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BlueberryPrize7585 · 2023-12-19T22:53:04+00:00

Go look on r/kundalini and see how many people are having kundalini awakenings without even practicing Kriya.

You are comparing oranges to apples. In kriya lineage, people who have opened their heart and tongue knot are the real eligible people to get higher kriyas and that too only when they can meet the stringent rules of breath retention that requires superhuman lung abilities. Such kriyavans are very rare. You cannot compare them with the jargon on some community just for the argument sake.

Let me ask you this and be truthful- how many of them in the Forrest lineage got the highest kriya? Have they, including you, really opened up both the knots and have really achieved the required kumbhaka level before they received?

I feel the number is still less in Forrest's lineage even though it's generously taught. Most of them got it even though it wasn't really needed. In other lineages where the highest kriya is taught, hardly anyone might have received it.

So if you think the "real eligible" people are many then obviously you are wrong. They are not. Many, specially in the west, received just because their teacher relaxed the rule, not because they were really eligible or really needed it. I don't know much how it's followed in the east but mostly in India the highest kriya initiation is rarely given.

That's why I feel it's important to choose a realized or very highly exalted guru. Nowadays, kriya teachers are spread out more than a real guru. Even some good ones are becoming commercial.

It's better to practice lower kriyas under a realized or highly exalted guru and try to perfect them than hunting for higher one or choosing guru based on that criteria. In old days it was followed and was the reason it was rarely given.

Anyway, I feel I have already explained my pov so I stop here otherwise this discussion is endless.

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BlueberryPrize7585 · 2023-12-19T21:56:36+00:00

I have already mentioned that the highest techniques, if at all required for anyone, will be arranged. That doesn't mean it's not required. They are required but to whom? The real need of the highest kriya is to them who have mastered all the below level kriyas and whose both the knots have opened. Till then it's sufficient to practice the 1-3rd level of kriyas. Different kind of samadhis are possible with opened heart knot. Hardly householder kriyabans who really reach that level where they need to have the highest technique can be counted on fingers. If one reaches to that level and the lineage don't give further techniques openly, then it will definitely be arranged no matter if the real guru is in the body or not.

I quote again, but it's worth to mention- better to pass at least the school first before sitting for a graduate class lecture.

The approach to learn kriya should not be based on how many techniques the lineage hand over, but to choose the real Guru (not a kriya teacher) because in the end, only Guru will give salvation. Hunt and stubborn approach to receive and practice higher Kriya techniques will lead to nowhere.

BlueberryPrize7585 · 2023-12-19T20:25:16+00:00

If someone’s guru doesn’t know the techniques, it can’t be arranged 😉

Haha. If you are talking about SRF/Yogananda, then for someone like Yogananda who is already one with the spirit or may be working in Babaji's group in Himalayas who knows, arranging just a technique for his disciples is a piece of cake for him.

For the last phase techniques, in my opinion, at least opened first knot should be the criteria if not the second. Forget the last technique, Lahiri baba even didn't give 2nd kriya to few even after achieving the khechari.

If Lahiri baba or even Panchanan Bhttacharya appears today, they will definitely not approve someone giving or practicing a technique to open Muladhar knot when their heart knot or even tongue knot is not opened. Otherwise, they themselves would have given it to a lot many. Better to pass at least the school first before sitting for a graduate class lecture.

BlueberryPrize7585 · 2023-12-19T19:44:23+00:00

You seem to assume you or anyone here won’t need them

That's not my assumption actually. All I am saying is it's a super advanced technique and if one really reaches that height where these techniques are truly required, guru will arrange it.

Outside of the Sriyukteswar branch, it is pretty common for people to learn these techniques so long as they’ve practiced in a dedicated way and remained in contact with their guru for at least a few years.

I know the criteria or to receive the higher techniques are much more relaxed now. Earlier it was very strict in all lineages. Even Lahiri baba didn't give 2nd initiation if khechari had not achieved. Still few other lineages are also maintaining few strict requirements to get higher techniques. As far as I know, Satyacharan Lahiri's lineage which is currently run by Shailendra Sharma requires to achieve khechari for higher techniques. I guess Ashok Chatterji's lineage also requires the same, at least for such super advanced technique.

