Raja Yoga: The Path of Meditation (Part 1) | Swami Sarvapriyananda

Raja Yoga: The Path of Meditation

Sri Ramakrishna

Raja Yoga: The Path of Meditation

Oh esatto mas and gamma is Thomas Oh dooty rakamma mid-tier mom written gamma own Shanti Shanti Shanti Oh leaders from the Unreal to the real lead us from darkness into light lead us from death to immortality home peace peace so speaking about the four yoga's the one

we're going to take up now is called Raja yoga it's basically the path of meditation the raja yogi says that it's not a question of belief it's not a question of believing something it's a question of experience some Vaikuntha said religion is the realization the religion is not giving your assent to a set of doctrines not giving your commitment to something that you have been taught but actually practicing and experiencing something you know it's really only when you have experienced it this is where Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekanand the yogis powered excellence you see that is basically for both of them drive towards experience Sri Ramakrishna he would he approached Rakhal each temple the image of Callias are you real or are you just an image is there some reality behind this can I experience that can I see the Divine Mother

so that was his burning quest and how did Vivek on and the Narendra does not become Vivekananda he went around asking have you seen God the notable intellectuals and teachers of his time in Calcutta sir have you seen God and finally, he came to Sri Ramakrishna where he got an answer which satisfied him he said yes

I have seen God just as I see you in fact even more clearly and you too can see God later Vivekananda was to come to this country and say that if somebody says to you that

I have seen God but you cannot and you must follow me you must believe me do not follow such a person but if somebody says

I have seen and you can too then you can follow such a person so this method of experience Swami Vivekananda said if there is a god I must be able to see God if

I have an immortal soul I must feel it through this path of seeking experience religion is something to be experienced again notices that it is not absolutely a new thing it's more or less was taken for granted and understood in India for eons together the religion is not ultimately meant for just for belief because you have the example of

so many saints generation after generation

who have actually had a vision of God with whatever the tradition is that they have seen God Mirabai saw Krishna actually, you have visions of God

we are talking about even the Thebes saw Rama and Lakshmana see the protecting the house of the saint still see thus the vision of God these mystical experiences these you will find it and not only throughout the history of Hinduism but in every religion at the core of religion you will find Mystics saints who claim not that they believe in something
who claim not that they have understood something who claimed that they have actually seen and the path of yoga Raja Yoga says that's our goal

we must actually experience these realities and for that, there is a method a set of psychophysical exercises which if you practice you will realize see the paradigm in the path of devotion is that God exists you do not have faith in God you do not believe in God do not worship or surrender to God that's the problem and

so the solution is faith in God in this yoga the Raja yoga the path of meditation the paradigm is our minds are restless and therefore

we do not see the truth if the minds can be concentrated focused calmed then we will see this truth for ourselves,

we will experience it and

we do not argue with the experience I mean you might argue with somebody else's experience but if you experience it to your satisfaction then you will be satisfied personally,

so it's the path of experience and why

we do not experience it right now because our minds are scattered

we are not focused not concentrated and there are methods specific methods to focus or concentrate our mind and then

we will realize and especially in the Eastern religions but in all religions but especially in Eastern religions there are many many such methods these are methods of meditation especially religions like Buddhism and Jainism they specialize in a variety of meditative methods and in Hinduism the Patanjali yoga sutras the yoga philosophy the Sankey philosophy especially the yoga philosophy it is a specialization on meditation I sometimes joke that Advaita Vedanta is a composite which has borrowed happily it's a plagiarized happily from all the other schools for the concept of pure consciousness from Sankhya that the concept was already there in Sankhya the techniques of meditation Samadhi from yoga which

we are going to study now Patanjali yoga how to understand and interpret the Upanishads which are central to adroit evident from Purva Mimamsa school of philosophy which specialized in textual interpretation and take all of that logic argumentation reasoning from the Naya the Indian school of logic and take all of that and put Brahman on top of it and then kaput it'll put the label Advaita Vedanta but if you open it up made in China inside

so meditation techniques have been freely taken from Patanjali yoga Sutra, in fact, the first textbook

we had to read in Vedanta it's called Vedanta Zahra as novices by a sedan and the Yoga

Indra Vedanta Zara

so there at the end, you will find the entirety of Patanjali yoga so - the techniques of Ashtanga Yoga Yama niyama asana pranayama pratyahara Dharana Dhyana some all of dit just literally taken from Patanjali Yoga Sutra and put their plugged in there as the method of meditation and you find them in in Buddhism in Jainism in all these methods the classic textbook of meditation the classic manual of meditation is the Patanjali yoga Sutra and the classic translation modern translation with Patanjali Yoga Sutra was done in New York by Swami Vivekananda in 1895 the first edition of Raja yoga

so that's part of our heritage - in the New York Vedanta Society in fact Karma Yoga the first edition New York a part of Gyana yoga was first published from New York and bhakti yoga one of the earliest edition the earliest edition was published from New York all the four yoga's from the Vedanta Society of New York, the Karma Yoga was also published from London and Gianni Yoga was only partially published from New York but anyway, why am I saying it's the classic manual of meditation because there's some controversy whether actually the the the the way

we find the potential Yoga Sutras today is it pre-Buddhist occur after the buddha after the buddha but if you look at the buddha's own teachings his own record he went to some teachers after he renounced he

went up to the forest to seek enlightenment he went to the teachers, first he went to the existing teachers of his time he has left behind records of at least two of them a lot of Kalama and with Darla Kurama put or something to mean something like that and he has left behind some records he was not satisfied with the teaching but he has left behind some records of the teaching and very clearly when you listen to what he has said they were Frank Ian's teachings and some of the techniques of meditation which he observed developed but they clearly bear the imprint of yogic techniques so and

we know from his own records that from Buddhistic records were many Yogi's at that time so this is pre ballistic the text itself may have maybe post Buddhistic but maybe the text itself or this is also free ballistic techniques themselves are definitely pre-existing

so it is maybe the oldest existing body of knowledge on meditation even now it's very popular the person jelly Yoga Sutras so that's heavy stuff that will come a little later but first before

we get into the Patanjali yoga sutras

I want to talk about something practical regarding meditation something that helped me and has helped many other people,

