Seeker of Wisdom

I accept that it can be a gateway to serious spiritual practice - still, I can't help but wish our society was less ignorant when it comes to things like this. As for those jumping on a chance to judge me for being angry or whatever - there's more to me than what you can interpret from one post.

Yes. I've never been into bhakti, it's not a path that suits me. But I get the idea of it, and Yogani's 'bhakti' is something completely different. He interprets it as such a vague hodepodge of ideas that I can't even give a definition of AYP 'bhakti'. In lesson T37 Yogani responds to someone asking about fantasising in solo tantra: *facepalm*

If your jing is used to flowing out through sex and you don't release, then wet dreams will happen to release the pressure. BUT if your jing is circulating naturally (and at later stages becoming chi), then this is not necessary. So you have two options: Masturbate regularly. Retain jing and cultivate seriously so it circulates and sublimates. If you choose the latter path, then focus on cultivating mental clarity much more than on cultivating energy. Mental clarity makes everything else happen naturally. Direct energy cultivation can help you progress faster, but don't attach to form. Choose what seems right to you... but in my experience, you will probably find yourself leaning towards the second path more as time goes by. What you don't want to do is retain without cultivation, especially in a forceful repressive way. It doesn't work, just messes people up. We all know how quickly that turns priests into paedo priests!

Thanks, Mandrake. Sounds encouraging!

I know, yet that's exactly what I believed until I very nearly had an OBE about two years ago. I'm so glad that happened because it forced me to question my assumptions, and now I'm on a spiritual path because of it. Looking back, it's just laughable that I believed an objective flow of chemicals and nervous signals could somehow cause a subjective phenomena of consciousness, and the mind. How can a object possibly cause a subject, or vice versa? It makes no sense. They're qualitatively different sides of reality, which must both be reducable to something which is neither subject or object (the Self). Dialectical monism WIN! It explains how consciousness and matter can affect each other, without stating that one somehow causes the other despite their very different natures.

One of the more disturbing things I've noticed is how AYP gives itself weird escape hatches for any claim that the practices are flawed. For example, Etherfish says: So any issue can always be blamed on the practitioner going too fast, and the practices themselves are shielded from criticism. This is like a car company whose cars keep getting involved in accidents saying, 'accidents are always due to bad drivers, our cars are perfect.' Even the best driver will have an accident if his car has a bomb in it! And Yogani says: The fact that teachings are more accessible in the West now has no relevance to the effectiveness of the practices themselves. I don't understand what Yogani is basing this crap on. How are practices done in 2012AD more powerful than the same practices would have been if done back in 2012BC? But people like the idea of a new golden spiritual age, so if they're already on the Yogani train it's easy for them to ignore their intellect one more time and accept this new-agey nonsense. Then if people accept this, they can brush off constant overloads seen among long-term AYP'ers as a universal thing that all seekers are going through, rather than put the blame on the practices themselves. Nobody at AYP will actually look around other spiritual communities and see there are 20x more problems at AYP than most other places, because they have escape hatches to use: That anything that happens in DM is always part of the process - so even unconsciousness is progress! That there is no need to think - that's over-analysis. That anyone who questions AYP has a problem - never AYP itself. Nice ideas they're attached to: That it's as simple as 'inner silence' - any quietish state of mind is experience of the Self. That no disciplined effort is needed. That we're advancing unusually fast from being alive in this time. And harsh realities to face if leaving AYP: That they have wasted time and maybe money. Even if the AYP practices themselves weren't flawed, mind-traps (whether Yogani made them deliberately or not) would be a cause for concern. And as the AYP practices are at best dead-ends leading only to foundational calm, at worst seriously harmful; these are keeping people in AYP until they either wake up or get kundalini syndrome. Simple as.

Hi, Creation. I also think it's good Yogani tried to touch on everything, although the issue there is that all of it is a bit watered down. Certainly Yogani's take on the 8 limbs of raja yoga is much lighter than the proper discipline laid out by Patanjali - especially weak (at best almost useless) in the last 3 limbs and samyama! However, I completely agree with AYP when it comes to not demanding absolute mastery of yama and niyama before starting meditation. Beginning with the mind and spreading out in the other limbs from there makes more sense to me than trying to enforce ethical conduct through will, BEFORE getting to the actual roots of behaviour in meditation. You'd be over 50 before being 'ready' to meditate! Another big strength of AYP theory is that it doesn't over-emphasize prana, or promote obsession with the chakras as much as some systems. And it's great that it points out openly that self-enquiry before a good foundation of development can end up as a mind-game.

