By Swami Satrupananda

When I met Gurudevi Nirmalananda, I didn’t know about mystics.  Yet it was obvious that she was having a different experience of being human than I was.  Answering one of my questions, she said, “I experience more bliss than you do.”  Bliss? What is bliss?  I wanted to know more.  I wanted to experience this “more bliss.”

By studying with Gurudevi, I learned that bliss is the experience of the knowing of your own Divinity.  Gurudevi is established in this knowing.  She also knows and sees that we are all the same One Divine Reality.  This is true, even if we don’t know it.  This was a radical concept for my scientific mind to grasp.  Yet, from my own experiences with Gurudevi, I could not ignore the evidence of its truth.

As I studied further, I learned those who experience their beingness as one with the Divine are called mystics.  This ultimate experience is not limited to one spiritual or religious path.  There have been many mystics throughout time and across cultures.  Here are some quotations from a few great mystics:

Saint Teresa of Ávila

Roman Catholic Saint

Lived: Spain 1515-1582

 “The Lord is very deep within their own souls… Within oneself, clearly, is the best place to look; and it’s not necessary to go to heaven, nor any further than our own selves.”¹

Julian of Norwich

English theologian and anchoress

Lived: England 1343-1416

“I saw no difference between God and our substance, but, as it were, all God.”²

Mansour Al-Hallaj

Persian Mystic & Poet

Lived: Persia 858-922

“I am the Truth.”³

“I saw my Lord with the eye of the heart.

I asked, ‘Who are You?’

He replied, ‘You.’”⁴

Adi Shankaracharya

Indian philosopher

Lived: India, 700-750

“I am completely full and perfect.

I am Shiva.

I am my own Self.

I am eternal bliss. I am eternal bliss.”

The mystics agree that you find the Divine within.  And the Divinity you find within is not different from you.

As the science of mysticism, yoga describes in detail the mystical experience.  Yoga also defines the stages and steps that take you to mystical knowing.  Yoga’s practices, tested throughout time, are proven 100% reliable in taking you to this destination. Gurudevi is proof of that as a modern-day yoga master and mystic.

Gurudevi discovered her mystical reality by studying with her teacher Swami Muktananda. Muktananda did the practices his teacher, Bhagavan Nityananda, gave him.  Gurudevi and Baba Muktananda followed the path defined by the science of yoga by following the directions from a Master teacher.  It worked.

Muktananda describes his mystical experience as:

“He is supreme Bliss

and supreme Consciousness.

He, truly, is God,

is Nityananda, is Muktananda.”

Swami Muktananda, Mukteshwari, Verse 22

In this verse, Muktananda describes himself many ways, showing each is equivalent:  

supreme Bliss = supreme Consciousness = God = Nityananda = Muktananda

Consciousness, the knowingness of your own Self, is a bliss-full experience. It is the same as the One Divine Reality, also called God. This is who Muktananda discovered himself to be inside. It is the same One Divine Reality that Nityananda found within himself as himself. And it is the same Divine Essence that you will find as your own Self.

When you discover your inherent Essence, you will make the same statement.  You can personalize Muktananda’s quote:

“I am supreme Bliss

and supreme Consciousness.

I, truly, am God,

 am Nityananda, am Muktananda.”

That has been my experience. Sometimes I experience myself as Bliss, other times as Consciousness. I’ve also had the experience, “I am Nityananda.”  The first time it happened, I was at Nityananda’s temple in Ganeshpuri India.  I was waving a candle flame in front of Nityananda’s enlivened statue.  On the outside, there appeared to be two: Nityananda and me.  But my experience was that there was only One.  I was Nityananda waving the flame to Nityananda.  The flame and the air between us was Nityananda.  The act of waving the flame was the same One Nityananda.  Then on the inside Nityananda said to me, “I am Nityananda.”  He wasn’t telling me his name.  He was telling me who I am.

The mystics promise this result from the science of yoga.  When you follow the scientific formula, you get the proven results.  Originally tested in India over millennia, principles of the science of yoga are now being proven around the globe.

What is the scientific formula of yoga’s mystical practices?  Study with a living mystic. Gurudevi Nirmalananda has mastered the formula by following her teacher’s directions. Now she guides you along the way since she knows both the path and the destination. Then you will also discover the mystical reality: Divinity is found within as you.

^{1 http://daughterofthechurch.weebly.com/visions-teresa-avila.html
2 https://www.imere.org/content/mystical-experience-julian-norwich
3 https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/anal-haqq-i-am-the-truth-the-most-famous-of-the-sufi-sathiyat-ecstatic-utterances-or-paradoxes
4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Hallaj}

By Swami Prajñananda

Darkness cannot resist the light.  In a dark room, if you light a single candle, it banishes the dark.  It works the same way when you do your yoga practices.  Whether you are doing Svaroopa^® yoga poses, breathing, mantra, meditation or more, there is a common denominator.  You are invoking the light of your own being, which yoga names your capital-S Self.  This light dwells within you as you. 

Yet for most people the perception of this light is diminished or hidden — covered over by the darkness of not-knowing.  Instead of seeing and being the light, you focus on the limitations that keep you in the dark. 

Yoga gives you the tools to cut through those limitations, like a candle flame cutting through the darkness.  When you access your own inner light, it can then shine forth fully.  This quality of light and illumination is one reason that it is called “the fire of yoga.”  This fire consumes what holds you back from the knowing of your own Self.

Here at the Ashram, we live across the street from a river.  During the transition seasons we get heavy fog coming off the river in the mornings.  The fog can be so thick that you are not able to see even a foot in front of you.  Yet, like clockwork, when the sun rises, the light dissolves the fog. 

There is a yogic teaching that describes this phenomenon:

_{citi-vahnir avaroha-pade channo’pi maatrayaa meyendhana.m plu.syati.}

^{— Pratyabhij~nah.rdayam 14}

_{The Fire of Consciousness, though concealed in the individual, burns away Maayaa’s limiting knowledge like fire burns fuel.}

^{— translated by Swami Nirmalananda}

In this aphorism, your own Self is named Chiti — the Fire of Consciousness.  Fire is a good description for Chiti because the qualities of fire are light and heat.  The light in this case refers to Chiti’s knowing, named Consciousness.  Consciousness is the knowing of your own being; you know that you are you.  This knowing is and can be described as light. 

It’s like in those old-school cartoons when the character all of a sudden realizes something and a lightbulb goes on above their head.  The light in the lightbulb represents understanding and knowing. 

Chiti’s knowing also has the quality of heat.  Like how fire burns fuel, the heat of your knowing burns away the density of your not-knowing.  The not-knowing is named Maayaa, the contracting energy that conceals the light of your own being.  When you are stuck in Maayaa, you think that you are this small and limited individual, lonely and alone.  Svaroopa^® yoga specializes in the turning within, to invoke your own inner light, which is the Fire of Consciousness.  Like fog in the sunlight, Maayaa’s limiting knowledge is dissolved by this inner fire. 

So how does this affect you in your day-to-day life?  When you do Svaroopa^® yoga practices, you shift your focus from Maayaa to Chiti, from outside to inside, from not-knowing to knowing.  With this shift in focus, the density and thickness, which had been blinding you from seeing your own brilliant Self, simply melts away.  You get immediate results.  In your spiritual practice, you settle more deeply into your Self.  It is a feeling of ease within your own skin.  You feel like you.  When you feel like you, you show up in your life with that same sense of ease. 

Because you are based in the light of your own being, everything in your life becomes easier and more joyous.  Even when you experience challenges, you face them with surety and steadiness.  Darkness cannot resist the light because the light is who you truly are.  To live in the light, to know and be it, do more yoga.