On Paramahamsaji
Everything that you say is thoughtful, and spoken out of a need for justice and mental clarity unhampered by dogma. I honor this attitude and, as far as it goes, we are on the same side. But I believe this situation is more complicated than it seems, and I will try to explain this in more detail, first by answering some of your points.
I have made different translations of Satyananda's books (in particular the Bhakti Yoga series) for the Greek ashram. (I have stayed a total of four years in that ashram). In one of the books I read Satyananda saying that he was doing pranayama at a high altitude and smoked bidis (hashish) to get warmer, and he added that bidis destroyed the photographic memory with which he had been blessed by birth, and therefore he knows that they cause harm and he advises against them. I don't know if you have information that he still used to smoke bidis(hashish) in the ashram while a guru. I have no idea as to why he would want to do that, as I see it as a quite disgusting thing. (Because it takes away the sharpness of the mind, and makes it blunt, hampering a clear and deep understanding of things.) If you have information that he did smoke bidis, a question of whether the info is accurate is pertinent. If, on the other hand, by saying " indian cigarettes" you mean normal cigarettes, well, I don't know why he would do it, but it doesn't annoy me that much.
As far as his having sex with female disciples is concerned, I wonder if you could make a list of what is known about it, on what source, and how reliable you find that source. I was reading Ms Manning say something of this kind about Satyananda and herself, and I felt, while reading it, that she was telling the truth. I felt an hair of honesty and authenticity in what she said.
"could be extremely violent" It seems it is so, and I've even read him saying so much about himself. He has said that little by little he has quieted down, but that he used to beat people that were acting inappropriately, or something of the sort, in his guru's ashram, when he was responsible for different things. He said that, with time, he learned that everyone has his own sense of self-worth and self-respect, and he should be respectful to that.
Might we imagine that he temperamentally was violent? Can a divine man be violent? Did he check and control it? Did he believe that it is ok to beat others?
It might be tempting (for someone who would want to excuse such behaviors) to perceive him as giving a kind of blessing in this way, but I don't know how far we could press this idea without becoming grotesque.
And, if beating was a blessing, was sex also a blessing? Dear God, in what avenues we are led!...
For him to not meet the delegation coming from Australia to speak about it? I think it's disgusting.
"Understandably, those who saw these sides of him, would hold a different view and perhaps question whether such a person could ever be called divine." Very understandably so. I would need to sit at a seminar and be wholly indoctrinated into excusing such behaviors, because now I cannot even imagine how to.
Can sex be excused? Well, fist of all, why have sex at all? Why, if you are a guru? For the enlightenment of the disciple? Were these women enlightened? Are there no other ways to enlightenment? And exactly how does one become enlightened through sex anyway?
Bidis?
Violence?
Neglecting a person's health, as you mention? (I've read this story somewhere else on the internet as well. How to estimate its reliability, though?)
As far as training "a young uneducated poor teenager (as Akhandananda was) to become a sexual predator" is concerned, I would assume that the question is, "Why didn't he stop him", rather than a question of training him with this aim. I have read that Akhandananda used to be different and inspiring, then went into drinking and deteriorated ethically and behaviorally. If that is so, this is not about wanting him to be so, but rather about allowing him to be so.
Now, let's look at the other side and see what positive things we can say about him.
Personally: I stayed in the Munger ashram for five months when I was 20. When I wanted a doctor, he was offered to me. Then stayed from 2000 to 2002, doing a Master's degree in Yoga Psychology in Bihar Yoga Bharati. Again, when I needed a doctor, there was one.
In my first visit, when I was young, I went to him on the advice of Swami Sivamurti, the Australian swami who created the ashram of Greece. I was studying piano-playing in Germany, my arms got pains and I couldn't continue, she suggested visiting and asking his advice, I managed to work and find some money for an one-way ticket to India. (My parents wouldn't pay for such a trip, they were afraid of yoga.) When I was there, I didn't mention anything about money in my initial meeting with him, but I was later told by the responsible swami that he directed them not to ask me for money. He made this present to me, perhaps understanding my situation. I didn't pay anything for five months.
