The
Lifestyle of Transformation
Kriya
Yoga and the Satguru
By Bryan Gates
I was
19 in the summer of 1999, a freshman at Colby College with a big
sense of excitement because we had an adventure planned for summer
break. I drove cross-country with my two best friends to explore a
land of milk and honey, living and working in Berkeley, California. I
didn’t know what I was looking for, or if I was consciously
looking, but I had the feeling of being a seeker, a traveler of some
sort. There was no possible way to foresee the mystical places I
would travel to and the modes of transportation that would take me
there.
Earlier
that year, I received a curious call from my best friend Dylan. After
spotting a grainy flyer at UC Berkeley, he had gone to see a man with
a white beard and piercing eyes in the photo, a Master of Yoga from a
Himalayan tradition — people called him Gurunath, or Yogiraj.
He had come to the west coast to teach meditation, and would be
returning to Berkeley in the summer.
Dylan
proceeded to tell me about the experience of being in his presence,
and many things I had never heard before. It sounded like standard
California crazy talk to me, initially. A lot of inscrutable words, a
lot of syllables, a lot of ahhh sounds. Sadhana.
Mahamudra. Shakti. I wasn’t
getting it.
But
over the course of the summer, the stories of this Yogi began to
unfold in miraculous fashion, each one more wild than the next. I
spoke to some of his older devotees and began reading a small black
and white pamphlet on the “evolution of consciousness”
and its corresponding brain science, written by the man himself,
Yogiraj Siddhanath. On my breaks in the back of the beer garden where
I worked as an underage bouncer (and quite possibly with a beer in
hand), I would read and re-read this little booklet that seemed so
rich with intoxicating, exotic information. I had never heard
anything like this before.
Yogiraj
wrote about how at this point in human evolution, the earlier “hot,”
mammalian brain of passion and instinct was in a tug-of-war with the
newer “cold,” rational human brain of reason and
intellect, which you can see as our now-pronounced forehead with its
neo-cortex. He would then effortlessly traverse the anatomical
science of the body to blend it with much loftier talk of light and
power and the mysterious spiritual energy residing in the spine known
as Kundalini.
I would often say to myself, ‘What is this stuff?’, ‘Who
is this
guy?’ A mild curiosity began to develop into a burning fire. I
began to consider Yogiraj my Guru. I didn’t know what a Guru
was, or if he would even accept me as a disciple, but this was my
Guru. And then, embarrassingly enough, I missed him that summer
because I had to work! Now that
was a choice and
a lesson that would launch me on a
year-and-a-half struggle through life’s many dramas to finally
meet him in India, 2001. In that time period my experiences began
evolving. I tried meditating for the first time. All I remember is a
single blue spark I could somehow see within the lower spine. I said
to myself, that just happened; you cannot pretend it didn’t.
I
began reading Autobiography
of a Yogi by Paramahansa
Yogananda, the famous disciple of Gyanavatar Sri Yukteswar. I would
read a chapter and then try to “meditate.” One night in
my dorm room I was lying on my back, and my breath began to move
without me trying. As I relaxed into this elongated breath, I
realized that I was not breathing but being “breathed”
somehow, an override of my natural inhale and exhale. Did I have a
mystical breathing coach who worked remotely?
Many
hard trials sprung up in the time before finally arriving in India to
meet Yogiraj; in retrospect, every one of them built me into a yoga
aspirant on my evolutionary journey. And the Satguru, himself, was
more amazing than I could fathom.
He was
ever youthful with this flowing platinum hair, yet he looked like he
was from long ago. He seemed so incredibly fresh every moment, awake,
interested, always having fun. Then he would stop moving from time to
time, and he was gone. When he started meditating, everyone else
instantly swooned into meditation.
After
a few days at the Siddhanath Forest Ashram in Simhagard, I received
the long-awaited Empowerment above his meditation cave inside a
little temple. After the initiation into the Kundalini Kriya Yoga of
Babaji, I sat alone under one of the mango trees on the arid ashram
grounds and wondered what this new energy meant. And with daily
practice, my experiences began to take root, take hold, take me out
of my body. True power showed up.
