A Sanskrit term literally meaning “isolation” or “detachment” and used in the SĀNKHYA and YOGA philosophies to refer to release from the “wheel of rebirth” (termed mokșa, release, or apavarga, emancipation, by other Hindu systems, or nirvāṇa, extinction [of the limitations — i.e., cravings, attachments — of personality], by Buddhists). It results, according to Sānkhya-Yoga, when the purity of one’s contemplation is identical to purity of the individual self (puruṣa 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 Pāda or “Section on Liberation.”

R.W.B.

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