“Everybody has their different capacities relative to their abilities to make progress, but these first five Yogas—dejection, discrimination, action, knowledge, and renunciation—are the foundational processes that we will cycle through forever.”
The first six chapters of the Bhagavad Gita travel about halfway along the ascending journey of consciousness to our origin. They take us to the point of no return—where we come to know the Self, when consciousness reaches sufficient velocity and distance to transcend the gravity of the human condition. The individual, through effort, is now prepared for the next stage of evolution. It takes time. The first six chapters describe the journey to that point in detail.
They introduce the concept of yoga. Yoga is the conscious and willful action we take toward a purpose: to merge with the goal, to complete what we are striving for, to realize the Self or the Soul. Yoga has six aspects: the Yoga of Dejection, the Yoga of Discrimination, the Yoga of Action, the Yoga of Knowledge, the Yoga of Renunciation, and the Yoga of Meditation.
All are interrelated. They cycle continually. The basic teaching is the same: moving the consciousness out of its identification with the human condition into identification with the spiritual condition; moving out of identification with a separate egoic existence into a relationship with an overall field of consciousness of which we are each an expression.
Yoga is an unveiling. It requires a sense of the goal. It requires persistence. At times it requires effort while at other times it is a natural movement. These first six chapters are the effort part. It doesn’t come naturally. Being a human being comes naturally. Enjoying ourselves, indulging our whims and our moods and getting what we want comes naturally. This is the habitual human condition.
The Yoga of Dejection
The first chapter in the Gita points to a stage when one’s soul starts to rise to the surface of our awareness, creating instability, disruption and turbulence. It causes one’s normal identification with ego and life to lose its hold over our consciousness. If intense enough it shifts the foundation of one’s orientation to themselves and their lives.
In many cases dejection is the first sign of spiritual awakening. Yet it is not rare. It often occurs multiple times in one’s life but does not reach sufficient intensity to set in motion the next stages of the spiritual process. Even so these times cause some shifts out of one’s previous sense of self and life, setting in motion a new relationship with existence. They often bring with them deeper wisdom and greater self-awareness than before.
Dejection is not something we do, rather it is what happens when we reach a certain capacity to integrate the lessons that dejection brings us. At this point of transition, the soul—the consciousness associated with a body—becomes more deeply aware of how it creates its own bondage. This is a visceral, below-the-surface awareness. It is a turbulence going on deep in the vibration of consciousness itself, so it is hard to know what is going on.
The Yoga of Discrimination
The second chapter points to the state of consciousness that comes if we are able to find a way to collaborate with the process that dejection sets in motion. It is the by-product of learning to own the territory of our new way of being. We begin to see what binds us and what doesn’t, what frees us and what holds us back. The Yoga of Discrimination takes us to a place where we begin to understand the distinction between who we are as a personality, and who we are as that which has a personality. Discrimination helps us to understand the nature of dejection, to understand the nature of our condition, and to begin to take actions that extricate us.
The Yoga of Action
The third chapter of the Gita happens when we begin to recognize that we have some power to change what has up until now ruled our attention. We begin to align with the shifts that the two previous yogas have set in motion. We taste new insights and glimpses of freedoms and possibilities veiled from us previously. We discover what actions do not serve. And we discover those actions which serve, those which take us away from our identification with that which binds us, taking us towards greater freedom and truth.
As our awareness expands, a sense of purpose arises. We begin to see that what has been happening is allowing us to grow and learn in new ways. We begin to see the difference between outer personality and the inner being. This process includes inquiry, spiritual practices, talking with others on the journey, and being exposed to people whose radiant presence can enhance the experience of our own presence. The more one takes these actions, the more the discrimination grows, the less dejection and suffering one goes through.
The Yoga of Knowledge
Discriminative action of the third chapter deepens in time and becomes a form of direct knowing. A knowing that goes beyond mind alone. This knowledge is a recognition of the truth of things. A way of knowing what is true and what is false. A way of knowing what it is to be a self-aware person in the world and the purpose of life. A way of knowing the truth of our Self, of what is real. With this truth knowledge comes the first taste of freedom, the freedom to escape the pit of bondage. True knowledge is the ability to experience, to have glimpses, to know that which we are without a personality, without a story, a mind, emotions, beliefs, or attachments.
