– What is Babaji’s Kriya Yoga
Babaji’s Kriya Yoga is a lineage of Yoga, one of the many that exist; it comes from a master named Babaji. But it is not a cult, it is not a belief system, it is a practice. Our Kriya Yoga originates in 1954, when Yogi Ramaiah, professor of my teacher, received the 144 techniques or kriyas of Babaji’s Kriya Yoga. Who is Babaji? He is a master from the Himalayas. Many lineages come from masters of the Himalayas, Babaji is one of them. Yogi Ramaiah received these kriyas and taught them to different people, including Govindan Satchidananda, my teacher. Govindan taught me all these techniques, as he has taught them to many people all over the world, and he also trained me – along with about thirty other people – to teach them. I have been teaching Kriya Yoga for about eighteen years, and I am authorized by him to give the three levels of initiation.
– What does “Kriya” mean?
“Kriya” means “action with consciousness”. Consciousness is the vehicle and the goal of Yoga. The quick answer to the question “Who am I?” it is “I am consciousness, joyful consciousness”. The problem is that we identify ourselves with our perceptions, our emotions and our thoughts. This identification makes us forget our essential nature, and that is what causes us suffering. We are on a roller coaster, we go up with pleasure and we go down with pain – physical, emotional or mental. In the center of the roller coaster, right in the center of the wheel, there is a space that is beyond dualities. That is the space of pure consciousness. All Kriya Yoga techniques are designed to finally develop consciousness, and bring it to each of our activities of daily life. Kriya Yoga is not a Yoga to flee the world or to transcend it, but to transform it, to bring our consciousness, our real being, to every area of daily life.
Nityananda
– Is it a classic yoga, how old can you be?
Some of his techniques are so much old that its origins are unknown. The techniques were compiled and synthesized by Babaji in 1954, many of them are much earlier, but they were updated and adapted, let’s say, to the needs of today’s man.
– What results can obtain the person who practices Kriya Yoga, especially if he has never practiced anything before? Yogafest is especially aimed at these people who have no previous experience in Yoga.
There are different levels of practice and commitment in Kriya Yoga. Three initiations are given; the most important techniques, the most basic ones, are those taught in the first initiation. The minimum of practice required for this first initiation is twenty minutes in the morning and twenty in the afternoon, plus one hour of asanas. What can one expect when practicing? We can expect an improvement of our life, as we learn to tune into the highest part of ourselves, and to receive inspiration for our daily life through a series of meditations. You also have a breathing technique, the most important of all Kriya Yoga, which in addition to quieting your mind, improving you breathe, making you live longer by the optimal absorption of oxygen through breathing, it accelerates your personal growth, because it activates the energy and moves it through the centers of consciousness – what we call “chakras”. Kriya is “action with consciousness”; When you practice this breathing, day by day, in a subtle, unhurried way, you expand your own consciousness by expanding the chakras. To summarize, people who practice the first level note a better quality of life, receive inspiration to improve it and have a source of tranquility and serenity to face the daily challenges.
– In Yoga, is “realization” the same as “enlightenment”?
Not for me. I do not use the word “enlightenment”, as it comes from Buddhism, not from Yoga, and also I do not understand it. In Yoga we speak of Self-realization. The Self is what you really are. The problem of the human condition is that we identify with things that we are not really. The Siddhas (masters of Yoga) defined the Self as Sat-Chit-Ananda, Existence-Consciousness-Joy. The human condition is that you lose sight of your essential nature and you identify yourself with perceptions, feelings and thoughts. And all these are dual, which means they have an aspect of pleasure, joy, and another of suffering, and the two cannot be separated. Consciousness, your real being, is not dual, it is a joy that does not depend on the circumstances, it is always present there. The Siddhas said that we are dreaming with our eyes open, we are lost in the daydreams and patterns of our mind and our subconscious mind. The more you are dominated by these patterns the more predictable are your actions, and the less freedom you have in your life. There are people who wear gray glasses and think that everything is gray. We are all conditioned by our unconscious patterns – this is actually a form of karma. The antidote to this is Kriya, consciousness. It is that space that exists between you and everything that happens. You can discover those patterns of limitation to the extent that you become aware within yourself, and in doing so you are free to follow them or not. A Siddha, someone who has Self-realization, is absolutely unpredictable, because he is not limited by his or her own mental patterns.
– How unpredictable is it?
Look at Jesus, in a moment he spoke about love and at the next moment he expelled the merchants from the temple. Nobody knew where Jesus was going to go. That’s why he was so dangerous. Teachers are very dangerous.
– There are people in Yoga who afraid of using words such “god”, “spirituality”, what do you think?…
There are three words that I try not to use, one you already know, it is “enlightenment”. Another word is “god”, and the third is “spirituality”. Why? Because these are three words that, although we seem to be talking about the same thing, when we use them each one is thinking about a different thing, we talking about things that are absolutely different for each person.
– Are they different because of the previous experiences of each one?
And also because the beliefs of each one. You speak of “god” and one will think of a grandpa in a nightgown sitting on top of a cloud. Another person will think – now it is very fashionable – in “an energy, there is an energy”. People think of very different things, very different. Fortunately – and I say this because I do not have to enter this endless world of personal beliefs – Kriya Yoga is not a belief system; I do not teach beliefs, I teach techniques. The Siddhas did not waste time in beliefs. They told to their disciples, “take this technique, practice and within a year you come back and you explain to me”. Through the seven Kriya Yoga meditations you can learn more about the functioning of the mind, through your direct experience, than by reading a hundred books about the mind.
I use the term “Self”, rather than “god”. And if you ask me what spirituality is, for me it is the study of the mind, of its fluctuations and creations, and the experience of the joyful consciousness behind the mind. By the same, everyone thinks of disparate things when talking about spirituality: astral travel, magic, visions … in the end all these things are conditioned by the mind. The object of study is our own mind, because all these subtle phenomena pass through it. You have to know how the mind works to be able to experience just what is behind it: Existence, Consciousness, Joy, your real Self.
– Finally, can you give some advice for people who do not know Yoga or Kriya Yoga?
My advice to those who start is remind them that Yoga has many schools, teachers and lineages, that they should allow themselves the freedom to experiment, and finally they should follow what works best for them. When I teach Kriya Yoga, I tell people: Give the techniques a try, experience them, and in the end, follow what works best for you.
– Is it hard to practice Kriya Yoga?
No, it’s easy. One of the characteristics of Babaji’s Kriya Yoga is the extreme simplicity of the kriyas. Through very simple techniques you can have very deep insights and results. And I think this was done on purpose.