Natural Yoga Parts 1 and 2

[Shambhu]

I would like to share something written by my guru's guru, Yogeshwar Muni.  Many knew him as Charles Berner, the originator of the Enlightenment Intensive retreat, but what not everyone knows is that he went on to be an accomplished yogi.  After having many peak experiences to only face a dead end, his guru, Swami Kripalu, gave him the key to achieving God realization.  This is a rare path, and I would like to share an introduction to that here.

Chapter 1
Introduction to Natural Yoga

In the Western world it is not considered very important to be guided by the heart. We would all like to be more able to love and be loved, but we have learned to trust our heads. We have been educated, not only in our educational system, but also in our society as a whole to use our heads. It has brought us a certain degree of material success, but it has not succeeded in giving us the happiness, the peace, the consciousness, and the love that we all want.

The teaching of Natural Yoga is the way of natural union with God. From my spiritual teacher Master Kripalvananda, I learned a method of opening my heart, a method of surrender. This is not to say that knowledge is a bad thing, because it is not. But it is not enough; nor is just opening your heart. We are so much more advanced in our heads than in our hearts. What we need is to learn to open the heart and surrender.

But surrender to what? In Natural Yoga one surrenders only to the Truth. Another name for the Truth is God. God is the Absolute; the Absolute is Perfection; and Perfection is Truth. Natural Yoga is about knowing God not just intellectually, but consciously and directly; it is about surrender to God.

It is necessary to re-release the energy captured by the closed heart. The heart, in turn, has been captured by the mind; and the mind controls it. It is not possible to figure out how to re-release or to liberate the life energy that has been entrapped. The more you use your will to make it happen, the more life energy gets captured. But when the heart is re-opened, the mind loses its grip on the previously captured energy, and life begins to flow again.

If you surrender to anything and everything, your life becomes a complete waste. Your desires run wild and you run into incredible difficulties. In Natural Yoga, by surrendering to God, by surrendering to the Truth, the suppressed energy is released and transformed. Then liberation is achieved.

Once you surrender the body, feelings and mind to God, the purification process begins. But the ego resists it. It says, “Oh, no, you don’t. This surrender business is not for me!”

If you have a lot of toxins in your body, there will be a strong reaction. If you are sickly, overweight, use drugs, smoke cigarettes, or drink coffee or alcohol, the body will react very strongly and make it very difficult for you to continue surrendering. If you sincerely want to do Natural Meditation, you need to work through these difficulties and prepare for the process of full surrender, of completely giving over your body, feelings and mind to God. Then as you continue to surrender, your mind begins to purify spontaneously.

There are four ways to awaken or liberate the life energy. One of them is by physical exercise; another is by understanding the Truth; the third is through devotion; and the fourth is through the transmission of divine energy form teacher to student.

If you do a lot of exercise, stop using drugs and eat a pure diet, your body will become purer. And when it purifies, the life energy will be liberated.

My life energy was liberated by understanding the Truth. I had a realization of the Truth of life. As a result, the life energy in my body went “whoooosh.” I rolled all over the floor and acted crazy. I didn’t know what to do with it! I tried to figure out what it was all about. For years I tried to find out what to do with it and how to handle it.

I did not succeed until I met Master Kripalvananda, affectionately called Kripalu. He is the only one I ever met who really knew what to do with the vital energy. He was a great yogi from the great tradition of Natural Yoga. Something led me to his feet. He had the knowledge, method, and power to transform the life energy; and he could teach and transmit it to others.

And finally, if you devote yourself to whatever is divine to you and open your heart and serve it, through great love, your life energy will be liberated

In Natural Yoga, the life energy is awakened through the transmission of divine energy from teacher to student. The transference is a gift of life energy from the teacher to the student. The great advantage of transmission of divine energy from teacher to student is that you know what is happening; you how it has come about; and you know you have someone to guide you. Once the divine energy is transferred, the rest happens spontaneously and automatically as you continue to surrender.

1. You begin to treat people better, not because you are forcing yourself, but just because you want to.

2. The body performs purifying actions, moving spontaneously into yoga postures whether you have ever heard of them or not. The postures occur in the exact way necessary for your body to purify.

