________________
658
BURCH
Bhattacharyya's philosophical thought, but by itself it is only a suggestion of what a fourth phase might have been. Sankhya dualism also suggests the simultaneous attainment of alternative absolutes: the consummation of knowing, which is the "reversion" of willing, is not "eternal quiescent knowledge,” which would be the self, but mind distinguishing, defining, or detaching itself from the self to be lost in unmanifest matter, while the self is left "in its eternally manifest solitariness" (1 144)—which seems to mean mind absolutely knowing the thing-in-itself and self absolutely willing without any object. In general, however, this work is of relatively little relevance to the present study, since Sankhya, with its interest in the world, is not like Vedanta and Yoga exclusively concerned with the search for the Absolute. Studies in Yoga, on the other hand, are concerned with the dialectic of will.
Knowing is passive, but willing is active. Non-dualist Vedanta is the way of knowing: its steps are the rejection of illusions; its goal is not to do anything but to know. Yoga is the way of doing its steps are forms of behavior; its goal is not to know anything but to will. "All spiritual activity is yoga" (I 286), which understands freedom conatively (1 253); willing, for Yoga, is self-conscious subjectivity (1 221). Its positive downward trend is toward bhoga (egoistic activity). Its negative upward trend is willing to abstain from egoistic willing, willing to approach and attain samadhi (1 224), inward willing (1 284). The practice of yoga is spiritual willing, conditioned by knowledge, in the discipline leading to absolute Freedom. It involves knowledge only contingently (1 225); in it both knowing and feeling are "implicit willing" (1 283). Yoga is "spiritual willing for the free being or active quiescence of the spirit” (1 225),106 the "essential or spiritual form of willing” (1 284). The activity toward samadhi is free willing; samadhi itself is free being. 107 Yoga as free willing for free being is the conscious activity of the mind to overcome its differentiation into states. The "will to be in the knowing attitude for freedom from knowledge" is the will to contemplate the mystery of the absolute Freedom through which free will itself emerges, the "freedom to create freedom,” which is God (I 227).
The realizing of freedom, taken as a knowing process in Vedanta and Sankhya and a feeling process in Vaishnavism, is for Yoga literal willing (I 285). Freedom as a mental state is psychologically intel
106 Free being and active quiescence are paradoxical combinations of contradictory terms.
107 That is, Freedom, related to willing as Truth to knowing.
