Pranayama Focus

[Pravin Kumar]

Pranayama Focus

SRF (Self-Realization Fellowship) is adapted to Hindu heritage with much stress on guru-faith. The fellowship teaches kriya yoga, which is a system of yoga methods with a deep focus on breathing methods, also called pranayama. For learning kriya yoga, initiation is required. The cult's demands in that matter are so stiff that they work as a fish trap (funnel-shaped basket). The bait: the said efficacy of kriya. The fish trap: you cannot get out once you enter to learn kriya. Yogananda's warnings against ever leaving him after initiation may be among the severest to be found. He talks of many lives of sufferings for that alone.

Yogananda taught a handed-over set of methods called kriya yoga. Less known to adherents today, he changed and simplified the methods too, by leaving out formerly essential elements, Yogananda's kriya is still designed to make certain "life energies", prana forms, turn inwards as tersely said in the ancient yoga classic Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. Successful training hopefully brings the attention more inwards, and then one may become a deeply "successful one", a siddha [an adept]. Such persons may be few and far between, though, in part depending on what methods they use, how congenital their methods are, how well composed, and so on. A beginner may find way to tell which kriya teachers are accomplished, and how well accomplished. There is much secrecy to deal with. And then there is the added problem of severely disappointed kriya practitioners who disclaim kriya yoga in itself because they have not perceived any breakthrough or special progress from it. Here is a way: If you consider kriya as an art, it needs practice. There are many types of kriya schools nowadays, many different kriya "artists" as well. As for their art (kriya yoga), much is similar, some elements differ among the schools of kriya, some artists have different flairs and appeal to different sorts of people. The marketing differs too. You do not have to be religious to practice kriya; it is enough to be oneself - and piousness is not to be forsaken either.

The fellowship Yogananda formed into a church of tax benefits, teaches classes in kriya yoga and also offers "Churches of All Religions" that give out meditation counsel, lectures on living, and guru-loved music. Have your own taste also. Their services allegedly combine elements of Hinduism and Christianity. Thereby elements of handed-over Christianity play the second fiddle, as if that is all right. They worship Hare Krishna and may likewise pray and weep half-ritually to the Cosmic and Divine Mother as directed by Yogananda. It reminds of peekaboo.


Source: Spiritual Forum