Author Archives: Swami Nirmalananda

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About Swami Nirmalananda

Swami Nirmalananda is a teacher of the highest integrity since 1976. In 2009 she was honored with initiation into the ancient order of Saraswati monks. Now wearing the traditional orange, she has openly dedicated her life to serving others. Usually called Gurudevi, she makes the highest teachings easily accessible, guiding seekers to the knowledge and experience of their own Divine Essence.

The Fire of Yoga

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By Gurudevi Nirmalananda

We all love the primal elements: earth, water, fire, air, and empty space.

Yoga names these mahabhutas as the building blocks of all that exists in this world. It is especially powerful where they meet — like the ocean washing against a sandy beach or crashing against the rocks.

Maybe for you it is sunrise or sunset over the sea; when there are a few wispy clouds, you can get all five elements at once:

The shoreline — earth

The ocean — water

The sun — fire

The clouds — air (when the air is holding water, you can see it, otherwise air is invisible)

The space between the clouds — empty space

So many beautiful photographs and paintings feature these primal elements, and they touch something deep inside you. Some of your favorite places probably have the combination of several mahabhutas, perhaps even your own garden.

Yoga explains that we love them because they are different expressions of the One, the primordial essence, which is the source of everything. You are made of this same substance, which is why you experience such a profound feeling in these environments. You enjoy a resonance or a recognition of the shared essence.

Since we are so often out of touch with our own essence, we need these external reminders. Many people even dream of retiring to the hinterlands and living in the midst of nature; they are seeking an environment that will give them constant peace and joy.

Recently I have realized that even before I loved the ocean, I loved fire. My first experience of making friends with fire was when I was about 12 years old. One by one, I lit all the matches in a book of matches and let each burn down to my fingertips. I was enchanted and have been ever since.

Ocean and fire are two very important images in yoga. Many texts speak eloquently of the ocean of consciousness, directing you to your own inner essence so you can discover the vastness and fullness that is even greater than the ocean. At my request, Master Yoga has featured photos of the ocean on our catalogue covers for several years. Of course, our locations on both the Atlantic and Pacific are no accident!

Our January 2006 catalogue has a roaring fire on the cover, to honor the fire of yoga. The power and beauty of fire is captivating. Fire is very important in many ways. The light and heat of the sun makes our planet hospitable to us. Civilization began when man tamed fire. Your own life depends on the cellular fire of digestion and metabolism. Most importantly, yoga specializes in the inner fire, which blazes forth in a radiant glow that transforms your experience of yourself, your life, and the world.

This transformation is needed because you live in amnesia, not knowing your true essence. You are Consciousness-Itself, an individualized form with a type of Divine Amnesia. This is both because you have forgotten your own Divine Nature, and also because the amnesia was placed in you as part of the Divine Play that brings this world into existence.

Your job is to recover from the amnesia and recognize your true being. Yoga is the amnesia-recovery system.

You already know that yoga helps you with your aches and pains, and can even cure many conditions that stymie medicine. I am delighted to hear of every “miracle cure” and receive several reports every week. This is the starting point for most yogis, the motivation to make some changes in your life.

Excerpt from Gurudevi’s book — “Yoga: Inside & Outside,” pages 145-146

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Embodied Consciousness

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By Gurudevi Nirmalananda

Primordial Consciousness takes on a body – yours.

Primordial Consciousness takes on all bodies –even rocks, mountains, trees and rivers, and the many objects. Consciousness is being the whole universe and all it comprises – including you.

Why? Out of the bliss of pure Beingness, Consciousness is overflowing in exuberant creativity. Each thing that Consciousness becomes is a blossoming forth, with the whole contained in it.

The purpose of yoga is to empower your discovery that the whole of Consciousness is hidden within you. Thus you will live in the continuing knowing of Consciousness being you. Consciousness, which we call Shiva, is being your quirks and peculiarities as well as your talents, skills and loving heart.

From Shiva’s perspective, it’s like light shining through a crystal hanging in the window. The ray of light becomes many colored lights dancing around the room. Shiva is the one light. You are one of the different colored lights. You think you are merely small, a dot of light among many, with each being less than the whole. Yet, when you look into the dancing dot of light, you see that it is made of light. Fully, wholly and completely made of light…

But when you haven’t yet attained your own Beingness, it all looks starkly different. As an individual, a contracted form of Consciousness, you don’t experience the fullness of your inherent bliss and Divinity all the time, at least not yet. You don’t know you are made of light. Your dance includes sorrow as well as joy. Your internal GPS has lost…

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Self-Improvement

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By Gurudevi Nirmalananda

It’s predictable. You start doing yoga or meditating and pretty soon you’re eating healthier.

How does that come about? Your life is becoming “yogified.” I confess that I made up the word, specifically to describe the organic process of upliftment yoga provides.

This experience is the fulfillment of a promise made thousands of years ago, repeated through the ages by India’s ancient and modern sages.

In addition to physical improvements, your life begins to change. You are less anxious, so you deal with situations and people differently. You sleep better. Dare I accuse you of becoming more peaceful? Your relationships improve as a result; you even see those around you from a different perspective.

