Jnana Yoga is structured around a set of precise disciplines that cultivate direct insight into the nature of the Self. At its core stand the classical triad of **śravaṇa**, **manana**, and **nididhyāsana**. Śravaṇa is the attentive listening to, or study of, the Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, and related Advaitic texts under the guidance of a teacher, especially the great statements such as “tat tvam asi” and “aham brahmāsmi.” Manana is the sustained reflection that tests these teachings through reason, resolving doubts by discriminating between what is permanent and what is changing, and by distinguishing the seer from the seen. Nididhyāsana then deepens this understanding through meditative assimilation, repeatedly resting as the witnessing awareness until the recognition “I am pure consciousness” becomes steady and natural.

Alongside this triad, Jnana Yoga makes extensive use of **neti neti** (“not this, not this”) and **ātma-vicāra** (self-inquiry). Neti neti is a method of systematic negation: whatever can be observed—body, senses, thoughts, emotions, even subtle ego-notions—is examined and set aside as “not-self,” since it is changeful and objectifiable. Self-inquiry, often framed through the question “Who am I?”, directs attention back to the very sense of “I.” When any thought or experience arises, inquiry turns to “To whom does this arise?” and traces the “I”-sense back to its source, allowing the false identifications to fall away and the underlying awareness to stand revealed.

These practices are supported by a disciplined preparation known as **sādhana-catuṣṭaya**, the fourfold qualifications. Viveka, the discrimination between the eternal and the transient, and vairāgya, dispassion toward worldly pleasures and results, create the inner space for genuine inquiry. The sixfold virtues—calmness, self-control, withdrawal, forbearance, faith, and concentration—steady the mind so that it can remain with subtle contemplations without distraction. Mumukṣutva, an intense longing for liberation, provides the existential urgency that keeps the entire process from becoming a merely intellectual exercise.

All of these elements converge in a single orientation: to turn attention away from objects and roles, and to investigate the very subject that knows them. By studying and contemplating the mahāvākyas, by discriminating between the witness and the witnessed, and by persistently negating all that is not the Self, Jnana Yoga aims to remove ignorance rather than to acquire something new. What remains, when the non-Self has been thoroughly seen through, is recognized as the ever-present reality described as pure existence-consciousness-bliss.