By Anup Taneja

Seekers often complain that while making efforts to enter deep into meditation, they find it extremely difficult to subdue the turbulent mind full of distracting thoughts. This, says Paramhansa Yogananda, happens because of the outward flow of the life-current through the afferent and efferent nerves, because of the downward flow of the apan current. This traps the seekers in ephemeral pleasures of an illusory world; in the process, they tend to lose their equanimity and poise.

The question that arises is: What type of effort should the seeker make to ensure that thoughts of the Divine occupy her mind constantly, and that she can spontaneously enter deep meditation? Yogananda says this is possible if the seeker can neutralise the currents of pran, life-force, and apan, outgoing breath, descending energy in the astral spine.
To accomplish this, he strongly recommends the practice of the Kriya Yog technique, which consists of a number of pranayam-based exercises that help in hastening the process of spiritual evolution. The practitioner of kriya yog endeavours to make the pranic energy revolve upward and downward, around the six spinal centres or chakras situated in the sushumna – the hollow passage that runs through the muladhar in the spinal cord and ends in the highest spiritual centre in the brain, sahasrar.

Within the human body, or what is referred to as the pind, the entire cosmos or Brahmand is contained: the first five chakras, from muladhar to vishuddh, are centres of panch-bhutas or five elements – earth, water, fire, air and ether. The sixth chakra, ajna, is seat of mind, while the seventh, sahasrar, is located in the brain and represents Shiv, supra-causal state of consciousness. The seven loks corresponding to the seven chakras are bhu, bhuvah, swarg, maha, jana, tapa and satya . Yogananda writes: “Real yogis who practise kriya yog withdraw the life force from the body cells and sensory motor nerves and offer it – as ghee is offered into a sacrificial fire – to the seven deities or divine powers that reside in the seven astral fires in the spine, beginning from the coccyx and rising to the cerebrum.”

The basic purpose of kriya yog, therefore, is to get the pran out of Ida, associated with moon that ends up in the left nostril, and Pingala, associated with sun that ends up in right nostril, and direct the life-current into the ‘sushumna’, in order that the seeker’s mind gets detached from gross sensory perceptions. Through regular meditation, supplemented by special pranayam-based techniques, the pran and apan currents flowing into the spine become calm and even, enabling the mass of energy stored in muladhar to travel along the sushumna smoothly and with tremendous force, being drawn to the sahasrar.
When this happens, a seeker can spontaneously enter deep meditation where her ego-consciousness gets transmuted into the inconceivable bliss of the soul. She experiences a supra-causal state of consciousness, which is referred to by Yogananda as ‘Dying to the world without dying’. In this state of ecstasy, the seeker understands the body “to be a motion picture of divine energy, which in turn is a dream of God’s consciousness; and he, the Self, is an eternal part of dreaming consciousness”.

The writer is a senior academic fellow with ICHR

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