These results are predictable because you’re aligning yourself with Consciousness-Itself. The light of your inherent Divinity, svaroopa, is beginning to shine through. These organic lifestyle changes are the best part of yoga! They are your first steps toward enlightenment — you’re cleaning up your act.

It’s helpful to understand what’s happening to you. When you get the map of the inner terrain you are traversing, you can cooperate with the process and anticipate your next steps. The writings of the sages describe clearly how you…

— Excerpt from A Yogic Lifestyle, pages ix-xii

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Your State Affects Your Life

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Excerpt from Telecourse by Gurudevi Nirmalananda

Your mental and emotional state affects your relationships, your work and even your health.

Emotional pain and psychological needs can be what motivated you to start yoga, but everything changes when you discover what you really get — your capital-S Self.

The bliss of the Self is far greater than any blissful sensory experience. The depth at which you live, within yourself, is more meaningful than anything outside of you can provide. While the Svaroopa® practices improve your psychology, they’re not about psychology. They’re about enlightenment.

Yet, on the way to enlightenment, you become a better person, a happier person, more understanding, more generous, more genuinely present in everything you do. But if your goal is to be better, happier, understanding, etc., you’ll settle for too little. Wearing the clothes, wearing the jewelry and wearing the mask of spirituality just freezes you into another superficial sense of self

Yoga’s spirituality is for a purpose. Just like a car’s purpose is to provide you with reliable transportation, not to give you an identity. For example, I’m now driving my 6th Honda over the years, but I don’t have the identity of being a Honda owner.

The Guru keeps you on track, if you let yourself be seen. Many Svaroopis keep a careful distance from me, because they know that, if they come, I’ll see how they are and where they’re at. Of course! I care about you! If you’re stuck in your stuff, do I want to leave you there?

Excerpt from Leaps & Bounds, Module 2

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Yogic Discipline

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By Gurudevi Nirmalananda 

In yoga, discipline is not the same as “spare the rod and spoil the child” — punishment and enforcement.

Yogic discipline is the means by which you are uplifted and transformed. It is how you can get the highest and the best from your yoga practice.

Continued application of your own effort, on a regular basis, is what makes you successful at anything in your life: yoga, art, business, relationships, etc.

The best athletes and musicians must practice daily, yet they do not consider it an onerous duty. Top musicians love to do the scales! True discipline is doing regularly what makes you feel best. Regularity is the key, and it is what ultimately makes it easy. Consider who creates this regularity? Your job may require you to keep certain hours. This then determines when you eat, get up, go to bed, and have free time.

A newly self-employed or retired person often has difficulty organizing these things, because they are used to an externally imposed discipline. Yet, even enforced discipline can yield great benefits. A woman in her ‘60s told me she hated her mother for sending her to piano lessons and making her practice every day. Now the piano is one of the greatest joys in her life. In yoga class you experience…

Excerpt from Yoga in Every Moment, Gurudevi’s first book (page 4)

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Sharing Your Happiness

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By Gurudevi Nirmalananda

The common denominator in most conversations is complaints.

But after a yoga or meditation session, you may find that you have fewer words. That is because, when you are in bliss, your mind is quiet. When you are in bliss, you no longer need outer things to make you happy.

Yogic bliss is reliable; happiness is not. Bliss is more fulfilling than happiness. It fills you from the inside. Since bliss arises from within, you can bring it with you everywhere you go. Yogic bliss is more portable than worldly happiness.

When you base yourself in the deeper dimensions of your own being, bliss is ever arising. Your neediness and fear disappear as though they never existed, like dark disappears when you light a candle flame. Now powered by Consciousness, you have lots to give.

I remember when I was needy. I couldn’t be generous because I always felt empty. Fear was what kept me moving. Whether money or relationships were motivating me, I worked hard at measuring up. Yet when things went well, my success didn’t ease my fear. It’s like I lived on red-alert. Until yoga, that is.

Yoga taught me how to relax. Yoga taught me how to breathe. Yoga taught me how to be present inside my own skin. It was my first step toward…

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Living Mysticism 2024 Calendar Journal

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NEW BOOK by Gurudevi Nirmalananda

Make your life spiritual, brimming with joy and peace. Such a life knows neither pain nor agitation.

I received this promise from my Guru and extend it on to you. May these modern-day sutras, short quotes from my writings and discourses, help you base yourself in the inner infinity of your own Divinity.

There are many ways to use these pages.  It’s small enough to fit in your purse, yet substantial enough to hold your whole year for you.

▼ As a calendar, these pages can help you organize your days.

▼ As a journal, you have space to write or draw about your meditations or your life – or both.

▼ You can fill the pages with mantras or prayers, invoking Divine blessings with each one.

▼ Or use the daily sutra as a jumping off point, to contemplate the teaching more deeply.

When you weave these teachings and practices through your life, your meaning and purpose are easily fulfilled. Your eyes shine with light and your heart overflows, giving you clarity, understanding and generosity. What a way to live!

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Why Do You Do What You Do?

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By Gurudevi Nirmalananda

There’s always a reason behind your actions. You are a volitional being, meaning you have free will. Animals function by instinct but humans have more options. What is it that motivates you?

