Written Messages

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Paris

1 July, 2006

Of late, a 'satsang' ('drinking' the presence and receiving the waves of perception without any past prejudice) took place with a French Police officer (P). He knows Hatha Yoga, Mantra Yoga as also Kriya Yoga from Shibendu (S).

P : Why such rigorous and time consuming practices of Hatha and Mantra when there is this simple Kriya Yoga with a profound philosophy for direct perception without any complicated net-work of concepts and beliefs ?

S : Simplicity is not attractive and exciting. It does not provide much coveted escapes from facts of ache, agony and agitation of the mind. So simple understanding becomes difficult & complicated occupations and obsessions are welcome. Common sense becomes uncommon and peace appears to be paradoxical. Experience of joy (which is just pleasure preparing for sorrow) is preferred to joyful existence. Water is not important, but wine is. Virtue of vegetables and fruits is ridiculous, vulgarity of meat and smoke is respected. Hatha Yoga and Mantra Yoga are marketed. Kriya Yoga can not be and  must not be marketed. A Hathayogi or Mantrayogi can be a billionaire, but  not a Kriyayogi.

When a naughty boy can not sit in peace to attend to studies and if he is forced to sit down, he will still be restless bubbling with many mischiefs. But if he is asked to run around a big nearby garden seven times, then you will see that he sits quietly on the same seat after he returns without any restlessness and starts attending to his studies. Similarly, when you are tired of and transcend high-profile Hatha and the monotony of Mantra, you may be ready to the process of self-knowing (not escaping from self) through the pondering, practice and perceptionof Kriya Yoga. Yoga is freedom from disintegration, disharmony, divisions, disorder, delusions, fragmentations, separations, splits, opposites, classifications, conflicts, and so on. If Yoga is merely a physical fitness program such as Hatha Yoga then gymnastists and circus-atheletes would be revered as supreme Yogis !

Sage Patanjali puts ''Samadhi Pad'' first and then ''Sadhana Pad'' indicating that freedom is right at the outset. If one can not see this naturally, let him wait in wisdom without anxiety or ambition in some congenial practice. Thus Hatha Yoga and Mantra Yoga have their assigned place. Ego, however, does not understand. It either holds on desperately to something or becomes hostile to some other things. Too much Mantra brings about dullness, not stillness. And mind made still is not still mind ! But the claim and expectation is that by chanting only, one would run into Moksha ! 

Pandit Bole Baat So Jhhutha, Ram Kahe Jagatgati Pawe, Khhand Kahe Muh Mitha !

Dhan Kahe Dhanik Jo Howe, Nirdhan Rahe Na Koi,

Bin Dekhe Bin Daras-Paras Binu Ram Ratey Kaa Hoi !! 

What the priest says is a lie. If Moksha is to be attained by chanting ''Ram'', then chanting ''Sugar'' would enable us to taste sweetness in the mouth. If it is possible to be rich by chanting ''money'', then poverty would be erased from the planet. So what is the good of chanting ''Ram'' without the phenomenon of seeing, touching and preceiving ? 

But then vanity and vested interests prohibit us to see the truth and transcend our self-centered activities. Essence of Yoga is non-becoming. And seeing is possible in the emptiness of the essence. This seeing is virtue. Seeing is awareness without split in the consciousness. It is the invasion of Intelligence that destroys totally the accumulative, imitative, repetitive, defensive mechanism of the psychological framework called ''I''. To try to be free of the illusion ''I'', step by step, through this and that 'spiritual' practice is the absurdity of the spiritual market. And to cut the roots of ''I'', one by one, through 'analysis' and 'introspection' is the psychological absurdity of the medical market.

There is only the fact, --- not the idea, opinion, evaluation, judgement about the fact. Facing the fact is liberation, not feeding it or fighting with it by incorporating ideas about the fact.

God (Pure Understanding) who indeed liberates, has no worshipper (the ''I''). God is not in the religious market to be bought or sold. He can not be found through His opposites such as greed, fear, and beliefs. Omnipresence has no obscurity of opposites.

JAI YOGA