I saw him just very few times while I was there. My physical experience of him is not at all extensive.
Let's look to his work in general: He has created an international yoga movement from which possibly countless people have been benefited. Definitely I have, by the practices and lifestyle of yoga, and I know many others who have too. In general, wherever I taught yoga, it was obvious that it brought to people a different sense of life, it made a wholesome spiritual addition to it.
Let's consider his philanthropic organization. Can anyone claim that it has not benefited many-many-many people?
Let’s consider his enlightened disciples. I know three of them: Swami Niranjan, Swami Satsangi, Swami Sivamurti. All of them claim to have received their spirit from him through shakti-pat. How many lives has each of them inspired? How much light have they brought to people's lives? I know that we here in Greece are crazy about Swami Sivamurti. And she has made it clear that "If Swami Satyananda had not inspired me, none of us would be here today."
Now, there is something I must try to elucidate. You say: "Those who are humble (and good souls) will usually attribute things to others - gurus, or God - saying that what they did or experienced was by guru or God's grace." Actually, people like me or Swami Sivamurti are not humble. The people you are describing are of the religious sort. Some of them may be swamis, but a mystical temperament is different. It sees the possibility of spirituality in everyone, it doesn't use fake humility to explain it. I remember, when we were all doing pranam to Swami Satyananda at an event in Munger in my first visit there, I must have been the only one who didn't bow down to him. Temperamentally, I am proud. You can hardly insult me and get away with it. I may listen to a spiritual discourse and feel inspired, in which case I give the lecturer their due, but I would be the last person to say that my spirituality was created by them. My spirituality, as well as my lower nature, are innate. I would never consider attributing it to some swami, some saint or make any other such nefarious attribution. I am not because of someone else. I am because I am. Period.
But then we come to the issue of shakti-pat, the transmission of spiritual energy, which is a thing of its own, and, if you have not had it, I would ask you to make your best efforts to imagine what I say. Those who are trained in yoga have different experiences. We may go out of the body, experience some lights etc. We also have the common, nonspiritual experiences, e.g. we dream at night. And, while dreaming, we may see our mother, our friends, our lovers or our guru. And they are all dreams. Our mind rehashes what it experiences during waking state.
But there is a type of dream experience that is not due to the inherent virtues of your personal mind, but due to something that comes from outside you. An external force, within the spiritual world, that comes and occupies your mind and shares with it, for a while or permanently, its own energy. Information may be transmitted. Things that you don't personally know come to you, not due to some general "spirit" but from a very definite source – from the world of personal gods.
I will give one example. I have a well-known Youtube channel where I have subtitled into Greek more than a thousand spiritual videos. And someone emails me and says that she has written a book on extraterrestrials, and she asks me if I could edit it. She lives in the same town (Athens), we get together and I edit the book. In the process, I tell her: "You know, there is a yoga satsang in Athens at such a date with Swami Sivamurti, a spiritual teacher. Why don't you come and have a look?" I explain to her what a satsang is. She says she doesn't think so, because at that date she has invited some friends for lunch. But we 'll see. A couple of days later she gets a divine visitation in her sleep. The form of Swami Sivamurti appears before her (whom she had never seen before) and she tells her she is called Swami Sivamurti. The woman says: "Really? I was invited to a lecture of yours, but I don't know if I can make it." The figure says: "Come." She instructs her not to sell the book she is writing, but give it to people for free. She kisses her with love on the forehead and disappears.
Now see the even more interesting part. She comes to the satsang. Then she asks for a personal meeting with Swami Sivamurti and she gets it after a year. She goes and tells her that she saw her in her sleep inviting her to her satsang. And what does Swami Sivamurti say? She says: "It was not me. That was the Yogi (meaning Swami Satyananda). He finds funny ways of keeping in contact with me."
So, what she tells her is that there is an accomplished yogi in the tradition who has the ability, in the mental realm, to take the form of others. And she also takes her own form, presenting himself (should I even say "HIM-self"?) as Swami Sivamurti, in the way of a humorous "hello" to her from the other world, where the guru now is inhabiting.
