Encyclopedia of Spiritual Knowledge

Buddhi yoga is the highest stage of yoga. This term is translated as “yoga of consciousness” and denotes a system of methods for developing the consciousnesses. Buddhi yoga allows one to traverse the final stages of the personal evolution.

Within the frame of the “eight-fold path” of the Patanjali's yoga (yama, niyama, asana, pranayma, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana, samadhi), buddhi yoga represents the content of the eighth stage. There are indications to it in the Bhagavad Gita.

There is also the following precept in the New Testament: God is Spirit and they who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth (John 4:23-24). That is man has to perceive himself not as a body, but as a spirit, i.e. a consciousness, a lump of consciousness. And as a consciousness, man must build relationships with God-Spirit, that is with God-Consciousness, the Universal Supreme Consciousness — so that to achieve Mergence with Him as a result.

The Stages of Buddhi Yoga

In buddhi yoga there are the following stages:

1. Withdrawal of the consciousness from the body into the cocoon, distributing it there and then — dividing the cocoon into two parts — the upper one (the region of the head and neck) and the lower one (the region of the trunk and legs).

2. Development of the lower bubble of perception in the scale of the planet by filling the planet’s form with oneself as a subtle spiritual heart.

3. Cognition of Nirvana, including its dynamic aspect. Mastering the state of Nirodhi through the meditation of total reciprocity. In it one achieves the stage of “non-I”. All this is possible to achieve only by transforming oneself as a spiritual heart of the size described above.

4. The developed consciousness of the spiritual warrior, who has mastered the state of a subtle spiritual heart expanding beyond the bounds of our planet, merges then with various manifestations of the Divine Fire (one of manifestations of the Holy Spirit) and with other subtlest aspects of the Absolute, except for the Creator in His Abode.

5. Having cognized empirically the entire structure of the Absolute, the spiritual warrior is accepted by the Creator in His Abode, gradually accustoms himself or herself to the state of Mergence with the Creator and then acts from it in the world of evolving purusha. The latter is possible both from the non-incarnate and incarnate states.