Actionable Knowledge of Devotion: Gita and God 0005

Equivalence of Yoga’s Seeking Godhood

Since attainment of Godhood is the ultimate destination of all Yoga’s, at some stage along the path all Yoga’s get merged. With Karma Yoga at one stage the wise person concentrates on work as worship of God that leads him think about the God and he moves towards the knowledge or Gyan. The same is true of Dhyan Yogi who concentrates on the God through deep meditation. Raj Yoga helps prepare body and mind to sustain meditation on God. A gyan Yogi needs at some stage to make all his acts desire-free and hence adopts the same stance as the Karma Yogi. A Bhakta Yogi seeks to develop intense love for the God forgetting every other thing in the World: he becomes desire-free, destroys his ego through complete submission to God, thus getting over anger, jealousy and selfish motives. As intense love fills the Yogi, he is no more bound by Karma and is tuned to realization of Gyan, the ultimate knowledge. A Gyan Yogi at some stage learns to love God and hence everyone and everything. That helps him realize God and walk the final steps to Godhood.
“The wise Yogi who sees himself as equal and same with every other entity/ element/ body or thought or phenomenon is the Greatest among the Yogis.” (V.32)
“The one who does not depend on the effects of Karma to motivate him to Karma and yet carries out all Karma is both a Karmas Yogi and a Gyan Yogi. No Yogi can give up Karma until he reaches the stage when he/she is permanently and continuously in God-realization stage. Even then some acts continue without his conscious involvement or attachment.” (VI.1)
“ When the Yogi reaches a stage when his heart, mind, intellect and senses can no longer make him aware of sensual pleasure or pain, when he has become completely free of all possible desires, he is close to the final destination og Godhood.” (VI.18-19)
“When the embodied existence is permanently free of any connection with any desire, pleasure or pain and hence his mind, thoughts and intellect are permanently and solely established in the knowledge of God, the Yogi has attained Yoga-Samadhi.” (VI.23-26)
“For types of Yogis are found to worship God: those who are in difficulty and seeks relief from the God, those who seek fulfillment of their earthly sensual desires through God’s help or blessing, those who are seeking ultimate knowledge by concentrating their thoughts on me and those who have realized the ultimate knowledge. It is the last category of yogis who are in complete knowledge are the ultimate Gyanis or Tatwa Gyanis who have reached Godhood.” (VII.16-18)
“ The worshipers and Yogis get what they want from God since they concentrate their thought on the God with some desire or the other. If they desire wealth, they concentrate on one of the God’s images (Laksmi) and they get wealth. Those who worship to get education and/ or knowledge, they also get what they want through Yoga and meditation on my image of Education or Knowledge (Saraswati). Those who worship me to obtain physical and mental power superior to those of the ordinary beings, get what they want as they concentrate on one of God’s various images (Shiva/ Kali).”(VII.20-23)
“ The illusive power of the three Gunas makes most Yogis fail to concentrate on the full and comprehensive concept of God and therefore they are unable to reach Godhood. Those who succeed have the same knowledge as God is defined by” (VII.25-26)
“ Those who wants and strives to free themselves from the bondage of the nexus of Gunas-Desires –Senses, completely submits to the whole concept of God and ultimately realizes full knowledge about God and attain Godhood” (VII.29)
“The Yogi who reaches the ultimate stage of complete knowledge about God (the Creator and the Creation) goes beyond the ideas of the infinitesimal sub-atomic particles to an idea of formless all pervasive enlightened existence, merges with such divine existence of God” (VII. 9-10)
“The Yogi who mediates on the concept of God with complete single-point, focused concentration and faith all the time, easily transits to divine existence of God.” (VIII. 18)

For a Yogi who has reached Samadhi state, is always in God and hence work or no work, karma or no karma, rituals or no rituals, prayer or no prayers – all are immaterial to him. Till one reaches that blissful state, practice of Karma, or Bhakti, or meditation, yearning for Gyan or sacrifing for others or helping others, etc. , only keep him on the path towards godhood. He cannot really give up work or Karma. As different Yogis who began on the path of Yoga successfully reach close to the ultimate destination of Godhead, they show similar characteristics- desire-free Karma, completely sub-merged in love with or in prayer or worship of God, in meditation on the ultimate Gyan, love for all, unperturbed by external objects, events, outcome, seeing him in everything in this creation, virtually no disappointment, no pain or pleasure, no fear, no anger, no excitement, no self-ego. The equivalence of Yoga of different types is meaningful only in this perspective.
However, there would be many Yogis who will not show one or more of these charateristics : they are yet to reach closer to the ultimate destination.

All these are findings from empirical observations on those who practices Yogas. This is not to suggest that one can freely chose to decide to be a Yogi or remain in the path of Yoga.