Before you perhaps attribute that claim to Swami Sivamurti's humility, please consider how it is in the first place that a woman sees a particular spiritual teacher whom she has never met, in her sleep.
This is a standard event that happens in every true religion or mystical path. Some people have the mystical power to project themselves into the dreams of others.
They may even project themselves within the waking experience of people. The following event is such an example.
I was teaching yoga to a class of around maybe 15 or 20 people. One of them had come for the first time. I was having everyone do pranayama while standing. They did kapalbhati. That new student, a Russian woman, graduate of Russian literature, an intelligent woman, is trying to understand and perform the technique correctly. With closed eyes, as I have instructed them to have, she sees someone in front of her, within her mind, so to speak. She doesn’t know him. He shows to her how to perform the exercise, demonstrating it by moving his own abdomen. A few months later she comes to the ashram and recognizes this man in the photograph of Swami Niranjan, in the front cover of one of his books.
There is more to this story. During the same week when she saw Swami Niranjan, she comes again to the same gym for a yoga class with me. This time it takes place at an adjoining room, same number of people. At one point during the lesson, I see her looking intently on something. This scene registers in my mind, but without me giving much attention to it, as I have been involved in the practice of teaching. I believe her eyes were closed at the time, but I do not anymore have a clear recollection of this. Later she relates to me the following. That, near me on the floor, she saw sitting an aged but energetic man. Light emanated from him towards the center of the class, where students were, so that they were "swimming" in this light, so to speak. When, after a few months, she came to the ashram, and saw the photo of Sw. Niranjan, she also saw Satyananda's photo, but didn't recognize him as the man she had seen. Yet it makes sense to assume that this was the man. Who else could it be? Satyananada has changed frontal exterior during the years, depending on whether he lived as an ascetic, a Swami, whether he had aged, etc. So perhaps she saw him with a different appearance than she later did on the ashram photograph. Even I have sometimes asked, upon seeing a photo of Satyananda: "Is that him? He looks different!" Swami Sivamurti has related to us having the same experience in relation to his visage.
But even if we will not pronounce on that, what do we have to say about her seeing Swami Niranjan? How can you say that the source of this vision of Niranjan (a man she didn't know) demonstrating to her kabalbhati pranayama can be anyone other than him? How can you say he was an expression of her inner spirituality? She doesn't see people she doesn't know. And she saw him inside a Satyananda yoga class.
Similar is the case of my father. In his case you cannot claim with "scientific accuracy" that he didn't know the guru, because he had once seen a photo of him, around ten years before he saw him in his dreams. But what he described in the dreams went way beyond what he had once seen. He narrated to me the particular and characteristic way by which Satyananda moves and speaks: the very austere nature of his speech, the gesture by which he raises the right hand, index finger extended, when he wants to stress a point. Even I did not know back then, when my father saw and related the dreams to me, that Satyananda had this habit. I learned it years later, when I saw certain photos of him. And, by the way, my father was not exposed to any info on Satyananda. Because, once, I started telling him something about my guru, and he reacted be calling him a bad name, out of prejudice against yoga (many people here in Greece have such prejudice), and this stopped me in my tracks and I never again spoke to him about him. And one day he comes and tells me that, during the period when he was a professor in the State University in Cyprus, and I was serving my military duty at the time, and my father was living there alone, and was practicing tratak (a form of meditation) – but really not doing it as "yoga", I just showed to him a form of concentration and suggested that he tries it out, and he did), he had three dreams of Satyananda. And they were very powerful, very inspiring. In one of them, my father was …
I will make a break here. I have found an older piece of writing of mine to a swami friend, in which I argue the matter comprehensively. I will post it here below. So, while you read this –it's a bit long, but I hope it will be rewarding–, please consider this: What is the big picture in relation to Satyananda? Because what he is accused of, legitimate as it seems, is a subset of data. I believe we should not accept to miss the greater picture in seeking to simplify things. I believe that in the minds of the accusers of Satyananda, there must be some voice saying: "This may be true, but it can't be the whole truth. Something must be missing. His international success, the thousands of people who swear by his name, his philanthropic organization, the extreme asceticism that he underwent at such an advanced age, the strong aura of the principle disciples (Niranjan, Sivamurti, and perhaps Satsangi as well), can' be explained if he is a con artist." And similarly, the people who do not want to look at the court testimonies must also have a voice in them saying: "What if I took it seriously? What would it reveal?"