When you lack any of the basics, they are your priority… Yoga honors the reality of such needs and reactions. You must prioritize basic issues, perhaps making yoga part of your support system when setting up a better quality of life. I have been fortunate to help a few yoga students facing such difficulties. Yet I recognize that most people come to yoga only when their basics are managed.

Once you have room to look at yourself and your own process, I ask — why do you do what you do? Hopefully you’re not focused on the instinctual level anymore. You have some breathing space in your life, enough that you’re interested in yoga. That means you have freedom of choice.

As an adolescent, I made choices based on anger. I was deeply frustrated at the incongruity between the ideals I’d been taught compared to the reality of the world around me. The prevailing message seemed to be, “Do what I say, not what I do.” My knee-jerk response was to try both what was recommended as well as what was advised against. What I learned in the process fueled my aspirations for something greater. I first sought it in higher education, but intellectual achievements were not enough for me.

Only yoga’s timeless teachings satisfied me. Now, for five decades, I’ve deliberately deepened my yogic knowledge and the experiences it has opened up in me. This is truly a bottomless well! Yoga has empowered me to live up to the highest ideals, yet in a down-to-earth way.

I think of my life’s path as a good use of my free will. Svatantra means free will. Svatantrya is God’s free will. Only you and God have free will. It is the distinguishing characteristic of…

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The Yoga of Relationship

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By Gurudevi Nirmalananda

The intimate connection that you seek with another person is more than a meeting of minds and more than a meeting of bodies.

The point at which com­munication becomes communion is the experience of union. This is the goal of yoga, and the meaning of the Sanskrit word “yoga” itself — union. 

Once your innate yearning connects with your own inner source that fills it, you experi­ence this connection and communion with everyone. It is the natural outward expression of the inner experience. 

My own experience of relationships has been transformed by yoga. I have dif­ficulty naming it “love.” It is somehow both more and less than what I always thought love was. Whatever you want to call it, it is yoga. This is what makes our relationships work.

For me, it includes a deep respect for every person, along with a genuine interest and caring for how they think, how they feel, and for what is going on in their lives. 

Because of this, I never tire of talking with students about their lives, about their body, about their feelings, and especially about their experiences of yoga. I feel deeply honored by their sharing with me. I am grateful for this opportu­nity to share my understanding and my experience of yoga with you..

– excerpt from Yoga in Every Moment, page 2 

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Embodied Spirituality

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By Gurudevi Nirmalananda 

Tantra means loom, like a weaver’s loom that interweaves the warp and the woof threads.  It means that you find the infinite in this finite reality.  

You discover the Divine which is already present within the mundane.  The tantric sages say that the One Reality, which has always existed, decided to manifest the entire world and everyone in it. Everything is Shiva being the world as well as being beyond the world.  

The doorway into this tantric tradition is through initiation — Shaktipat.  It is a transmission of energy that awakens your own dormant energy, hidden within.  Your awakened energy then climbs your spine from the tip of your tailbone to the top of your head.  The purpose of all Svaroopa® practices is to awaken and support the blossoming of this spiritual energy in you.  

During meditation, signs of this inner awakening include little swaying movements, even small little jerks that deepen your meditation.  You may feel an inner heat climbing up your spine and spreading through your body.  You can be drawn into a deep and profound meditative state, so deep that it feels like sleep.  It is a deep meditative immersion into Consciousness.  

In your inner explorations, you may see lights, colors and visions, or you may hear divine inner sounds.  Or sudden and profound insights may be revealed.  These are all the results of Shaktipat — the inner awakening.  This is the beginning of embodied spirituality.  

Once you have received Shaktipat, the end goal is guaranteed — enlightenment in this lifetime.  I describe it like this: Once a baby is born, puberty is guaranteed.  Once you receive Shaktipat, realization is guaranteed.  

As cosmic energy moves through your spine, it vitalizes your body.  I can’t say revitalize because that would imply you were getting energy you’d previously had.  Rather, this is a vitality you never knew.  Your body undergoes energetic and cellular changes, profoundly beneficial.  

Yet the most important effect is that a profound inner state opens up for you.  Your new inner stability and depth provide additional physical benefits.  Your inner essence is expressed through your body and is experienced in your body, even while there is so much more.  

Svaroopa® yoga poses create and support this process.  Our sequencing always starts at the tip of your tailbone, followed by poses that mirror the inner opening of Shaktipat.  These practices support your inner upliftment, helping to dissolve blockages along the way.  Yet, as powerful, beautiful, wonderful and blissful as the poses are, they are only the starting point.  

Ultimately, the real work is accomplished in meditation. Meditation is where you let your Divine inner energy move through your spine.  This energy restructures your body and opens up your mind.  Your most powerful practices are mantra and meditation.  They will fulfill the promise of the sages, embodied spirituality: 

to know without thought

to BE without effort

to experience without fear or desire

to abide in the bliss of Consciousness

to live in the multidimensionality of your own being

to know your own Self as the Divine Incarnation that you already are.

-Excerpt, pages 22-24
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