• ISBN13: 9789388159883
• Binding: Hardcover
• Subject: Encyclopaedias and References
• Publisher: Khel Sahitya Kendra
• Publisher Imprint: Khel SK
• Publication Date: N/A
• Pages: N/A
• Original Price: INR 2500.0
• Language: N/A
• Edition: N/A
• Item Weight: 1000 grams
• BISAC Subject(s): N/A

Yoga, one of the six systems (darshans) of Indian philosophy. Its influence has been widespread among many other schools of Indian thought. Its basic text is the Yogasutras by Patanjali (c. 2nd century BCE or 5th century CE). The practical aspects of Yoga play a more important part than does its intellectual content, which is largely based on the philosophy of Samkhya, with the exception that Yoga assumes the existence of God, who is the model for the aspirant who seeks spiritual release. Yoga holds with Samkhya that the achievement of spiritual liberation (moksha) occurs when the spirit (purusha) is freed from the bondage of matter (prakriti) that has resulted from ignorance and illusion. The Samkhya view of the evolution of the world through identifiable stages leads Yoga to attempt to reverse this order, as it were, so that a person can increasingly dephenomenalize the self until it reenters its original state of purity and consciousness. An aspirant who has learned to control and suppress the obscuring activities of the mind and has succeeded in ending attachment to material objects will be able to enter samadhi- i.e., a state of deep concentration that results in a blissful ecstatic union with the ultimate reality.