Kriya Practice Failure

Meditationtime Forum Post

Date: Posted 5 years before Jul 05, 2017

MiBeloved 5 years ago

From a conversation on Linkedin:

Alfredo D: [Michael wrote: I do not sit to meditate unless I have done pranayama immediately before sitting.]

Michael, Very good explanation, thank you very much.

The Kriya Yoga of Lahiri Mahasaya is a package deal that tries to incorporate different complementing elements and introduces certain practices before the meditation proper, as you stated.

Not only Pranayama is critical, and you can always elongate it at your leisure, but before Pranayama is started there are certain Mudras which objective is to equalize Ida and Pingala, and thus open the Sushumna. The result is equal nostril breathing, and this is not a chimera. Then Pranayama is started.

Regarding Pranayama per se, I was initiated into 2nd Kriya by Swami Hariharananda alone in a room with him. Differently from the techniques you mentioned that can be found in Hatha Yoga Pradipika, Gheranda Samhita, or other Tantric texts, like Bhastrika, Kapalbhati, or Nadi Shodana, this Pranayama was developed by Lahiri Baba (or given to him, according to the Babaji tradition) and it is very unique in that it interlaces Mantra Yoga with Pranayama.

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MiBeloved’s Response:

Alfredo,

Swami Hariharananda was great, a real fountain of divine compassion. I met him physically once about three years before he left his body. He was at their small farm south of Miami. I was with a guy called Surya and my wife Marcia Beloved.

At the time he was in a wheel chair on a permanent basis but his eyes were glistening with spiritual realization.

Later I used to meet him in the astral world. A friend of mine was initiated by him in a few kriyas and then was initiated by one of his senior swamis who later deflected from his society. This friend tried the procedures he introduced but got no success with it. I feel this was mainly due to not mastering pratiloma and viloma pranayama properly and also due to relying mostly on visualization in the same system you spoke of which in your words is:

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Before pranayama is started there are certain Mudras which objective is to equalize Ida and Pingala, and thus open the Sushumna. The result is equal nostril breathing, and this is not a chimera. Then Pranayama is started.

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I am glad you mentioned this Alfredo and I will stand up in public to any kriya master who says that this is it without explaining if this is going to work in a body which was not born in India, not in a brahmin family, not in a kriya yogi family, where the body from birth is sensitive to pranic flow, and where yogis do asanas to perfection and also did things like nauli and dhauti.

The charm of the kriya gurus is charm only because it does not change the bodies of the Western people who have not done asanas in their youth.

Mudras to equalize ida and pingala?

What are you talking about?

That is like saying that if we poured two milk-truck loads of MacDonald greases down our drain, and then push down the left over spaghetti from a popular deli on Time Square and then got all our girl friends to shampoo their hair and send it down the drain, it will be cleaned out with a little bottle of drain cleaner.

Please be real!

It is not going to happen.

Nobody except a fake yogi or a New Age visualization trainee can do something like that in the world of make-belief.

Swami Hariharananda is great. I took help from him on the astral planes when he showed me some techniques about urdhvareta upwards passage of sexual energy in the subtle body, but the idea that taking these systems from him will bring success just like that without doing the basic aggressive hatha yoga kriyas for years prior is tomfoolery.

I call it imaginary self realization and it is perfect for many of my New Age buddies.

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Alfredo Delregato, MS, CIH, FLAC, FMA:

MB wrote: [The subtle body once it is infused by bhastrika or kapala bhati, changes in configuration. There is increased psyche perception, opening of third eye, realization of the buddhi analytic psychic organ and other features].

In my case there was a downpour of poetry even though I was never a poet, and a lightness of body felt at the physical level. There was an increase in calmness and certitude.

Michael, I have a question:

Swami Krishnananda once told me in a letter that Yogic practices can be summarized into 3:

I - Mano nigraha

II - Prana Nirodha

III - Brahma Abhyasa.

I now believe he was referring to a Buddhi Yoga approach. For he added that by the proper practice of Brahma Abhyasa, as described in Panchadasi, the 2 others are attained.

For in the Pranayama the way you practice it and the way early Kriyavans under Yogirag Lahiri practiced, there is a bhastrik, a bellows effect, a precursor and the goal is not only Prana Nirodha. Or is it?

What do you say?

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MiBeloved’s Response:

I - Mano nigraha

II - Prana Nirodha

III - Brahma Abhyasa.

