A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Autobiography of a YOGI

P >> Paramhansa Yogananda >> Autobiography of a YOGI




Sister asked me to convey her heartfelt gratitude to my guru. He
listened to her message in silence. But as I was taking my leave,
he made a pregnant comment.

"Your sister has been told by many doctors that she can never bear
children. Assure her that in a few years she will give birth to
two daughters."

Some years later, to Nalini's joy, she bore a girl, followed in a
few years by another daughter.

"Your master has blessed our home, our entire family," my sister
said. "The presence of such a man is a sanctification on the whole
of India. Dear brother, please tell Sri Yukteswarji that, through
you, I humbly count myself as one of his KRIYA YOGA disciples."

{FN25-1} The gracefully draped dress of Indian women.

{FN25-2} Because most persons in India are thin, reasonable plumpness
is considered very desirable.

{FN25-3} The Hindu scriptures declare that those who habitually
speak the truth will develop the power of materializing their words.
What commands they utter from the heart will come true in life.



CHAPTER: 26

THE SCIENCE OF KRIYA YOGA

The science of KRIYA YOGA, mentioned so often in these pages, became
widely known in modern India through the instrumentality of Lahiri
Mahasaya, my guru's guru. The Sanskrit root of KRIYA is KRI, to
do, to act and react; the same root is found in the word KARMA, the
natural principle of cause and effect. KRIYA YOGA is thus "union
(yoga) with the Infinite through a certain action or rite." A yogi
who faithfully follows its technique is gradually freed from karma
or the universal chain of causation.

Because of certain ancient yogic injunctions, I cannot give a full
explanation of KRIYA YOGA in the pages of a book intended for the
general public. The actual technique must be learned from a KRIYABAN
or KRIYA YOGI; here a broad reference must suffice.

KRIYA YOGA is a simple, psychophysiological method by which the
human blood is decarbonized and recharged with oxygen. The atoms
of this extra oxygen are transmuted into life current to rejuvenate
the brain and spinal centers. {FN26-1} By stopping the accumulation
of venous blood, the yogi is able to lessen or prevent the decay of
tissues; the advanced yogi transmutes his cells into pure energy.
Elijah, Jesus, Kabir and other prophets were past masters in the
use of KRIYA or a similar technique, by which they caused their
bodies to dematerialize at will.

KRIYA is an ancient science. Lahiri Mahasaya received it from his
guru, Babaji, who rediscovered and clarified the technique after
it had been lost in the Dark Ages.

"The KRIYA YOGA which I am giving to the world through you in this
nineteenth century," Babaji told Lahiri Mahasaya, "is a revival of
the same science which Krishna gave, millenniums ago, to Arjuna,
and which was later known to Patanjali, and to Christ, St. John,
St. Paul, and other disciples."

KRIYA YOGA is referred to by Krishna, India's greatest prophet, in
a stanza of the BHAGAVAD GITA: "Offering inhaling breath into the
outgoing breath, and offering the outgoing breath into the inhaling
breath, the yogi neutralizes both these breaths; he thus releases
the life force from the heart and brings it under his control."
{FN26-2} The interpretation is: "The yogi arrests decay in the body
by an addition of life force, and arrests the mutations of growth
in the body by APAN (eliminating current). Thus neutralizing decay
and growth, by quieting the heart, the yogi learns life control."

Krishna also relates {FN26-3} that it was he, in a former incarnation,
who communicated the indestructible yoga to an ancient illuminato,
Vivasvat, who gave it to Manu, the great legislator. {FN26-4} He,
in turn, instructed Ikshwaku, the father of India's solar warrior
dynasty. Passing thus from one to another, the royal yoga was
guarded by the rishis until the coming of the materialistic ages.
{FN26-5} Then, due to priestly secrecy and man's indifference, the
sacred knowledge gradually became inaccessible.

KRIYA YOGA is mentioned twice by the ancient sage Patanjali, foremost
exponent of yoga, who wrote: "KRIYA YOGA consists of body discipline,
mental control, and meditating on AUM." {FN26-6} Patanjali speaks
of God as the actual Cosmic Sound of AUM heard in meditation. {FN26-7}
AUM is the Creative Word, {FN26-8} the sound of the Vibratory Motor.
Even the yoga-beginner soon inwardly hears the wondrous sound of
AUM. Receiving this blissful spiritual encouragement, the devotee
becomes assured that he is in actual touch with divine realms.

