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Ramakrishna Ananda

Standing on the Branch Side of the Saw?

Introducing three amazing techniques

Do you find yourself many miles from that special teacher you’re searching for? You can, nevertheless, develop greatly and perhaps gain numerous glimpses of higher consciousness if you become adept in the following practices. You will become more and more prepared to meet your teacher and will find many benefits occurring in your life from the application of these marvelous principles.

Growing on the Path, Helpful Qualities

Higher consciousness is found through an increase in consciousness. If you’ve developed a habit of being numb in the brain or in general sensitivity, all the tendencies involved in this habit have to be patiently turned around. If you recognize that you’re mentally limited and are willing to patiently do everything you can to activate your consciousness, then perhaps there is hope.

Of course, we’re all relatively bright and we’re all relatively stupid, depending on how comparisons are made. But it’s all-important for you to consider whether you’ve firmly decided to daily become a more conscious person. These principles of higher consciousness have to be applied with some degree of sensitivity and thoughtfulness in order for them to work. The path here is one of greater consciousness, not magic. Your ability to be attentive and sensitize yourself to superconsciousness is essential in order for you to meet with success.

The Legend of Kalidas

The legend of Kalidas — India’s greatest playwright — always begins with the story that he was extremely stupid. In fact, he may have been the most stupid man in his part of India. Once, some wise men passed by and observed him standing on the limb of a tree and sawing off the limb while standing on the wrong side of the saw! That is, when he had successfully sawed through the branch, he would himself fall down a considerable distance — along with the branch he was removing.

The wise men were seeking a particularly stupid man so they could play a cruel trick on their arrogant princess. They had determined, after receiving considerable abuse from her, to find the stupidest man they could get their hands on and present him to the princess as an extremely wise man, a “fitting” candidate for her royal hand.

They took Kalidas to the palace and presented him as a great sage who was observing a vow of silence, and told the queen he could only communicate through gestures. Previously they’d advised Kalidas to keep his mouth shut under all circumstances and simply move his fingers and fists when questioned. The princess interrogated Kalidas and the responses of his fingers and fists, as interpreted by the wise men, made him seem the wisest man in the kingdom.

Delighted, the princess married him. Shortly after they entered the marriage chamber Kalidas uttered something and the princess, with horror, discovered she was married to a dolt. She kicked him out of the bed chamber and palace. She called him a camel and other such endearing names.

Kalidas was miserable. He determined life was not worth continuing — especially his life. He went to the river to drown himself. But once there, he observed that the rocks beside the river had been worn down by the washerwomen who scrubbed and pounded the clothes on the stones on the bank. Kalidas hesitated a moment in his desire for oblivion and studied the hollows worn in the stone banks by the washerwomen.

“If merely washing clothes can wear down something as hard as stone, surely my thick, numb, stupid mind can also be worn through,” he thought.

Kalidas prayed that this possibility be so. He prayed to the Lord, thinking of the Lord as his divine mother. She appeared to him and bestowed a blessing on his thick head. His stammering tongue was freed, his mind became clear, and his deep heart became unblocked. He became the most eloquent and brilliant poet in Indian history. Kalidas is considered the Shakespeare of India.

Worth thinking about, isn’t it? A man who couldn’t saw the branch off a tree intelligently became legendary for the subtlety of his mind.

Why They’re Amazing

The three techniques that follow are of extraordinary value. They awaken consciousness. They release inner potential. They will also brighten your life. From this moment, you need never be bored or have idle time in which you cannot think of anything to do. These three techniques are fascinating to practice. They work in harmony with one another and they can also be practiced separately, as you wish.

There are thousands of specialized techniques which can help a person become more conscious and ultimately discover the higher consciousness within. However, a study of the wide variety of techniques and disciplines will reveal they have much in common with these three excellent practices, which you are about to know. Adherents of most every path practice these techniques in one form or another. Adepts in western mysticism, in metaphysics, and in most all schools of thought in the Western world, as well as masters of Eastern philosophies, including Yoga and Zen, focus with particular favor on these three amazing practices.

Bear in mind, as you prepare to raise your consciousness with the great techniques ahead, all adepts would urge that no method should become more important to you than your goal. The method is only your means toward higher consciousness. Methods are not meant to be more than the means.

Schools of Thought

Many Zen advocates, for example, urge that since the mind is ignorant to begin with, the mind must be silenced through paradox or by some other “mind-bypassing” means. The Zen student strives to stop the misperceptions and the distortions which his or her mind regularly creates through its ignorance.

Other schools of thought generally say that while the mind is ignorant and generally distorts any particular technique, it would be better that the mind be given some food, some reason or some idea of what it’s doing, so that it might cooperate toward a transcendent process which leads to higher consciousness.

So, some methods strive to directly calm the mind while others engross and concentrate the mind. Many wondrous levels of awareness become available when either approach is practiced well.

The three techniques comprise what is formally called kriya yoga but you will find similar practices under different names throughout the world.

Many teachers consider kriya yoga a sublime preparation, clearing the way for an aspirant to enter into a successful relationship with a qualified teacher. On the other hand, some gurus and masters, when they make the acquaintance of their new and beloved student, require him or her to practice these three steps for five or more years.

Mastery of these three practices assures a relative ease in the discovery and consolidation of one’s life in higher consciousness.

