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.

By Swami Shrutananda

My friend texted, “ “My feast is finally ready.  No veggies.  Just carbs.  I love that Mac & Cheese.” On Christmas Day, she sent a lovely picture of steaming Mac & Cheese, homemade wheat bread and a pecan pie.  Later she texted, “I can’t stop eating it.  I have no control.  I want that bliss feeling over and over and over.” 

Especially during the holidays, many people find themselves in this food frenzy.  They go from one bliss bite to another.  Some even get bliss from veggies like collard greens, kale or a fresh green salad.  Your body knows these foods are what it needs.  You can feel your body absorbing the vitamins and minerals.  Bliss treat!  Unfortunately, it’s temporary.

You are propelled into seeking bliss because your essence is bliss but you’re not in touch with it.  Your bliss need is built into you.  Anytime bliss is missing, you don’t feel like yourself.  When you are in bliss, you stop chasing and settle into who you really are.

We not only seek bliss from food.  We also seek bliss from places, people, pets, music, etc.  If I get to sit in the garden, if I talk with that person, hug my pet, listen to beautiful music or go for a walk, I will feel happy.  It works most of the time, though not always.  On a cold winter day when it’s sleeting, you cannot sit in your garden.  You cannot enjoy the sun and the view of the beautiful trees, flowers and birds.  When you call a dear friend, sometimes they are needy or grumpy.  At times, your pet is whiny, not cuddly.  Sometimes your favorite music does not give you a bliss hit.  Walking can be no fun when your body is hurting.  The things on your happiness list are not always reliable.  In fact, they can cause you pain, especially when they don’t give you the bliss treat you wanted and needed. 

Later that same day, I phoned my friend.  She had a belly ache and sadly announced that she no longer loves pecan pie.  After all these years of giving her a bliss treat, the pie was now too sweet.  My friend asked what I was doing on Christmas.  I replied, “I am doing a full-day yoga retreat at the Ashram from 5:15 am to 9:30 pm.  We are doing three rounds, each with a yoga class, chanting and meditation.  With each round I experience more and more bliss.”  My friend said, “For bliss I do treats, and you do retreats.”  We laughed. 

Yes, you can do bliss treats that give you momentary experiences of bliss.  This is called dependent bliss.  You depend on something outside of you to give you bliss.  That thing, however, will eventually lead to pain in one of two ways.  It leads to pain when you do too much of it.  Or you experience pain when that thing fails to give you the bliss you wanted. 

It’s called “normal” to try to get in as many bliss treats as you can every day, so you will make yourself happy.  Yet, in-between the bliss treats you will be dissatisfied, even in pain.  My teacher explains that you must find bliss within:

For lasting bliss, for ever-expanding ecstasy, you have to find the inner source. Your own Self is the source of cosmic bliss.  Once you’ve experienced it, it is the only kind you’ll ever really be satisfied with.

^{— Swami Nirmalananda, Practical Mysticism 5: Pleasure, Pain & Sex}

What if you could live in bliss all the time no matter where you were, who you were with or what you were doing?  This is independent bliss.  To build this capacity you need bliss retreats.  Yoga retreats are about finding your source of bliss — inside.  You don’t need it to be a whole day.  A bliss retreat can be just a minute or a little more.

For an instant bliss retreat, you can repeat mantra, chant or meditate.  How does this work?  While you do these practices, your brain is rewiring itself.  This capacity is called neural plasticity.  Few people grasp how quickly this shift can happen and how extensive brain changes can be.  How much control each of us has over the process is surprising!  In Bliss Brain, Dr. Dawson Church finds stunning evidence of rapid and radical brain change.  In just eight weeks of meditation, 12 minutes a day, he found that measurable changes are produced in our brains.  These changes make us calmer, happier, and more resilient.

Dr. Church says, “When we cultivate these pleasurable states over time, they become traits.  We don’t just feel more blissful as a temporary state; the changes are literally hard-wired into our brains, becoming stable and enduring personality traits.”  His research shows that neural remodeling goes much farther than scientists have previously understood, with stress circuits shriveling over time.  Simultaneously, “The Enlightenment Circuit” — associated with happiness, compassion, productivity, creativity, and resilience — expands.”

Long before these discoveries by researchers, the ancient sages knew this experience and described it:

Lokanandah samadhi-sukham.
^{— Shiva Sutras 1.18}

In every moment, such a yogi easily experiences the bliss of Consciousness.

