Tag Archives: Jnana Yoga

Approaches for Working with Deep Seated Issues

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By George A. Boyd © 2023

There are several different perspectives on working with deep-seated issues across the Seven Rays:

First Ray – Activation of the will through will training (volitional therapy); use of attunements to destroy entities that contribute to mental and emotional distress (Attunement and transformation)

Second Ray – Understanding of the issues through listening and empathic reflection (humanistic therapy); loving kindness and compassion meditation (meditations drawing upon the source of unconditional love within)

Third Ray – Identifying steps to change and taking constructive action (coaching); identifying layers of the issue and leading attention to gain insight and release through reflective, receptive, and guided meditation (Jnana Yoga)

Fourth Ray – Use of creative exploration methods using drawing, giving a voice to unconscious issues, and acting out unconscious issues through psychodrama (Gestalt and imagery therapies); use of mindfulness and Vipassana to breakthrough and transcend the issue (Zen Morita and mindfulness-based therapy)

Fifth Ray – Dismantling false beliefs to uproot dysphoric emotions and dysfunctional behavior (cognitive behavioral therapy); using process meditation to identify where the issue originated and making the choice to re-create it (process meditation approaches)

Sixth Ray – Using psychotropic medicine, herbs, or vitamins to ameliorate symptoms (psychiatry and holistic healing); invocation of the Divine Succor and Grace, receiving Divine Healing and Comfort (prayer and pastoral counseling)

Seventh Ray – Working with the system and the environment to change the dynamics that hold the issues in place (family systems therapy); awakening the Kundalini Shakti to awaken and empower the Soul (Yoga therapy)

There are two approaches: external approaches work through the personality—these involve psychotherapy, counseling, coaching, and medical and nutritional regimens. Internal approaches that engage the attentional principle, spirit, and Soul—these include meditation and invocation.

We train our students in these inner approaches to work on their issues. These methods include transformation (Mantra Yoga), Attunement (Agni Yoga), Reflective and Receptive Meditation (Jnana Yoga), Mindfulness and Vipassana, Process Meditation, and awakening the Kundalini (Kundalini Yoga) in our intermediate meditation classes, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program.

We encourage you to utilize different inner and outer approaches until you find one that enables you to make progress with resolving your issues. We note that different external or internal approaches do not work for certain individuals; you need to identify one that allows you to extricate yourself from the thralls of the issues that bring you unhappiness and hinder your progress towards your worthy goals and dreams.

Can A Woman Become a Spiritual Master?

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By George A. Boyd © 2008

Q: Can a woman become a spiritual Master?

A: The answer to this question is yes. Some confusion has arisen in this issue, so it is important to elaborate upon this topic at greater depth.

A woman’s connection to the Logos is predominately through the heart, hence she is innately intuitive, and gravitates easily to the bhakti path of spiritual communion. Her great strength is love, compassion, and nurturing. She may also be attracted to the path of surrender and selfless service, Karma Yoga.

A man’s connection to the Logos is predominately through the brain, hence he excels in volitional, intellectual, and conceptual formulations of spirituality: teaching, moral instruction, and development of self-discipline. Men for this reason often do well in Jnana Yoga (intellectual, discriminative) and Raja Yoga (inner mastery through will) paths.

Over a series of incarnations in both genders, an individual has an opportunity to work on both heart and head connections with the Logos. Typically, by the Third Initiation, the individual has had sufficient experience with both connections to be relatively balanced, so there will be relative facility in all four forms of spiritual work: discipline of attention, mind, and body (Raja Yoga); discrimination of one’s own higher Nature and ability to use abstract contemplation (Jnana Yoga); development of selfless love, devotion, and inner purity (Bhakti Yoga); and expression of selfless service to humanity (Karma Yoga).

The Soul is neither male nor female; hence the Soul’s ability is not affected regardless of the gender of the current incarnation. So when the Soul is revealed in its own unborn Glory in the Fifth Initiation, its illumination is not dependent on whether the individual is male or female. The initiate can minister the Divine Light regardless of gender.

Where the question of gender is included is one of traditional teaching roles propagated at the level of institutions. Some institutions have developed policies that women cannot be ministers or priests, and a similar tradition is upheld in certain spiritual lineages. The impact of this is to maintain a Logoic “brain emphasis,” where will power, philosophical and ethical teaching predominate in these traditions.

So as long as these policies continue within institutions, females will be excluded from expressing the ministerial role within these social vehicles. However, the Divine Spirit does not recognize such boundaries devised by the intellect and imagination of humanity, hence empowers women as Its instruments, as readily as It empowers men. We should understand Grace transcends culture and social institutions: whomever has earned the requisite qualifications and Mastery in Light may become anointed and join into the Hierarchy of Illumined Ones.

