Yoga Work 15
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Interesting, but interesting enough?
Q: Kriya yoga is good and a method that works but on your website you say it amounts to gasping. In what way do you mean 'it works'?
When you exercise, the need for energy makes you breathe heavily, and eventually you gasp.
If you learn to tune in to some delicate nuances of heavy gasping (they are there),
without running and cycling for an hour first, you are supposed to increase the prana
(life energy) intake thereby. In Patanjali yoga similar facets and other facets of breathing are termed pranayama, and the basic technique of kriya yoga is pranayama.
The panting is much silent, almost inaudible, and does not deal with hyperventilation.
The surplus ado thus gathered, is used to "magnetise the spine and brain" if
it is followed by delving inside the mind (pratyahara and dharana) in the terminology of
yoga.
Many diving methods use a
mantra - one or more sets of syllables - that is to be think-intoned.
After gasping comes delving, and the long-run effects of that could be good. It
depends though. I would not focus
on the bad sides of everything involved, but on clarifying what gives help, and extracting the
salient features so that they could help even better - in a nutshell.
Q: I'm sure alternative medicines have some element of healing to them.
Maybe its placebo effect - the mind somehow overpowers the body.
It has probably saved my life several times.
Q: As far as I am concerned, I have had precognitive dreams before and the
subsequent deja vu . . . I was thinking about the mind-body relationship recently and how
it is possible that the universe is just a mind. At least, if evolution has a goal, it
could be said to be self-consciousness. . . . [And] nobody says that lightning has a
soul.
In Veda times they thought that natural forces like the wind (Vayu) were gods, and hence had
soul. And . . . lightning and thunder is supposed to contain the awesome presence of Thor
[Norse thundergod, somewhat like ancient Greek Zeus and Vedic Indra].
The New Testament says everybody lives and moves in God - the maker. There is room
for principalities and powers in Biblical thinking.
Q: Can we truly say that the mind is not a part of the body and vice-versa?
I don't think so.
Nor do I. Psychosomatics supports parts of the atman(soul-god)-mind-body thing too.
Dispensing Kriya or Not
Q: Can you give me the kriya yoga? I understand you may be apprehensive about this for various reasons, but I would love to know Yogananda's yogas.
I can, but will not take on the responsibility.
The Soul
The soul is understood as the immaterial aspect or essence of a human being. The soul is further defined as that part of the individual which partakes of divinity. There have been numerous ideas about when the soul comes into existence and if it dies. For example, the Jain world is eternal and uncreated, and the soul, jiva, is one of five basics of such a reality. In Zoroastrianism the soul, urvan, is one of five immortal parts of man. [Ebu "soul", "jainism", "Zoroastrianism"]In Hindu thinking, the atman ("breath," or "soul") is considered to have been created at the beginning. And when the body dies, the atman may pass into a new body after some time-out beyond, and be reborn till the soul has attained karmic perfection, merging with the Absolute.
Plato and Socrates also accepted the immortality of the soul. Plato believed the soul was simple, not composite, and that the intellect is the purest element in the soul. For the Platonists, the soul was an immaterial and incorporeal substance. In Christian theology, body and soul were separate, but it was not possible to conceive of a soul without its body. To Benedict de Spinoza, body and soul formed two aspects of a single reality.
The thinker Gottfried Leibniz holds that nothing truly exists except monads; they do not extend in space, and monads are souls, spiritual beings. [Ebu "soul" "metaphysics"]
Jesus teaches the soul can be destroyed, whereas Yogananda teaches it is indestructible. [LINK]. I suggest the two views cannot be reconciled. Accordingly, dispense with the one, stick to the other.
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| Literature | SECTION | First Page |
Ak: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Man's Eternal Quest. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1975.
Ap: Mieder, Wolfgang (main editor), Stewart A. Kingsbury, and Kelsie E. Harder: A Dictionary of American Proverbs. (Paperback) New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Ay: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Autobiography of a Yogi. 1st ed. New York: Theosophical, 1946. Online. [oaks.nvg.org/pv6bk12.html]
Ebu: Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica 2006 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD. London: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2006.
Op: Simpson, John, and Jennifer Speake. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Pa: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Autobiography of a Yogi. 11th ed. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1971.
Say: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Sayings of Yogananda. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1958.
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© 2004–2006, Tormod Kinnes. All rights reserved — August 2006.