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Yoga and jnani Hinduism, as pointed out earlier, is a mixture of all the orientations and paths that are under discussion here. As a religion it may have developed in ancient times from Shamanism, through polytheism, to monotheism, but all three are visible in the religious life of India today. Hinduism contains well developed social, occult, and transcendent elements, as defined here, and, as noted before, seems to balance the needs of bhakti and jnani in its congregation. Likewise we find both via positiva and via negativa in its traditions, though the via positiva of Hindu Tantra lives somewhat on the fringes of mainstream practice. One of Hinduism's central jnani transcendent teachings is that of the yoga tradition, as codified by Patanjali at some point around 300 CE. Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, as they are known, represent a good example of jnani and the occult intertwined, and were reinterpreted by the esoteric Christian and Theosophist, Alice Bailey in the early 20th century. The bulk of the Yoga Sutras are a beautifully constructed treatise on transcendence, couched in the language of jnani, but acknowledging just the once, and for the sake of completeness, the bhakti path. It is divided into four parts, of which the third deals with occult powers, including the remembrance of past lives, telepathy or clairvoyance, astral travel, and feats of physical endurance (Alice Bailey counts 23 such powers in all). The term 'yoga' means union, but is used as an overall term for a range of spiritual practices and traditions. In the West a 'yoga' class is usually the yoga of postures, properly termed 'hatha' yoga. Patanjali's yoga is called Raja Yoga or Kriya Yoga. It is an entirely inward activity whose goal is a state termed 'samadhi'.
A more recent account of the yoga path and its relationship with the occult is to be found in the Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda, an approximate contemporary of Alice Bailey. Whereas the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with the exception of some of chapter three, can be read as a purely transcendent discipline, Yogananda describes a Kriya Yoga that is almost completely occult. In contrast, another approximate contemporary of Yogananda, Ramana Maharshi (whom Yogananda visited in 1935), seemed to teach and practice a transcendence devoid of any occult overtones. Examining one's responses to the lives and teachings of these two men can go a long way towards an understanding of one's own instincts to the two forms of spiritual life: the occult and the transcendent. They may be intertwined, but most of us will place an emphasis on one or the other.
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