Interview with Shibendu Lahiri

What is Kriya Yoga and what is the Objective?
All kinds of mental pollutions are being spread in the name of Kriya Yoga as this is more marketable due to a famous book.
Let me say what it is not:
- It is not a physical fitness programme
- It does not demand adherence to any belief system
- It does not promote any sect or cult.
- It does not promote Gurus as personalities from whom we can draw quick consolation and petty psychological securities.
Guru is a process and an energy that dispells darkness of the mind. Gurus must not supply sedatives to remain amused in our mental prison.
Kriya Yoga is the science of inner Being
- It is centripetal action, not centrifugal activities of the mind.
- In Kriya Yoga, it is understood that mind and its irrational activities based on fear and fancy are the root cause of our pain and suffering.
Mind is a friend in technical area but an enemy in the arena of vanity and vested interests and emotional gratifications.
And the ego which is malignancy of the mind, is just a useful fiction for the purpose of performing our daily tasks. Otherwise, wars and killings are nothing but the final exaggeration of the ego.
Kriya Yoga enables us to understand that it is possible to be free of the mind, even though it would function whenever required.
Kriya Yoga is integration (Kriya means action, Yoga means iintegration) between action generated by pure understanding (which is not settling down to comfortable conclusions and convenient ideas) and the activities of the mind. It is Integration between liberation and bondage. It is beyond bondage, not against bondage.
The purpose of Kriya Yoga is to be in natural state, which means that the body is released from the stranglehold of the mind. Body is then instructed by the glands and chakras and not by thoughts. In natural state, thought is not in desparate contiunuity. Here immense silence is possible in the gaps between the thoughts.
Mind thrives through problems and pursuits. Samadhi is a state of no-problem and no-pursuit. It is a state of no-minid -the highest intelligence and perception.

What is mandkind’s highest objective in life?
If you try to find the meaning and objective of man’s life, you will call for murders and suicides. Life exists so beautifully because it has no meaning whatsoever. It is the illogicalness of the wonder of creation. It is not the convenient logic of the mind.
The purpose of life is to live and living peacefully at every level of existence (individual, family, society, national, international) is the one and only goal of life. All other goals are created by the greed of shoddy little minds.

What does ignorance mean?
You must distinguish between ignorance and innocence. Kriya Yoga is a movement from innocence to innocence and thus it dispells the ignorance of the mind and its myths and maladies.

Who can practise Kriya Yoga?
Anyone, who has become fedup with the life of fancy and fear and the superficial living created by social morality based on acquisitive and accumulative urges of the mind and its conditioned reflexes, is ready to practise Kriya Yoga.

What are the obstacles to practise Kriya Yoga?
Kriya Yoga has been promoted in the spiritual market with all kinds of expectations and apprehensions. Some people, who come for getting something through Kriya Yoga, are those who are shopping in the spiritual market. They are interested in entertainment and excitement. They are not interested in the bliss and benediction. So they will not continue in Kriya Yoga. The main obstacles are greed gullibility, gratification, fearful and fancyful ideas.

What is Samadhi?
- It is not going into coma and thereafter announcing that during Samadhi you had this or that experience.
- Reality is a movement in the energy of existence and not in the entanglement with experiences.
- The so-called spiritual experiences are conditioned reflexes from the reservoir of cultural inputs and traditional involvements.
- The very fact of experiencing is the proof that what is being experienced is not truth, because experience happens through cognition. And cognition is possible only when it is already there in the memory. The cognition is translated as experience through verbalization and words.
- Samadhi means to be established in equinimity, in even-minded mindfulness.
- The mind then does not create any problem out of the flow of life. It passes through every situation in absolute non-chalance.
Mind thrives through problems and pursuits. Samadhi is a state of no-problem and no-pursuit. It is a state of no-minid - - the highest intelligence and perception.

What is your message?
I have no message. My message is you. Look at yourself. Be a light to yourself. Start a centripetal journey. Practise Kriya Yoga. Be available to perception not merely to craving for experiences.