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perfectibility or limitlessness of human nature, Jung is paralleling Kant s claim that, in
terms of epistemology, human nature is finite it can never know  the thing itself 
and the theological claim of Christianity that human nature is fatally flawed.1
While these conflicting assessments of the perfectibility of human nature await
a definitive study, a number of recent books have begun to lay the groundwork for a
solution. The opportunity for Western scholars to understand the Yoga claims is ad-
vanced by the availability in English translation of Jean Varenne s Yoga and the Hindu
Tradition.2 While the translation of Patañjali s Yoga Sk
tras has been available in En-
glish for many years, it is set in the esoteric conventions of aphorisms and commen-
taries that characterized the scholarly style of early classical India. Consequently it is
difficult for the modern mind to appropriate. Eliade opened it to the West in his
1954 Le Yoga: lmmortalité et Liberté (translated by Willard Trask and published
in 1958 as Yoga: Immortality and Freedom). While he gives much helpful clarification
of esoteric terms and practices, Eliade concludes his study by observing that, when
it comes to the Yoga ideal of a perfected state (the j%2Å‚van-mukta) in which no personal
consciousness exists but only omniscient awareness,  We shall not attempt to
83
84 YOGA AND PSYCHOLOGY
describe this paradoxical condition; indeed, since it is obtained by  death to the
human condition and rebirth to a transcendent mode of being, it cannot be reduced
to our categories. 3
Like Eliade, Varenne finds the texts describing the perfected Yogi to be paradoxi-
cal. Although the individual ego-personality is claimed to have been transcended, the
Yogi does not vanish, as the Yoga Sk
tras and other such texts logically suggest should
happen. To continue with a physical body and all its sensory and cognitive limitations
does not square with the claims of omniscience, and omnipresence that we find in the
Yoga Sk
tras. The usual response to this paradox in the Yoga texts is that while there is
no necessity for the perfected yogi to retain a body, he or she does so only for the pur-
pose of helping others, such as students, reach that same perfected state the goal of
all religion, philosophy, and psychology.
As j%2Å‚van-mukti, or  living liberation, is a unique idea in Hindu thought, let us
take a moment to examine it in more detail. The j%2Å‚van-mukti tradition has a long and
.
highly respected parentage. From Z
ankara (c. 700 CE) to contemporary scholars (e.g.,
Sarvepali Radhakrishnan) and saints (e.g., Ramana Maharshi or Sri Aurobindo) vary-
ing interpretations of the idea are found. In his authoritative studies, Andrew Fort
finds that while most agree that salvation or release can be realized in this life, there
is no consensus on exactly what one is liberated from or to.4 Fort notes,  In addition
to disputes about the possibility of embodied liberation, there are differing views on
the types, degrees, or stages of liberation, some attainable in the body and some not. 5
One thing is common, however, namely that all experiences of ego-sense must be
transcended for the realization of the j%2Å‚van-mukti state. This is where the j%2Å‚van-mukti
idea connects with the discussion of this chapter over the very possibility of an egoless
state. Western thought rejects the idea of egolessness, whereas the Yoga psychology of
.
Patañjali assumes its necessity for release from rebirth (sams

ra). The j%2Å‚van-mukti no-
tion goes further in providing detailed description and discussion of exactly what such
an egoless state of salvation or release is like when experienced before death. In fact a
classical Hindu text of the fourteenth century CE, the J%2Å‚van-Mukti-Viveka of
Vidy

ranya, offers a systematic analysis of the evidence for the state of living libera-
.
tion while in the body, its psychological make-up, and its purpose.6 The text specifi-
cally distinguishes between the more usual Western notion of liberation after death
through release from the body and the j%2Å‚van-mukti state of liberation while still alive
and embodied. Patricia Mumme7 notes that the seed ideas of the j%2Å‚van-mukti notion
are found in several passages of the Upanisads, the basic texts of Hindu scripture. She
.
suggests the Buddhists may have contributed the idea that release from karma could
be achieved in a living state called nirv

na, and this helped to inspire development of
.
.
a parallel concept in Hindu thought. A foundational text of the S

nkhya School, the
S

mkhya K

rik

, proposed the analogy of the potter s wheel to help explain how em-
.
bodiment could continue in a karma-free, egoless, liberated, and enlightened person.
The analogy runs as follows. Just as when the potter finishes making a pot, the wheel
continues from its own inertia to turn a few more revolutions, so also the body of one
who has realized release, that is, has removed all karma and ego-sense, continues on
for a while a few more revolutions as it were out of its own inertia, offering the
opportunity to be a guru and teach others. Among the Hindu schools, the Advaita
THE LIMITS OF HUMAN NATURE 85
Ved

nta has made the most use of the j%2Å‚van-mukti concept and has continued its de-
velopment right up to the present.8 Indeed the contemporary neo-Vedantists, in seek-
ing to engage current ideas of ecumenism and social concern for all with traditional
j%2Å‚van-mukti thinking, have made the concept into a universal truth that holds for all,
thus directly challenging more limited Western views of the perfectibility of human
nature. The neo-Vedantists even offer the contemporary example of the Hindu saint,
Ramana Maharshi, as a twentieth century j%2Å‚van-mukta, or one who has achieved lib-
eration while embodied.9
Returning to the Yoga Sk
tras, it is clear there that through practice of the eight
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