Lord The four Yoga’s of Hinduism: an Introduction

Hinduism: The Universal Religion
The four Yoga’s of Hinduism: an Introduction

A Religion to satisfy the largest proportion of mankind must be able to supply food for all various types of minds and where this capability is wanting, the existing sects all become one-sided. Suppose you go to a sector which preaches love and emotion. They sing and weep, and preach love. But as soon as you say, ‘My friend, that is all right, but I want something stronger than this, a little reason and philosophy; I want to understand things step by step and more rationally’. ‘Get out’, they say and they not only ask you to get out, but would send you to the other place, if they could. The result is that sect can only help people with emotional turn of mind; they not only do not help others but try to destroy them; and the most wicked part of whole thing is that they will not only not help others but do not believe in their sincerity. Again, there are philosophers, who talk of the wisdom of India and the west and use big psychological terms, fifty syllables long, but if an ordinary man like me, goes to them and says, “Can you tell me anything to make me spiritual?” the first thing they would do would be smile and say, “oh, you are too far below us in your reason. What can you understand about spirituality?” these are high up philosophers. They simply show you the door. Then there are the mystical sects, who speak all sorts of things about different planes of existence, different states of mind, and what the power of mind can do, and so on; and if you are an ordinary man and say, “show me anything good that I can do; I am not much given to speculation; can you give me anything that will suit me?” they smile and say, “Listen to that fool; he knows nothing, his existence is for nothing.” And this is going on everywhere in the world. I would like to get extreme exponents of all these different sects, and shut them up in a room and photograph their beautiful derisive smiles.

This is the existing condition of religion, the existing condition of things. What I want to propagate is a religion that will be equally acceptable to all minds; it must be equally philosophic, equally emotional, equally mystic and equally conductive to action. If professors from the colleges come, scientific men and physicists, they will court reason. Let them have it as much as they want. There will be a point beyond which they will think they cannot go, without breaking with reason. They will say this ideas of god and salvation are superstitious, give them up!” say, “Mr. Philosopher, this body of yours is a bigger superstition. Give it up don’t go home to dinner or to your philosophical chair. Give up the body, and if you cannot, cry quarter and sit down.” For, religion must be able to show how to realize the philosophy that teaches us that this world is one, that there is but one existence in the universe.

Similarly, if the mystic comes, we must welcome him, be ready to give him the science of mental analysis, and practically demonstrate it before him. And if emotional people come, we must sit, laugh and weep with them in the name of the lord; we must “drink the cup of love and become mad.” If the energetic worker comes we must work with him, with all the energy that we have. And this combination will be the ideal of the nearest approach to a universal religion.

Would to god that all men were so constituted, that in their minds, all these elements of philosophy, mysticism, emotion, and work were equally present in full. That is the ideal, my ideal of a perfect man. Everyone who has only one or two of these elements of character I consider “one-sided” and this world is almost full of such “one-sided” men, with knowledge of that one road only, in which they move; and anything else is dangerous and horrible to them. To become harmoniously balanced in all these four directions is my ideal of religion. And this religion is attained by what we, in India, call YOGA-Union. To the worker, its union between men and the whole of humanity; to the mystic, between himself and the god of love; and to the philosopher, it is the union of all existence. This is what is meant by yoga. This is Sanskrit term, and these four divisions of yoga have, in Sanskrit, different names. The man who seeks after this kind of union is called a Yogi. The worker is called karma- yogi. He who seeks union through mysticism is called the Raja- yogi. And he who seeks it through love is called Bhakti yogi. He who seeks it through philosophy is called the jnana- yogi. So this word Yogi comprises them all.

Humble pranams to the Great Yogi India has ever seen swamy vivekanand.
Speech by Srimad Swami Vivekananda delivered in the west.
The four yoga types will be explained in the future posts