^{— Rendered by Swami Nirmalananda}

Who is such a yogi? Such a yogi is established in the experiential knowing of their own Divine Self.  How do you get there?  Church states that during deep meditation “the 7 neurochemicals of ecstasy” are released in our brains.  These include anandamide, a neurotransmitter that’s been named “the bliss molecule.”  Notice that aananda, the Sanskrit word for bliss, is the root of the neurotransmitter anandamide.  Your brain makes bliss chemicals.

How does this work?  Svaroopa^® Vidya Meditation specializes in carrying you to the source of bliss, your own Divine Essence, your own Self.  This feeling of your own Self has a physical effect on your body and your mind.  Your mind becomes saturated in bliss of your own being.

Starting right now, through the Svaroopa^® Sciences practices developed by Swami Nirmalananda, you can begin to rewire your brain for bliss.  It will not take 8 weeks.  It won’t even take 12 minutes.  In this Shaktipat tradition, the effects are almost instantaneous.  Our practices are infused with Divine Power.  This Grace flows through our lineage — Swami Nirmalananda, her Guru, Baba Muktananda, and his Guru, Bhagawan Nityananda, and meditation masters back through countless ages.  Each has added their energy, support and blessings to these practices. 

You put forth even a little bit of effort and you get an avalanche of benefit back.  The practices that return the most bliss for your investment of time are chanting, japa (repetition of mantra), and especially meditation.  Even a minute of these practices will begin to rewire your brain for bliss, revealing your own Divine Essence to you. January is a lovely time to make a New Year’s Resolution.  You choose — treats or retreats.  Yoga promises that, when you do more and more yoga, your state will be continuous ever-expanding ecstasy.

By Gurudevi Nirmalananda

While you’re waiting for life to get back to normal, you’re still limited in where you can go and who you can see.  Sheltering in place means you can’t do a lot of your usual things.  However, the truth is that most of them are timewasters. 

I remember arriving at a rural hotel in India near an Ashram I was visiting.  The staff member taking me to my room proudly pointed out their pool, tennis courts and a game room.  He encouraged me to make use of their amenities but I demurred.  Shocked, he asked, “What will you do to kill time?”

I don’t want to kill time.  I want to make full use of every precious moment.  Life is for living, I learned from the fictional sage named Auntie Mame.  I’m still sure she was right.  But what kind of living can you do in a pandemic?  Well, it turns out that living fully is not about being busy in every moment.  It’s about being more alive, whether you’re busy or quiet.  The whole point of yoga is to make you more alive, more present, more fulfilled and full-filled within yourself.

For that, you need to find your capital S-Self — the Divine Reality within you that is you.  Svaroopa^® Vidya Meditation opens your access to this vast, pure, sacred and holy interior dimension.  The specialty of this tradition is Shaktipat, the inner opening which gives you easy access to the God within.

It’s the God-feeling that I’m talking about, not the personhood of God, not your idea of who or what God is – but what you feel inside when you experience God.  My Guru explained it this way:

Bhave hi vidyate devo.

God is in your feeling

You know the feeling.  I know the feeling.  You look for this inner feeling in so many places and in so many ways – but the reality is that, when you feel it, it’s inside.  No matter where you go or what you do, the experience is an internal experience.

I went to a concert put on by the Tibetan Gyüto monks; each man sings a chord on his own.  And they sing it all together.  It is amazing!  But it’s not the sound that’s so incredible – it’s the inner experience it provokes.  Time stops as these sounds hang in the air, combining and twining around each other – total timelessness, pure space and vastness, deep inner opening and pure bliss.  The God-feeling.  That’s the point.

At the summer camp I went to as a teen, there was a quiet area, a lookout point, reserved for those who joined a special group.  We got special badges and only those with the badge could go to this spot.  It was a place of silence.  I loved it there, but I couldn’t figure out why.  I’d go look at the view of the valley, but the feeling didn’t come from there.  It didn’t come from the trees, not from the earth or the rock I liked to sit on.  What I couldn’t figure out was that it was coming from inside me. The God-feeling. That’s the point.

I sat in the sunroom of my home the other day, sipping some hot tea.  After a while I stopped sipping and just enjoyed the light filtering through the clouds and trees.  No words.  No reason to be there, no reason to leave.  No memories or plans.  Just being.  The God-feeling.  That’s the point.

