Classical Hinduism: The Way of Knowledge
This essay is about the Way of Knowledge (jnana-yoga) of Classical Hinduism. This is not a different religion but another aspect of Classical Hinduism. It arose in the same period of social transition and cultural exchange around the 6th century b.c.e. as discussed in the previous essay (I.) on the Way of Action (karma yoga). I am translating the Sanskrit word “yoga” here as “Way”.
II. Classical Hinduism: The Way of Knowledge
A. What is this Way of Knowledge?
1. Knowledge, jnana in Sanskrit, does not mean knowledge as information or knowledge of religious doctrines, but knowledge comes from religious/spiritual/mystical experience. I translate it Mystical Knowledge. The Sanskrit word is most similar to the Greek word “gnosis”. Both refer to a type of knowledge that comes from within, perhaps intuitive knowledge is a good term. Such knowledge is not based on facts, on information, on human reason, on authority or on religious beliefs or doctrines. Such knowledge is called “esoteric” as opposed to “exoteric”, again emphasizing that it is inner and secret rather than outer and known through the mind or senses. It is also called mystical which means that it comes from a mysterious source, Sacred Reality, which a person experiences within. It can never be explained completely or logically in black and white terms, but has to be experienced. Such knowledge leads to an ecstatic feeling of oneness with Sacred Reality, whatever one calls it, and is sometimes called an “oceanic oneness”. Usually this experience is momentary, like the proverbial “the light bulb came on” or as a flash of insight, but it is transforming, which is what I explained as the purpose of religion. Please also refer to Unit 1 where I explain “mystical transformation”. Remember the Way of Knowledge does not mean doctrinal knowledge. It involves certain basic doctrines but is much more concerned with practices and disciplines which lead to religious experience.
B. When, Where, How & Why did this Way of Knowledge originate?
1. This way of Hinduism originated during the same period of social change (ca. 6th b.c.e.) we have already noted in the previous essay, when the Vedic religion of sacrifices was reformed due to social changes. This was the same period that the caste system originated, and the Laws of Manu was written, as already noted. This was a period of social change when the new generation of young people born into the civilized and more cosmopolitan environment began to question the keepers of authority of the old ways. Similar changes happened, for e.g. in Europe which led to Protestant Christianity becoming separate from Catholicism, or in the US in the 1960s and 1970s when young people became interested in Native American or Asian religions or new evangelical Christianity. In India it gave rise to Classical Hinduism & to Buddhism, as well as Jainism and some other minor groups.
2. Why did the Way of Knowledge originate?
The more thoughtful and educated people of this new society began to think more philosophically and realized that the old Vedic religion which involved priests doing sacrifices and prayers for the sake of material benefits did not answer what some call the big questions. Why are we here? What happens when we die? Who am I? These folks decided that all the Vedic religion did was ask for better material life and comforts and really didn’t solve the problem of what happens when we die. Is there a soul? Were they supposed to just believe that they go to heaven and join their ancestors? Isn’t heaven just temporary also? Aren’t rituals useless for the soul’s salvation? Isn’t the repeated cycle of birth and death and rebirth just a weary endless circle? In short, these people became skeptics regarding traditional authorities. They wanted to think and experience for themselves rather than just believe Holy Books and priests. They also wanted to find a state of spiritual freedom (moksha) that was beyond the endless round of birth and death (karma and rebirth).
3. How did the Way of Knowledge originate?
Thoughtful and educated people withdrew from ordinary society into a liminal style of life which in the Hindu texts is called “living in the forest”. It means that they left family and home and went out into nature where they could be still and discipline themselves and try to find answers to their inner questions, those “big questions” noted above. Essentially they began to practice meditation. From their meditation experience they began to write books which are called the Upanishads and they began to teach others. The word “Upanishad” means “to learn by sitting near” which indicates that this knowledge has to be acquired not from books but by hanging out with someone who has had this spiritual experience. The experience is gained by disciplines which came to be called yoga and the people who do it are yogis.
