By Matrika Gast, SVA Board Member 

William Wordsworth first awakened my yearning for transcendence. In a poem about a blissful experience in nature, he described it as “a sense sublime… Whose dwelling is…”

…the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.  — “Tintern Abby” 1798

This passage makes me remember glimpsing the Divine in sunsets when I was in high school, in a swirl of adolescent angst and family dysfunction. I was relieved to feel a sense of eternal Presence that “rolls through all things.” It was just slightly out of reach. If I worked hard enough in school, I could get to It, I thought.

Decades later I accidentally took a Svaroopa® yoga class at a yoga teachers’ conference in another style. I loved the chant CD that accompanied the practice, with poses supported by fluffy pillows. But, really, what was up with this rolling around on the floor? But when I walked down the hall afterward, my back felt light and airy, like a fresh marshmallow. Before that, a deep ache was all I had ever felt in my back.

Five years later (I’m a slow learner), my yearning for transcendence led me to Svaroopa® YTT Level 1. I was sitting in Sukhasana, effortlessly, when a pink flow arose from deep within; I felt it to be the pure love of God and knew it was Real. That was the first of more and more experiences of Self, continuing to strengthen the yearning Patanjali describes:

Teevra-samvegaanaan-aasanah — Yoga Sutras 1.21 

This summer in ATT 402: Deeper Practice, we received Swami Nirmalananda’s renderings of Patanjali’s Sutras, including Sutra 1.21. Because it is the narrative of my own life, I especially resonate with this one:

All your life, you have been experiencing a yearning — it is the yearning for God. Recognize the yearning itself. It is the fuel for the rocket ship that takes you to God.

I am finally discovering that “sitting” with the “yearning itself,” without directing it to conventional pursuits, is a practice in itself. I love that it was in Sukhasana that I first had that experience of God as my own Self. The sutra’s final Sanskrit word “aasanah” means “sitting near.” When you allow yourself to experience your strong yearning, you are already sitting near your own Self. You are infinitesimally close to the transcendence that you earnestly seek. Our Svaroopa® Sciences, given to us by our Master Teacher, provide a banquet of yogic practices to nourish the yearning that first drew us to seek the “More.”

You, I and all our Svaroopa sisters and brothers stepped onto this path because we yearned for the “More.”  Maybe it was more health, more wellbeing or even transformation and illumination. Maybe it was for more fulfilling work in the world, becoming a Svaroopa® yoga teacher. Maybe you were already a seeker, yearning to be established in your own Self. What would any of us do without our Svaroopa® Sciences: asana, meditation, chant, study of the ancient texts, puja, etc.?

Now we have a Place of Bliss — Lokananda — a physical structure. The building serves us with full-service, immersed trainings and retreats, with the cultivation of physical healing, ever-expanding wellbeing and mystical transcendence.  For all of us, on our individual paths, Lokananda serves us.  Here, we clear the “shrama,” accumulated world-weariness, and immerse in the Svaroopa® Sciences teachings and practices.  At Lokananda, we support the fulfillment of our yearning and our dharma.

Our tantric teachings say the Divine and the mundane are inextricably interwoven. So Lokananda needs a new roof! What could be more mundane? We need to fund that expensive repair as well to replenish the reserves used to renovate this beautiful old building. It is infused with Grace from our ancient lineage extending. Lokananda is for you, for me, and for our Svaroopa sisters and brothers — to cultivate your yearning and to fulfill yoga’s promise.  Our Place of Bliss is our yoga home.

Over the past year, we have raised two-thirds of our $150,000 goal. If you have already contributed, you already know the vital importance of this building to our organization. If you have waited until now, the time is at hand to make a significant difference with your contribution.

Either way, please step up for this final leg of our Capital Campaign, raising the final $50,000.00, to ensure this building that takes you — and our current and future community — all the way home to your own Self.

Click here to donate.

