Raja Yoga and Buddhi Yoga:
Their Place in the Evolution

(Lecture)

V.Antonov

Translated by T.Danilevich

Yoga is the Path to merging with God. But what is God?

People imply different things by this word. Quite right was Gurdjieff saying that each person has his own religion. It is really hardly possible to find two persons who see their religious path likewise, even if they belong to the same religious trend.

Some people use this word to denote one or another god-spirit from heathen pantheon. Initially it was inherent in all peoples: such gods were worshipped in ancient India which is reflected in the four Vedas, in ancient Greece, in ancient Rome, in the territory of our country — everywhere in old days people worshipped either real spirits calling them gods, or just mythological personages.

But later on — in India through Krishna, among Hebrews through Judaic prophets, in China through Huang-Di — people got information on existence of the principally different cosmic Power — God — Creator — Omnipresent and Omniscient Authority. It sounds differently in diverse tongues but it denotes the same: Primordial Universal Consciousness of the Creator. In terms of scientific language — It is present in the deepest (related to physical world) plane of the multidimensional universe.

There is one more monotheistic meaning of the word "God". God is the Absolute, that is ALL, the Creator who created His Creation out of Himself and in this sense He is the same Being.

It is possible to speak of God in personal aspect but being careful not to get into paganism. Such approach is permissible within monotheism whereas the Universal Creator can manifest Himself in some incarnated people who attained the Divine Perfection.

So that to be able to understand other people speaking of God and so that to make it possible for them to understand us, we have to keep in mind these differences.

Now we shall consider the topic of Evolution.

The fullest knowledge of this can be obtained from one of the most ancient books — Indian Bhagavad Gita. (Sadly, none of the translations into Russian that existed revealed all profound layers of information contained in it. That is why we put its translation in our own edition). This book features spiritual talks of the prince Arjuna with Ishvara (Father-God) who spoke through the body of Divine Krishna.

It was in Bhagavad Gita that were given the most comprehensive notions on what is God, what is man, what is the sense of life, what major laws determine the man's evolution.

It is possible to speak of the evolution of mankind, evolution of a particular person as well as of the evolution of God. All this is very closely related which will be evident from further information.

God's evolution proceeds in cycles called cosmic pulsation in modern astronomy. In Sanskrit these cycles are called Manvantaras, each consisting of Kalpa: a time period when in the definite region of space the world "manifesting" in material plane exists; and Pralaya: time period when the "manifesting" world disappears. The indicated stages of Manvantara are likened in Bhagavad Gita to a "Day" and "Night" of Brahman (the Holy Spirit).

Each Manvantara starts with the regular "Creation of the World" (in the Bible's language) and ends with the "End of the World" — when the conditions of the Creation are exhausted. God covers a certain cycle of His Evolution over each Manvantara.

Then the next "World Creation" will follow, and is can be quite different from the previous one. It is not to be supposed that in the next Creation Earth will be the same, with the same physical bodies of people and other creatures. No, everything will be in another way and there is no sense in guessing in what way.

By the beginning of each Manvantara God is manifested in His major three components:

a) protoprakriti — that is pre-matter (energy which later gives life to dense substance — matter),

b) protopurusha — that is the energy destined in the given Manvantara to develop in conditions, created for this purpose in prakriti,

c) the Supreme Purusha — that is the Creator, who remains to be the Witness of purusha's evolution in prakriti, the Goal of personal evolution of each unit of life, the Supreme Teacher.

As the result of each Manvantara the Creator adds to Himself those units of purusha that have been evolving in physical bodies, which managed to cover the whole cycle of their personal evolution and attained the Divine Perfection. All in the Creation is designated for that. In this is the sense of everything, whereas the Evolution of God Himself proceeds namely through this and in this it is represented.

That is the essence of everything taking place in the Universe.

By the way, some mystics bring up the question sometimes on the disappearance FOR THEM of time in meditations, hence, they infer, objective time does not exist. No, it does exist. It just can be different. Earthly time is measured by periods of circulation around its axis (24 hours) and around the Sun (year). These units of objective earthly time were divided by people into conventional units: months, hours, minutes, seconds. But the universal time is measured by Manvantaras.