True knowledge provides the ability to build a sense of who we are outside of that condition we are awakening out of. This truth gets stronger and stronger the more we pursue this yoga. The pull of outer life and our own habits, preferences and repulsions, addictions, negativities, and the behaviors that have formed our individual identity are now recognized and thereby lose their authority over our consciousness. The greater truth now has sufficient momentum to overcome the inertia of our old way of being.
The Yoga of Renunciation
When knowledge comes to a certain point, we begin to step out of the habit of the old personality and enter the stage of the journey the fifth chapter points to, where renunciation is automatic as we turn our attention inward from its outward orientation. The soul now has sufficient integration with human ego, has come to recognize it is the cause of how life shows up and has become a collaborator in its own undoing and has a greater sense of purpose and of the truth that is growing within.
This falling away is a sign of the maturation of these first four stages of dejection, discrimination, action, and knowledge. The more conscious the renunciation, the easier it gets. We come out of the “who” we are and become more of the “what” we are. Renunciation further reinforces the earlier stages of discrimination, right action, and knowledge. Eventually renunciation becomes natural because it brings us back to what is real in us, rather than what has been programmed or conditioned.
The Yoga of Meditation
When each of these previous five stages reaches a certain threshold, we slip gracefully into the final stage of this first book of the Bhagavad Gita, The Yoga of Meditation, the sixth chapter. Then we find that which lives us. That which we essentially are starts coming forward into the outer personality, causing it to grow quieter. The emerging being is always accompanied by quieting of the mind, emotions and the pull of the senses. Things become still, settled, present. Left behind is the frantic restlessness, the treading of water. Our lives begin to sink into the life-giving ocean of stillness that we actually are. This is meditation.
Meditation itself is the yoga of this stage of the journey. It is when we find the inner peace and the fulfillment of merging with that which is the source of our consciousness. Focusing on our inner Self and turning away from external distractions leads us into the next stage of the Bhagavad Gita’s journey. By remaining still and silent for extended periods, we gradually uncover deeper levels of our true nature. Meditation leads to samadhi, samadhi leads to direct experience of our universal nature and its tie to all the creation.
Summary
Everybody has their different capacities relative to their abilities to make progress, but these first five Yogas—dejection, discrimination, action, knowledge, and renunciation—are the foundational processes that we will cycle through forever. But each time we cycle through we are at a different vibrational frequency from before. We start this journey at one point of dismantling the habit of ourselves; then we shift to the next point until that point is complete; then we shift to the next point, and so on. This cycling is necessary even after we have become grounded in the truth of what we are, because when we reenter into matter the world tries to coat us again. We must continuously apply our discrimination, take actions that support this truth of what we are, periodically practice renunciation, and get back in touch with what we are through knowledge.
For most people these first six chapters take many years, even lifetimes; learning to detach from the personal self and discover the individual impersonal self can be laborious and difficult, with many traps and distractions that prevent one from coming to our true Self, the central being. But once this is attained there arises the ability to step back, to be less attached to what others say, or to getting our way, or to how things turn out. We move out of the human condition into our true nature. As we move into relationship with our inner Self, with that which lives our life, we are no longer lost in those things. This is the point of no return. We have exceeded the pull of human identity. We are no longer lost to ourselves.
These first six chapters include almost everything that we have learned in nearly all traditions—the individual coming to a state that could be called individual liberation, the liberation from being a person to being consciousness—although it may not necessarily be well integrated. Ninety-five percent of seekers are in this process of becoming stable in the Self. Of that 95 percent there is probably another 20 percent who have glimpses of the next stages of the journey. These glimpses come and go, rare experiences of the universal that can come and then be completely forgotten for lifetimes before they come again. What is more common is to become stable in the Self—the state where your identity as yourself as matter has switched to that of your Self as spirit.