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Patanjal and Kapil.
AN EPITOME OF JAINISM. grees of excellences such as omniscience, greatnesss, smallness etc., proves the existence of a Being possessing the non plus ultra of excellence. This Being, Ishvara, was, with the yogins, originally, no other than one among many Purushas, only with this difference that Ishvara had never been implicated in metempsychosis and was supreme in every sense.
Whether this theism of Patanjali's Philosophy is consistent with its Sânkhya basis is often disputed. The simplest solution seems to be that Kapila was never directly hostile to theism, but was rather indifferent in his attitude towards the question and that this made it possible for Patanjali to foist his theistic yoga upon the Sânkhya philosophy.
In the Yoga system, however, no such importance has been accorded to God as could very well be expected, and as we find in such European systems, otherwise analogous with the yoga, as those of Martineau, Lotze and other Personal Idealists. Devotion to God, in Patanjali's system, is merely one of Kaivalya or Soleity
Soleity is the summum bo num of yoga.
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