Sadhguru Answers Question About Raja Yoga And How To End Relationship Gracefully

Question: What is Raja Yoga? Is it the highest form of Yoga?

Sadhguru: Raja means King. Yoga means a way. Someone believes their way is the King's way. Whatever path anyone is walking, they must see that as the best thing. Otherwise, they can never walk the path. If you are sitting here thinking there may be some other place where things happen better, it just cannot work for you. If you pursue a spiritual process, you must pursue it because right now you see this as the best thing that can happen. If you think there is a better way, just go there immediately; otherwise, you will waste your life. So someone called their Yoga as Raja Yoga, because they believed theirs is the King's way. And different people are calling different things as Raja Yoga.

The only four realities in your life right now are: body, mind, emotion, and energy. Whatever you wish to do with yourself, it must be on these four levels. If you use your emotions and try to reach the ultimate, we call this Bhakti Yoga – the path of devotion. If you use your intelligence and try to reach the ultimate, we call this Gnana Yoga – the path of intelligence. If you use your body, or physical action to reach the ultimate, we call this Karma Yoga – the path of action. If you transform your energies and try to reach the ultimate, we call this Kriya Yoga. That means internal action.

These are the only four ways you can get somewhere: body, mind, emotion, or energy. Which is the most appropriate for you? Is there anyone who is only head, no heart, hands and energy? Or is there anyone who is only heart, not the other things? No. In one person the heart may be dominant, in another the head may be dominant, in yet another, the hands may be dominant. But every individual is a combination of these four, so only if it is mixed in the right proportion for you, it works best. What we give for another person, may not work well for you. That is why on the spiritual path there is so much stress on a live Guru. He mixes the right combination for you.

Question: How can one face the end of a relationship gracefully?

Sadhguru: There are many types of relationships we hold in our lives. Among them, there are certain relationships that bind us more strongly than others because they go beyond just emotional and psychological support. The body has something called runanubandha, a certain kind of physical memory. If you just touch something or someone once, the mind might forget, but in the body, it is registered forever. In Yogic culture, this physical memory is called runanubandha.

You pick up runanubandha in many ways, but sexual relationships have the maximum impact in terms of the amount of memory they leave. When you separate from someone, ripping this memory apart is almost like tearing yourself apart. Most people think that the best way to conduct a separation like this is to immediately jump into another relationship of the same kind. No, it is extremely important that the body has enough time to work out the memory and keep it at a certain distance. Otherwise, you will render yourself to a space where making yourself peaceful and joyful will become extremely hard in your life. So, conducting this process gracefully is important.

Thinking of retribution or punishing someone at a time like this is not going to transform your life. Initially, it gives you some satisfaction, but when you look back after some time, you will feel ashamed of yourself. So do not go that way. This is an opportunity for you to see, "What is the nature of my life? Why does it feel so incomplete that it needs another person to fill it?"

Someone can cheat you, run away, divorce you or fall dead. How they do it does not matter, but essentially, you feel you are denied something. You can be denied only because you are in a certain illusory state of believing that you are half a life and you need another half from somewhere. One aspect of Yoga is to set up your energies in such a way that you are complete by your own nature – you do not need anyone or anything to make you complete. If you interact, it is a contribution and not a seeking to fulfill yourself. If you blossom as a complete life, relationships will be of a completely different nature.

(Sadhguru is a Yogi, mystic, visionary and a New York Times bestselling author. He is also the founder of Conscious Planet – Save Soil)