Sathya Sai Vahini - Post 28

 

In Today's post, we start with the essence of the 2 path- Raja Yoga and Jnana Yoga, as written by Swami, covered in the previous post

 

Raja Yoga (Royal Path, as Swami puts it)

 

• When the mental abilities are focused on one effort, knowledge can be acquired quicker and from a wider field. And that is the only way by which knowledge can be earned.

•   Concentration will enable one, whoever one is, whatever the activity engaged in, to finish it much better than otherwise. 

•  Whether in material assignments, ordinary day-to-day work, or spiritual exercises (sadhana), concentration of mental energies is a must if success is to be achieved. It is the key that can open the treasure chest of wisdom (jnana). This is the most important aspect of royal yoga.

•   Millions of unwelcome, unwanted, unnecessary, and even harmful thoughts enter our minds and confound their activities. These have to be kept out; the mind has to be guarded and controlled and kept under our rigorous supervision. Royal yoga is the one refuge for persons endeavoring to win this victory.

 

Swami Vivekananda, whose writing, and teachings on “Raja Yoga”, is one of the most authentic teachings on this Royal Yoga.

Glimpses from the introductory chapter on Raja Yoga by Swamiji is given below.

"Yoga is the science which teaches us how to get these perceptions. It is not much use to talk about religion until one has felt it. Why is there so much disturbance, so much fighting and quarreling in the name of God? 

There has been more bloodshed in the name of God than for any other cause, because people never went to the fountain-head; they were content only to give a mental assent to the customs of their forefathers, and wanted others to do the same. 

The science of Râja-Yoga proposes to put before humanity a practical and scientifically worked out method of reaching this truth. In the first place, every science must have its own method of investigation. 

If you want to become an astronomer and sit down and cry "Astronomy! Astronomy!" it will never come to you. The same with chemistry. A certain method must be followed. You must go to a laboratory, take different substances, mix them up, compound them, experiment with them, and out of that will come a knowledge of chemistry. 

If you want to be an astronomer, you must go to an observatory, take a telescope, study the stars and planets, and then you will become an astronomer. 

Each science must have its own methods. I could preach you thousands of sermons, but they would not make you religious, until you practiced the method. 

The knowledge of the mind, of the internal nature of man, of thought, can never be had until we have first the power of observing the facts that are going on within. It is comparatively easy to observe facts in the external world, for many instruments have been invented for the purpose, but in the internal world we have no instrument to help us. 

The science of Raja-Yoga, in the first place, proposes to give us such a means of observing the internal states. The instrument is the mind itself. The power of attention, when properly guided, and directed towards the internal world, will analyse the mind, and illumine facts for us. 

The powers of the mind are like rays of light dissipated; when they are concentrated, they illumine. This is our only means of knowledge. 

Everyone is using it, both in the external and the internal world; but, for the psychologist, the same minute observation has to be directed to the internal world, which the scientific man directs to the external; and this requires a great deal of practice. 

To turn the mind as it were, inside, stop it from going outside, and then to concentrate all its powers, and throw them upon the mind itself, in order that it may know its own nature, analyse itself, is very hard work. Yet that is the only way to anything which will be a scientific approach to the subject.

What is the use of such knowledge? In the first place, knowledge itself is the highest reward of knowledge, and secondly, there is also utility in it. It will take away all our misery. 

In the study of this Raja-Yoga no faith or belief is necessary. Believe nothing until you find it out for yourself; that is what it teaches us. Truth requires no prop to make it stand. 

This study of Raja-Yoga takes a long time and constant practice. A part of this practice is physical, but in the main it is mental. 

According to the Raja-Yogi, the external world is but the gross form of the internal, or subtle. The finer is always the cause, the grosser the effect. So the external world is the effect, the internal the cause. 

A Yogi must avoid the two extremes of luxury and austerity. He must not fast, nor torture his flesh. He who does so, says the Gita, cannot be a Yogi: He who fasts, he who keeps awake, he who sleeps much, he who works too much, he who does no work, none of these can be a Yogi (Gita, VI, 16).

 

In the next post, we will take up Jnana yoga.

 

Love.

 

Swami Sivananda

 

 

The divine within you is stronger than anything that is without you. Therefore, be not afraid of anything. Rely on your own Inner Self, the Divinity within you. Tap the source through looking within. Improve yourself. Build your character. Purify the heart. Develop the divine virtues. Eradicate evil traits. Conquer all that is base in you. Endeavor to attain all that is worthy and noble. Make the lower nature the servant of the higher through discipline, Tapas, self-restraint and meditation. This is the beginning of your freedom.

 

Swami Sivananda Maharaj

Sathya Sai Vahini - Post 27

Swami now explains the other two yoga(s)

 

Royal path of unitive wisdom

 

“Now about the royal yoga (raja-yoga). Royal yoga means the process of establishing mastery over the mind. One need not surrender one’s intellect or follow the guidelines of religious leaders. There is no chance of being misled or mistaken. At every step, one must rely on one’s own intellect and experience, as tested by oneself.

 

Every being has three varieties of instruments for acquiring knowledge and, through that knowledge, wisdom. The first is “instinctive”; this is very strong, active, and advanced in animals. This is the earliest, the lowest, and therefore the least beneficial of the three. The second is the “rational”, the instrument that seeks the cause and the effect thereof. This is most evident in people. The instinct can operate only in the limited field of senses and sensory experiences.

