ORIGINS OF YOGA 11true highest nature. Like the state of samadhi, we transcend the small self
and connect to the big Self.
Outside of raja yoga, which emphasizes the science of the mind through
meditation, are other paths that can take you to the summit of human con-
sciousness. Although they may be different, they will get you to the same
place. Yoga teaches that you are your own master, and you walk the path
that feels right for you. We are all different and unique. In fact, in the history
of humanity, there has never been a person quite like you.
The other traditional paths besides raja yoga include jnana yoga, karma
yoga, bhakti yoga, and hatha yoga. Let’s explore these other styles.
Jnana Yoga
Jnana yoga is the yoga of knowledge. It provides the path of self-realization
through both a mental and an experiential understanding. It’s one thing to
understand something intellectually, but a whole other thing to know some-
thing from direct experience.
The Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama, 563 BCE – 483 BCE) might be considered
one of the most powerful jnana yogis in history. He lived a life of discipline
and high principles, practicing peacefulness, truthfulness, generosity, and
celibacy and refraining from all intoxicants. He learned various meditation
techniques from contemporary masters, and he trained his mind to reach
extremely deep states of concentration. However, he still felt something was
missing. It wasn’t until a fateful day and night when he took his seat with an
unshakable determination to awaken himself that he finally found everything
he had been seeking. He became fully liberated from delusion, greed, and
hatred, and it all happened through his own direct experience.
After many years of intense spiritual practice, the Buddha still hadn’t become
fully awakened. At the age of 35, he decided to sit under a Bodhi tree (the
tree of knowledge) until he became completely awakened. By awakened, we
mean to come out of the delusions that most of us live in. As the Buddhist
scriptures state, The Buddha sat in a crossed-legged meditative posture, closed
his eyes, and began to focus his mind on the natural rhythm of the breath. As
his mind became more concentrated, his awareness of Reality deepened until
he experienced his entire being as a constant flow of sensations. Although the
muscles and bones of the body appear on one level to be dense, concrete,
and hard, on a deeper subatomic level, everything is pure energy made of
kalapas, the smallest subatomic particles of physical matter. The Buddha real-
ized these subatomic particles that he was feeling flowing through his body
were also what made up his thoughts and feelings; in fact, his entire mind.
As his experience deepened during the days he sat beneath the Bodhi tree,
The Buddha realized directly that all the matter throughout the universe was
a great eternal flow of trillions of these kalapas. His great awakening then
expanded into the realization that the endless flow of kalapas was the cause
of impermanence (anicca) of all phenomena. The Buddha’s freedom thus