The Path of Yoga

Yoga is in itself a path to enlightenment, however, unlike any of the other paths mentioned before, it is not a religion. It breaks none of the mentioned religion's laws or rules to follow this path, in fact, it compliments and adds to the religions' path. There are many various types of Yoga, and each type as mentioned here has enlightenment as its final goal.

Yoga, in its oldest form, seems to have been the practice of disciplined introspection or meditative focusing along with sacrificial rites. It formed out of early Hinduism from the four Vedas and later was known through the Upanishads. As such, there seems to be no single type of Yoga, but a multitude of yogic paths. We will touch upon the main types of Yoga here to introduce you to the different forms and how they differ. Yoga is often spoken of as a wheel with many spokes where the spokes represent the different schools and movements of Yoga while the rim symbolizes the moral requirements shared by all types of Yoga, while the hub stands for the ecstatic experience by virtue of which the yogi transcends not only his or her own limited consciousness but cosmic existence itself.

As such, all forms of Yoga are ways to a single center, the hub, although this hub may be defined differently by the various schools. According to the Yog- Râja-Upanishad there are 4 types of Yoga - Mantra, Laya, Râja, and Hatha. All are said to include well known practices of posture, breath control, meditation and ecstasy.

Yoga Disciplines

Bhakti-Yoga - the Self-Trancending Power of Love

Bhakti-Yoga is a path of Love and devotion to God. Said to be the easiest and most rewarding path of Yoga, Bhakti Yoga incorporates meditation, prayer and dedication of one's life to God. The devotion of a yogi following this path is so overwhelming that their own ego becomes transparent to the will of God.
While Râja-Yoga and Jnâna-Yoga seek to transform and transcend the mind, and Hatha-Yoga seeks to transform the body, Bhakti-Yoga does the same thing by the emotions. The follower of this path, the true devotee "sees nothing but love, hears only about love, speaks only of love and thinks of love alone." Such a person is so attached to God that there is nothing else for which he cares; without any effort on his part, other attachments and inclinations lose their hold over him. Such a person is beside himself with this love of God. He is no longer a person of this world. He transcends this world by focusing all his being on God. This places God apart from him, so the final step to enlightenment is to realize God within himself.

Hatha-Yoga- Cultivating a Divine body

Hatha-Yoga is the path of physical discipline. It uses posturing, or âsanas to bring the body into alignment with the energy centers or Chakras. Although a path that doesn't receive much of a following in India, where it was conceived, it is said that this path will bring one to enlightenment over a course of 20 to 25 years. A subset of this branch of Yoga is prânâyâma, the science of breath. This division of Hatha-Yoga still has a great following and is said to bring those who practice it special powers as well as radiant health.
The forceful Yoga is a medieval development. While its ulimate goal is the same as the other Yogas, transcending the ego to the ultimate reality, it is mainly focused on developing the body's potential to bring the energy centers into alignment and prepare the nervous system for this change. Although we often think of the transcendent state of Samâdhi as a purely mental state, this is not the case. Mystical states of consciousness can have profound effects upon the body including the nervous system. Hatha-Yoga attempts to steel the body - to bake it well, as the texts say. Thus, Hatha-Yoga attempts to manifest the ultimate reality in the finite human body-mind. The Hatha yogi wants to construct a divine body - not to withdraw all senses from it. As such, it is often noted that Hatha-Yoga and Râja-Yoga are complimentary.

Jnâna-Yoga - Seeing With The Eye of Wisdom

Jnâna-Yoga is the Yoga that pits the mind against the mind to bring one to enlightenment. It's path is one of meditation and discernment. The word Jnâna translates as "Knowledge", "Insight" or "Wisdom" and refers to a special type of liberating knowledge or intuition. It is the path of gnostic understanding or the wisdom associated with discernment of the Real from the unreal, or illusory. In the opinion of one scholar, Jnâna-Yoga "is fundamentally different from all other forms and stands really unique in the history of the world. It is not the worship of God as an object different from the self and is not a discipline that leads to the attainment of anything distinct from one's own self. It may be described as the worship of God as one's self."
Jnâna-Yoga is the disciplined cultivation of the eye of wisdom, which alone can lead us from the unreal to the real.

Karma-Yoga - Freedom in Action

Karma-Yoga is the Yoga of acts of service. Karma translates as "action", "work", "product", or "effect". Said to be the best course of action for yogis of the West, a follower of this path devotes all their labors and the fruits of their labor to God. Karmic action is freedom in action, not non-action, but the transcendence of egoic motivation of action. With Karma-Yoga, every action is turned into a sacrifice of the ego. It is action performed in the spirit of self-surrender to God's will. Karma-Yoga is the most grounded of all yogic approaches. Its great ideal of inaction in action applies to all other spiritual disciplines and is as relevant today as it was when India's sages first formulated it - well over two thousand years ago.

Râja-Yoga - The Yoga of Spiritual Kings.

Râja - or kingly - Yoga refers to that system of Yoga written of by Patajali in The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali - in the late sixteenth century AD. It is said to be the Yoga of those with the greatest mind training ability and it is considered to be the classic form of Yoga. It is the highest road of meditation, concentration and contemplation. Swami Vivekananda stated that, " Râja-Yoga is the science of religion, the rationale of all worship, all prayers, forms, ceremonies, and miracles." He added that the goal of Râja-Yoga is to teach "how to concentrate the mind, then how to discover the innermost recesses of our own minds, then how to generalize their contents and form our own conclusions from them." In the end, this meditative quest is intended to lead to the discovery of the transcendent Reality beyond thought and image, beyond worship and prayer, beyond ritual and magic.

Mantra-Yoga - Using Sound as the Vehicle for Transcendence

Mantra-Yoga uses sacred sounds or vibrations to transcend to the ultimate Reality. Just as we now know the very sub-atomic particles that make up this three dimensional world are but infinitesimally small strings in vibration, so the ancient sages of India knew that the whole universe was nothing more than forms of vibration. They discovered that certain repetative sounds affected consciousness and were used to help bring about awareness of the transcendent Reality. These sounds, known as mantras, are a vehicle of meditative transformation of the human body-mind and are thought to have mystical potency. These mantras may be single syllables or a string of sounds. Each one is thought to have specific properties and can bring various results from their use. Mantra-Yoga has been said to be one of the easiest approaches to self-realization. However this Yoga can be as demanding as any other form of Yoga. One must be intensely attentive to transcend into the ultimate Reality and realize the ultimate Being-Consciousness-Bliss (Sat-Chit-Anand). Mantra-Yoga demands the same self-sacrifice as all other forms of Yoga.

Laya-Yoga - Dissolving the Universe

Laya-Yoga makes meditative absorption its focus. The Laya yogi attempts to dissolve themselves through meditation by clinging solely to the transcendental self. Central to Laya-Yoga is the use of Tantric concepts of the Chakras, Kundalinî and the Nâdî, similarly as Hatha-Yoga does. Laya-Yoga may be seen as a higher - meditative form of Hatha-Yoga. It consists of a progressive withdrawing of the senses from the outer world along with a greater unification with the inner awareness.

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