Yoga - The distilled essence of all sciences
What if the most rigorous path to truth wasn't through telescopes and particle accelerators, but through the systematic study of the only instrument making all observations - your own body?
Context
I went to Maharishi Vidya Mandir in Chetpet, Chennai for high school. We were made to bring breakfast to school because we had to practice a whole session of yoga before we started the day at school. This meant I had to go early to school and carry more weight on my back. Needless to say, I hated yoga. My parents have been meditating since I was 8 or so and they've taken me to their ashram every Sunday for a long time where my sister and I would be made to sit and do artwork and play around. There were a few opportunities here and there for us to sit in silence as well. Wasn't a huge fan. For me to write about Yoga as "the" distilled essence of all sciences is quite the leap considering my temperament.
For most of my life I've had disdain for the irrational. I gravitated towards practical knowledge that would lead me to discovery. Science is the self-correcting framework for human pursuit of discovery. For a rational mind that devotedly seeks truth, science is sacred.
Since I was around 6 years of age, I have been consciously seeking truth through inquiry. I have been constantly fascinated by the mystery of the unknown. The big questions were present from a very young age: why we're here, where we are, what life is. Space exploration and marvels of scientific engineering and technology ignited my passion. It was where I could truly see myself belonging in a world filled with those who live their lives obsessing over the mundane. My consciousness has always been oriented to the larger context of my life in the universe rather than in society. Science brought a sense of hope in reaching understanding and realization. Naturally I was drawn to Physics - understanding the fundamental nature of the universe across all scales. How can anyone go about living life fully immersed in it when we don't even know what it is all made of? To me, absorbing the object of awe with my mind is a way of expressing my appreciation of it. And there is nothing more profound in my experience of life than life itself, in all of its dimensions. Understanding the basis of it has been important in being truly able to appreciate it.
So yes, I know the implications of a statement such as the title of this post. Yoga is the distilled essence of all sciences because it is the systematic framework for perfecting the only instrument through which we can discover anything at all - our perception.
Yoga, the ultimate science
As I stated earlier, Science is essentially the self-correcting framework for the pursuit of discovery. Every one of the words of this statement are important. The essential purpose of science is discovery. Discovery essentially entails the knowing of the unknown. It's a framework, not knowledge itself. It specifies the systematic approach towards the pursuit of discovery. It's self-correcting, because it is designed to improve our knowledge of what we are ignorant of. And it is meant to improve its own output over time.
When we are born as human beings, the only thing we can know are what our bodies tell us. We reside all of our lives within our bodies. Let that sink in. This is not metaphor. This is literal fact. The nature of our minds is that we can easily forget that which we do not consciously pay attention to. Life in society requires the expenditure of conscious attention towards that which will provide survival advantage, so why pay conscious attention to that which does not require it? So we go about living our lives in obliviousness to the fact that we are living 100% of all of our life within our bodies.
The human body is the instrument of perception and action. We perceive all that we perceive through our bodies. And we exhibit all of our behaviour through our bodies. Action and perception form the entirety of what we are capable of doing in this life.
Even our most sophisticated scientific instruments - telescopes, microscopes, particle accelerators - still require human perception to interpret their readings. They extend the range of what we can observe, but they don't eliminate the need for perceptual clarity. The data from a space telescope is meaningless without a human mind to interpret it, and that interpretation is only as clear as the instrument of perception itself.
Yoga is the process of purification of this instrument. By purification, I mean the systematic removal of cognitive biases, attentional limitations, and somatic noise that distort observation. The ultimate purpose of Yoga is to purify the instrument sufficiently enough to let us see the truth as is. Being able to directly witness reality without distortion is essential to being able to perceive information without adulteration. One cannot realize the importance of this unless one realizes the extent to which our minds distort our perception of reality.
For the intellectually rigorous, purity of perception matters. It's like calibrating a space telescope precisely so that we can infer the most accurate information from what it shows us. The purity of the perception of the instrument is critical to our pursuit of discovery. It applies just as vitally to our moment to moment perception of reality. If we cannot be sure of our ability to perceive reality as is, how can we be sure of anything at all?
Much of science is easy to grasp to the rational mind because it is all contained in closed systems that we exist outside of. It's easy to rationalize when we remove ourselves from the equation. But all of life is lived with us in the equation. There has never been one moment in any of our lives where we have experienced anything outside of our subjective experience. The objective cannot exist without the subject - the observer and observed are inseparable. They exist together. You cannot produce one single instance in all of your life where you experienced the object without your subjective experience.
This brings us to an important distinction in how we pursue knowledge - one that reveals why yoga deserves to be called a science at all.
Direct Sciences vs Inferential Sciences
Two approaches to discovery
Within sciences there are two systems: Direct sciences and Inferential sciences. Inferential science is the pursuit of the unknown through cycles of simulation and validation. We simulate the likely possibility through the process of hypothesis creation and we validate (invalidate its null) it and construct actionable models of reality in our minds. All of these happen inside of closed systems where rationality is utilized heavily to construct a representation of reality in our minds.