Now we shall consider the evolution of purusha.

It starts with the formation of the first rudiments of initially diffusive energy on crystalline grates of planet's minerals. And each mineral has the stages of its "childhood", "adulthood" and "old age", then it comes to "death".

Thus formed clump, mass of energy gets incarnated into bodies of the most primitive organisms, later into vegetation bodies and develops in those from incarnation to incarnation.

Then follow the incarnations into animal bodies, from primitive ones up to more and more evolved.

Then evolution proceeds in human bodies.

That is each one of us has a vast preceding history of being incarnated into diverse bodies. But some of us went through a number of human incarnations, still there are also those who became human being for the first time. From the latter ones not to be expected to reach the scope of religious thinking. Their lifestyle is utterly different and the reason is not that they are bad ones, but they are still young irrespective of the age of their present-day physical bodies. At some time in the future they will also become highly educated thinkers. And later they will possibly fulfil the supreme predestination of man — merge with the Creator's consciousness.

This supreme predestination was indicated by both Jesus and Krishna.

Jesus said: be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect, that is strive to Divine Perfection, become such as God.

There is such a commandment in the New Testament: God is Spirit and those worshipping Him should worship in spirit and in truth. That is man has to realize himself to be not a body, but spirit, that is consciousness, mass of consciousness. And as consciousness, he should build his relations with God-Spirit, that is God-Consciousness, the Universal Supreme Consciousness so that to achieve merging with Him as a result. This final act of human evolution is dealt with in the "Book for the Perfects" by the Apostle Thomas: man has through his own spiritual endeavors to merge with the Father (it is said "with the King" in the book) and stay in this merging forever.

Bhagavad Gita deals with the same question to a far greater detail. There given are the fundamentals of buddhi-yoga — yoga of consciousness, yoga of work with consciousness.

So man has firstly to know the Atman, touch the energy of the highest, the subtlest space dimension within the bounds of his own multidimensional organism.

Through merging with the Atman, that is with the God's Spirit that lives in us (in words of the Apostle Paul), through knowing the Creator — first within our organisms and later without them — we ultimately attain merging with Him.

Direct your mind to Me, submerge your consciousness into Me — and you will then live in Me — in this way Ishvara expressed this thought in Bhagavad Gita.

There are also such words in it: if you devote the whole of your life, without reservations, to Me — you will come to Me absorbed in the Atman.

These are great and magnificent words, one of the best meditations brought to us by Bhagavad Gita: we reach merging with God through letting ourselves be absorbed...

And this was emphasized not only by Krishna and Jesus: the same idea was achieved also by Chinese alchemists, Tibetan buddhists, Mexican Indians and Muslim Sufis.

So we truly possess a possibility to submerge forever in the embrace of our Great Universal Beloved — God! But for this, firstly, our love to Him must be strong enough and secondly, we have to become worthy of this merging, that is to become perfect.

Now let's revert to considering the evolutionary chain: stones — plants — animals — human beings — God.

Stones turn out to have a somewhat peculiar memory. And it is quite possible, provided one has certain experience in yoga, to tap information from stones' memory.

To ensure the result the following three conditions should be observed:

first, stones should have been in communion with people. There are stones "unsociable", not "familiar" with people and never getting into this kind of contact. But stones that lay or are lying in busy places as for example near houses or in places where people rest — those get into contact willingly;

second, a stone should be warmed by sun heat or, say, by fire;

third, a person himself must be able of entering the subtle space plane. This is achieved by methods of raja- and buddhi-yoga.

If one enters a stone concentrating his consciousness on subtle planes, he can tap the information a stone has stored and which it witnessed in the past. So it is possible to sink into the times when a stone lay on the seashore... Episodes of war can be seen... It is possible to perceive strong human emotions out of a stone's memory... For instance, not far from this place we managed to find a stone, that served as a bench next to the house and witnessed first a high harmony and love of a young Finnish family and later — its utter grief when Stalin's troops approached and people had to abandon their dear-to-heart house... Many of our students could not restrain tears in this place...

