Aesthetic Philosophy
Aesthetic philosophy is a study of sensual perception, the way we evaluate beauty, and the significance this has for appreciating reality. “‘Aesthetics’ deriving from the Greek word aesthesis (‘perception’), was coined by the German philosopher, Alexander Baumgarten, in the middle of the eighteenth century. By it he meant ‘the science of sensory knowledge’, though the term soon began to be confined to a particular area of such knowledge and understood as ‘the science of sensory beauty’” (Cooper 1997, 1). Grounded in processing sensory information, aesthetic appreciation is essential for the way physical yoga is used to decipher material reality, but also has a bearing on understanding the transcendent. The aesthetics of contemporary physical yoga practice are considered here by examining two major technical approaches – one that works through approximate stillness and one that attempts continuous fluid movement. The prospects and propositions of yoga, based on stillness, form a large part of the textual canon, though the actual techniques for accomplishing it lack definitive clarity. There is also considerable writing on the nature of “action”, which has some bearing on the way that movement can be done yogically. In modern practice, stillness is generally associated with asana and movement with vinyasa and these terms will be used loosely throughout to denote which of these approaches is being discussed.
The historical philosophies of yoga are indisputably important, however, when viewed without circumspection, they can become an impediment to the living evolution of yoga’s practices and philosophy. The aphoristic style of ancient texts encourages interpretation, but these interpretations, when put into practice, appear rooted in the assumption that the profound questions yoga raises have already been adequately answered. The explorations of physical yoga are a vital and living quest for additional perspective; informed by new and provoking information and which are continuously subject to revision. The philosophical presentation of this chapter conveys the authors’ experiences and comprehension of the practice and teaching of yoga (since the 1970s). It proposes a theory (later chapters suggest methods and techniques to investigate it) to explain these experiences and examines these through a variety of aesthetic and historical reflections on the nature of reality. The debates surrounding the ineffable, ancient, and complex philosophic traditions ascribed to yoga are rich in conjecture and remain unresolved. The aesthetic philosophy presented below is a way of making sense of this fascinating debate from a modern, Western, scientific perspective rather than an abandonment of the precepts of yogis from previous generations.
Yoga and Religion
Philosophy taught from a physical perspective might be considered problematic. In the contemporary yoga studio setting, philosophy has been conflated with aspects of religion or else as something that has more to do with discussion than demonstration. It is worthwhile to begin by considering how religion and philosophy differ.
Religions have some orientation to unseen realms, beings, and powers; religion posits the existence of supernatural things (Stark and Bainbridge 1985, 3). Belief in these supernatural entities need not be proved or might belie demonstration. One of the demands of philosophy, in contrast, is that tenets must be logically derived and that the mechanism by which it obtains conclusions is demonstrable. David Lewis-Williams and David Pearce construct a useful paradigm to explain religion that, in many ways, fits well with an explanation of yoga. There are three mutually supporting aspects to be considered: experience, belief, and practice. They argue that “Religious experience is a set of mental states created by the functioning of the human brain in natural and induced conditions” and that people interpret these experiences as some “sort of contact with supernatural, but to them very real, realms … Religious belief derives, in the first instance, from attempts to codify this experience in specific social circumstances” (Lewis-Williams and Pearce 2005, 25–27).1 Beliefs give meaning to religious experience. Religious practice refers to the way beliefs are manifested – the particular rituals and symbology of the society in which they occur. These practices are meant to lead people into religious experience and are a way of manifesting their beliefs. For instance, people may practice the belief that there is a heaven and hell by going to church on Sunday or that one can acquire spiritual insight by attending a yoga class once a week. The mystical experience is strengthened and affirmed because others attending share these convictions and is reinforced through symbology and practices (an Om sign on the door of the studio; a cross on the church – kneeling to pray or bringing the hands into namaste). The most profound mystical experiences in religion and yoga are rare, yet they are accorded validity through these beliefs and practices.
Philosophy asks difficult questions to which it posits hypothetical possibilities, whereas religion provides absolute answers, often supported by a canon of written or oral texts. Philosophy proposes and tests hypotheses, seeking to refine, refute, or reify the understanding of its subject. In physical yoga, philosophical hypotheses are tested through experience and conclusions are subject to revision. As the circumstances of a yoga posture change from day to day, the uniqueness of each experience is highlighted. Through ongoing experimentation, the practitioner tries to extrapolate – both about the particularity of the physical experience and what the meaning of this might be.
There is nothing in yoga practice that demands belief in supernatural beings, nor is there a necessity that the supernatural exist, although it has certainly been placed in a religious context in past analyses (Eliade 1958, 363).2 While yoga may share some features of religion and make reference to celestial or supernatural beings, these are culturally specific (theistic) interpretations and are nonessential for the study of yoga and its physical philosophy (Jakubczak 2014). This is not to say that faiths are trivial for the individuals that hold them – on the contrary, religious beliefs may be useful for contextualising what an individual uniquely experiences through yoga.
Early Non-Theistic Explanations of the Foundations of Reality
Alternative and nontheistic views of yoga philosophy were derived during what Karl Jaspers refers to as the Axial Age (Jaspers 1955, 1–6). During the period of approximately eighth–second century BCE, a new way of conceiving reality flowered, as is found in the pre-Socratic philosophers of Greece and Kapila and the Buddha in the Indian sub-continent. This period marked the development of the notion that the cosmos was something that could be intellectually considered, and its unfolding pierced in ways that would show its workings through provable means. Natural phenomena would have demonstrable causes. Religious doctrine was no longer considered the sole means of construing reality. Milesian pre-Socratics, for example, sought to describe a reality that was conceived as a primal, indivisible unity from which natural phenomena appeared. Thales and Anaximenes, respectively, postulated that water and air were the elemental substances from which everything was derived. Anaximander imagined this unity as something he termed the apeiron – an entity without boundary; limitless – an early articulation of infinity of both space and time. Heraclitus (from Ephesus and at odds with the Milesians) maintained that it was not a substance, but rather, an ever-changing process, and his expression of this idea is that one cannot step into the same river twice, for different waters flow by.3 These pre-Socratics contributed to the study of natural, rather than supernatural, phenomena as a means to understanding the nature of reality – something that matured through later Greek philosophy and which continues to evolve.
