How to learn to truly know yourself on a deeper conscious level By Yogiraj Siddhanath

Today’s modern education system bestows much knowledge and many practical skills for living in today’s fast-paced world, but it fails to educate students on one of the most important elements of existence; specifically, it fails to teach individuals to know themselves. This “inner knowingness”, based completely on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, and interpreted by me, aims to bring student to a deeper level of Consciousness.

To introduce students into this wisdom of Inner Knowingness I have developed my teachings into three distinct parts: Mindfulness, Soulfulness and Consciousness. Mindfulness helps in dealing with external stress and strife by increasing awareness; soulfulness leads towards a state of peaceful coexistence and consciousness connects to the joyous divinity within, to live a fulfilling and holistic life on this earth.

In first state of Inner Knowingness, which is Mindfulness, the students learn to calm their mind. Imagine the mind as a still lake on a peaceful morning. If a stone were cast into the lake’s centre, ripples would spread. The mind’s incessant thoughts are like many rocks being cast around the lake, their ripples bouncing around the lake, reflecting off the shore and each other, creating a turbulent surface on the lake. These ripples disturb the soul.

Mindfulness is a state wherein a clean steady flow of thoughts originates – imagine one rock after another being thrown in exactly the same spot in the lake — without being interrupted by any other thought. The mindful person is able to gently rest his or her attention on a particular object. To get to mindfulness one has to still the mind by inward concentration. This is done by tutoring and tuning the mind toward exclusive attention. When the mind can focus its thoughts exclusively on one object and is absorbed totally, only then is the person said to be in a state of mindfulness or ideal meditation- dhyan.

Next you get into the next state of Soulfulness. This is when a trained and tuned mind is in harmony with nature’s flow. When it does, the mind melts into the opal glow. When a mind is steadily focussed on an object and aligned on it, it moves from concentration, where there is still some effort required, to a steady flow of thought with no effort.

Soulfulness is a state of effulgent intuitive knowingness. So deep is the state of absorption upon the object that the mind forgets itself and becomes the object, which then reveals its inner secret. The atom is split, the code is cracked and forgetting the apparent self the practitioner becomes the object that is the focus of attention, which now reveals the soul of its mystery to you. Depending on the object of concentration, it becomes an open book for you. The soul essence of a perfected intuition and an effulgent intuition is Soulfulness. This process in technical yogic terms is called samyam.

Yet in Soulfulness, although the intuitive mind is clear as crystal in the present, it is still the soulful mind as long as it harbours the impressions of the past. To move to the next level of Consciousness the mind has to be purified still further.

To make it clearer, in Mindfulness you see the light through a frosted glass, in Soulfulness the glass has been cleaned but you see the light still through a glass though it maybe crystal clear, in the third stage of Consciousness the final barrier of clear glass itself is also dissolved.

In this final stage the very fabric of the mind has to dissolve to enter the state of Consciousness. The fabric of the mind’s ultimate constitution is an undifferentiated homogenous consciousness of radiant ether. When this final veil of the mind light is removed, when the last thought is dissolved from knowingness then is the education of Inner Knowingness completed. The yogi practitioner now has transcended light and entered divine consciousness in a state called samadhi.

From Mindfulness to Soulfulness to Consciousness is the psychology of spiritual awakening and the education of Inner Knowingness.

Yogiraj Siddhanath is a Himalayan Master and direct disciple of Mahavatar Babaji. He will be in Australia in November 2019 to hold experiential talks and empowerment retreats in Sydney and Sunshine Coast.