So, to try to make sense of it, I would like to invite you to make a list of exactly what we know about Satyananda himself from the court proceedings themselves. How many people talked about the behaviors that you are referring to: smoking (what?), violence, sex. And, also, exactly what evidence there is that what they say did happen. And of course the issue of his knowing about Akhandananda's actions and bypassing them while supporting him. Please be careful to mention, in all of this, what is the source and context of the information. Let's be clear about what may still be called a claim or assumption and what has been shown to definitely be so (if anything). Because, reading the final report, I did not see anything be said about Satyananda himself. Then at some point, if Ms Manning or someone else said something about him, let's be clear on what importance it has. – – Not try to play it down. Just be clear. Cite the accusations. State briefly the weight that you see in each accusation, depending on the proof value (how strong a proof there seems to exist).
Let's see, with a clear and objective mind, what lies in every side of the argument: in favor of him and against him.
Because, although I claim to have this special relationship with satyananda, I know there is one thing that I definitely do not want: I don't want to be like the Mangrove Mountain swamis, who, out of faith, seem to have lost their mind's capacity to ask questions and be fair; to tragically have lost a sense of compassion and justice.
------------------- the email to friend begins here -----------------------------
I believe truth lies in seeing the whole picture. I believe both of us have part of the picture, not the whole. To get the whole picture, I have read everything there is on the internet about the matter (including the transcripts of the proceedings, which is a thousand pages long […] Actually, I think this is the mistake the Mangrove Mountain people made. They did not want to know and consider anything, and this is why in the end they came across, in the Royal Commission proceedings, as so stupid and so brainwashed. To observe how brainwashed they were was just heart rendering. They were caught in a net of perceived need to stay loyal to the guru even at the expense of playing blind to what they would have criticized if done by anybody else.
This is why in this story that the Royal Commission deals with, the supporters of Pji (Satyananada) project as being so wrong.
However, in my view, a similar fanaticism exists between Satyananda accusers as well. By saying "fanaticism" I refer to a psychological need to exclude from perception a part of the picture:
The accusers present Satyananda as someone interested in only money and power and influence and sex, and using yoga as a means to that end. It seems counterintuitive though that a man without a genuine interest in yoga would be so proficient in it and would be able to spread it far and wide in the world. Doesn't it?
The accusers present Satyananda as having been thrown out of his guru ashram by Sivananda himself, due to a girl being sighted coming out of his room one day in the early morning. (I don't think all the accusers would know that, I read Janaki saying that, claiming that Satyananda himself told her.)
Yet I have read a periodical where the VIPs of the Sivananda tradition pay very high respects to Satyananda and depict him as an exemplary disciple during his time at Rishikesh. And even today there is a very good connection between the two traditions/ashrams.
The accusers completely bypass the fact that from Satyananda, Niranjan and Sivamurti (but then she doesn't seem to be known amongst them) there emanates a kind of force. This force is a very strong argument by itself. I was in Munger a few years ago and attended a satsang by Swami Niranjan. I found it incredible that there was a kind of magical atmosphere of love emanating from him and permeating the environment. I felt this to be true magic. I thought, "How is he doing it?" I felt enchanted…
A wholesome, deep and bright vibratory energy. If the mind of Niranjan was focused on sex and on lying about Pji, how does he become able of emanating this quality of energy? We must view this energy as an objective thing. Maybe it exists in another plane, but it permeates our own and we become aware of it. Isn't this energy that has attracted us to the tradition in the first place? And this is why guruless yoga centers, no matter how big they may get, are, in my opinion, not the wave of the future. Because the human soul remains always the same, and needs that bright energy that comes from beyond and, before we have attained it, is seen only in the souls that are ripe with transcendental experience and in their works.
