Book Review: Prashant Iyengar’s A Manual on Humanics Gary Jaeger

PRASHANT IYENGAR’S A MANUAL ON HUMANICS

BY GARY JAEGER, PH.D.

It has been 30 years since Prashant wrote his first book, which has now been rereleased in honor of its author’s 65th birthday. Such an auspicious occasion deserves a look back at this Manual on Humanics. First books are often ambitious, and this is no exception. In its 15 chapters, Prashant introduces his readers to Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, situates those sutras within the context of Indian philosophy, contrasts them with modern science, and demonstrates how they can respond to the questions and rebuttals of those other systems of thought to arise as the pre-eminent system. It would be impossible to attend to all the details provided in such an ambitious text, and so I will focus on its two main themes: philosophy and religion.

Prashant begins by distinguishing these two. Philosophy is, he tells us, “a view of the external world seen through the intuitive landscape.” Religion, on the other hand, “is a set of instructions on a way of life.” Seen in this way, these two disciplines appear to be at cross purposes. As a theoretical pursuit, philosophy seeks to explain how the world is. As a practical pursuit, religion seeks to explain how we ought to operate in the world. Prashant aims to show how yoga can be both philosophy and religion, and so he contends, “There are a very few systems of philosophies which have succeeded in narrowing the gap between philosophy and religion, and yoga darsana scores a distinction here over all other systems of thought.” To this end, he considers two ways in which theory and practice can appear to be at odds.

The first has a modern source. Since the scientific enlightenment, the West has relied on empirical science to learn about the external world. The point of yoga, however, is to overcome the suffering through the “development of an internal capacity to help the mind keep restrained from all fanciful, violent, and turbulent radiations and establish it in placidity.” Clearly, yoga lies on the practical side of the theoretical-practical divide. Moreover, it is a practice that involves and benefits the mind. If it can be situated within any theoretical framework structured by empirical science, then psychology, the branch of empirical science concerned with the mind, would be the most obvious contender. Prashant, however, rejects this, arguing that “Western psychology is generally understood as a study of behaviorism… it has tended to be parochial, for it is obsessed with the instincts of the bio-world, in general, and humanity, in particular.”

Although many psychologists would reject the reduction of all of their theories to those of behaviorism, there is a part of Prashant’s point worth considering. While psychology might not reduce all thought and action to a mere behavioral response to external stimuli, it is nevertheless an empirical discipline that can only explain the human mind and motivation by way of what can be observed. The practice of yoga, however, requires a more subtle apparatus to make sense of the way it profoundly transforms us.

Modern science is not the only theory that appears to conflict with the practice of yoga. There is a second and much older source as well. This other apparent conflict regards the uneasy way in which the practice of yoga fits within the theory of Samkhya from which it comes. Samkhya, like yoga, is one of the orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy. It provides the metaphysics, or theory of existence, upon which the practice of yoga is built. Samkhya tells us how the aspects of individual consciousness (citta), our organs of perception and action, and the subtle and gross elements all evolve from unmanifest prakrti. Yoga accepts this account of evolution in order to provide guidelines for reversing this evolution through the process of pratiprasava or involution. As Prashant makes clear, however, despite this similarity, “The yoga darsana stands distinctly separate from Samkhya-philosophy... .”

One reason for this stark divide concerns epistemology, or the study of knowledge. Samkhya believes that all knowledge, including the knowledge by which we overcome suffering, is learned through observation and the inference and testimony that proceed from observation. Although yoga takes these forms of knowledge to be helpful, it maintains that even these fluctuations of consciousness must be stilled. Another reason why Samkhya stands divided from yoga regards its position on Isvara (God). The Yoga Sutras maintain that devotion to God is essential to progress in yoga. Samkhya remains more neutral on the issue. As Prashant explains in Chapter 7, Samkhya maintains a principle called satkaryavada, which holds that an effect must already be present in its cause. Since the world evolved from prakrti, but God is untouched by prakrti, Samkhya maintains that God could not have created the world. If there is a concept of God to be found in Samkhya, it occupies a peripheral position.