Ennio Nimis has been studying and practicing yoga since the age of 15 and after becoming an adult has focused exclusively on Kriya Yoga. He has now written an excellent book on the subject with all of the details provided. The book is available to download for free from his web site: Kriya Yoga Info. Below is the inspiration that led him to writing this book.
It was winter. One day I went skiing in the nearby mountains with a couple of friends. All went magnificently. During a break in the afternoon, I managed to find time alone. I found myself looking at the mountains that marked the boundaries of the distant horizon in all directions. In less than half an hour the sun would paint them pink – with an intense hue on their eastern side and tinged with blue on the western side. I imagined India to be right behind them, the Himalayas being their continuation. My thought went to all the Kriya enthusiasts who found, as I did, insurmountable obstacles to the understanding of that beloved discipline. All those obstacles seemed to me an absurdity that wore the clothes of a nightmare – I felt an infinite rebellion.
I visualized a book on Kriya explaining every technique in great detail. How often had I wondered what would have happened if Lahiri Mahasaya or one of his disciples had written it! My imagination led me to fantasize about its cover, to skim its few pages – sober, yet rich in content. If this book existed, we would have a reliable manual of Kriya that restrained the many small or large variations made up by various teachers. Perhaps some annotator would try to force its meaning into his own theories. Nay, I was positive that some pseudo-guru would say that the techniques described in it were for beginners only, while there were much more complicated techniques that could only be passed on by an authorized teacher to chosen disciples. Some would swallow the bait, contact the author, and pay good money to be introduced to rubbish that he had assembled either through fancy or borrowed from some esoteric book...
This happens; it’s part of our human nature. However, sincere researchers would surely be able to recognize the strength and self-sufficient intrinsic evidence of the original text.
It is a shame that no one had written that book! For the first time I dared to let my thoughts stray toward what could happen if I wrote it. It would be hard, yet possible, to summarize the totality of my knowledge of Kriya into a book – welding together techniques and theories through a clean, rational vision. The intention was definitely not to celebrate myself or lay the foundations for yet another new school of Kriya. If I were to describe my experiences, it would only be for the purpose of clarifying theoretic and technical explanations. There would be no more rhetorical claims of legitimacy and riddle-like sentences to confuse readers or have them guess at technical details or create further doubts in them! How beautiful it was to dream of a book which would prove its validity by reproducing Lahiri Mahasaya's thought in the simplest and most logical way, in a complete, harmonious set of techniques!
I will be examining Ennio's teachings in greater detail in future posts.
