Kriya Yoga
Preach for Better Life– Kriya Yoga According to Paramahansa Yogananda –
(WE DO NOT TEACH KRIYA YOGA, WE PREACH KRIYA YOGA)
Kriya Yoga is a sacred meditation technique taught by Paramahansa Yogananda, designed to accelerate spiritual growth and lead to self-realization. It is an ancient method, mentioned in the Bhagavad Gita and taught by great yogis like Mahavatar Babaji, Lahiri Mahasaya, and Sri Yukteswar, before being brought to the West by Yogananda.
1. What is Kriya Yoga?
Autobiography of a Yogi:
“Kriya Yoga is the airplane route to God-realization.”
🕉 Key Benefit: It speeds up spiritual progress 10x faster than normal meditation.
2. The Science behind Kriya Yoga
Bhagavad Gita (4.29):
“The yogi who masters breath control is free from suffering and attains divine realization.”
🕉 Key Benefit: It removes restlessness and deepens inner stillness.
3. The 3 Main Practices in Kriya Yoga
(i) Pranayama (Breath Control)
- The heart beats faster when the mind is restless.
- By slowing the breath, the mind becomes calm and focused.
- Kriya Yoga uses a specific breathing technique to harmonize body and mind.
Yogananda:
“The more you calm the breath, the more you awaken divine consciousness.”
🕉 Effect: Deep peace, mental clarity, and increased energy.
- True meditation means stilling the mind and experiencing the divine within.
- Yogananda emphasized meditating on the spiritual eye (Third Eye Chakra).
- Regular practice leads to deep bliss, intuition, and divine connection.
Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras:
“Yoga is the stilling of the mind’s fluctuations.”
🕉Effect: Increases focus, intuition, and spiritual awakening.
- Along with meditation, Yogananda taught the importance of love for God.
- A heart filled with devotion and surrender accelerates spiritual growth.
- Practicing gratitude, kindness, and selfless service (Seva) purifies the heart.
Yogananda:
“Kriya Yoga without love for God is like dry mathematics—it must be practiced with devotion.”
Yogananda:
“By practicing Kriya Yoga, one can reach enlightenment in a single lifetime.”
🕉Effect: Deepens joy, divine love, and inner fulfillment.
5. How to Learn Kriya Yoga
Yogananda’s organization, Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF), offers Kriya lessons worldwide.
Before receiving Kriya, students practice preliminary techniques like Energization Exercises, Hong-Sau Meditation, and AUM technique.
Yogananda:
“The Kriya path is for those who seek God above all else.”
– Kriya Yoga’s History –
The illumined sages of India discovered the spiritual science of Kriya Yoga in the long forgotten past. Lord Krishna extols it in the Bhagavad Gita. The sage Patanjali speaks of it in his Yoga Sutras. Paramahansa Yogananda has stated that this ancient meditation method was also known to Jesus Christ, as well as to disciples such as St. John, St. Paul, and others.
Kriya Yoga was lost for centuries in the dark ages, and reintroduced in modern times by Mahavatar Babaji, whose disciple Lahiri Mahasaya (1828–1895) was the first to teach it openly in our era. Later, Babaji asked Lahiri Mahasaya’s disciple, Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri (1855–1936), to train Paramahansa Yogananda and send him to the West to give this soul-revealing technique to the world.
Paramahansa Yogananda was chosen by his venerable line of gurus to make the ancient science of Kriya Yoga available to seekers around the world, and it was for this purpose that he established Yogoda Satsanga Society of India in 1917 and Self-Realization Fellowship in 1920.
Formerly available only to a faithful few who renounced the world and lived solitary lives as ascetics, the great ones of India have now made the ancient Kriya science available to all sincere seekers worldwide through the instrumentality of Paramahansa Yogananda and the spiritual organization he established (YSS/SRF).
Yogananda Wrote: “In bestowing his blessings on me before I came to America in 1920, Mahavatar Babaji told me that I had been chosen for this sacred mission: ‘You are the one I have chosen to spread the message of Kriya Yoga in the West. Long ago I met your guru Yukteswar at a Kumbha Mela; I told him then I would send you to him for training.’ Babaji then predicted: ‘Kriya Yoga, the scientific technique of God-realization, will ultimately spread in all lands, and aid in harmonizing the nations through man’s personal, transcendental perception of the Infinite Father.’ ”
– The Science of Kriya Yoga –
The quickest and most effective approach to the goal of Yoga employs those methods of meditation that deal directly with energy and consciousness. It is this direct approach that characterises the particular system of meditation taught by Paramahansa Yogananda. Specifically, Kriya is an advanced Raja Yoga technique that reinforces and revitalises subtle currents of life energy in the body, enabling the normal activities of heart and lungs to slow down naturally. As a result, the consciousness is drawn to higher levels of perception, gradually bringing about an inner awakening more blissful and more deeply satisfying than any of the experiences that the mind or the senses or the ordinary human emotions can give. All scriptures declare man to be not a corruptible body, but a living soul. The ancient science of Kriya Yoga reveals a way to prove this scriptural truth. Referring to the sure and methodical efficacy of devoted practise of the Kriya science, Paramahansa Yogananda declared: “It works like mathematics; it cannot fail.”
Meditation Techniques of the Kriya Yoga Path
‘God seeks willing hearts that He may give His bounties to them….’ That is most beautiful, and that is what I believe. God seeks willing hearts for the bestowal of His gifts. He is willing to give us everything, but we are not willing to make the effort to be receptive.”
Paramahansa Yogananda provides a description of Kriya Yoga in his Autobiography of a Yogi. The actual technique is given to students of the Yogoda Satsanga Lessons after a preliminary period of study and practise of the three preparatory techniques taught by Paramahansa Yogananda.
Taken together as a comprehensive system, these meditation techniques enable the practitioner to achieve the highest benefits and divine goal of the ancient yoga science.