human existence. They showed how and to what extent a person is conditioned by his heredity, social environment, cultural stereotypes, the unconscious - and above all by history, i.e. their position in modern times and their personal history. This latest discovery of Western thought, the discovery that man is essentially a being subject to time and history, that he is and can only be what history has made him, dominates modern Western philosophy. Some philosophies even conclude from this that the only real task confronting man is to accept this temporality, this historicity freely and completely, because any other choice is equivalent to a flight into abstraction, into the inauthentic, a flight that entails not only emasculation, but also spiritual death, ruthlessly punishing any betrayal of history.
We will not discuss these ideas here. Let us only note that the problems occupying Western minds today prepare the ground for a deeper understanding of the Indian spirit. In fact, these problems encourage us to use the thousand-year experience of India for our philosophical solutions. Recall that one of the objects of the latest Western philosophy is human conditioning, and above all the temporary existence of man. It is temporality, temporality, that makes all other "conditions" possible, it is this that turns man into a "conditioned" being, into an endless, fleeting succession of conditions.
But this problem of "conditionality" (and its naturally arising conclusion, which has not been sufficiently paid attention to in the West - "deconditionality") constitutes the central place of Indian thought. Since the time of the Upanishads, India has been engrossed in elucidating the essence of this conditioning. (Therefore, the idea, not without meaning, arose that all Indian philosophy is, in fact, "existentialism".) The Western world has yet to carefully study the following: 1) what exactly India considers the variety of "conditions" of human existence; 2) how it approaches the question of the temporality and historicity of man; 3) what way out can be found from that state of anxiety and despair, which inevitably follows the awareness of temporality - the matrix of all conditioning. With a rigor not known anywhere else in the world, India turned to the analysis of the various dimensions of human life. Clearly, this was not done in order to arrive at an accurate, consistent knowledge of man as such (as, for example, nineteenth-century Europe did, when it believed that a person should be judged on the basis of hereditary or social factors), but in order to find outhow far the boundaries of conditioning extend, and whether there is anything beyond those boundaries.
Long before depth psychology, Indian ascetics and saints sought to penetrate into the dark realms of the unconscious. They found that the physiological, social, cultural, religious factors of human life are relatively easy to control and, therefore, master; however, this cannot be said about the activity of the unconscious, which creates the greatest obstacles in ascetic and contemplative practice through its sanskaras and vasanas (lit. "impregnation", "inheritance", "hidden forces") - they, in fact, form what depth psychology He calls the contents and essence of the unconscious. However, it is not so much the pragmatic anticipation of some modern psychological techniques that is valuable, but the use of knowledge about the unconscious to "decondition" a person. Therefore, in India, the knowledge of the causes that affect human life cannot be a self-sufficient goal; if one investigates the contents of the unconscious, it is only in order to "burn" them. We will see what methods yoga uses to achieve its amazing results. It is these results that attract the special attention of Western psychologists and philosophers.
We would not like to be misunderstood. It is not our intention to encourage Western scientists to practice yoga (which, by the way, is far from being as simple as some amateurs believe) or to suggest that western disciplines adopted yogic methods or a yogic view of the world. It seems to us more fruitful another approach - to carefully study the results obtained in the course of such methods of dealing with the psyche. The vast, time-tested stock of human experience offers itself to Western researchers. It would be at least unwise not to take advantage of this.
As mentioned above, the problem of human conditioning is at the core of Western thinking; the same problem was originally dealt with by Indian philosophy. Of course, one cannot find here the terms "history" and "historicity" in the sense in which they are understood in the West; We rarely come across the concept of "temporality". Nevertheless, it is not the literal coincidence of philosophical terminology that is important, but the correspondence of the main issues of different traditions to each other. For a very long time it was believed that Indian thought devotes a significant place to the concept of Maya, which in Europe was translated - and for quite good reasons - as "haze", "world illusion", "mirage", "magic", "becoming", "irreality" etc. If you look more closely, you can see that Maya is an illusion because it is devoid of being, because it is “temporality”, “changes”, both on a global and historical scale.
It follows that India was aware of the connection between illusion, temporality and human suffering. Although the Indian saints expressed human suffering primarily in cosmological terms, we will understand, having read their works with the attention they deserve, that this phenomenon was conceived precisely as a “becoming” due to temporal structures. What modern philosophy calls "being situated," "being constituted by temporality and historicity," has its counterpart in Indian philosophy: it is "existence in the nets of maya." If we compare the two philosophical horizons, Indian and Western, then everything that India thought about in connection with the problem of maya will turn out to be very modern for us. This becomes evident when we read, for example, the Bhagavad Gita. Her analysis of human existence is delivered in a language with which we are no doubt familiar: Maya is not only a cosmic illusion, but, more importantly, historicity; not only life in the eternal world cycle, but above all any life in time and history.
