Phenomenological Yoga: An Husserlian Approach to Patañjali's Yogasūtra

Abstract

This thesis examines Patañjali’s Yogasūtra, a Sanskrit treatise on the theory and practice of yoga, in light of the philosophy of Edmund Husserl, a key figure in the 20th century philosophical movement known as phenomenology. Using Husserl’s distinction between the natural attitude and the phenomenological reduction, this thesis distinguishes between two respective hermeneutical approaches to the Yogasūtra: the natural-cosmological and the transcendental-phenomenological. While a case can be made for either approach, this thesis argues that the latter proves to be more cogent and fruitful. It thereby explores the Yogasūtra’s metaphysics as an account of the principles that structure conscious experience, and it explores the Yogasūtra’s meditative praxis, particularly the meditative states known as samprajñāta samādhi and samāpatti, as the clarification of pure experience, in a spirit similar to Husserl’s phenomenological reduction.