Workshop “Kriya Yoga”

Today we will talk about Kriya Yoga or Yoga of Dynamic Meditation. “Kriya” could be translated as “doing” or “practicing”. It means also “cleansing treatment” or just a verb “to do”, or “correcting something that was done wrong.” In this workshop, you will learn about practicing Kriya Yoga at different levels - physical, subtle and causal. You will learn how to start your own practice. It will be revealed through the axiomatic aspects of Kriya Yoga. And the most important aspect of the workshop - how Kriya Yoga can help you to fix Karma, or in other words, how to fix something that was done wrong.

Teaching

Yoga teaching is one teaching. So Hatha Yoga, Pranayama Yoga, Raja Yoga and any other kinds of Yoga are just the parts of the teaching called Yoga. In the Western countries the word “Yoga” is usually used to define static exercises of specific poses, so-called “asanas”. But these “asanas” are nothing but “Hatha Yoga”, just one of the parts of Yoga. There are a lot different kinds of Yoga besides Hatha Yoga. But for many different reasons we don’t have enough information about all kinds of Yoga. Kriya Yogais one of these kinds of Yoga .

What is it? The main difference between Hatha Yoga and Kriya Yoga – is the way of practicing. All exercises of Kriya Yoga are dynamic. These exercises are called “Kriyas”, and they are a visible part of Kriya Yoga. At first sight Kriya Yoga looks like a sequence of repetitive exercises. But as all other kinds of Yoga it brings us to the Highest level of Freedom and Self-exploration.

Knowledge is power. Knowledge about ourselves gives us power for problem solving and avoiding negative. We can consider Kriya Yoga is one of the most powerful kinds of Yoga.

What is “Kriya”?

There are many different interpretations of this word. Some schools of Yoga use it for body practices, others for meditation, and others for cleansing practices. Each of these practices could be called Kriya Yoga. You can find a lot of different books about Kriya Yoga, and all these books give you different points of view about “what is Kriya Yoga.” It happens because the teachings of Kriya Yoga included variety of topics in ancient times, but nowadays Yoga knowledge is disappearing. So, unfortunately, we have just small parts of the whole Knowledge. Different students were thought different parts of the same Yoga. It happened because one kind ofschools was focused on exercises and others on meditation practices, and so on and so forth. By and large, there is no contradiction, but there are different facets of the single doctrine of Kriya Yoga.

The word Kriya has a lot on meanings, i.e. thereby it is difficult to translate it unambiguously. It could be "doing", or "cleaning treatments", or just the verb "to do", or "to correct something that was done wrong." It seems that the words “Kriya” and “Karma” have the same root in Sanskrit. The word “Karma” means something that was already done and have gaven the results. The word “Kriya” means the process of creating and removing Karma.

Now we switch to the theory of Yoga. Any kind of Yoga doesn’t contradict with logic, because it is logical on the supreme level. And the Supremelogic doesn’t contradict with the logic. That is why: when you begin practicing any kind of Yoga, you begin with logic. Little by little, the more you practice the more you notice the Supreme logic in your life, even at the beginning you considered it as a miracle. Actually there are no miracles. There are only grosser and subtler laws. The basics of Kriya Yoga are just obvious and clear axiomatic. And you can use the axiomatic to get all the theory of Kriya Yoga logically.

Yoga axioms

There are no proofs for the basic axioms. They were given us as a present, but the more you practice Kriya Yoga; the more you understand why exactly these axioms were given.

1. Every Human being has the Highest Self. The Highest Self is absolutely free from everything, and it manifests itself through Prana. Prana manifests itself in our Universe through Energy and Consciousness.

2. All ours Highest Selves are equal and grandiose. In other words, all ours Highest Selves (Atmas) are equal, and there is no difference between great yogis and ordinary people.

3. There are no Atmas (Highest Selves) by themselves. All of them the parts of Absolute. And all of us are the small parts of Absolute.

4. In spite of Freedom, our Highest Self considers itself as its manifestations: Prana or Energy or Consciousness.And it defines our actions and results of our actions.

Each of us feels Energy and Consciousness. It can’t be taken away. Each of us has conception about ourselves; our body helps us to feel ourselves. Kriya Yoga says: we got our bodies from our parents. Our Highest Self moved to our body as a new tenant moves to a new apartment. You got your body not by an accident, but it was defined by your Karma.

How to determine your karma?

Some people ask me: “Please, give me a hint how to know what kind of Karma I have.” The first you can do for it – undress and look at a mirror – that is the first step to see your Karma. That is your Karma on the physical level. This level you can see easily, and usually you can improve it pretty fast, if you want. Yoga uses this chance.

If we had a mirror for subtle body, we could see our Karma on the subtle level. I assure you: it would be very scaring compared to the physical level. The physical level is much prettier then tangle of fears, uncertainty, stupidity at the subtle level.

If we had the third kind of mirror, which lets us to see our causal body, it could be even more scary than two previous ones. Because we could see parts of our causal body which make us suffering in any kind of circumstances, regardless our living conditions.

You can have a perfect body and mind, but you can have very bad imprints on your causal body. In this case nothing can make you happy. You would feel miserable all the time. From time to time you can read in newspapers about a millionaire who had a wonderful life, could afford everything and committed a suicide. They say, it was because of his/her mental problems. If it were the whole truth psychologists and psychiatrists could help. But unfortunately sometimes they can’t help. There are some problems that can’t be solved by training and courses. That is the level of causal body. That is the most terrible and severe part of the life.

We get what we deserve – body, parents, etc.

All these bad imprints are consequences of our Karma. Our body also is defined by our Karma. The law of Karma is a very complicated thing. Physical disabilities, from the one point of view, can be considered as fault of our relatives. They didn’t care about their bodies, didn’t do sports.

Actually, after our death we started looking for parents and got parents we deserved by our previous actions. And our parents got the child they deserved by their previous actions. The only thing defines our parents is our Karma and nothing else. During all our life we are making actions and getting results. The final result of bad and good actions gives us the next place of birth, our body, living conditions, illnesses and life. There is nobody to blame for everything we have. We have what we deserve.

Process of karma development

Your Karma wasn’t created in one day. This process is as long as duration of your lives. We have three kinds of bodies: Gross (Physical), Subtle (Mental) and Causal Bodies. Our body is created from life to life and our Energy and Consciousness revive it. We got our body from our parents, and during our life we can improve it: mentally and physically. If you improve your body up to a certain level during the current life, for the next life you get a body which wouldn’t be worse than your left. It is the justice of Karma. Even if we get a body a little bit worse compared to the previous one, we would get abilities to improve it the shortest time.

Karma is a very complicated thing: we can’t say exactly what we get for an action - pain or pleasure. For example, a person practices Yoga and enjoys the process; at the same time this person cleans his/her body. As s result of this pleasant process he/she gets a strong and healthy body instead of weak and frail one.

We have three types of bodies, and our Consciousness and Energy (in other words - Prana) manifest through all of them. Our Consciousness and Energy are the manifestations of our Highest Self. Our Highest Self is super powerful and always is in a state of the Highest Happiness. This highest state is called “Sat-Chit-Ananda.” At the same time by mistake our Highest Self considers itself as our manifestations - it considers itself as our bodies.