Please note that the term kriya yoga has been used to refer to other practices as well as those which follow. To a few million people, kriya yoga is primarily the series of techniques which involve directing life force, or prana, up and down specific passages in the spine until body, mind, and emotions are so calm and pure that higher consciousness can be perceived and entered into. Or, more appropriately, that the higher consciousness may descend throughout the individual’s faculties without being blocked, distorted, or limited. The term kriya yoga is also popularly used in ways that will seem so bizarre as to make you laugh, or in other ways so strange as to raise eyebrows in perplexity. Since the word kriya comes from the Sanskrit root word meaning action, many teachers feel free to call any actions they dream up, kriya yoga, or “kriya kriya,” or “kriya-robics.”

Apply These Techniques to your Daily Life

As you practice these three exquisite techniques, please apply them as specifically as possible to your daily life. Use each day to develop in your practice of each one.

Please do not allow past destructive habits to dominate these new, life-enriching tendencies. Consider each technique as if you’re hearing it for the first time. Apply yourself as never before to the benefits that each technique yields.

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#2 THE MYSTIC GAZE
A Classic Technique

This classic technique is one of the mystic’s greatest treasures.

It is designed to stimulate your mystical faculties and begin the process of spiritual awakening.

With the Mystic Gaze enjoy the developing sense of clarity, coordination and attunement with life in all you do.

  1. Sit calmly and relax your eyes
  2. Gaze slightly upwards 20-30 degrees
  3. Look into space 20 feet or more
  4. Gaze, don’t stare or strain your eyes
  5. Simply observe and appreciate your awareness of space
  6. Enjoy the dawning wholeness for several minutes
  7. Gear down and go about your day

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#7 EXPANSION THROUGH ATTITUDE AND GOOD WILL
Change Your Heart

Your practice of good will cultivates the heart’s truest, deepest feeling:  love.

These good will practices are a boon to mystical study.

The goal of good will practice is the change of the heart.

When your heart naturally and spontaneously radiates forth a palpable good will, then you are a changed person.

  1. Consciously direct your thoughts and feelings toward an attitude of good will
  2. Bring a person to mind
  3. Or place your awareness on a person closest to you
  4. Direct good will toward this person
  5. Feel free to add specific well-wishes like health, love, courage, etc.
  6. Allow your heart to expand, to change

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#6 EXPANSION LEVEL ONE
Quality of Life

Mystics break out of body bondage through numerous expansions of the heart — of the sense of self.

Your feeling of self-awareness imprisons or frees you.

Happily, you can do something powerfully liberating about the state of your heart and the quality of your life.

  1. Sit comfortably for 15 minutes
  2. Choose a person you know
  3. Imagine you’re walking in his/her shoes
  4. Feel you’re inside this person
  5. Say “If I were (name), I’d feel and think…”
  6. Have fun with it and let your heart expand

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#5 THE HEART AND ITS LIBERATION
Your Sense of Self

Mystics break out of mind and body bondage through expansions, expansions of consciousness.

Your “Heart” is your sense of self, your feeling about who you are.

Who are you as a distinct person from everyone else? This is your core individuality, your mystical heart.

  1. Focus on your mystic heart
  2. It is located in the right-central chest or inside the spine behind the heart
  3. Practice The Radiance or The Mist:
  4. Feel that your mystic heart…
  5. Radiates love, light and energy, or
  6. Generates a white mist flowing outward

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#4 THE MYSTIC BREATH
Your Window

Your breath is the key to the mystery of your life. The Mystic Breath is conscious use of this key.

Our individual natures will require different windows — different energy centers — from which to view the life force.

Allow the mystic breath to reveal your personal window.

  1. Stretch and then sit comfortably
  2. Take 5 to 7 deep breaths
  3. Focus on the center of your upper lip
  4. Witness the breath come and go
  5. Let your mind move to a natural center
  6. Watch your breath and the life force from this “window”

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#3 THE ASCENT
The Essence of Your Life

We begin meditation on the Infinite by focusing our awareness on Spirit, the life essence within us.

How can we do something so seemingly abstract? It’s easy. Spirit empowers your breath night and day.

Let the life force reveal itself to you. Sense the higher power which flows through you.

You’ll feel more alive.

  1. Stretch and relax your body
  2. Sit comfortably
  3. Take 5 to 7 deep breaths
  4. Focus on your nostril rims
  5. Witness the breath come and go
  6. Enjoy for 10 to 12 minutes
  7. Inhale deeply and stretch

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#0 THE MYSTIC SELF
Our True Nature

In the view of mystics, the major problem in life for most of us is ignorance of our true natures.

The Mysteries reveal many ways that you can actually contact your mystic self — and the Infinite Consciousness.

Do you, can you, contact your Mystic Self? Yes, indeed!

  1. Practice this anytime you like
  2. Probably your mind wanders quite often
  3. At times during the day, look at your mind and notice when it’s wandering
  4. Then, turn your attention to that part of your consciousness which observes that your mind is wandering
  5. That special overseeing awareness is part of your marvelous mystic self

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#1 MYSTIC AWAKENING
Benefits

Stimulate your mystical awakening.

When you wake up from a dream you realize you were only dreaming.

Consider too that this normal state of awareness in which you live may be a kind of sleep also.

As you do this technique you’ll find the world becomes more beautiful and enjoyable.

  1. Try this many times a day
  2. Whisper to yourself, “Wake up!”
  3. Mentally say, “Wake up!”
  4. Increase your attention, appreciation and feeling of love
  5. Just cheerfully exhort yourself
  6. Wake up!

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How to Succeed

As you may know, we do not charge for our courses. All Yoga World content is free and available to you with our blessings. However, we do have a simple, but important request that’s key to the transformations necessary to succeed on the path.

We ask you to commit two hours a week to selfless service. This service can be anything you choose ranging from helping a family member or neighbor to volunteering at a nonprofit organization.

I Commit to Serve

This commitment is solely between you and your inner self.

Why the Commitment?

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