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Meditation
Support
Kriya Yoga: Highway
to the Infinite
from
the September 2002 Daily Meditator
From The
Path, by J. Donald Walters (Swami Kriyananda), Selections from Chapter
34: Kriya Yoga
Jesus said, "Blessed
are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." The truth in these
simple words has been acclaimed equally by great saints of East and West...
Jesus didn't say, "Blessed are my followers, for they shall see God."
His message was universal: By the yardstick of inner purity alone is a
person's closeness to God determined.
What is purity of heart? Jesus in effect defined it elsewhere as the capacity
to love God with all one's heart, soul, mind, and strength. And why is
this capacity called purity? Simply because we belong in God; worldliness
is foreign to our essential nature.
To develop love for God, the first prerequisite is that no other desire
hinder its free flow. This, then, is our first spiritual "work":
to give up every desire that conflicts with our devotion. We need not
destroy our desires so much as rechannel their energies Godward.
And it is in this true labor of love that the techniques of yoga serve
most effectively. Wrong desires, it need hardly be added, could never
be transmuted by technique alone. But just as the techniques of running
are useful to those with a desire to be good runners, so the techniques
of yoga can help devotees to control their physical energies, and to redirect
them toward God. Yoga practice by itself won't give us God, but it can
help us very much in our efforts to give ourselves to Him. The yoga science,
in other words, helps us to cooperate with divine grace.
Take a simple example. Devotees naturally want to love God. Many, however,
have no clear notion of how to go about loving Him. Too often their efforts
are merely cerebral, and end in frustration. Yet Jesus hinted at a technique
when he said, "Blessed are the pure in heart." For, as everyone
who has loved deeply knows, it is in the heart that love is felt-not in
the physical heart, literally, but in the heart center, or spinal nerve
plexus just behind the heart. Christian saints have stressed again and
again "the love of the heart." And yogis claim that love is
developed more easily if, instead of merely thinking love, one will direct
the thought of love upwards from the heart center, through the spine to
the brain.
Take another example.
Devotees attempting inward communion with God often find their efforts
thwarted by restless thoughts. But long ago yogis found a technique for
overcoming this obstacle. The breath, they discovered, is intimately related
to the mental processes. A restless mind accompanies a restless breath.
By simple, effective techniques for calming the breath, they found they
could free the mind more easily for divine contemplation.
Thus, by its practical
application of laws governing man's physical body and nervous system,
the science of yoga helps one to become more receptive to the flow of
divine grace, much as technical proficiency at the piano makes possible
the uninterrupted flow of musical inspiration. And divine communion, as
St. Paul said, comes not by "pleasing" God, overtly, but only
by making oneself fully receptive to His love. That love of its very nature
wants to give itself.
I referred to the
ego in Chapter 32 as a vortex of consciousness that separates itself from
the ocean of awareness by its own centripetal force. Once this vortex
is dissolved, I said, self-awareness flows outward to embrace infinity.
But now I should explain that it vastly over-simplifies matters to speak
of the ego as but a single vortex. The fact is, egoic awareness gives
rise to countless millions of subsidiary eddies: vortices of likes and
dislikes, resulting in desires, which in turn lead to ego-motivated activities.
Every such vortex draws energy to itself, and thereby also reaffirms and
strengthens the ego from which it derives its energy. Until a desire has
been fulfilled in action, or else dissipated by wisdom, it may remain
dormant, like a seed, in the subconsciousness for incarnations. The stronger
the mental tendency, the greater the ego's commitment to it. The amount
of energy diverted toward these myriad commitments is incalculably great.
Paramhansa Yogananda used to tell us, "There is enough latent energy
in one gram of your flesh to supply the city of Chicago with electricity
for a week. Yet you imagine yourselves powerless in the face of a few
difficulties!" The reason we can tap so little of the energy potentially
available to us is that most of what we attract to ourselves from the
surrounding universe has already been "spoken for"; it is absorbed
by countless eddies of prior egoic commitments.
