This module will explain the historical context of Rājayoga within the broader history of yoga, and will look specifically at the earliest known text on Rājayoga, which is called the ‘no-mind state’ (amanaska). This type of Rājayoga derived from older tantric religions of Śaivism, and much of the terminology and conceptual framework in the Amanaska shaped subsequent traditions of Rājayoga. Central themes include the nature of meditative absorption, the meditative techniques undertaken to achieve it, the relationship between the mind and breath, the teacher’s role in learning meditative absorption, and how the liberated yogi acts in the world.

Rājayoga, the state of meditative absorption in which the yogi becomes as still and steady as a mountain, was considered to be the necessary cause of liberation in most yoga traditions. But what type of liberation arose from it? Indian philosophies and religions produced various conceptions of liberation from worldly suffering, and at least two different conceptions can be seen in the early traditions of Rājayoga. This module will present selected passages on liberation and the liberated yogi from early texts on Rājayoga to offer speculative answers to questions such as ‘How did the liberated yogi live in the world?’, ‘To whom might yogic conceptions of liberation appeal?’, ‘Were these conceptions similar to those of earlier tantric traditions and other religions of India?’, and ‘Why are most Rājayoga texts so terse and ambiguous in their descriptions of liberation whereas other traditions discuss the topic at greater length?’.   

After the Haṭhapradīpikā (15^th cent.), the notion that Rājayoga was the best of all yogas—in other words, the king of all yogas—demarcated the battleground, so to speak, of various traditions as they vied with one another to teach the best yoga. This module will survey many different interpretations of Rājayoga that derive from this period, and will argue that the term rājayoga became little more than a label for highest teaching or yoga of a particular lineage or religious tradition. In more scholarly yoga compendiums, the term rājayoga was equated with the highest level of samādhi in Patañjali’s yoga. In some philosophical traditions, the gnostic yoga of the Yogavāsiṣṭha was called rājayoga. Certain Vedāntins understood it as the yoga for kings, and threefold and sixfold systems of Rājayoga were developed. We shall see that it was probably as recently as the 19^th century that Patañjali’s yoga became widely known as Rājayoga.