C. What are the basic teachings of the Way of Knowledge?
a. Brahman: Brahman is a term which we already heard meaning mysterious power, and it also applied to priests who knew how to tap into this power by chanting and the power of words. With the Upanishads Brahman comes to mean what in this course I am calling Sacred Reality. Brahman as a Sacred Reality is not a creator god or a personal god as in monotheism. Brahman is the One, the single all-pervading but unseen Being or “Isness” of all that is. Brahman is monism, Oneness. It is what everything exists within, and is not a deity but a universal essence, pure spirit. It is nothing, but everything comes from it and abides within it. It is indescribable by human words but can be experienced within the human soul.
i. Teaching by analogy: like a lump of salt in water.
Since Brahman is beyond words, the sages of the Upanishads taught about it by analogy and by having students do experiments. Put a lump of salt in a glass of water and go to bed. What has happened to that lump by morning when you get up? What does the water taste like when you drink it? Brahman is like that, dissolved in everything like the salt.
ii. Teaching by analogy: like the seed & the banyan tree
The banyan is an enormous and amazing tree which originated in India, but it has the tiniest of seeds, so tiny they are invisible in the seed pod. Brahman is like that, invisible but everything grows out of Brahman.
b. Atman: Who am I? Atman was the Upanishads’ answer. Some
translate this term as Self with a capital S to distinguish it from self, or ego as it is popularly called, the selfish little guy we all care so much about! But let’s just call it what it is, let’s call it Soul.
These yogis or experimenters in meditation did not look up in books to define soul but searched subjectively within. They practiced introspection. They sat down and reflected on it, thinking “Hmmm, am I this body?” “Am I the sense of seeing, or of hearing? They realized that they are not any of these, neither body, nor senses, nor mind, but something which is within or beyond or behind all these. They called this Atman/Soul. Some described it like a little inner person, the size of a thumb, dwelling in the human heart. Others felt it was very much like their own breath, the life-breath (prana), which is one with the wind, which is spirit-like in its subtlety.
a. The Sheathed Soul.
The practicing yogis realized that Atman, the Soul, is covered up like a worm in a cocoon. They experienced that we have 3 bodies. The grossest one they called just that, the gross body or material body (hands, livers and stuff). The next sheath going inwards is the subtle body which is made of atoms which are all dispersed, so you can’t see or hear or touch or smell or taste them. That’s what ghosts are actually, spirit bodies, ones in which the atoms aren’t hanging together but are all diffuse and spaced out. Finally they experienced that we all have a causal body, and this is our karma. That’s why they call it causal, because it causes us to exist as individuals, by sticking to us and carrying us along from death to birth and death again. Some types of psychology also identify the core of human problems in a deep subconscious layer of the psyche.
b. The Conscious Soul
Sitting around practicing meditation these folks also realized that the Soul is Pure Consciousness (awareness, which obviously rocks and such do not have). But that consciousness goes into different states. These are similar to what modern psychology identifies as the conscious & the subconscious or unconscious. Waking Consciousness is when the Soul is looking out its windows (eyes, ears and so on) at the regular world, so it is not aware of itself, but of the world. Then there are times when the Soul closes its windows and looks at the tape recorded in the mind. This is the Dreaming Consciousness. Thirdly at times the Soul is just out of it entirely, blissed out in Dreamless Sleep Consciousness. We all know these states but the yogis found another one, which is the basis of them all. They weren’t very imaginative in naming it, just calling it the Fourth Consciousness, but they were ecstatic in describing it. They said it is total bliss, just awareness, no sense of self or others, no stress of wanting or not wanting anything, just being. They advised everyone to try to experience this state, as it is really what the Soul is because in this state of consciousness the Soul is Brahman. The modern field called “Transpersonal Psychology” is also concerned with this mapping and understanding these inner states of consciousness and helping people deal with problems such as stress or depression by methods putting them into contact with this Fourth State.
c. The Extroverted Soul
Long before Freud discovered that human beings have an unconscious mind and begin mapping it (ego, id, superego) in 1859, giving birth to modern psychology, the Upanishads’ experimenters were identifying parts of the psyche. According to their experience, the Soul/Atman goes out from its blissful Fourth State to function through the intellect, through the feeling and sensing mind, and through the individualizing aspect (sort of like Freud’s ego). This is how we live most of the time, as our Soul is going outwards to hear and see and think and logic and experience ourselves as separate and unique individuals.