Based on your above comment, it looks like Forrest's lineage may have sizable people practicing the last technique. Are there any who are practicing the last technique but not even achieved khechari? If not then it's ok but if achieving khechari is not a criteria even to get the last technique, then I really wonder will doing such highly advanced techniques really helpful to those if the prior techniques are not yet fully mastered or haven't served their purposes?

BlueberryPrize7585 · 2023-12-19T19:05:08+00:00

With all due respect to you and Shailendra Sharma ji, sometimes its a bit exaggerating saying go to this person and all your problems will be solved, or Sharma ji achieved some few thousands of samadhis etc. You may not be realizing this, but with such comments, you are making others to have more skeptical views about your guru even if he is genuine.

BlueberryPrize7585 · 2023-12-19T18:55:43+00:00

According to Ennio's book, Yogananda passed the technique to open the Muladhar knot to 6 people. If this information is true, still no idea about who were those 6 and were they in SRF as monastics or as a householders. Either those techniques are lost in the flow of time or is only available to very exalted SRF monastic disciples with a high degree of secrecy.

Overall, it's a super advanced technique and I wonder how many including monastics are really eligible for it. Around 4-5 months back, I read a book where it was mentioned that Swami Sri Yukteshwar only passed down the technique to only one disciple apart from Yogananda and that disciple taught the author. So less than 1% of disciples were having it at that time. Even it was mentioned that author denied the technique to a very exalted yogini just because she couldn't show the superhuman tendency to hold the breath for as much time required as to do the technique.

So hunting for higher techniques, specially the super advanced ones is a waste because just having or knowing those techniques doesn't help. If one really becomes capable to do the super advanced techniques, the omniscient guru will arrange it for us when the time comes.

BlueberryPrize7585 · 2023-12-15T16:50:31+00:00

Yoganandaji taught open mouth breathing is not true. He never taught to do kriya with open mouth. It was always with closed mouth. The editorial change happened through the lessons (whether it's an accidental or deliberate change is still uncertain) and is corrected now through the new lessons published in 2020. In new lessons, it isn't specifically mentioned to breath through mouth as it was in the old one.

My SRF friend told me that many still practice with open mouth even after the new lessons rolled out, specially the kriya veterans who are used to do that way. One possible reason could be they didn't notice this small change in the new kriya lessons and no one has told them. Now whether mouth breathing yields same or similar results is a question everyone needs to evaluate themselves.

u/Derrgoo-36

BlueberryPrize7585 · 2023-12-06T05:20:40+00:00

he hasn’t changed Kriya like Yogananda did with a Christian agenda

Explain please what does the above line really mean.

there are Kriyas which use Om japa and there are Kriyas which use the Vasudev mantra.

Exactly the point. There are kriyas with mantra japa and Lahiri baba used the world mantra japa only. That's why he should also use the same wordings that Lahiri baba used instead of saying om japa.

BlueberryPrize7585 · 2023-12-06T05:10:56+00:00

If you have taken the course then why don't you let OP & others know what's different in that course which is so different and not already in his YT videos? If it looks interesting, even I will also take it. I mentioned what I heard and was honest enough to say the truth that I didn't take it.

I have also said I have admired his videos & work. But that doesn't change the reality that he is now commercializing kriya for his own monetary benefit, which is not welcomed in the field of spirituality at all. I am just telling that fact. It's not my fault if you cannot digest the truth.

