The Four Vedanta Yoga Pathways
 
By Dave DeLuca

The four ancient yoga pathways to spiritual union taught in the Bhagavad Gita are built on the profound recognition, made by yoga masters thousands of years ago, that human beings have four faculties through which they can learn to purify the heart, discipline the mind, restrain the senses, and unite with the Self within: the intellect, love, psychic control, and work. Swami Vivekananda describes the four yogas as such:

“Each soul is potentially divine,
 and the goal of yoga is
 to manifest this Divinity within
 by controlling nature,
external and internal.
 We can do this either
 by work (Karma yoga),
or worship (Bhakti yoga),
 or psychic control (Raja yoga),
or knowledge (Jnana yoga)  —
by one, or more, or all of these,
and when we do,
 we shall be free.
Always remember that
the bringing forth
of the Divinity within us
 is the whole of religion.
Doctrines, or dogmas,
or rituals, or books
 are but secondary details.”

Jnana Yoga

Jnana yoga is the path of intellectual discrimination between the real and the unreal. It is the path to union through knowledge, not the mere knowledge of things, but the direct apprehension of the One Infinite Reality behind all temporal things. The renunciation of the jnani is the renunciation of all illusions of two-ness. The aim of the jnani is to develop the superconscious ability to see the Divine One everywhere, expressing itself through and as everyone and everything.

Jnana is considered the most difficult of the four yoga pathways, for it calls not only for the rejection of all illusions of duality outside ourselves, but also for the rejection of every mental or emotional state within us that hides the truth of Oneness from us. Swami Vivekananda offers us a taste of this in one of my favorite passages of his in Sacred Jewels of Yoga:

As long as you see the many,
 you are under delusion.
“In this world of many,
 he who sees the One,
 in this ever-changing world,
 he who sees Him who never changes
as the Soul of his own soul,
as his own Self, he is free,
 he is blessed,
he has reached the goal.”
Therefore, know that you are He;
 you are one with
 the God of this universe.
All these small ideas
 that I am a man or a woman,
 sick or healthy, strong or weak,
 or that I hate or love
or have little power,
 are but hallucinations.
Stand up then.
Know that every thought and word
 that weakens you in this world
 is the only evil that exists.
Whatever makes you weak and fearful
 is the only evil that should be shunned.
Stand as a rock;
 you are the Infinite Spirit.
Say, “I am Existence Absolute,
Bliss Absolute,
Knowledge Absolute,
I am He,”
and like a lion breaking its cage,
 break your chains and be free forever.

Karma Yoga

Karma yoga is the path of selfless service, the path to union through work offered in the spirit of worship. It is the aim of karma yoga to sacralize each of our actions through the conscious, constant, and loving offering of our work and the fruits of our work to God. When we work in this way, detached from outcome and in the spirit of service, the bonds of ego-attachment fall away, and our identification with the highest within us grows stronger. Acts of selfless service in devotion to the higher purifies our hearts, destroys our selfishness, and spiritualizes our ego.

Renunciation of the Karma yogi is the renunciation of all selfishness and attachment in thought or deed. In this passage from the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna’s emphasis on the spiritual power and significance of selfless service is unambiguous:

Every selfless act,
Arjuna, is born from Brahman,
the eternal, infinite Godhead.
He is present in every act of service.
All life turns on this law, O Arjuna.
Whoever violates it,
 indulging his senses
for his own pleasure and
 ignoring the needs of others,
 has wasted his life.

Bhakti Yoga

Bhakti yoga is the path of love and devotion to a personal God. It is the unceasing adoration of God in any of God’s Divine forms: Heavenly Father, Holy Mother, the Beloved, Christ, Krishna, Shiva, the Lord of Love within, or any embodiment of God that the bhakta can love with all of his or her heart. Through a constant and unbroken flow of adoration directed to God, the bhakta disintegrates all selfishness through the fervor of divine love.

Renunciation of the bhakta is the renunciation of all that is unloving within and all unloving feelings outward into the world. The bhakta sees the whole universe as God’s and therefore offers unswerving love to all of God’s creation. It is through the power of this intense and blissful relationship with God that all of the petty desires of the little ego fade away naturally and without struggle, until nothing is left to experience but the Lord of Love Himself. Swami Vivekananda, in another passage from the book, explains:

Bhakti Yoga is the science
 of higher love.
 It shows us how to direct love:
how to manage it, how to use it,
 how to give it a new aim;
and from it, it shows us how to
obtain the highest and
 most glorious results;
that is, how to make it lead us
 to spiritual blessedness.
Bhakti Yoga does not say,
“Give up”; it only says,
 “Love the Highest!”
and everything low will
 naturally fall away from those,
the object of whose love
 is this Highest.

Raja Yoga

Raja yoga is the path to union through meditation, concentration, and psychic control. It is for the devotee who is contemplative in nature and who enjoys mining the depths of the soul for the supreme treasure within. Renunciation of the Raja yogi is the renunciation all of the mental and emotional states within that hide the glory of the Supreme Soul. Through mastery of Raja yoga comes the complete command of the mind, intellect, and senses, culminating in samadhi, the perfect internal stillness and clarity that reveals the Atman in all of its glory. According to the Gita:

Closing their eyes,
steadying their breathing,
and focusing their attention
on the center of
spiritual consciousness,
the wise master their
 senses, mind, and intellect
 through meditation.
Self-realization
is their only goal.
Freed from selfish desire,
fear, and anger,
they live in freedom
always.

Dave DeLuca is one of the West’s most acclaimed teachers of India’s ancient Vedanta wisdom and the editor of “Sacred Jewels of Yoga” and “Pathways to Joy.” He has spoken and presented workshops on spiritual growth at temples, churches, conferences and learning centers all over the United States, and is currently teaching an ongoing class on Vedanta Yoga at Common Ground in Tustin, CA. For further information, visit www.davedeluca.com or email dave@davedeluca.com

Excerpt from Sacred Jewels of Yoga ©2011. Printed with permission from New World Library.