However, the earliest traces of Hinduism known stretch back to approximately 3000 BCE (Wikipedia). Hinduism is largely concentrated in India. Brahman can be defined as the logical order in the world, the cosmos, the truth or ultimate reality. Brahma is the manifestation of Brahman in the natural world. He appears in many different forms or representations; among the most important ones are Shiva, Vishnu, Ramah and Krishna. (Flesher) .
The ultimate goal in Hinduism is to achieve liberation from the cycle of death and re-birth. Ultimately, this is achieved by realizing that one's atman (inner God) is essentially Brahman. To discover this, one must go through a process of self-contemplation, meditation and yoga. (Flesher). There are several kinds of yoga that will be further explained later in the essay.
Meditation is a very important practice in the Hindu religion. The purpose of meditation is to experience atman as Brahman. It is used as a mean of controlling the human mind in order to look deep within one 's self to find strength and truth, which in turn leads to experiencing the divine. When experiencing the divine, one can expect to have a higher understanding of the Self, as well as a better quality of life. Hinduism provides different paths to reach this goal through different kinds of yoga. There are four different kinds of yoga, and meditation is an important factor in the practice of each. The four types of yoga are jnana, bhakti, karma and raja yoga. Jnana yoga is the shortest but steepest path to enlightenment. It is the path leading to Brahman through knowledge from, Holy Scriptures, thinking and differentiating the outer self from the inner Self. The ultimate aim of this form of yoga is to fully separate the outer self from the inner Self. Once this is accomplished, there is nothing that separates the atman from Brahman (Smith). Next, there is Bahkti yoga, which is the most common of the four.