 

In people, instinctive knowledge is largely subordinated by the rational instruments. The limits of the rational are very thin; reason can range over vastly wider fields. In spite of this, reason is also capable only of very poor performance. Its reach is restricted; it can proceed only a certain distance; it cannot venture further. The road that logic takes is not straight. It is more circular, returning again and again to the place from which it started.

 

Take, for example, our knowledge of the objective world, of the elements and energies that compose it. That which urges and prompts the objective world and its components does not stop with just this much. It absorbs also that which is immanent outside the objective world. So, the extent that reason can spread over and explain is as the “consciousness” that is imprisoned in the tiny molecule as compared with the vastness and grandeur of the transcendent fullness.

 

To go across the boundaries of reason into the full, free realm of intuition, certain spiritual disciplines and exercises are essential. They can be grouped under the name God-propelled wisdom (jnana). For we have only three stages of wisdom: native, or derived from the senses of action and perception (sahaja-jnana); knowledge derived by the process of discrimination and evaluation; and God-induced knowledge, i.e. gained through grace by inner vision or intuition. 

 

The first of these is the knowledge possessed by animals; the second is the characteristic of humanity, and the third is the special treasure of high-souled individuals. It possible for everyone to foster, cultivate, and develop the seedlings of this third wisdom; the capacity is latent in all.

 

Another fact has to be borne in mind. The three are stages of growth, so they are not mutually exclusive types of knowledge. 

 

God-induced knowledge will not contradict discriminative knowledge; it will only bring to light what is un-manifest in discriminative knowledge. The later stage only confirms and elaborates the previous ones. Afflicted by the vagaries of the mind and its fancies, some consider their distorted attitudes to be God-given or grace-induced. They may even call upon others to heed their counsel and lead people astray by their barren guidance. These morons announce their absurd prattle as God-propelled.

 

True teaching can never be counter to discriminative knowledge — the conclusion arrived at by discrimination and evaluation. The yogas mentioned above are all established in consonance with this view. Royal yoga has to be practiced mostly by the mind and its resolution. This is a vast subject, so we consider here only its central theme, something that is the only refuge for the lowest of the low and the highest of the yogis: single-pointed meditation. 

 

For the person engaged in research in a laboratory, one walking along a road, a scholar reading a book, or an individual writing a letter or driving a car, concentration of all their attention on the articles before them and the activity in which they are engaged is very important. The person understands the nature and peculiarities of the object being handled. The more intense the concentration, the more successful the activity. When the mental abilities are focused on one effort, knowledge can be acquired quicker and from a wider field. And, that is the only way by which knowledge can be earned.

 

Concentration will enable one, whoever one is, whatever the activity engaged in, to finish it much better than otherwise. Whether in material assignments, ordinary day-to-day work, or spiritual exercises (sadhana), concentration of mental energies is a must if success is to be achieved. It is the key that can open the treasure chest of wisdom (jnana). This is the most important aspect of royal yoga. It can even be said that it is the only important aspect of that yoga. 

 

Millions of unwelcome, unwanted, unnecessary, and even harmful thoughts enter our minds and confound their activities. These have to be kept out; the mind has to be guarded and controlled and kept under our rigorous supervision. Royal yoga is the one refuge for persons endeavoring to win this victory.

 

Yoga of supreme wisdom

 

The yoga of wisdom (jnana-yoga) is devoted mostly to the study of basic principles. This universe or cosmos, which we cognize as outside ourselves, can be explained by means of various theories of knowledge, but none of them can be convincing to the uninitiated. Wisdom-yogis weave many such theories and hypotheses. They are not convinced of the reality of any material object in the universe, or of any activity, or even of anyone else who propounds any other explanation. 

 

They believe that they should transcend the daily chores of life and not be bound by social or other obligations. In the vast ocean of ISNESS, or truth (sath), all objects are but drops, in their view. They are all struggling to move from the circumference to the center, from which they manifested through illusion (maya). Wisdom-yogis also yearn to merge in the centre, the core of reality, away from the tangle of apparent diversity. 

They exert themselves to become the Truth, not only to become aware of it. Of course, as soon as they are aware of it, they become it. They cannot tolerate the thought that they and truth are separate and distinct.

The divine is the only kith and kin of wisdom-yogis. They know none other. They entertain no other urge, no other attachment, no other desire. God is all, in all. They cannot be affected by grief or joy, failure or success. They see and experience only one unbroken, unchallenged stream of bliss-consciousness. 

For the people who are firmly established in this state, the world and its ups and downs appear trivial and illusory. In order to stay in that consciousness, they have to counter the pulls of the senses and face the fascinations of the world without any agitation of mind.

Wisdom-yogis are vigilant against the temptations held before them by the senses; turning them aside, they approach the Divine and seek strength and solace there. They realize that the power and energy that vitalize the tiniest of the tiny and the vastest of the vast is the same divine Principle. Their actions, thoughts, and words reveal the vision that they have experienced: the Supra-vision (Paramaartha-drishti). They see all elements —earth, fire, water, wind, and sky— as the divine itself and all beings —humanity, beast, bird, and worm — as emanations from God and therefore fully divine."

 

We will go deeper into the SSV part covered in the blog today, in our next post

 

Love.