Yes, but when AYP'ers often describe positive 'inner silence' experiences, their account makes it clear that they actually experienced torpor or dissosciation, and mistook that for something good. They actually use terms like 'separate from reality', 'spaced out', etc. And if they do have actual good experiences like flashes of samadhi, they are rare and - this is important - do not increase in frequency as they continue practicing. If AYP really strengthens, clarifies, develops, shouldn't long-term AYP'ers be on their way to mastering deeper levels of awareness? They just bob up and down - torpor mistaken for 'inner silence' about half the time, overload about half the time, very rare flashes of what valid practices would have made regular. And aside from that, read my previous post again. Ignore the experience-based points for now. What about the scientific evidence? The logical principles? Surely STUDIES are evidence enough? Jeff, how is fuzziness not a bad thing? Torpor is one of the '5 hindrances' for a reason. Allan Wallace - a Dzogchen guy - said as much here. I think his words were something like 'relaxed, but not spaced out. Alert.' Fuzziness is a weaker state of mind, the exact opposite of what we're trying to cultivate. BUT Yogani says over and over that the mantra in DM is supposed to refine, not to a subtle clarity, but to fuzziness. I wouldn't say meditation is a contrived state of mind. Meditation is a tool to make the mind capable of looking within and realising the true nature of things. In an ideal reality we'd just be able to introspect for a moment and, hey presto, be enlightened, but who can actually do that? Only people who already have a finely tuned mind from previous practices. Dzogchen is not against meditation. I list my practices on the first page of this thread. I can't suggest practices to people because only they can figure out what's right for them, HOWEVER if I think a practice in invalid entirely, I will suggest people avoid it. Hence, this thread on AYP.

Hi, Jeff. A good question. Obviously I can't look into someone else's mind, however I have several good reasons behind my opinions which correlate nicely with each other: Personal experience - I did AYP daily for almost 2 years. Others experience - TI did AYP for 4 and a half years and has said the same as me. Gatito did AYP too and also agrees. Scientific evidence - studies on TM (which is the same as DM but just with a different mantra, as TM teachers have confirmed) have found that the effects on brainwaves are the same as mindlessly repeating a word until you space out. Logical principles - it makes sense that a technique where no focused attention is used, just a slight favouring of the mantra, would lead to a dull state of mind alternating between listlessly using the mantra on autopilot and dull blankness. Experience of AYP'ers - refer to the quote in the first post on this thread, the person reporting drifting into a sleepy state regularly. On the thread that came from, others report the same experience, and someone said it lasted for months for them! AYP'ers report positive experiences, but - these are rare, and often include references to feeling dissosciated from reality, spaced-out, etc, so it's clear AYP'ers often mistake torpor for 'inner silence'. On the interpreatation issue: Yogani makes his points on how the practices are to be done very clearly. Even if someone, e.g. reads the first lesson on meditation and is a bit dim, the points are repeated multiple times with various analogies. (The word 'fuzzy' alone should set off warning bells.) I think it's very clear what Yogani means here. A mindless, completely passive process.

Yogani on concentration: Another idea that's kind-of right, but off in important ways. Mere letting go on the superficial level achieved through AYP just creates a bubble of torpor, which can be mistaken for clarity by someone who believes the 'inner silence' thing. Just letting go in a passive way as in DM calms the surface mind (manas) but without fundamentally overhauling the thinking process. How could it? Without making awareness sharp and clear, you cannot access and transform any deeper. True letting go requires a letting go of ignorance, lax,restless, unhelpful mental processes from the very base of the mind: letting go of the actual causes of clinging. If you want to do this, you need to hone a sharp focus with a balance of the right level of effort. At this point the constant flux of the manas will slow to just that one thought. Then you can pass beyond manas into the chitta, and keep going deeper. As wisdom dawns in the chitta, the buddhi shines and prajna grows in earnest. Then one can discriminate and concentrate on a deep level, enter samadhi (which has stages, it's not a nebulous 'pure bliss consciousness' as AYP says) and uncover pure consciousness. From there one can invert consciousness onto its basis and perceive the Self directly.

When TI shared his concerns, the response was either: A quote from the lessons. Personal attacks, blocking and so forth. Told to stop analysing and 'just do the practices' (isn't 4 and a half years enough to know?) 'Just because it didn't work for you', etc: (completely ignoring the actual points made). I feel it's better to make my case on a site like this and hope AYP'ers think about what I've said and have an open, fair discussion with me; than to try to post on the AYP site and never have the post allowed at all.

