Dhyana Yoga is the concluding stage of the yoga practice of Hatha Yoga. It is the realisation of a mental conception of mind’s union with the Supreme self\u2014a state of God-consciousness.<\/p>\n
While the yoga asanas influence your hormonal system and the pranayama controls your ‘prana-shakti’. It is the Dhyana Yoga that lends you the consiousness factor of your spiritual energy, awakening in you the power of intuition (the jiva-shakti).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It is intuition that is responsible for all your ‘karmic’ (action) energy, that is, the will and potential for your daily routine and business activities.<\/p>\n
Dhyana Yoga, in other words, is the awakening of your ‘sushumna nadi’, that leads you to the concentration of your mental energies into a state of dynamic tranquility.<\/p>\n
With a relaxed mind by daily practice of Dhyana Yoga, you can perform even your hardest professional duties with greater ease, efficiency, courage and perseverance extending to longer periods of time without any feeling of tiresomeness.<\/p>\n
His holiness, Swami Satyananda Saraswati of the Bihar school of Yoga has beautifully described Dhyana Yoga by giving a Pauranic analogy. He says that the mind is like an ocean.<\/p>\n
We must utilize ‘sushumna nadi’ as the base and churn the ocean of mind into awakening, to bring out the jewels.<\/p>\n
The jewels symbolise the positive and the negative qualities of the mind (devas and rakshasas), which are controlled in a balanced manner by the ‘sushumna nadi’.<\/p>\n
In the affairs of life, both the qualities appear in the form of tendencies of the ‘pravritti marga’, that is, the life of involvement, and the ‘nivritti’ marga, that is, the life of renunciation.<\/p>\n
Both are indispensable to life, but when controlled, one can handle the affairs of life successfully and without any tension, the cause of many diseases.<\/p>\n
Life should be well-regulated between these two extremes. One is reminded here, of the words of a dialogue between Chitralekha, the court dancer of king Vikramaditya and her lover, Bijagupta, the Samanta, or minister of the king.<\/p>\n
Both have gone out at the dead of night in their routine of courtship, when in a state of sudden awakening, Chitralekha poses a question to Bijagupta, by asking him as to who are the people who keep awake at the dead hour of night.<\/p>\n
Bijagupta replies in brief, “the Yogi and the Bhogi (one indulging in luxury)”. Chitralekha, further questions, ‘why so?’ Bijagupta reveals to her by saying that the Yogi tries to gain what he lost in the previous birth, while the Bhogi is busy squandering away the gains of that birth in his present birth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"