Laya Yoga

Laya Yoga

Recently a lady in one of my talks told me that her son has traveled to the Himalayas more than once for spiritual teaching, and she said it sounded EXACTLY the same as what I was teaching.   
She couldn't remember what it was called,  the teaching her son was studying. Though I found it fascinating since Barry Long, the teacher whose teaching I followed and now teach, stayed for several months in the Himalayas too, during his spiritual journey. 
And then I was reminded recently that Barry Long wrote the following in his own autobiography:

"My plan, as soon as the van arrived, was to visit Meher Baba, the Sufi sage at his ashram at Ahmadnagar, about 500 miles north-west of Madras. From there we would make our way north to the Himalayas. Meher Baba was one of the five Indian teachers whose works had helped me. (His Discourses, if you can get them, are extremely good.)" 

So Barry did study Sufism after all, if indirectly in the works of Meher Baba. 

And a little search on Google brought up the following on Laya Yoga regarding emotion and karma specifically: 

What is Laya Yoga?

The term laya means dissolution, melting of all karmic conditioning and limitations that have accrued as result of various occurrences and incidents which took place in the course of one’s entire lifetime. The barriers of a preconditioned life become gradually dissolved, until the soul sees the enlightening world of freedom and salvation (Kaivalya). Layah means to absorb or to dissolve. The word Yoga means unity or reconciliation. One can say that the whole phrase may be interpreted as: the yoga of absorbing dissolution in God’s Spirit.

Laya Yoga is such a form of yoga in which Unity: the Highest Unification, also known as samadhi, is attained in the process of laya, additionally referred to as fana by Sufis, or nirvana by Buddhists. One can say that laya means a deep concentration (attentiveness, focusing), which brings about a gradual dissolution and absorption of the structures of material ego in an utterly pure power of the Highest Consciousness.

Laya is a process of gradual absorption of basic energies that generate our material form so that Consciousness (Chittam) becomes released (liberated, redeemed) from all phenomena that are not spiritual, or where the divine enlightening power of Pure Spirit is concealed inside. One can say that consciousness that is absorbed in concentration on God and submerged in God, becomes progressively so preoccupied with it that everything that does not represent spirituality discards it and becomes annihilated. What remains is the imperishable existence of the Eternal Spirit, the real substance and essence (Sain) of a human being.

The Himalaya Master

For those familiar with my, or even Barry Long's teaching, the similarity in the above description of enduing emotion, which is the karmic energy, consciously, is quite incredible. 
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