dave_a_mbs
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In response to Alysia's curiosity about jana yoga, I thought of adding this to the PUL thread, but it might turn out to be even more confusing, and perhaps will be that way alone, so I put it independently.
Hindu thinkers, sitting by the Ganges about 5000 years ago (and Egyptian philosophers in roughly the same time period) found that reality can be subdivided into three specific aspects. In Sanskrit these are called the three gunas, meaning three aspects of nature. They are rajas, tamas and sattva.
Rajoguna is the aspect of reality that is dynamic, variable, changing, moving, transforming and so on. Tamoguna is the aspect of reality that is obdurate, solid, fixed, durable, lasting, and structured. Sattvoguna is the aspect that is relative, intermediary, logical, descriptive, comparative, aware, clear, rational.
Rajas leads to karma yoga, action done for its own value, as a joyful contribution to manifesting the nature of the Creator, which nature we all share. Karma yoga is the yoga of selfless action and service.
Tamas leads to union with the One Creative Essence, the unconditional equation of self and other through PUL, and the sense that in God we are both "the individual drop in the bucket of water, and at the same time, the entire bucket, all at once".
Sattva leads to jnana yoga (also spelled other ways in English) in which we become fully aware, fascinated and involved deeply in our universe, comprehending it in the sense of its own logic and proper nature, without interfering hopes, preferences or bias, so that we arrive at enlightened wisdom.
Yogis practice these as basic disciplines, dependeing on who is their teacher and what the teacher finds preferable. As an example, the recent yogi Ramakrishna practiced bhakta yoga through PUL. Krishnamurti or Nisargadatta Maharaj are better examples of jnana yogis. Mother Theresa exemplified both karma yoga in her selfless service, and also bhakta, in her love and unity with those around her.
When a student gets to the point at which the three yogas have been mastered to an adequate degree, so that only trivial imperfections remain, that state is called sat-chit-ananda, which means "perfection of existence, awareness and bliss". At that time, production of "negative karma" stops because there is no major negative activitiy going on to cause it.
The term Satyam (sat) refers to bhakta yoga, the existence of Oneness that includes all. The term Chittam (chit) refers to jnana yoga and mindfulness (literally mind stuff) through which awareness and enlightenment are developed. The term Anandam (ananda) refers to joyful activity in karma yoga, through which we beome "Co-creators with God" as Edgar Cayce put it.
Yogis who have entered that state of sat-chit-ananda now will typically lump all yoga together into raja yoga, the joining of all three, in which the term "raja" expresses that this is the highest or ruling form of yoga practice. It is ideally in this state that we practice samadhi (spiritually transcendent meditation) through which we merge into God.
Traditional yoga sources say that these levels are so exalted and evolved that they are unattainable, and that a guiding guru is needed in order to get to them. This is great advertising for gurus, but quite false.
In practical terms, most of the people on this site who have spiritual experiences are highly advanced spiritually. Merely thinking about and practicing the ideas presented here, and the concepts of soul retrieval described by Bruce, places people in a group equivalent to advanced yoga students.
Those who no longer are having problems because they have finally worked the kinks out of their lifestyles are generally past the level of sat-chit-ananda. This is the basic level of mature existence. Lower levels are still involved in self-destructive activities, like a dog chasing its tail, viewing it as a hostile stranger, and trying to find out why it hurts when it gets close enough for a nip.
Many people posting here are involved in various levels of meditation that carry them into certain types of samadhi, and from time to time we see posts expressing experiences of oneness with the activities of God, being lost in ecstatic PUL or having an enlightening epiphany. These are much like yogis meditating in caves (except that central heating and flush toilets have a lot of advantages).
The point, Alysia, is that there's nothing really new here, but just a different expression of the same old thing. That you probably never looked at yourself as a yogi (properly, "yogini", feminine case) has nothing to do with it except in terminology.
d
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