By Matrika Gast

If you take yoga classes, you are a yogi. You are being educated in the science of yoga. You can count on your “yoga studies” to ensure that you are in a process of personal growth.

Search for “personal growth” on AmazonSmile and you’ll find hundreds of titles, largely focusing on cultivating career and success in the world.  A yogi’s personal growth certainly includes career and worldly pursuits. In fact, your education as a yogi makes this type of success more available to you.

But yogic education does not focus on outward achievement. When you are a yogi, your education is directed inward, an expansion on the inside. You may have started yoga because of physical or emotional pain.  While Svaroopa^® yoga poses improves your condition, rather these practices make you able to turn your awareness inward. That change in direction dissolves inner tensions that create so much of the pain in body and mind. This release allows you to grow from within as naturally as an acorn sprouts into an oak tree.

This is true education, coming from the Latin verb educere, meaning to bring forth that which is hidden. You have learned yogic practices that not only make you more effective in the world but, more importantly, open you to your own True Nature. You become more and more illuminated from the source within, the light of your own Self . When you unravel the deep layers of physical tension and mental contraction, you bloom from within in the glory of that Light.

This education transforms you inside and outside, as it brings forth that which was always there in you — but hidden. You are able to use more effectively your inborn talents as well as your life skills. Certainly, your life improves outwardly. Yet this education teaches you that you never needed to improve yourself. You find that you were always whole, you were always the eternal Divine Essence. You are able to live more and more in that inner knowing, which frees you. Yes, reliably, you become more effective in what you do in the world, yet your joy, your bliss, arises from within.

By Prakash (David) Falbaum, SVA Board Member 

Our “Place of Bliss” grounds the Grace.It stands as a full-service yoga and meditation teacher training facility, as a retreat center, and as the local venue for Swami Nirmalananda’s Grace-filled teachings. Living in MN, I have only a few opportunities a year to visit the Ashram and be in the presence of Swami Nirmalananda. Every time, I have very deep experiences. I know that these experiences are fueled by Guru’s Grace, powerfully available to us all at Lokananda.

This Grace has given me everything. I started Svaroopa® yoga as a very contracted person. The more I am able to be in Swami’s presence, the less contracted I am. Her satsangs open me up the way Muktananda’s Shaktipat set him free, free to know himself as the One Self.

I have always yearned for the “More.” Until I encountered the teachings about Self-Realization in Swami Nirmalananda’s Svaroopa® Sciences, I felt incomplete. Even though I have a successful career and a wonderful family life, I felt worthless. When I was born, I was destined to be adopted out so was not held in my mother’s arms. Contraction began for me on Day 1. When I found Svaroopa® yoga, I had become almost an automaton. Yet everything changed when I took my first Svaroopa® yoga class. I got Shaktipat. It came through my local teacher, because Svaroopa® yoga teacher training and practices are empowered by the Grace of the Guru, from Nityananda through Muktananda, and through Swamiji. After that first Svaroopa® yoga class, I went home and walked my dogs. I felt as though I was walking on air. I felt that light.

I now know that I was noticing Kundalini beginning her work on me. More than five years later, at Swamiji’s August 14 Satsang, where her discourse focused on Baba’s Shaktipat, I felt more completely free, becoming more and more freed from the limitations of my mind. This deep clearing of contraction manifests in my ability to listen to other people, to let myself be known to others and to speak the Truth of this path to Self-Realization. My mind no longer has the power to inhibit the Truth I want share. The more yoga I do, the more I feel myself to be my Self. And it all happens at Lokananda, where Swamiji’s teachings and the deepening practices of our community are saturated with transformative Shakti.

During our annual SVA Board retreat, I attended Swami Sunday at Lokananda. We celebrated Baba’s Shaktipat anniversary.  India gained independence from the British Empire on that same day in 1947. Baba’s name, Muktananda, means the bliss of moksha (freedom). When Swamiji spoke about the intersection of all these freedoms, I experienced a profound shift. Swami gave me Muktananda. At this satsang, I realized that I am Muktananda. Such experiences happen to me, to you, to our Svaroopa® sisters and brothers because we can come to trainings, retreats and other programs at Lokananda.