Meditation is the best pathway, of course.  We use mantra to get past the mind’s churning, to dive deeper within.  It’s amazingly easy, thanks to the energy planted in the mantra by my Guru, and by his Guru before him as well as the many preceding generations. 

Maybe this is what you can do with yourself during remaining months of the pandemic — get filled from the inside out.  Maybe this could be your New Year’s resolution:  to discover your own capital S-Self.  For that, you must meditate.

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By Gurudevi Nirmalananda

A single candle flame washes the dark out of a whole room.  No scrub bucket needed, you can’t wash the dark away with water.  Only light devours dark.  This theme pervades the holy days around the upcoming solstice.  The shorter days of the Northern Hemisphere celebrate light when we’re missing it; the longer days of the Southern Hemisphere celebrate light in the abundance of its gifts.  Yoga celebrates light all year long, but it’s the inner light that matters.

The pandemic changes the outer landscape, probably affecting your holiday traditions.  It makes each person matter more, because you get to see them or because you don’t.  It’s like your life lights up when they come into it.  As meaningful as that can be, yoga urges you to focus on your own light.  That inner light that you so readily share with others is meant to lighten your own inner landscape.  When you base yourself in the light of your own Beingness, it vaporizes all the dark memories, dissolves all the dark predictions of your future (worries) and makes your burdens easier to carry.  Light banishes heaviness as well as darkness so only one thing remains:  the light of your own being.

This is yoga’s focus. This is Svaroopa^® yoga’s specialty:  to open the doorway inside, to make it easy for you to find your Self.  This is why I have posted free teachings online for you, hundreds of audios and articles that shine the light for you, illumining the pathway inward.  Please allow me to help you discover the pathway inward, especially at this powerful time of year. 

Enjoy the lights shining outside and the people parading through your life so beautifully, but don’t forget who you are while you see all these forms of light.  Be the light.  As you’re looking outward, check and see — who is looking through your eyes? 

There is only One Reality, being all and seeing through everyone’s eyes, including yours.  There is only One Presence, being you as well as all.  There is only one Light, shining in all, shining as all. Find the sacred source of that light within you.  You are that candle flame that lights the whole room.  When you bring your Self with you, everyone and everything you touch is made sacred. 

By Swami Samvidaananda 

Recently, I saw a pharmacy ad showing a meditating yogi paired with the word “health.”  How widespread is meditation that a major pharmacy would use such an image?  Meditation is so widespread how that everyone seeing that image would go, “Oh yeah, meditation means health.” 

It does.  Meditation makes you healthier and happier.  It helps you sleep, reduces your stress, and helps you focus.  Your meditation practice gives you greater calm, peace of mind, and resiliency.  And so much more. 

I practice and teach a yogic meditation named Svaroopa^® Vidya Meditation.  Svaroopa means your own inner essence, which is your Divine Self.  Vidya means experiential knowing.  While “svaroopa vidya” names the technique, it’s also a promise:  meditate and you will experience your own Self.  When you do, you discover that you are full, whole, and complete on the inside.  You will realize that you are made of the Divinity of which everything is made.  That Divinity is you. 

So how come you don’t know your Divinity all the time?  The short answer is you’ve got stuff.  Mental, emotional, and physical stuff gums up the works.  It keeps you from knowing the wholeness and holiness that you already are.  Worries, insecurities, and self-limiting thoughts cut you down to size.  They make you feel small, limited and alone.  Everyone has this kind of stuff; it’s built into every human being.  The good news is this: the capacity to be free of these limitations is also built in.   

Svaroopa^® Vidya Meditation specializes in breaking through your built-in limitations.  Then you know the Divine whole you.  This breakthrough is accomplished by an inner awakening of your inner energy of upliftment.  Once you’ve received this awakening, your own meditative energy arises through your spine every time you meditate.  As it does, it melts the inner blockages.  It dissolves the density and incinerates the limitations that keep you from knowing your Self. 

What does that mean for your meditation?  It means that you might not look like the pharmacy’s image of the meditating yogi. Instead of sitting peacefully and perfectly upright, you might rock or sweat.  You could see inner lights or visions or have profound insights.  Waves of joy, sadness, anger, grief, laughter or love may arise and subside.  You might experience samadhi, an immersion into the depths of your Self that feels like sleep.  You may have meditations in which you experience physical discomfort, or waves of bliss or deep stillness. 

