Life Force - God Incarnate & Healer Universal!

The ancient metaphysical teachings of East and West, through the voice of the masters, have averred since time immemorial that the creation, the cosmos, and you and I are manifestations of the One Light of the Supreme Spirit. A further extension of this precept, discovered through intuition and proven by the methods of modern science by Albert Einstein, goes further to say that energy is the underlying and unifying force of all creation.

From the view point of the spiritual teachings of Vedanta, Yoga, and Shankhya (the core of the so-called "Indian philosophy") the link between Spirit (consciousness or mind) and matter is this energy. It is called "prana" in Sanskrit, and Chi, in the far East. The spiritual teaching is that this innate, intelligent, and divine Life Force takes the form of the subtle ("astral") body and is the repository of the matrix of our individual karma (ego, tendencies, life patterns). But, being in essence our higher Self, or soul, it is divine. It holds the key to our spiritual growth. By becoming increasingly aware of and sensitive to this Life Force, one grows in wisdom, peace, self-acceptance and all the other attributes of Life Force and our soul. This awareness begins with physical, mental and emotional relaxation from the distraction and hypnosis of body and ego consciousness. Specific Life Force control techniques, known as pranayama, form the heart of yoga disciplines.

This Life Force has its residence in the subtle, astral spine. This astral spine is analogous to and the subtle prototype for the physical spine and vertebrae. Advanced yogic techniques have for their focus concentration upon the astral spine. The astral spine includes along its length the "doorways" known as the chakras. Through these doors, Life Force goes out into the physical body and returns inward to its "source" or home in the subtle spine.

Thus it is that the science of yoga uses Life Force control for spiritual growth towards Self-realization. But it is also true that this very same Life Force control is the key to health and well being! The Spirit has descended into human form through the agency of prana, thus giving us birth, life, energy, intelligence and physical form. Retracing our steps through and with prana back to Spirit is the "anatomical" essence of spiritual growth. This knowledge can accelerate our spiritual awakening and is the unique contribution of yoga science to the sincere efforts of spiritual seekers regardless of religious affiliation.

Nonetheless, Paramhansa Yogananda, and his disciple and founder of Ananda (worldwide), Swami Kriyananda, dedicated much of their teachings and public service to helping people use these precepts and techniques for self-improvement, success, better relationships and, of course, health. A healthy body and ego are essential or at least greatly helpful for spiritual growth.

The now popular yoga and meditation therapy techniques are a direct result of the intuitive and experimental knowledge of Life Force as the essential element in all life and in all healing. It has become increasingly sophisticated and works in tandem with modern medical science to assist in healing body and mind. The effectiveness of allopathic medicine depends upon the degree to which modern drugs and methods stimulate the healing power of Life Force. Western medicine acknowledges, too, that patient attitude and faith has a direct and measurable effect upon healing. Nonetheless, stopping short of working with physical or mental disease (a task which requires proper medical training and teamwork with medical professionals), yoga and meditation techniques can be offered and used by anyone for personal self-improvement and general health and well-being.

It is our hope, therefore, at Ananda in the Seattle area ("Ananda Meditation Temple in Bothell, WA www.AnandaWA.org) to move in the direction of developing courses in yoga and meditation designed specifically to apply the precepts and techniques of yoga and meditation for the general health and well-being.

Beyond the obvious physical health culture is the more subtle mental culture. By improving our mental well-being -- calmness, intuition, self-awareness, concentration, positive attitudes, and creativity -- we can improve our success in business or career; in relationships; and in our ability to change habits in eating, sleeping, and behavior.

This opens the doors to courses in bringing yoga principles and techniques into business, learning the superior merits of cooperation over competition; of integrity and servicefulness over short-term profits; to understandings that true success brings greater happiness, not more tension and stress.

In dietary matters, Life Force control teaches the how and why prana-filled foods bring more energy and well-being to both body and mind; why a vegetarian diet is generally better for most people. In human relations and mental well-being, calmness and self-awareness and movement of Life Force upward in the subtle spine can help us transmute harmful emotions; to love without fear; to become more expansive, joyful and creative. Even sustainable food growing represents Life Force awareness (in nature). There is so much that can be shared and applied in practical ways for a better life.

