The Secret Power Of Kriya Yoga: Revealing the Fastest Path to Enlightenment. How Fusing Bhakti & Jnana Yoga into Kriya will Unleash the most Powerful Yoga Ever (Real Yoga)

After reading this book, I am still in awe. I second other’s opinions. This book is such a precious jewel for every Kriya practitioner. It goes one step further than all other Yoga books that I have read. Here you will learn how to merge Kriya Yoga, Jnana Yoga and Bhakti Yoga into a powerful all-encompassing Yoga. The final chapters are fantastic. The author also explains the different Samadhis without any fancy and ambiguous language. The best part of this book for me, is some of the profound and direct teachings regarding the "I" and the complete reverse of Yoga (union) on its head toward an absolute nondual approach! That's something I’ve never heard from any present-day Kriya Yoga gurus, organizations or even in any other Yoga book at all. Those teaching are the last step toward Freedom that is lacking in Kriya Yoga and most Yoga traditions these days. There are also many quotes from the great Masters, backing up what the author shares. Disagreeing with this book is disagreeing with the Truth all those Masters pointed out, which is so clearly exposed in this book. All authentic Kriya and Yoga practitioners need this book, now more than ever, especially those who have been practicing meditation or spiritual practices without proper results for years. I know I was one of them. I wholeheartedly recommend it. EDIT 3/2021: Three years after this review, I decided to come here to give my update on this book and teachings. I have to say that my opinion has not changed. If truth be told, I am not even more grateful for SantataGamana’s books on Kriya Yoga. They have helped me achieve what I honestly feel that I couldn’t have achieved otherwise. I have now read his whole series of books (eight books at the time of writing this review update), and I firmly stand by the same opinion of my other review: This is spirituality that I find nowhere else. It’s not about techniques, deities, guru figures, kriya institutions or organizations. It’s much more than that. Like I said in my review of Kriya Yoga Exposed, even though I had exclusively practiced Kriya Yoga for a long time, something was lacking. When I found out about this collection of books, it all changed. I finally "understood". It's unfortunate that many Kriya gurus or books don't go this deep and more in line with Advaita teachings. They place too much focus on techniques, which become like an automated process. I was too attached to the techniques and couldn’t see the real goal. This is a common problem with many Kriya Yogis. Notwithstanding, this book shares great advanced techniques, and also emphasizes the Crown Chakra Kriya practice. I thoroughly enjoy practicing the upgraded versions of Kriya Pranayama and Yoni Mudra (but you should be practicing the initial techniques (Kriya Pranayama, etc) from Kriya Yoga Exposed first). On the author’s website there’s also an excellent post with detailed information on different forms of Kriya Yoga. I recommend you check that if you are interested in some visual aspects (there are visual explanations there). Kriya Yoga with an Advaita flavor, directing the practitioner towards the real Parvastha state is the paradigm-shift you need to grasp. No other book or teaching explains this like these two Kriya books.

The author does a marvelous job of revealing the core practices of Kriya Yoga, making them accessable for everyone. He cuts through the veils of secrecy and dogma that have scattered and diluted these valuable teachings that originated with the sage Lahiri Mahasaya in the 19th century. This book is as good as it gets for undertaking self-directed Kriya Yoga practice. However, Kriya Yoga is first and foremost a pranayama path, and is weak in stand alone meditation, attempting to combine it simultaneously with spinal breathing pranayama, with less than optimal results. Dyed in the wool kriyabans will not like to hear this. Perhaps the author will not either, though he discusses meditation methods practiced outside of kriya pranayama, without making meditation a core practice. How could he? It never has been part of Kriya Yoga. He is strong on nonduality practice in the afterglow of stillness (parvastha) following kriya pranayama. This is the important bhakti-jnana yoga aspect of kriya he emphasizes. But this is not core meditation practice, the essential element for cultivating abiding inner silence, the witness, upon which all lasting spiritual progress is built. This can be learned from a variety of sources, including Transcendental Meditation (TM), AYP Yoga (which also has spinal breathing pranayama), other established mantra meditation sources, Buddhist meditation teachings, and so on. But, unfortunately, not from Kriya Yoga. Is kriya spinal breathing pranayama with chakra mantras enough? Obviously it can be done, and the author shows how. But Kriya Yoga does not have a stand alone meditation practice. It's something to consider adding that can supercharge kriya pranayama, and so too can kriya pranayama supercharge a stand alone meditation practice. It goes both ways when kriya pranayama and an effective meditation technique are practiced in sequence instead of at the same time, in an efficient daily routine. Then the afterglow of stillness will steadily become permanent in daily life, bringing a natural surrender into nonduality. If pure Kriya Yoga is the priority for you, this book, and others by the author, are the best you will find for self-directed practice. Whichever path you choose, stick with it, and enjoy the ride!

Short and succinct, this book is full of truths. It will clarify, inspire, encourage, and enlighten anyone who is seeking spiritual progress, especially to practitioners of kriya yoga. Abit of context, I had no exposure to kriya yoga a few months ago, and am a recent student of Sadhguru's Inner Engineering programme. I have gained immense benefits from the practices and teachings there, and have experienced the practices as the perfect vehicle on which I've been searching to transform my life. With the help of this wonderful book, I've come to understand that it is a contemporary form of kriya yoga, in the way that it is completely relevant to our lives and lifestyles in its content and delivery. (well, most of it is timeless anyway ;)) This book is a gem of truth, a beautiful elucidation on this path towards realization.

