Origin of raja yoga
You are familiar with the term raja yoga. Who was the propounder of raja yoga? Everyone will say Patanjali, and that is an incorrect understanding. Sage Patanjali came in the medieval period of yoga, not in the early period of yoga. Raja yoga comes from an age way before Patanjali, many centuries and possibly millennia ago. In the early period of yoga, the teaching of raja yoga was imparted by Lord Shiva to a sage called Shukracharya, who was the guru of demons. The demons were a group of people who were irrational, negative, destructive, creating imbalances and distractions, always disrupting harmony and peace. Such people also need a guru to show them the right path, not that they only suffer the consequences of their demonical acts. Their guru was Shukracharya.
He looked at the nature, the character, the behaviour of all these unruly boys, and thought about how to tell them to quieten down, settle down, be gentle, kind and peaceful. He prayed to Lord Shiva to show him a direction on how to bring the demonical tendencies into the righteous path. Shiva imparted to him the teaching of raja yoga. Thus raja yoga was meant for demons, not for gods. Demons meaning people with tamasic qualities: the negative, the discontent, the unhappy, the desirous, the selfish, seeking selfgratification and selfsatisfaction. These are the tendencies that inhibit one from experiencing the freedom of spirit and hold one in the shell of one’s egocentric personality. Therefore raja yoga is to manage such patterns and behaviours of the mind. Everyone in society has a little demon inside them. Sometimes the demon can grow big to possess your whole body and sometimes it can remain a little devil on your shoulder.
From the book “Yoga Chakra 7, Raja Yoga Complements Bhakti Yoga”, pg.5, Sw. Niranjanananda Saraswati