There are many similarities between Patanjali's Yoga and Tantra, but there are also some fundamental differences.
Osho, the (in)famous teacher of spiritual liberation said, regarding Yoga and Tantra:
"The techniques also belong to yoga. They are the same techniques, but with a difference: you can use the same techniques with a very different philosophy behind them. The framework, the pattern differs, not the technique. You may have a different attitude toward life, just the contrary to Tantra.” ... "Yoga and Tantra reach to the same goal; however, their paths are not only different, but contrary also. So this has to be understood very clearly."
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| Osho |
"The techniques also belong to yoga. They are the same techniques, but with a difference: you can use the same techniques with a very different philosophy behind them. The framework, the pattern differs, not the technique. You may have a different attitude toward life, just the contrary to Tantra.” ... "Yoga and Tantra reach to the same goal; however, their paths are not only different, but contrary also. So this has to be understood very clearly."
Georg Feuerstein, one of the world's foremost experts on both Yoga and Tantra explains:
"India's spiritual traditions are all moksha-shastras, or liberation teachings. In the words of a much-quoted Upanishadic prayer, they seek to guide the aspirant from falsehood to Truth and from darkness to Light. The final goal is conceived differently in the various traditions. In Patanjali's yoga-darshana, for instance, liberation is conceived as the irrevocable separation of the eternal principle of Consciousness (called purusha) from the eternal principle of unconscious nature (called prakriti). For this reason, one of the commentators on the Yoga-Sutra, King Bhoja, even defines Yoga as "disunion" (viyoga). In the ordinary, unenlightened state, the purusha, or spirit, deems itself entangled in the processes of nature, forgetting its perpetual freedom. The goal of Patanjala Yoga is, through discernment (viveka) and dispassion (vairagya), to separate the unfettered purusha from the automatic machinery of nature (including the brain-dependent mind). The final state is called kaivalya, or "aloneness", meaning the transcendental isolation of the spirit.
"India's spiritual traditions are all moksha-shastras, or liberation teachings. In the words of a much-quoted Upanishadic prayer, they seek to guide the aspirant from falsehood to Truth and from darkness to Light. The final goal is conceived differently in the various traditions. In Patanjali's yoga-darshana, for instance, liberation is conceived as the irrevocable separation of the eternal principle of Consciousness (called purusha) from the eternal principle of unconscious nature (called prakriti). For this reason, one of the commentators on the Yoga-Sutra, King Bhoja, even defines Yoga as "disunion" (viyoga). In the ordinary, unenlightened state, the purusha, or spirit, deems itself entangled in the processes of nature, forgetting its perpetual freedom. The goal of Patanjala Yoga is, through discernment (viveka) and dispassion (vairagya), to separate the unfettered purusha from the automatic machinery of nature (including the brain-dependent mind). The final state is called kaivalya, or "aloneness", meaning the transcendental isolation of the spirit.
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| Georg Feuerstein Ph.D |
"For Patanjali, liberation depends on the resorption (pratiprasava) of the primary constituents of prakriti, the gunas, back into the transcendental ground of nature, whereupon the entire body-mind in all its levels of manifestation is dissolved. Thus for him, liberation inevitably coincides with the death of the bodily envelope and the disappearance of the mind associated with it [similar in some ways to the concept of 'ascension']."
"[In Patanjali's Yoga]... upon liberation the individual body-mind is forever negated. Transcending as it does space and time, the purusha is without body, and its identification with a body-mind is merely an inexplicable self-inflicted illusion of dire consequences. That misidentification can be compared to a person mistaking his or her mirror image for the real "I".
"Tantra, too, acknowledges that such a misidentification occurs but understands it differently. The mirror (i.e., nature) is as real as the person gazing in it. The mistake is made when the mirror image is taken to be oneself exclusively, when the image is separated from the imaged being. The Tantric authorities never tire of reiterating that Shiva and Shakti are distinct entities only in our conceptualization of them but are identical at the level of absolute Reality."
"... When we see things as they truly are (yatha-bhuta), all opposites - such as inner/outer, subject/object, spirit/matter - melt away. What remains is the finally incomprehensible One, which encompasses all the countless distinctions that the senses and the mind can possibly conjure up."
- Georg Feuerstein, Ph.D. (from 'Tantra - The Path of Ecstasy')
"When the doors of perception are cleansed, things will appear as they truly are... Infinite."
- William Blake
- William Blake