Direct sciences deal with directly studying the perception of reality, without aiming to arrive at static models. Direct sciences lead to actionable pursuit of one's own life, as if it was the only thing that is possible to influence, and therefore is the only actionable knowledge we can possess. Direct sciences don't deal with the hypothetical. They involve the systematic study of what is known directly, rather than inferentially.
Why this distinction matters for understanding yoga
For someone who does not understand the significance of this, Yoga is going to look odd and meaningless. It truly requires some rational backing to understand the significance of it to someone who is devoted to the pursuit of truth. But here's the paradox: requiring a rational basis before pursuing the study of direct science can be counterproductive. The rational basis for its merit emerges to the practitioner through the practice, as they witness the mechanics of its functioning directly.
You cannot be proficient at the discovery of truth if you are not proficient in tuning your instrument of perception. If you want to systematically pursue a better experience of life, then you must systematically study action. Besides your perception, your action is all that defines your experience of life. For maximum impact on all aspects of our lives, we must systematically study both our perception and action.
Unlike inferential sciences, where others' knowledge may serve us too (because they deal with creating static mental models of realities through inference that can be communicated between individuals), direct sciences require that each of us practice the study directly. That is the only way to pursue them. We can only share stories, not actionable knowledge. This is also why it is notoriously difficult to convey one's advanced understanding to someone who has not pursued direct sciences enough.
The nature of direct study
The essence of the direct sciences is a deep study of the apparatus of perception and action, the two fundamental modes through which this instrument can operate. And the instrument allows us to perceive not just that which is around, but also that which is within. Inferential sciences involve the study of the attributes of external perception, to generate a representation of reality that is internal. Direct sciences involve the study of the internal, because that is what we have direct access to, unlike external phenomena that require inference. Inferential studies of direct experiences constitute inferential sciences, not direct.
What does it all really mean?
Yoga (not the studio Yoga that aims to act as a body relaxant or practiced towards physical benefits) is essentially the distilled essence of how direct sciences can be pursued. It is a guidance framework to practice this science effectively and efficiently.
But why call it THE distilled essence rather than merely A valid approach? Because yoga operates at the root level of all perception and action - the body itself. It focuses only on what can be known truly through direct perception and doesn't involve any inference. Some of the intricacies of how the human mind and body ought to be honed for clear perception without distortion form the central thesis of yoga. Its goal is the systematic removal of the distortions of the mind to facilitate clear perception.
The approach to the study itself is fundamentally no different from that of inferential science. Rationality is still needed to truly dissect the mechanisms of perception and action through the study of the body. But it appears rationally incoherent to the uninitiated. Its merit can only be known to the practitioner of direct science. The understanding gained through the practice of direct sciences through yoga cannot be communicated or transferred to someone else. However, one can be guided towards the path to the starting point.
Much like in conventional inferential sciences, how far you go depends on your caliber as a practicing scientist. Not every practitioner of yoga pursues it assiduously enough to reap the benefits of understanding. Most do it for the side effects, the improvements in various aspects of life, the benefits, not the understanding. But someone interested in pursuing it to prepare the body as an instrument of undistorted perception of reality will see more than most.
The relevance of these sciences
It is not a matter of which science is superior. Each has different approaches and different applications. The approach that we take to learn something defines how we are able to use that knowledge. The insights gained from direct sciences help us to directly manipulate the perception and action that we're studying. Inferential sciences allow us to manipulate the static representations of reality that then indirectly guide our actions. Inferential sciences are the only sciences we can practice when our apparatus of perception is insufficient to perceive that which we wish to study. And it is insufficient by default if we do not consciously work towards eliminating the distortions in perception.
Mastering the inferential often leads to the discovery of the relevance of the direct sciences, because we arrive at the shortcomings of strictly using inferential science for all discovery. The practice of direct science does not require anything other than one's own body, and so one can progress at their own pace. You progress as fast and as reliably as you can, with you as the observer, the judge of the quality of your observations, and the principal benefactor of the practice of direct science. Of course others can benefit from you being adept at living your life, but only indirectly.
Like the space telescope that must be calibrated before it can reveal the cosmos, the human instrument must be refined before it can perceive reality clearly. The difference is that with the telescope, we calibrate from the outside. With yoga, we are both the instrument and the scientist performing the calibration.
If this framework resonates as intellectually rigorous rather than mystical, you're ready to understand yoga as science rather than spiritual practice. It is something you can truly only appreciate if you have had some footing in direct science or at least have reached the level of mastery of inferential science to see its limitations in what is possible to discover through it. The essence of why Yoga is the distilled essence of the scientific process becomes apparent only through practice.