The Kriya Yoga Lineage: Babaji, Lahiri Mahasaya, Sri Yukteswar, Yogananda

Why lineage matters in Kriya Yoga

Kriya Yoga is a set of techniques handed from teacher to student. Knowing the lineage helps a newcomer understand where the practice comes from and why its advanced techniques are given through initiation rather than published openly. The chain described here is the one Paramahansa Yogananda set out in Autobiography of a Yogi; other branches trace to the same source and are mentioned below.

Mahavatar Babaji

At the head of the lineage stands Mahavatar Babaji. According to the tradition, Babaji is a deathless master living in the Himalayas who preserved the ancient science of Kriya through a long period in which it had been largely lost, and who chose the nineteenth century to bring it back into the open.

Little about Babaji is documented in the historical sense. His name simply means "revered father"; the title Mahavatar, "great avatar", was used by Yogananda. What can be said with confidence is that every Kriya lineage practising today points back to him, and that his instruction, as the tradition records it, was to make Kriya available to sincere seekers of every background.

Lahiri Mahasaya (1828–1895)

Shyama Charan Lahiri, remembered as Lahiri Mahasaya, is the first figure in the lineage whose life is historically clear. He was a householder: married, a father, and employed as an accountant with the British-run railway in India. He was not a monk and never became one.

According to the tradition, in 1861 his work took him to Ranikhet, in the Himalayan foothills. There, as Yogananda recounts it, he met Babaji, was initiated into Kriya Yoga, and was told to return to his ordinary life and teach the practice to lay people who sincerely sought it. Lahiri Mahasaya did exactly that. From his home in Benares (Varanasi) he quietly initiated students from many religions and castes, without founding an organisation or seeking publicity.

Two features of his life shaped what followed. He showed that Kriya could be practised fully within family and working life, which is why householders have carried much of the tradition. And he taught many disciples, several of whom began lineages of their own, which is why there is more than one Kriya organisation today.

Sri Yukteswar (1855–1936)

Among Lahiri Mahasaya's disciples was Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri, a scholar and astrologer from Serampore in Bengal who later took monastic vows. Known for a rigorous, analytical temperament, he ran small hermitages where he trained a handful of students closely.

His best-known work is The Holy Science, a short book written, according to his own account, at Babaji's request. It sets out the common ground between the Hindu scriptures and the Bible, and it proposes a cycle of ages, the yugas, that places humanity in an ascending period of growing understanding. It remains in print and is read within the lineage as a foundational text.

His most consequential act was training one young disciple, Mukunda Lal Ghosh, who became Paramahansa Yogananda.

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952)

Yogananda was born in Gorakhpur, northern India, into a family devoted to Lahiri Mahasaya. He met Sri Yukteswar as a young man and spent years under his guidance before taking monastic vows.

In 1920 he travelled to the USA to address a congress of religious liberals in Boston and stayed. Over the following decades he lectured across the country, founded Self-Realization Fellowship to carry his teachings, and taught Kriya Yoga to Western students on a scale that had never happened before. His approach combined the Kriya techniques with practical energisation exercises, the Hong-Sau breath-awareness practice taught openly to beginners, and a universal, non-sectarian framing that placed Kriya alongside the teachings of Christ and the Bhagavad Gita.

In 1946 he published Autobiography of a Yogi. The book tells the story of his own training and of the lineage from Babaji onward. It has been translated widely and remains, for most people, the first introduction to Kriya Yoga. His one-line summary of the practice still serves: "Kriya Yoga is an instrument through which human evolution can be quickened."

Who carries the lineage today

Because Lahiri Mahasaya taught many disciples and never centralised his work, several organisations now give Kriya initiation. The principal ones that a seeker in Canada is likely to encounter are:

• Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) in the West and Yogoda Satsanga Society of India (YSS), the organisations founded by Yogananda, which offer a structured home-study course leading to Kriya initiation.
• Kriya Yoga International and other organisations in lineages that descend from Lahiri Mahasaya through disciples other than Sri Yukteswar, or through Sri Yukteswar's other students.
• Various smaller lineages, ashrams and teachers in India and abroad who trace their authority to Lahiri Mahasaya and give initiation in their own way.

Techniques and emphases differ somewhat between branches, and we take no position on which is "correct". What they share is the source, the practice of pranayama along the spine, and the principle that the full technique is received from a teacher, not from a page.

How Kriya Yoga Canada relates to the lineage

We want to be plain about this. Kriya Yoga Canada is a project of Vipassana.ca, an Alberta-based organiser of meditation and yoga retreats. Our teachers, Artem Rusinov and Valerii Bandurko, are RYT-200 yoga teachers who also teach meditation in the Mahasi Sayadaw Vipassana tradition.

We teach the foundational Kriya pranayama, mantra and meditation practices that the tradition makes available openly: upright sitting, diaphragmatic and even breathing, Hong-Sau, Om, and simple spinal-breathing awareness without retention. They are safe, they are a genuine preparation for the deeper practice, and they sit naturally alongside Vipassana on a retreat.

We are not an initiating body. We do not give Kriya initiation (diksha), we do not claim lineage transmission, and we do not teach the advanced techniques that the lineage organisations reserve for initiates. If you wish to receive Kriya initiation, we encourage you to approach Self-Realization Fellowship / Yogoda Satsanga Society, Kriya Yoga International or another lineage organisation directly. Our role is to help you build the foundation, in a quiet setting, with teachers present.

Dedicated Kriya Yoga classes, online courses and teacher training are in preparation. For now, Kriya is practised within our Vipassana.ca retreats. Read more on What is Kriya Yoga? and Kriya pranayama.

Practising the foundations in person

The lineage gives the full technique through initiation; the foundations that precede it can be learned from any qualified teacher, and that is what we teach at the Vipassana.ca retreats in Calgary, Edmonton and Cochrane. Upcoming dates are below; where to practise covers each city.