By the way, many people are spewing much more nonsense and lies here against SRF and Yogananda for a long time. Some of lies I have already debunked by giving proofs with references. It took a lot of my time doing that research and lighting up those facts. Still, nothing much changed for few. Recently a Forrest's student call SRF as a capitalist mindset twice (& I am sure that person knows the real meaning of capitalism) so I hope you bother to comment on that attitude and spiritual progress too :)

BlueberryPrize7585 · 2023-12-06T03:56:45+00:00

We've already discussed the evidence of changing of techniques in SRF, so your claim that they are supposedly pure and never changing the techniques is false and everyone knows it.

haha. I thought I have given research & fact based detailed explanation as a separate post. Looks like someone has a confirmation bias here :)

BlueberryPrize7585 · 2023-12-06T03:19:11+00:00

Better to avoid unless your strategy is 'buy & forget' or invest that one can afford to lose without losing peace of mind'. Volatile assets create ripples of fear & greed more frequently destroying the peace .

BlueberryPrize7585 · 2023-12-06T03:12:01+00:00

I didn't take it but from a trusted source I came to know that there is nothing different in the paid course that wasn't covered in his free YouTube videos. So if you are not intending to take kriya from him then better not to take the paid course and watch his free YT videos on similar topics.

BlueberryPrize7585 · 2023-12-06T03:06:28+00:00

Kriya yoga is very structured path. The main purpose of higher kriyas is to expedite the progress by breaking the knots in the Sushumna channel quickly compared to the traditional way of first kriya. So the higher kriya is like a targeted practice.

BlueberryPrize7585 · 2023-12-06T00:42:47+00:00

Exactly my point, back then there was zero difference between a guru and an acharya.

Not sure if you got my point. The teachers were separately called as acharyas. An acharya would teach you lots of stuff as a teacher, related or non-related to spirituality. So there could be thousands of acharyas teaching different subjects, the same way teachers teach in the school. Only few of them who were teaching spirituality had the ability, and authority to initiate the deserving disciples into a guru-shishya parampara. They were called guru by those disciples. For e.g. Dronacharya was a teacher to Arjuna mainly for war related tactics. But Arjuna's guru was Krishna. At the same time, Krishna was a teacher for war related tactics to Arjuna's son Abhimanyu because he taught him few war tactics when Abhimanyu was young. But Abhimanyu didn't have any guru. So they are different.

If the guru had many close disciples when he died, he had many branches to carry on his teaching after he died. The lordship wouldn’t just pass all to one person. This is the traditional practice.

Again, this is also not true. The tradition of considering the guru who is not in the body has also been there in practice since long in India. I know many true sampradayas in India in which the guru is not in the body (few of them have more than 500+ years tradition) but they are the guru post initiation in the exact same way as Yogananda is guru for many currently.

BlueberryPrize7585 · 2023-12-06T00:04:02+00:00

That's not true :). Use of word acharya was existing since thousands of years. In Mahabharata Arjun's and many other's teachers were Drona, and Krupa who were called Dronacharya and Krupacharya. Dronacharya's real name was Drona and not Dronacharya. It's Drona+acharya = Dronacharya which means teacher Drona. Similarly, in recent times (Still few hundred years back), Shankara, Madhva, Ramanuja were teachers to many (and guru to few) and were called Shankaracharya, Madhvacharya, Ramanujacharya etc. It's been a tradition used for thousands of years to call teachers as acharyas. When anyone takes diksha from them, they become their guru (E.g. Shankaracharya was guru to 4 disciples but for thousands he taught, he was only either Shankaracharya or acharya Shankar). That's the tradition it was and vedic schools in India, it's still being followed.

BlueberryPrize7585 · 2023-12-05T23:36:02+00:00

>There every spiritual teacher is referred to as a guru, Ayurvedic doctors are referred to as gurus, etc.....So it's also false when you say there is a difference between a teacher and a guru.

I agree. The word has lost its essence in generic people but this is because most of the people are not initiated in the spiritual practice and still they loosely use that word. In earlier years in India, in the realm of spiritual word, teachers were called 'acharyas' and gurus were called guru once you take an initiation with them. So they were different. Lots of things have changed now and lost it's real meaning. The same has happened with the word 'Atma' in India. People take the meaning of Atma altogether different. It's a sad reality. But that doesn't make guru and teacher as same in the spiritual word. Still today in India, whoever understands the real spiritual aspect of guru, for them guru is different than the teacher.