In 2007 we created the Institute of Living Yoga - "where yoga comes to life!." At present, the Institute sponsors only the yoga teacher training and the meditation teacher training. Now we would like begin developing new courses and this new direction of using yoga (and meditation) for health of body and mind.

None of this is new to yoga; none of this is new to the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda or Swami Kriyananda (and, by extension, Ananda worldwide). But clarity of emphasis and focus can take one deeper in any direction or activity. While Ananda represents the teachings of Yogananda, this does not make the techniques themselves sectarian or narrow. The ancient yogic science is for everyone and it is universal. Nor is there any need for us to survey and represent the many excellent and varied yoga lineages in order to help others. The essence - Life Force awareness and control - is the same.

So I ask for your blessings and support for this new emphasis. It won't happen overnight and we will need help with web development, content and curriculum, and teacher development along with the tools of web supported sharing. Any sincere interest and support is welcome.

Blessings to all,

Swami Hrimananda
aka Hriman

Meditation: Empty or Full?

One of the keen minds I enjoy chatting with the other day, queried: "I sometimes get confused whether in meditation I should be striving to be "empty" or whether I should "worship" my guru or God in some other form or abstract visualization (such as Light or Sound)? Isn't "worship" but a mental projection? I don't want to deceive myself! Which is correct?"

Hmmmm: maybe both? Paramhansa Yogananda, and his disciple, my teacher, Swami Kriyananda, taught that the concept of "nirvana" (emptiness) is all too often misunderstood. Kriyananda asks, tongue firmly in cheek, "Why would anyone want to aspire toward self-extinguishment? No wonder the Buddhist boddhisattvas decide to return to incarnations to help others: they took a "rain check" on spiritual suicide!"

We weren't created with this deeply rooted impulse to survive only to kill it, and by extension, ourselves! (Nor are we given the impulse to create, procreate, to love and to expand only to suppress it!)

Patanjali describes spiritual evolution and the desire to grow in truth and realization as smriti, or memory. The great teacher, the 19th century avatar Ramakrishna, described spiritual growth akin to peeling an onion: each layer of our delusions are peeled off until "no-thing" remains.

The process of emptying ourselves of false self-definitions and self-limiting desires, memories, and opinions is a necessary part of smriti. Ego transcendence has always been an essential element of the spiritual path in every tradition. So, YES: NIRVANA, a state where the ego is dissolved, is a true goal and a true state of consciousness.

St. John of the Cross, the great Christian mystic and contemporary of St. Teresa of Avila (being to him what St. Clare was to St. Francis, a spiritual companion on the path), spoke of this need. He wrote, now so famously:

In order to arrive at having pleasure in everything,

Desire pleasure in nothing.

In order to arrive at possessing everything,

Desire to possess nothing.

In order to arrive at being everything,

Desire to be nothing.

In order to arrive at the knowledge of everything,

Desire to know nothing.

But the question remains: is emptiness the end of all spiritual growth and seeking? Is God, as the Supreme Spirit, simply No-thing? Well, yes, as Pure Consciousness and as "thing" represents material objects, truly God might be described as "No Thing." But here the intellect, striving to reach beyond its own context of "subject-verb-object," fails to reach its goal. The intellect can describe the orange--its shape, color and sweetness and various biological attributes--but it cannot give to us the taste of the orange!

We live that we might live forever; we live that we might be conscious of life and ourselves; we live that we might enjoy Life and find unending satisfaction. To insist that we must kill our own consciousness to achieve, ah, what, exactly? This is absurd.

The great teacher, Swami Shankyacharya (the "adi" or first great teacher, or acharya, in the Indian monastic tradition) described God and the purpose and goal of God's creation and our own, human life, as one and the same: Satchidananadam: immortality, self-awareness, and joy. Or, as Paramhansa Yogananda rendered it: "ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new joy!" This is what our hearts seek through many lives and in an infinity of forms and experiences. No outer accomplishment, pleasure, or state, conditioned upon the ceaseless flux of outward conditions, can ever satisfy this eternal, God-knowing impulse.

