Here is the Ananda Link for Kriya comments in December 2019 https://www.ananda.org/video/kriya-yoga-the-airplane-route-to-god/
Here is the YouTube link for the same video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo5n4mKUf-k
Here is the YouTube link for the same video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo5n4mKUf-k
Kriya Yoga is an ancient meditation technique for self-realization which is well known in India. Paramhansa Yogananda, who came to America in the 1920’s and authored the Autobiography of a Yogi in 194, dedicated Chapter 26: The Science of Kriya Yoga to what he called the expressway to Self-realization. Autobiography of a Yogi which became hugely popular in the West remains one of the most popular spiritual books today.
Swami Kriyananda, who lived with Paramhansa Yogananda in his Los Angeles ashram for the last 5 years of the great avatar’s life on earth, founded Ananda Sangha Worldwide, communities dedicated to living the yogi life. Ananda offers online classes to prepare you for initiation into Kriya Yoga. Please go to http://www.ananda.org/kriya-yoga/ and sign up for the program today. As a kriyabans myself, I can help coach you through the process. When we get just a few Kriya Yoga class graduates, Ananda will send a Nayaswami to perform the initiation ceremony for you here at The Ancient Wisdom of Yoga.
The following is a series of quotes from Yogananda, P. (1946). Autobiography of a yogi. New York, NY: The Philosophical Library. I have included points of clarification which are identified by the following type of {brackets}.
“Kriya is an ancient science… the royal yoga was guarded by the rishis until the coming of the material ages (3102 BCE). Then due to…man’s indifference, the sacred knowledge gradually became inaccessible…Lahiri Mahasaya received it from his guru, Babaji, {c. 1861} who rediscovered and clarified the technique after it had been lost in the Dark Ages… (Yogananda, p 232)
The Kriya Yoga I am giving to the world through you in this 19th century,” Babaji told Lahiri Mahasaya, “is a revival of the same science which Krishna gave, millenniums ago, to Arjuna, and which was later known to Patanjali, and to Christ, St. John, St. Paul, and other disciples (Yogananda, p 232).
Kriya Yoga is a simple, psychophysiological method by which the human blood is decarbonized and recharged with oxygen. The atoms of this extra oxygen are transmuted into life current {prana} to rejuvenate the brain and spinal centers {chakras}. By stopping the accumulation of venous blood, the yogi is able to lessen or prevent the decay of tissues; the advanced yogi transmutes his cells in pure energy. Elijah, Jesus, Kabir and other prophets were past masters in the use of Kriya or a similar technique, by which they caused their bodies to dematerialize at will” (Yogananda, p 231).
Kriya Yoga is referred to in by Krishna, India’s greatest prophet, in a stanza of the Bhagavad Gita: “Offering inhaling breath into the outgoing breath, and offering the outgoing breath into inhaling breath, the yogi neutralizes both these breaths; he thus releases the life force {prana} from the heart and brings it under his control” (Bhagavad Gita, IV:29). The interpretation is: “The yogi arrests the decay in the body by an addition of life force, and arrests the mutations of growth in the body by apan (eliminating current). Thus neutralizing decay and growth, by quieting the heart, the yogi learns life control (Yogananda, p 232).
Kriya Yoga mentally directs (the yoga practitioner’s) life force {prana} to revolve upward and downward, around the six spinal centers (medullary, cervical, dorsal, lumbar, sacral, and coccygeal plexuses) which correspond to the twelve astral signs of the zodiac, the symbolic Cosmic Man. One-half minute of revolution of energy around the sensitive spinal cord of man effects subtle progress in his evolution; that half-minute of Kriya equals one year of natural spiritual unfoldment (Yogananda, p 234).
One thousand Kriya practiced in 8 hours gives the yogi, in one day, the equivalent of 1,000 years of natural evolution: 365,000 years of evolution in one year...{This} Kriya short cut, of course, can be taken only by deeply developed yogis. With the guidance of a {Self-realized} guru, such yogis have carefully prepared their bodies and brains to receive the power created by intensive practice (Yogananda, p 234).
The Kriya beginner employs his yogic exercise only 14 to 28 times, twice daily. A number of yogis achieve emancipation in 6 or 12 or 24 or 48 years. A yogi who dies before achieving full realization carries with him the good karma of past Kriya effort; in his new life he is harmoniously propelled toward his Infinite Goal (Yogananda, p 234).
One thousand Kriya practiced in 8 hours gives the yogi, in one day, the equivalent of 1,000 years of natural evolution: 365,000 years of evolution in one year...{This} Kriya short cut, of course, can be taken only by deeply developed yogis. With the guidance of a {Self-realized} guru, such yogis have carefully prepared their bodies and brains to receive the power created by intensive practice (Yogananda, p 234).
The Kriya beginner employs his yogic exercise only 14 to 28 times, twice daily. A number of yogis achieve emancipation in 6 or 12 or 24 or 48 years. A yogi who dies before achieving full realization carries with him the good karma of past Kriya effort; in his new life he is harmoniously propelled toward his Infinite Goal (Yogananda, p 234).
Liberation can be accomplished by
that pranayama (Kriya Yoga)
which is attained by disjoining
the course of inspiration and expiration
(Patanjali Yoga Sutras,
Aphorism II:49; Yogananda, p 233).
that pranayama (Kriya Yoga)
which is attained by disjoining
the course of inspiration and expiration
(Patanjali Yoga Sutras,
Aphorism II:49; Yogananda, p 233).
St. Paul knew Kriya Yoga, or a technique very similar to it, by which he could switch life currents {prana} to and from the senses…”Verily, I protest by our rejoicing which I have in Christ, I die daily” (Corinthians, 15:31). By daily withdrawing his bodily life force {prana}, he united it by yoga union with the rejoicing (eternal bliss {Ananda}) of the Christ consciousness. In that felicitous state, he was consciously aware of being dead to the delusive sensory world of maya (Yogananda, p 233).
In the initial states of God-contacts (sabikalpa samadhi {still subject to time or change}) the devotee’s consciousness merges with the Cosmic Spirit; his life force {prana} is withdrawn from the body, which appears “dead”, or motionless and rigid. The yogi is fully aware of his bodily condition of suspended animation. As he progresses to higher spiritual states (nirbikalpa samadhi {timeless, changeless}), however, he communes with God without bodily fixation, and his ordinary waking consciousness, even in the midst of worldly duties (Yogananda, p 233).
{Referring to “yogi” and the “technological yogi” as a practitioner of Kriya Yoga}…Lord Krishna praises the technological yogi in the following words: “The yogi is greater than the body-disciplining ascetics {Hatha Yoga}, greater than the followers of the path of wisdom (Jnana Yoga), or the path of action (Karma Yoga); be thou, O disciple Arjuna, a yogi!” (Bhagavad Gita, VI:46; Yogananda, p 239).
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