3. Atman is Brahman: The Introspective Soul
The yogis discovered that the Soul/Atman could also have inner experiences, and these are what in this course I call religious/spiritual/mystical experiences. In these experiences the Soul loses the sense of separateness in Oneness with Brahman. This is what the Way of Knowledge aims to achieve. This becomes a way of salvation, a way to experience the fullness of life, ironically, by losing one’s separate individual self in a state of “oceanic Oneness”. Just as one loses selfishness and performs actions for others and from a sense of duty in the Way of Action, so in the Way of Knowledge we find another way to connect with Sacred Reality. This satisfies the universal human need to be connected with something that is beyond oneself, beyond nature, and beyond the human social world.
4. The Beyond Within
a. Psychology & the Soul: Modern people have become comfortable with the existence of other levels of consciousness besides our ordinary rational waking consciousness through the popularization of psychology. We commonly refer to the “ego” meaning our selfish little self, and many understand it as a “persona” or mask which covers our true inner Self or Soul. We have also learned terms like unconscious drives and motives, subliminal thoughts and drives, the role of the subconscious in human development. There are many therapies to help people in realizing their full human potential by accessing or releasing hidden issues in the subconscious and psychiatrists deal with well-defined types of psychopathology or psychological problems. Psychology has also identified the source of many human problems in feelings and sensations, not in rational thoughts.
b. Religious Experience & Psychology: The Way of Knowledge aims at a religious experience which is a feeling and a sensation, not a rational or logical thought. It opens a person to subconscious and superconscious aspects of their being that are not available in normal waking or dreaming consciousness. It is usually brief, but rarely forgotten; it is indescribable, but utterly transforming. Many modern spiritual therapies have developed ways for people to get in touch with their inner Soul and transform their lives by combining the insights of religious teachings such as the Way of Knowledge, or Buddhism, or Sufism with those of modern psychology. Transpersonal Psychology is one and the name itself states that one goes “beyond the personal” to find Soul within.
D. Yoga: The Practice of the Way of Knowledge
I define yoga as “experimental union of the individual with
Sacred Reality”. The word is literally similar to the English word yoke, which means to unite with or join. Many modern people are now practicing some type of yoga which is based on a set of physical exercises in order to lose weight or be flexible and get some exercise. This is only one small part of yoga.
1. Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. This sacred Hindu text was written around the same time as the “Laws of Manu” we noted in the previous essay. The first sentence of this book defines yoga as
“stopping the restless waves of the mind in order to be peaceful in your Soul”. Patanjali goes on to explain how the mind is like a baby that will put anything in its mouth, and how it is always at war, that what religions call “gods and demons” are really in the human mind. Yoga is to stop them fighting! Patanjali then outlines an 8-Step program to achieve the goal of a peaceful mind, which will be one in which the Soul is united with Sacred Reality instead of ignorantly identified with the waking, dreaming and deep states of the mind. Yoga is really a psychotherapy rather than a religious practice, but it yields the same results of solving human problems by a transforming inner experience.
a. 8-Step Program of Yoga: How to Meditate.
1. Control the mind by observing moral teachings of non-violence, truth-speaking, not stealing, not coveting and not sexually exploiting people.
2. More intense moral development by purifying your mind and body with diet and exercise, being contented, tolerant, studying spiritual teachings and surrendering your ego.
3. Practice of yoga exercises so the body will be flexible and relaxed in order to sit in meditation.
4. Breathing exercises. If your breath is quiet and rhythmical it will lead your mind to be the same way.
5. Sense Withdrawal. Practice sitting quietly without paying attention to sights, sounds, smells, tastes and feelings.
6. Concentration: Focus your mind. You can focus on an object, such as the light of a candle or on an image, or on your breath, or by repeating a simple prayer or word of power. Or you can watch thoughts pop up and let them go by like water in a river.
7. Meditation: This is accomplished when your concentration becomes natural and easy.
8. Samadhi: Here is another Sanskrit word you should remember. Samadhi is the goal of meditation. It means you become one with or absorbed in the Soul or Brahman, that you go beyond your small self. This is a classic example of religious experience. It usually doesn’t last very long, but it relaxes you, invigorates you and transforms you.