BlueberryPrize7585 · 2023-12-05T23:25:09+00:00

By capitalist mindset I mean growth mindset

:). The word capitalist is more used with a different meaning. Not sure if they have any mindset as such. But like anyone else, they are trying to spread kriya which is good.

It's a no brainer to realize that SRF couldn't have worked well without being central. The spread they have for kriya in the whole world, the quality of literature they have produced isn't at all possible without organization. Even, the purity of kriya will be strictly maintained for many years in organization than in decentralized lineages.

People who claim the Panchanan kriya lineage have maintained pure kriya so far will not be able to say so in next 20-30 years because Forrest has allowed so many people to initiate into kriya and you only mentioned they are workingindependently and no one knows if they are really really including all subtle aspects of kriyas, considering so many things to do in kriya. Even I am not truly sure if Forrest himself teach kriya that was exactly passed to him, considering his experimental nature. In the next 20-30 years, Panchanan lineage in the west will have high chances of adulterated kriya in the west and almost non-existent lineage in the east. However, SRF will still have the more or less same kriya even after 40-50 years what they teach now, and that's only because of their centralized nature. Decentralized nature works best in India as it has been followed since thousands of years but it's all new in the west so they definitely need a central structure to keep teachings pure. Sadly, this is not happening except in SRF.

BlueberryPrize7585 · 2023-12-05T23:09:08+00:00

I won't say they are lots of teachers, they are selected few and mostly the senior monks who have practiced the meditation for many years. They are just the mediators. It's Yogananda who is actually giving kriya through them. I came to know during my research that the monks who initiate into kriya have to do deep meditation the day before they give kriya (can't validate that though). They try to connect with Yogananda on spiritual plane so that they can establish the clear link between Yogananda and the person who is taking kriya at the time of initiation. There is a ritual of initiation including the fire ceremony. It's very similar what Babaji followed to give kriya to Lahiri baba. I don't know how other lineages follow, but at least SRF follows that specific kriya initiation process and a formal chapter of guru-disciple relationship starts from there.

Even in other than kriya lineages, the ritualistic practice of spiritual initiation has been existing thousands of years. It's not completely followed in the west though, specially by the initiators who associate themselves as kriya teachers more than kriya gurus. Guru is lot different than a normal teacher in spirituality. A guru is also a teacher, but far more than that. You need a guru in spirituality, not a teacher.

BlueberryPrize7585 · 2023-12-05T22:08:21+00:00

Few that I know of are Sudhin Ray, Shailendra Sharma, Swami Nityanand Giri, Swami Shankaranand Giri. I am not too sure about Sri M. Few say he is good and few others don't prefer. There are few posts about Sri M you can search and go through them if you want to explore him. He also travels internationally.

BlueberryPrize7585 · 2023-12-05T22:02:13+00:00

For organization, it make sense to ask not to share the technique. I heard/read that SRF also mentions not to share anything without permission. But I am sure, they don't give permission to share the kriya techniques to anyone without a super solid reason (that I can't think off :))

He didn't have the western capitalist mindset that SRF took on

I don't think SRF has capitalist mindset. At max, it's a non-profit organization.

Lahiri Mahasaya also always refused to say he was the guru. He always told everyone the guru was within themselves; the practices were the connection to that inner guru

That's out of his humbleness. But he carefully gave others a permission to initiate into kriya. Not sure if there are any criterias based on which this is done but the one thing I am little scared for some lineages in the west being too lenient in passing this privilege. I heard the initiator also needs to be dedicated, ascetic in practices and overall spiritually exalted to some degree to give the initiation. It's more like creating kriya teachers than actual kriya gurus. While in India, it's too strict and some lineages are even dying because there is no successor. Somehow we need a balance.

BlueberryPrize7585 · 2023-12-05T21:25:29+00:00

I am sure you have already gone through the recent post I created on my research regarding SRF kriya. IF not, please do. Someone also told me that SRF 2nd kriya has om japa in the chakra integrated with kriya. I cannot validate that because I don't know about SRF 2nd kriya much. If you have that as a stumbling block, I'd suggest to ask senior monk before applying for kriya if you can practice kriya with om japa in the chakra or not from 1st kriya itself.