This is the short list.  The list of possible meditation experiences is very, very long.  Why?  Because you get what you need, you get your next step.  It will be unique to you.  The reason is that you have unique talents, strengths and quirks.  Your impediments and patterns of holding yourself small are also uniquely yours.  So you’ll have exactly the experiences needed to unravel that stuff.  My Guru, Swami Nirmalananda, puts it this way: “Meditation is what happens when you sit to meditate.”  It all counts.  Every experience is valid and valuable.  It’s all legit.   

Yet the experiences are not the goal.  They are merely steps on the path.  They are signs that your inner obstacles are being cleared away.  With this clearing, you can know and be the Divine whole of your Self all the time.  That’s the goal.  It’s called Self-Realization because you realize that you are the Self.  You don’t become or attain something that you are not.  You realize who you are and always have been.  You just didn’t know it all the time.  The promise of this tradition is that you will and that we can help you get there. 

By Swami Sahajananda

When I grew up in Manhattan, cranes and wrecking balls demolishing old buildings were a constant presence.  My neighborhood transformed from rundown six-story tenements to twenty-story high-class apartment buildings.  I watched through eyelevel holes cut into the tall wooden fences around the construction sites.  The physical force and energy of the demolition was most fascinating.  In a moment, this power turned walls that had stood for a century into rubble.

I witnessed the power of destruction on the outside.  This power is also a spiritual force within each human being.  In yoga, it is one of the functions of the Ultimate Reality, called Shiva.  Along with destruction, Shiva has four other cosmic powers: creation, maintenance, concealment and revelation.  When acting as a force of destruction, Shiva is called Bhairava.  Bhairava opens you up and destroys your limiting delusion of who you think you are.  The Shiva Sutras, an ancient yogic text, explains:

Udyamo Bhairava  — Shiva Sutras 1.5

The upwelling of consciousness within you reveals your own Divinity.  — Rendered by Gurudevi Nirmalananda

Bhairava shakes up your complacency and comfort.  Bhairava propels you past the familiar illusion of who you think you are.  You are propelled into the awareness of yourself as Consciousness Itself.  This is your own Self.

I always had a subtle, persistent inner yearning.  I now can name it as the desire to know my Self.  Back then, though, I was always looking for something to fill this yearning.  I really did not know what I was looking for.  Yet this longing sent me searching.  I lived in many different places with a variety of people.  I took many different healing and personal growth trainings and workshops.  Each gave me a bit of what I was looking for, at least for a moment.  Still, nothing fully touched the longing I had felt since I was a teenager.

Then I took a weekend yoga workshop with Gurudevi Nirmalananda.  As the weekend progressed, a profound feeling of “rightness” arose within me.  For so long, this experience was what I had been searching for.  As I was driving home, everything was different.  Something big had opened within me through Gurudevi’s Svaroopa^® yoga practices.  I felt alive.  I felt that everything was just right.  Within, I could feel the something more I’d been seeking.  Gratitude, joy and bliss welled up and filled that amorphous hole of yearning inside!

The exhilarating force of Bhairava brought me to the knowing my Own Self within.  Bhairava was also the yearning that had set me searching for something I couldn’t define.  This inherent longing had started me on the path of a seeker.  It ultimately took me to that transformative yoga workshop with Gurudevi.  

The awakening to your own Self is not just theoretical nor is it obscure.  Your yearning leads you to doing yoga practices like yoga poses and meditation.  The practices thin out the layers that hide the knowing of who you are.  You become aware of the deeper dimension of your own being, which you earnestly desire.

In the Svaroopa^® yoga lineage, you have the support of Gurudevi Nirmalananda.  She has traveled the path to being established in knowing herself as Consciousness Itself.  She elucidates the path for you and speeds your progress.  From Gurudevi you receive Grace that fuels your internal transformation, the awakening of your spiritual energy.  This gift is called Shaktipat.  It jumpstarts the process of your inner upliftment.  You are blasted past your resistances and the walls of delusion crumble.