But first we must empty ourselves of our own desires and ego self-affirmation. Our separateness, personified in the Goddess Kundalini and in her power to delude or to enlighten, is the "entrenched vitality of our mortal delusion" (quoting Swami Kriyananda from his classic text: Art and Science of Raja Yoga).

The reward of our emptying ourselves of all delusion and material desire and ego affirmation is the steady tsunami-like rise of the ocean of bliss into our consciousness. It starts as a little bubble of joy, born of meditation and right attitude in daily life. (Right attitude is self-giving and self-offering, inter alia.)

Thus meditation is both empty and full. Emptiness, as quietude and stillness experienced during meditation, is in fact felt as very dynamic, very full. There are times, however, when our emptiness is simply that: devoid of the little self and of all fluctuations. Indeed, Patanjali not only describes the spiritual path as a process of soul recollectedness (smirit-memory) but as the gradual subsiding of our energetic commitment to our likes, dislikes, desires, memories, and all self-involvement. His most famous sutra, well, second to the aphorism in which he lists the now famous eight steps of Ashtanga Yoga, is Yogas chitta vritti nirodha. Sometimes clumsily translated as "Yoga (state of Oneness) is the neutralization of the waves of mind-stuff!" (A singularly useless translation, I might add. Giving rise to more questions than answers.) But seen as the dissolution of ego involvement, it makes perfect sense.

Nor is the process and experience of meditation a linear one: first empty, then full---like doing the dishes, cleaning the kitchen or the workshop or your desk before beginning a new project. Yes it is that in the big picture but in sitting down, sometimes we are filled with devotion and longing for God; other times we are crushed by grief or disillusionment. The yin and yang of empty and full course through our psychic veins like the tides, or wind in the trees, or clouds scudding across the sky of our mind.

So, yes, friend, it is, once again,  BOTH-AND reality. God is Infinity and more! Thus no thought, no definition can contain Him. The journey, while in essence the same for all, is, in its manifestation in time and space, uniquely our own.

Blessings,

Swami Hrimananda aka Hriman!

How to Work with a Spiritual Teacher

The New Spirit Journal published an article I wrote about my life and lessons learned with my spiritual teacher, Swami Kriyananda.

I refer you to the June 2013 print edition or the online edition at http://issuu.com/newspiritjournal/docs/nsj_june_2013_issuu/1?e=1451184/2812712

The article is on pages 8 and 9.

In joy,

Swami Hrimananda!

Practicing the Presence: present tense? or mind full?

Is the Present tense? Or is the mind full?

"You have to be present to win!"

I had lunch with a friend the other day. I don’t see him often because of he lives at a distance. He works for Boeing in a repair consulting role that fields calls from airline maintenance crews worldwide.

Like firemen who work long shifts with days off in between, my friend has to be on hand for these calls and the long shift days makes meditation time difficult. He has to get up quite early and gets home very late. Consequently, the goal of meditating twice a day is, well, honored “in the breach.” When the days off finally come, he needs rest and, in addition, may have to drive several hours to his first home where his wife is. She’s not a meditator.

I suggested to him that he accept what he can do in re meditation and be grateful for the time he can profitably take. Put aside the “ought” and embrace the reality he’s got. Hopefully by greater appreciation of the time he can take for meditation, he will have a deeper and more satisfying meditation than fussing over what he didn’t and can’t do!

But this brought up the subject of “how to be mindful, and practice the presence of God” during those long shift days. He reported, as do most meditators, that his mind is restless (not just in meditation but during the day), and with the kind of work he does (sitting by the phone waiting for emergency repair calls!), he is lured into daydreaming or otherwise drifting off, as it were.

The mind is a terrific foe even as it can be our guide and mentor. But we must learn to rein it in by focusing it upon interests that feed our ideals, our rightful preoccupations, and our higher aspirations. This takes patience. Did I say “patience?” If not, let me repeat that: it takes PATIENCE!