Join me in contributing to the third leg of our Capital Campaign for Lokananda. Since campaign began about a year ago, we have raised $100,000 of our $150,000 goal. To date, these generous contributions have supported the renovations and furnishings of our 130-year-old Lokananda. She shines! But she also needs a new roof now, and a maintenance reserve for those future capital repairs that are inevitable. Please open your heart as well as your wallet. Let us together complete this Capital Campaign for Lokananda now. Then, for ourselves and others to come, we can count on a place to be in the bliss that will fulfill the yearning that first pulled us on to this Svaroopa® Sciences path.

Click here to donate.

By Tirtha Richards

After reading our August contemplation article, “Inspired by Great Beings”, I am ever so grateful for my Guru, Swami Nirmalananda. It is a reminder that my life circumstances have led me to this Guru, who has received the greatest of gifts from her own Guru, and has dedicated her life to passing forward this precious gift to us. As I write these words, I feel the impact of it throughout my body. The Grace flows through me filling me with bliss, calm and peacefulness.

Role models in my family were slim. Coming from a complex and large family dynamic left me with few to emulate.  As I read about the women in the article, I was so impressed with all they were, and all they accomplished. But when I see the picture of my Guru, before I even read the words about her, I am transported into the state of Grace. I stop and let it fill me. Swamiji has given me everything. Guru’s Grace has transformed me and continues to do so. Granting not only me, but my family with gifts, and service, beyond our imagination!

There is so much available to us. We can listen to her on recordings, read her words, chant with her, see her image and bask in her Grace. All this without leaving our houses, just by going online. But nothing can compare to being in the Guru’s presence. Having Swamiji in this world with us is a gift, but in the same room is powerful beyond imagination. The experience of sitting with the Guru shows us the way, reminds us why we are here, and lets us know what is possible if we follow the path.

I was not the one in a billion to have had a spontaneous mystical experience in youth, so I am extra grateful for my living Guru. She is that living example of all that is available to us if we are willing to do the practice.  This beautiful Shaktipat lineage is the perfect path for me. Receiving Shaktipat from Swamiji has allowed me to have that experience of spontaneous revelation, showing me all that is possible.

Peter Gallagher, SVA Board Member

The inner experience of Self is closest for those whose yearning is strongest.
— Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras 1.21.

I’ve just returned home from our annual face-to-face Board meeting and retreat. While we met at the Ashram, we were housed at Lokananda. The accommodations are beautifully functional and comfortable. But it is a 130-year old building, and daily as my roommate left our room for his 4 am meditation, I heard the doors squeak. Thinking that SVA admin staff needed to be notified of the problem, we told Swami Nirmalananda about it. Swami told us where to find the can of WD-40. That clinched my sense of truly being at home in Lokananda.

Driving from Downingtown to my “other home,” I thought about other journeys. I have learned that saving for retirement is a journey that begins with a single step and takes another thousand steps. You start with saving a little, plan ahead and step by step you will arrive at retirement with enough funds to support you.

As I approach retirement, I start another journey of a thousand steps on our Svaroopa^® Vidya path to Self-Realization. The yearning to be at home in my own Self is a strong pull. The yearning for Self-Realization feels like it is magnetizing me toward an ultimate home. To get there, I just need to let the yearning orient me to that “home” the way a magnet is aligned with the North Pole. I can fulfill my longing with mantra, to be turned inward to my own Self. All I have to do is cultivate the yearning and everything will just flow. That Grace-filled flow, emanating from Swami Nirmalananda, carries me to Self-Realization.

