Yogi Maheshwar

Last year I read a great free book on Kechari Mudra by Yogi Maheshwar. The book is called Khecari Mudra: When the Divine Goddess Takes Off in Inner-Space. It covers many topics not found in other books along with the author's personal experiences and recommendations. I found the information quite useful and highly recommend it. As an excerpt, I'll share his experience with Babaji.

I was not favourably disposed toward bhakti, toward devotion when I first started yoga lessons, it did not belong at all to my previous way of thinking. If I had fallen on yoga lessons emphasising that aspect I would not have been hooked at all. I shall confess that even an om chanting was difficult to tolerate for me! At some times while practising advanced difficult practices (in particular kumbakas), I was shyly asking a bit of help to Śiva, represented by an image on the wall of the yoga studio, nothing more.

My bhakti discovery has been tightly connected to that of the Kriya Yoga of Babaji, the atemporal himalayan yogi becoming famous thanks to Yogananda book Autobiography of a Yogi. I have been initiated to Kriya Yoga by my friend Sita in the spring of 2015. The two days initiation started with a puja in Babaji’s honour. That ceremony was something new for me, I did not feel very confortable with all that. I was finding that time was passing slowly during that initiation’s weekend; the practices proposed seemed to me very soft compared to the ones I was used to. In particular no retentions, no unending pranayamas. I had the wrong feeling in those days of the necessity of pretty strong ways of practicing. With Kriya Yoga I will learn in between other things that the strong ways are not always necessary. I had the need of strong practices at a certain moment in time but that is not everyone’s rule.

At the end of the initiation the last practice is dedicated to Babaji. While the practice has not even begun Babaji’s mantra, that I did not know yet the previous day, becomes active, it starts to resonate in me. Everything happens as if I was hearing someone reciting the mantra close to my ear, strongly, much faster that I could master consciously... Babaji is appearing to me, he opens his arms and shelters me in there in a cascade of benevolent grace; the connection with that lineage of yogis and yoginis is sealed.

Om Kriya Babaji Namah Aum!