In the Upanishads there is a question, “What do human beings want?” The answer is that we want happiness. Everything we do, we do for the sake of happiness. We seek that happiness through our work, through our friends and family, through art and science, through food, drink and entertainment. For happiness we perform all the…
— Gurudevi Nirmalananda
From Gurudevi’s full discourse “I Gave My Life to God“
By Gurudevi Nirmalananda
Infinite Beingness is being finite by being you.
Like an iceberg in the ocean, you have a clear and distinct sense of individuality, yet you are made of the same substance you are melting into. Iceberg and sea are like time and timelessness interwoven together. This is our world.
I found timelessness by listening to the clocks ticking in my elementary classrooms. I stopped hearing the teacher as I listened to the silence between the ticks. Looking back, I think I was meditating. The teacher didn’t appreciate me tuning her out.
Right/wrong, good/bad, pleasure/pain — yoga calls these “the pairs of opposites.” We see the world this way, though it is much more complicated. The sages of India explained that the world is not merely black and white. Finite reality is manifesting in bold living color, yet it is all made of the infinite. It’s all Divine, even when you’re not getting your way.
You have probably invested time and energy in doing things right. The theory says if you do everything right, you will get what you want. It works most of the time. But some days give you different results. Also, it works differently for other people. Trying to calibrate all the differences can spin your mind out of control.
Yoga says you don’t have to track it all. You don’t have to map where all the individual icebergs are headed. Find the water in which they rest, that substance of which they are made. When you find your own essence, you find Essence-Itself, flowing in a Divine choreography. While each dancer hears a different song and creates their own moves, it all lives and breathes in timeless time.
Na shivam vidyate kvachit. — Svacchanda Tantra
There is nothing that is not-Shiva.
What exists that is made of something other than Shiva? There is nothing that is not-Shiva. This is true because “that which exists” is called Shiva. Thus, if something exists, it is made of Shiva. Even that which does not exist is made of Shiva! The texts explain that…
By Gurudevi Nirmalananda
I never dreamed I would live this long, but here I am, still going strong. It’s from yoga, of course, especially from receiving Shaktipat 50 years ago.
Baba always said that the effects of Shaktipat are unerring. Keep doing your best in life while meditating every day and you will attain Self-Realization. The best part is that, in every meditation, every day, you get a taste of enlightenment. Baba’s mantra makes this happen. This is why I share it with you.
Each enlightenment-moment leaves an imprint in your mind and heart. They add up. Guaranteed. It’s Baba’s guarantee. And I have benefitted from it personally.
One of Baba’s swamis shared a conversation with a new meditator who wanted to know if he should change his lifestyle. The swami reassured him that all he had to do was meditate every day.
Getting more specific, the man asked, “I can eat meat? I can have my brandy snifter every evening? I don’t have to give up my girlfriend, that my wife doesn’t know about?” The swami gulped and said, “All you have to do is meditate every day.”
A year later, a woman came to say thank you to the same swami. She said, “My husband has been meditating every day. He has given up meat and his daily brandy. And he gave up the girlfriend he thought I didn’t know about. Thank you.”
Yes, you will change. I did. And I am so grateful. Because all those external pursuits had never made me happy, not even when I practiced them more intensely. Meditation filled me from the inside, freeing me from the desire for the things that had never actually worked.
Best of all, Kundalini dissolved all my gripes and complaints about life. Shaktipat awakens the energy of Consciousness to arise within, uplifting you in her pathway from tail-to-top. I rock-n-rolled through my meditations for years, with Kundalini moving me into classical yoga poses. I learned anatomy from the inside-out as deep tensions were melted away.
The transformation in my body was only part of it, for each tight area had its related mental-and-emotional tensions. As they dissolved, I outgrew my past. While I still loved the people who had raised and trained me, I was no longer limited to their ideas of who I was or what I could do.