A couple of points came to the fore spontaneously in our conversation:

1. The basis of mindfulness is calmness and concentration. These attributes of the mind are most effectively developed through meditation. Thus meditation is essential to mindfulness during activity. In fact, practicing the presence is a form of meditation and an extension of meditation from sitting into activity. The more of the one, the easier for the other, and vice versa!
2. In coming out of meditation, make it a practice to extend the quiet mind born of meditation into the minutes, and with practice, the hours that follow. Move deliberately, even slowly. Think deliberately, even slowly. Do one thing at a time. As you shower or have breakfast after rising from sleep and meditating, do so in a calm, focused meditative mood.
3. During the day, return to this space as often as it returns to your mind to do so. Alternatively, using a watch or a smartphone, get a timer (try www.InsightTimer.com), and set a soothing chime sound on the hour to bring you back to that space.
4. Mindfulness should be practiced a little bit at a time. Calmly, carefully, and patiently. Let it grow organically from the spiritual pleasure and well-being it brings.
5. “Chanting is half the battle,” to quote Paramhansa Yogananda. Chanting throughout the day, or whenever you can remember, is very powerful and enjoyable. You can use mantras, mantra put to melody, mantra chanted rhythmically, affirmations, or, as we do at Ananda, chants with English words such as the entire collection given to the world by Paramhansa Yogananda or Swami Kriyananda. Or, you can chant your favorite Indian bhajan.
6. You can chant silently to yourself, or “under your breath,” or, in some cases (like in the car or walking down a noisy city street), aloud!
7. Mantras to choose from are endless but begin and end, literally, and otherwise, with the mother of all mantras: AUM. Aum can be surreptitiously chanted by simply humming softly wherever you are. For energy and spiritual strength, try Aum namoh Shivaya. For dharma and right action, Sri Ram, jai Ram. For devotion try either the Mahamantra (Hare, hare, Krishna, hare, hare; hare, hare Rama, hare Rama) or Om namoh Bhagavate Vasudeva. Or, simply, Aum guru.
8. Word phrases, affirmations, or chant words should be simple, especially if your activities require mental engagement. “I am Thine; be Thou mine.” “Lord I am Thine, Be Thou mine.” “I want only Thee, Lord; Thee, only Thee.” “Door of my heart, open wide I keep for Thee.” “I am strong in myself, I am free.” These are just some examples.
9. Don’t begin by expecting you can do this all day. Start with one minute and build your mental strength from there.
10. Avoid lapsing into a mechanical repetition, however. It’s not only ok, but perhaps better, to practice for X number of minutes; pause for a bit and absorb the effect.
11. Forms of mindfulness are also numerous but for those who are not devotionally inclined and who seek to be more present and conscious during activity consider the following:
12. At natural pauses between activities (closing a file or case or project; finishing a phone call or a meeting, e.g.), do some conscious breathing. Breath techniques abound but what we at Ananda call the “double breath” (tensing the whole body, while standing or seated, while holding the breath after a vigorous inhalation) is great for energy. Long, slow diaphragmatic breathing is good for calmness and presence of mind; alternate breathing, for balance.
13. Do a mini-meditation: BEE: B reathe;  E nergize; E njoy. Take a couple of deep breaths (of your choice, e.g., see #12 above); internalize your awareness and feel the energy of the body; and then be still for a moment and enjoy the experience. Time lapse 30 seconds to 2 minutes!

Am I losing my mind?

A few words on losing your mind. (Huh?) There is a distinct pleasure and satisfaction from “losing yourself” in your activity. It can even be relaxing and refreshing. So what I am saying is that there are two ways to go: set a part of your mind apart from your activity into the watchful state; or, immerse yourself in what you are doing. Thus far in this article I have addressed only the former, not the latter. It comes to me now as an after-thought. But this losing your mind thing needs some clarification.

There are, in turn, two ways to lose your mind. One is to do so frantically, being anxious for the result or engrossing oneself into the experience and descending into subconsciousness. Becoming frantic and anxious and upset is hardly a satisfying experience. Descending into the subconscious mind is what happens when you tuck into your favorite tub of ice cream (when no one is looking) and fifteen minutes later you come up for air realizing that “I ate the whole thing.”

These two examples above of losing your mind are NOT what I am talking about.  Here’s what I mean:

Start with calmness and a quiet confidence as you approach the task at hand. If you are devotionally inclined, silently ask for divine guidance in what you are about to do. Silently offer your forthcoming action to God in whatever form you hold dear. Otherwise, simply mentally state your intention and how it fulfills your duty or ideal and fits into your priorities.

