Welcome to the Kriya Yoga Mandala
The Kriya Yoga Mandala is a community of compassionate souls who have come together to help awaken and uplift humanity through our own self-realization.
Kriya Yoga is a powerful yogic science that connects us directly to the Absolute Truth within. Because of its effectiveness and universal, dogma-free nature, Kriya holds the potential to serve as the great-awakener of humanity, revolutionizing the world we live in.
Imagine the world full of awakened, compassionate beings flooding the Earth with pure consciousness — all connected to the Divine through a simple, practical, and potent technique that promises direct experiences of God-Consciousness.
This is the vision of the Kriya Yoga Mandala.
Let us together reignite the flame of Kriya Yoga as a beacon of light for all awakening souls.
Kriya Yoga Initiation
I offer Kriya through private personal and group initiations, online and in-person.
What is Kriya Yoga?
Kriya Yoga is an ancient esoteric yoga practice kept alive through the millennia by a lineage of awakened mystics. It is a system of meditation & pranayama through which we can have direct experiences of God-Consciousness and come to realize our True Essence.
It is an extremely powerful evolutionary technology that zeroes in on the natural process of spiritual awakening and accelerates it directly.
Because it works on a universal level of our consciousness, Kriya transcends dogma and serves as a powerful ally in our evolution no matter our religious or spiritual orientation, and supports all energetic endeavors whether creative, intellectual, or spiritual.
Kriya provides us with a steady container for our spiritual unfoldment, creating a space for us to consistently unravel into deeper layers of our soul and have direct experiences of Truth that even the loftiest of philosophies can only hint at.
An ancient practice that was revived in the 19th century, it is often considered to be the “lightning path” because of its remarkable effectiveness in awakening transcendent states of consciousness within us.
It is also referred to as the Crown Jewel of yoga practices in this age of the householder yogi, where we need a technique powerful enough to balance our spiritual unfoldment alongside our worldly responsibilities.
In practice, Kriya is like a distillation process, each breath refining our awareness until we arrive back at the original purity of our soul. ‘Kri’ signifies action and ‘Ya’ indicates the soul, so Kriya Yoga is union with the Divine through soulful effort.
Kriya helps us rewire our entire nervous system and align our consciousness with our innermost heart. It purifies the mind, senses, and all energetic currents flowing through our system, and empties us of all transient thoughts and imprints of reality so that we may experience the purity, peace, stillness, and ecstasy of the eternal Self.
Kriya also helps strengthen our basic functioning by building our digestive fire, giving us energy, reducing fatigue, charging our creative and sexual force, promoting healthy sleep, energizing the brain and intellect, and is deeply restorative and nourishing. It helps us to become more in tune with our emotions and more fluid mentally. Kriya truly is a support to every dimension of our existence.
It is a path that, if approached with respect, humility, love, and dedication, has the potential to see us through to the experience of Self-Realization.
There really is no way to exaggerate the potency and beauty of this blessed practice. My prayer is that you come to understand just why that is.
My Initiation Journey
One evening, at the age of 19, I was playing music with my friends when I heard an unexpected voice whisper to me “go to the bookstore.” Following this mysterious guidance, I arrived just 5 minutes before it closed and immediately was entranced by a beautiful face staring at me from a book cover. It was Paramhamsa Yogananda, who took me on a profound and mystical journey over the next few weeks with his Autobiography of a Yogi. Through immense grace and a series of serendipities, I was connected to a Kriya Yoga teacher to whom I made a pilgrimage just a few months later. I had a powerful initiatory experience as I felt the blessings of the Kriya masters pour through me. I knew immediately that my entire existence had been revolutionized.
The practice felt familiar and natural to me, and I dedicated myself to it wholeheartedly. Within a couple months I started to experience ecstatic Kundalini awakenings and began to untether my consciousness from the material world. I went celibate for 5 years, experimented with fasting, and would sit blissfully for several hours daily.
Throughout this time I was initiated into several different lineages — I learned the Hariharananda version in Florida and was refreshed by Swami Prajnananda in Amarkantak, India. I went to a retreat and learned the version taught by Satgurunath Siddhanath in California, and later on took initiation from Lahiri Mahasaya’s great-grandson, Shibendu Lahiri, in Varanasi India. I also learned the Self Realization Fellowship version and read many books about Kriya and its many masters. I was totally enamored by the practice and learned as much as I could both through practice and literature.
A couple years into my Kriya journey, I took initiation into the higher Kriyas from my original teacher and prepared for the greatest initiation of all. In 2009, during a peak of my spiritual unfoldment, directly after a powerful in-person blessing from Babaji, I was involved in a severe car wreck which left me hanging onto life by a thread. During my coma I traveled far and wide to many different planes of reality, meditated in the heavens with Siddhas, and traversed through the darkest of underworlds. Several times throughout my journey I met with Paramahansa Yogananda, Sri Yukteswar, Lahihi Mahasaya, and Mahavatar Babaji, whom initiated me into transcendent states and gifted me with the greatest gifts a yogi could ask for.
The culmination of this journey came when, after receiving the gifts of the masters, I decided to leave this world for good. As soon as I made this decision, I was transported into a beautiful tunnel of light where I forgot everything about my earthly existence. I felt my consciousness completely melt away as I merged with pure bliss and dissolved into the ecstatic peace of the Absolute Brahman.
Timeless eternity gave way to a scene of nurses huddled around me as I was shocked back into my body and returned to this world from the inconceivable realms. There are no words that could ever convey this type of experience, but I knew at that point that I was here to serve humanity with what I had experienced in the higher realms, not escape it.
Over the next few years I continued my practice and set out on the next step in my spiritual evolution after transcendence — the journey of embodiment, which was much more intricate and involved than I ever could have imagined. Around the time I started to feel balanced between my transcendent self and my embodied existence, I was initiated as a teacher of Kriya Yoga and began to share the practice through in-person initiations.
There are so many ancient, esoteric practices available these days that they often get obscured or watered down. I am passionate about conveying the true power of this sacred path and doing everything I can to share its revolutionary potential with the world.
Through the guidance of the masters and my innermost heart I have taken on the responsibility of presenting a clear, undiluted version of Kriya based in my 19 years of practice. I pray that it serves you well.
An Ancient Practice Through a Contemporary Lens
I share Kriya through the unique perspective I have gained over the years by comparing several lineages and versions of the technique, while taking into account modern nuances that shape our daily realities and affect the way we approach spiritual practice. Having noticed many Kriya schools offering a predominantly mechanical, left-brained approach to the practice, I offer a version that is more balanced and harmonizes masculine and mental energy with a more feminine and heartfelt approach, while remaining true to the original practices which are already perfect and complete as they are.
The result is a potent, harmonious, and easily integrated form of the practice that inspires internal balance, fluidity, and a sense of grace.
While I feel that the potency of a spiritual technique is largely based on an individual’s natural affinities, their spiritual predilection and the phase of their journey, Kriya Yoga remains to me the most potent and universal form of esoteric yoga I have found and I am honored to be a steward of this sacred practice. Delivering results and direct experiences of God-Consciousness quickly to any sincere practitioner, It truly is the Lightning Path.
Thank you
It is my honor to serve you in your spiritual journey. I pray that my offering helps you to discover the beauty within your own sacred heart.
— Marco André
