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Updated: June 20, 2025
Raja Yoga with its methods and exercises, is the path of knowledge, through application; concentration; meditation. The practice of Raja Yoga will lead the student to the path of Gnani Yoga; and to the realization that Bhakti Yoga, the way of love and service will be included, not as an arduous task; not as a study, or as a means to an end, but because of the love of it.
The follower of Gnani Yoga seeks the occult or hidden wisdom, and always has before him the idea of whether this or that be of the Self, the atman, or of the self, the personal, gradually eliminating from his desires all that does not answer the test of its reality in spiritual consciousness; he welcomes experiences of all kinds, as so many lessons from which he extracts the fine grain of truth, and throws aside the husks; he accepts nothing blindly or in faith, but "proves all things holding fast to that which is good"; not that he lacks faith, but because the very nature of his inquiry is to discover the interior nature and its relation to God.
He who wishes to develop by "knowing" by studying the fundamental principles, and the wonderful truths underlying Life, follows the path of "Gnani Yoga." And he who wishes to grow into a union with the One Life by the influence of Love, he follows the path of "Bhakti Yoga." But it must not be supposed that the student must ally himself to only a single one of these paths to power.
This is not the place for it it belongs to the subject of Gnani Yoga rather than to Raja Yoga and we touch upon it here, not for the purpose of trying to explain the scientific side of it to you, but merely in order that your minds may be led to take up the idea and gradually manifest it in conscious realization. We are following the latter plan, for this course is a Course in Raja Yoga.
But before doing so we must call the attention of the student to the fact that, in order to understand intelligently what we are saying, he must carefully re-read the "Fourteen Lessons in Yogi Philosophy" wherein the details of the teachings are set forth that is the fundamental truths are explained. In the "Advanced Course" and in "Gnani Yoga" the higher phases of the teachings are presented.
There are many in the world of to-day who feel the urge toward the path of Gnani Yoga, because of the conviction that is forcing itself upon every truly enlightened mind, that civilization with all its wonderful achievements, does not promise happiness, or solve the question of the soul's urge.
What is known as "Gnani Yoga" deals with the scientific and intellectual knowing of the great questions regarding Life and what lies back of Life the Riddle of the Universe. Each branch of Yoga is but a path leading toward the one end unfoldment, development, and growth.
In short, the educated, and the well conditioned, if he be a thinker, and not submerged in maya, lost in the personal self, inevitably finds himself searching for the real in all this labyrinth of mind creations and sea of emotions, and then as a rule, he seeks the path of Gnani Yoga, because his intellect must be satisfied, even though his heart calls.
Another sect held to the more scientific occult form of the gradual evolution of the soul, by repeated rebirth, on the physical plane, from Lower to Higher, as we have set forth in our lessons on "Gnani Yoga."
In his book "From Adam's Peak to Eleplumta," in describing his experience while visiting a Hindu Gnani Yogi, he says: "And if we are unwilling to believe in this internal mastery over the body, we are perhaps almost equally unaccustomed to the idea of mastery over our own inner thoughts and feelings.
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