Baba described it this way:
Once a disciple’s spiritual energy has been awakened by the Guru and he begins to meditate, the unresolved impressions of past actions, or spiritual debts, are reduced and the seeker’s future automatically brightens.
Two types of impressions dissolve, karmas and vasanas. Karmas are the yet-to-come consequences of your prior actions, which balance out your deeds from many lifetimes. Now you don’t have to live through events to complete your karmas. They resolve in your meditations.
Vasanas are the mental-and-emotional patterns you have so carefully installed through repetitive thoughts and the strategies you’ve been using to get through life. For example, if you always speed up when a traffic signal turns yellow, you’re going to end up in an accident. Or if you eat when you’re sad, you’re going to end up with some health problems. Worse, you’ll be sad a lot of the time.
When these patterns dissolve, you see life differently. It’s like your peripheral vision has expanded. More light is coming in through your eyes. Better yet, your inner light shines brighter, more of the time.
How do I know? I took my own advice. I have been doing more yoga for decades!
There are two ways to be experiencing yogic bliss: from the outside — looking inward, or from the inside — looking outward. When you do some spinal release poses, or Ujjayi Pranayama, mantra, chanting, any of the practices we do, when you’ve gotten lost in the world again outside yourself, you do these practices and now, you’re looking inward. Any of these practices settle you inward. And the deeper you go, the more bliss you experience. And then deeper, beyond your senses, beyond your mind, beyond your idea of who you are. All the way in, to your own Self. Oh, Shiva.
— Gurudevi Nirmalananda
From Gurudevi’s full discourse “Inner Bliss“
One of the glorious things I love about Baba’s gift to us is when I see it blossoming in you. Of course it’s Shaktipat that makes it happen. That’s Baba’s gift. But you are the one who’s blossoming, and I get to watch as you become more you. As you find who you really are, you bring your light and your Essence into your life and into the world. You glow in the dark, and you can feel it.
— Gurudevi Nirmalananda
From Gurudevi’s full discourse “Glow in the Dark“
But if you’re not putting your time and effort into these teachings and practices, what are you putting your time and effort into? If you put your time and effort into reinforcing your limitations, your feeling of emptiness and neediness, reinforcing your pain and suffering, what will you get from that? You already know. So, you put some time and effort…
— Gurudevi Nirmalananda
From Gurudevi’s full discourse “Your Divine Essence“
I saw so many people transformed by their encounter with my Baba. And I saw so many people who got nothing at all. They left Baba’s Satsang saying, “That was nice. Shall we go to the movies tomorrow night?” They were looking for an evening out — something enjoyable, entertaining; not uplifting, not transformational, not life-changing, not…
— Gurudevi Nirmalananda
From Gurudevi’s full discourse “Open to Grace“
By Gurudevi Nirmalananda
Spirituality changes your body as well as your mind and heart. The changes blossom forth as your spiritual essence fills you from the inside.
The fast path to a mystical upgrade is Shaktipat initiation. What follows is, as I described last month, “…bliss, clarity, compassion and enthusiasm fill your mind and heart.” This is not merely a mood change. Your body changes.
A body that runs on anxiety is different than a body running on bliss. Your nervous system and hormones operate differently when you stand down from red alert. Your metabolism changes.
Research has proven that, when you are happy, your digestion and elimination work better. What do you suppose happens when you’re in bliss? Your lungs and heart, your immune system and even the composition of your blood are changed. Your biological age markers run in reverse.
My student Saul started yoga at age 80. He took Gentle Yoga twice weekly, our class level that is geared to elders and those recovering from illness or injury. While he enjoyed his classes, he did no yoga at home. After three months, he went in for a scheduled follow-up on his annual medical physical.
When he blew into the spirometer, they discovered that he had regained seven years of gradual loss of breathing capacity. Since he was a medical doctor, he would never have believed it possible. At his next yoga class, he told me, “I know it’s the yoga.”