2. Kundalini Yoga:
Kundalini Yoga is another type of yoga which is practiced by both Hindus and Buddhists, and is also called
Tantra Yoga. It is an example of how syncretism occurred between different cultures within and beyond India. Many Western people have heard of or embraced the idea of the “7 chakras” of kundalini yoga.
a. The Kundalini. Kundalini is human spiritual energy which, in a person who is not aware of spiritual practices, is coiled like a snake at the base of the spine. The practice of Kundalini Yoga is to release that blocked and coiled energy to travel up the spinal column to the top of the head. As it does this it passes through the chakras, invigorating the body and mind, and releasing spiritual energy. It is often depicted in art as a Goddess or female force called “Shakti”.
b. 7 Chakras: Literally chakra means “wheel” but here it means energy center or neuro-hormonal center and each one is associated with aspects of physical and emotional health. They are at: base of spine, below navel, solar plexus, heart/chest, throat, between your eyes, and crown of your head. Each is associated with a color of the rainbow, going from the base of spine which is red, through the spectrum of light to violet at the crown of your head. Each chakra is supposed to be a balanced center of spinning electro-magnetic energy. If out of balance, they the body and emotions are also out of balance. Yoga exercises, diet, and various therapies including massage are used to “balance the chakras” and attain spiritual well-being. In Hinduism & Buddhism each one has a particular Sanskrit letter, a deity and is represented by a stylized lotus flower, and the number of its petals has symbolic meaning as well.
c. Raising Your Kundalini
The ultimate goal of kundalini yoga is to achieve release of spiritual energy through the crown chakra, and this release accomplishes union with Sacred Reality. It is a religious experience like samadhi, usually brief, but utterly transforming. The mental and health aspects of kundalini yoga are secondary but equally valid goals!
3.Yoga in the Bhagavad Gita
The Bhagavad Gita is the main Hindu Holy Book. It is found inside the epic we noted earlier, The Mahabharata. It synthesizes the main teachings of the Upanishads. For Hindus, the Vedas are like the “Old Testament”, but the Bhagavad Gita is their “New Testament”! It is a short 18 chapters in which the deity Krishna teaches Arjuna (“Everyman” or “Anyone”). The classic explanation of the 3 ways of Hinduism is found in this book. Krishna teaches Arjuna the Way of Action, telling him that he is of the warrior caste and so he has to fight in the war. The war is a metaphor for the “battle of human life”. To follow the Way of Action he must surrender selfishness and desire for recognition for his actions, but just do them unselfishly. Krishna also explains the Way of Knowledge, teaching Arjuna to control the restlessness of his mind by practicing yoga. Last but not least, Krishna advises Arjuna that he should practice these 2 ways, but the 3rd way, the Way of Faith, is the easiest because all Arjuna has to do is surrender to and love Krishna, who is an incarnation of the God Vishnu (similar to Jesus Christ as the son of the Christian God). The Bhagavad Gita calls these 3 ways “yogas”, hence the Yoga of Action, the Yoga of Knowledge, and the Yoga of Faith.
4. The Yogas or Ways & Personality Types
Plato was the first to identify different human personality types,
which he called “appetitive, spirited, rational and daemonic”, but these are
quite old-fashioned words. Modern psychological typing is done by tests
such as Myers-Briggs and many others, including up to as many as 16 psychological types. The 4 yogas are more like Plato’s types, identifying people who are basically active or like just doing stuff, who are experimental and reflective (I have put these 2 together in the Way of Knowledge), or who are emotional. Emotional types, for e.g., would be more attracted to the Way/Yoga of Faith.
E. Conclusion: OM, the symbol of Sacred Reality.
The syllable OM is the beginning and end of every Hindu prayer, something like “Amen” in Christianity. It is often also written AUM, and the A stands for the beginning (notice when you say A, pronounced like in “far”) your mouth is open; M stands for the end (notice your mouth is closed). It is the sound of the universe, the primal sound. OM/AUM symbolizes the unity of Atman/Soul with Brahman/Sacred Reality. The 3 lines of the part of the symbol that looks like a 3 represent the 3 states of consciousness of waking, dreaming and sleeping. Also they represent the 3 main deities of Hinduism (Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva). The other side of the symbol which is connected to the 3 represents Atman-Brahman, so the symbol connects the ordinary world with the spiritual world.
