Ethics of Liberation in Patañjali’s Yoga

I wish to argue that Patañjali’s philosophical perspective has, far too often, been looked upon as excessively ‘spiritual’ or isolationistic to the point of being a worlddenying philosophy, indifferent to moral endeavor, neglecting the world of nature and culture, and overlooking the highest potentials for human reality, vitality, and creativity. Contrary to the arguments presented by many scholars, which associate Patañjali’s yoga exclusively with extreme asceticism, mortification, denial, and the renunciation and abandonment of ‘material existence’ (prakrti) in favour of an elevated and isolated ‘spiritual state’ (purusa) or disembodied state of spiritual liberation, I suggest that Patañjali’s yoga can be seen as a responsible engagement, in various ways, of ‘spirit’ (purusa = intrinsic identity as Self, pure consciousness) and ‘matter’ (prakrti = the source of psychophysical being, which includes mind, body, nature) resulting in a highly developed, transformed, and participatory human nature and identity, an integrated and embodied state of liberated selfhood (jīvanmukti).