Bikram Yoga: An Opinion

Meditationtime Forum Post

Date:  Posted 5 years before Apr 01, 2017

MiBeloved 5 years ago

I was asked yesterday for an opinion on Bikram Yoga.

This yoga was founded by Bikram Choudhoury who was a disciple of Vishnu Ghosh who was a brother of Paramhansa Yogananda. Yogananda, of course is famous from the kriya lineage which was established to spread the ideas of Sri Babaji Mahasaya, the person who inspired my book, Kriya Yoga Bhagavad Gita.

For some information on Choudhoury see this page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikram_Choudhury

For information on my Kriya Yoga Bhagavad Gita book which I authored, see this page:

https://sites.google.com/site/michaelbeloved/kriya-yoga-bhagavad-gita

Choudhoury has copyrighted some of his methods and that is crazy, because the yoga postures and the methods are all natural practices. I have some particular techniques which are in my book Meditation Pictorial. These are nowhere else. No other teacher has given certain methods which are in that book. No one else has issued any of the diagrams in that book. I know this because I am with Siddhas in the astral world who marvel at some of those diagrams and wonder how I was able to put those things into print. And still it would be a farce if I were to take those diagrams and try to monopolize them and sue people about the use of them.

One does this kind of legal maneuver either to make money by monopolizing on something or to stop others from doing the same while they use one’s process. Right now I just began a book called the Anu Gita. This is a discussion between Krishna and Arjuna, after Arjuna’s brothers won the Mahabharata war and Arjuna asked Krishna to again show the Universal Form. This is a very interesting discourse because Krishna refused to show the form again, claiming that it was through special yoga technique that he showed the form and that he could not do it again. He more or less cited that Arjuna was a terrible disappointment because Arjuna had lost track of the apparition. Krishna said he was disgusted with Arjuna, as a disciple of yoga.

So I am translating that book right now. It is a small book. So why am I doing this? Well it is because in the astral world Rishi Singh Gherwal asked me to do this and then he left as if to say, that he would see me again when I got this book in print as well as another book, which is also from the Mahabharata.

The other book is one about the Yogi Markandeya, who entered Krishna’s body and spent billions of years transmigrating in it as a human bacteria. Can you imagine, becoming a bacteria and then entering someone’s body and staying in there moving all over in their tissue for years.

So after that Markandeya came back out of Krishna’s body. So this book was told to Yudhishthira in the Mahabharata.

So why am I doing that book? Well in this life, the first time I read the Mahabharata or a part of it, was when Arthur Beverford handed me a tiny book which was Rishi Singh Gherwal’s publication of that story of the microbe yogi Markandeya. That book is now out of print. I cannot find a copy of it anywhere. I used to have a copy around 1972 but I do not know where that is.

So now Rishi Singh instructed that I do that book of his all over again. Should I claim that anyone who tries to use that book without my expressed permission should be sued. You can see how ridiculous that would be.

Anyway the Bikram Yoga system is taken from two systems. The first is Patanjali Yoga, which lists yoga as having 8 parts. The second is from the Kriya Lineage from Babaji Mahasaya which came through Lahiri Mahasaya and then came to the Western countries first through Paramhamsa Yogananda.

Interestingly, there is a confusion where people feel that Patanjali Yoga is something other than the Kriya system. Some teachers have given people that impression but it is wrong.

Here is why:

The Patanjali 8-coursed system is inclusive of the kriya system. The kriya system taught by Babaji is mentioned in chapter 2 of Bhagavad Gita as Buddhi Yoga. It is laid out there in plain terms.

In the Patanjali system the Kriya system is laid out as samyama which is the three higher courses of yoga fused into one serial system, as the 6th stage progressing into the 7th which progresses into the 8th and final stage which is samadhi.

No one after Patanjali can monopolize on that system. If anybody owns the system as being the person to first list it out it is Patanjali and he is dead and gone. My suggestion for persons who want to follow Bikram Yoga is to study Patanjali Yoga Sutras. I published a translation and commentary but there are other translations in print.