Overview

There comes a time in our lives when it becomes important to know the deeper truth of our existence, consciousness and ananda (bliss, joy, knowledge, realization, and freedom). I would like to share a few thoughts with you, which are the most valuable gift one can give to another, if the thoughts come from the inner being. Such thoughts do not belong to our finite human consciousness but are received in deep meditation and passed on to others from generation to generation. The Sanskrit word for receiving such messages in deep meditation is called "Shruti".

Transmission of Vedic Kriya Yoga

The material that is given here is best discussed in the presence of a living guru. In the Vedic times of India, a guru would verbally describe this to a disciple and give supporting examples, as it is very hard for a person engrossed in the mundane world to comprehend. The actual techniques and steps of Vedic Kriya Yoga are only given in person and under the guidance of a practicing guru and therefore will not be presented here. Initiation into Vedic Kriya Yoga can only be given in person to those who have a genuine yearning to receiving it. Incorrectly practiced meditation may be counter productive and have adverse psychological results. Nothing in the Vedic Kriya Yoga practice is invented by one man or one guru. It comes from the Vedas in its entirety. In the beginning there is the Word, the Word is with God, the Word is God, and the Word is Om and its expansion into the Vedas. The gurus of this lineage simply act as a medium to pass it on to new seekers until the practice connects them to God as the real guru. The word Kriya Yoga is not to be confused with other meanings of the act of kriya in other lines of yoga practices.

If there is God, then God must have given a way to find God at the beginning of time. God did that in the Vedas and the Gita. It is by silencing the mundane noise or the material consciousness that we connect to God. The true meaning of the dharma is to silence the material consciousness which occupies our attention and steals the valuable time we are given, depriving us from finding the simple truth that there is only Satchitananada oscillating in the dynamic expansions of Om. Beyond the manifestations of Om there is also Satchitananda who reveals everything. That experience of Om is only obtained by the complete silencing of the mind and material vibrations. Vedic Kriya Yoga provides the techniques and practices to achieve this.

The twentieth century laid the ground work for introducing yoga to the world by great gurus like Lahiri Mahasaya, Swami Vivekananda, Paramhansa Yogananda, Swami Muktananda, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Swami Prabhupad and their offshoots to name a few major contributors. With the exception of Lahiri Mahasaya, the above gurus drew attention to their own intellectual abilities, their own holiness or celibacy, or they assumed divine power as a guru, or just promoted and preached the Bhakti (devotional) aspect of yoga and down played meditative, intellectual or karma yoga. Some of them proclaimed themselves as the last guru of their line in direct contradiction to the Vedic expansion and contraction of the universe. Only Lahiri Mahasaya set an example of teaching yoga by not proclaiming his holiness, celibacy, super-intellectual power or his arbitrary authority to discard one aspect of yoga at the cost of another. The result is that a common person, as well as the holiest person, can identify with Lahiri Mahasaya and practice yoga as it was given by God to all human beings to practice.

The above gurus, except Lahiri Mahasaya, have primarily conducted mass initiations, classes, lectures and intensives. The initiation ceremony is the most sacred of events in the guru-disciple relationship of Vedic teaching. It is always conducted in a one-to-one Yagya (yajna) ceremony by the guru passing on the pure Vedic knowledge and practices of yoga. Lahiri Mahasaya and my lineage adhere to this one-to-one initiation and individualized intensives and transmission of the pure Vedic way of life. So when Paramhansa Yogananda proclaims himself the last guru of SRF, or when other gurus conduct primarily a group initiation or teaching, they violate their guru's instructions and the Vedic way of life. Satsanga, group meditations, and Kumbha mela (holy gathering) are essential but not at the cost of one-to-one religious teaching and practice. One-to-one yoga practice must be the primary mode of initiating and guiding disciples in Kriya Yoga practices. This is what the Vedas teach and what Lahiri Mahasaya taught.