Patanjali refers a second time to the life-control or KRIYA technique
thus: "Liberation can be accomplished by that PRANAYAMA which is
attained by disjoining the course of inspiration and expiration."
{FN26-9}

St. Paul knew KRIYA YOGA, or a technique very similar to it, by
which he could switch life currents to and from the senses. He was
therefore able to say: "Verily, I protest by our rejoicing which
I have in Christ, I DIE DAILY." {FN26-10} By daily withdrawing his
bodily life force, he united it by yoga union with the rejoicing
(eternal bliss) of the Christ consciousness. In that felicitous
state, he was consciously aware of being dead to the delusive
sensory world of MAYA.

In the initial states of God-contact (SABIKALPA SAMADHI) the
devotee's consciousness merges with the Cosmic Spirit; his life
force is withdrawn from the body, which appears "dead," or motionless
and rigid. The yogi is fully aware of his bodily condition of
suspended animation. As he progresses to higher spiritual states
(NIRBIKALPA SAMADHI), however, he communes with God without bodily
fixation, and in his ordinary waking consciousness, even in the
midst of exacting worldly duties. {FN26-11}

"KRIYA YOGA is an instrument through which human evolution can be
quickened," Sri Yukteswar explained to his students. "The ancient
yogis discovered that the secret of cosmic consciousness is
intimately linked with breath mastery. This is India's unique and
deathless contribution to the world's treasury of knowledge. The life
force, which is ordinarily absorbed 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 mentally directs his life energy to revolve, upward
and downward, around the six spinal centers (medullary, cervical,
dorsal, lumbar, sacral, and coccygeal plexuses) which correspond
to the twelve astral signs of the zodiac, the symbolic Cosmic
Man. One-half minute of revolution of energy around the sensitive
spinal cord of man effects subtle progress in his evolution; that
half-minute of KRIYA equals one year of natural spiritual unfoldment.

The astral system of a human being, with six (twelve by polarity)
inner constellations revolving around the sun of the omniscient
spiritual eye, is interrelated with the physical sun and the twelve
zodiacal signs. All men are thus affected by an inner and an outer
universe. The ancient rishis discovered that man's earthly and
heavenly environment, in twelve-year cycles, push him forward on
his natural path. The scriptures aver that man requires a million
years of normal, diseaseless evolution to perfect his human brain
sufficiently to express cosmic consciousness.


One thousand KRIYA practiced in eight hours gives the yogi, in one
day, the equivalent of one thousand years of natural evolution:
365,000 years of evolution in one year. In three years, a KRIYA
YOGI can thus accomplish by intelligent self-effort the same result
which nature brings to pass in a million years. The KRIYA short
cut, of course, can be taken only by deeply developed yogis. With
the guidance of a guru, such yogis have carefully prepared their
bodies and brains to receive the power created by intensive practice.

The KRIYA beginner employs his yogic exercise only fourteen to
twenty-eight times, twice daily. A number of yogis achieve emancipation
in six or twelve or twenty-four or forty-eight years. A yogi who
dies before achieving full realization carries with him the good
karma of his past KRIYA effort; in his new life he is harmoniously
propelled toward his Infinite Goal.

The body of the average man is like a fifty-watt lamp, which cannot
accommodate the billion watts of power roused by an excessive practice
of KRIYA. Through gradual and regular increase of the simple and
"foolproof" methods of KRIYA, man's body becomes astrally transformed
day by day, and is finally fitted to express the infinite potentials
of cosmic energy-the first materially active expression of 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
decidedly unpleasant. KRIYA, on the other hand, is accompanied
from the very beginning by an accession of peace, and by soothing
sensations of regenerative effect in the spine.

The ancient yogic technique converts the breath into mind. By
spiritual advancement, one is able to cognize the breath as an act
of mind-a dream-breath.

Many illustrations could be given of the mathematical relationship
between man's respiratory rate and the variations in his states 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. Fixity of attention depends on slow breathing; quick
or uneven breaths are an inevitable accompaniment of harmful
emotional states: fear, lust, 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,
{FN26-12} breathes only 4 times per minute.

The rejuvenating effects of sleep are due to man's temporary
unawareness of body and breathing. The sleeping man becomes a yogi;
each night he unconsciously performs the yogic rite of releasing
himself from bodily identification, and of merging the life force
with healing currents in the main brain region and the six sub-dynamos
of his spinal centers. The sleeper thus dips unknowingly into the
reservoir of cosmic energy which sustains all life.