The accusers claim that Satyananda left the ashram with the ostensible aim of doing sadhana while his real motive was to avoid a wave of reaction to the kind of life that he had lived there.
Isn't it a bit strange that, for this reason, he would have chosen to practice panchagni? If his aim was to hide, he could have hidden in some room and present himself as practicing his mantra all day, while inside he could actually have been having a good time with (even) more young girls… What was the need for panchagni?
In fact, doesn't the fact that he practiced panchagni –as evidenced and witnessed by many– denote the exceptional and spiritual character of this person?
Actually, if he was not so exceptional, how could he have practiced panchagni at all? You need to be a superhuman to stay in such temperatures, and you need to have a very high and pure aspiration.
I don't see anybody reflecting on any of that between the accusers.
Then, there is the issue of spiritual experience. Many people have had the darshan of our spiritual teachers. This can not be written off as some kind of illusion created by a spiritual aspect of the experiencer's personal mind. There are two kind of experiences that are particularly impervious to such an explanation:
First, there are the experiences of people who did not know our teachers before, and yet they saw them in their dreams. I myself, in my close environment, am aware of three such people.
One was my father. When I was fifteen my father came to the Satyananda Yoga centre once and heard a lecture by Swami Sivamurti. At the centre was a picture of the guru and my father must of course have seen it.
I had invited him there, but he didn't take an interest. So there was no follow-up on that. About 7 years later I made a reference to the guru and my father called him a "punk". Thus I cut off what I was saying and didn't continue it, and didn't say anything at all about the guru after that.
So, my father didn't know anything about the guru. He never read a thing.
Yet, subsequently, when I was 26, eleven years after my father had seen that photo, he saw in his sleep the guru four times. There was an interaction between them in a very high level, and the dream figure, in its particular way of acting, speaking and physically moving, corresponded completely to the actual Pji that we know. The richness, detail and content of the dream figure correspond accurately and completely to the Pji that we know. My father was never exposed to Pji and had no way of knowing, for instance, that Pji had the habit of raising his hand and stretching out his index figure when wanting to stress a point. Even I did not know that at that time. But he did it in the dream, just as he was doing it in real life. He did it when he wanted to steer my father away from a particular course of action. He raised his hand in the aforementioned manner and he said, "No!" Three months later my father saw him again, and Pji said to him: "Did you do what I told you?" Then he gave him the same instruction that he had given him in the first dream. He saw Pji a total of four times, and the dreams were full of Hindu symbols, that my father had been completely unaware of, and the particular atmosphere and mannerisms of Pji. (When recently I described this dream in detail to Swami Niranjan, he also stated that this is a genuine message given by Pji. Sivamutri has also said that and has invited my father for lectures at different times, but my father still did not develop an interest, maybe the ashram and its ways being too foreign to him. Let me mention that the message that Pji was giving him in the first dream was what my future should be, that I should be involved with yoga. A couple of decades later, where can I say that this "order" that my father received from Pji has led? It has led to me studying philosophy, psychology, doing a Master's in Yoga Psyxhology in Bihar Yoga Bharati, then teaching yoga, translating some books and creating an internet site that has uploaded a thousand videos of spiritual lectures that very many people have seen. Well, was it worth it? Though it is not some illustrious record, it is better than nothing. It seems to have made a useful contribution to society. Was that what Pji had in mind? I don't know. – – The second and third dreams of Pji that my father saw were of a general inspirational nature, and the fourth dream was again about me doing what Pji had ordered. My father said, due to the forceful order he was receiving by Pji: "You must do as he says, because I do not want to see him again." Though there was a lot of love and bliss in the dreams, he was also afraid of him.)