3. The life energy becomes restrained and elevated.

4. The attention withdraws from the senses.

5. You go into deep concentration.

6. You go into spontaneous meditation.

7. You go into equanimity or union with God.

This does not happen in two or three seconds; it takes a while. It may take days, weeks, months or years; but it happens according to the grace of God and Truth, according to the wisdom of the divine energy that guides you.

The process of Natural Yoga proceeds according to your degree of surrender, the previous work that you have done in this life and others, and the wisdom of your spiritual teacher. Divine union is the ultimate outcome of Natural Yoga. Your own true, divine nature comes into union with God or Truth.

Natural Yoga brings not only bliss, but also consciousness, Truth, health and happiness. It brings natural humility and saintly behavior. Impurities are transformed into Divine Love for others. Eventually a complete and permanent transformation of one’s human nature takes place. This is a long-term project; yet it is the promise of Natural Yoga.

Chapter 2
Surrender

The key to Natural Yoga is surrender. By surrendering in meditation you achieve union with God or Truth. There are many names and ways of thinking about the Ultimate. Choose the way that has meaning for you, then surrender and go into union with it.

Natural Yoga is natural union, a union that happens naturally without the use of willful direction or guidance. Natural Meditation means following the natural path, the path that is automatic and spontaneous. But this can only come through surrender. This is why surrender is the key. Without surrender, the will is involved. When the will is involved, nothing happens naturally.

There are a lot of advantages to meditating naturally. You might say that surrender is “letting it be.” Letting things be the way they are, is a form of surrender.

The dictionary defines surrender as the opposite of victory; surrender is yielding or giving in. It implies being forced to give in, to give in against your will. In Natural Yoga surrender means giving in by your own choice and letting the will of something other than you have its way.

In Natural Yoga, you not only surrender, but you also surrender to the Truth; you surrender to Perfection; you surrender to the Absolute; you surrender to the Ultimate. You surrender to the cosmic finality. Call it whatever you like.

You don’t just surrender. You surrender to an Ultimate. You have the choice to surrender or not. In Natural Yoga you choose to give in to the Divine. This is the key principle of Natural Yoga. You don’t need to know anything else. Everything else supports this key principle. So you need to understand it well.

It is not easy to surrender, but it is the key to spiritual growth. If you surrender to the Divine, then automatically and spontaneously, you are on the path to the Truth, to the feet of the Lord, to Divine Love, without having to plan, to know, to force or to concern yourself in any way.

The difficulty is that when you choose to surrender, there is a reaction. Therefore, you can only surrender to a certain degree. If you could surrender to the Truth totally, all at once, you would experience the Truth and you would have complete union with the Truth.

Some people refuse to surrender at all. They say, “I’m using my will and that’s it. I’m not surrendering at all!” A few have surrendered totally. We call them God. Most of us are in between with some degree of surrender.

When you have a reaction to surrender, don’t stop surrendering. Simply surrender more. Even if you don’t want to, go ahead and do it anyway. Perhaps you pull back your surrender to some degree. But if you do surrender, a little bit of purification takes place. Not only do concerns go away, but also the body and the mind purify to some degree. So when you surrender that much again, the reaction is not so strong. And as you continue, your capacity to surrender grows deeper and deeper because the reactions are less.

It would take a lifetime to sort out the best way to have a supremely happy life, achieve complete liberation, attain absolute freedom, and reach total union with God. By the time I found Natural Yoga, my life had been spent trying to work this out.

I had assembled about fifty different, quite excellent methods of dealing with the body and mind, like massage, Polarity Therapy, Rolfing, Feldenkreis, Hatha Yoga, breath restraint, good diet, Gestalt Therapy, Mind Clearing, Emotional Trauma Release, praying to God, and many others.

I was trying to design an assessment method to test every person who came to our spiritual growth center and then direct them to the techniques they needed. I had an elaborate plan worked out with a marvelous testing system so that each person’s plan could be adjusted to just the combination they needed and varied as their needs changed. I was excited by all of this and was beginning to make some sense out of it even though it was a fairly complex subject.