Plants possess not only memory, but emotions as well (certainly on their — "plant" — level). All of us, no doubt, heard or read about experiments by Buckster, which later were repeated in many other laboratories of different countries. Their essence is that instruments registered electric-physiological response of a plant to a person's emotion directed to it at the distance of a few meters, as for example, an aggressive intent to get the leaf scorched...

Animals possess additionally to a memory and emotions, an intellect, they can think.

Man possesses one more possibility — to develop his consciousness. But it should not be inferred that all people possess consciousness. To obtain it they have to cover some stages of evolution in human bodies.

What is consciousness? Primitive atheistic materialism spoke of "public consciousness" or the same term was identified with the term "intellect". But fundamental psychology understands by this word a mass of self-aware energy. To make a parallel with Sanskrit — in it mind is termed "manas" and consciousness — "buddhi".

But to comprehend this in full is possible only to those people who have developed their consciousness by methods of buddhi-yoga. Only for them consciousness is the empirical reality rather than just mere words. Even in India there are schools, for adepts of which consciousness has not become a reality as yet and the word "buddhi" is interpreted by them as the "supreme mind".

So consciousness is energy and one of the man's purposes is to develop, increase the amount of this energy to the cosmic scale so that later, after the destruction of his "self" through special techniques of buddhi-yoga to "pour" his consciousness to the Consciousness of the Creator.

Practical experience of our school reveals that a person who has mastered the first course of raja-yoga (that is after about 5 months of practice) has volume of consciousness approximately the size of a tennis ball. And a few courses later he can reach any point within the bounds of Earth and space around it with his "crystallized" (that is developed) consciousness. (Far from all who started the first course manage to do this, of course). Such an effect is attained through the use of methods of increasing the mobility of consciousness (the latter be in the process of getting refined) and later through its "growing" ("crystallization") by special techniques — first within the bioenergetic casing surrounding body ("cocoon"), then — outside of it.

The principal provider of energy for the consciousness "under crystallization" is common food. That is the energy, released during biochemical processing of prakriti's particles in our bodies, is used to form the lower purusha at first and then Supreme Purusha. That is, in particular, what incarnations are needed for. And that is the reason why the evolution of human consciousness can not proceed in non-incarnated state.

Once again — purusha "feeds on" prakriti for its growth. With this purpose the whole material Creation exists — so that material physical bodies were placed in it, giving them the mechanism of self-reproduction and nurture in them the energy of purusha and the Supreme Purusha.

But to grow the "mass" of consciousness is far from easy: this is not a mechanic process. So that to make it all clear let us consider in detail the question of man's evolution in a row of incarnations. But prior to that the meaning of two terms must be given. One is "ontogenesis" — the development of a being within one incarnation, in one body. Another term is "psychogenesis", the development of the soul, evolution during a number of incarnations.

There exist a lot of patterns of people's psychotypes that reflect the stages of psychogenesis. Such systems were created in India, some of them were set forth by Gurdjieff , we also featured this matter in our publications.

The simplest system is the description of the gunas in Bhagavad Gita.

The first guna — tamas, that is darkness, stupidity, ignorance.

The second one — rajas, that is the stage when man starts the active process of his development, disengages himself from dumb primitiveness, grows as a fighter, and then — as a leader, organizer of other people.

The third guna — sattva, that is purity, harmony, bliss, happiness.

But Krishna warned in Bhagavad Gita not to be snared by sattva as it is capable of making one attached to itself by the happiness that man experiences on this stage of his development. Krishna calls to fearlessly break free from sattva and go further — to Ishvara — through further efforts at self-transformation.

But man can not by-pass the sattva guna, whereas it is only it that can secure him in subtlety and harmony, in peace.

In the same way it is not possible to by-pass the rajas guna inasmuch as in it the energetic qualities are mastered, and also obtained is the power necessary for further advancement. It is possible to say that the sattva in man must be supported by the power and energetic features, developed and mastered in the rajas guna. Sattva must be powerful.

In the past I made a few grave mistakes in estimation of some of my students, when I mistook those weak by energy and intellect criteria, but who had achieved refinement due to our methods of the first courses — for those who attained true sattva. These ones had a very painful fall-down into their initial tamas, when the work with them in our school discontinued. They were not able of standing on their own legs.

