Kriya meditation

Most people think that a yogi is a person who has developed his body’s abilities to an amazing degree: he can lie on nails, walk on fire or sit in the lotus position…  But the main thing in yoga is the spiritual aspect. The Principle of Unity!

Therefore, it is important to first correct people’s misconception of  yoga.

Yoga is the direct Path to the HIgher. I declare this with full awareness and understanding of responsibility. Yoga is a reunion with the Supreme! It is the most direct and shortest way to self-realisation. Yoga is not a religion. It is a science in which the Ultimate Knowledge, from which various systems and directions have emerged, is revealed.

Kriya yoga is a tool that allows a person to accelerate their evolution. Kriya is the ultimate method of comprehending the Law of the Universe, where the true answer comes from the depths of the inner Self. The eternal and invariable Law of the Universe is expressed as Truth, Righteousness, Unconditional Love, Peace and Calm, and Non-violence. The Science of Kriya is this Universal Law in action.

Through this practice, intuition is effortlessly awakened, and you can gaze into the face of your Higher Self.

Kriya yoga teaches us how to control the breathing, calm the mind and achieve higher states of consciousness.

Fifty minutes of Kriya practice is equivalent to one hundred years of natural human evolution…

Meditation is a state beyond the mind, the personality and the ego. It is a state that allows us to get to know ourselves first, become friends with ourselves, and reach higher levels of self-awareness.

Meditation is a state when you are very close to the Creator, the Supreme. But there is a distance between you and the Higher Self to which you aspire.

An analogy with a fire can serve as an example. Meditation is when you are sitting around a fire, but you cannot get close to it, because you are not yet ready. You enjoy the warmth and love of this divine radiance, you feel warm, happy and comfortable, you are close to it and have the opportunity to enjoy it.

Enjoying and rejoicing in it is meditation. Moreover, the Creator’s radiance constantly gives you what you so desperately need. In the case of the fire, it is warmth, in the case of divinity, it is unconditional love, strength, wisdom, peace, and everything that comes with it. This is perfection, this is magic… And it changes you.

Anyone who knows nothing about Kriya but truly wants to practise, wants to do something for one’s life, for oneself and others, can safely start practising.

Your level of preparation is not important. The Science of Kriya transforms the body and makes you more prepared. If we say that a person needs to be prepared, then this knowledge is not universally applicable. Preparation is needed when you take an exam. Now, we practise, and awaken the will by working on ourselves.

The Science of Kriya is not a teaching about the body like hatha yoga, there is no emphasis on sitting cross-legged, in the lotus or half-lotus position.

Here, it is very important that your spine is straight, and during the practice at the Retreat, you can even sit on a chair or a small ottoman, which will allow you to keep your spine straight. This would be enough. Remember that all realisation takes place in the spine, the brain and the spinal cord. It does not happen in the legs or arms.

No matter how old you are, even if you are eighty or a hundred years old, if you start practising Kriya and address the Supreme in Spirit with a request for realisation, you will be given additional years for realisation. From the moment a person steps on the Path, a space of time opens up for achieving the High Goal, so this person will grow stronger and be able to carry out their plans!

For me, Kriya is Cosmic knowledge, it is the manifestation of the Creator in knowledge, so even if you come to this for the first time at the age of 80, you will reach realisation much faster.

I met an 85-year-old grandfather at a seminar in Perm, who was much more active than everyone else in the hall. He came up to me during the break and asked: “Can an old man like me achieve liberation?” “Of course you can, don’t even hesitate…”

“There’s a law: everything you encounter in this life is meant for you.” So do not doubt. Simply start working on yourself.

The seminar is a fairly social term. In reality, the Kriya Seminar is initiation into the Science of Kriya yoga.

When you attend a 2-day Kriya Seminar, you gain knowledge and food for thought. But the most important thing is that a person receives true knowledge passed from one heart to another, from the Master to the disciple.

This is a method of direct knowledge transfer.

When you come to a Kriya Seminar, you may be completely unprepared, not ready to sit, and not ready internally. You attend to prepare and accelerate your evolution. Evolution is accelerated many hundreds of thousands of times only thanks to this great and high teaching. Naturally, your body changes as well. It changes when you practise. The criterion of truth is practice.

Kriya is the base, the foundation and the crown of all spiritual practices!

