________________
454 The Philosophy of the Bhagavad-gitā [ch. cakra system. Thus the Amrta-nāda enumerates after the manner of Patañjali the six accessories of yoga as restraint (pratyāhāra), concentration (dhyāna), breath-control (prāņāyāma), fixation (dhāraņā), reasoning (tarka) and meditative absorption (samādhi), and describes the final object of yoga as ultimate loneliness of the self (kaivalya). The Amrta-bindu believes in an all-pervading Brahman as the only reality, and thinks that, since mind is the cause of all bondage and liberation, the best course for a yogin to adopt is to deprive the mind of all its objects and thus to stop the activity of the mind, and thereby to destroy it, and bring about Brahmahood. Brahman is described here as being absolutely indeterminate, uninferable, infinite and beginningless. The Kșurika merely describes prāņāyāma, dhyānu, dhāraņā and samādhi in association with the nerves, susumnā, pingalā, etc. and the nerve plexuses. The Tejo-bindu is a Vedāntic Upanişad of the ultramonistic type, and what it calls yoga is only the way of realizing the nature of Brahman as one and as pure consciousness and the falsity of everything else. It speaks of this yoga as being of fifteen accessories (pañca-dasānga yoga). These are yama (sense-control through the knowledge that all is Brahman), niyama (repetition of the same kinds of thoughts and the avoidance of dissimilar ones), tyāga (giving up of the world-appearance through the realization of Brahman), silence, a solitary place, the proper posture, steadiness of mind, making the body straight and erect, perceiving the world as Brahman (drk-sthiti), cessation of all states and breath-control (prāna-samyamana), perceiving all objects of the mind as Brahman (pratyāhāra), fixing the mind always on Brahman (dhāraņā), self-meditation and the realization of oneself as Brahman. This is, however, a scheme of yoga quite different from that of Patañjali, as well as from that of the Gitā. The Triśikhabrāhmana speaks of a yoga with eight accessories (astānga-yoga), where the eight accessories, though the same in name as the eight accessories of Patañjali, are in reality different therefrom. Thus yama here means want of attachment (vairāgya), niyama means attachment to the ultimate reality (anuraktiḥ pare tattve), āsana means indifference to all things, prāņa-samyamana means the realization of the falsity of the world, pratyāhāra means the inwardness of the mind, dhāranā means the motionlessness of the mind, dhyāna means thinking of oneself as pure consciousness, and samādhi means forgetfulness of dhyānas. Yet it again includes