Richard Tarnas, in The Passion of The Western Mind, summarises the Greek philosophy that the pre-Socratics engendered as resulting in two philosophic strands – Platonic and Aristotelian (Tarnas 1991, 69–71). The Platonic seeks hidden/mystical truths through the use of reason and presupposes an ordered cosmos, which analysis reveals as a timeless order that is both rational and mythic. The Aristotelian relies on what the five senses can discern and demands that theoretical understanding be measured against empirical reality. The mythological and supernatural – undemonstrable otherworld realities – are excluded from causal explanations. One of the dynamic tensions here is the theoretical assumption of “mystical truths” in the Platonic tendency and the Aristotelian exclusion of “undemonstrable otherworld realities”. The following examples illustrate the contention that yoga is an aesthetic philosophy that seeks to understand reality through physical means. Consider the beauty of the stars or planets shining in the sky – Venus for example. There it is – named for a deity – visibly glowing brighter than the rest in the twilight or early morning. The Platonic view might be something like: “Ah yes, an example of beauty, but not something that fully epitomises the complete ideal of beauty. However, we can calculate through mathematical formulae the exact trajectory of its course through the sky and come to the conclusion that these formulae reveal a profound structure of elegant and knowable harmony to be found in this natural phenomenon that can be extrapolated to larger or smaller structures – that the nature of the universe and of beauty is to be found in this exactitude.” The Aristotelian view would be that: “It is glowing the way it does in the twilit sky because the atmosphere is ‘just so’ on this occasion and it is being viewed from a particular vantage point – its beauty lies in a combination of many factors that create the unique way it appears on this occasion.” If we change the example from Venus to a yoga student executing a posture or sequence, a teacher, of a Platonic perspective, might be viewing it to see how well it conforms to their ideal of the form (its “sacred geometry”) or an Aristotelian might be looking to find what factors are making it occur as it does on this particular occasion (the warmth of the room and student’s physical anatomy). In both cases, the summary of the details is meant to return the analysis to something larger. One perspective holds that there are precise alignments of body parts etc. that point to an understanding and congruence with a Platonic “mystical plane – a music of the spheres”. The other believes that this is an Aristotelian phenomenon – a unique occurrence, and that in the sum of the details of the experience exists an explanation of reality.
While the pre-Socratic philosophers pondered primal substance and process, the Vedic sage Kapila proposed two categories of reality – prakriti and purusha.4 Prakriti is, basically, “matter”; the stuff/substance that comes into “being”. As “matter”, the nature of prakriti is impermanent – ever-changing, forever dissolving and reassembling itself – an endless atomistic alteration. In contrast, purusha is characterised as unchanging, but purusha is less susceptible to easy definition – though, vernacularly, it has been described as “spirit” or “consciousness”. Exactly what Kapila, in his cultural milieu, might have construed it to be is speculative, but modern interpretations of purusha involve the idea that a person’s spirit is totally distinct from their material self and endeavour to account for both its immateriality and its reality. The analysis that follows uses the word “potential” to describe this. It is real because it could happen (not impossible), but immaterial because it has not become manifest. This is in accord with the pre-Socratics’ interest in cause and effect. Like the proto science of the pre-Socratics, this provides a way to look at cause and effect; the actions performed in prakriti5 bring the potential inherent in purusha into material being. If water, for example, was heated it would turn to steam; the action of heat brought it into being, but water could not become blood by heating it because that is not something that is latent in purusha; as a potentiality it does not exist – it is not real.
Objections could be made against “potentiality” as a description of purusha. Traditionally, purusha has been described as “pure consciousness” (the “spirit” or “person” that is a passive attribute of living creatures), a mere inactive spectator, a state of indifference, irreducible, without qualities, free from engagement with prakriti. It is something that buddhi (intelligence) cannot know because, even as a highly evolved part of prakriti, it can only know other parts of prakriti. Furthermore, the only way to know this “pure consciousness” is to wholly overcome life – dying to be reborn, if taken literally. It is impossible to corroborate the state of purusha empirically through prakriti. Also, traditionalists might wonder how “potentiality” accounts for an irreducible “I” – a kind of inactive observer who is eternal and unchanged, everlasting consciousness. It may be impossible to adequately describe with words (products of buddhi) and exactitude this “reality”. Nevertheless, the concept “potentiality” does provide a starting point for modern practitioners’ investigations into understanding the nature of “pure consciousness” through yoga.
Potentiality does satisfy a number of the conditions ascribed to purusha. Potentiality is indifferent to whether it becomes realised. It is simply a fact – it could happen, but it has no interest in making it happen. As an infinite vastness of amorphous contingency, it is unattached – it cannot facilitate or influence its own coming into being. That is the role of “cause”; something in prakriti. Having no substance, it is irreducible. The essential “I” of each “person” or “spirit”, being irreducible, shares this reality with all “persons” or “spirits” so that, even though a person may die, this essentiality carries on. Pure consciousness would be everlasting in this sense. Though Samkhya philosophy applies this to living creatures, it is not a stretch to think that this same potentiality could be extended to the inanimate. Purusha is something that is real, but not m...
