‘Raja’ means king and thus Raja Yoga is the ‘Kingly Yoga’ or the ‘Royal Way’ of Yoga. Our mind is the ‘King’ in question, the master in our lives is the mind, and the control of mind is the primary concern of Raja Yoga.

Two thousand years old Patanjali’s ‘Yoga Sutras’ is considered the classic text on Raja Yoga. In fact Patanjali’s Aphorisms of Yoga is a compilation of previous works and teachings. Its four chapters deal with the discipline of the mind and psychic potential and psychic powers. Patanjali’s book is often called ‘Ash¬tanga Yoga’, eight steps yoga or eight limbs yoga and it is a more specific study of the inner or esoteric four limbs of Yoga. These four limbs are Pratyahara (a transitory stage from Hatha Yoga to Raja Yoga), Dharana (concentration), Dhyana (meditation, contemplation or sustained concentration) and Samadhi (states of ecstasy, realization and cosmic consciousness).

In a broader sense we can say that Raja Yoga is heavily concerned with Dharana or concentration. Concentration is the key to the Siddhis, the so-called supernatural powers (really supernormal abilities latent within us all) such as ability to concentrate on a single object for a longer period, photographic memory, self-anesthesia, mental calculations, etc. According to tradition, Raja Yoga confers upon the student the more spectacular psychic powers in the form of telepathy, clairvoyance, psychometry and related phenomena belonging to the field of parapsychology.

In a western parlance we can say that Raja Yoga can be defined as the science of concentrating and focusing the conscious mind upon the unconscious mind until an integrating process takes place between them, resulting in a new superconscious state of mind. Because Raja Yoga deals exclusively with the mind may therefore be considered as applied Eastern psychology. But with a difference.

In this modern age of Western psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers, we must point to a fact concerning the essential differences between Eastern psychology, as characterized by Raja Yoga, and contemporary Western psychology. Modern Western psycho-analysis may be said to have really commenced with the work of Freud, a hundred years ago. The psychology of Raja Yoga, as expounded by Patanjali in his Aphorisms, is nearly two thousand years old and the source from which Patanjali drew his material is even older, receding in the primordial times of human history .

Western psychology is based upon theory proved empirically by tests which have provided statistical data. Eastern psychology has as its fundamental basis, personal, subjective experience, but nevertheless proven facts. The Eastern student of yoga does not rationalize truth - he experiences it. It is an Eastern maxim that the student accepts nothing as true until he validates it by personal experience.

Western and Eastern psychology both have the goal of aiding man to solve his problems, in this case psychological problems, but where they differ is in methodology, in the practical approach to the basics of human psychology.

The Western approach limits the individual to staying within his problem and understanding it through ‘Psycho-analysis’, the Eastern approach sets no limits upon the method of solving the problem and rather would suggest that man should transcend his personality problems through the transmutation techniques of Yoga, in general, and Raja Yoga, in particular.

It seems that the global process in this area is going toward a needed synthesis of the best of Eastern and Western psychology. Where Eastern psychology lacks is objective providing empirical proof, the gathering of data and an objective verification. Western psychology lacks objective practical techniques to produce subjective changes within the patient or student.

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