The following conclusions were made thus:

first — it is necessary to discern true sattva from tamas adorned with sattva;

second — serious spiritual work is not meant for the weak ones;

So teachers of high stages of yoga must be thorough in determining the psychogenesis of there disciples: whether they have mastered rajas, whether they have gained a foothold in sattva and so on.

In doing so it is of help to find out the psychotype of each disciple, applying a few various scales to him. This allows to have a clearer picture and avoid mistakes.

Now let us consider the next scale — Indian varnas as they are outlined in Bhagavad Gita.

In line with this pattern man represents the Shudra varna at the start. There are newly incarnated young souls. These people are capable of nothing on their own. Now they should learn from more mature (psychogenetically) people, offering the help in their work.

Then man becomes vaishya, when he has developed his intellect to such an extent that he can engage in business on his own, becoming an artisan, farmer, tradesman and so on.

Having developed himself in the preceding varna he passes to Kshatrya varna, that is he becomes a leader, organizer, a selfless fighter.

The supreme spiritual knowledge accumulated, practical religious path covered, first in the quality of a disciple and then of a religious leader, man — through methods of buddhi-yoga — attains Nirvana in Brahman, becoming a Brahman, a representative of the highest varna. (It is possible to speak of potential Brahmans, that is people who reached the potential of becoming in this very incarnation).

Now we are going to review one more scale of psychotypes.

In the beginning each person may feel himself to be just a physical body. This takes place in both psychogenetic and ontogenetic youth. And this in necessary: a child must first learn to live on Earth, on material plane, thus developing through this. Children must not be torn away from the physical plane with, for example, complicated meditations. They also should not be admitted to the religious truth too profound for their age.

Once again: any person should first gain strength in interaction with the physical plane — gain first intellectual power, accumulating knowledge and experience of solving the problems coming his way. Only after this he can start serious spiritual practice safely. For this work can be selected only those ones who are firmly "grounded".

So man on the first stage sees only the material plane and perceives himself solely as a material body.

The second stage is termed the "astral plane". There people start to understand and feel that there exists something other than matter. They begin to feel their non-identification with physical body, make attempts to grasp this more thoroughly, and among other means by mystical practice. They are still not capable of perceiving Divine levels of consciousness as far as they are not refined and can not have "access" into them. Due to this reason they find themselves involved into relations with non-incarnate beings of rude planes and sometimes they tend to consider them to be their "teachers" and often even "God".

The cosmic "astral plane" is an abode of the least developed, least advanced in evolutionary relation non-incarnate beings, including people. Those ones find themselves there who cultivated energetic rudeness in their last incarnation and became demons.

It is the state on the "subtlety — rudeness" scale that was predominant during the lifetime in body, that predetermines the way of the disincarnated entity — either to hell or to paradise, or higher than paradise.

The "astral plane" is admittedly divided into some sub-planes, the grossest of which are hell, impregnated with rudeness, atrocity, greed, falsehood.

That is why so greatly important in evolutionary relation is the favorable tendency of avoiding cross emotional states and all possible efforts to refine consciousness. Lust, anger and greed — such is the threefold gates of hell and those who get rid of these three — they make their own happiness — so Krishna said.

So hell is not localized, as often viewed, on the Moon or some other place on the physical plane. Hell is the rudest non-material layers of multidimensional Universe, where those find their way who have developed in themselves the hellish features during the lifetime in body. It is achieved by ignoring the fight with one's own vices and their active nurturing, as well as being over-enthusiastic in studying the "astral plane" and attunement with its residents.

That is why it is most advisable for every one to "pass" the "astral" stage of his development as quickly as possible.

With this purpose it is very essential to give most serious attention to ethic work over oneself in accord with the tenets of Krishna, Lao-tzu, Jesus, as well as teachings of the best spiritual schools, such as those of Ramakrishna, Yogananda, Rajneesh, Sathya Sai Baba, Juan Matus and other.

The stage following the "astral plane" in evolution is the "mental plane". Serious intellectual search for the Highest Truth and development of one's intellect through this search determine the ascent onto this stage. One, in particular, has to grasp the idea that on the Path to God, to one's own happiness, ethics should be given most serious attention. A person, mentally prepared for further spiritual work is the one who represents the "mental plane".

