With Swami Kriyananda
Yogananda – very symbolically – gave a harmonium to Swami Kriyananda, as an encouraging gift. It is seen on this photo and today can be admired at the museum at Ananda Village.
For a deeply devotional album with more meditatively chanted Cosmic Chants, please go here: Kriyananda Chants Yogananda.
Day 1
Receiving Yogananda Into One’s Life
First chant with Swami Kriyananda his song: “OM Master OM”:
Now practice this guided meditation:
“It is extremely helpful, in any case, to bring the avatar out of the pages of history, or out of that divine form which one may actually behold before him, and into oneself, into one’s own personal consciousness. The divine descent into human form will not be complete, where you yourself are concerned, until he can descend into your own body and mind.
Think of him in meditation, then, as the human being he is, or was. Concentrate on that one special avatar, among many, for whom your heart feels a particular affinity. If you have a guru, you may think of him thus, also. Visualize that spirit descending through your medulla, brain, and spine and out into your nervous system, filling your entire body. Feel that he has, in some mysterious but exalted sense, become you. And feel divine devotion toward him, especially in your heart. You are that divine consciousness which now dwells in your body! Pray that it fill you, and purify you of every human imperfection. Uplift the attunement you feel in your heart, and offer it up to God. Pray that the avatara make you one with itself, with the Infinite Spirit.
In this meditation there is no presumption. Rather, it helps the divine avatar to fulfill his purpose in descending into human form at all: to give you, yourself, the grace to attain all that he himself has attained.
From The Hindu Way of Awakening
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Day 2
Interiorization and Upliftment
First chant with Swami Kriyananda this Cosmic Chant:
Now practice this guided meditation:
The secret of withdrawing the consciousness and energy into the spine lies in deeper, and ever deeper, conscious relaxation.
A good way to relax the body is to breathe deeply several times; then inhale quickly, tensing the body; last, throw the breath out forcibly, and simultaneously relax the whole body. Repeat this practice once or twice more.
Now, think of your body as made of space. Visualize yourself surrounded by infinite space — by infinite stillness.
Keep the spine straight and the body erect during meditation, to facilitate the upward flow of energy and consciousness through the spine to the brain.
From The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
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Day 3
Detachment From Sense Pleasures
First chant with Swami Kriyananda this Cosmic Chant:
Now practice this guided meditation:
Visualize your sense-pleasures as roses clustered on a stem. See how, as one rose pales and drops its petals, others burst into bloom. Birth, life, and death: the story told and retold in every flower, in every sense-enjoyment, in every human being.
Must even the fleeting moments of our lives be a constant retelling of our ultimate mortal destiny? Must our joys die uselessly, every day? And will our entire lives prove just as useless in the end?
With the sword of discrimination, cut the stem! Fling the petals joyously on winds of inner freedom. Release from attachment to the moment will render you immune to life’s every change. Release from attachment to life’s changes will render you immune to death itself, life’s greatest change. Inner freedom will make you immortal.
From The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
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Day 4
The Formless “I”
First chant with Swami Kriyananda his song: “I am Free”
Now practice this guided meditation:
In meditation it is good, in addition to devotional thoughts, to meditate on your own true, formless state. Think of a blue light (since blue is the color of the Christ consciousness). Visualize this light gradually expanding, filling your body, then the room in which you are sitting, your city, your country, your continent, the world. Visualize this light expanding beyond the world, filling the solar system, our galaxy, the entire manifested universe. See all things glimmering in this infinite light. The Scriptures say: “Tat tuam asi! Thou art that!” Dwell on the thought of your own infinite freedom.
The Art and Science of Raja Yoga
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Day 5
The Aspiring Heart
First chant with Swami Kriyananda this Cosmic Chant: “Listen, listen, listen”
Now practice this guided meditation:
Meditate on the heart. Think of it as a lotus, its petals, like rays of energy, turned upward toward the brain.
Visualize each petal as a specific aspect of your feelings: love, aspiration, enthusiasm, longing, tenderness, fiery devotion, self-dedication, renunciation of lesser goals in life. Direct all of these aspects upward, toward superconsciousness.
Visualize, now, the mud out of which the lotus grows, as it lifts itself high into the air to absorb the sunlight. The lotus looks upward, away from the mud of its origins. Yet it cannot deny those origins, lest it die. Think of it as sustained by them—turned away not in contempt, but gratefully, in its aspiration toward higher realities.
Do not mentally reject what you’ve been in the past. See God’s presence there also, in the mud of your human origins. See God rising through long, arduous effort to reclaim Himself in the Great Self; God in the sunlight; God as the eternally shining, ever-blissful Sun.
From Awaken To Superconsciousness
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Day 6
Sending Out Blessings in Daily Life
First chant with Swami Kriyananda this Cosmic Chant:
Now practice this guided meditation:
Paramhansa Yogananda taught this effective technique: Meditate first, and harmonize the vibrations in your heart. Then radiate these calm vibrations outward—not so much to specific persons as generally, in all directions, to the world around you.
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Day 7
Purifying Subconscious Faults and Imperfections
First chant with Swami Kriyananda this chant:
Now practice this guided meditation:
Wisdom descends from superconsciousness. It is from that level that our personalities truly become transformed, our faults eradicated, and our virtues brought to perfection.
Calm your mind in meditation. Center your gaze and attention in the frontal lobe of the brain, at the point between the eyebrows—the seat of superconsciousness in the body.
From that high center, keep your mind focused on the thought that your will power is dynamic, free, and forever joyful. Now, let your mind sink downward into the lower part of the brain—the seat of subconsciousness. Offer up, for purification by the inner light, the tangle of subconscious desires and frustrations. Tell yourself repeatedly, with deep, calm concentration: “I am joyful! I am free! In myself, I am forever free!”