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The yogi is deemed greater than body disciplining ascetics, greater even than the followers of the path of wisdom or of the path of action; be thou, O Arjuna, a yogi! - The Bhagavad Gita,VI:46
When Sri Sri Paramahansa Yoganandji dedicated ‘God Talks With Arjuna’ his colossal interpretation of Sage Vyasa’s Bhagavad Gita, to ‘The Arjuna devotee within every sincere seeker,’ the majestic yogi was perhaps reaffirming the Divine Avatar Krishna’s praise of the royal path of yoga as the highest of all spiritual paths, and the scientific yogi as greater than a follower of any other path.
Yoga, or life-force control is the direct, shortest, ‘air-plane’ route to divine realization as compared to the slow, uncertain, ‘bullock cart’ theological path to the divine. ‘It is an instrument through which human evolution can be quickened.’
In his spiritual classic ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ Yoganandji explains how a yogi who sincerely practices the scientific technique of Kriya Yoga is gradually freed from karma or ‘the lawful chain of cause-effect equilibriums.’
Mahavatar Babaji, the deathless Himalayan Yogi, rediscovered and clarified the ancient science of Kriya Yoga mentioned by Sri Krishna twice in the Gita.
“The Kriya Yoga that I am giving to the world through you in this nineteenth century is a revival of the same science that Krishna gave millenniums ago to Arjuna; and that was later known to Patanjali and Christ...” Babaji uttered this liberating truth to his disciple Lahiri Mahasaya, who taught the technique to various exalted disciples, among them Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri, the guru of Yoganandaji.
Incidentally Babaji had met Swami Sri Yukteswarji at the Kumbh Mela in 1894 and promised to send him a disciple to be trained in the yogic science, and later who would spread the teachings in the West. “The vibrations of many spiritually seeking souls come flooding to me.” He affirmed compassionately.
The divine promise found fulfilment when Yoganandji established Yogoda Satsanga Society of India/Self-Realization Fellowship more than a hundred years ago, to bring to the world the ancient science of Kriya Yoga in its pure, original form as intended by the liberated Masters.
The sincere practice of Kriya Yoga leads the ego, mind, and lifeforce through the same spinal channel through which the soul descends into the body. Thus, the spinal route is “the one straight highway that all earth-descended mortal beings must follow in the final ascension to liberation” Yoganandji avows.
The true yogi meditates until he attains inner attunement with God, thus all his outward activities or service is not ego motivated but a willing adherence to the Divine Will even in the minutest detail of both inner and outer life.
The real yogi knows God as the ‘ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new Bliss.’ Swami Sri Yukteswarji further emphasises, “the ancient yogis discovered that the secret of cosmic consciousness is intimately linked with breath mastery. The life force must be freed for higher activities by a method of calming and stilling the ceaseless demands of the breath.”
Thus, yoga is not just a science of meditation, it is a science of self-transformation-of transforming the little body-bound self (ego) into the pure divine Self (the soul). On this International Day of Yoga let us reaffirm ancient India’s role in bringing to the world this pristine wisdom of human evolution. Further info.: yssofindia.org
