Self-Realization Fellowship

I eventually went upstairs, introduced myself.

We started talking, and she was a follower of Paramahansa Yogananda Self-Realization Fellowship.

And so that was like one of my first friends who totally understood what I had gone through in my awakening.

And since she worked right next to me in the field office, we would have lunch and just kinda talk about, uh, spiritual matters.

all of the different facets that are guiding you and wanting to come through you and communicate through your cellular and your energy intelligence and guide you of what actions, what conversations, what meetings, what events, what people, what environments are in your highest good for that moment.

Paramahansa Yogananda is the founder of Self-Realization Fellowship.

One of the most famous quotes that he has that a lot of people have heard is, is that environment is stronger than will.

And typically that's where the quote kind of stops.

And beyond all the work that I do in the world, I'm also a deep meditator.

and a lifelong student of Hindu and Buddhist teachings, particularly in the Self-Realization Fellowship tradition, which is a worldwide organization that was founded by my teacher, my guru, Paramahansa Yogananda, in the US in 1920.

So yeah, that's what brings me here today to talk to you about all the exciting things of size and all that.

Amazing.

It does feel like maybe we come here to do some refining, some soul refining.

That's right.

And so I think in our traditions, right, in Self-Realization, the reason why Yogananda named this Global Organization Self-Realization Fellowship is because Self-Realization really describes the goal of what life is, which is to realize oneself.

realize that we're one with everything and everyone, that we're, there's, you know, Thich Nhat Hanh popularized this phrase of interdependence or interbeing.

Would you guys go to the Kumbh Mela? And it's a loaded question because Would you go to like really crowded festivals? Because you know how we celebrate festivals, like Janmashtami, for example, at the Krishna Temple is a chaos, especially in the UK, but in India it would be chaos as well.

It's a loaded question because you know how in SRF we celebrate commemoration.

We just do a commemoration meditation where really it's not an outward pilgrimage.

It's usually an inward pilgrimage, isn't it? So on that note, would you guys go to these big festivals, Janamashmi and Kumbhalas and Diwalis and all those things?

The influence of delusion and the triple qualities is extremely powerful, painting even the most valiant efforts of the aspiring devotee until victorious at last he is irrevocably established in his pure soul nature.

So we see the East and the West, comments here that Babaji leads us to, this origin story as to why we're here,

really, in the SRF.

Sri Yukteswar says that he has been thinking of the leading scientific man of the West, again, so he goes into this part of the conversation with Babaji.

We've got to be able to find a joy on a deeper level than just this kind of hysteria.

I remember a woman who became a... renunciate, a nun, at Mount Washington, the headquarters of Self-Realization Fellowship.

She had been a Hollywood starlet.

And she'd lived the sort of American dream.

In this way, values are relative.

You had a question, I believe?

When Yoganandaji left the physical body, he also left behind a structure and a vehicle to propagate his teachings, and that, I understand, is the Self-Realization Fellowship.

And if I were a seeker wanting to connect with the tradition of Sri Yukeswar, Babaji, and Sri Yogananda, I would be confused, because there is the SRF vehicle for propagating his teachings, and then you represent Nanda, and you teach Kriya Yoga.

So I started reading the Bible in mid-summertime of 23.

And by January, I had stopped going to the Self-Realization Fellowship, which is in Pacific Palisades, which I was searching for church.

And that's about the closest I could get.

But that one's like, all religions lead to God.

And then we went off in the woods or whatever weeds.

And then I was going to say, but Jesus is the only one pointing at himself.

And I learned that from that dude, Keith green from a video that, on youtube where and bro he was talking about what i just said about the lake shrine self-realization fellowship he says yogananda he says the guy's name no he's talking about this place where i was going and so that's you're so on point yet that dude

that's crazy yeah and he died in a plane crash i think in the 90s maybe i think somewhere around there yeah Wow.

So would your Hatha Yoga, would your breath work, 30-35 minutes of breath work, with the Kriya practice which is now a hundred rounds I do takes me about 1 hour 20 minutes which used to take me originally three hours, then I got used to it.

Then it took two hours, then one and a half, no, around one hour, 20 minutes it takes me to do a hundred rounds of Kriya, right? The one that I modified and simplified from the Self-Realization Fellowship organization where Paramahamsa Yogananda initiated over 10,000 people into this, Kriya practice and I modified it and simplified it.

You can refer to my video on the Kriya practice, right? Would tremendously boost your meditation progress exponentially.

They said it can even increase it by about a thousand times or they got a very big formula and even that you're going to need several lifetimes before you're going to self-actualize or this thing.

Lots of people, when they're doing the Padmasana, the lotus posture, that is the yogic pose.

But we don't, in SRF, that's not a requirement for our Kriya.

So Guruji described here, mudra usually refers to a ritual gesture of the fingers and the hands.

And it's much deeper.

to the needs of today's world, which I think is the most important thing, right? And this is what Guruji doesn't, this is why he doesn't go into more volumes of philosophy of miracles that he gives the warning about in the previous sentences.

And he says that the economic and religious conditions of ancient India are not not there right now essentially and that we need to not be wandering aesthetics with a begging bowl that we need to keep the advantage of being a yoga yogi and practice yoga but also be earning and living in the world and being a contributor a tangible contributor to society and not being dependent on society for support i we can do all of that but we can also continue to practice yoga deeply and profoundly in the privacy of our own homes.

So this is one for the three of us, certainly that we adhere to, but it's also one for most SRF and YSS members.

And the ones who don't fall into this category generally become monks and nuns of SRF and YSS.