Lokananda, our Place of Bliss, is the physical home that gives me a Shakti-saturated place to stay where I can be in the presence of our Guru, Swami Nirmalananda. Lokananda is an essential element in cultivating the yearning that promises to take you to Self-Realization. I must take care of this second home as I do my own residence. Capital repairs, the stuff you do every few decades, such as getting a new roof, must be done. I understand the need to sustain the organization which provides the physical support for Swamiji’s teachings that carry me, you, and current and future seekers on the path. We need to take responsibility for Lokananda, our spiritual home, just as we do for our own personal homes. My donation to this phase of the Lokananda Capital Campaign feels like another step on the way home.

Our capital campaign goal of $150,000 was set in July 2015. We are enormously grateful for the $100,000 in donations received so far. They enabled us to renovate the sturdy old building for beauty and comfort. Our goal for this leg of the campaign is $50,000, which will complete our appeal.We will first be able to get a much needed new roof, and then replenish the reserves that support the programs that carry you forward on your spiritual journey.

I also understand the devotional aspect of contributing to the capital campaign for Lokananda, just as you bring a flower to Swamiji as an offering out of gratitude. Will you join me in opening your heart to decide on a gift to establish Lokananda in good and ongoing repair? It is the physical structure in which your yearning can be cultivated and fulfilled as Patanjali promises in Sutra 1.21. The strength of your yearning will take you to your Self. When you contribute to the last leg of the Lokananda Capital Campaign, you are oriented to the home in which you will always find the “More.”

Click here to donate.

By Amala Cattafi, SVA Board President

The inner experience of Self is closest for those whose yearning is strongest. — Patanjali Yoga Sutras 1.21

Everyone experiences spiritual yearning, but not everyone acts on it.  — Joseph Campbell

Most people find ways to divert this powerful yearning into other, more conventional, safer things.  Baba Muktananda explained:

• Out of 100 who feel the yearning, one recognizes it as a yearning for something the world cannot provide.
• Out of 100 who recognize it as a spiritual longing, one looks for a Guru
• Out of 100 who look for a Guru, one finds a Master who can give the experience as well as the teachings.
• Out of 100 who find such a Master, one opens their heart and mind.
• Out of 100 who open their heart and mind, one does the discipline.
• Out of 100 who do the discipline, one comes to know God.

When we started our “Lokananda:  Your Bliss Place” capital campaign last fall we knew that many of you Svaroopis are included in the 1 in 100. You are not only dedicated to your personal practice and the source of those teachings, but also to your community and the space she has dedicated to serving you.

We knew you were out there, and you did not disappoint! We have raised $100,000 of our original $150,000 goal. This achievement is due to a great many of you who have selflessly (and Self-fully) stepped up to support the physical location that is the heart of our Svaroopa^® Sciences. BUT WE ARE NOT YET DONE.

Your generous donations to date in this Capital Campaign have paid for renovations and the costs incurred in buying Lokananda. But we will soon need a new roof, and have several additional improvements planned to make your retreat experiences even more comfortable.

If you have previously opened your heart and given generously, we want to share our gratitude. Please know how much you have done to benefit your Svaroopa^® community. We hope you will do it again!

If you have not yet found the impulse to give for this very important purpose, NOW IS THE TIME! I can tell you from experience that the act of opening your heart and your hands, even when you think you can’t, is one of the most deeply satisfying acts that a human being can experience. Live your life every day as the 1 yogi in 100 who not only cares, but takes action to help.

Consider Baba’s teaching about the 1 in 100 yogis. He is talking about Self-realization. With Swami Nirmalananda as our Master Teacher, we are positioned to reach the ultimate state that yoga promises. We belong to the small percentage of the world population who recognizes the inner longing for what it truly is, the desire to know the Self.

Join me and the SVA Board in completing our Lokananda Capital Campaign successfully. When you contribute to its last leg, you securely establish the place filled with Grace, your spiritual home in which you will always fulfill your yearning for the “More.”

By Yogeshwaree (Melissa) Fountain

As Svaroopis, we are blessed to have so many ways to practice our yoga: meditation, asana, japa (out loud mantra repetition), seva (selfless service to others), Ujjayii Pranayama, the yoga of eating, chanting, and svadhyaya, one of the niyamas that means the reading and studying of yogic texts.

