Yohanan Grinshpon

On Metaphysics and Imagination (bhavana); a Note on Patanjali's Siddhis as Yogic Visualization

Let us imagine a yogin who focuses attention (meditation) on the navel-cakra and comes to know the arrangement of his bodily organs (or anatomy) (kaya-vyuha).[footnoteRef:1] Or let us imagine a yogin who enters with his mind into others' bodies;[footnoteRef:2] or the one who creates or constructs other minds (nirmana-citta);[footnoteRef:3] or the one who by virtue of concentrated attention on the shape of his body affects (or imagines) his own disappearance.[footnoteRef:4] Or let us conceive of the yogin who visualizes the entire universe (consisting of seven mythological worlds) following meditation on the top of his skull.[footnoteRef:5] Or let us think of the yogin who understands animals' speech by discriminating word, object and meaning.[footnoteRef:6] What indeed is the nature of these attainments? Historically, they have been perceived as somewhat inferior components of Patanjala-Yoga, foreign to the Sankhya-Yoga metaphysics and even to yoga practice. Or, at least, there was a dissonance between the sutra-kara's perception of the "powers" (as real and full-fledgedly commensurate with other components of the Yogasutra) and the prevailing attitude among modern commentators and scholars. More specifically, the dissonance lies in the question as to what Patanjali, the author of the Yogasutra, means by the description of these dozens of so-called supernormal powers included in his text? [1: YS 3.29: nabhi-cakre kaya-vyuha-jnanam. Vyasa interprets the yogin's knowledge of anatomy as consisting of ] [2: YS 3.38. See below.] [3: YS 4.4: nirmana-cittany asmita-matrat. ] [4: YS 3.21. kaya-rupa-samyamat tad-grahya-sakti-stambhe caksuh-prakasa 'samprayoge 'ntardhanam.] [5: YS 3.26. By focusing meditation on the sun there follows knowledge of the universe (bhuva-jnanam surye samyamat). ] [6: YS 3.17. due to superimposition of word, object and idea there comes into being confusion (sankara). By meditation of their respective difference there follows knowledge of the sounds of all the creatures (sabdartha-pratyayanam itaretaradhyasat sankaras. tat-pravibhaga-samyamat sarva-bhuta-ruta-jnanam. ]

David Shulman's seminal More than Real; A History of the Imagination in South India[footnoteRef:7] is an inspiring discourse on "imagination" (bhavana, pratibha) and its modes of manifestation in south India.[footnoteRef:8] As its title suggests, Shulman is anxious to resist any confusion of imagination with mere hallucination or impotent daydreaming and so on.[footnoteRef:9] Imagination is "an intentional act of calling something into existence."[footnoteRef:10] The temple built in the mind of Pucalar according to the Tamil Periya Purana is more real than the temple built of stones.[footnoteRef:11] [7: Harvard University Press, 2012. All the quotations from Shulman are from this source. ] [8: Although close to the spirit of yoga (even explicit on the "yoga of the imagination") Shulman does not mention the Yogasutra or the siddhis in his discourse. However, his focus on the power of imagination is a conceptual leverage for a new reading of the siddhis as fully compatible with Sankhya metaphysics and the other parts of the Yogasutra.] [9: As Shulman says: "There are, it seems, certain channels or levels within reality that, when activated successfully in the attuned and focused mind, issue directly into the envisaged result" (p. 25).] [10: Ibid. ] [11: See pp. ]

The imagination - not, incidentally, only the poet's - is much more than a medium. Although it governs perception, it is also a cause, possibly the main cause, of what passes for reality. As in the Kudiyattam performances, as in the Yoga of imagination, but above all as we see it in the early Telugu and Tamil novels and poems, the work of the imagination presents us with fundamental reality claims.[footnoteRef:12] [12: P. 271.]

---Within the axiology of the worlds we are exploring, there is ample room for the notion that mental acts impact in multiple ways on our object-laden world.[footnoteRef:13] [13: P. 26. Shulman adds: "I am not even sure that our own modern axiology cannot accommodate some such idea. (p. 26). ]