Through Shaktipat, Bhairava’s cosmic power destroys your limitations.  You open inward to a deep freedom, which is your inherent nature.  The “not knowing” of your Self is ended.  You come to know your Self as Consciousness-Itself.  Moving out of the cramped “tenement” of mistaken ideas of who you are, yoga realize your own Self.  You live in that expansive inner state, illuminated by the upwelling of your own Divine Light.

By Swami Satrupananda

How will the pandemic play out?  Who will win the U.S. Presidential election? How will it impact me?  You ask these questions because you want certainty in the future.  You seek this certainty because you have forgotten the certainty of your own existence.  Your own existence is unchanging, eternal.  You will feel unsettled until you know and live from that inner certainty.  It’s time to stop looking for certainty in the world and find your eternal, unchanging Essence within.

Technology can make us feel like we are in control of our lives, providing the illusion of certainty.  “Siri, set a timer for 5 minutes.”  “Alexa, play music I like.”  Our phones are smart.  Our homes are getting smarter.  Stores are opening with no cashiers and no checkout lines.  Technology has helped declutter your mind of telephone numbers as well as appointment times and dates.  Yet your mind still churns.

You try to calm your mind by finding certainty in external circumstances.  But you are looking in the wrong place.  To find certainty, look for it in your own existence.  The sages from India describe your innermost Essence as unchanging and eternal.  In the Vivekachudamani, the 8^th century yogic sage Shankaracharya described this Essence:

Aatmaan [your Divine Existence] is birthless and deathless. It neither grows nor decays. It is unchangeable, eternal. It does not dissolve when your body dissolves. — Translated by Swami Nirmalananda

You exist beyond birth and death.  You have never not existed.  You will never stop existing.  Nothing you can take away from yourself will make you less you.  Nothing you can add will make you more you.  You are unchanging and eternal.  You exist.  Your existence is the one Eternal Existence that is being everyone and everything.

I remember my first experience of the eternity of my beingness.  It was early on in my meditation path.  An awareness arose that I always existed and will always exist.  It was a knowing beyond my intellect.  Having been steeped in the time-space continuum from my scientific education, my intellect was blown away.  I could not understand my experience with my mind.  Yet I knew my Eternal Beingness was more real than anything my mind could ever understand.

It is incredible that I had such a profound experience of my own eternality so early on in meditation.  This is the specialty of Svaroopa^® Vidya Meditation: a Meditation Master shows you the way.  Swami Nirmalananda is a modern day-Meditation Master, a representative of an unbroken lineage of Masters.  She opens the door inside to your own certain Existence.  She is the catalyst that fuels the discovery, making it quick and easy.

Well, at least she makes it quicker and easier.  This is a process of discovering and learning to abide in your own Existence.  It is a bit peculiar:  if you are eternal, beyond time, why don’t you know it all the time?  The answer is a four-letter word: mind.  Your mind draws you outward.  

Your mind runs around the world seeking certainty that can only be found inside.  It’s not just your mind.  Everyone’s mind does this.  It’s called the human dilemma.  Each of us is the one eternal Existence, yet we don’t know.  It is the ultimate quest in life — to know your own eternal Existence.  So your mind needs to do some work.

By using your mind to turn inward, you can discover and live in the certainty of your own Existence.  Abiding in your eternal Essence, you continue to live in the world.  But you approach it from a different place within yourself.  While living in this uncertain world, you are based in the certainty of your eternal Existence.  To get there, follow the path shown by Swami Nirmalananda and dive within.

By Swami Prajñananda

Deep and easy.  This is the specialty of Svaroopa^® Vidya Meditation.  Even first-time meditators often experience deep meditative absorption in their very first meditation.  We call this “dropping in.”  You sit and repeat the mantra (your tool for meditation).  After only a few repetitions, you settle into a deeper dimension within yourself. 

The first few times you “drop in,” you may think you fell asleep.  But this is not the same as sleep.  Instead of going into unconsciousness, you are delving into Consciousness-Itself.  When you open your eyes after your meditation, you feel more energized, expanded and settled within.  This is something different than sleep.  This is the beginning of your awakening. 

Awakening is a good description because you progressively become more aware as you continue meditating.  Awake means “to become conscious or aware of something.”  That is what happens when you meditate — you become aware of something.  You become aware of your own Divine essence, which is pure, whole and complete.  Yoga calls this your Self.  Svaroopa^® Vidya Meditation gives you easy access to your own essence, your own Self. 