You may already do many of these practices, but for me, svadhyaya stands out as incredibly powerful and sustaining. I can go very deep in the poses or meditation, but how I carry that inner opening into the world is what matters most to me.  Studying and applying the words of a true master feed me at the deepest level. It is what the Shiva Sutras describe as “j~naanam annam,” that knowledge of the Self is the true food.

We can be looking everywhere else but what we long for is the Truth of who we really are. Swamiji, in her love and care for us, provides this nourishment in many ways. One of the most potent is her second collection of monthly contemplations: Yoga: Inside and Outside: Carrying Inner Bliss into Your Life.

I have often sat down with a cup of tea and pen, and read a chapter as if chatting with my dearest friend, underlining points I’d mention to Swamiji if she were sitting right there. This enlivens the text for me, and I always get what I need.

As a Weekend Workshop Leader, I rely on her contemplation articles to guide me through the theme of the weekend, using her text as the springboard for my talks and selections of poses.  The contemplation shapes the vessel I am creating to contain the weekend.  My students and fellow teachers describe how they interact with this book:

“Reading Swamiji’s book has really deepened my meditations.  I love that each day I read a contemplation article, it helps to bring me to the Self.  I am an avid reader, but also feel that my mind is very busy. Reading Swamiji’s words helps to center my focus back to the Self rather than in the many directions that my mind is going in.  I also have found that reading it as my preparation for my morning meditation makes it carry into my day.  It is amazing how the contemplating the Truth can bring comfort and clarity to me, or really bring a spotlight to something I have been struggling with.  It sometimes feels like the message was written specifically for me.”  — Carol Waite

“Little did I know that Svaroopa^® and this book would impact my life so profoundly. I was preparing (although I didn’t even know it at the time!) for a huge transition in my life and every day I would read one of Swami Nirmalananda’s meditations. Often I would meditate on them.  Through her ability to communicate deeply authentic insights along with her
personal experiences, always with humility and humor, she reached deep into my heart and inspired, sustained and changed me in ways I never anticipated… such a surprise, such a delight, such a gift. Thank you Swami Nirmalananda!” — Janet Neff

“Yoga: Inside and Outside brings the teachings and practices of yoga directly into my everyday life.  Swamiji’s articles guide me into how to more fully relax my body (“Living in Shavasana” May 2004) and quiet my mind (“Quiet Mind, March 2007), in ways I’d never experienced before. Yoga class gives me so much, but using my mind in this way is enlightening! Anymore, if I am stressed out or in fear, I know to look at the chapter titles, make a selection, and find the help I need.” — Lyn Hoyt

by Swami Nirmalananda Saraswati

Bhagavan Nityananda gave Shaktipat to my Guru, Swami Muktananda, on August 15 1947.  Shaktipat, the gift of the universe and beyond, the gift of the Self.  I have been contemplating what this gift really is since I received Shaktipat from Muktananda, almost 40 years ago.  What do you say when someone gives you the universe, and beyond?

A triad of freedoms intersected on that auspicious day.  My Baba had been given an auspicious name when he became a swami:  the bliss (aananda) of freedom (mukta or moksha).   He dedicated himself to full time yoga studies and practices for 25 years, becoming an accomplished yogi, but still knew that he was incomplete.  He wanted more.  He wanted the “More” that is yoga’s specialty.  Baba sought the fulfillment of the promise held in his name.

That day was a day of freedom in another way.  At 8:30 am, the British formally granted independence to India.  After two decades of mostly non-violent struggle, Lord Mountbatten handed over the country to their new Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.  The day was one of great festivities!

And Nityananda gave Muktananda Shaktipat.  He gave the gift of freedom to one whose name was freedom, on a day of freedom.  No wonder Baba had so much to share with us!