I will share with you today this is from Swami Ashok Ananda there is a nice book before this book is called meditation by the monks of the Ramakrishna order it's a nice collection the collection of essays the first one in that series is before you sit in meditation, before you sit in meditation see meditation is very popular today it's

so popular but also universally acknowledged being difficult people say it's difficult

so many techniques of meditation across different traditions today it's a supermarket of techniques available to us today there is the Buddhist Vipassana meditation which has been developed further into the modern mindfulness it's a huge industry in us enough multi matting many Millie multi-million or billion dollar industry now meditation mindfulness meditation it's taught in corporate offices it's taught in schools in jails and in in in an in colleges and the military everywhere, you find meditation you sometimes find in corporate buildings meditation rooms and most of the thing you know here is mindfulness meditation there are techniques tantric have their own techniques of meditation very sophisticated the Kashmir Shaivism has a wide range of very sophisticated techniques of meditation one book began a pair of details about 112 Darin oz which are basic techniques of meditation and then you have the Tibetan Buddhists a variety of visualization techniques a variety of sophisticated meditation techniques you have meditation techniques among the Vaishnavas visualization of the deity every devotional tradition in Hinduism has its what is called Dionna's stotras Harnish locust how to visualize the deity it is in fact from there that that iconography has come and images have been built from those verses then you have of course the yogic techniques of Patanjali yoga sutras the Chinese have their own body of meditation techniques and

I have heard a branch of Sikhism has its own special version of Kundalini Yoga and so

we have a whole range of techniques beyond India you have meditation techniques for example

the method if you have read a very beautiful book called the way of the pilgrim the way of the pilgrim Russian Russian Orthodox Church

so this man is taught the Jesus Prayer the prayer of the heart which he has to repeat and Lord Jesus have mercy upon me and he repeats and the book is very nice if you read it it's just like mantra Japa it is by basically mantra Japa and this man in a very simple way throughout all the ups and downs of life he goes on repeating that and his mind is always on that and the experiences he gets you will find it tallies closely with the experiences,

we talk about in mantra Japa which you have in our tradition Sufi Islam has its own meditation techniques

so meditation is a worldwide phenomenon many many techniques are there don't worry I'm not going to start teaching technique after technique here but first universally before you sit in meditation there's certain things to be observed which makes meditation if you do these things meditation will become effective very soon joyful peaceful without these things, meditation will always remain a kind of a struggle

so what are these things so I'm your Shogun and Drain that first si in that book collection meditation by the monks of the Ramakrishna order in that first essay he gives ten points ten points

so I'll quickly share them with you before

we go into the actual discussion on the potential y

yoga sutras first are regular in meditation that means meditate daily be regular in meditation meditate daily what is the practice of meditation just start just start there is no good meditation bad meditation to begin with just start do it meditation is practice remember it no amount of reading or theory or Patanjali yoga sutras and no amount of commentaries if you have read all the books and meditation and not meditated you have not advanced a single inch but if you sit quietly morning and evening at least for 10 minutes five minutes each you've already begun you've made the tomato start

so regular regularity wide regularity remember meditation is to do with them the mind is also a body just like the physical body the mind is also a body it's called the subtle body suksham asha reader you are not the mind but you have a mind and spirituality is basically in the mind now why is what is the significance of saying that it's a body needs training body does not need information just like you want a fit body if you have read all the articles about healthy eating and exercise and all the news feeds and the books will you be given the body becomes fit not at all maybe a little sicker than before after reading all

so many books but if you exercise every day in the morning without reading a single book your body will begin to show the changes similarly the mind it's a body it's a subtle body and body requires training mind also requires training is repetition it's worth repeating that training is repetition training is not information training is not understanding there's this book happiness hypothesis Jonathan Hyde let me write down the name it sounds like a typical self-help book but it's actually quite a deep book he is psychologist he has written many other books some time nowadays to do with politics and all of psychology of politics but that's different but this was one of his early works very interesting he takes up the issue that

so many good books are available now if you go to Barnes & Noble self-help the section you know so many it's one of the biggest sections in Barnes & Noble and so many books

so if those books did any good our lives will be transformed so much wisdom interesting in the stories inspiring stories techniques they're full of them and it started long ago Dale Carnegie how to win friends and influence people and how to be a good public speaker how to overcome tension

so many such books are available and it's not that they are useless it's not that they what they continue is wrong many cases it's anecdotal but may not be very rigorous but still good advice and practical advice and useful advice and yet why is our life our lives are not changing people go ahead buy so many books and then within a few

weeks they would have had many friends and influence so many people's but why is it that lives are not changing

so he says what is the problem Jonathan Hyde, he takes up he says that because we do not understand the model of our personality it's like elephant and rider he gives the elephant and writer model the rider the MA
who knows where he wants the elephant to go he can read a map and he decides me will go there but he has no strength to make the elephant go there unless the elephant agrees to go there elephant is much stronger than the mouth-to-mouth can guide the elephant but the elephant now wants to go there into the banana Grove and eat bananas then the mouth cannot do anything now it is much too weak to pull the

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