Shulman's explication of imagination (bhavana) as a mental process which carries "reality claims" is of crucial importance for our association of the siddhi-theory of Patanjala-Yoga with yogic visualization. Rather than evidently false or mere daydreaming, the art of yogic visualization is difficult to carry out but is - in the sutra-kara's vision - true and real.[footnoteRef:14] The yogin portrayed in the YS is capable to visualize and actualize his successful yogic practice. This goes well with Vyasa's and Vacaspati's conception of the siddhis as sucakas ("signs," pointers) for the yogin on the path to ultimate discrimination (viveka-khyati). Imagination of the siddhis is successful visualization, and the yogic bhavana is inherently associated by the sutra and bhasya-kara with the metaphysical truth of Sankhya.[footnoteRef:15] Comment by user: - . - . [14: Shulman associates the work of imagination with the aesthetics implied in the development of the poetic competence in India, culminating in the birth of the novel (16th century). "Once imagination effectively kicks in, overcoming the entropic resistance that is inherent to mental life, the full-bodied tasting of pleasure can begin" (p. 68). ] [15: Notions of "knowledge" in the YS (jnana, prajna) should be conceived as truthful visualization. YS 1.49 should be read: the capable imaginer's imagination carries truth (rtambhara tasya prajna). ]

According to Shulman "bhavana is, at its most literal, a causing something to be,"[footnoteRef:16] "a disciplined imaginative progression"[footnoteRef:17],also associated with "vivid perception."[footnoteRef:18] bhavana has the uncanny ability to retrieve such earlier perceptions and to make them immediate, so that they fall into the category of pratyaksa, direct seeing a far more reliable and powerful mode than reconstructed memory.[footnoteRef:19] [16: P. 19.] [17: P. 123.] [18: P. 19.] [19: (p. 20).]

Shulman posits the "work (or art) of imagination" (bhavana) as a pivotal hallmark of Hindu civilization.[footnoteRef:20] Therefore, I argue that Patanjala-Yoga-Sastra is one important expression of the power of language to induce imagination as part and parcel of yogic practice and training. Indeed, I suggest that exercise of imagination is the core of Patanjali's siddhi-theory and is perhaps also central to yogic practice and the nature of Patanjali's speech-act of the Yogasutra. The Patanjala-yogin, as I portray him here is in David Shulman's expression - "a capable imaginer."[footnoteRef:21] The teaching of the siddhis - a substantial parameter of Patanjala-Yoga - is inherent to Patanjali's conceptualization of involution, the movement opposite to the evolution which started at the inconceivable touch (samyoga) of purusa and prakrti. Following Shulman's exposition of imagination as making into being, I conceive the sutra-kara's conception of the siddhis an integral part of yoga, and since they are made of imagination, they are as real as can be. And yet, even as feats of imagination, the siddhis are very difficult to visualize. How can one visualize one's disappearance? How can one enter with his mind into others' bodies? In other words, what is it that makes the yogin - in the sutra-kara's eyes - a "capable imaginer"?[footnoteRef:22] Three hypotheses (or assumptions) are the points of departure of the discussion below: a) in the sutra-kara's mind the siddhis are real. b) the siddhis are not ordinary objects of observation. c) the siddhis are fully compatible, even strictly implied by the Sankhya-Yoga metaphysics. Building upon David Shulman's emphasis on the essential importance of bhavana (imagination) in the literary and philosophical traditions in India, the following is an interpretation of the siddhis according to Patanjali's Yogasutra as "feats of imagination," or "successful visualization".[footnoteRef:23] According to this view, the Patanjala-yogin is a "gifted imaginer,[footnoteRef:24]"an effective agent of visualization who realizes stages of dissociation or involution closely associated in the sutra-kara's mind with Sankhya-Yoga metaphysics. In Patanjali's point of view Sankhya-Yoga metaphysics conditions the contents and scope of yogic imagination. According to this perspective, the work of imagination (bhavana) is a major preoccupation in Patanjali's mind with respect to the siddhis as well as to other components of classical yoga (power of language, yogic practice, etc.). [20: In his explication of bhavana Shulman deals with various traditions sNyaya] [21: P. 271.] [22: David Shulman's expression. See below.] [23: In the following I associate imagination with visualization, in line with the two parameters of imagination as a mental process culminating in reality. David Shulman: ] [24: P. 26. ]

The science (or rather discipline) of the siddhi in the Yogasutra is based upon the connection between a point of departure ("object of meditation") and (consequent) successful visualization.[footnoteRef:25]A recapitualation of the sutra-kara's (or bhasya-kara's) unified point of view implies that Sankhya metaphysics is strictly compatible with the theory of the siddhis. Disembodiment, or dissociation of body and self (or disembodied self-identification) invariably underlies the theory of the siddhis in the Yogasutra.[footnoteRef:26] Discrimination of "self" (purusa) and objectivity (prakrti), the core of Sankhya metaphysics sits comfortably with the siddhis as moments of imaginary dissociation. Since - in Patanjali's vision - the siddhis are far from being false and must carry a v