Then one day I met my beloved spiritual teacher, Kripalu. He taught me Natural Meditation. With Natural Yoga all you have to do is surrender to God. And the perfect thing happens to you at just the right time with the correct intensity to do exactly what is necessary for you whether it be in your mind, your body or your feelings. It brings about the exact degree of purification you need. And then the process continues naturally without any need to ask questions or make plans! What a relief! What a Godsend!

Unfortunately not everyone can surrender to God. First of all, many have not found God. Others have no absolute anywhere in their life. It’s difficult for them to find anything to surrender to.

Secondly, many are so impure and toxified that if they do surrender even a little bit, their ego can’t stand it. They clamp their will down with all their might. These people must find Truth, through some other method, through Enlightenment Intensives, for example. They need techniques to remove their mental and communicative obstacles. Once their minds become purer as a result of techniques such as the Enlightenment Intensive, then surrender is possible for them.

For those who are ready, for those who have prepared themselves, the path of Natural Yoga is open. Natural Yoga is an option if they so choose! Many have had deep experiences of God, Truth or Divine Love. But these experiences fade with time.

All willful techniques are limited because you can only know God in a surrendered state. As soon as the will is re-activated by arising desire, the deep experience lost. Many people are sincerely driven time and time again into the realm of peak experiences only to fall back again when desire arises.

Some have sought experiences using drugs, only to crash again. Taking drugs is certainly willful; and you cannot willfully maintain union. Only in the state of surrender to the Truth can the Ultimate goal be continually experienced.

It’s a gradual process. Where willful techniques leave off, surrender begins. This is not to say that willful techniques have no value. They do! It is necessary for almost everyone to participate in them to get themselves to the place where they can surrender meaningfully to the Truth. To do Natural Yoga, one must be able to surrender and let the will another be done. It is God who is the doer in Natural Yoga.

In Natural Yoga you release the body from willful acts. You allow the life energy in the body to do what it wants instead of willfully trying to do something.

If your body gets tired, let it fall over or just collapse on the floor. Once the body rests for awhile, it wants to move again. Whereas ordinary meditation uses the will, in Natural Yoga you let the life energy, guided by the divine, move the body in whatever way it sees fit.

Do not try to concentrate your mind or attention on any particular thing. In willful meditation you concentrate on one subject or willfully try to maintain a state of openness.

In the case of Natural Yoga, you let the attention go wherever it wants. It might go onto anything. You surrender the control of your attention to the divine and letting it do what it wants. The divine directs the energy that guides the attention. It will go where it needs to go in order for you to make the most rapid progress in your meditation.

Meditation may not always be what you want; and often, it is not. Sometimes it is boring. Sometimes it does seemingly pointless things like the grocery list. But that is what needs to be done. The energy is trying to release your attention from the “grocery list” so it can go on to other things.

You say, “Oh, I shouldn’t be thinking about the grocery list; so I’m not going to think about it. I should be thinking about God.”

You are using your will. It is all very well to think about God; but if you are using your will to direct your attention, then you are defeating the method of natural union with God. If you surrender your attention to God, the life energy in the body and mind will be guided appropriately.

In meditation you go through what you need to go through. No one has to tell you anything. God is the only therapist. If you have God or the Truth as your therapist, you can not do better. The only fee God wants is surrender to Him.

You can say Her if you prefer. The Goddess is Truth. Truth is the way things actually are no matter what perspective you take. You just let meditation happen whatever way it wants. Let His will be done, not yours.

Surrender, then, is to choose to let God, the Truth, or whatever you want to call it, guide your body, feelings, and mind, your thoughts and attention. You will be lead you through the most fascinating, exciting, sometimes boring and even terrifying journey to to union with the Truth.

By surrendering to the life energy, the body can naturally go through what it needs to go through in Natural Yoga. It does not become tired. The mind goes through what it needs to go through so it does not become stuck or frustrated trying to control the attention. And the feelings can flow when they are ready; when they are not ready, nothing happens. So just let it be.

One can do many hours of Natural Yoga over long periods of months and years. The serious aspirant can devote his or her whole life to this activity. Four to eight hours a day spent in meditation is not unusual for a serious practitioner of Natural Yoga.