Those who achieved the high stage in ethic purification, who had an experience in subtle states of consciousness and made themselves grounded in them — those are on the next stage — the "supramental plane".

The following stage is the "subdivine plane". This is the abode of true spiritual leaders.

After this man ascends onto the stage called in Sanskrit "Brahman", or the Holy Spirit in English. Who are those that have attained this stage? — Those who entered the space dimension of Brahman with their developed, "crystallized" consciousness in this state became habitual for them.

Through further efforts over oneself one can "conquer" the last stage — to transfer his consciousness into the dimension of Ishvara (God-Father) and then merge with Him. So man finishes his personal evolution, his ascent.

A similar system of psychotypes is presented in Yukteswar's book "The Holy science".

Offered below one more Indian scale of psychotypes.

In accord with it on the spiritual Path man is a disciple at the start.

Then he must without fail become a householder — "grihastha". In a narrow sense "grihastha" is the one who holds a family, is experienced in material maintenance of oneself and other people. In other words, grihastha is the one, who developed himself to such an extent that he is capable of doing this. In a wider sense, grihastha is the person-organizer on a social scale, for example, a good director, political leader and so forth.

The grihastha stage incorporates two stages of the varna pattern of psychotypes : Vaishyas and Kshatryas.

The next stage is sannyasa, when man has to abandon "fuss" in which he has been perfecting himself before, and remain with God alone. Now he is busy only with spiritual service walking the Direct Path leading to the Lord.

There is also a scale of psychotypes designated specifically for those treading this "Direct Path".

In keeping with this scale man must first become a "Daughter". This is a "zero" stage to be mastered regardless of the body's sex. A "Daughter" is a person of strong, sure sattva. A "Daughter" possesses all the best features inherent in a women — harmony, tolerance, tenderness, readiness, to self — sacrifice, ability to wait, to forgive and so on. To be a "Daughter" also means to possess "firmness" in positive emotions and refined consciousness.

The next stage is a "Son". The stage can be "conquered" by those incarnated both in male and female bodies. A "Son" is the one who has mastered the correct "crystallization" of consciousness.

In one of apocryphal gospels such an episode is set forth. Disciples asked Jesus : Why does Mary Magdalene go with us? It is known that a woman can not enter the Heavenly Kingdom. Jesus answered : I'll make her into a man and she will enter Kingdom of Heaven sooner than you will.

A soul has no sex. Man incarnates in a body of this or that sex depending on what he is to master in the forthcoming life. Female bodies are instrumental for quicker mastering of one kind of qualities, male ones — of another kind. And God gives to the soul such a body that is needed most at the given time.

The one who has fully mastered the "Son" stage can become Brahman (here this scale coincides with the previous one).

And Brahman can merge with Ishvara.

Jesus said: Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is. So what is perfection? From the spiritual development's point of view it is essential to concretize this word.

We can say that Perfection consists of three components inherent in God: perfect Love, perfect Wisdom and perfect Power.

According to these three components of Perfection there are three trends of spiritual work:

1. Ethic work, represented by stages of karma-yoga (path of nearing God through ethically correct behavior) and bhakti-yoga (path of nearing God through Love).

2. Intellectual work (jnana-yoga) leading us to Wisdom.

Let us see what Wisdom consists of and the way of developing it. There are some religious trends considering that what is needed is only to pray day in day out with a few of standard prayers, lament over one's faults, take part in some religious ceremonies — nothing else is required. They even bar children from sports, reading books other than religious ones, going to cinema, watching TV... This influences their development quite negatively. Why? Because man represents not one single growing feature but a great number of them. A most excellent simile in found in Bhagavad Gita: man as field. Field is covered with sprouts each of them symbolizing a feature, quality, characteristic, property. And every one of us is to reach the Perfection through not one single feature, but through the whole of the field. Each of the valuable characteristics must be grown into maturity, and all the weeds must be rooted out.