The voluntary yogi performs a simple, natural process consciously,
not unconsciously like the slow-paced sleeper. The KRIYA YOGI uses
his technique to saturate and feed all his physical cells with
undecaying light and keep them in a magnetized state. He scientifically
makes breath unnecessary, without producing the states of subconscious
sleep or unconsciousness.

By KRIYA, the outgoing life force is not wasted and abused in the
senses, but constrained to reunite with subtler spinal energies.
By such reinforcement of life, the yogi's body and brain cells
are electrified with the spiritual elixir. Thus he removes himself
from studied observance of natural laws, which can only take him-by
circuitous means as given by proper food, sunlight, and harmonious
thoughts-to a million-year Goal. It needs twelve years of normal
healthful living to effect even slight perceptible change in brain
structure, and a million solar returns are exacted to sufficiently
refine the cerebral tenement for manifestation of cosmic consciousness.

Untying the cord of breath which binds the soul to the body, KRIYA
serves to prolong life and enlarge the consciousness to infinity.
The yoga method overcomes the tug of war between the mind and the
matter-bound senses, and frees the devotee to reinherit his eternal
kingdom. He knows his real nature is bound neither by physical
encasement nor by breath, symbol of the mortal enslavement to air,
to nature's elemental compulsions.

Introspection, or "sitting in the silence," is an unscientific
way of trying to force apart the mind and senses, tied together by
the life force. The contemplative mind, attempting its return to
divinity, is constantly dragged back toward the senses by the life
currents. KRIYA, controlling the mind DIRECTLY through the life
force, is the easiest, most effective, and most scientific avenue
of approach to the Infinite. In contrast to the slow, uncertain
"bullock cart" theological path to God, KRIYA may justly be called
the "airplane" route.

The yogic science is based on an empirical consideration of all
forms of concentration and meditation exercises. Yoga enables the
devotee to switch off or on, at will, life current from the five
sense telephones of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Attaining
this power of sense-disconnection, the yogi finds it simple to unite
his mind at will with divine realms or with the world of matter.
No longer is he unwillingly brought back by the life force to the
mundane sphere of rowdy sensations and restless thoughts. Master
of his body and mind, the KRIYA YOGI ultimately achieves victory
over the "last enemy," death.

So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men: And Death once
dead, there's no more dying then. {FN26-13}

The life of an advanced KRIYA YOGI is influenced, not by effects of
past actions, but solely by directions from the soul. The devotee
thus avoids the slow, evolutionary monitors of egoistic actions,
good and bad, of common life, cumbrous and snail-like to the eagle
hearts.

The superior method of soul living frees the yogi who, shorn of
his ego-prison, tastes the deep air of omnipresence. The thralldom
of natural living is, in contrast, set in a pace humiliating.
Conforming his life to the evolutionary order, a man can command no
concessionary haste from nature but, living without error against
the laws of his physical and mental endowment, still requires about
a million years of incarnating masquerades to know final emancipation.

The telescopic methods of yogis, disengaging themselves from physical
and mental identifications in favor of soul-individuality, thus
commend themselves to those who eye with revolt a thousand thousand
years. This numerical periphery is enlarged for the ordinary man,
who lives in harmony not even with nature, let alone his soul, but
pursues instead unnatural complexities, thus offending in his body
and thoughts the sweet sanities of nature. For him, two times a
million years can scarce suffice for liberation.

Gross man seldom or never realizes that his body is a kingdom,
governed by Emperor Soul on the throne of the cranium, with subsidiary
regents in the six spinal centers or spheres of consciousness. This
theocracy extends over a throng of obedient subjects: twenty-seven
thousand billion cells-endowed with a sure if automatic intelligence
by which they perform all duties of bodily growths, transformations,
and dissolutions-and fifty million substratal thoughts, emotions,
and variations of alternating phases in man's consciousness in an
average life of sixty years. Any apparent insurrection of bodily
or cerebral cells toward Emperor Soul, manifesting as disease
or depression, is due to no disloyalty among the humble citizens,
but to past or present misuse by man of his individuality or free
will, given to him simultaneous with a soul, and revocable never.

Identifying himself with a shallow ego, man takes for granted that
it is he who thinks, wills, feels, digests meals, and keeps himself
alive, never admitting through reflection (only a little would
suffice!) that in his ordinary life he is naught but a puppet
of past actions (karma) and of nature or environment. Each man's
intellectual reactions, feelings, moods, and habits are circumscribed
by effects of past causes, whether of this or a prior life. Lofty
above such influences, however, is his regal soul. Spurning the
transitory truths and freedoms, the KRIYA YOGI passes beyond all
disillusionment into his unfettered Being. All scriptures declare
man to be not a corruptible body, but a living soul; by KRIYA he
is given a method to prove the scriptural truth.

