Discipleship Unease

The third course in the Kriya Yoga initiation program that I have been taking was on the topic of discipleship. It described the nature of the relationship between Yogananda and his disciples as that of divine love. It was specifically mentioned that the concept of discipleship is much more common and understood in India but not in the west. I did feel the incongruence upon reading the descriptions of the relationships between the different gurus and their disciples in the Kriya Yoga lineage. That ultimately dissuaded me from pursuing this path further.

Really most everything seemed fine as the guru is presented as this divine guide whose aim is to make you your own guru at the end. In this course the condition to move forward was to make a pledge of discipleship to Yogananda. That includes essentially giving up your own will to the guru and doing everything he asks of you. That alone rubs me the wrong way but also Yogananda already passed away and I don’t know what I’d be getting myself into with such a pledge. The idea of giving up my autonomy like that seems very dangerous.

End Goal Deliberations

I don’t take my words lightly as they would need to be completely aligned with my intention.  The goal of the path in Kriya Yoga is union with God. After encountering the ultimate trust conundrum in the discipleship course, I started thinking about what I really know about this union and why I would want it. Union with God is returning to the source. But what does that entail? The only existence I know is that of my own small separate self. It seems that upon merging with the source that self would stop existing. Why would that self want that?

So it goes back to motivation and goals, my kryptonite. What is worth wanting and moving towards? Are pleasure and pain the only factors that determine what we are choosing and why? Does one want enlightenment only because they want to experience the ultimate bliss? Buddhism and Yoga definitely seem to say so. In Buddhism nirvana is the liberation of suffering by eternally abiding in one’s true nature. In Yoga samadhi that brings one to union with God is the same thing. The cessation of suffering there is due to there no longer being any distinction between you and not you.

From that perspective logically the mechanism of liberation from suffering makes sense but it is still incomprehensible in terms of understanding how exactly it feels and what happens to the consciousness that the small I is currently experiencing. It might not even matter from that higher standpoint but how would the small I know that and why would it want to go out on a limb to find out at the risk of annihilation? Perhaps that is the ultimate leap of faith one must take if the curiosity is strong enough. But what if it is some kind of trap?

Uncertainty and Doubt

This is the challenge that keeps coming up as whatever you decide to follow or trust, you do have to believe it before you can find out whether it is true, safe, or real. However, even when you encounter some extraordinary events that could be considered proof of the matter at hand, their interpretation can be done in an infinite amount of ways. I have run into this problem several times this year. It could be this or it could be that. How do you know which is the real explanation if there is no unequivocal clarification either way? This is why I seek enlightenment, for there to remain no uncertainty about what is real and who I am. The search continues.

Kriya Yoga has given me great tools that have improved my meditation and energization techniques but I am changing my approach and plan for further practice that I will describe in a separate post.