Yet he did only five minutes of yogic breathing in each class. What if he had done the 20 minutes we recommend? More changes would ensue. Organically. What if he had gotten Shaktipat and started meditating? Wow, what possibilities!
Science has mapped your brain. You use certain parts of your brain more than the rest. For example, if you are in pain for some time, your brain grows more pain synapses. This means your brain specializes…
By Gurudevi Nirmalananda
His birth was celebrated by his parents, but not for the reasons that we celebrate his birth today.
Swami Muktananda was the treasured first child of his parents. He was welcomed with great joy, more so because they had been infertile for some time. They rejoiced at having a child, especially a male who could care for them in their elder years and inherit their land.
By contrast, we celebrate what he did with his life — his spiritual fulfillment and his sharing it with thousands. I was one who received Shaktipat from him. He steered my life in the direction I wanted to go. Now, decades later, I marvel at who he was and what he gave to us all.
This is the lunar anniversary of his birth, born on the full moon. Yoga sees the moon as being like your mind. While both do shine with light, it is merely reflected light, not the source. The moon reflects the light of the sun; your mind reflects the light of your Divine Essence.
My Baba did shine brightly! He shared the teachings of India’s ancient sages in a captivating way, with a twinkle in his eye. His laugh was a deep chuckle that tickled my mind and warmed my heart at the same time. And he would sing to us, sharing lines from his beloved poet saints.
I loved to go for darshan, bowing at his feet. I would first look at him, the one to whom I was bowing. Then I put my head down, below my heart, getting drenched in the Divine Energy flowing from his feet. Lifting my head, I looked at him again.
Sometimes he was looking directly at me. When he looked in my eyes, he saw all the way through, not just to my soul but beyond — to the infinity within. He opened the doorway for me to step inside and taught me how to live there.
He must have been emotional, as astrology says about a full-moon baby. Stories of his childhood include him ditching school to climb the nearby hills. He complained that the teachers wanted to show pictures of the native plants, but he wanted to go see them live.
The traditional stories of gods and saints captivated him so much that he would enact them with the help of his siblings and friends. He loved to meet the traveling sadhus (seekers) who walked the road near his home on their way to the sacred caves in the hills. One of those sadhus was Nityananda, whom Baba found again, but only years later.
In the interim, Baba followed the traditional path of the renunciant. One night, he ran away from home to go to an Ashram and become a swami.
For the rest of his life, he dedicated himself to deep yogic studies and practices.
I wonder what the tipping point was for him. What happened during the day that led him to climb out the window that night? He felt something strongly, that is clear.
I tried to run away when I was 15. I hadn’t met sadhus or read stories of gods and sages, but I felt the angst deeply, painfully. There were no Ashrams for me to go to, so I was at loose ends. I was lovingly rescued by a friend, protecting me from my own worst impulses. But I still wanted more than home, family and society offered me. It was years before I found Baba.
He had left home in search of God, following a calling to the highest that life offers. He was taken in by a great Siddha, a yoga master, who saw the light shining brightly in him. Siddharuddha Swami nurtured the young man, naming him Muktananda, the bliss of freedom.
His name promised a great future. But that future did not blossom forth for another 25 years, not until Muktananda found Nityananda again. Then, on the day that India gained her independence from Britain, Nityananda set Muktananda free by giving him Shaktipat.
He was born on an auspicious full moon day and initiated on an auspicious day. Then my Baba left his body on another auspicious full moon day. The light shone through him so brightly. And he shared it far and wide. I am forever grateful.
Happy Birthday, Baba.
When you’re lost in your thoughts, or your reaction to them, you’re lost. So, it takes longer to find your own Self. Mantra takes you home. But if you don’t use mantra, where are you headed? So, you recognize where you’re at, and you meet yourself there by invoking…
— Gurudevi Nirmalananda
From Gurudevi’s full discourse “Enlightenment Timeline“
practice & grace: giving you your Self
revealing the mystery
SVA Blog 