Kriya Yoga is the path of transforming one’s energies. Sadhguru explains what makes this path unique and reliable as he delves into the mechanics of how it transforms the practitioner’s mind.
Sadhguru: Kriya is a unique method because it does not ask you to believe something, focus on God, purify yourself, or love thy neighbor. You just do your sadhana, transform your inner energies, and one day, you look at your neighbor and tears well up in your eyes. You may never even have thought of the word “love” – it just happens effortlessly.
Kriya Yoga looks at life the way it is, not the way scriptures or saints talk about it. It looks at life not the way heaven spells it, but the way earth spells it because you are of the earth. If you do not learn to work with this earth but dream of heaven, you will hallucinate; and the line between dreams and nightmares is extremely thin.
Your mind can be in five different states. It could be inert, which means it is not activated at all. If you energize it, it could become active but scattered. If you energize it further, it will not be scattered anymore but oscillating. If you energize it further, it could become one-pointed. If you energize your mind further, it will become conscious. If your mind is conscious, it is a miracle and a bridge to the beyond.
People whose mind is inert eat well, sleep well, have a strong gut, and a good digestion. People who think too much can neither digest food, nor can they sleep well. Simple-minded people perform activities of the body far better than the so-called intellectual people. Physically, they can do everything better, but an inert mind is closer to animal nature than the possibility of what it means to be human. There is a certain peace to being simple-minded. Intelligent minds tend to be disturbed, chaotic, and scattered.
A mind may be inert, but the moment you pump in some energy, it becomes active, though it could be scattered. Some people who start doing the kriya become much more disturbed than before. I am very happy, but they are not, because they were sleeping and eating better before they came to Yoga. Now their mind is thinking all kinds of things. They were never troubled by such things before because their mind was inert.
Those who had a very scattered mind have come to a place where their mind is less scattered, though it still changes from day to day. But this is already a huge improvement. Those who already have an oscillating mind, their mind is slowly becoming one-pointed because of the kriya. That is far better. But the most important thing is that the mind becomes a conscious process. If it does, it is the most miraculous thing in existence.
Kriya Yoga is unique because it does not ask purity or divinity from you; it does not even ask for humanity. It does not ask for anything; it just requires dedication towards the sadhana. If you keep doing the kriya, it will work for sure because the work is on the level of the basic energies that make you who you are right now. You are refining that energy which made mud into body. If that refinement happens, there is no way that anyone can remain untransformed.
People have this old nonsense in their heads: “I have been doing Shambhavi Mahamudra Kriya for six months, but impure thoughts are still coming.” Who told you that they are impure thoughts? Someone put these ideas of purity and impurity in your head. Your mind is only thinking about some aspect of life. Whether you think of work, money, land, gold, man, woman, children, society, fame, or whatever nonsense, everything that the mind thinks is only about life. Even heaven and hell are just exaggerated versions of life.
Your mind never thinks anything other than life, so it cannot be wrong. It is thinking about whatever it knows best right now. If the grandest thing that someone knows in their life right now is money, they think about money all the time. If the sweetest thing that someone knows in their life right now is sexuality, they think only about that. For someone else, the biggest experience in their life is drinking alcohol or smoking pot, so that is all they are thinking about.
People are thinking about aspects of life that promise them some kind of sweetness or pleasantness. It is not a question of right and wrong. It is perfectly right for you to aspire to become pleasant. Whether you are seeking meditation, God, drink, drug, or sex, you are going back to it because it reminds you of some pleasantness. Kriya Yoga does not ask you to be unrealistic with your mind, expecting it to clear off all the things that it knows till now.
There are various aspects to the mind. The logical mind and thought process are only small parts of the mind. This logical part of the mind is essentially functioning from memory. So, if you seek pleasantness, it will refer to your memory to find the pleasant things that you experienced in the past and say, “Let’s do that.” It cannot offer you a new possibility. If the mind becomes conscious, then it opens up a million different possibilities that are not from your memory but from the possibility of what this life is right now.
Once you know that the greatest drug is within you; once you know the Divine is within you, your intelligence will naturally take care of the rest. The important thing is to increase the voltage in such a way that the mind attains to that conscious state, not battling with something that you cannot get rid of.
Kriya is significant because it does not ask your mind to do anything which is not natural to it. The highest level of intellect and capability will naturally arise from experience, not by dissecting life itself through your intellect. Even the simple twenty-one-minute Shambhavi Mahamudra Kriya has all the possibilities in it.
