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Gnani Path
I do get very emotional about knowledge, does Gnani preclude bliss? No, in fact it acknowledges that some people most naturally arrive at bliss by intellectual contemplations. That they are moved to awe by inspiring ideas, and religious observance may not speak to them. It’s not considered to be profane to be unmoved by ceremonial…
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Questioning Path
Gnani is more about the questions then the answers? Yes. They don’t deny that answers can be arrived at, but getting an answer and clinging to it is not the Gnani way. It’s the dynamic of inquiry itself that is their path. It’s almost like the question is a mind asana? Exactly. Knowing the path…
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Mind Merged with Matter
We have discussed the karma of action without attachment to outcomes. We have discussed the yoga of devotion that absorbs the self and thus liberates it. Gnani yoga is a bit more like the scientific ideal without the materialistic bias. In Gnani, through contemplation of ancient wisdom, meditation and speculative exploration of our experiences of…
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Growth in Understanding
Gnani yoga doesn’t of necessity preclude reverence for a deity though many traditions do not incorporate such reverence in their core teachings. This is one of the elements that all schools of yoga have in common. The gods they traditionally venerate are not seen as especially invested in anyone’s specific affairs. The wheel of karma…
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First Confront the Self
The reason one attempts to identify their path in yoga, is not because they need to classify themselves. That motive itself would be a serious stumbling block. To not move with knowledge is to lack real understanding. I like the idea of taking a stand with the knowing that you can move on from it.…
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Gnani Exercise
I have asked this repeatedly. It was actually in preparation for this point. Though the question still has no wrong answer, I can clearly explain the exercise. Shall we do a Gnani exercise? No one’s answers are wrong, but everyone who is willing should participate, and then I will explain. If you will, which paths…
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Natural Starting Path
Everyone tends to understand things best if they start in a particular way. They can take on any other point of view sure, but they will not understand it as well as they could if it had started on the right foot, started with the right path. My own reason for sudden shifts of mood…
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Many Lives in a Single Life
Shall I discuss the many lives in a single life? I do understand that people experience what seems like different selves. From both my experience and my research, I have both learned and witnessed this shift in others, often radical actually, and just as often unnoticed by them. They never lose their core context, but…
Category: Gnani Yoga
Gnani yoga is a bit more like the scientific ideal without the materialistic bias. In Gnani, through contemplation of ancient wisdom, meditation and speculative exploration of our experiences of the world, one seeks to cultivate a mind free of distorted awareness. You achieve correctness and thus unity with the divine through growth in understanding.
The trick of all the paths is to find the middle, even the middle of extreme. The middle is the heart, and a path with heart is worthy. Your heart just needs to be in it, and for some of us our heart is with our mind and not our body.
Return to chapter on Yoga.
“The meaning of our self is not to be found in its separateness from God and others, but in the ceaseless realization of yoga, of union.” Rabindranath Tagore (Indian Poet, Playwright and Essayist, 1861-1941)