What is Raja Yoga?

Raja Yoga is a system of knowledge and meditation practices to empower us to experience our own inner greatness and happiness and for creating positive change in society at large. It suggests that happiness is our true nature. 

At present the tendency of relying on the external world to make us happy makes us more and more dependent on the outside world and that tendency creates a corresponding sense of emptiness in the self. This life of dependency promotes more dependency and misery. The Raja Yoga method of meditation is aimed at helping us to get in touch with our original inner happiness.

The reason for our loss of happiness is that we are challenging some basic laws of nature.  Nature has a beautiful system of drawing attention to danger or the wrong direction by causing discomfort. For example, a wrong posture will cause discomfort before it damages any joints. The discomfort is meant to give a message. The same mechanism is at work in more complex discomforts like pain, illness and emotional sorrow.

Wisdom lies in learning before the pain message comes. When we come back to the greatness of the self and then interact with the world outside, such a life is both emotionally rich and healthy.  

This knowledge is the highest knowledge because it is based on wisdom. It frees us from dependency and makes us the master (Raja). The knowledge and its practice can free us from all forms of sorrow and allow our original state of peace, happiness and compassion to re-emerge.