Oh, I have no personal problem with Yogani or anyone at AYP whatsoever. If he was looking for a personality cult, he would be at his retreats and manipulate vulnerable people there. If there was malicious intent to lead people down the wrong path, he wouldn't sprinkle good stuff in the mix that he doesn't have to. I think he believes AYP is a good path to follow, and so he's trying to help as many as he can by sharing it. It's just a case of a good guy following a mistaken path, leading others.

Any other ex AYP'ers on here? Anyone who'd like to see just how harmful AYP can be to people who do it for a few years, take a look at this section of their forum. An example from the thread "Can no longer meditate or do any practices": This person STILL thinks the practices are fine and this is just the process of cleaning going on! And then many other people share similar sentiments - none of them seeming to seriously consider leaving AYP. It's like they've all been hypnotised into forgetting about every other practice on the planet, and thinking AYP is the only option and is fantastic. Strange.

Nice! Thanks. *edit* Listened to the first 3 so far, this guy seems to really know his stuff.

I agree with you. IMO, transcending these things is the Self which is the basis of reality, or fundamental 'suchness'. The Tao of Taoism, or Tathagatagarba of Buddhism. Buddha says in the mahaparinirvana sutra that he kept saying 'no-self' to get people to drop the skhandas, but in reality only samsaric things are subject to no-self - there is a true Self beyond samsara. *edit* wow, old me didn't have a clue at this point...

Hi TI. The trouble with AYP is, it takes no intelligence or discipline. So it's easy to just follow AYP and never think twice. Every negative result or critical comment can be brushed off with a quote from the lessons, because people are never taught the fundamental principles to figure out what to do for themselves. There are people on their forum who can barely do the practices any more because of constant overloads, but even after months of this they'll think 'wow, the practices are so powerful they clear up so much so fast' instead of 'this is ridiculous, there must be some problem with the practices'. MOST long-term AYP'ers are like this, but nobody seems to really think why! And as you know, anyone who does openly wonder is kicked off even though AYP is supposed to be 'scientific and open to scrutiny'. I never joined their forum, fortunately. Why no 'constructive criticism' subforum, if Yogani wants to follow the scientific method?

I just recently left AYP... I can't believe it took almost two years to realize it was such cobblers! My thoughts, here. Good work, TI. I hope as many people as possible read your posts and think twice before joining the Yogani gang.

Yogani's concept of 'natural vajroli': We can assume that by 'sexual essenses' Yogani doesn't mean veerya/jing but actual semen/female ejaculate as this is consistent with the general opinion of AYP'ers, who get all their opinions from Yogani. So he's confusing energy with its physical counterparts... For women, Yogani is suggesting that mere fluids will somehow swim up the ureter (!), get into the kidney, be absorbed into the blood, then become veerya somehow, and presumably transmute into prana and so on. For men, at least sperm can swim, but in order to survive they will have to be floating in semen. So the various fluids involved have to travel somehow (without being moved by powerful muscular contraction as in ejaculation) to the vesicles seminalis or whatever (I'm not a doctor), surviving the urea in the bladder, be broken down into small molecules by the kidney which suddenly produces digestive enzymes now (WTF?), and also get into the blood. Then magically turn from matter into veerya too. And for both genders, what happens when urine flows down the ureter to the bladder? Those sexual fluids better have damn good climbing ropes! Look at the diagram. And facepalm that quite a few people probably believe Yogani and think what I just described really happens.

Zhunti mantra during the day. 3 mins of surya namaskar. 5 mins of simple nadi shodhana pranayama. Really gets chi moving in a far more balanced way than the AYP techniques. An hour of anapana sati. Actually trying to focus makes it so obviously... deeper and richer, than DM. 28 mins metta bhavana. A lovely, rewarding practice. Horse stance. No pain, no gain. LOL. This routine is much better. I'm glad I didn't stick with the wrong practice for another 18 years! *list updated since original post* Yes, I agree Yogani doesn't really know what he's doing.

*Just the opinion of a beginner.* IMHO, chi and all that stuff is an auxiliary. Mind and chi are linked, so cultivate jing/chi/shen and you'll get a great foundation for really high attainment. But ultimately, it's the mind that needs to stop clinging. It's the mind that develops virtue and wisdom. It's the mind that realises its true nature. Chi is an object. Turn the subject (awareness) within and you can realise That beneath subject and objects. Really, the key thing is meditation I think. Calm the coarse mental processes, clear the crap from the subconscious, refine the buddhi, progress through samadhi, go beyond to pure consciousness. And don't stop there. Overturn pure consciousness to face the Self.

Hi all.

'Fraid so. Kinda wish I'd realised earlier.