“…inner silence and the yama/niyama it naturally brings up will not let us off the hook.”
Boy you got that right! Whew! 
Scott,
An odd, perhaps ironic, thing happened tonight when I read this part of your post, a post that I found, on the whole, basically reasonable and well considered. I tried the method of “imagining your sense of taste extending 15 cm above your head” (I had not heard of it before) and immediately, for the second time in my life, I tasted a sweetness like honey. It was accompanied by a strong steady surge of conductivity that lasted through the evening. I went to All Saints Night choral eucharist at the Episcopal Church across the street and I was in bliss. The organ music stroked my inner sensuality beyond anything I had felt before and the eucharistic host tasted like honey, even before I took it in my mouth (kneeling at the rail with my head bowed, the priest was holding the bread about 15 cm above my head when he said the words of blessing… an interesting coincidence/correlation, I thought. Many mystics before me have reported the honey taste of Eucharist).
Not having experienced Kechari, I cannot compare it. But I will say that last night when I told my wife that I had ordered a nipper and that I was planning to start snipping, she said it sounded like self mutilation. All this has me wondering, if I’ve already experienced what some people go for with Kechari, it might not be worth going through the stigma of snipping. Even so, I’m leaning Yogani’s “God helps those who help themselves” direction in light of, among other things, his hymen comparison and his other suggestions about how it is such a fitting practice for people who, like me, have already started feeling conductivity.
B.
Since Balance has brought it up again, I’ll address this:
Scott said: And he also says it’s a trap for people to cut the frenum…that it was intended to keep unworthy people from doing the actual practices. He justifies this by saying that it’s a violent act to cut the frenum, and it would obviously go against the code of non-violence.
Frenum-snipping is indeed very minor self-surgery. Given that, terms like ‘violent’ and ‘mutilation’ and ‘unnatural’ are only terms of disapproval on that surgery, since such terms can be applied to any surgical practice. Better to ask people what exactly the reasons are that they disapprove. Don’t accept these disapproving terms (or further ones) alone, as supplying any number of disapproving terms is never equal to providing a good reason to disapprove. Challenge them to provide solid reasons for disapproving of this minor self-surgery.
This little discipline is really just a matter of confining people to clear, rational thinking.
And he also says it’s a trap for people to cut the frenum…that it was intended to keep unworthy people from doing the actual practices.
There’s a trap right there in that idea. Productive spiritual practices make people worthy — worthiness does not make productive spiritual practices.
A good question to ask here is, how is Yogani trapped? How am I trapped? Or Shanti, or Meg, or any of the others making productive use of frenum-snipping and Kechari?
B,
That’s cool that it worked well for you! I don’t know Ajita’s method exactly…what I wrote was my interpretation of his words in his translation of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika. Hopefully he comes back to this forum and verifies if you were doing it correctly…or if my understanding of what he wrote about kechari was somewhat correct. Who knows…maybe it’s a great practice! I certainly don’t…I’m such a beginner.
I tried it for a second or two…I’m not great at imagining things like that. I didn’t want to cause any imbalances, since I’m already having enough “fun” with AYPractices. 
I don’t know if it’d have a negative effect, since the crown is kind of involved?
The fact that the crown is involved may have been the reason why your ecstatic conductivity was so great. I duno!
By the way, I also have tasted sweetness from the communion cracker. I think it has to do with enzymes being released as a result of ecstatic conductivity. It was written that Yogananda ate garbage and said it tasted sweet. Cool to hear about someone else having the same experience as me.
bewell said:
I tried the method of “imagining your sense of taste extending 15 cm above your head” (I had not heard of it before) and immediately, for the second time in my life, I tasted a sweetness like honey.
It seems to me that there is something to this practice. It definitely produces a positive subtle yogic effect when I try it, and the effect may have something in common with Kechari mudra. At the same time though, in and of itself, I doubt it would have been anywhere nearly as powerful for me as my kechari practice is. Another twist on the whole thing is that, whereas I definitely feel the subtle effect from doing that now, I’m not so sure I’d have felt it nearly as well without the kechari background. Every advance in Yoga breaks ground for further advances.
From his writings, I’m inclined to suspect that Ajita is experiencing genuine and profound yogic effects; that is, he is a genuine ‘strong yogi’. However, from the perspective of these experiences (and with the background given by tradition), he may be inclined to believe that he can easily transmit these strong subtle practices. But this is not at all easily acheived. The possession of yogic abilities, unfortunately (sadly perhaps), doesn’t necessarily make the teaching of them easy, or make the ‘advanced’ people extremely effective at teaching. That’s the reality of it, I believe, and the reality goes counter to the mythology of the ‘realized siddha’, which can give us unreasonable expectations.
Fair play to anyone for trying though!!
Hi David:
Yes, perhaps it is the “forgetful mountain climber” syndrome – lesson 84.
There is this guy yelling from the top of the mountain, “Just be here now!” But few may know exactly how he got there, including him! The prerequisites for benefiting fully from the lesson may be missing.
That is why clear trail-blazing all the way from the bottom of the mountain to the very top is essential. The more we know about climbing the mountain from bottom to top, the more we can gain at all levels, including from those who are on top, even if they may not recall how they got there (or how we can get there).
This may be a case in point…
The guru is in you.