Today I honor my Guru for his humility.  In order to be ready to receive Nityananda’s great gift, Muktananda described how he had to let go of his pride, pride in his years of practice, pride in his great learning, pride in his renunciation and austerities.  Though he was already a radiant yogi with an impressive bearing and presence, he became, in his own words, “a dog in Nityananda’s court.”  He always sang Nityananda’s praises, out of great love and gratitude to the one who gave him everything.

Muktananda!  Muktananda!

There is only one word on my lips – Muktananda!

You gave me everything

because you had everything to give

having received it from One who gave everything to you.

You made yourself able to receive,

so small that you could be made great,

and then give me the greatness within.

What can I say?  Only one thing:

Muktananda!  Muktananda!  Hail to Muktananda!

Reported by Dana Clark

One of my students attends classes twice a week, for many years now. She is a nurse and has suffered most of her life with back pain and sciatica. She says if she wasn’t doing the yoga she wouldn’t be able to keep working. She financially supports her husband and grandchild.

She recently told me how grateful she is to have been practicing standing poses in class. She works in a nursing home, and an elderly patient fell on her as she was helping him getting up out of bed. At first she panicked a bit as his full weight was leaning into her.

She then remembered to lean into her leg bones, like when we do Warrior poses. Doing this saved her back from injury.  She was able to support his weight while help came. Help did not come for at least 5 minutes as it was a very busy time and staff was thin on the ground.

Another example of how we can use yoga in our daily lives!!

By Matrika Gast

I found true education and personal growth only when I encountered Swami Nirmalananda and the Svaroopa^® Sciences.  In high school, I learned that “educate” is related to educere, Latin for “to lead forth that which is hidden.” I was thrilled by this! More and more education — that would lead the best of me (covered by adolescent issues) from inside to outside. I would bloom. I would fly with brightly colored wings. College, graduate school and becoming an academic myself left me still looking.

Foundations taught me how to align myself and others in primary spinal openers, poses that I had already fallen in love with.  Already certified and teaching in another yoga style for six years, I was stunned at the challenge of Foundations. I had to learn to learn in a new way, an exponentially deeper way. Experiential, embodied learning was beyond me. I had been dropped into a foreign land with a language I’d never heard before. No way was my facile mind going to carry the day.

Yet, though uncomfortable and frustrated, I somehow knew I belonged in this strange land. Trainings, retreats and conversations with Swamiji have begun to lead forth that which had been hidden in me all along. The first step was dissolving my delusion that I could depend on my analytical mind to figure out the right answers. I had to slow down, lean inward and really look inside myself to get a sense of what is deeply inside.

Within me emerged a resonance with Swamiji’s teachings, which inform all Svaroopa^® Sciences programs, both meditation and asana. I began to experience the knowing that I am the Self, and everyone is the Self, whether they know it or not. It’s the knowing that Shiva is being me, and being you. Even when you’re having a bad time, Shiva is having a fine time being you. That teaching has helped dissolve many opaque layers of contracted attitudes, behaviors and identities. Through the past 12 years, my Svaroopa^® Sciences education, slowly and surely, has led “the hidden” in me into the light, inside and outside.

For me the greatest amazement of this education is seeing that its process is more than just great teachings. The ingredient of a Great Teacher, the presence of the Guru, is essential. Decades ago I had a friend who had a guru in another lineage. I could see she was a successful, intelligent, respectable and professionally respected individual. But when she talked about the power she felt in the presence of her guru, I figured some part of her was just nuts. I knew I was never going to be that, well, off track. I certainly had no inclination to go in that direction!

That memory is a measure of personal growth, fostered through Svaroopa^® Sciences education. It’s led forth the knowing of what IS, in myself, in my family, in friends and students — and in the world with all of its wonder, miracles and tragedies. Along with the teachings she carries to us from her Baba, Swami Nirmalananda’s presence is the fire beneath the pot transforming all ingredients into pure nourishment.  And I’m eating my fill.