How You Can Become Illumined and Enlightened

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By George A. Boyd ©2018

Q: What is Illumination? How do I become enlightened?

A: To understand how you do this, you need to understand something about the levels of mental functioning. To become enlightened, you have to move your attention to the core of your mind and unite with your Soul. But before you do this, you have to move through the other strata of mental functioning. So beyond the firing of neurons in your brain that instruments can measure, there are seven additional layers of mental functioning:

  1. Reason – At this level of the Conscious mind, the faculty of reason enables you to use analysis, deductive and analogical reasoning. With your reason, you are able to “test reality” to detect if a statement is true or false. You use this level of the mind when you investigate something or gather evidence to prove or disprove a hypothesis.
  2. Intellect – At this level of the Metaconscious mind, you are able to utilize problem-solving strategies to arrive at a solution to a problem. The intellect is capable of inductive, dialectical, and synthetic reasoning.Reflective and Receptive meditation – When you activate this connection to your Soul through the intuitive thread (Antakarana), you can ask the Soul questions and receive answers. So if you ask your Soul, “What is the purpose I am alive?” The Soul will give you an answer if this cord that connects your intellect with the Soul is functioning. You can also “sit in the silence” and passively receive guidance from your Soul through Receptive meditation.
  3. Psychic intuition – This type of knowing operates in your vehicle of consciousness in the Psychic Realm. Depending on your state of spiritual evolutionary development, this aspect of intuitive knowing allows you to read the “ethers”—the chemical ether (comprising molecules, atoms, and the subatomic unified field), the information ether, the resonance ether, the life force ether, the desire ether (e.g., the Law of Attraction), the thought form ether, and yet higher ethers up to the presence of the Soul. This form of knowing allows you to gather information about other people, so you can do “psychic readings.”
  4. Revelatory intuition – This type of knowing begins to operate in the First Planetary Initiation. It ostensibly reveals the meaning of scriptures, gives correspondences to metaphysical ideas, and constructs a philosophical framework through which you can understand the world. With sufficient acquisition of this knowledge from this source, you can begin to teach and counsel others about metaphysics and spiritual subjects.
  5. Illumined Mind downpour of knowledge – This aspect of the mind functions when you awaken the “Buddhic capsule,” the inmost mental stratum around your Soul. You can awaken this capsule through deep Raja Yoga or Kundalini meditation. When it is activated, there is a continuous downpour of intuitive knowledge, which shows you the content of every level of the mind, and reveals the Soul at the core of the Superconscious mind. This igniting of this deepest aspect of the mind is called Illumination or Samadhi. The discerning wisdom that operates at this level of the mind is called mandalic reasoning.
  6. Gnosis – This state dawns on the mind when you know the Soul from the Soul’s perspective. In Gnosis, you become the Soul. This state is also called Enlightenment.

Most people are familiar with layers 1 and 2—you use them at school and at work. Some people can also access layer 3, so they are able to ask a question to their Soul, and the Soul will give them guidance.

Usually people begin to tap into layer 4 when their Soul journeys onto the Psychic Realm; layer 5 appears when the Soul enters the First Planetary Initiation; and layer 6 dawns with the Soul takes the Fourth Planetary Initiation and it migrates onto the Buddhic Plane. There are spiritual practices that can enable people to prematurely activate layers 4 and 5—this typically results in distorted and confused information being disseminated.

You can learn ways to safely activate layers 3 to 6 in our intermediate meditation classes, in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program. We explore the deeper aspects of gaining illumination (layer 6) and experiencing Gnosis (layer 7) in the Mudrashram® Advanced Course in Meditation.

We encourage you to acquire techniques from intuitive meditation (Jnana Yoga), so you can begin to access the deeper layers of your mental functioning. We teach these techniques in our intermediate and advanced classes to help you reach the states of Illumination and Gnosis.

Faculties of the Soul’s Intuitive Knowledge

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By George A. Boyd ©2018

In our intermediate courses, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program, we teach about the seven chords of Jnana Yoga, the octaves at which the Soul uses its innate intelligence and intuition. You can read about these seven chords of Jnana Yoga in our Library [you can get a free library membership here—if there are particular areas that interest you, please let us know on this page where you sign up for the Library.]

This intuitive thread, which has been called the Antakarana, stretches from the physical brain to the Soul. With each meditation, insight, and revelation, you activate this thread and build the Soul’s knowledge and wisdom.