Then, as you go about your task, do so with a quiet mind, with calm concentration, and quiet sense of competency and confidence. Don’t be like most people who are of two minds when a difficult or troublesome (or boring) task must be done and can no longer be avoided. Enter fully into what must be done. Palpable enthusiasm is very helpful but sometimes you are simply doing what must be done. Either way do so with your entire BEING.

When you are finished you will find that refreshing sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that comes from doing what is right. Resist the temptation to congratulate yourself: you simply did what was needed. If you are devotional by temperament, thank God for the opportunity and offer the results to God, thus freeing your ego from attachment. In any case, once finished, relax or move on and give it no more thought. Be free of whatever action you engage in once you are finished.

Well, that’s all my mind wants to say today! Remember:

You have to be present to win!

Blessings,

Swami Hrimananda!

Reality is a state of consciousness

Our minds are so conditioned, so hypnotized to view our responses to the world around as real and correct that we rarely stop to separate our response from our perception of the facts or the truth we think we see. If at dusk while walking we see ahead on our path what appears to be a snake that is only, upon closer inspection, a rope, then we can relax from our response of fright and say that this response was in error. Rarely, however, is life so simple or clear.

Our frightened response, however, is, in the moment, at least, true for us, regardless of the correctness of our perception. All too often the amount time between perception and reaction is so tiny that we get used to equating our reaction with the reality. It takes the habit of calmness and mindfulness, born of meditation and practiced throughout the day during activity, for us to remain sufficiently calm so as not to fall into the habit of confusing response with reality.

Paramhansa Yogananda counseled students: “Circumstances are always neutral. It is how you react to them that makes them seem either happy or sad.” If you dislike someone, you are much more likely to be critical of his every sentence or action without ever stopping to consider that the source of your criticism lies in your dislike, not necessarily in what he has said or done.

Indeed, someone who admires this person will either defend the person or not even notice anything worthy of comment, what to mention criticism. Further, he may even find something admirable rather than critical!

Although I don’t hear this expression much anymore, it used to be asked of someone who was having a bad day, “Did you get up on the wrong side of bed this morning?” By this we acknowledge the influence of our moods and attitudes on our response to life’s daily challenges and activities.

But my subject goes deeper than this obvious and simple fact of human psychology. Although still far from existential, it is also true that upon entering a room a carpenter notices the baseboard trim is not straight, the painter, that the paint is peeling, the interior decorator, that the furniture is out of date, the mother, that her child is far too quiet, and the father, that he’s late for work and can’t find his car keys!

Is it true, then, that we see only ourselves, then? That we see only what we are interested in? What we are capable of seeing? Most certainly it is: at least for most people on this planet. Observing simple facts like a crooked baseboard or peeling paint is not significantly meaningful to our lives. Think then how much reality we lose when it comes to gut reactions on the hot, emotional buttons of our lives?

I observed, more than once, that my spiritual teacher, Swami Kriyananda, upon entering a room, rarely seemed to notice (even less to comment upon) the details of a room, unless he did so for instructive purposes. Once, when he was our guest in our home, he commented that hotels that were run by thoughtful people remembered to put hooks in the bathroom for clothes or one’s bathrobe. (We immediately went out and installed a hook on the inside of the bathroom door!) By contrast, most people entering another’s home for first time, literally “jump” on every detail, painting, furniture, wall colors--eager to pass judgement, either “ooohing” and “aaaahing” or turning up the proverbial nose (“Such Cretans!”). If we do this for such relatively trivial objects in our field of vision, how much more are we at sea for the important things?

Yogananda taught that the law of magnetism determined what circumstances and people were drawn to you. By magnetism, he meant the vibrational (attractive or repulsing) aspect of karma. By karma, he means the cumulative impact of past and current actions. Thus a person who, whether in past lives or the current life, has dedicated his energies to making money is, at least eventually (if he pursues his monied goal with intelligence, intensity, and sensitive awareness) going to attract financial success.

