"A Sweeter Mango"
Dec 20, 2023
Baba Hariharananda was a scientist.
"Kriya Yoga technique is the scientific and mathematical way of changing the material body consciousness into Cosmic Consciousness"
He never stopped his inner exploration of Self-realization thru the practice of Kriya Yoga.
In the editors preface of the first edition of his Bhagavad Gita, he is quoted as saying,
"All my God-Realization has come from the scientific practice of Kriya Yoga"
This same approach shined thru everything he did.
At the end of his life, living in Homestead, Florida, he took mango cuttings from India and mango cuttings from South America, and graphed them onto a existing mango plant, to try and develop a sweeter mango.
Practically and dynamically he taught Kriya Yoga.
He taught each of us differently based on our individual spiritual need and capacity.
Like a modern Doctor, he diagnosed each patient and prescribed the medical cure based on the individual need.
He would utilized the best of old yogic wisdom and the best of modern yogic knowledge evaluated thru his own personal experience and applied knowledge.
Anyone who has sat with a "realized yogi" has experienced that there is often a "public teaching", which is shared in the group classes and often a more "private inner teaching", which is shared "one to one" by the master and student.
Many people miss this point, and I have seen time and time again, particularly on the internet, and often by devotional students of an individual teacher, who have never had the experience of this "inner private teaching."
"Only our teacher understands "Baba Hariharananda" and is teaching his "pure original techniques".
Unfortunately this is a "limited understanding and misrepresentation" of Baba Hariharananda and his approach to Kriya Yoga practice.
From my own experience I can give a example.
Meditating privately "one to one" in person with Baba Hariharananda was such a deeply trans-formative experience.
You felt your molecules rearrange.
It is almost impossible to put in words what that was like and often it left you with tears of joy and in a speechless state of awe, because the experience was beyond anything one would think is humanly possible.
No book, letter or lecture can convey this experience fully.
Once I left the apartment of Felix's Marquez, on 33 street in Kips Bay, New York City.
I got on the subway in such an ecstatic state, after meditating privately with Baba.
I wanted to tell each person in the subway car.
"There's this man, here in New York City, he is "pure magic", he can show you, how divinely wonderful you are".
I thought for sure they would call the police and have me sent to the hospital as a crazy raving lunatic, because I was in such a high ecstatic state of divine blissful joy after being with Baba.
We had sat together privately for meditation.
At this point in time I was only initiated in the Second Kriya.
Baba proceeded to guide me in meditation and asked me to concentrate on different parts of my brain, which later I came to know was Fourth Kriya.
Baba asked me to focus one by one, on the different parts of my brain.
"Concentrate on the Forehead, Pons...etc."
As I focused on each of the different parts of my brain, which I had never had thought could be possible to distinguish, because as ordinary human beings ,we are normally more absorbed in our five senses and general physical body, I experienced the most intensely astonishing experience.
Baba made each location he asked me to focus on in my brain, "vibrate and light up".
It was so intense and required my deepest concentration.
I was astonished, How is it possible ? that Baba could make different parts of my brain wiggle and light up.
Wherever he asked me to concentrate would vibrate and illuminate with bright light.
When I finished concentrating on the different parts of my brain, I experienced my self rotating, rising upward, in a whirling tornado of white light.
As I was spinning around with my eyes closed above the body, I could see Baba floating in the light, in a lotus posture, as I would come around and pass by him.
This brought me to a state of immense peace and bliss.
When I came back to my earthly awareness, Baba smiled and said "OK, time to go"....
When I reached the subway, I wanted to go up to each person and tell them what I just experience
"By practicing Fourth Kriya , the disciple feels some special movement of the Soul inside the forehead, pons, thalamus, hypothalamus, pineal gland and in front of the pituitary.
He feels that the light is rotating around from the High Heaven to the earth.
That is called 'asamshakti' samadhi.
That means the devotee is roaming in Cosmic Consciousness".
(Kriya Yoga: The Scientific Process of Soul-Culture and the Essence of All religions fourth edition by Swami Hariharananda Giri)
Paramahamsa Hariharananda and Yogacharya Don Baba, Homestead, Florida, USA
I am always astonished to read or hear someone presenting themselves as "experts" on Baba Hariharananda and Kriya Yoga having only read his books or his letters.
Many of these experts on Kriya Yoga only received First Kriya and never actually sat privately with Baba, many of them never met Baba.
Yet they know everything about Kriya Yoga and people follow them, as legitimate sources of Kriya Yoga teachings.
Even to the point as to fighting with others, that only their teacher is teaching "pure kriya" or "the original, authentic techniques".
One example of my point, is there is a published author, who has written a very nice book, which I do recommend reading, about "Yogananda" and has become a very influential speaker on Facebook, who is seen as an authority on everything "Yogananda".
He states in his own biography that he never met "Yogananda" and he never received "Kriya Yoga initiation. He is a practicing Buddhist and does not practice Kriya Yoga.
How is possible for him to be an expert on everything "Yogananda" without direct personal experience of being with him and no experience of the very core practice and teachings that Yogananda lived his whole life?
Another example is a person I met at a SRF meditation in NYC. Someone who I like and consider a friend.
She would often say in a conversation "Master says" .... with complete conviction that what she is saying is the unadulterated truth, because she read it in a book, which has been edited so many times. She never met Yogananda and no direct personal experience to really know what he actually said.
Which brings me to my main point, which is that "Kriya Yoga" is a dynamic teaching and the teacher teaches according to the individual students need.
It is not a one size fits all.
Yes there are core techniques which are the foundation for its practice.
Raghabanandaji would say "Ketchari Mudra, Mahamudra, Kriya Pranayama, Paravastha and Jyoti Mudra are the essence of Kriya Yoga and everything up to is preparation for "Kriya".
Like a modern medical doctor, Baba taught each person, who sincerely approached him, according to their own individual spiritual need. He had the ability to see what each person needed and gave the prescription, based on his most up to date modern spiritual knowledge.
He was always fine tuning his knowledge and experience of Kriya Yoga.
How he taught in India was different than how he taught in the west.
In addition, the last twenty, ten and five years of his life saw improvements based on his life long practice of Kriya Yoga and inner experience as a samadhi master.
He was constantly studying his students and improving how best to help a student learn and integrate Kriya Yoga into their lives.
Like a modern medical scientist he was always trying to do better.
Any one who presents themselves as the sole authority on Baba Hariharananda's teaching really has a limited understanding of Baba's spiritual stature and legacy. He traveled all around the world teaching different students from all types of backgrounds.
Baba showed me several different ways to practice the Second Kriya 50 Bijas mantras, which when I have asked many of the other Yogacharyas of Baba, he never shown them.
How to use them in the Bow, Mahamudra and Jyoti Mudra....
Baba also taught additional ways to practice these same 50 Bijas mantras to individual Yogacharya, which I believe Baba only taught them, one to one and no one else, which he didn't show me
How to experience the 50 bijas around the cranium in a very specific way and also how to connect each individual bijas petal to distinct points of light above like individual stars.
This again reinforces that Kriya Yoga is a dynamic teaching and practice, which is only revealed one to one sitting at the feet of a qualified Kriya Yogi and thru deep practice.
In this way Baba Hariharananda tried his utmost to help each student become a "sweeter mango".
"Ripe Mango" not "Green Mango", he often say.
Darshan at Homestead, Florida, USA
For me it was simple.
"Baba tell me what I need to know and I will do it."
Baba gave the prescription and I am still following his prescription.
At the same time I am studying myself, and applying this knowledge in a skillful, intuitive way, with love, like Baba.