At the core of this thread there are seven essential aspects of the Soul’s intuitive wisdom. These include:

  1. Discernment – This enables your Soul to recognize its own nature and differentiate its essential nature from its vehicles of consciousness and the phenomena of the inner Planes. At the culmination of discernment, you gain Soul Realization, or Gnosis. This faculty has also been called Viveka, or spiritual discrimination.
  2. Mandalic reasoning – This faculty is anchored in the brain center of the Soul’s essential vehicle. It resembles a series of concentric circles (some perceive this center like concentric spheres) that mirror each stage of the Soul’s development—from the first nodal point of the Subtle Realm to your current state of spiritual evolution. Through mandalic reasoning, you can tap into the knowledge you have gained at each nodal point of the Path; you can also locate archetypes on different Planes that correspond with one another—this is the basis of the esoteric dictum, “As above, so below.”
  3. Multi-dimensional knowledge – This allows you to plumb the energetic thread that connects each of your vehicles of consciousness, and to access the knowledge of each of those vehicles. This operates through the seed atom of each vehicle of consciousness; it permits you to plumb the content corresponding to any nodal point in any vehicle of consciousness. This inner coordinate system allows you to locate specific content in any vehicle and to bring it up. This has been referred to holographic knowledge.
  4. Depth intuitive knowing – This enables you to know the identity state contained within each vehicle of consciousness, to declare it (e.g., the I AM declaration of Jesus in the Bible, “I am the bright and morning star”), and to empathically enter the experience of others. It is this faculty of intuitive connection that enables you to take the perspective of the Soul when you do healing, psychic readings, coaching, depth counseling or psychotherapy, or ministry.
  5. Connections with the intellect – This expresses in seven ways; most people utilize one or more of these connections with the Soul’s illumined mind to receive and communicate the information they gather:
    1. Visual-symbolic – This resembles a cascade of images or symbols that enter awareness in meditation. You need to reflect on each of these images to glean additional information about it.
    2. Verbal intuitive – This inspired verbal guidance and inspiration speaks through you and you hear yourself speaking it. This has been called satsang, channeling, or prophecy—depending whether the source of the information comes from, respectively, your own Soul, another spiritual entity, or the Divine Spirit.
    3. Silent thought reception – Here you receive guidance and direction through silent intuition. You hear the thoughts directed to you in your mind. This mode of transmission of guidance and information has been called telepathy. You commonly access this connection through asking questions to your Soul—we refer to this as the “tell me circuit.”
    4. Visual thought reception – In this connection type, when you ask the Soul a question, it moves your attention within you to the level where you can directly experience the essence about which you are curious. So, for example, if you wanted to know what is the form of the Divine at the top of the Abstract Mind Plane, your Soul would guide your attention to the level of the Continuum where you actually would behold that Being. We refer to this as the “show me” circuit.
    5. Behavioral guidance – Through this connection, you receive plans for sequences of action, blueprints for building something, or guidance for new behavior you have never practiced before. For example, this connection is activated in those who have a calling to build temples. We call this the “praxis circuit.”
    6. Creative inspiration – This is a downpour of poetry, artistic images, or literary or dramatic dialog that you capture through your particular artistic gift. You sense that your Soul is expressing through you, and you put it down, for example, through writing it, painting it, recording it, or sculpting it.
    7. Systemic view – This gives you the big picture of a system. We call this synthetic form of perception global intuitive perception. It enables you to view how all parts fit together into an integrated whole.
  6. Integration – This alchemical process enables you to change elements of your unconscious mind into an aspect of consciousness that you can utilize. You access integration through a series of evocative techniques drawn from meditation, psychotherapy, and hypnosis. When this aspect is operating, you typically will be encountering and interacting with an element of your unconscious mind, and progressively changing it until it can be re-integrated into consciousness. This form of intelligence has been called synthesis or integrative reasoning.
  7. Jnana Shakti – This is the innate energy of the Soul’s illumined mind that operates each of these six essential aspects of intuitive wisdom. This aspect is awakened during the sitting we give for Jnana Yoga in the Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and in the introductory session of the Mudrashram® Advanced Course in Meditation.

Each of the seven chords of the Soul’s intelligence and intuitive wisdom can be accessed through evocative questioning and attentional focusing techniques. You can learn about these methods in our intermediate and advanced meditation courses.

We encourage you to study the activity of each of these faculties of your Soul’s intuitive wisdom, and to learn methods to enhance their operation. This will enable to allow your Soul’s innate genius to flower and to have full expression in your life.