To understand how
to utilize rightly the enormous amounts of energy that are available to
us, we must understand how energy functions in the body. Its main channel
is the spine. The spine, like a bar magnet, has its north pole at the
spiritual eye, and its south pole at the base, in the coccyx. In a bar
magnet, all the molecules, each having its own north-south polarity, are
turned in the same direction. In an unmagnetized bar the molecules, though
similarly polarized, are turned every which way, and cancel one another
out. A common man, similarly, may lack the dynamic power that one associates
with human greatness, but it isn't because he has less energy than the
mightiest genius; it is only that the "molecules" of his subconscious
desires and impulses pull him in conflicting directions, and cancel one
another out.
A steel bar becomes magnetized, not by the introduction of any new element,
but simply by the realignment of its molecules. Human magnetism, similarly,
results when the "molecules" of conflicting desires are realigned
unidirectionally... But deeper realities of human nature, and the fact
that the very way our bodies are made reflects those realities, make it
impossible for us to bring all our "molecules" into alignment
until we adjust them to the north-south polarity of the spine. That is
to say, all our desires and aspirations must flow upwards, toward the
spiritual eye: the "doorway" to Infinity.
Likes and dislikes, and their resultant desires and aversions, are the
root cause of mortal bondage. The progressive stages of involvement with
maya may be traced through the basic functions of human consciousness:
mon, buddhi, ahankara, and chitta: mind, intellect, ego, and feeling.
Paramhansa Yogananda explained these basic functions by the illustration
of a horse seen reflected in a mirror. The mirror is the mind (mon), reflecting
the image just as it appears through the senses, without in any way qualifying
or defining that image. Buddhi (intellect) then defines what it sees,
informing us, "That is a horse." Ahankara (ego) steps in next
to say, "That's my horse." Up to this point we are not yet really
bound by the thought of ownership; the identification, though personal,
remains more or less abstract. But then comes chitta (feeling), which
says, "How happy I am to see my horse!" Chitta is our emotional,
reactive process, our likes and dislikes, and is, as I said, the true
source of all our delusions. Thus, the ancient sage Patanjali, classical
exponent of the yoga science, defined yoga itself as "the neutralization
of the vortices (vrittis) of chitta."
"Blessed are the pure in heart," said Jesus, "for they
shall see God." The teachings of the Galilean Master and those of
India's great yogis were cut from the same cloth of Self-realization.
Only when the likes and dislikes of the heart, and their resultant vortices
of desire and aversion, have been dissolved-in short, when the heart has
been purified-can Self-realization be attained. The vortex of ego itself
is then dissipated with relative ease, for without objective attachments
it soon loses its momentum, and is dispersed at last by the currents of
divine inspiration.
Most efforts to transform
oneself involve a laborious struggle to correct an endless array of individual
faults-a tendency to gossip, over-attachment to sweets, physical laziness,
and the like. The devotee must, of course, fight such battles as they
present themselves to his mind. But to attempt to win the whole war in
this piecemeal fashion would be like trying to realign each molecule in
a bar of steel separately. Purely psychological efforts at self-transformation
are a never-ending task. Even after one has succeeded, finally, in turning
a few mental "molecules" in the right direction, there is no
guarantee they'll remain turned that way once one leaves them to work
on the next lot.
The way to magnetize
a bar of steel is to introduce a south-north current into it, by placing
it in close proximity to a magnetized bar. The way to become spiritually
magnetized, similarly, is to place oneself in spiritual "proximity"
to one's guru; that is to say, to attune oneself to him mentally. Because
the energy of an awakened master flows naturally upwards, toward the spiritual
eye, attunement with him generates a similar flow in the disciple.
