Homage to Paramahamsa Hariharananda and Kriya Yoga

The Northern California Kriya Yoga Center offers this website with love and thanks in honor of Paramahamsa Hariharananda's Centenary, the celebration of his 100th birthday.

Paramahamsa Hariharananda was a monk, a Swami, an ancient yogi with unfathomable spiritual power. He was a master of Kriya Yoga, which simultaneously develops body, mind and Soul. He died at 95 years of age, after a life devoted to serving God. Notwithstanding his physical death, his guidance, blessings and support continue for the thousands he took under his wing.

In Paramahamsa Hariharananda the little, pinched and strained self was perfected, love has been fulfilled in faithfulness, and the mortal has been united with the immortal God. He was saturated in holiness, from his decades of meditation and immersion in God. Just as you can smell wonderful fresh bread cooking when you enter a home where baking has been done, the holiness in his vicinity (not just in his presence) was palpable. It was, in a sense, mouth watering, just like the fresh bread; it awakened a hunger in you. To mix metaphors, sometimes being with him was soothing, almost as if you were sweaty, sunburned and sore, and slowly slipped into warm, amber-colored water. Ahhh! It felt good.

He was vigorous and strong long into his life. His body had been well-used over the decades, and in his later years he had trouble walking. He lay on his bed most of the time, absorbed in God. He kept a toehold in that old body, swimming in the Divine, coming back when needed to guide and bless us.

Paramahamsa Hariharananda could be fierce. For those who wanted to open themselves fully to the Divine, he would help. And since what keeps us from the Divine often is parts of ourselves that we cherish or at least comfortably indulge, his rooting out of these things, his placing us in situations in which we were scoured cleaner, was excruciating.

He could be extraordinarily tender and loving, too. Like an adoring mother, he might caress your face, and pull your head to rest on his chest as he held it in blessing. His ferocity was an aspect of his love: sometimes we need a chisel applied to us, sometimes soothing balm. He gave and gives us what we need to open more fully.

In life, Paramahamsa Hariharananda was a master of and taught Kriya Yoga. "Kriya Yoga" means, roughly, a path for realizing union with God through experiencing that God, the Soul of the universe who is present in all things (not excepting ourselves), is the sole active agent, the sole doer. As a corollary, he taught that "Work is Worship."

In other words everything that we do or think can be done with awareness of God as the One who is doing the work. We (what we think of as ourselves) are, in a sense, along for the ride—and that, too, is incorrect because there really is no "we" separate from God. This concept can be hard to accept, but if God is omniscient and omnipresent, does he not pervade us too? Doesn’t he breathe in our breath, see through our eyes, love and suffer with and through us? As the Sufis say, God is closer than our jugular vein.

A fully developed human being, he taught, is “God in human being, human being in God.” Paramahamsa Hariharananda gave thousands of hours of lectures to tens of thousands of people. Here are a few drops of nectar from him:

Through sight you see the seer. It is all coming from Soul. Who is seeing but God? You practice it, when you will walk, how God is walking. You are not realizing this; apply it in your daily life. When you walk, feel that God is walking. When you stand, feel the divine vibration of God’s presence within you.

Watch how the power of God is moving in you. You are forgetting, and deviated from truth. If you remember that you and He are one, and always have been, you are the immortal Soul. He is doing work through you. He loves you.

The power of God is within you. Your blood is the blood of Jesus, your face is the face of Jesus, and the power of Jesus is within you. Remain in God, then all the time you will perceive the presence of Jesus within you. This is religion. (In other words, this is both the path and the result of following the path).

Walk and feel that He is walking, eat and feel that He is eating, laugh and feel that He is laughing. If you forget, it is your death. You are advancing toward immortality. If death dies, then who will die? Practice it. Who can say who will die earlier, you or I? So just complete your course. Mistake is not mistake, it is for correction. We learn from mistakes. God is giving you time to change your mistakes. Constant alertness, constant perception of Self. This is Kriya Yoga. Seer, sight, seen are one. Feel that at any moment you can die.

Paramahamsa Hariharananda’s successor, Paramahamsa Prajnanananda, continues his work. You can learn more about them and Kriya Yoga at www.kriya.org.

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