[Advaita-l] chAndogya 8.6.6

[Ramesh Krishnamurthy]

namaskAraH,

This is with reference to some of the earlier debates on yoga &
vedAnta that we have had on this list before.

chAndogya 8.6.6 says:

......shatam ca eka ca hR^idayasya nADyaH tAsAM mUrdhAnamabhiniHsR^itaikA I
tayA Urdhvam Ayan amR^tatvameti
....................................................................II

i.e. the nerves of the heart are a hundred and one, one of them goes
towards the crown of the head, going upwards through that one attains
immortality.

This appears to an early version of what later came to be systematized
as kuNDalinI yoga, with its emphasis on the ascent of the kuNDalinI to
the sahasrAra. However, the shA~Nkara bhAShya makes no mention of
kuNDalinI yoga; in fact the bhAShya does not even provide a detailed
explanation for 8.6.6. (going by Swami Gambhirananda's publication)

Does this imply that the chAndogya bhAShyakAra was not aware of
kuNDalinI yoga? I wonder whether Vidyasankar and others have
researched this topic and whether they have anything to say about
this.

In this connection, I might add that the yogasUtra-s seem to have no
idea of kuNDalinI either - so perhaps the mainstream pAta~njala
tradition developed separately from the kuNDalinI yoga tradition and
the advaitins of Sa~Nkara bhagavatpAda's times were closer to the
former than to the latter ?

Ramesh