In this sequence mano nigraha means to take the mind away from social activities on the external plane and on the internal plane. The yogi sits to do his practice and the first thing he does is to cease external contact with others. Then when he sits he ceases internal mental and emotional contact with others and with the sense world in which we interact normally. This is only a partial mano nigraha but it is the start of this process,

The next stage of prano nigraha is to discipline the pranic energy, because otherwise the effort to detach the self from the sensual contacts will only work superficially. Unless the yogi can discipline the energy content of the subtle body, particularly the kundalini in the trunk of the subtle body and the buddhi in the head of this subtle body, his sitting quiet will mean nothing since the psyche will still crave, located and interact with the usual sensual energies which are against self realization. Or it will pretend not to have an interest and then the yogi will think that a blank mind is self realisation. But that is called jada samadhi, the trance state of retarded people.

At this stage, the second stage in the listing the Guruji gave you, the yogi has to use whatever pranic infusion method which he practices and which effectively works to close out the interest in the usual sensual discourse.

Once this second stage is completed successfully it will propel the yogi into samyama practice and from that the practice of brahma yoga can begin (brahma abhyasa). This is not samadhi practice which is samyama but it is the application of the samadhi practice according to the level of advancement of the particular yogi.

Patanjali listed the major applications in the sutras having to do with siddhis.

In the astral world some years ago, I was lucky to hear from Swami Nityananda Baba about the brahma yoga practice and so by his dictation I published a book called Brahma Yoga Bhagavad Gita.

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Jivana:

(Michael you wrote this:)

"Kundalini is involved to be sure but it cannot create the mental effect or vrittis without the assistance of the buddhi intellect. Thus if the intellect is energized, then the operations ceases at the stage of pranayama and one automatically is transferred into the stage of pratyahar and that causes interiorization of the sensual energies which results in the samyama sequence as explained by Patanjali. "

Michael,

I can kinda sorta get the gist of what you are saying, but is there a way to say these things in English. I am asking for me, but not only for me, because I think that this is of great interest and importance to others who do not yet understand Sanskrit...

Respectfully

Jivana

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MiBeloved’s Response:

Jivana,

Presently I am not in Santa Barbara. When I first heard about Rishi Singh Gherwal’s teaching of yoga in Santa Barbara, it was way back in 1974 in Ventura which is just near Ojai. Arthur Beverford was living there at the time. He was my first formal teacher for asanas and third eye meditation practice. He was a student of Rishi Singh Gherwal.

I will try to translate from English to English what I wrote above, or at least state it in a way that anyone without a background in yoga terminology can follow it:

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The life force survival mechanism in the body which runs breathing and other body concerns like breathing and digestion, is called kundalini in Sanskrit. In this explanation, I will use the term life force for it.

The information of what this life force does reaches us in the form of feelings which are then interpreted to us by our intellects. For instance if a person has a heart attack, there will be a feeling of discomfort and that may be interpreted by the intellect as a medical crisis. So this is the way this communication takes place between the life force survival mechanism and the reasoning faculty.

In yoga one can use the communication system to increase psychic perception by interrupting the communication of the life force system when it tries to reach the intellect. The state of the life force system normally affects the intellect. This means that if you change the life force system then the information it sends to the intellect will be a different and the effect produced in the intellect will also be different.

In another way if you change the energy the intellect operates from, then it will give different conclusions, just as if you change the circuit in a calculator, the new circuit if it is different will work in a completely different way.

The ashtanga yoga process uses pranayama breath infusion to change that energy. This is because it was discovered that the life force survival system uses breath energy as its main food source. Changing the type of breath and the rate of absorption of breath changes the way the kundalini operates and it causes it to abandon its survival instinct system and to tend to more transcendental matters.

Thus if the life force system is changed in this way when it makes contact with the intellect, that intellect will operate differently as well.

Patanjali advised the higher stages of yoga as:

Pranayama (breath infusion and adjustment to the life force and whatever else needs breath as energy for operation)

Pratyahar (withdrawal of interest in the sensual energies)

Samyama (a system of focus on what is outside of the mundane range of energy)

Pranayana or breath infusion, if done to proficiency achieves the pratyahar or sensual energy withdrawal because by breath infusion one can cause the life force and the intellect to lose interest in the lower sensual energies which are its natural foodstuff.

With the sensual interests withdrawn, the self turns to higher realities and that is samyama.

MiBeloved 5 years ago

Alfredo replied:

Michael:

[Mudras to equalize ida and pingala?

What are you talking about?

Please be real!

It is not going to happen.]

Here you are being presumptuous, for you do not know of what Mudras I am talking about, of what my practice had consisted, but that is fine with me. To each his own. This equalization has been temporary in my case, but it occurs and it is an experience to me. These Mudras are designed to do so.

On Hariharananda, the time you met him he was indeed mostly confined to a wheel chair. I used to take him in it around the Ashram in Homestead that you visited and was at his deathbed in Baptist hospital Dec 3, 2002.