After his dreams my father later told me that he saw in his dream a man who had a big belly, had no hair etc and he understood that this was my guru. When my father did not do what Pji had told him to do, Pji checked him four months later, asking him why he did not do it. My father answered something and Pji exclaimed: "Disobedient!" Then he instructed him again on what to do, in the exact same visionary fashion that he had instructed him in my father's first dream of him, four months earlier. When Pji said to him what he wanted of him, he didn't say it with language. He brought him to a window and had him look outside. And as my father looked outside, he became his vision and etherically flew out of the window, in spirit, and witnessed in a suggestive manner what Pji was asking him to do.
I am aware that, not wanting to believe that Pji has such power (how could he have it if he is just a debauched fellow?), an accuser of Pji might cling to the fact that my father had once seen Pji's photograph. I emphasize that the content and imagery that my father experienced in his dream, and its accuracy, could not plausibly have come from a photograph of Pji that my father had seen 11 years earlier. Also, as a university professor, my father was an intellectual and had not been interested in mysticism or eastern spirituality. I'm not saying that he had no vein of spirituality, this would not be true. I'm only saying that he had not been exposed to all of the particular content he was exposed to in his dreams. (Some of this content came from Greek mythology –Zeus throwing his thunderbolt, with Pji impersonating Zeus; other of it from the Indian tradition, I think Buddhist or Jain, with Pji impersonating the Buddha or the Jain saints, I should think, in a temple that my father said was like this one https://www.britannica.com/place/India/The-Shunga-kingdom (the Karli temple half way down the text) and wherein Pji was a living statue that my father would see wherever he looked within the temple. A wholly transcendental dream. Four dreams –meaningful, distinct and forceful, and then silence. Never again saw any of it in his whole life. He is 80 now.)
But in my personal environment, I also know of cases where the person experiencing the teacher in their dream had not had any previous exposure to his person at all – not even a photograph seen!
One such case is that of a yoga student in a class of mine. I was teaching at a gym and she had entered the class for the first time. I had the students stand and practice pranayama, in particular kabalbhati. I had them do that while standing, not lying on the floor or sitting cross-legged. She had her eyes closed and performed the movement of the abdomen. When the class finished she came and told me that, while standing there, with eyes closed, she saw a man who showed to her how to do the exercise. She described to me in detail what had happened. She said that he did not touch her, but showed to her how to do it properly by acting the movement in his own belly. Months later I invited her to the ashram and she came. She saw photographs of Swami Niranjan and said she recognized in him the man she had seen in class.
During that woman's second class, a similar thing happened (and never again since then). It was two days later, it was at the same gym but in a different classroom. There was a quite large group of people. During the class I observed, at a particular moment, that she was looking at something intensely, but I gave to her no further attention. At the end of the class she told me that she saw near me, sitting cross-legged on the floor, a man, old but very lively. A white (luminous) energy was emanating from him and vibrating at the centre of the classroom. I think she spoke about a kind of bliss, but my memory of that part is dim. When she later came to the ashram she saw in Mandir the picture of Pji but did not recognize him as the one. She didn't say it wasn't him, but didn't recognize him as the one.
Well, who could it be? Two days prior to that, Swami Niranjan, then… who other than Swami Satyananda? It might be assumed that what she saw in the classroom was Pji's newer version, his countenance as an ascetic (that was at that time that particular period of his life), and not the previous image of the (younger) geru-clad man with a shaven head. Of course, I can't say for sure, it is just an assumption in this case as to Pji.
Another example of this kind of experience –seeing a spiritual teacher in darshan without previously knowing them– is the case of a woman whose acquaintance I made through my webpage. She wrote to ask me if I could edit a book she was writing, a novel on extraterrestrial life. We had some interactions in relation to that, and then I invited her to the ashram on a coming Sunday for Sivamurti's satsang. She answered that she doesn't know if she will come, because she has invited some people for lunch. Subsequently, at her dream, she saw a woman telling her: "I am Sivamurti". The author said: "What a coincidence! A friend of mine invited me to a speech of yours for Sunday, but I don't know if I will come." The Sivamurti figure said: "Come." Then she was instructed to make the book she was writing available for free, without receiving money for it. At the end of the exchange, the Sivamurti figure bowed down and kissed her on the head. (Let me mention that Sivamurti does not look at all like a Greek. She is at least one head taller than a Greek woman, and it was very accurate that she bowed down and kissed her; this is what would have happened in real life, due to the height difference.)