If you are a sufficiently conscious person and possess deep understanding, if you can talk about the Science of Kriya, you have enough energy and enough knowledge not to do things that harm your body. This means eating right. If you think it is difficult for you to give up eating meat and smoking cigarettes. By the way, smoking is also eating, but of a slightly differen nature. If it is difficult for you, start practising Kriya and the practice itself will pull you out of it. If a person wants to understand their own world, their inner world, they gradually become a vegetarian.

We recommend that you start by reading Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi. Paramahansa Yogananda, the great Indian yogi and educator who brought Kriya to America and Europe, wrote the following in his book Autobiography of a Yogi, Chapter 26: The Science of Kriya Yoga:

“Kriya Yoga is a simple, psychophysiological method by which the human blood is decarbonized and recharged with oxygen. These extra atoms of oxygen are transmuted in a human being into a life current that rejuvenates the brain and spinal centres. By stopping the accumulation of venous blood in the body, the yogi is able to lessen or prevent the decay of tissues.”

“Kriya Yoga is an instrument that enables a person to accelerate their evolution,” – Sri Yukteswar explained to his students. “The yogis of ancient times discovered that the secret of Cosmic Consciousness is intimately linked with breath mastery. This is India’s unique and everlasting contribution to the world’s treasury of knowledge. The life force, which is ordinarily involved in maintaining the heart-pump, must be freed for higher activities by a method of calming and stilling the ceaseless demands of the breath.”

The Kriya Yogi uses the power of thought to direct his life force to move up and down along the six spinal centres (medulla, cervical, dorsal, lumbar, sacral, and coccygeal plexuses) which correspond to the twelve astral signs of the zodiac, the symbolic Cosmic Man. Even half a minute of revolution of energy around a man’s sensitive spinal cord causes subtle progress in his evolution. That half-minute of Kriya equals one year of natural spiritual development.

The astral system of a human being, with six (twelve by polarity) inner constellations revolving around the sun of the omniscient spiritual eye, is deeply interrelated with the physical sun and the twelve signs of the zodiac. Everyone is thus affected by an inner and an outer universe. The ancient rishis discovered that man’s earthly and heavenly environment push him along some kind of natural path of spiritual development, which comes in a sequence of twelve-year cycles. The scriptures state that under favourable conditions, a person requires a million years of normal, healthy evolution to fully develop their human brain enough to express the Cosmic Consciousness.

In eight hours, a person can make a thousand Kriyas, which enables them to go through a thousand-year path of natural evolutionary development in one day. In one year, this will be equivalent to 365,000 years of evolution. Thus, in three years of conscious effort, the Kriya Yogi can achieve the same results that Nature gives a person a million years to achieve. Of course, only advanced yogis can significantly shorten their path using the method of Kriya Yoga. At first, under the guidance of a guru, they carefully prepare their bodies and minds to receive the colossal energies generated through intensive practice. The Kriya beginner does 14 to 28 yogic exercises, twice a day. A number of yogis achieve liberation in 6, 12, 24, or 48 years.

The body of an ordinary person is like a fifty-watt light bulb that is not able to pass through itself the billions of watts of energy awakened by constant Kriya Yoga practice. However, the safe Kriya method proposes gradual and regular increases in the load, so that a person’s body undergoes astral transformation on a daily basis and can eventually express the infinite potential of cosmic energy, which represents the first materially active expression of the Spirit.

Kriya Yoga has nothing in common with the unscientific breathing exercises taught by a number of misguided zealots. Their attempts to forcibly hold breath in the lungs is not only unnatural, but very unpleasant. Kriya, on the other hand, will bring you peace and a blissful sensation from the very beginning that accompanies the regenerative processes in the spine. This ancient yogic technique turns the breath into the material of the mind. Spiritual progress enables a person to come to know breathing as a mental phenomenon, as an act of the mind, as a dream.

There are many examples of the mathematical relationship between a person’s breathing rate and changes in their state of consciousness. A person whose attention is wholly engrossed, as in following some closely knit intellectual argument, or in attempting some delicate or difficult physical feat, automatically breathes very slowly. A person’s attention span depends on their speed of breathing. Quick or uneven breaths are an inevitable accompaniment of harmful emotional states: fear, lust, and anger. The restless monkey breathes at the rate of 32 times a minute, in contrast to man’s average of 18 times. The elephant, tortoise, snake and other animals noted for their longevity have a respiratory rate which is less than man’s. The tortoise, for instance, who may attain the age of 300 years, breathes only 4 times per minute.