Real Yoga

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God... so the story goes, but really, in the beginning was a huge ball of swirling gasses and what seems fortunate for us. WATER.

Once the gasses had cooled enough to form solids to hold the water of this earth, the heat, the grime and slime produced micro–organisms which over the eons of time randomly mixed their separated parts to form other organisms, beginning the chain of genetic evolution.

It is this randomness that is fascinating, yet as random as it was and still is, it all depended on climate, pools of slime, necessity and just the right characteristics to evolve into new life forms, which on crawling out of the mire found themselves in new abodes which necessitated once again the need for mutation or die. Change through cross–pollination and interbreeding, and also the need to survive, their new surroundings produced an ongoing change of diverse life forms. Many life forms did not make it.

In today's world with genetic engineering, randomness has taken on new meanings — unless one can call experimenting a form of randomness, thus we are seeing all types of genetic engineering, both horizontal types and vertical types.

It is presumed that only vertical types have happened in the past through what one likes to call natural means — until man came along and inferred the possibility that an animal protein gene could be mixed in with the starch of a wheat plant. It has worked. Has it worked in the past without our aid? After all, we are nature also, equally as much so as the tree or the ape is, so why is it that something we do should be called unnatural, when all the time it is in the nature of the beast to invent and discover.It is not so in the rest of nature. It is only randomly so We don't know yet, in the long run, whether it will be a benefit to us or not.

Amazingly enough that we could have evolved from some squirmy little creature in a mud bath, yet when you think that of all the genetic double helixes from all forms of living species, including trees and plants, we all share a good 90% of the same genetic structure, with only a little over 10% being different. No wonder we can trace our roots back to the limb of the tree that branched off from the species lemur. They seem to be more closely, linked to us than any other.

New species came about by replication of the gene helix itself. Replication was not the randomness of mutation or cross pollination, but was like, in a way, some of the species we have today which are female for procreation and giving birth to its species and changes itself in order inseminate; thus the replicators became brand new species.

Although, through natural means and means by man's interfering hands, hundreds of species a year vanish from this earth, new ones are being replicated. Is it so much different now than it was thousands of years ago when natural disaster wiped out hundreds of species also?

We have become, in these past years, slaves to preserving which has really been brought about by recognition of our ability to destroy ourselves. We have become paranoid, and because it is part of our human species nature to preserve ourselves, we find that now, we are doing it for as much of life as we are able to.

The scales weigh heavy on either side of the fulcrum, those that wish to preserve and those destroying as much as they can for profit. It is a dichotomy which has existed forever, for if you look at the animal kingdom, you will find the lion's share of the profit is to protect his space and to destroy the young of other male lions, should he find them; thus assuring his own genetic strain's immortality.

An interesting scenario is the way in which Mind has evolved through Consciousness from the cellular level, limited by each cell's need to do its job of building a claw, or a feather. Limited indeed, but Consciousness nonetheless — a Consciousness with direction.

Even smaller still, mind at the particle level and the sub–atomic level was born out of Pure Consciousness to swirl amongst the hot gasses and mud of the beginning of the worlds within worlds.

In all of these Mind Constructions of the birth of matter, Mind has been behind its ever increasing complexity, until we see today's very complex mind being displayed by man, not quite sure which kind of new world it will create for itself, or how many new galaxies it will create, all the while thinking individually, that we have discovered them.

These mad ventures to save and to protect are only part of Mind's way in keeping balance to the destroying profiteer. Knowing the Mayic dream one can relax with equal assurance that the Mind that has created everything will also preserve it. It has to. The Law of Harmony and Balance as well as that of Righteousness always prevails.

One can retrace our historical steps and find, although the Law of Duality can appear to give an unbalanced picture, and see that every evil has been overcome. We see that when the spear was invented, the shield came soon after. This balancing act that nature plays out has a beauty all of its own, and we too are nature. Thus this should allow us to be assured and to let go of worry, paranoia, and fear and get on with the important task of uniting with that Pure Consciousness from which Mind arose.

It means retracing our steps — literally — to go back (the meaning of repent) to go back to our source. We do that every night in the deepest of sleeps, where Mind has ceased its Conscious activity. If Mind has ceased its Conscious activity, doesn't it make sense that because we existed without it in deep sleep, we should be able to exist without it while fully awake. We cannot deny our own existence can we? What we can deny is that we are this or that.

Making these denials is the philosophy of Gnana Yoga — Not this — Not this where we reduce our mental (mind) fluctuations by eradicating all the Vrittis, or activations within it. We have found, in other articles and the The Portal that this Objective Reality we call the Waking State is nothing more than an Illusion, so to worry that the World will end, or the political agenda will affect our dream lives, or whether we will die from the lack of oxygen because they are cutting down the forests, is a waste of the Yogi's time. He knows better. He knows that Maya will not allow herself to be destroyed, by destroying the very thing that gives credence to her existence — and that is Mind itself.

When through meditation one enters Samadhi, it will at first be a short lived flash of an experience which cannot really be remembered, so extending and working towards Sabakalpi Samadhi is well worth it because one can then experience Satchitananda, and for that moment, awakening to the Gnosis (Pure Knowledge) that this World is nothing more than a Dream, equally as much so as awakening from a Dream in Sleep confirms its Illusion to us.

This Fourth State of Reality is called Turiya and is Pure Consciousness itself, without attributes.

Although we have created a marvelous world of harmony and balance, we have also created Concomitant Laws which are so enforced as to make this shadow picture appear real. In a dream where we can float — or talk to dead friends, and be in other places instantly — it too, because of those Concomitant Laws, make the dream appear real also.

All visual and mental worlds are an Illusion which we are trapped in because being blinded by Maya — Ignorance (Avidya) — we believe that because the Concomitant Laws are so rigid in the Waking State, then the Waking World State must be real also.

Link this Waking experience to your Dream experience. Now just imagine that You could Wake Up instantly into Turiya. Now you can see how you would realize this World is as much of a Dream as the Sleeping Dream State is.

For the Yogi, awakening into Turiya means getting rid of mental movement — having a good thought evacuation — chucking out — getting rid of. In fact, annihilating it altogether.

This is done by a constant remembrance in the Waking State Meditation (see Meditation of the Light), where gradually the Illumination of Pure Consciousness is ever present — even while working.

In my articles, there is much repetition, and that it is because this is so simple, this Gnana Yoga, that one overlooks the beauty of its ability to take you to The Portal of everything.

Articles by Swami Harinanda and Yogi Karmananda are © 2026 and are licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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