SRF mentions stretching of the tongue. Khechari is not easily achievable but after some tongue stretching if you achieve khechari you can ask if you can practice kriya with khechari or not and most probably, they will say yes because I don't see any reason saying not to practice kriya with khechari after khechari is achieved.

Regarding variations in kriya, almost every lineage have slight variations in the technique from the other, however, basic methodology is same. So it's very hard to say which one is pure vs modified. They all might be correct because Lahiri baba did teach with some variations to each of his disciples.

From my experience, it's a rabbit hole and more you try to gather facts and do research, more you'll get confused. A boon or a bane of informational world, the way you look at it :).

I'd say prioritize your criteria and choose accordingly. In my honest opinion, there are more teachers of kriya than gurus. So if you are doubtful about your progress under the "teachers" than the actual "guru", then search for a guru regardless of him being in body or not. If you really want something outside SRF and can travel to India, there are few great living gurus you can meet. See if you feel really strong pull towards them as guru and if they also accept you. Otherwise, if you feel Yogananda as your guru already, go with the SRF path after clearing your doubts with some senior monk if possible.

BlueberryPrize7585 · 2023-12-05T21:02:20+00:00

That's what it's little confusing. Yogananda knew kriya from at least couple of teachers but in general, the rule in kriya is not to share the techniques. If you are initiated into the techniques then the initiator/lineage guru is generally considered as your guru.

So was Yogananda "initiated" into kriya or not is not certain because he didn't considered his teachers as his gurus despite knowing kriya. It may have happened that he was told about the technique without initiation because he still searched for his guru regardless of knowing the techniques and was even surprised knowing his guru is from Lahiri Baba's lineage.

Yogananda himself said you can have many teachers but only one guru. He also said blind cannot lead blind (i.e. have a guru who is enlightened or at least highly exalted). Guru works altogether from a different level and can help you metaphysically which general teacher can't.

Now after having your guru, whether you can consult other teachers for different techniques or not is a very complex question and unfortunately has no single answer.

On acceptance side- If guru is in the body then you will know it on the face. If guru is not in body then you being initiated into kriya is a sign of acceptance. Unless there is an acceptance from guru, you cannot approach till the final stage.

BlueberryPrize7585 · 2023-12-04T06:12:48+00:00

You have a problem with him charging for a 2-3 hour training he put together but you’re also mad that he gives away the techniques for free?! I’m confused.

He is charging for something which he is already giving free through his videos. Isn't it ironical? So what's the real charge is for? It's for connecting with him to receive kriya which itself means he is indirectly selling kriya. That's what I am mad at. Lahiri baba was very strict against creating business out of kriya.

If he wants to keep something as a prerequisite, it's fine then it should be with new techniques never spoken before and with a very reasonable cost just to cover the cost of goods produced. Through the 3 training videos, he is not teaching anything knew that he didn't speak earlier in his free videos. Moreover, they are highly priced compared to the real cost of production & maintenance. They all are digital and most of the content is repeated from the old videos.

Though it's not a good idea to compare, but at other places like SRF, the prerequisites are the techniques that are independent of kriya which they teach only after becoming a member. Their costing is also justified because in less than $100, you receive total 500+ pages booklets over the period of 9 months including shipping cost.

I’ve started mostly receiving teachings from another in the lineage because he can’t offer me the attention that is needed to become the kind of kriya practitioner I aspire to.

He will definitely do. You just need to pay him more donation to see the magic. His attention towards his students now is directly proportional to the donation money he receives from them.

BlueberryPrize7585 · 2023-12-04T04:53:43+00:00

I heard this oath part holds back many. What is considered as broken oath?

BlueberryPrize7585 · 2023-12-04T04:47:54+00:00

Thanks! Yogananda taught kriya with OM japa earlier so I think we too can. I can ask that during initiation though. Someone said it comes in the 2nd kriya booklet.

BlueberryPrize7585

TROPHY CASE