Raja yoga is basic practices for the purification of body, mind and spirit. It is the cultivation of purity, light and wisdom. While Yama reduces the desire and agitation and tama’s reduces the darkness and negativity. The practice of asana and pranayama also plays an important role in the eight step system of raja yoga. Raja yoga unravels layers of dysfunctional emotional training, by transforming physical, emotional and conceptual habits. Yoga is the suppression of the modifications of the mind. Raja yoga is used to remove the kleshas. Kleshas is the key to liberating ourselves from the human condition of mental suffering. They are five kleshas:
• Avidya is the primordial ignorance that takes the “non-external, painful, impure and non self as the eternal, pure, happy self or Atma.
• Asmita is the egoism or the false “I” created by pure consciousness which identifies with the mind and the body and then divides the world into objects to be consumed or possessed, objects to be avoided and objects of no interest.
• Abhinivesha is the instinctual fear of death that haunts all people, even the learned.
• Raga is the power of the mind to dwell on the objects that the false ego associates with pleasure.
• Dwesha is the opposite power of the mind to generate emotions of hatred and disgust for objects that the false ego associates with pain.
Purification occurs when we do yoga and meditation all day long putting the body in shape, putting the min in shape, putting the spirit in shape, putting the action in shape. We purify the body with the right kind of food and with exercise or asansa. We purify the prana with pranayama. We purify the mind and emotions with mantra and chanting. We purify the intellect by listening to discourses or study of scriptures or enquiry into the nature of the self. We let go of our regular ideas and replace them with the light and with the truth. Instead of having dark thoughts, we replace them with the light and with the truth. So it we practice Serve, Love, Give, Purify, meditate then realization will follow. The word the realization means that the impurities are removed and we have the experience of meditation, both during the time we sit for meditation and outside of it. It means that when we meditate, we have the experience and feeling of calmness. We think that realization must be like being struck by lightning but inside we can see the changes. From this we can understand that we are not conditioned by this existence, by age, by our body. We call this the knowledge of immortality. Realization is the experiences that is touched by nothing and experiencing it all the time.
Yoga provides a foundation of emotional strength to become the master of our mind rather than a slave to negative emotions. The scattered and dulled rays of the mind are gathered back into the concentrated state. The higher practices of yoga then refine the concentration into meditation and finally to the highest states of Samadhi. Yoga is not just doing attractive postures and temporarily feeling more healthy and relaxed. It is a precise formula for transforming our entire lives from ignorance to truth from darkness to light, and from a life identified with the impermanent material objects to spiritual immortality.
• Yama is the ethical restrictions including non-violence, non-stealing, continence, truthfulness and abstinence from greed.
• Asana posture.
• Pranayama the breath control
• Niyama is used to develop internal purity including cleanliness or saucha, contentment, austerity, study of scriptures and self-surrender.
• Pratyahara is the abstraction of the senses.
Each of these accessories to concentration and meditation give yoga practitioners not only survival techniques for emotions into their positive potential of pure joy, discriminative knowledge and freedom. These practices are simple, but essential to bring about physical and emotional health. Knowledge of the unity of life cultivated. It is a spiritual gift of god.
Yoga is the mind without vrittis is pure understanding, a mirror reflecting the Divine nature of the self. It is the emotional charge of the kleshas that generates the disturbing thought waves. The root Klesha, ignorance, is maintained by a vast network of roots of unconscious desires imbedded in the depths of our minds. We only recognize them when they swirl up in our consciousness manifesting as disturbing emotions such as arrogance, lust, greed, fear, jealousy, anger, hatred and prejudice. The emotionally charged vasanas sit like land mines waiting to explode into our conscious minds when they come into contact with corresponding sense objects defined by the ego as objects of raga or dwesha. The potent antidote for all of the kleshas is unbroken discriminative knowledge. With awareness, we can catch the mind from falling into negative habit energy of attachment and fear. With awareness, even if we slip into the pain generating habits, we learn to practice vairagya and the whole afflictive drama is nipped in the bud. To maintain unbroken discrimination requires purity of mind and one pointed concentration. These skills are most difficult for the untrained mind and must be developed by step by step. If we are not mindful, the pastry attachment can become an addiction.