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Laya-yoga
The term laya means among other things dissolution or absorption, which in the Agni Purana is distinguished into four kinds: nitya-laya or the dissolution that accompanies the daily deaths of all kinds of organisms; naimittika-laya or ‘incidental dissolution’ which is the absorption of the elements that constitute these organisms’ bodies into the Absolute; prakrta-laya which is the material dissolution of the entire universe at the end of a cosmic cycle; and atyantika-laya which is the ultimate dissolution of the liberated individual into the Absolute.
It is this last kind of laya that is the central concern of laya-yoga, with liberation defined as meditative absorption into the Absolute, which is in turn understood in terms similar to the other kinds of laya mentioned above, as the progressive dissolution of the elements that constitute an individual into their source.
This connection between dissolution and liberation in laya-yoga is consistent with orthodox Hindu cosmology, as the great cycles of the emergence, persistence and dissolution of the cosmos from, within and into the Absolute act as a model for spiritual practice. The progressive withdrawal of awareness from the manifest world through various meditative practices is thought to mirror the progressive dissolution of the constitutive elements of the cosmos at the end of one of its great cycles: of the gross into the subtle, and of the effect into its cause.
He, O friend, who knows that indestructible being wherein the true knower, the vital airs [pranas], together with all the powers [devas], and the elements rest, he being all-knowing has penetrated all. (Prasna Upanisad, 4:11)
Laya-yoga is often classified as either Vedic (Vaidika-laya-yoga) or Tantric (Tantrika-laya-yoga). As Tantric, laya-yoga refers to a range of meditative practices and initiations that draw upon the esoteric correspondences that are assumed to exist between the subtle physiology of the human body and the cosmos. Once these correspondences are activated or realised, the task then becomes the progressive dissolution of this inner cosmos through an intensified identification with the cosmic source, until only an awareness of the Absolute remains.
Kriya-yoga
Like the term karma which it is often used as a synonym for, kriya can mean act or rite, though in other contexts can also meanmovement or exercises. Kriya-yoga can therefore be translated as the ‘yoga of action’, and some texts such as the Tri-Sikhi-Brahmana-Upanisad have equated it with karma-yoga, while others in the Saiva Siddhanta tradition regard it as a preparatory stage to liberation, characterising it as the performance of acts of service to the Divine. Kriya-yoga is also mentioned in Patanjali’s Yoga-sutra, with some commentators arguing that the following sutra captures the true intent of his teachings. Asceticism (tapas), study (svadhyaya), and devotion to the Lord (isvara-pranidhana) [constitute] the Yoga of Action (kriya-yoga). (II.1)
More recently the term kriya has come to refer to spontaneous movements initiated by kundalini awakenings, as well as the practices or exercises that aim to mime the effect of these movements in order to purify and strengthen the gross and subtle physiologies of an individual to prepare for the awakening of kundalini.
Understood in this way, kriya-yoga falls within the broad Tantric tradition in its appreciation of the subtle physiology of the human body and its emphasis on awakening the dormant kundalini-sakti. More specifically, it focuses on the relationship between the breath as a species of prana and the mind, using the former as a means of indirectly controlling the latter.
The kriyas or practices of this approach are ritualised forms of pranayama that combine specific patterns of breathing with an intent to direct the flow of prana through particular nadis and cakras. By allowing the mind to move as it will without interference and focussing instead on the relaxed performance of any given kriya, the refinement of prana gradually produces a one-pointed mind. The relationship between the breath and mind in kriya-yoga reaches its full development in the state of samadhi, which is associated with the breathless condition of kevala-kumbhaka.
The relatively recent dissemination of this form of kriya-yoga is not tied to any particular texts, though Swami Satyananda Saraswati (b. 1923), who has done much to popularise and promote tantric-based yoga practices internationally, has written that the kriyas he teaches were drawn from Tantric texts without being clearly defined as such (Satyananda has documented his approach in two texts: A Systematic Cource in the Ancient Tantric Techniques of Yoga and Kriya and Kundalini Tantra). Instead it is believed to have been transmitted from to guru to disciple in both monastic and householder settings from ancient times.
Apart from the efforts of Satyananda, the modern version of this tradition can be traced back to the middle of the nineteenth century and the enigmatic figure of Mahavatar Babaji. According to Yogananda’s popular Autobiography of a Yogi, Babaji (‘revered father’) is a deathless master who has lived for centuries if not millennia in the same physical form. Babaji is the reputed source of the two modern lineages of kriya-yoga, one beginning with Lahiri Mahasaya in the north of India in 1861, and the other with S.A.A. Ramaiah and V.T. Neelakantan in the middle of the twentieth century in the south. Lahiri Mahasaya is reported to have been initiated by Babaji into the practice of kriya-yoga in 1861, and many of his disciples, including his sons, became teachers and inaugurated lineages of their own. Of these, the most influential internationally trace their lineage to Lahiri Mahasaya through Sri Yukteswar Giri, and include the USA-based Self Realisation Fellowship which was founded by Yogananda in the early twentieth century. The south Indian lineage has been connected by Marshall Govindan – a North American disciple of S.A.A. Ramaiah - to the southerm arm of Saiva Siddhanta, arguing that Babaji can be placed within the tradition of the ‘18 Siddhas’, some of whom are among the presumed authors of the Tirumurai.
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