A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga - Hardcover

Ramacharaka, Yogi

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1936690799 ISBN 13: 9781936690794

Publisher: Ancient Wisdom Publications, 2012

Synopsis

A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga by Yogi Ramacharaka (a pen name used by William Walker Atkinson) is a comprehensive guide to the principles and practices of Raja Yoga, which is one of the classical forms of yoga focusing on meditation, mental control, and spiritual development. The book presents yoga as a holistic system that integrates the mind, body, and spirit, offering practical lessons for personal transformation and self-realization.

Raja Yoga, often called the "royal path," emphasizes the mind's mastery over the physical body and emotions, aiming for a deep state of meditation and spiritual enlightenment. In this work, Atkinson distills these teachings in a way accessible to Western audiences in the early 20th century, while still rooted in ancient yogic philosophy.

About this title

About the Author

Born in Maryland in 1862, he began working life at 15 in his parent’s grocery store. He married at age 27, and became a successful attorney in Pennsylvania. However, stress and over-strain brought him to a physical and mental breakdown that ended in a financial disaster. He looked for healing and in the late 1880’s he found the principles of New Thought, and in applying them he restored his health, mental vigor and material prosperity. He began writing articles on the truths he had discovered. His “A Mental Science Catechism,” appeared in Charles Fillmore's ‘Modern Thought’ in 1889. By the early 1890’s he moved to Chicago, then a major center for New Thought, and became an active promoter of the movement as an editor and author. He wrote his first book, Thought-Force in Business and Everyday Life, in 1900, a series of lessons in personal magnetism, psychic influence, thought-force, concentration, will-power, and practical mental science. Soon after he met Sydney Flower, a well-known New Thought publisher, and in December 1901 he became editor of Flower's New Thought magazine (until 1905). He wrote dozens of articles in the magazine; and later on, he was a regular contributor to Elizabeth Towne’s Magazine, Nautilus. Throughout his subsequent career, Atkinson wrote and published over 100 different books, some under his own name and many under pseudonyms such as Yogi Ramacharaka, Theron Q. Dumont, Theodore Sheldon, Magus Incognito, Edward Walker, Three Initiates and Swami Bhakta Vishita. Among the first to develop the concept of Law of Attraction, Atkinson is considered, together with Orison Swett Marden and Wallace Wattles, the masters of self-development and positive thinking, and the real promoters of New Thought, a movement that came very much to life again with the Millennium He died November 22, 1932 in Los Angeles, California , after 50 years of successful career in law, business, writing, occultism, and a life surrounded by mysteries, including his own death.

From the Back Cover

Yogi Ramacharaka was the pseudonym of William Walker Atkinson a prolific writer, and his many books achieved wide circulation among New Thought devotees and occult practitioners. He published under several pen names, including Magus Incognito, Theodore Sheldon, Theron Q. Dumont, Swami Panchadasi, Yogi Ramacharaka, Swami Bhakta Vishita, and probably other names not identified at present. Atkinson has been identified as the author or co-author of 105 separate titles.

These works treat themes related to the mental world, occultism, divination, psychic reality, and mankind's nature. They constitute a basis for what Atkinson called "New Psychology" or "New Thought". Titles include Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World, and Practical Psychomancy and Crystal Gazing: A Course of Lessons on the Psychic Phenomena of Distant Sensing, Clairvoyance, Psychometry, Crystal Gazing, etc.

Ramacharaka's Advanced Course in Yoga Philosophy and Oriental Occultism remains widely respected as an excellent primer for the Western layman, despite the fact that it was 100 years old in 2004 and is understandably dated in some respects.

Edition details

• Publisher: Ancient Wisdom Publications
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1936690799
• ISBN 13: 9781936690794
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 242