Jnana Yoga
In Hinduism there is considered to be four fundamental spiritual personality types. For each there is prescribed a specific yoga. The ultimate goal of each is the mystic union with Brahma, with each representing a direct but distinct path to God. This is performed by preliminarily ridding oneself of destructive action and cultivating positive habits. For the reflective spiritual personalitiy type the most advantageous method is Jnana yoga.

Jnana yoga is the path to God through knowledge. The term “jnana” (of similar etymology as the Greek “gnosis”) does refer to knowledge of the physical plain. Philosophical inquiry through the sciences directs one towards the absolute truth of the matter. Through the biological sciences a person will deepen his self-inquiry of who or what he is by recognizing what he is not. Through mathematics, sub-atomic physics, and astrophysics the scholar will discover the esoteric, underlying connections of the universe. These are only examples dealing with the external reality of things. The knowledge of jnana also delves beyond factual knowledge, past the encyclopedic into the intuitive and unconfirmed, but strongly suspect ideas of the inner world.

One of the access routes to the inner world, a path to God, is through thought. Reflectives live in their head in which the main mode of transportation is thinking. Thoughts animate the world and life itself.  As Houston Smith stated, “And if such thinkers are parodied as philosophers who walk around with their heads in the clouds, it is because they sense Plato’s Sun shining above those clouds.”  Thoughts have consequences, and the suspicion that there is a transcendental reality draws the jnana yogi deeper with the final consequence being that the thinker establishes his sense of self, his atman, as Brahma one and the same.

Guidance down the path of jnana yoga is directed through discrimination. Distinguishing between the surface level self and the unseen but felt Brahma is the key that matches the tumblers to unlocking the truth and situating oneself peacefully in this truth. Cultivating discrimination occurs in three stages. The first is learning; by reading the scriptures and listening to the sermons of the higher order teachings the jnana yogi happens upon the alleged identity of every self as the Self. Through jnana yoga one learns that his essential being is the quintessential Being.

Prolonged reflection is the second step. Through intensive thinking this idea of the atman being Brahman must move from concept to revelation. Realization springs from self-inquiry by many methods. Analyzing language, especially the use of possessives such as “my” and identifiers such as “I” give clues towards what a person truly is, much like the study of biology discussed previously.  Supposedly the body recycles all cells that by seven years passed a person is composed of a completely different set of cells. So then what is the underlying connector who maintains the continuous appearance of a self? Who is the actor behind the persona, behind the layers of personality built out of experience and genetic dispositions? Seeking these answers further separates the sense of the shallow self and the deep, clear Self.

Now the aspirant is prepared for the third stage of cultivating discrimination in the path of jnana yoga.  The transition and situation of the self as the newly realized, infinite Self.  This is most easily done by thinking of oneself as “the witness,” the spirit behind the veil of the yogi’s everyday life.  Detachment from actions, possessions, self-identifications, and all ego-invested phenomenon urges the consciousness to shift its seat to the Self. As read in the Upanishads, “That thou art, other than whom there is no other…”

Jnana yoga is one of the four fundamental paths to God in Hinduism, highlighting knowledge for the reflective spiritual aspirants. Those hyper-aware, meta-cognitive seekers have a strong faculty that should be exploited for the ultimate goal, and a technique has been expounded for them through the process of discrimination, detachment, and situating the personal atman as the universal Brahman.  This is the task of yoga (the root yog, similar to yoke, meaning union), to unite oneself with the only and infinite supreme Self.