I have
distinct memories of sitting in a hotel room, on our way to the
Himalayas with Yogiraj, amongst my new yogi friends. With eyes
closed, I experienced being vacuumed down a long narrow tube in my
mind’s eye, like falling down the rabbit hole lined with
psychedelic hues. And, no, I didn’t believe it either, but it
was happening, and it was only the beginning of a new life as a
meditator.
I
thought to myself, “You cannot keep this to yourself. You have
a responsibility to share this.” That was my first impulse to
teach, and thank God I did not teach then, as many try to do when
they are brand spanking new to the complexities of meditation.
I
would go to India every few years and see Yogiraj in the U.S. as he
made his annual tour: six months in India, two months in Europe, and
four months in the States, giving workshops and retreats to huge
varieties of people. His following built slowly but surely, picking
up steam as time went on. With my own meditations, the growth seemed
exponential. The differences from year one, to year three, to year
five, seemed like different lives, new versions of myself unearthed
and for the better.
There
were singular meditations where I knew I would not be the same person
coming out the other side, and I was right. There were days spent
with Yogiraj in beautiful settings, camps and fires and family
outings, filled with ecstatic, very visible energies and the
ever-present light that surrounds him and every scene he inhabits.
Yogiraj
always returns to the simple brilliance of Kriya Yoga, gifted to
humanity by the “spiritual super genius, Babaji.” He
explains Kriya as a science whereby our life force currents are
directed into the spinal column then breathed up and down along that
superhighway of evolution. As the practice continued, I noticed the
infrastructure of my physical body changed dramatically.
The
spinal breathing would send cleansing, refreshing energy (sometimes
warm, sometimes cool) through the central river of the spine into the
command center of the brain and back down again, reviving me. This in
turn purified all of the other nerve tributaries while magnetically
oxidizing the spine, providing abundant, fresh life force and
incomparable relaxation. The de-carbonating effect of Kriya Yoga is
legendary in India, known to remove venous blood and toxins from the
system. This is why Yogiraj often calls it “the ultimate spa.”
He
explains human beings as electrical circuits with various wires,
fuses, switches, and transformers. The subtle nervous system is
collectively called the nadi
system, along which the bioelectricity
of the body moves. These nerves or nadis
are the wires and the prana
or life force energy is the current
running through them. When a person practices the rhythmic breathing
of Kriya Yoga,
the nerves develop more bandwidth to receive more electricity, and it
shows. Every fiber begins to spiritualize as the body electricity
circulates through specific channels to unite under the
practitioner’s control.
The
Satguru’s role in the student’s progress is
irreplaceable. The Satguru is the meditation. Through the sacred bond
of Guru and disciple, a Master of exceedingly rare caliber will
absorb and convert the higher electrical forces of the cosmos and
then step those energies down for those willing to receive them. You
can’t plug a light bulb directly into a power plant or it will
explode. Likewise, Masters like Yogiraj are extremely careful to give
people dosages they can handle, ramping up this spiritual voltage
gradually, protecting and illuminating our fragile human nervous
system.
Many
amazing things happen along this path. Many are not fit to share with
an uninitiated public. But I can tell you from experience, a Satguru
is a rarity on this planet. My advice is don’t wait, just go
and experience. If the science of stress removal and radiant health
does not compel you, perhaps the promise of illumination will.
Yogiraj
Siddhanath will begin his 2012 U.S. tour in mid-July visiting New
York. He will arrive in Southern California and host Kriya Yoga
Meditation Workshops and Satsangs in San Diego/Encinitas and Los
Angeles between August 11-19, followed by a New Life Awakening
Meditation Retreat in Carlsbad, CA starting September 27th. For
registration and more information, please visit www.Siddhanath.org.
Questions can be addressed to events@siddhanath.org
The
author, Bryan Gates is a Kriyacharya authorized by Yogiraj to
teach/initiate Kriya Yoga. He may be reached at bryan@hamsa-yoga.org