How do the different Yogas work?

[Guest guest]

How do the different Yogas work?

 

The purpose of all " Yoga " is to take the practitioner one step closer

towards developing the right identity. A gross person identifies himself with

the body and other things physical things that are related to the body. The

perfect person identifies himself with the Subject discarding everything that

can be objectified. The Subject is the real Self.

 

As an engineer, I got curious on how the various Yogas work. After a few days of

thinking and discussions with friends, here is what I infer.

 

There are three entities talked about in all philosophies and religions - self,

world and God. All religions and philosophies are merely different models for

these three entities and the relationship between them. Every person has a

personal model of these three depending on his stage of spiritual evolution.

 

The idea of all these three always go together. The person who

identifies himself with the physical body sees the world as a physical

entity and also needs a physical symbol of God to relate to. A person

who sees himself as the mind sees everyone and everything in the world

as mental entities and sees God also as a formless being with virtuous

qualities.

 

By working on one of these three - self, world and God - and changing

the perception of that entity, the other two get automatically changed. This is

the basis of the various Yogas.

 

What is being aimed for is infinite, eternal and beyond causation.

Anything finite cannot be fulfilling. Anything which can be acquired can be

lost. So this leaves us with only one possibility. Whatever needs to be

" acheived " is already there with us. The search is only because of the ignorance

of it. The only remedy for ignorance is knowledge. Thus the final step to

perfection is essentially that of knowledge (Jnana Yoga). There cannot be any

other process there.

 

All other Yogas are preparations of the mind to make itself eligible to Jnana

Yoga. It is here that the Yogas can be broadly classified based on which of the

triad - self, world and God - that is taken as the primary entity to be worked

upon. Each Yoga refines the concept and perception of a particular entity.

 

To start with, the self identity is with the physical body. This is

because the objects of the senses are the main focus of attention. The

body is taken as the subject when the external objects are focussed

upon. Ashtanga Yoga (Raja Yoga) first makes the body and breath as the

object and thus the identity shifts to the mind. This is only the

beginning. After this, various practices of concentration make the mind the

object. This makes the practitioner start enquiring " Who am I? " . He finds

himself as the consciousness without any qualities. Going one step further, he

finds that he himself exists and appears as a everything and everyone. This

leads him to knowledge.

 

A gross person looks upon the world as an object of enjoyment and

exploitation. He sees the world as physical objects. He looks upon all

the non-living and living things in the world, including human beings as

physical objects who can either bring him happiness or sorrow. By

serving others without aiming at one's own happiness and sorrow, the

attitude about others change. The person starts seeing others as

thinking and feeling entities. This is called Karma Yoga. Then going one more

step, he realizes that everyone is a part of the same whole.

Then he sees that the whole is in the core of every part. This leads him to

knowledge.

 

The beginner of Bhakti Yoga sees God as a bigger power, who has to be

appeased to get things done and to avoid calamities in life. He needs a physical

symbol of God in a human form or any abstract shape. He needs to do a lot of

physical rituals to connect to God. As he keeps following these, he develops an

idea of God as a person with a lot of good qualities like compassion, fairness,

omniscience, etc. Thus God's

" mental " qualities comes more into his focus than the physical symbols

and forms. As he progresses, he starts developing deep love to God and he starts

loving God irrespective of the qualities of God. The " mental " qualities of God

vanishes and he considers God as

without any qualities. Once qualities are gone, the distinction between

individual objects and people in the world and God is gone. This leads him to

knowledge. Thus the different Yogas take the aspirant from physical to mental

and beyond. In all cases, the final blow to the individuality is given by the

realization that there is nothing called an " individual " . Only changeless

eternal homogenous partless infinite consciousness exists. All variety is just

an appearance. With this knowledge comes fulfilment. He finds that there was

nothing to be acheived. He has been the infinite eternally. It was just the

ignorance that made him think that he was not whole.

 

Thus the Yogas work.