Solely the complex development of man can further the quick treading of the Path. That is why man should experience sexual love, maternity or paternity and change as many workplaces as possible — so that to learn more, to travel over Earth — to observe life of other peoples, his body should be strong, developed whereas only in a harmoniously developed body one can progress on the stages of raja-yoga.

That is why sport is vitally essential for man, especially when his body is young. As well as one must go through rock-music, through dynamic rhythmic dances as they help develop energetic properties. Those having no energetic features can not make more on the Spiritual Path in view of lack of inner power.

And one's education must be possibly the widest since the development of Wisdom starts from accumulation of specific knowledge.

When earlier asked : what should we read? — I answered: everything! Even the editorials of the "Truth" newspaper should be read — so that to learn to distinguish falsehood from truth aiming at developing in oneself the capability of critical evaluation of information. Through this Wisdom is unfolded.

Wisdom is a) possession of a large amount of specific knowledge, including the supreme one, plus b) ability to use and integrate it and capability of intellectual creativity. Each one of us must become creative! This quality is mastered on the stage of grihastha (on its sub-stages from another scale — stages of Vaishyas and Kshatryas). It is not possible to become Brahman without having become intellectually creative on the stage of grihastha.

Let us note the fact that the technically and scientifically developed society of our days creates most rich possibilities for unfolding the intellect of its members. No doubt that the progress of science activates evolutionary process quite considerably.

3. And let us eventually deal with psychoenergetic aspect of spiritual development, spiritual work. It comprises three stages:

The first stage can be conditionally called the stage of hatha-yoga. It is aimed at regulation of one's body and energetics. This stage in particular implies deliverance from various kinds of ailments. But these ends can be met not solely through hatha-yoga methods but equally, say, through dynamic exercises of Chinese and some European systems and so on.

The second stage, that of raja-yoga, encompasses special work on cleansing and developing specific energetic systems of organism — chakras (dan-tiens) and meridians. (We shall not go into detail now concerning their role in organism and methods of work with them because this material was already published, in particular, in the book "Raja- and Buddhi-Yoga").

And the last stage of psychoenergetic development is buddhi-yoga which can start to be practiced only when preceding stages are mastered in full.

Let us make a short review of principal stages of buddhi-yoga (this will be concise inasmuch as this material was also published in the book "Raja- and Buddhi-Yoga").

At the transition phase between raja-yoga and buddhi-yoga one has to learn:

1. To transfer the mass of one's consciousness from one chakra to another. Criterion of the exercise being done correctly is the ability of looking through chakras.

2. To work with the "microcosmic orbit" what facilitates cleansing and refinement of energies inside the body and "cocoon".

3. Through numerous methods of refining consciousness to come to know the Atman in the depth of anahata chakra and attain Samadhi.

In case a disciple has mastered this and is ready to proceed with the work (in keeping with intellectual and ethical criteria which depends to a big extent on one's psychogenetic and ontogenetic age), the work can be continued within the frame of buddhi-yoga. It consists of the following stages:

1. Withdrawal of one's consciousness out of body into the "cocoon", its distribution in the latter and later — division of the "cocoon" into two parts — the upper (head) one and the lower (including trunk and legs).

2. Development of the "lower bubble of perception" .

3. Achieving the static aspect of Nirvana (in our practice — through the use of yantras).

4. Mastering the dynamic aspect of Nirvana.

5. Attaining the state of Nirodhi through the meditation of "total reciprocity". In this is achieved the stage of "no-I" in Brahman ("there is only Brahman but there is no me").

6. Through work with the "secret passage" Ishvara is perceived with His emanations called the "Fire" by Juan Matus. If by this time an adept is no more attached to earthly things (the state of Mukti) he enters Nirvana in Ishvara and perceives his identification with the Absolute.

7. From Nirvana in Ishvara may be done the work with body, what according to descriptions, allows to transform the energy of body in such a way that body gets dematerialized.

So we are through with consideration of the place of raja- and buddhi-yoga in the general Evolution within God-Absolute. We started this analysis with the moment when individual forms of life come into being and traced their development to the end that is when they lose their individuality in merging with God. They are emitted from Him in one quality and come back into Him in another, new, perfect one.

That is the Evolution of God. And that is our place in it.