But of course, more is involved here than passive acceptance of the guru's
blessings. Any disciple, indeed, who relies on those blessings alone will
make only negligible progress. For man is not inert metal; he can and
must cooperate in the process of self-transformation. As Yogananda put
it, "The path is twenty-five percent the disciple's own effort, twenty-five
percent the guru's effort on his behalf, and fifty percent the grace of
God." The guru needs the disciple's cooperation. And the disciple
can cooperate best when he understands how this magnetic influence actually
works in his body, raising subtle currents of energy through the spine
to the brain. Cooperation with the guru's efforts, and with divine grace,
means doing what one can himself to direct energy upwards through the
spine.
The correlation between spiritual awakening and this upward movement of
energy can be observed somewhat in ordinary human experience as well.
When, for example, a person feels an increase of happiness or inspiration,
or when he makes a firm resolution to do something wholesome and positive,
he will, if he introspects, observe an accompanying upward flow of energy
to his brain. He may even find himself standing or sitting more erect,
holding his head higher, looking upward, turning the corners of his mouth
up in a smile. On the other hand, if he feels depressed or discouraged,
he will note a corresponding flow of energy, downward, away from the brain.
He may even slump a little, look down at the floor, turn the corners of
his mouth downward, and actually feel physically a little heavier.
Spiritual awakening takes place when all one's energy is directed upward
to the spiritual eye. Hence the saying of Jesus, "Thou shalt love
the Lord thy God with all thy strength": that is, "with all
thy energy."
This upward flow is obstructed in most people by countless eddies of chitta,
which, once formed in the heart, get distributed along the spine according
to their anticipated level of fulfillment-the lower the level, the more
materialistic the desire; the higher the level, the more spiritual. These
eddies, or vrittis, can be dissipated by a flow of energy through the
spine strong enough to neutralize their centripetal force. Numerous techniques
of yoga have as their main objective the awakening of this energy-flow.
Of all such yoga techniques,
the most effective, according to Paramhansa Yogananda and his line of
gurus, because the most central and direct in its application, is Kriya
Yoga. This was the technique, they said, that was taught in ancient times
by Lord Krishna to Arjuna. And Krishna, in the Bhagavad Gita, states that
he gave this technique to humanity in an incarnation long prior to the
one in which he taught Arjuna. Of all the techniques of yoga, Kriya is
quite probably the most ancient.
Kriya Yoga directs
energy lengthwise around the spine, gradually neutralizing the eddies
of chitta. At the same time it strengthens the nerves in the spine and
brain to receive cosmic currents of energy and consciousness. Yogananda
stated that Kriya is the supreme yoga science. Beside it, other yoga techniques
that work on calming the breath, concentrating the mind, etc., though
important in themselves (Yogananda also taught a number of them), must
be classed as subsidiary.
He often said that Kriya Yoga strengthens one in whatever path-whether
devotion, discrimination, or service; Hindu, Christian, Moslem, or Judaic-one
is inclined by temperament, or by upbringing, to follow.
A visitor who once came to his Ranchi school had been practicing Bhakti
Yoga, the path of single-minded devotion, for twenty years. Though deeply
devoted, he had never yet experienced the Lord's blissful presence.
"Kriya Yoga would help you," the Master suggested to him earnestly.
But the man was fearful
of being disloyal to his own path.
"No, Kriya won't
conflict with your present practices," Master insisted. "It
will only deepen you in them."
Still the man was
hesitant.
"Look here,"
Master finally said, "you are like a man who for twenty years has
been trying to get out of a room through the walls, the floor, the ceiling.
Kriya Yoga will simply show you where the door is. There is no conflict,
in that kind of aid, with your own devotional path. To pass through the
doorway you must still do so with devotion."
The man relented at
last, and was initiated. Hardly a week passed before he received his first
deep experience of God.
"I wasn't sent to the West," Yogananda often told his audiences,
"by Christ and the great masters of India to dogmatize you with a
new theology. Jesus himself asked Babaji to send someone here to teach
you the science of Kriya Yoga, that people might learn how to commune
with God directly. I want to help you to attain actual experience of Him,
through your daily practice of Kriya Yoga."
He added, "The time for knowing God has come!"
from
the September 2002 Daily Meditator
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