Sachidananda

The word "Sachidananda" or God is a conjugation of three separate words, Sat + Chit + Ananda, which are three forms of energy, emanating from one entity, truly one unified field of energy. Sachidananda is the Lagrangian of the unified field which the modern physicists are looking for and have not found because they are confining their search to the material (Sat) energy only. The Vedic rishis knew all about it in Satyuga, the first period of the birth of the universe from the Sachidananda. "Sat" means material energy. It is what all of the matter or the elements of the universe are made of. It is the atomic, nuclear and subatomic energy. It is also the source of cosmic rays. The gravitational, electromagnetic, nuclear-weak, nuclear-strong etc. forces are but different manifestations of Sat. Time and Space owe their ever-changing forms and existence to Sat. Sat energy has always been here and beyond and will always be here and beyond in one form or another, i.e. in the manifest form detectable by the senses or in the unmanifest form undetectable by the senses. Sat energy has eternal existence and has eternal substantive truth. Sat also means truth and eternal existence. In the manifest form, i.e. the universe, the Sat energy moves from a higher potential to a lower potential. Physics, chemistry, mathematics etc. are various studies of Sat energy.

"Chit" means life force or prana, i.e. the energy of life. In the manifest form it combines with the Sat energy and takes the various forms of life from a living cell, to the animals and man. In the initial period of creation, the divine human beings spring out of God's being without undergoing an evolutionary cycle. In the unmanifested form, Chit is beyond all forms and is indescribable, yet there is a state of mind where both Chit and Sat can be experienced beyond this manifestation. When Chit or prana leaves our bodies we die no matter how healthy our bodies appear. Biology and medicine are the study of Chit energy. However, it is not understood by modern scientists since they confine themselves to the material energy only.

"Ananda" is the most subtle form of energy of Sachidanada (God). Ananda is effervescent joy, bliss and more. No one word in the English language defines it. It is also the intellect, the seat of all knowledge and pure unadulterated emotion. It is our volition and will power and the source of our incentives. In the unmanifest, i.e. beyond the universe, the ananda is ecstasy of all ecstasy. When we get in touch with it, our beings are illuminated with the thousand (trillion) points of light and our forms will become aware of our oneness with Sachidananda. It is what the enlightened yogis seek and there are ways to calm the manifest, this universe and its ups and downs and its dualities. The universe is said to be a divine play and is a noise in the consciousness of Sachidananda. In the manifest, i.e. the sense play or this creation, the Ananda splits into the spectrums of emotions, i.e. positive, neutral and negative emotional fringes, and becomes the driving force for either turmoil and chaos or the bringing about of the golden age of this earth and others. Under the grip of emotions mankind moves mountains, performs selfless duties or wages wars. In the divine play, the intellect, volition and incentives all take their spectral forms (positive, neutral, and negative) just like the emotions. There are scientific yoga techniques to calm the spectral forms of the ananda and transcend into the unmanifest, i.e. the pure and non-phenomenal form of Sachidananda. It is the Ananda force of Sachidananda that summons the Sat (matter), Chit (life) and Ananda (emotion and intellect) in different proportions to produce the inanimate, animate, and intelligent human forms of the universe. The Ananda energy, unlike the Sat energy, moves us from the lower potential to the higher potential as well as in the reverse direction. It is the source of our healing and growth as well as our decay. Psychology, psychiatry, politics, religion, mathematics and philosophy are the study of the Ananda energy.