For the Bhagavad Gita, as well as partly for Christianity, the problem is as follows: how to resolve the paradoxical, dual situation associated with the fact that a person, on the one hand, finds himself "abandoned" in history and temporality, and on the other, knowsthat he will be "cursed" if he allows himself to be defeated by them, knows that he must at any cost find a path already in this world that leads to a transhistorical, timeless level. The solutions proposed by the Bhagavad Gita will be discussed further. Here we want to emphasize that all such solutions are modifications of yogic techniques.
Thus, we again meet with yoga. For the reality is that - and this relates to the third question that interests European philosophy (the question of ways out of that state of anxiety, which is generated by the discovery of our temporality and historicity, what means of counteracting the pressure of time and history exist in the world) - all answers, offered by Indian thought, to one degree or another are based on the knowledge of yoga. Hence it is obvious what significance for Western scientists and philosophers is familiarity with this problem.
Again, we are not raising the question of unconditional, uncritical assimilation by Europe of one of the decisions made by India; the value of any spiritual phenomenon is not comprehended like the development of a new brand of car. Moreover, it is not a matter of philosophic syncretism or "Indianization" or, even more so, of the revolting "spiritual" hybrid which has been engendered by the Theosophical Society and continues to exist today in the worst of the innumerable polymorphoses of modernity. The question is deeper: what is important is that we know and understand the thought that has managed to occupy a paramount place in the history of global spirituality. It is also important that we know it now, precisely in our time, when any cultural provincialism is overcome by the very course of history, we - both Europeans and non-Europeans - are faced with the need to think in terms of universal history and forge universal human spiritual values. On the other hand, it is precisely now that the problem of human existence in the world dominates in the philosophical consciousness of Europe - that the very problematic, which, we recall once again, is central to Indian thinking.
It is possible that this philosophical dialogue will not be carried out without some disappointments, especially at first. A number of Western scientists and philosophers may consider Indian interpretations to be rather simplistic, and practical solutions to be ineffective. Any technical language expressing a certain spiritual system is a kind of jargon; it is likely that European philosophers will find the jargon of Indian philosophy old-fashioned, imprecise, cumbersome. However, all these troubles to which the dialogue between the two worlds may be exposed are not so significant. Eventually, over and in spite of the philosophical lexicon, the enormous significance of Indian thought will certainly be recognized. It is impossible, for example, to deny the importance of one of the most significant discoveries of India, namely the discovery that consciousness can act as a "witness", "observer", free from the influence of psychophysiological factors and temporal conditioning. This is the consciousness of the "liberated man", i.e. one who managed to get out of the stream of time and knew true, inexpressible freedom. The conquest of this absolute freedom, this perfect spontaneity, is the goal of all systems of Indian philosophy and contemplative practices. But, according to

human existence. They showed how and to what extent a person is conditioned by his heredity, social environment, cultural stereotypes, the unconscious - and above all by history, i.e. their position in modern times and their personal history. This latest discovery of Western thought, the discovery that man is essentially a being subject to time and history, that he is and can only be what history has made him, dominates modern Western philosophy. Some philosophies even conclude from this that the only real task confronting man is to accept this temporality, this historicity freely and completely, because any other choice is equivalent to a flight into abstraction, into the inauthentic, a flight that entails not only emasculation, but also spiritual death, ruthlessly punishing any betrayal of history.
We will not discuss these ideas here. Let us only note that the problems occupying Western minds today prepare the ground for a deeper understanding of the Indian spirit. In fact, these problems encourage us to use the thousand-year experience of India for our philosophical solutions. Recall that one of the objects of the latest Western philosophy is human conditioning, and above all the temporary existence of man. It is temporality, temporality, that makes all other "conditions" possible, it is this that turns man into a "conditioned" being, into an endless, fleeting succession of conditions.
But this problem of "conditionality" (and its naturally arising conclusion, which has not been sufficiently paid attention to in the West - "deconditionality") constitutes the central place of Indian thought. Since the time of the Upanishads, India has been engrossed in elucidating the essence of this conditioning. (Therefore, the idea, not without meaning, arose that all Indian philosophy is, in fact, "existentialism".) The Western world has yet to carefully study the following: 1) what exactly India considers the variety of "conditions" of human existence; 2) how it approaches the question of the temporality and historicity of man; 3) what way out can be found from that state of anxiety and despair, which inevitably follows the awareness of temporality - the matrix of all conditioning. With a rigor not known anywhere else in the world, India turned to the analysis of the various dimensions of human life. Clearly, this was not done in order to arrive at an accurate, consistent knowledge of man as such (as, for example, nineteenth-century Europe did, when it believed that a person should be judged on the basis of hereditary or social factors), but in order to find outhow far the boundaries of conditioning extend, and whether there is anything beyond those boundaries.
Long before depth psychology, Indian ascetics and saints sought to penetrate into the dark realms of the unconscious. They found that the physiological, social, cultural, religious factors of human life are relatively easy to control and, therefore, master; however, this cannot be said about the activity of the unconscious, which creates the greatest obstacles in ascetic and contemplative practice through its sanskaras and vasanas (lit. "impregnation", "inheritance", "hidden forces") - they, in fact, form what depth psychology He calls the contents and essence of the unconscious. However, it is not so much the pragmatic anticipation of some modern psychological techniques that is valuable, but the use of knowledge about the unconscious to "decondition" a person. Therefore, in India, the knowledge of the causes that affect human life cannot be a self-sufficient goal; if one investigates the contents of the unconscious, it is only in order to "burn" them. We will see what methods yoga uses to achieve its amazing results. It is these results that attract the special attention of Western psychologists and philosophers.