"Outward ritual cannot destroy ignorance, because they are not
mutually contradictory," wrote Shankara in his famous CENTURY OF
VERSES. "Realized knowledge alone destroys ignorance. . . . Knowledge
cannot spring up by any other means than inquiry. 'Who am I? How
was this universe born? Who is its maker? What is its material
cause?' This is the kind of inquiry referred to." The intellect
has no answer for these questions; hence the rishis evolved yoga
as the technique of spiritual inquiry.

KRIYA YOGA is the real "fire rite" often extolled in the BHAGAVAD
GITA. The purifying fires of yoga bring eternal illumination, and
thus differ much from outward and little-effective religious fire
ceremonies, where perception of truth is oft burnt, to solemn
chanted accompaniment, along with the incense!

The advanced yogi, withholding all his mind, will, and feeling from
false identification with bodily desires, uniting his mind with
superconscious forces in the spinal shrines, thus lives in this
world as God hath planned, not impelled by impulses from the past
nor by new witlessnesses of fresh human motivations. Such a yogi
receives fulfillment of his Supreme Desire, safe in the final haven
of inexhaustibly blissful Spirit.

The yogi offers his labyrinthine human longings to a monotheistic
bonfire dedicated to the unparalleled God. This is indeed the true
yogic fire ceremony, in which all past and present desires are fuel
consumed by love divine. The Ultimate Flame receives the sacrifice
of all human madness, and man is pure of dross. His bones stripped
of all desirous flesh, his karmic skeleton bleached in the antiseptic
suns of wisdom, he is clean at last, inoffensive before man and
Maker.

Referring to yoga's sure and methodical efficacy, Lord Krishna
praises the technological yogi in the following words: "The yogi
is greater than body-disciplining ascetics, greater even than the
followers of the path of wisdom (JNANA YOGA), or of the path of
action (KARMA YOGA); be thou, O disciple Arjuna, a yogi!" {FN26-14}

{FN26-1} The noted scientist, Dr. George W. Crile of Cleveland,
explained before a 1940 meeting of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science the experiments by which he had proved
that all bodily tissues are electrically negative, except the
brain and nervous system tissues which remain electrically positive
because they take up revivifying oxygen at a more rapid rate.

{FN26-2} BHAGAVAD GITA, IV:29.

{FN26-3} BHAGAVAD GITA IV:1-2.

{FN26-4} The author of MANAVA DHARMA SHASTRAS. These institutes of
canonized common law are effective in India to this day. The French
scholar, Louis Jacolliot, writes that the date of Manu "is lost
in the night of the ante-historical period of India; and no scholar
has dared to refuse him the title of the most ancient lawgiver in the
world." In LA BIBLE DANS L'INDE, pages 33-37, Jacolliot reproduces
parallel textual references to prove that the Roman CODE OF JUSTINIAN
follows closely the LAWS OF MANU.

{FN26-5} The start of the materialistic ages, according to Hindu
scriptural reckonings, was 3102 B.C. This was the beginning of the
Descending Dwapara Age (see page 174). Modern scholars, blithely
believing that 10,000 years ago all men were sunk in a barbarous
Stone Age, summarily dismiss as "myths" all records and traditions
of very ancient civilizations in India, China, Egypt, and other
lands.


{FN26-6} Patanjali's APHORISMS, II:1. In using the words KRIYA
YOGA, Patanjali was referring to either the exact technique taught
by Babaji, or one very similar to it. That it was a definite
technique of life control is proved by Patanjali's APHORISM II:49.

{FN26-7} Patanjali's APHORISMS, I:27.

{FN26-8} "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God. . . . All things were made by him; and
without him was not any thing made that was made."-JOHN 1:1-3. AUM
(OM) of the VEDAS became the sacred word AMIN of the Moslems, HUM
of the Tibetans, and AMEN of the Christians (its meaning in Hebrew
being SURE, FAITHFUL). "These things saith the Amen, the faithful
and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God."-REVELATIONS
3:14.

{FN26-9} APHORISMS II:49..

{FN26-10} I CORINTHIANS 15:31. "Our rejoicing" is the correct
translation; not, as usually given, "your rejoicing." St. Paul was
referring to the OMNIPRESENCE of the Christ consciousness..

