Three types of yoga explained: classical yoga, bhakti and tantra

Sitting under the bodhi tree, waiting for enlightenment

Good news! Not all yoga is about emptying your mind, or sitting in meditation for hours like Buddha under a bodhi tree! I believe there is a yogic path for everyone, to suit our different beliefs about life and Consciousness, and our different mental and spiritual proclivities.  

Comparing these three Indian spiritual traditions shows the variety of practices, from the practical to the more esoteric. While all yoga is ultimately about the enlightenment of man (to put it broadly), each has different views on what the problem of human existence is, what the answer is, and how to get there.

The view (darśana)

Patañjali

Classical yoga is the one you’ve probably heard about the most – or more specifically, one man and his book. Of all the ancient wise yoga dudes, Patañjali is probably the one whose name you’re familiar with, along with his 4th-century text, Patañjali’s Yoga Sutras (aphorisms containing concise, precise teachings). Patañjali said that our problem is that we get caught up in our mind’s activity, and we falsely identify with prakriti – materiality, which includes our physical self, mind and thoughts. This stops us being aware of our true nature, purusha – the soul. We don’t know who we are at our core. 

His yoga centres on sitting still in meditation to quieten the mind and on asceticism. This way we can deeply understand reality and separate the soul from the fluctuations of the world and the mind, leading to the soul’s liberation – returning to our true nature, bliss, beyond the ego and mind. His yoga is not “union” (a translation you may have heard); it is viyoga (this separation, or dis-union). 

Patañjali didn’t invent the method in his book; he systemised the yoga that was already being practised and recorded it as a practical manual.

Bhakti 

Bhakti is the path of devotional love for God. In contrast with Patañjali, Bhakti sees the problem of human existence as separation from the Divine and the solution as devotion to God. Its practices are not commonly about meditation but are devotional, surrendering to God and seeking the grace of God. The Narada Bhakti Sutras, a 12th-century text, defines bhakti as Sā tu asmin parama-prema-rūpā (“Bhakti has the nature of supreme love for God”, sutra 1.2). 

Patañjali was around at the same time as bhakti was developing, and both views saw the individual soul, our individual consciousness, as separate to the greater Consciousness, or God. In other words, they shared a dualistic view. Bhakti sought enlightenment by uniting with God. But Patanjali said our problem is not separation, it’s false identification with prakriti; we don’t need to unite with anything as we already are the Self.

Tantra 

Tantra began to appear in a very early form in the 4th-5th centuries, around Patañjali’s time and when bhakti was developing. In contrast to their dualistic view, Tantra sees everything as ultimately all one reality, and us as individual manifestations of this one reality. This reality has two aspects: consciousness, called Śiva (pronounced Shiva) and energy, called śakti (shakti). These manifest as the universe and everything in it. The human problem is that we become contracted, limited forms of Consciousness. The solution is to expand our human consciousness back to its original Divine nature of bliss and love. Tantra is a tool for this expansion. 

Unlike Patañjali’s meditation, the mind can be really quite active in Tantric meditation, with numerous different techniques such as visualisations and mantras, and other practices besides meditation, such as devotional. Let’s compare the practices of these three yogas. 

The practices

Patañjali

Patañjali’s yoga is samādhi: meditation – bringing together the scattered energies of the mind, He defines the practice of yoga as Yogaś-citta-vr̥tti-nirodhaḥ (“Yoga is restraining the activities of the mind,” sutra 1.2). Once our thoughts are restrained and we’re not distracted, our awareness can rest on the true Self, purusha. Otherwise we stay absorbed in the mind. The purpose of this yoga is to grow in Self-awareness and to live in the world yet stay in that state of Self-awareness, through repeated, detached meditation. 

He has two categories: samprajñāta (‘with thought’), meditation with one focal point e.g. a physical object or a mental focus, and āsamprajñāta (‘without thought’),  the ultimate thought-free state, or pure Awareness. Though, in my favourite of his sutras, 1.39, he also says: Yathābhimata-dhyānādvā (basically, meditate on anything you want)!

Bhakti

Bhakti is a heart-centred practice, seeking liberation through love, where you devote yourself and all your actions to God, abandon all sensory pleasures and attachments except to God, surrender to and worship God, and open your heart to receiving the love and the grace of God. Once this is attained one becomes not only fulfilled, loving and content, but realised and immortal. 

Unlike classical yoga’s quiet meditation, bhakti practices are active and devotional, to open the heart to the love and grace of God. These include. puja (ritual offerings to the deities), satsanga (spiritual gatherings), tirtha yatra (pilgrimage to sacred sites), kirtan (repetitive chants singing God’s praises) and bhajan (singing devotional poems).

Tantra

The view prior to Tantra was that you have to devote yourself to spirituality and meditation, to transcend the mind, and this is prevented by enjoyment of and attachment to worldly pleasures.. Tantra was radically different. Its approach to the material dimension is that since everything is one Consciousness, nothing is intrinsically pure or impure (meaning good or bad). Separating things this way maintains duality, whereas Tantra’s aim is to transcend duality, even in dark places. Instead, enjoy everything in life – the body, food, art, material objects – but do so with awareness of the Divine in every aspect. Know that these worldly objects and activities are not the cause of the peak experiences of love, beauty and happiness but are the triggers for what already exists in our hearts. This doesn’t mean all actions are equally desirable, e.g. those that have a negative impact on our health or on other people. 

Tantra has a multitude of practices to achieve its goal of mukti, freedom from karma/ karmic conditioning (effect of past actions). It includes meditations on pure Awareness (on the nature of the Self) but its distinguishing feature is its many meditations where the mind is active with visualisation and practices that work at a physical, mental and emotional level – all radically different to earlier yoga, which merely observed or largely ignored these realms. These include breathing techniques, rituals, prayer, puja, mandalas (symbolic visualisations to meditate on), mantras (chanted sounds to access deeper levels of Consciousness), and processes to cleanse the nadis (body’s energy channels) so that the energy of kundalini (the power of human consciousness to expand back into its original state of universal consciousness) can rise through the sushumna (the central channel) and ultimately bring enlightenment.