Generally, the energy in meditation moves a lot at first, then slows down to nothing and the aspirant goes into yogic sleep. You may think that you should be alert and busy. Your will tells you, “I think I should be awake, active and busy.” And there is God’s will.

Sleep is coming on naturally. If you have truly surrendered, you let sleep come. If a hand wants to move, let it move. Whatever happens let it happen! There is only one condition, surrender your body, mind and feelings to the Truth,. If you have done that, there is no error. Whatever occurs, including sleep or anything else, happens properly and automatically.

Why doesn’t everybody do Natural Yoga? It’s so easy! I mentioned the obstacle of reaction. Many people are attached to the ego; that is, their ego wants to be in charge. It wants to be the doer and wants to cause things to happen. “If I do this, then I want that result. And I want the fruits of my actions.”

Following the ego is the ordinary Western way of proceeding. It is also the Oriental way of proceeding to some extent. When you willfully act, God responds to a degree, if you have acted ethically.

You can get bound to the ego and get stuck in the role of the doer. You are the one who is doing it, rather than surrendering. Following the ego can only take you so far. But most people are not ready to give up the role of “doership.” They are not ready to go on to Natural Yoga.

God is the doer of all things. Imagine a slave master who has many slaves and who wants to build himself a nice house. He sits up on his dais and says, “Slave, you come over here and you carry these stones. And you slaves there, you pile them up. And you mix the mortar. And you design it. Come on, jump!”

And they start jumping and carrying stones and they build the palace. When the palace is finished, the slave master invites his neighbor over. And he says, “Look! See the palace I built! See what I did!”

The slave master is the ego and the slaves are God.

God is the doer of all things that appear in the form of nature. God in the form of nature does all things. The ego sits back and says, “Look what I’m doing! See what I did!” The ego thinks it is the doer. But the ego does not create anything; it does nothing!

The body is part of nature; the mind, feelings and thoughts are part of nature. The entire physical universe is part of nature. All that happens is done by God working in and through nature. Surrender releases the divine energy that makes everything work. The divine energy is what guides your body, mind and feelings in Natural Yoga.

If you are strongly identified with doership, surrender will not occur. But you can give up the ego and say, “God, I surrender to you.” It would be like the slave master saying, “Slave, I surrender to you. I realize that you have been doing the work anyway and I’ve just been taking credit for it.”

It is not just a matter of stopping what you were doing; it is a matter of realizing that you never were and are not the doer. God in the form of nature does all things. The act of surrender is simply the gradual realization of the Truth.

As long as you are attached to the fruits of action, you are held in a trap. You hold on to the idea that you are the doer. “I did it. I worked all day. I want my pay.”

So if you are attached to the fruits, you are automatically the doer. But it is not true. The fruits do not belong to you. They are all God’s. You are not the doer. God does it all.

So what are you? You are the one who either surrenders to that fact, or resists it. You are the one who can make the choice. You can either surrender to the natural way which brings about union with Truth or you can fight it, saying, “No! No! No! I’m going to do it the way I want!”

Sometimes people feel that if they decide to stop doing something, nothing will happen. They think that not doing anything is surrender. This is not true. They think, “I won’t think any thought; I won’t move a finger; I won’t breathe.” There is a very simple way to test this.

“ Well since I’m the breather, I’ll stop breathing.” But it is not you who starts breathing again because it was not you who was breathing in the first place. God in the form of nature is causing the body to breathe, not you. And in the same way, nature causes the brain to think, the hunger to come, the sexual urge to arise. All these things happen by the will of nature.

Thus it is the ego that stops people from doing Natural Meditation. Everyone has an ego. However, if you can just yield some of your doership, some of your attachment to the fruits of action, then you can open the door to Natural Yoga.

Natural Yoga liberates you from both pleasure and pain. You protest, “Wait a minute, don’t you take my pleasure away! I’ll put up with some pain as long as I get some pleasure.”

