Hard Work

"Is It Really the Solution We Are Talking About?"

"If you work hard, you will get there." [Babaji to Yogananda, according to Yogananda]

A critical look at Yogananda's hard work

Many ideas are embedded in paintings, also concepts of the love life.

Yogananda was sent to the West to propagate kriya yoga, and turned into an orator till once when he talked on some subject, he found had better refrain from much public talk. Then he changed his ways somewhat, and talked more for "the crew" each Sunday, and more often too.

In our times, a talk that is recorded, may reach hundreds of thousands or more, depending on who talks, about what, and his or her listeners. The efforts are largely taken over by machines. To let machines and computers to the hard work, is part of modern times and trends. The alarming consequences of adapting to much of that sort, may get hard in time, but we are hardly there yet.

Another issue highlighted by hard-working Yogananda is what to work hard with. Yogananda adapted kriya yoga and his hype about it. Was is wise to do that? Followers hope "yes," while old yogis of his kriya yoga line may have other and perhaps better thoughts in that matter. I give you two key sources here: [1] and [2]

The first link is to an alternative kriya yoga site, the other is to a book written by a fellow disciple of Yogananda, an eyewitness account to much, and substantiations of this: Yogananda changed kriya, and not all that he did, was much welcome among the old-timers. That is for sure.

A third and rather overlooked side to Yogananda's efforts is that he changed the kriya yoga hype too, after some time in the United States. First he was told to spread the kriya yoga several kriya gurus had taught him and work hard at "sitting panting next to inaudibly" along with that. Accommodation-willing Yogananda started to simplify kriya, leaving out formerly fixed parts of the system, and including a few methods that are not part of kriya yoga proper: he included hamsa and a nadi-listening method that is called the Om technique. He left out yogic tongue-lifting, a crucial element of original kriya.

At the same time he said his kriya worked twelve times better than the kriya he was given and was expected to hand over to very interested ones in the West, and told that evolution by natural ways and means otherwise took a million years, wherever he got that number from. All the same, his guru Yukteswar had said and written that would take 12 million years. The Yogananda hype thus improved the prospects of success in kriya yoga about 144 times - seemingly as surely as by mathematics. He said so.

However, in time there were disciples who had done their 1 million kriyas without getting Cosmic Consciousness, and how did the yogi manage to get out of such a squeeze? He said devotion was needed too, and blamed the lacking Cosmic Consciousness in followers on lack of devotion.

How smart is that kind of hard work when cleaner procedures should be maintained, one may wonder. And this goes to show that it is not always a matter of hard you work, but how clever you are too, and how consistent in a profitable direction.

I do not doubt that Yogananda reached a high state in 1948, if not now and then before, but the fact is there has been much discord in the ranks, first around 1930 and further. I don't know what happened to his membership count when he announced that people needed a dictator in 1933, but he did. He could have spared himself that trouble, in the light of later events that followed. When Yogananda died, many followers left the SRF ranks and started schools and got their own Yogananda followers, and around 2002 about one third of the SRF monastics had had it and left the premises. [3]

Hard work - make it remunerative if you are able to, and save money too

Very often in life, hard work should be translated into better skills and adequate equipment. Hence, it is often not so much a matter of working hard as of working well. Skilfully, that is, and with sustained efforts too. That suggests "not as much as we can do by straining ourselves too much, but proceeding optimally". Proceeding well has many forms.

See how a boat that at top speed shakes and gets strained so that it gets in dire need of repair quite soon. That could be the best that can happen under straining circumstances or emergencies, but the ideal is not to get shipwrecked by yoga or any other thing. Do the best you can, and it is seldom good enough in the long run, unless you are updating yourself, keeping in shape, keeping your handling skills updated, and your best equipment. It often pays to be informed.

Now a boat at optimal speed (suggested to be about 3/4 of top speed, give and take, can go on a long way and perhaps reach its destination, whatever that may be. Therefore, avoid straining yourself for prolonged periods unless you surely have to. Bodies and minds are not always possible to repair, you know.

Also try to ascertain "What is he working hard with? If working hard, is it not feasible to get smarter some way or other?" There is a risk that the hard worker is exploited by formidable-looking others. A hard worker should be favoured by improving his skills and getting equipment to ease his or her way far and wide. And the essence of good education in yoga-meditation, as in other fields of endeavour or self-help, is to be enabled to get more leisure through know-how and equipment and proper methods to master, and use one's hard-won spare time for lots of good, whatever that may be in each single case. Hearts know, and some hearts may be able to tell too.

The optimal reach here is to work appropriately, by the best methods you could find, and not overdoing it a lot. Getting cramped is a good sign of overdoing things. And if you don't gain Nirvana-Bliss today by contemplating in a good and fit way for yourself, maybe next day, or next month, or the next leap year - you never know. The best is to "fix your eyes" on fit use of methods while diving inwards (meditating), and disregard the rest, including guru-given notions of what to gain. For these doings conform to the methods and aims of sane yoga. And now you have been warned.

❖ Violent criticism is seldom tough enough: Take care of your own working capacity and know better than being worn out by too little rewarding, hard work. Strain is seldom good.

❖ If you do not defend yourself enough, one of your aims should be rigid favours. Learn to bulwark yourself and your house better. Remember that sane "Prevention is better than cure". It costs less and has better chances to work well. That's why it is called better.