In order to understand how Sachidananda manipulates Her/His Sat, Chit, Ananda forces to make this universe come about, we will look at an example. When we are awake we are functioning at the conscious level. When we go to sleep and dim the energy of the five senses, we are in the sleep consciousness. In the sleep-consciousness level, the conscious mind projects a very real and vivid universe of its own. We call it a dream and forget about it or remember it simply as a thought projection of our waking state. Let us say you went to sleep and started dreaming in the middle of the night. You are sleeping in your bedroom and you dream of getting up, starting your car, taking an airplane and going to an earth city or a place on an unknown planet by a space ship. Your conscious mind, while dreaming, manifests your car, your garage, ignition of the car, the road on which it runs, the airport, the airplane (or space ship), and the space goes on expanding to another planet. However you never leave your room, you are still sleeping, the dream space, the car, and the airplane never collided with the conscious and awakened space-time state of this earth. While dreaming you were convinced that the dream world did exist. In your dream you created other human beings and life forms and inanimate objects from your own conscious being. However, when you wake up you are easily convinced about the play of the conscious on the subconscious state as unreal, a dream or a fantasy. But the Sachidananda in your dream is revealing the process of the existence of our awakened conscious world. The Sachidananda is telling you that She (He) has many layers of consciousness. When the Sachidananda is not having this conscious dream, which we call the real world, She is in the Superconscious State (Unmanifest). The Sachidananda sometimes dims the energy of Her Super senses and dreams this (our) so-called real world. We are projections of Her Superconsciousness, just as the people, the animals and the inanimate things in your dream are the objects of your conscious being. This world is a pure play of Her (our) different layers of consciousness. Just as you wake up from your dream and the people and objects of the dream vanish or merge into you, similarly there is a process of waking up from this conscious state and becoming one with the Superconscious State of Sachidananda. The key is waking up consciously from this reality to a higher reality. Vedic Kriya Yoga delivers it scientifically and surely.

Thus, the Superconscious thoughts are the genesis of this real world. Let there be light and there is light etc. To further understand the creation let us examine the ocean. Only two elements of the Sachidananda manifestation are involved in this discussion. In the calm and still ocean there are no bubbles and waves. At the very depth of the ocean everything looks as one body of water in all directions. However, when the ocean is churned by the forces of wind and sun it starts to unfold itself in many forms. The waves take different shapes, the bubbles rise and disappear. The water vapor rises to become fog and clouds of many patterns, rain, lakes, and finally as rivers it merges back into the ocean. It also enters our beings to quench our thirst and become part our bodies as well as the bodies of other animals and plants. That is the miracle of just two elements of the Sachidananda. But Sachidananda has many elements and the Sat, Chit, and Ananda energy have infinite permutations and combinations. Remembering the ocean and its manifestations, you can understand the beauty and vastness of this universe and complexity of God. When the Superconscious being goes into the thoughts and dreams of the conscious state, a noise, a disturbance, a sort of chaos takes place in Her being and the conscious world springs out by summoning the different proportions of Her Shakti (energy...force).

The Five Yoga Disciplines

The only way to go back to the Superconscious state is to reverse the noise and churning of the thought process by Yoga. It is a process of conscious (not sleeping) meditation. There are five Yoga disciplines making a complete and an integral set for God realization.

The first one is Hath Yoga. It is not a mechanical body-building and exercise process. It is the preparation of our body, mind and emotions by certain energizing exercises in which one consciously meditates while performing the Yoga. The awareness of the flow of the Sat and the Chit energy and its rhythms are captured by these exercises. It is a process of meditation on the flow of Sachidananda energy. Otherwise it produces poor results. It is the most scientific and stable way of weight reduction and management.

The second yoga is Karma Yoga, the process of union with the Sachidananda by whatever activity we are engaged in at all times in our lives. Karma also means K (move) R (prana or life force) to Ma (medulla oblongata) which is achieved by Kriya Yoga.  Therefore, Kriya Yoga is the highest form of Karma Yoga. The practitioners of Karma Yoga become aware of the commands and guidance of our Higher Self, Sachidananda, and all activities are performed as awareness and dedication to Sachidananda in a pure joy. The good, neutral and bad activities are but the spectral play of the Sachidananda. Just as no painting is possible unless there are white, black and neutral gray shades present in the picture, so there is no world of ours possible unless there are the good, neutral and bad activities, thoughts, emotions. The difference between our conscious and Superconscious being is that the latter is devoid of the spectral form. The beauty is that we can traverse in the subconscious, conscious and even the superconscious states of God.

