Kriya Yoga: A Path to Happiness and Inner Peace April 19, 2013

The San Francisco Meditation Group of Self-Realization Fellowship presents an introductory lecture on Paramahansa Yogananda's Kriya Yoga teachings. The program will begin at 7:00 pm with a lecture by Brother Kalyanananda, a senior monastic with the Self-Realization Fellowship Order based in Los Angeles. He will lead a guided meditation at 8:00 pm.

The sages of India discovered the science of Kriya Yoga in the forgotten past. Lord Krishna extols it in the Bhagavad Gita. The sage Patanjali speaks of it in his Yoga Sutras. Paramahansa Yogananda has stated that this meditation method was also known to Jesus Christ, as well as to his disciples.

Kriya Yoga was lost for centuries, and reintroduced in modern times by Mahavatar Babaji, whose disciple Lahiri Mahasaya (1828-1895) was the first to teach it openly in our era. Later, Babaji asked Lahiri Mahasaya's disciple, Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri (1855-1936), to train Paramahansa Yogananda and send him to the West to give this technique to the world.

Yogananda was chosen by his line of gurus to bring the ancient science of Kriya Yoga to the West, and it was for this purpose that he established Self-Realization Fellowship in 1920.

Formerly available only to those who renounced the world and lived solitary lives, the great ones of India have now made the ancient Kriya science available to all sincere seekers through the instrumentality of Paramahansa Yogananda and the organization he established.

Yogananda wrote: "In bestowing his blessings on me before I came to America in 1920, Mahavatar Babaji told me... 'You are the one I have chosen to spread the message of Kriya Yoga in the West. Long ago I met your guru Yukteswar... I told him then I would send you to him for training.' Babaji then predicted: 'Kriya Yoga, the scientific technique of God-realization, will ultimately spread in all lands, and aid in harmonizing the nations through man's personal, transcendental perception of the Infinite Father.' "

Official Website: http://kriyalecture.eventbrite.com