Great thread, blessings to everyone… ~*~
feeling inspired to share my own experience with Kriya yoga. I read autobiography in 2002 and afterwards looked into SRF, something about it didn’t seem appealing at the time and there was no living master which is what I really wanted and felt I needed at that time.
I got initiated into kriya yoga under the auspices of Kriya Yoga International which actively claims to be in the same lineage as Yogananda and I personally think it is a valid claim; that being said, it doesn’t really matter to me because the idea of a lineage seems more political than spiritual though the guru param-para relationship and lineage does have some value depending, and if you are just getting into yoga things like that may be important; they did to me some degree when I first got into it, but gradually I came to see that all is divine so it didn’t really matter much after that became clearer.
After practicing kriya as taught by KYI for a couple years I met the head of the lineage Paramahamsa Prajnanananda and became very devoted to him and to the practice of kriya. Eventually my journey brought me to India where I experienced firsthand the KYI ashram in Puri which has great spiritual power perhaps more than I have ever felt anywhere else in the world, conversely I visited the karar ashram of sri yukteswar which in 2009 when i was there had virtually nothing going on, there is a swami there that still runs the place and oversees it but his demeanor is not very inviting and I wondered that perhaps this was a reason there was no one else present there; it doesn’t seem to be much of a full on ashram anymore as it was in the days of yukteswarji, at least that is how it seemed to me when I was there, the place was virtually empty. I still showed the swami love and respect regardless and I bought his book but it turned out to be very crude and almost completely unintelligible for a western reader.
When I got back from India I kept practicing for a few months and for some unknown reason I just stopped being interested in it… saying this after practicing diligently for at least an hour every day for several years… I can only explain this as one would a map, when you arrive at a certain destination you no longer need the map and maybe this was the case with kriya yoga for me, i simply am no longer interested in it, but for that time it was very helpful to me and was in alignment with my journey during those years…
The kriya technique taught by KYI is sort of an all-round development approach to yoga and having studied yoga fairly in depth for over 12+ years now I have come to the relative conclusion that kriya yoga as marketed by various lineages or organizations is nothing more than a combination of techniques that facilitate the development of physical, astral, and causal bodies making one ripe for realization on all fronts; furthermore, it is the combination of karma yoga - selfless service, bhakti yoga - devotional energy, and raja yoga - “mystical” techniques, asanas mudras and bandhas, it also incorporates hatha yoga to some degree.
The mythology and whatever else attached to it is a fancy to get one intrigued enough to get into it. There is truth to it as well I imagine but it is always relative to the perceiver and to mind… as sri nisargadatta relates “words do not go beyond the mind.” so everything i am saying here is just words so take it with a grain of salt and remember that you alone are the truth, whatever you think or feel is what matters and the real guru is you…
I recommend that some people might check out the aypsite for information about the practice of yoga, i think the approach given there is fairly well explained and useful and has less of the political/organization trappings that some other methods have built in for better or worse. There is emphasis on deep meditation to cultivate inner silence and emptiness and spinal breathing to generate ecstatic conductivity - becoming empty as to be filled with divine ecstasy. I’ve always liked the story of the philosopher who came to see the zen monk and was turned away because his cup was too full of ideas and expectations…
Another thing I heard many times was that kri means action - sort of like the word cre-ate… and ya means the soul, and ‘doing’ kriya is to perceive and remember that all actions are done by the soul, its like saying you can’t actually do anything, cannot perform actions unless the soul is present and you are thus breathing, the soul is likened unto a flame and breath is a bit of side effect of the soul’s presence as a flame needs oxygen to burn… when the soul/flame is gone, no more breath needed… that being shared, I don’t think it encompasses fully what the soul is… it is rather impossible to capture in words, but in any case I’ve always thought of it something that cannot be defined or affected by anything in the material world including thoughts and just anything at all… it is invisible and invincible and is the witness that without which nothing would be happening for there would be no one here to witness it, it’s the classic tree falling in the woods question. If there is no one there to see it does it really happen… without soul - ya (life, electricity, god, goddess, nothing), there can be no action. Another aspect of kriya too that had heavy emphasis was vairagya - not being attached to one’s expectations of outcome; performing action for the sake of the action and not so much attached to the fruits of the action… of course, one could say this is just a part of yoga anyway…
If you come to be involved in yoga long enough you will see that there is often talk of this kind of yoga and that kind of yoga and eventually you’ll come to realize they are all synergistic and they all complement each other so there is really no one ‘system’ they are all just parts of the system, and the real ‘system’ if there is one is simply you. I highly recommend Nisargadatta’s book “I Am That,” for getting greater clarity on who or what you are…
Yoga and Kriya Yoga and all kinds of Yoga are very hyped up “systems” for self-realization, I cannot say for sure because everyone’s vantage point or ‘experience’ is different but imho there is no fool-proof ‘system’ to realize god that will work for all of us, at some point you really have to go within yourself and find out what is right for you beyond what anyone else can show you, some systems or gurus may lead you up to a certain point but you have to walk the path and in the journey you must go it alone and really are always alone but also not, the experience happens inside of you and no one can happen it for you. You can still have gurus and relationships and the like with whatever and whoever, with this or that, but the real work is in you.
Feel free to use techniques but ask yourself who is the one performing the technique? Who is doing the techniques? Who is interested that wants to do them? If you are engaged in doing them, ask who is this that is engaged in doing techniques? This is what is known as self-enquiry and it is part of yoga if you like but in a way it is not, depending on how you interpret it…
one aside here, if you read bihar school of yoga books on kriya, there are many other techniques that KYI doesn’t teach and I would venture to say SRF doesn’t teach either… again there are many ‘systems’ or organizations out there, some may be right for you, some not… some may not need any of them at all… look within, be still, and listen to your heart… all the answers are there…
…thanks for reading my humble musings…
on a side note, I have some yoga related books I just put up on ebay (7/13/2012) if anyone may care to look at the books I have available you can find my website where there is an ebay link, just type my name into google: Christian Locke - 9 are from bihar school of yoga and i have 7 others that are kriya related as well as a box set of kriya books, 7 AYP books by yogani on tantra, meditation, spinal breathing, mudras, and more; yogananda’s commentary of bhagavad gita which is excellent, and a 21 cd set of bhagavatam teachings along with a few other items that may be of interest.
blessings to all, love and freedom is the goal, and it is here and now, eternal and immutable… bless it be ~*~
