ABSTRACT
The common acceptance of yoga as an indispensable means of liberation by the many different systems constitutes one of the great unifying forces of Indian thought and practice. Yoga has been associated with a great variety of metaphysics, and its many techniques have been employed for quite different purposes. But throughout its known history yoga has remained faithful to the underlying ideal of self-transcendence through self-control, an ideal combining the two great cultural ideas of power through self-discipline and liberation from bondage and suffering. The Bhagavad Gt, which accommodates many Vedic, Upaniadic, Jaina, and Buddhist ideas and ways of practice in the ways of salvation called Hinduism, also assumes this radical defectiveness as its starting point. The most difficult problem for Skhya is the relationship of purusa to prakrti, a problem that appears in Yoga in terms of the relationship of pure consciousness to embodied consciousness.
