For most of you, hatha yoga and asanas are synonymous, but not for me. Hatha yoga is shatkarmas, then asanas and pranayamas are practised after that. After asanas, you have mudras and bandhas, in order to awaken the psychic forces, I mean the deeper mental forces. Then only you come to practise kriya yoga.
The purpose of hatha yoga is to prepare yourself for kriya yoga. If you don’t believe me, please read the books on tantra. There are sixty-four texts on tantra, and out of these, quite a few have been translated into English, French, German, and maybe Spanish as well. Mahanirvana Tantra, Vijnana Bhairava Tantra, Hai Vajra Tantra, Hema Vati Tantra, Ananda Lahari and Saundarya Lahari have been translated and a few more.
I am going to talk about kriya yoga but I won’t be able to finish it this morning. This is the tradition of all the hatha yoga practices. Mind is not something which you can control. You are trying to control the mind, but you are controlling the thoughts and not the mind.
When a bad thought comes into your mind, what do you do? You stop it. Are you controlling the mind? I am switching off this mike, am I controlling electricity? So do not talk about controlling the patterns of the mind; let us not talk about controlling the mind. Therefore, even after twenty years of meditation, you are only having psychic experiences; you do not have the power.
In meditation, are you escaping from the realities or are you awakening some sort of energy, which will feed your mind with extra power? The philosophy and the practices of kriya yoga are very clear on this point. They say, ‘Look here, there is no point in trying to control the mind, because mind is a consequence, it is not an original object.’
According to Samkhya and other philosophies, mind is a composition of various elements and various items. How can you think of controlling the mind without controlling the physical energies and the physical elements? You try to control your mind, okay, and I will give you an injection of cocaine – see what happens. No, you will not be able to control it because mind is not thought; mind is not emotion; mind is not passion; mind is not exactly what we know.
Mind and body are interconnected. What happens to your sympathetic, parasympathetic system, cardiovascular system, to your kidneys, to your gall bladder or to your stomach? Everything goes to the mind and affects the mind.
I will close my speech here with a description of the first kriya of kriya yoga. I have one more chance and then I will tell you the next. The first kriya in kriya yoga is known as vipareeta karani mudra. Vipareeta karani means reverse, just as you reverse a car by putting the reverse gear and the car goes backward. In the same way, vipareeta karani mudra is putting you or something in your body in reverse gear.
Vipareeta karani mudra resembles sarvangasana but it is not exactly sarvangasana. The basis of this vipareeta karani mudra is cited in Hatha Yoga Pradipika. The text reads, ‘From the moon, the nectar flows and the sun consumes it, and the yogi or practitioner dies a premature death, disease and decay. But the wise one reverses this order. He sends back the nectar without being consumed by the sun in the navel and sends it back to the higher centres.’ That is vipareeta karani mudra.
In yoga they call it amrit. In tantra they call it bindu and elsewhere they call it ambrosia. This is a fine substance which is generated in the cranial passage, just below the centre where the Aryans or old type Hindus kept a bunch of hair.
In all the tantric texts, including Ananda Lahiri by Shankaracharya, there is a clear reference to this substance. Once I was involved in a research on glaucoma of the eyes through a certain poisonous principle. It was at that time, during the dissection, I personally saw that little place in the cranial passage exactly as described by Shankaracharya in his Ananda Lahari.
In hatha yogic practices, there is a mudra called khechari mudra. This mudra is practised in two different ways. One is for the young people of twelve or fourteen years of age, and the other is for anybody, all of you. The root of the tongue is snapped slowly and the tongue is elongated. After it is elongated, it is stuffed inside into the upper part of the epiglottis. The tongue actually excites a particular nerve which is situated in the upper nasal orifice and thereby sensations are sent or communicated to the higher centre in the bindu. Then this substance begins to flow.
It flows down and is controlled in vishuddhi chakra. Vishuddhi chakra is situated in the junction at the cervical plexus. The name is vishuddhi, which means refinery, and therefore; the colour of vishuddhi is purple. In Hindu mythology Lord Shiva is supposed to contain the poison in his throat. That is the point where the poisons are supposed to be refined into a pure substance.
When this fluid or substance enters into the body, it revitalises every cell and each and every tissue. It’s a sort of resurrection. In the Bible it is said that there is a ladder ascending from earth to heaven, it has seven rungs? Half the way you climb with open eyes and half the way you close your eyes. That is kriya yoga.
17 November 1982, San Juan, Puerto Rico