The Yoga Upaniṣads

योग उपनिषद्

Also written: yoga upanishads · yoga kundalini upanishad · nadabindu · hamsa upanishad · advaya taraka

Within the 108 Upaniṣads of the Muktikā list, twenty are classed as Yoga Upaniṣads. They are the bridge between the Upaniṣadic enquiry into the Self and the practical anatomy of the haṭha and tantra traditions — where the principal Upaniṣads ask what the Self is, these describe the instrument through which it is approached.

Where the word 'yoga' is first defined

The Yoga Upaniṣads are late texts elaborating a definition that is already present in the principal ones. The Kaṭha gives it, several centuries before Patañjali, and gives it as a state rather than as a practice.

यदा पञ्चावतिष्ठन्ते ज्ञानानि मनसा सह। बुद्धिश्च न विचेष्टते तामाहुः परमां गतिम्॥

yadā pañcāvatiṣṭhante jñānāni manasā saha buddhiś ca na viceṣṭate tām āhuḥ paramāṁ gatim

When the five senses of knowledge come to rest together with the mind, and the intellect does not stir — that, they say, is the highest state.

— Kaṭha Upaniṣad 2.3.10

तां योगमिति मन्यन्ते स्थिरामिन्द्रियधारणाम्। अप्रमत्तस्तदा भवति योगो हि प्रभवाप्ययौ॥

tāṁ yogam iti manyante sthirām indriya-dhāraṇām apramattas tadā bhavati yogo hi prabhavāpyayau

That steady holding of the senses they consider to be yoga. Then one becomes free of heedlessness — for yoga comes and goes.

— Kaṭha Upaniṣad 2.3.11

Two things in the second verse deserve attention. Sthirā indriya-dhāraṇā — 'steady holding of the senses' — is a definition by mechanism: yoga is not an experience one has but a condition of the instrument, exactly as Patañjali's citta-vṛtti-nirodha will be. And the last three words, yogo hi prabhavāpyayau, are a warning: yoga arises and it passes away. The text is explicitly denying that the state is self-sustaining, which is why apramatta, unheedful vigilance, is named in the same line as the requirement. A tradition that opened with a boy refusing every gift from Death closes its teaching by saying the achieved state must still be watched.

The twenty Yoga Upaniṣads
Upaniṣad	Principal subject
Advaya Tāraka	The tāraka and amanaska stages; inner light and the crossing beyond mind
Amṛtabindu	The mind as the cause of bondage and liberation; the two forms of mind
Amṛtanāda	The six-limbed yoga; withdrawal of the senses; the syllable Om
Kṣurikā	'The razor' — cutting the knots of the subtle channels by concentration
Tejobindu	Fifteen-limbed yoga; the nature of the witness
Trisikhibrāhmaṇa	Body, prāṇa, karma and jñāna yoga integrated
Darśana	The nāḍīs, the cakras and the eight limbs, taught by Dattātreya
Dhyānabindu	Meditation on the bindu; the seat of the heart; the syllable
Nādabindu	Nāda — the inner sound and its stages, from thunder to the fine note of the flute
Pāśupatabrahma	The haṁsa breath and the identity of the individual and the supreme
Brahmavidyā	The three mātrās of Om and the liberation of the knot of the heart
Maṇḍalabrāhmaṇa	The inner and outer targets of gaze; the five spaces; the fourfold body
Mahāvākya	The great sentences applied as meditation
Yogakuṇḍalinī	Kuṇḍalinī, the three bandhas, khecarī mudrā, and the raising of the śakti
Yogacūḍāmaṇi	The six cakras, sixteen ādhāras, the nāḍīs and the haṁsa mantra
Yogatattva	The four yogas — mantra, laya, haṭha, rāja — and their relation
Yogaśikhā	The union of prāṇa and apāna; the fire at the base; the highest yoga
Varāha	The nāḍīs, the kośas, and jīvanmukti
Śāṇḍilya	The eight limbs treated at length, with the ten yamas and ten niyamas
Haṁsa	The haṁsa — the breath as so'ham — and the ten inner sounds

The haṁsa — the breath that says itself

Several of these texts turn on one observation: the breath is already reciting a mantra. The inhalation carries the sound sa, the exhalation the sound ha — haṁsa. Reversed and read continuously it is so'ham, 'I am That'. It is called ajapā-japa, the recitation that is not recited, and the tradition counts it as occurring 21,600 times in a day.

Posture, breath, and the first list of signs

The oldest instructions on sitting and breathing are again not in these twenty texts but in the Śvetāśvatara, and they are strikingly specific.

त्रिरुन्नतं स्थाप्य समं शरीरं हृदीन्द्रियाणि मनसा सन्निवेश्य। ब्रह्मोडुपेन प्रतरेत विद्वान्स्रोतांसि सर्वाणि भयावहानि॥

trir-unnataṁ sthāpya samaṁ śarīraṁ hṛdīndriyāṇi manasā sanniveśya brahmoḍupena prataret vidvān srotāṁsi sarvāṇi bhayāvahāni

Holding the body steady with the three upper parts erect, drawing the senses into the heart with the mind, let the knower cross all the fearful currents by the raft of Brahman.

— Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad 2.8

Trir-unnatam — chest, neck and head held erect — is the whole of Upaniṣadic postural instruction, and it is a structural specification rather than a named āsana: what is required is that the spine bear the weight so that the breath is unobstructed and the sitting can be held. Everything the later haṭha literature adds is elaboration on those three words. The next verse gives the breathing: prāṇān prapīḍya, restraining the breaths, and then breathing through the nose with the movements diminished, 'as one would drive a chariot yoked to unruly horses' — the Kaṭha's image, reused as a description of what prāṇāyāma is doing.

And then the same text gives what appears to be the earliest list of the signs by which progress is judged — mist, smoke, sun, wind, fire, fireflies, lightning, crystal and moon appearing to the practitioner — followed by a claim that needs careful handling.

पृथ्व्यप्तेजोऽनिलखे समुत्थिते पञ्चात्मके योगगुणे प्रवृत्ते। न तस्य रोगो न जरा न मृत्युः प्राप्तस्य योगाग्निमयं शरीरम्॥

pṛthvy-ap-tejo'nila-khe samutthite pañcātmake yoga-guṇe pravṛtte na tasya rogo na jarā na mṛtyuḥ prāptasya yogāgnimayaṁ śarīram

When the fivefold quality of yoga has arisen, proceeding from earth, water, fire, air and space, there is no sickness for him, no old age, no death — for he has obtained a body made of the fire of yoga.

— Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad 2.12

This is the earliest appearance of an idea the haṭha and tantra literature will develop at length: that discipline works on the five elements in the body and produces a refined body, the yogāgnimaya śarīra. Read it exactly. The claim is made of a body already described as made of the fire of yoga — that is, of a transformed condition, not of the ordinary body of a practitioner who has meditated for some years. Read as a promise of physical immortality it is simply false and the tradition's own practitioners have all died. Read as a description of a state in which the elemental constitution no longer governs experience, it is the doctrine the Yoga Upaniṣads listed below are elaborating, and the tattva analysis on this site is its direct continuation.

The Yoga Upaniṣads

Where the word 'yoga' is first defined

The haṁsa — the breath that says itself

Posture, breath, and the first list of signs

The sources of knowledge in Sanātana Dharma

Śruti — that which was heard

Smṛti — that which was remembered

Nigama and Āgama — the two revealed streams

The four Vedas

Ṛgveda