Kaivalya

A Sanskrit term literally meaning “isolation” or “detachment” and used in the SANKHYA and YOGA philosophies to refer to release from the “wheel of rebirth” (termed moksa, release, or apavarga, emancipation, by other Hindu systems, or nirvana, extinction [of the limitations — i.e., cravings, attachments — of personality], by Buddhists). It results, according to Sankhya-Yoga, when the purity of one’s contemplation is identical to purity of the individual self (purusa or “person” in their system). This detachment is said to be gained by discrimination (viveka) or “discriminative knowledge,” i.e., knowledge which clearly discriminates one’s conscious self from one’s vehicles of consciousness. The fourth section of Patañjali’s Yoga Sutras is termed the Kaivalya Pada or “Section on Liberation.”

R.W.B.

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