In kriya yoga the component of psychic awareness emerges, in which you enter into your psychic dimension, vijnanamaya kosha. It is a confronting dimension, as everything that is unknown to you is lying there. Everything that is limitless within you is there. Everything that is luminous within you is there. Outside of it is your inter action with the world where everything is diluted and mixed. The purity lies in vijnanamaya kosha. The experience and the purity of realization that you gain with the practice of kriya yoga allows you to move into anandamaya kosha. Accessing vijnanamaya kosha, however, is a challenging situation and condition of life; it is a challenging dimension. Therefore until now kriya yoga has been a secret tradition, and it will continue to remain so. It will not become as popular as hatha yoga or raja yoga. It will remain in the zone of selected spiritual seekers who are willing to take that jump into the spiritual unknown.
For other seekers, up to raja yoga is enough. They deal with their mind and they live happily ever after. There is a difference. For a normal person in society who does not have spiritual aspirations, drive or motivation to even realize their nature, up to raja yoga is fine. De-stress yourself, relax yourself, enjoy yourself, and live in the best manner possible.
If you come to kriya yoga it is an indication of your desire to discover your inner spiritual dimension. This inner spiritual dimension can only be realized when you have cultivated the drashta state, the state of observer in your mind. Not only at the time of meditation, but twenty-four hours the awareness that ‘I am witnessing myself’, remains constant.
It does happen. If you can maintain the drashta awareness that ‘I am aware of myself’ for twenty-four hours during the periods of activity and inactivity both, then the mind is elevated to another level and it is not gross any more. Here kriya yoga begins.