I really enjoyed his first book, Kriya Yoga Exposed. It was a no brainer to get this, his second book in the series. I enjoyed it, but not quite as much. One of the things I appreciate about this author is that he communicates in a straight forward fashion, not relaying ideas buried in complex metaphors and difficult to comprehend language. He does that in this book also, but got a bit on the thick side of explaining things at one point about 2/3 of the way through the book when talking about the state one is attempting to achieve. He does a good job of explaining the value of merging concepts of Kriya Yoga with Bhakti and Jnana Yoga. Overall a book well worth reading and thinking about what he says.

No BS, this book is straightforward and honest and well written.

I never practiced Kriya Yoga prior to reading this book. I am deeply attracted to PY, his teachings, and his autobiography though, and in fact when folks come to visit us in Los Angeles, the place we most commonly take them to (if they have any spiritual inclination) is the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine. It is beautiful and peaceful there, with an almost transcendent energy. I did study the SRF Lessons for a year, but found the Energization Exercises too cumbersome, time consuming and indirect (compared to some other exercises I've done that serve the same purpose). At any rate, I read the current book, loved it, and couldn't put it down. More importantly, I began to practice the simplified method of Kriya as described here (and in the first book in the series, "Kriya Yoga Exposed."). I've made more spiritual progress in the past 2 months than in the previous 54 years. It is very fast and powerful. Sometimes I lose the "I" and merge into Awareness aware of itself. He is not joking when he says this method allows one to clear vasanas and samskara's quickly, and that doing the meditations brings a profound sense of stillness, sweetness and bliss to the practitioner Prior to studying SantataGamana's books, what I found very useful was the Awareness Watching Awareness (AWA) meditation described by Michael Langford. I spent 1-3 hours per day doing that meditation for years. One challenge though is that my mind would try to wander a LOT during AWA meditation, and it took much of my energy and attention to quell those thoughts and all of the other static in my emotional and mental bodies. What made a huge difference for me was doing some simplified Kriya Yoga first. This seems to purify and still all of the static and chatter in the emotional and mental bodies, and puts one in a "Parvastha" state of stillness, quiet and expansiveness. From there, one can perform AWA with much less struggle and consistently achieve blissful states. So if you've been doing Langford's AWA already, it's fantastic and I have the utmost love and respect for him. If you add some simplified Kriya beforehand, it will profoundly still your mind and allow you to much more efficiently watch your awareness. Highly recommended

It is such a rare thing to find a book that strips the practice of Kriya Yoga to its bare bones. This process may be thought of as similar to chipping superfluous rock from a block of stone to reveal a commanding statue that was otherwise obscured. Among spiritual practices, Kriya is a streamlined and efficient process for progression along the path to Self-Realization. Yet, the tree of Kriya practices seems to have grown a bit wild through generations of teachers and was in need of significant pruning. That is, the path of Kriya Yoga has become strewn with embellishments and irrelevancies that obscure the core practices or skillsets that make a significant difference in attaining Realization, and in the quickest possible manner. It seems that SantataGamana has done the pruning and I find nothing to contest in his presentation of the essential or critical core practices. But, of course, there are “different strokes for different folks.” Some would thrive on the embellishments, theory, lore, peripheral arcane techniques, etc. which might serve to evoke helpful understanding and commitment or motivation for actually practicing Kriya (among other things). All of this, of course, has to eventually go. And, such peripheral elements are summarily dismissed - in both “Kriya Yoga Exposed” and “The Secret Power of Kriya Yoga” - as unnecessary if one wishes to move expeditiously to the goal itself. It is observed that Kriya Yoga is a somewhat technical process that can be enhanced with a devotional disposition and by attending to that which we truly are – and, “what we are” being Consciousness itself. The author suggests that all mental/physical manifestations experienced during Kriya Sadhana can be uniformly released by repeatedly returning to, attending to, or resting in that sense of beingness – the observing, perceiving, or just being aware of awareness itself. In summary, SantataGamana emphasizes that Kriya is the means for expeditiously quieting the mind-body spectrum and facilitating one’s mastery of Parvastha, an attentive meditative process that enables one’s progression to ever deepening states of Samadhi and consequent resolution as Self-Realization. In summary, after years of collecting and reading books on Kriya Yoga, it seems to me that SantataGamana has published the first books that I’ve seen that “cut to the chase” and lay out an unembellished roadmap to Realization – truly, a “critical path” (in “project management” parlance).

This wasn't such a bad book. I'm not sure it was genuinely necessary. It's also odd that he criticized the teacher of these techniques for introducing two overpriced books on amazon when he's just done exactly the same thing. On top of that, he changes the kriya from the first book a little. You can tell he's still gripped by the kriya fever and hasn't yet attained a truly contented heart, which speaks to one's progress. Save yourself your money and stick with the first if you choose to buy either.