The four kinds of Yoga🔗

Since ancient times, seekers have followed four different paths to the Divine, according to their individual nature and preferences: Jnana yoga – the path of wisdom Bhakti yoga – the path of devotion Karma yoga – the path of selfless action Raja yoga – the path of awareness

Understand, these four are not separate paths!

The seeker enters into spirituality through one of these four doors, but all lead to the same experience.

For example, the jnana yogi understands and then surrenders, the bhakti yogi surrenders and then understands, that's all!

The jnana yogi who experiences the Divine consciousness naturally surrenders to the experience, and the bhakti yogi who surrenders to the Divine ultimately realizes the Truth.

In Karma yoga, the seeker surrenders his actions to the Divine, becomes a witness of his own actions and ultimately realizes the Truth.

In Raja yoga, all these processes are united. The seeker, while working on his body, breath and mind, surrenders his spiritual practices to the Divine and strives for the experience of Truth.

Of these four paths, Raja yoga is the one which is popularly known as yoga today.

The Patanjali Yoga Sutras, delivered by the ancient enlightened master Patanjali, is a brilliant treatise on Raja Yoga, and is the source of modern yoga.

Patanjali's Raja yoga is also known as 'ashtanga yoga' Ashtanga means eight limbs or eight parts:

• Yama (ethics), Niyama (personal cleanliness) Asana (physical postures) Pranayama (breathing techniques) Pratyahara (integration – withdrawal from inner chatter) Dharana (concentration) Dhyana (contemplation) Samadhi (enlightenment)

These eight steps are not like a sequence, to be practiced one after another and finally leading to the last step of Samadhi. Rather, they are eight limbs of yoga, to be practiced simultaneously. Each of them is directly linked to the experience of Samadhi.

Today, the most popular aspects of yoga are the physical postures (asana) and breathing techniques (pranayama). Asana and pranayama are practiced as a separate discipline, known as hatha yoga, which focuses mainly on culturing the body. But if you read the Patanjali yoga sutras, you will be surprised! In the very first sutra, Patanjali declares: 'yoga chitta vritti nirodhah' Yoga is cessation of mind. Understand, he does not even mention that yoga can be practiced for physical health. Directly he says, Yoga is cessation of mind. Yoga is not to be practiced just to be healthy or look good! Yoga is purely a science for enlightenment.

THE FLOWERING OF BODY INTELLIGENCE Working with your body

The truth is, when you work on your mind, when you go beyond mind, you will have physical health as well as a grace that is beyond beauty.

You may not work for it, but it will happen.

Both these will happen to you as a side effect, as a byproduct when you understand what is really meant by the word Yoga.

So you see, at the deepest level, there is no difference between yoga and meditation.

Any process that raises your consciousness and takes you into the experience of enlightenment can be called yoga or meditation.

YOGA IS AWARENESS IN ACTION!

As a young boy, I had the great fortune to be around a great yoga master called Yogiraj Yogananda Puri (Raghupathi Yogi). It was he who introduced me to the great science of yoga.

At the time when I started studying under him, he was already about 105 years old! But he had a perfectly fit body, and he was an adept in all dimensions of yoga. He had mastered the whole science of yoga.

Raghupati Yogi was well versed in the ancient scriptures on yoga, like Patanjali Yoga Sutras. Not only had he mastered the physical postures or hatha yoga, he had a deep understanding of the subtler aspects of yoga also - working with breath, working with the mind, working with visualization power, working with emotions. He also demonstrated many yogic powers like levitation.

Thanks to Raghupati Yogi, I had a deep insight into the core truths of yoga. I understood that without awareness, whatever yoga practices are followed, they are just kriya - physical movements. With awareness, even if physical movements are made, they become a tremendous meditation.

It was Raghupati Yogi who first made me aware of the power of intention.

He used to make me bend my body in all possible ways - you cannot imagine.

Not only that, he used to make me climb pillars the whole day! The temple where he used to teach me yoga had a beautiful hall with many stone pillars. Raghupati Yogi used to make me climb all the stone pillars, and that too using only one hand. I could never understand why he was making me do this, because in no book on yoga does it say that you are to climb any pillars!

So one day I asked him about it.

He told me a beautiful truth.

He said, with whatever intention you move your body, that memory, that purpose will be deeply recorded into your body and mind.

Understand, this was a very shocking revelation!

Whenever you bend the body with a particular intention, that idea, that samskara will start expressing in your body.

The exact posture, the method, the way in which you bend the body is not so important! It is the intention which matters. If your intention is to have good health, just move your body with that intention, and good health will simply happen to you!

Understand, he did not mean just yogic postures.

Any physical movement practiced with a particular intention will create that effect in your body! Even if you are just sitting, with a powerful intention to have good health, it's enough. You will see that good health is happening in you.

I asked him, how can this be?

I was expecting an intellectual explanation from him.

He said, that is the way it is!

After all, your body itself is made out of your memory.

Your idea of yourself, whatever you think of as you, actually makes up the building blocks of your body.

You are an expression of your own self hypnosis.

So when you move your body in any way with the faith that you will get a particular result, that change will simply start expressing in you.

Every memory is recorded in your muscles.

Your intention gets inserted into the very muscle memory and cellular intelligence.

So when you change the memories, you can change your system also. Your system can respond to the memory which you create.

Nowadays, especially in the west, there is too much of a connection between the different asana (postures) and various diseases.

Almost all the postures are being done for curing some disease or the other. Unconsciously, we link every posture to some disease or the other.

This is unfortunate, because the imprint of that thought gets inserted into our system.

On the other hand, there have been many recorded incidents where people have cured themselves of cancer or overcome tremendous physical handicaps by pushing their limits and going beyond what they thought was their capacity.

These things have happened through the power of intention, which can transform basic cellular memory.

Have you come across a book called 'The Biology of Belief '?

In this book, Dr Bruce Lipton, a cellular biologist who has presented a new theory on how cells behave.

We have all been taught that we behave the way our genes are designed. Dr Lipton, after his research, says the opposite - our genes are designed the way we behave! He says, 'We are what our perceptions are. As are our perceptions, so become our actions. As are our actions, so becomes our destiny.' Our traditional scientific treatises emphasize that whatever we think deeply and continuously has a profound effect on us physically, mentally and spiritually. This ancient truth is now being proven with the support of modern scientific findings. It has been found that a powerful intention can actually become physical reality itself.