The Path of Life Through Kriya
In this four-part series, leading up to the International Day of Yoga on June 21, Sadhguru looks at the four dimensions that underline any kind of yoga and address the four fundamental aspects of every human being—body, mind, emotion and energy.
Fundamentally, kriya means internal action. Inner action does not always involve the body and the mind because they are still external. When you have a certain mastery to do action with your energy, it is a kriya. Once we work with energy in a certain way, it gives a different depth to life. For example, today your thoughts may go in one direction. Tomorrow, if another person influences you, they go another way. Similarly, your body may be well today, so it likes asanas. Tomorrow if your body is stiff, you will hate asanas. Your emotions are not reliable. But your energies have been touched and activated, there is a different dimension to every aspect of your life.
Kriya yoga is important if you want go beyond realization. If your interest is only enlightenment, kriyas can be used in a small way. It needn’t be too intense because they are so elaborate and involve discipline and focus. We can use a complex mixture of everything which is much simpler for realization.
Through kriya, you also want to know the mechanics of life-making—the engineering of how life is built. That is why it takes much longer. People who have come up on kriya have a different presence because of their mastery over energy. They can dismantle life and put it back together. Kriya yogis can do whatever they wish with themselves in terms of energy, and with the world also. But kriya as a whole path is unnecessary because it needs too much application.
Uniting the four paths of yoga: Every human being is a unique combination of body, mind, emotion and energy—like the four wheels of a car. Driving with just one wheel —just doing karma, bhakti, gnana or kriya—you become socially incompetent. If you want to be social and still be at the height of spiritual process, it is important to balance the four dimensions. This is one reason why there is such stress on a live Guru, so that he mixes the right concoction for you.
Right now, your mind is wandering—emotions and the body going in different directions, and you do not know what is happening with your energies. Only if you put the four wheels together, can you reach somewhere.
By aligning the four, existence becomes blissful. You do not have to extract happiness out of anything. There is no fear of suffering, you walk through life full stride. Life becomes play. Then you simply play it the way it is needed.
The writer is a yogi, mystic and visionary, and a prominent spiritual leader. Visit yogayoga.org for yoga practices, specially designed by Sadhguru, in the run up to the International Day of Yoga on June 21. (www.ishafoundation.org)