We would not like to be misunderstood. It is not our intention to encourage Western scientists to practice yoga (which, by the way, is far from being as simple as some amateurs believe) or to suggest that western disciplines adopted yogic methods or a yogic view of the world. It seems to us more fruitful another approach - to carefully study the results obtained in the course of such methods of dealing with the psyche. The vast, time-tested stock of human experience offers itself to Western researchers. It would be at least unwise not to take advantage of this.
As mentioned above, the problem of human conditioning is at the core of Western thinking; the same problem was originally dealt with by Indian philosophy. Of course, one cannot find here the terms "history" and "historicity" in the sense in which they are understood in the West; We rarely come across the concept of "temporality". Nevertheless, it is not the literal coincidence of philosophical terminology that is important, but the correspondence of the main issues of different traditions to each other. For a very long time it was believed that Indian thought devotes a significant place to the concept of Maya, which in Europe was translated - and for quite good reasons - as "haze", "world illusion", "mirage", "magic", "becoming", "irreality" etc. If you look more closely, you can see that Maya is an illusion because it is devoid of being, because it is “temporality”, “changes”, both on a global and historical scale.
It follows that India was aware of the connection between illusion, temporality and human suffering. Although the Indian saints expressed human suffering primarily in cosmological terms, we will understand, having read their works with the attention they deserve, that this phenomenon was conceived precisely as a “becoming” due to temporal structures. What modern philosophy calls "being situated," "being constituted by temporality and historicity," has its counterpart in Indian philosophy: it is "existence in the nets of maya." If we compare the two philosophical horizons, Indian and Western, then everything that India thought about in connection with the problem of maya will turn out to be very modern for us. This becomes evident when we read, for example, the Bhagavad Gita. Her analysis of human existence is delivered in a language with which we are no doubt familiar: Maya is not only a cosmic illusion, but, more importantly, historicity; not only life in the eternal world cycle, but above all any life in time and history.
For the Bhagavad Gita, as well as partly for Christianity, the problem is as follows: how to resolve the paradoxical, dual situation associated with the fact that a person, on the one hand, finds himself "abandoned" in history and temporality, and on the other, knowsthat he will be "cursed" if he allows himself to be defeated by them, knows that he must at any cost find a path already in this world that leads to a transhistorical, timeless level. The solutions proposed by the Bhagavad Gita will be discussed further. Here we want to emphasize that all such solutions are modifications of yogic techniques.
Thus, we again meet with yoga. For the reality is that - and this relates to the third question that interests European philosophy (the question of ways out of that state of anxiety, which is generated by the discovery of our temporality and historicity, what means of counteracting the pressure of time and history exist in the world) - all answers, offered by Indian thought, to one degree or another are based on the knowledge of yoga. Hence it is obvious what significance for Western scientists and philosophers is familiarity with this problem.
Again, we are not raising the question of unconditional, uncritical assimilation by Europe of one of the decisions made by India; the value of any spiritual phenomenon is not comprehended like the development of a new brand of car. Moreover, it is not a matter of philosophic syncretism or "Indianization" or, even more so, of the revolting "spiritual" hybrid which has been engendered by the Theosophical Society and continues to exist today in the worst of the innumerable polymorphoses of modernity. The question is deeper: what is important is that we know and understand the thought that has managed to occupy a paramount place in the history of global spirituality. It is also important that we know it now, precisely in our time, when any cultural provincialism is overcome by the very course of history, we - both Europeans and non-Europeans - are faced with the need to think in terms of universal history and forge universal human spiritual values. On the other hand, it is precisely now that the problem of human existence in the world dominates in the philosophical consciousness of Europe - that the very problematic, which, we recall once again, is central to Indian thinking.
It is possible that this philosophical dialogue will not be carried out without some disappointments, especially at first. A number of Western scientists and philosophers may consider Indian interpretations to be rather simplistic, and practical solutions to be ineffective. Any technical language expressing a certain spiritual system is a kind of jargon; it is likely that European philosophers will find the jargon of Indian philosophy old-fashioned, imprecise, cumbersome. However, all these troubles to which the dialogue between the two worlds may be exposed are not so significant. Eventually, over and in spite of the philosophical lexicon, the enormous significance of Indian thought will certainly be recognized. It is impossible, for example, to deny the importance of one of the most significant discoveries of India, namely the discovery that consciousness can act as a "witness", "observer", free from the influence of psychophysiological factors and temporal conditioning. This is the consciousness of the "liberated man", i.e. one who managed to get out of the stream of time and knew true, inexpressible freedom. The conquest of this absolute freedom, this perfect spontaneity, is the goal of all systems of Indian philosophy and contemplative practices. But, according to