What is Raja Yoga?
Raja yoga means a royal or kingly action. By this yoga we try to bring balance between our mind and emotions to focus on the God. This makes the meditation to focus on the center of our forehead to achieve the ultimate. Our energy is balanced throughout the brain and body to have a feeling of calmness. The mind remains active and keeps the useless worries and thoughts away. Raja yoga was very well described by Swami Vivekananda.
Pleasant Sense: This makes our mind to have a pleasant sense of our well being and our mind is in a state of ecstasy with darkness all-around. There is faith in our deep consciousness in a supreme being. It is the God towards whom we are looking for help, guidance, protection and inspiration. Our ego causes a problem in this matter to not allow our mind to reach up to God. If our ego frees us from its slavery, we can easily get to the Ultimate.
King of Yogas: It is called the king of all yogas because it is mainly concerned with our mind. There is no struggling of breathing and physical body in this yoga but our mind gets silence and freedom from wandering thoughts. It makes our mind to enter the thoughtless state of mind and that is why called Raja Yoga. This yoga helps us to get realization of oneness.
State of Mind: Raja yoga is chiefly related with our mind and its control and certain kinds of modification. Our mind is always running in different directions with its ray’s scattered all over. We have to focus our mind to control these useless thoughts. We can control our mind with four great virtues, friendliness, compassion, complacency and indifference towards others who are too superior to us. It is yoga which makes us free from the bondage of misery and also develops the remote viewing abilities.
Eternal Bliss: Raja yoga puts an end to all the miseries in our lives and an eternal bliss is experienced through it. We have to free ourselves from the slavery of attachment in order to get near the almighty and attain eternal ecstasy. We have to realize the real cause of our miseries of earthly life. The cause of these miseries is the discrimination that arises within us with the thinking that we are superiors to others. Raja yoga gives us the most practical method to know the cause of such problems.
Three Types of Aspirants: There are first class aspirant to get materialistic things in life and they are advised meditation on samadhi to get freedom from this slavery. Then there are middling aspirant and they are advised selflessness, austerity and egolessness. Meditation with disciplinary practice like fasting and self-surrendering before God. Raja yoga maintains that everybody should strictly follow certain rules and regulation in life to attain freedom from the slavery of miseries. The yoga practitioner should be very patient.