Patanjali

Patanjali is considered the patron of Yoga as a philosophical school, and partial or complete authorship of the Yoga Sutras is ascribed to him. Patanjali (or sometimes Phanin or Sesha, the ‘divine serpent’) likely lived in the 3rd or 2nd centuries BCE. Patanjali generally means ‘Hindu scholar,’ and there are other writers of the same name, notably a grammarian and a physician, who may have been the same man. The Yogasutras (drawn from ideas that had already existed for a long time in India) were compiled over many years, and some historians claim that the final chapter was added after Patanjali. The anonymity of the individuals who worked on the Yoga Sutras is perhaps not so surprising, considering that they were more engaged in discovering Truth than in promoting themselves. His teachings positioned Yoga as one of the six "orthodox" (Veda-affirming) darsanas. It is often paired with another of the six, the Sankhya school, whose teachings it closely resembles. Sankhya is known for its dualistic metaphysics, in which prakriti ("matter") and purusa ("consciousness") are separate entities.

References

• Dasgupta, S.N. Hindu Mysticism. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers Pvt Ltd., 1977.
• Rajneesh, Bhagwan Shree. Yoga: The Science of the Soul, Volume 1. Rajneeshpuram, Oregon: Rajneesh Foundation International, 1976.
• Dvivedi, M. N. The Yoga-Sutras of Patanjali. Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1980.