In his section on Hinduism, Huston Smith discusses the Hindu belief in how they can obtain
the fullness of human potential. There are four different "paths" or yogas Hindus may take to reach
their goal of uniting with God. They have different paths for different types of people who choose
to follow them. Jnana yoga is for more reflective individuals, bhakti is for those whose emotions,
more particularly love, drives them to become closer to God, karma is for those who enjoy being
actively engaged in the work of God, thus becoming closer to Him, and raja yoga is for those who
use psychophysical experiments to try to find a way to God.
Jnana yoga is perhaps the most difficult "path" to God. Smith points out that only those
who have a strong sense of reflection, who try to change their lives and themselves by controlling
their thoughts, choose to walk this path. He states that the way to accomplish this is to use
discrimination to separate the "surface self" that everyone can see and the "larger self" that lies
hidden and dormant. There are three steps one takes on this path hearing, thinking, and applying
what they learned to change their self-identification. Hearing consists of learning from sages and
scriptures to gain perspective on ones being. In the thinking step one may be given something
about themselves to examine closely until they can see the difference between their surface and
larger self. The third step is where they shift their self-identification to completely become who
Smith states that bhakti yoga is the most popular of the four yogas mainly because it is
based on emotion, most especially love. The main goal of bhakti yoga is to turn all the love of the
heart to God. Those who follow this path try to love God, and show that love, even if they are not
loved back, their goal is to find joy in their lov
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