The third yoga is the Bhakti Yoga, which is pure devotion to the Sachidananda. Examples of this Yoga are Christianity and other devotional religions. When we are practicing this yoga, all emotions become the devotion to all Her/His forms. In Bhakti Yoga we realize that we love all the forms, duties, and creation of Sachidananda. In this yoga all the spectrum of emotions are calmed and become a unified total blissful consciousness. The highest and deepest state of devotion or Bhakti Yoga is obtained by Kriya Yoga as the practice leads to the total surrender of all the cells of our body to God during Kumbhak (peaceful, loving, blissful silence).

The fourth yoga is the Gyana (Jnan) Yoga, the yoga of reasoning, intellect, logic and analysis. In this yoga you further tune your consciousness with pure intellect and emotion, i.e. the Ananda energy itself. It is a vast field of yoga practice in itself. The highest and deepest state of intellectual or Gyana Yoga is Kriya Yoga as the practice leads to the total surrender of all the cells of our body to God during Kumbhak. In that surrendered state God becomes our Guru and downloads all of his omniscience/ wisdom to us. 

The fifth yoga is Raja Yoga or the Vedic Kriya Yoga of integrating all the other four forms of yoga and becoming totally placid, peaceful, and calm in deep meditation. It uplifts this body and mind to the Superconscious state and we transcend. Om, Shanti, Shanti, Shanti. The Bhagavad-Gita says that we must practice the balance of all five forms of yoga and not fight over the ways of one of them. The difference between man (woman) and God is the difference between ignorance and pure knowledge and love. When the ignorance is removed, the veil is removed and you witness yourself as you eternally have been, which is Ananda, an integral part of the Sachidananda. It is like a drop of water has merged in the vast ocean and become an inseparable whole. I provide structured feedback to students to help them manage their lives in order to obtain a superconscious state (samadhi, nirvana, or union with God).

Creation

In the initial period of the creation, the events in our lives take place by whatever thought arises in the being of God. To humans the initial events appear as random acts of God. However, after the initial period of a given creation, our individual consciousness begins to interact with the subsequent events of the creation. Actions influenced by human interventions is called Karma, that is as we sow (perform an act) so we reap, and there is group Karma which affects us all. We have existed in one form or another in the play of consciousness. At times our wishes come to fruition and at other times they do not. It is all based on the laws of Karma. Just as the births and deaths of the solar systems produce gold and diamond in our earth (the successive births and deaths of the stars create the higher elements like diamond and gold due to the extreme pressure and heat of the cosmic cataclysm), similarly in the births and deaths of our lives we find friendship and love during the extreme upheavals of our innumerable lives. In the various forms of our existence, from time immemorial, we have created friends and competitors and sometimes we find and at other times lose our loved ones in this harmony or to the contrary the tangled web of life. This scheme of things is purposely put in place by Sachidananda so that we all must return to God. The Sachidananda is the love of all love. So do not succumb to this play and instead find the greatest love (Sachidananda or God) while striving for the mundane and material goals of life, which are also important. Through all of this creation let the Shanti (Bliss or Ananda) be with us at all times. Ananda requires great discipline and meditation for its attainment.

The First Law of thermodynamics states that "material energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only change forms." In Hindu Yoga philosophy, matter, consciousness and bliss are actually one energy continuum. The Sanskrit word for this energy is "Sat-Chit-Ananda" or " Matter-Consciousness-Bliss". Sat-Chit-Ananda (S) is always here and will always be here in whatever we see including matter, animal, and all of us. Whatever we see (the phenomenal universe) and whatever we do not see is all S. The universe springs out of the being of S.

