Jnana Bhumikas (ज्ञानभूमिकाः)

Jnana bhumikas (Samskrit: ज्ञानभूमिकाः) are the seven stages of unfoldment of spiritual knowledge. Described in Yoga Vasishta, a seminal work in the field of Vedanta, these seven stages are attained by the Sadhakas or seekers of the highest knowledge to know the Self or Brahman. Jnana in general means knowledge and refers specifically to higher knowledge in Indian texts.

In contemporary psychology, the term cognition is a generic term for any process whereby an organism becomes aware of, or obtains knowledge of, an object or event. This includes the processes of sensation, perception, recognition, conceptualization, judging, reasoning, and so on (English and English 1958). As in the case of many such terms, there is no exact equivalent for cognition in Sanskrit. Monier-Williams’s English–Sanskrit Dictionary gives jñāna, vijñāna, and prajñāna as the Sanskrit counterparts of cognition. While these terms connote shades of the complex views of knowledge, they do not emphasize the process aspect of the contemporary usage of the term cognition.

Introduction

In the Advaita system, vidyā is gained through a specific kind of meditation, mainly involving the wise discrimination (nitya-anitya-vastu viveka) between what is changing and what is permanent, and hence its approach is called the path of knowledge (jñāna mārga). Thus, jñāna-, bhakti-, and karma-yoga, the three main forms of “applied psychology” in the Indian tradition involve the systematic modification of the three basic capacities of the jīva, namely thinking, emotion, and action.