By surrendering to the Truth, you gradually get over the suffering of pain and the enjoyment of pleasure. In life, pain is the payment, pleasure is the reward. It is the fruit. Getting caught in this endless cycle of pain and pleasure is ordinary human life.

An individual who wants liberation seeks to transcend this cycle. A practitioner of Natural Yoga, instead of pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain, seeks only union with Truth, perfect awareness of the way things really are. He or she becomes more and more detached. Both pleasure and pain become the same. A sincere meditator seeks pure consciousness of the way it is. The ‘way it is’ is often called ‘That’ in yogic scripture. Pure consciousness of ‘That’ is bliss.

Pure consciousness of the “way it is” (‘that’) may be called direct knowledge. When you have direct knowledge of ‘That’ which is true, you are in bliss. This is union with God. A liberated individual having transcended pleasure and pain comes to know God directly. If someone just talks to you about Truth, it tends to be dry. If someone just talks about God, you may feel belittled. But when you are the one that ends up knowing the Truth directly, you are in the state of bliss.

Bliss is not the same as pleasure. Bliss is pure consciousness of Truth. The state you are in when you go into union is bliss. Bliss is not the titillation of a nerve ending; that is pleasure.

If that nerve is not titillated, then it is painful. “Oh I feel so lonesome and left out. I feel depressed and hurt.”

This happens because the nerve fiber did not get its electrical stimulus. But if you have pure consciousness of God or Truth, it is bliss. It is union with God.

How do you to reach bliss? By the realizing that you are not the doer. By surrendering to the Truth. This leads to pure consciousness of the Truth and you have bliss.

I speak not from theory, but from experience that this is the case. Surrender even in the early stages of the process of union with God, leads to bliss and to God. By the grace of my spiritual teacher it has happened to me. I can say that direct knowledge of Truth is God, beyond doubt, beyond certainty.

There are many schools of thought, many religions and teachers who teach surrender to God in the form of the divine energy. The Christians on the day of the Pentecost were invested with the Holy Spirit which is the same thing as divine energy. They spoke in tongues and rolled on the floor, called out to God, cried, and laughed with joy. The purification had begun. The Holy Spirit had descended upon them.

Chi is another name for the divine energy. Tai Chi tries directs this energy. The name is ‘Orgone’ to the Reichians. They permit the energy to flow and to surrender to it. These are all steps in the right direction. They are all excellent techniques. In Natural Mediation, we deal with the same energy. In yogic tradition, the guru gives Shaktipat initiation awakening the divine energy in his or her students.

My spiritual teacher has provided us with a broad perspective of the spiritual growth process based on his experience in Natural Yoga. He practiced ten hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the year for over thirty years.

His life was Natural Yoga. He understood and practiced Natural Yoga in the context of ancient scripture. He was taught by his teacher, Lord Lakulisha, who achieved divine body through Natural Yoga.

Natural Yoga has a history of thousands of years of sincere meditators experimenting, going up blind alleys, finding the way and then staying on course. They continued until they achieved the highest state of union with God, the development of the divine body, and the fulfillment of life.

There are many names for this meditation. When I was in India, Swami Kripalvananda called me back into his room and wrote something his chalkboard in Hindi. I had to ask the translator to come back. Kripalu wrote, “The name of this yoga is love.”

I did not know what he meant at the time. Now I have a good idea. Love and surrender are the same. One’s most outstanding quality is love. And God is love. So when you surrender to God, to Perfection, to Truth, you love Him so He can love you. This is what leads to union. Without love none of it is possible.

Love does not mean surrendering to people’s personalities, weaknesses, inabilities, failures, or impurities. You surrender to the Divine, the Divine that is everywhere and in everything. You should not surrender to imperfections, disease, insanity and false knowledge. Surrender only to the Divine Truth which is in the heart of everyone. This is the act of love.

Kripalu told me that for thousands of years, it has been the custom in India when greeting or parting to say, “Victory to God!” Jai Bhagawan

If you like to read the remaining parts of his small book, you can find it here: http://www.naturalmeditation.net/Design/nmdocument.html 

[Giulio Bevilacqua]

Beautiful thank you ? 

[Consilience]

Such an amazing share! Thank you for posting this. ❤️