This experience changes how you feel within yourself, even when you’re not meditating.  You feel better, more alive and more you.  Yet you may not know how you got to that deeper level or how to stay there.  You plunge in and then, like a cork in water, you bob out.   Inside and outside seem disconnected.  How do you bridge that gap?

When I first started meditating, I was a school teacher.  I squeezed all my yoga practices into the morning before my 8 am start time.  It was a tight schedule.  Everything was planned down to the minute, so when I finished meditating, I would jump up!  And then I was off to the next thing on my list.  There was no time for me to linger after my meditations.  So, I felt a disconnect between my meditation seat and my day-to-day life. 

You can extend your meditations beyond your mediation seat.  Simply linger after your timer goes off.  When you open your eyes, contemplate your meditation experience for a few minutes.  Notice how you feel.  Linger in the afterglow.  This is one of the reasons why we recommend journaling after every meditation.  It helps you to linger longer in your meditation.

Lingering is described by K.semaraaja in the Pratyabhij~nah.rdayam:

Samaadhi-sa.mskaaravati vyutthaane bhuuyo bhuuya”s-cid-aikyaamar”saan-nityodita-samaadhi-laabha.h.

— Pratyabhij~nah.rdayam 19

The permanent state of absorption is cultivated by dwelling on one’s own identity with consciousness (Chiti) over & over again. 

— Translated by Swami Nirmalananda

The sage K.semaraaja explains that not only is it possible to linger in your meditation, you can cultivate a “permanent state of absorption.”  He is describing a pathway to Self-Realization.  You can realize and live in this knowingness of who you are at the deepest level of your being. 

You can practice Self-Knowingness.  It starts with meditation.  You repeat mantra and dive deep within to experience your own Divine essence.  When you finish your meditation period, instead of jumping up and out, linger and deepen down and in.  Instead of leaving meditation for the world, extend your awareness to include the world without losing who you are.  This is the state the great Masters have described through the ages.  But it is not exclusive to those who lived in the past.  This is possible for you too.  To make this a reality, in the here and now, meditate.  Meditate and linger in your own essence.  Take that knowing and being of who you are with you into the world and into your life.  Cultivate Self-Knowingness.

By Swami Samvidaananda Saraswati

You have a built-in ability to meditate.  Most people that I know who don’t currently meditate believe it’s a good idea.  But they aren’t sure where to begin.  Some think it might be hard or weird.  However, you actually already know how.  When you drive a car, play a musical instrument or engage in a sport, you concentrate.  Even to wash dishes or have a conversation with a friend, you focus.  It’s something you do many times every day.  It’s how you achieve anything in the world.  My Guru’s Guru taught that whatever you accomplish in the world, comes through your power of concentration. This is nothing but meditation, though on external things.

You are used to meditating on external, everyday things.  But your mind is like the camera on your phone.  Your camera focuses on what’s in front of you.  Or you tap a button to flip the camera to focus on yourself.  You can do that with your mind: flip the lens of your mind to shift your focus from looking outside to looking inside.  And what will you find when you look within?  

Well, first you’ll encounter the contents of your mind: hopes, fears, memories, lions, tigers and bears, oh my!  But all that mental activity, while real and important, is only the surface layer of what you’ll find.  There’s much more to you.  Yoga calls the more that you are, your capital-S Self.

A classic yogic comparison is that your Self is like the ocean.  Like the waves that keep on coming, your thoughts rise and fall, rise and fall.  But the waves are only the surface of the ocean.  In the same way, your thoughts are simply the surface level of who you are.  You have far greater depths.

When you dive beneath the waves, the water is calmer.  It’s quieter, and deeply peaceful.  When you meditate, you dive deeper than your thoughts, even deeper than your mind, into quiet, boundless, holy depths.  You discover you are not just a swimmer in the ocean.  You are the whole ocean.  From the shallows to the depths, you are all of it.  It’s called the “Ocean of Consciousness.”  There’s only One Reality.  It’s Divine.  It’s your own Self.

