal integration with Supreme Godhead Kṛṣṇa and (2) they “reverse” the Pātañjala Yoga cognitive paradigm of progressive mental cessation such that progressive absorption in Kṛṣṇa via meditation becomes expressly correlated with progressively dynamic and expansive states of cognition. This paper argues that the “aloneness” of the puruṣa that is theorized by Pātañjala Yoga as liberation (kaivalya) is explicitly reinterpreted by Gauḍīya theologians Rūpa and Jīva Gosvāmin as realization of one's eternal interrelationship with Kṛṣṇa as Paramātman, the aspect of Kṛṣṇa that is theorized to reside in the heart of every living being. Such analysis highlights that the Gosvāmins also subordinate such Paramātman realization beneath a range of “higher” bhakti states of realization of Self in eternal personal relationship to Kṛṣṇa. The paper concludes with an analysis of the five-stage system of meditation that Jīva Gosvāmin develops in Bhakti Sandarbha in which the Pātañjala Yoga meditative stages of dhāraṇā, dhyāna, and samādhi are reimagined as increasingly dynamic and expansive states that effectively cognize the eternal interrelationship of Self and Kṛṣṇa.