This law of vibrational resonance is what some “new agers” refer to as the Secret or what they mean by “creating your own reality.” Contrast staying in a five-star hotel with sauntering through a crowded, noisy slum on a hot, sultry day at high noon. We live in different worlds. Imagine paying $10,000 for a first class airline ticket for a flight of, perhaps, eight to sixteen hours! What is the life of a paraplegic in comparison to a wealthy heiress or globe-trotting financier? Different worlds, indeed.

Outwardly, at least! The more extreme our outer circumstances the more intensely we will tend to identify with them. For those on the path of mindfulness, however, we discover fairly quickly that the more we experience our core consciousness, stripped of name, body, ceaseless flux of thoughts and emotions, the closer we come to pure consciousness. We find, in time and with dedicated effort, that the reactive processes begin to fall away and we simply observe what is “ours” to observe without filtering it through the strainer of our fears and attractions.

There is no objective reality in the sense that the “pure mind” intends to visually observe every possible mundane fact in his immediate environment, from baseboards to dust to the art work on the wall! To one seeking higher consciousness (defined as God or in any other way, e.g., bliss, joy, and even emptiness), the most important reality is to first perceive, and then to become,  that consciousness. Are we not all seeking happiness? And how could true happiness be anything else if not unalloyed, ever-new, and permanent?

Reality in other words cannot be separated from the consciousness that perceives it. The highest reality is when separation between the knower, the known and the knowing melts into Oneness!

All we really possess, then, is our consciousness. There isn’t anything else. That doesn’t mean we can eat junk food and escape the consequences; or steal someone else’s car; or lie or cheat. Those actions presuppose the very separateness that brings us dis-ease, discontentment, and ultimately pain.

Rather, this means that, even if it means at first just affirming it, positive, inclusive and expanded states of consciousness will bring us greater and greater happiness. We are happier loving than hating; giving rather than taking; sharing rather than hoarding.

Our evolutionary path upward from the rocks, plants and animals has endowed us with the necessary and highly refined instincts for survival and for sensory pleasure and, on the human level, ego self-aggrandizement. All this works rather nicely to get us to the human level and, at that level, to excel and expand our horizons. But these become a glass ceiling when it comes to transcending the wheel of birth and death, and the ceaseless flux of opposite states of pleasure and pain.

We cannot but define happiness as permanent but the happiness we know through the body and the ego is anything but permanent. We have a profound, existential dilemma, for knowing this fact dilutes the fleeting pleasure or success or human happiness that comes our way.

Thus spiritual consciousness and awareness (which, when formalized and organized, coalesces into religion) invites our dissatisfied ego to rise toward a transcended state of consciousness.

This, then, is what is meant by “reality is a state of consciousness.” Meditation is the surest form of experiencing transcendence. Transcendence, being consciousness itself, is most effectively known (experienced) by consciousness itself. Further, it is most readily contacted by association and attunement with one who embodies, contains, and holds that consciousness. Thus the long-standing acknowledgement of sanctity personified and embodied in saints and masters.

Transcendence, so far as we are concerned (and we are concerned!), can only exist in embodiment. Not because it is limited but because we are limited. When we look at a beautiful sunset, we can enjoy it but we cannot, for the enjoyment of it, become one with it. Same, too, with someone we love. We are forced by nature and duality to be prevented from merging with the object of our love by the very electro-magnetic field that surrounds our body and its attendant, ego, and keeps our Spirit imprisoned. On the level of I-am-loving-you we must forever be separate.

We must first discover transcendence in the field of our body and, being locked in, that requires a transfusion, a transmission of transcendence not from nowhere in space but from its embodiment in space. Thus the power of a true guru who transmits this “knowing” and awakens it so, like a seed, it can grow from within. While a true guru, being transcendent, is not limited by his or her physical vehicle, it is we who need the vehicle through which to “tune in.” Thus, even after the physical death of such a one, a true disciple can draw inspiration and magnetism through meditation, prayer, and service. Ultimately, this transmission is only an “inside” job but we have to start where we are.

Further, it is the creative and loving desire of the Creator that this transcendence be awakened and experienced in the creation and not separate from it. We don’t have to die to “go to heaven.” This too is another reason that the transmission occurs from embodiment to embodiment.

Well, time to go!

Blessings to you,

Nayaswami Hriman

aka Swami Hrimananda