Jnana, Karma and Bhakti Yoga 

November 25, 2025

K Siva Prasad

The Gita is perceived differently by different people depending on their perspective.

There are three different paths given in the Gita which are karma yoga, sankhya yoga and bhakti yoga. Karma yoga is ideal for someone who is mind oriented. Sankhya yoga is for intellect and bhakti yoga for heart oriented.

In today’s world, the majority falls in the category of mind oriented.  It is based on the belief that we are tied up with chains and need to work hard to break them to free ourselves. This implies that it is action oriented. Any conversation with them would end up with ‘What should I do now’. This path leads us to nishkam karma i.e. unmotivated action.

Sankhya yoga, also known as jnana yoga, is about awareness or knowing, but not knowledge. Its starting point is the belief that we are in a dark room.To quell the darkness, we have to just light a lamp as no amount of action or fight can remove that darkness. This path takes us towards ‘choiceless awareness’.

Bhakti yoga is about surrender. Its followers equate themselves to a wave which owes its existence to the ocean and the ocean being Paramatma, the Supreme Being.

In the beginning, the language and understanding of these three paths would be quite different. If a path of awareness is explained to a mind-oriented person, he would keep looking for some action for awareness.

Certainly, these are not watertight paths. The combination of these three shapes our experiences in our daily lives. For example, when karma and sankhya paths meet we will get awareness that the final destiny of all karmas is a mirage.Subsequently we get detached to karmaas well as karma-phal while performing any karma. Every karma becomes an act in a drama.

Just like the entire universe is a combination of three particles namely electron, proton and neutron, the spiritual world is a combination of these three paths.

Krishna says, all these paths have one common destination of realizing the self, which is free of ahankaar.

(The writer is a senior IAS officer in the Punjab Government.)