Meditation immerses you in the depths of your Divinity.  When you emerge, you’re refreshed, renewed and uplifted.  You don’t become someone different or something you are not.  You feel like you; you’re at your best.  At first, that wonderful feeling of well-being fades as you get farther from your meditation.  But over time your ability to live from your Divine Depths increases. Even though you have the inherent ability to meditate, you have to practice.  You spend too much of your time paddling around in the waves.  You won’t become an accomplished deep-sea diver overnight.  And the technique you choose matters; you need one that works for you.  Something tried and true.  Something that makes it easy.  I found that in Svaroopa^® Vidya Meditation.  This meditation works by the means of a chaitanya mantra.  That means it’s enlivened.  It is imbued with the energy of revelation and upliftment by the yoga masters of this lineage.  These Gurus have preceded you on the path.  When you apply your innate ability to concentrate to this enlivened mantra, you are powerfully propelled into the delicious depths of your Self.  Then your meditation is more than easy — it’s enlightening.

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By Swami Shrutananda Saraswati

I teach in a miracle factory.  A miracle is “a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency” (lexico.com).  Do you believe in miracles?  Nearly eighty percent of Americans do.  Believing in miracles is not limited to a certain age group or restricted to certain religious denominations or affiliations, reported by Psychology Today.  Yet it turns out only 38% Americans said they have had a miracle from God (faithgateway.com).  I find that percentage to be too low, for I hear miracle stories from Svaroopa^® Yoga teachers and students every day!

Before yoga, I was involved in outrigger canoe racing on the Pacific Ocean.  During one race a big wave poured into our 400-pound boat.  It became even heavier.  We stroked harder and harder to keep moving forward.  In my efforts, I injured my neck and shoulder.  For years I went to various doctors and therapists to heal, but nothing freed me from the pain.  My life became very limited.  If I wasn’t at work, I was at home recovering on the couch.  I could not do much more than that.

For nine long years, I took the maximum dose of Advil every day.  At one point I said in desperation, “God!  If you will just relieve my neck pain, I will not ask for anything more.”  Well, after that I found Svaroopa^® Yoga.  I was relieved of my neck pain within a year and a half.  So fast!  It was a miracle.  More miracles were to come.

Now I do not agree that miracles are “not explicable.”  While science is unable to explain such miracles, yoga has a clear explanation.  In yoga, miracles are reliable and predictable.  Yoga taps into the source of healing, the inner source of miracles.  Every time you do any of the Svaroopa^® Yoga practices, you access the source of healing within you.  The source is svaroopa — your own capital-S Self, your own inherent Divine Essence.  Every time you have an experience of Self, you feel healed.  This healing arises on all levels of your being simultaneously: physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

In the beginning, you don’t realize all that is unfolding within you, from the inside out.  You come into a yoga class with some physical, mental or emotional pain.  Then a miracle happens.  It heals!  Yet, even though now you are healed, you keep coming back to do more yoga.  Do you keep going to the doctor, if you are healed?  No, but you come back to yoga.  Now you are coming back for a whole different reason.

As wonderful as yoga’s healing benefits are, they are only the tip of the iceberg.  The real miracle is greater.  It is explained in the Shiva Sutras:

Vismayo yoga-bhumika.h —Shiva Sutras 1.12

Yogic realizations are truly amazing.

(translated by Swami Nirmalananda)

Your Svaroopa^® yoga practices lead you on the inward journey that is the goal of yoga.  This is the exploration of your own Self, your own Divine Essence.  Wonders begin to unfold inside that are beyond what you could ever imagine.  Look back to when you first started yoga.  Now look where you are now.  Could you have imagined what you have gotten so far?  This is a miracle.  You didn’t even know what to ask for.  Yet you have received it: yourself being the Self that you are now.

The yogis agree with the dictionary in stating that a miracle is “the work of divine agency.”  In yoga, by Grace, amazement after amazement unfolds within.  The Shaktipat Guru is a dedicated agent of Grace, which is the Divine Energy of Revelation.  It is the function of the Guru to reveal your own Self to you.  The unfoldment, the amazement, begins in earnest when you receive Shaktipat.  Shaktipat ignites your inner process of discovery.  The miracles become more and more amazing as you deepen into your own Self, expanding into the infinity of your own being.

I teach in a miracle factory.  It’s the biggest one I know, for I hear miracle stories from teachers and students every day!  This miracle factory is powered not by electricity, but by Grace.  Every day, these miracles are delivered all over the world.  They are fast, predictable and reliable.  Through the Svaroopa^® Yoga practices, particularly meditation and mantra repetition, you will live in the amazing and ever-deepening discovery of your own Self, from the inside out.