Patanjali and the Cleft Self in T.S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party

This paper will seek to depict one element of the religious identity of T.S. Eliot’s play, The Cocktail Party. I wish to show, by focusing on the influence of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras in a play with obvious Christian theology and imagery that the play is undoubtedly hybrid, creatively combining as it does elements of Eliot’s earlier philosophy, Christian love theology, mysticism, and various sources from Indian thought and practice. Further, I wish to suggest that the play itself implies a model of intersubjectivity and poetics that is partially derived from the Indian text.  In this, Eliot’s play is an incipient comparative theology that takes as its starting point the kind of detachment and contemplative attention that it also demands of its audience in the act of experiencing the play. Eliot’s play, far from reflecting a strictly orthodox Christianity, aims to re-signify the tradition through the dialogical tension it embodies.