The approach that Eternalicious takes is a steady-state approach: go
into Silence and work from there. Gurunath mentions a state of inner
silence and union as one approach so I can guess that this is standard
technology, but he's teaching Kriya Yoga mainly, and I think I can see
a little bit of why.

The model discussed around Kriya Yoga is evolutionary: one breath in
the correct fashion is equal to one year of ordinary spiritual
evolution is the standard measure. I don't know how that compares to
extraordinary techniques like ritual magic or tantra of more direct or
communal kinds, but it could be either very fast or very slow
depending on your point of view.

I think there are three observations I have here.

1> Kriya Yoga is *very* sophisticated technology.
Although the *practice* is fairly simple, the understanding that goes
behind it is massive. Why that particular breath pattern should do
anything at all is unclear, yet it functions. The idea of consciously
speeding up *time* (measured by evolution) seems to be in there too...

2> Consistent practice is key
This is true for all meditation, but I wonder if one reason it matters
so much for Kriya Yoga is that consistent practice could create
constant velocity. The stop-start-jerk which accompanies spiritual
progress by ritual means could, in fact, in the long run, be one
reason so many wizards implode - the structural stresses from uneven
acceleration could really chew people up? I don't know for sure but
that would be consistent with my own experience of rapid, destructive
acceleration.

3> Karma is worked out gradually
Rather than, say, exploding all over everything.

I'm not turning my back on dramatic paths and ritual practices. I am
reassessing where they fit into my universe simply because, by god, I
**finally** **got** **kriya** **yoga**. I'd taken the initiation four
times, including once from Gurunath last year, and it only finally
actually registered. It could be ten years since the first try.
Through all that time, the kind of techniques I've described in
Eternalicious, particularly the meditation I've called Nath Sitting,
kept me going.

So, to my mind, that suggests that these tools have a valid role,
although I don't think I can remotely claim they are as sophisticated
technology as the Kriya system is and, so far, I've seen only the very
first moments of that approach. I don't know how the two approaches
relate to each other, whether they even interact. A big mystery and a
lot to learn.

In terms of revising Eternalicious, I'm probably going to write an
afterword which simply describes what happened and raises these
issues. I do not have any answers at this time.

Shivanath

PS: URLs relevant to this post:

http://hamsa-yoga.org/pract_kriya.htm

http://www.nathsociety.org/link.html