{FN26-11} KALPA means time or aeon. SABIKALPA means subject to time
or change; some link with PRAKRITI or matter remains. NIRBIKALPA
means timeless, changeless; this is the highest state of SAMADHI.

{FN26-12} According to the LINCOLN LIBRARY OF ESSENTIAL INFORMATION,
p. 1030, the giant tortoise lives between 200 and 300 years.

{FN26-13} Shakespeare: SONNET #146.

{FN26-14} BHAGAVAD GITA, VI:46.



CHAPTER: 27

FOUNDING A YOGA SCHOOL AT RANCHI

"Why are you averse to organizational work?"

Master's question startled me a bit. It is true that my private
conviction at the time was that organizations were "hornets' nests."

"It is a thankless task, sir," I answered. "No matter what the
leader does or does not, he is criticized."

"Do you want the whole divine CHANNA (milk curd) for yourself alone?"
My guru's retort was accompanied by a stern glance. "Could you or
anyone else achieve God-contact through yoga if a line of generous-hearted
masters had not been willing to convey their knowledge to others?"
He added, "God is the Honey, organizations are the hives; both are
necessary. Any FORM is useless, of course, without the spirit, but
why should you not start busy hives full of the spiritual nectar?"

His counsel moved me deeply. Although I made no outward reply, an
adamant resolution arose in my breast: I would share with my fellows,
so far as lay in my power, the unshackling truths I had learned at
my guru's feet. "Lord," I prayed, "may Thy Love shine forever on
the sanctuary of my devotion, and may I be able to awaken that Love
in other hearts."

On a previous occasion, before I had joined the monastic order,
Sri Yukteswar had made a most unexpected remark.

"How you will miss the companionship of a wife in your old age!" he
had said. "Do you not agree that the family man, engaged in useful
work to maintain his wife and children, thus plays a rewarding role
in God's eyes?"

"Sir," I had protested in alarm, "you know that my desire in this
life is to espouse only the Cosmic Beloved."

Master had laughed so merrily that I understood his observation
was made merely as a test of my faith.

"Remember," he had said slowly, "that he who discards his worldly
duties can justify himself only by assuming some kind of responsibility
toward a much larger family."

The ideal of an all-sided education for youth had always been close
to my heart. I saw clearly the arid results of ordinary instruction,
aimed only at the development of body and intellect. Moral and
spiritual values, without whose appreciation no man can approach
happiness, were yet lacking in the formal curriculum. I determined to
found a school where young boys could develop to the full stature
of manhood. My first step in that direction was made with seven
children at Dihika, a small country site in Bengal.

A year later, in 1918, through the generosity of Sir Manindra
Chandra Nundy, the Maharaja of Kasimbazar, I was able to transfer my
fast-growing group to Ranchi. This town in Bihar, about two hundred
miles from Calcutta, is blessed with one of the most healthful
climates in India. The Kasimbazar Palace at Ranchi was transformed
into the headquarters for the new school, which I called BRAHMACHARYA
VIDYALAYA {FN27-1} in accordance with the educational ideals
of the rishis. Their forest ashrams had been the ancient seats of
learning, secular and divine, for the youth of India.

At Ranchi I organized an educational program for both grammar
and high school grades. It included agricultural, industrial,
commercial, and academic subjects. The students were also taught
yoga concentration and meditation, and a unique system of physical
development, "Yogoda," whose principles I had discovered in 1916.

Realizing that man's body is like an electric battery, I reasoned
that it could be recharged with energy through the direct agency of
the human will. As no action, slight or large, is possible without
WILLING, man can avail himself of his prime mover, will, to renew
his bodily tissues without burdensome apparatus or mechanical
exercises. I therefore taught the Ranchi students my simple "Yogoda"
techniques by which the life force, centred in man's medulla
oblongata, can be consciously and instantly recharged from the
unlimited supply of cosmic energy.

The boys responded wonderfully to this training, developing
extraordinary ability to shift the life energy from one part of
the body to another part, and to sit in perfect poise in difficult
body postures. {FN27-2} They performed feats of strength and
endurance which many powerful adults could not equal. My youngest
brother, Bishnu Charan Ghosh, joined the Ranchi school; he later
became a leading physical culturist in Bengal. He and one of his
students traveled to Europe and America, giving exhibitions of
strength and skill which amazed the university savants, including
those at Columbia University in New York.

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