The universe has cycles. Day is followed by night and followed by day. The seasons are cyclical. The birth and death of the solar system, galaxies and universe are all cyclical. There are cycles within the cycle. The earth goes through life and annihilations of life cycles before the earth itself is no more. So after one annhilation of life on earth life begins again. That emergence of life after any cycle of annhilation is what Darwin noticed and described that there is matter (Sat) and it combined with consciousness (Chit or Prana) to become a living cell. The cell divided and evolved into the different animals. The matter, consciousness and partial bliss combined to become the humans on the earth. What Darwin did not notice is that by Yoga practice, humans attain complete bliss (Ananda) and merge or become one with matter, consciousness and bliss or Sat-Chit-Ananda. What Darwin did not notice is the beginning of the emergence of the Universe from S. If he noticed the beginning, he would have noticed the very first cell division that takes place in the being of this energy continuum, when S splits into three female energy forces (called Maha Shakti in the Sanskrit language). The three female energies then further subdivide as, birth giver, sustainer of the birth-entity, and death of that which is created from the being of S. The cell division proceeds into the Big-Bang when the phenomenal stage of the universe emerges from the S supporting human and animal life as we see. So actually the cell division has a downward spiral as well as an evolutionary spiral. So that is the big picture and the cell division of biology is only a fractal mimicking of the first cell division of S.

All of this is possible because of the law of conservation of Sat-Chit-Ananda (S). Whatever we see is S and whatever we do not see is also S. S is in everything and has always been here and beyond and always will be. According to the Vedas the universe springs out of the very being of S when God decides to burst into creative ideas from a placid (blissful or Ananda) state. This burst of idea is the first "big bang".   

The second or astral big bang is depicted above as the blueprints of living entities emerge from Sat-Chit-Ananda (in his universal form). Mahakali, Mahalaxmi and Mahasaraswati are represented as beings at the astral level without physical bodies. The second big bang is followed by the third or physical big bang.  This is the big bang that the physicists of the material world talk about.

All of this happens in Sat-Chit-Ananda at the very will of S. The discussion of time relates only to the creation. Time is a dimension of creation. S is beyond time and is timeless. These three lokic (in Sanskrit it is called the energy of Sat-Chit-Ananda or Tri-Lokas) big bangs are due to the Brahma (means to expand and contract) aspect of God or Sat-Chit-Ananda. So that is the total picture which physicists have yet to understand. Brahma is the creative aspect of God in the Vedas. In the Vedas Brahma's wife is Saraswati or Sarada.

Shrutis

In the second big bang the conscious entities without physical bodies dwell in an astral world. The means of communication in the astral world is called "Shrutis" which is the pranic and intelligent means of communication with mental-telepathic, audio and visual communication. This is the Divine Being's way of communication. Our astral beings do not need books or papers. Think of futuristic cell phones where text messages are stored on nano-material-particles and the nano-cell-phones are very small indeed. The nano-phones are later injected in our optic nerves for communication. It is not only a paperless but an invisible electronic environment. That technology is not far away in our material world. The Vedas are not printed books. They are Shrutis which are stored in pure pranic (consciousness) currents. In deep meditation these stored data are downloaded to our prana. Books are insufficient, incomplete and subject to interpretations.

Brahma Consciousness

Remember that the VKY practice is to establish your consciousness in the medulla oblangata in a breathless (do not hold the breath, practice will get you there), peaceful, loving, anandopranic state. That allows the entry of the Brahma consciousness at the 7th Chakra. After that God takes over and becomes your Guru and companion. All these practices are to get you there and help you stay there. So you perform the VKY steps only when you cannot maintain contact with the Guru Chakra or sixth chakra (medulla oblangata). When you do get there, you stop the practices and just stay there and all things will be revealed and added unto thee. The Witness and union with God. Like a drop of water merges into the Ocean from which it originated.

Please call me for spiritual discussions or further interests.

Copyright © 2005-2011 Ashok Kumar Singh. All rights reserved.