Raja yoga: The royal aspect of yoga

10 September, 2012

Raja yoga is the beautiful science of yoga, it literally means the royal part of yoga, the higher part of yoga or the supreme yoga. In yoga Upanishads, Raja yoga is presented in a slightly different from other yogas.

THE YOGIS and rishis found that every human being has a deep psychic potential. They are born with dormant, hidden potential and that inquiry creates the path of Raja yoga - so that they can go deep into the human personality and awaken the deep psychic potential, which is asleep in them. This was how Raja yoga was discovered and practiced.

It was the instinctive mind of yogis who found a series of practices that were given the name of Raja yoga. The rishis and yogis realized that there were different kinds of personalities, and in our day to day life we behave in different ways, sometimes the person is emotional, sometimes the person is intellectual or intuitive, and we operate from a deeper understanding. This expression of personality in modern psychology has become known as different personality types - intellectual, emotional, intuitive, and dynamic.

Yogis desire to open the sleeping hidden potential and they also said that, each one of us can access that hidden potential provided we have understanding and knowledge of this systematic path. And that systematic path was codified by one of the famous rishis Patanjali. He derived the system known as eight limbs of yoga or patanjali yoga and in this, first comes yama and then niyama, asana, pranayam, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana and samadhi.

These are the eight limbs of 'Ashtanga' yoga of Patanjali. These eight limbs are further divided into two chapters, the first chapter is known as bahiranga yoga, and in this the four chaptars are yama, niyama, asana and pranayam. To manage external personalities with the help of these four chapters, one uses four different parts of yoga, and the the person receives understanding of the mind - as to how to interact externally and thereby to manage the external 'vrithis' because they are influenced by the environment and the surroundings, as per this video by indiainteracts.

The last four chapters constitute bahirang yoga, including chapters on pratyahara, dharana, dhyana and samadhi. In these four chapters the focus is how to raise the lower mind to the higher mind. To lead the mind through the senses from the sensory experience, to experience samadhi and to alter the state of the mind.

The whole path of Raja yoga became a process, a tool and a method to raise human consciousness by awakening the sleeping psychic potential. We can say that raja yoga is a path of raising the lower mind to a higher mind - and for a man to be a superman.