She subsequently recognized Sivamurti as the person she had seen in her dream. She asked for an appointment with her and got it one year later! She then told Sivamurti that she had seen her in her dream. Sivamurti answered that she had not seen her, but the "yogi" (Pji), who took on her form. Sivamurti said that he finds "funny" ways of giving her his greetings.
Sivamurti gave a lot of attention to that woman, encouraging her to get involved with the ashram. During a subsequent seminar that she attended, that woman was Sivamurti's dinner guest at her own table in the front garden. She was also very encouraging towards her during their personal interview, and actually congratulated her for her contact with Pji, while implying that she may have known Pji from a previous lifetime and that is why, suddenly and out of the blue, so to speak, he came to her life. More particularly, the woman asked why it is that this happened, since she never had to do anything with these things. Sivamurti replied that there could be a prehistory between the two persons, thus implying that they could have met in a previous lifetime.
The second type of darshan that cannot be accounted for by reference to the subconscious or the spiritual nature of the disciple themselves, is that type in which, except for the visual content, you receive shaktipat, ie. a direct transference of energy from the body of the guru to your own body. The only one that I personally know that has received this sort of thing (except the spiritual teachers, of course) is myself, therefore I will speak about my own experience in this category. [Subsequent addition: I remembered now another person that I know who has received this sort of thing by Pji. It was different from mine, though, and I will explain it after my own, which I have already started writing.] Perhaps you have read the book "Autobiography of a Yogi", by Paramhamsa Yogananda. In that book there is a description of a shaktipat Yogananda received from his guru through direct touch, and its subsequent effects. I'm pretty sure you have read this book, but if you haven't, I propose that you read that chapter in the following address: http://www.ananda.org/autobiography/#chap14 . It is very inspiring.
Yogananda relates that he was meditating and his guru called him to himself. Yogananda didn't break his meditation practice to go, and the guru called him to himself again. Yogananda went. The guru asked him why he had not gone and Yogananda talked about him meditating. The guru said something like "Yes, I know how you are meditating, with your mind going from one thing to the other." There was some kind of exchange of this sort and then the guru said: "That which you want will happen." He went close and tapped on Yogananda's chest. Then Yogananda experienced the Universe. From that time on, he was left with the ability to experience the Universe at any moment. He had become enlightened.
As Sivamurti says, shaktipat can be given in any way, also in sleep. I myself experienced it in sleep. Around 24 years ago, I saw in the astral realm Pji approach me and touch me on the shoulder. Then the skies opened and I ascended straight into the heavens. This changed my perception and sensation of the material world, including the perception and sensation of my own body, for ever after. A chakra had been opened. It is exactly as it is described in the yoga tradition: A chakra is a switch being turned on (and the one switching it on is the guru). Although in the descriptions it is related to the brain, as in the description that "a part of the brain starts functioning", actually the event does not begin from the brain but from a higher realm where the energy resides. You feel it later within the body, but this is not where it happens during the experience. It happens in the body of the Cosmos, in the vast Spacetime. It is from there that the luminous guru inserts into you an energy by which you ascend into heaven while being transmuted into light, and this transmutation stays with you for ever after, when the experience is over. The energy of the material body has been partially transmuted, depending on the level that you have reached in your ascension.
This energy is something completely new for you. You cannot "project" this energy out of your subconscious, because you have never experienced this energy in the first place. It is the equivalent of viewing the guru in your dream without previously knowing him. In the same way, you don't know the energy. You have never experienced it and you could never even imagine it, not even in your most wild imagination. But it comes and it transforms you, from the transcendental hand of the guru, and it changes you for ever, while anything that you ever saw and experienced in a dream, no matter how "inspired" or inspiring, ended when the dream ended and didn't carry over to this gross reality, except as a memory and perhaps as a psychological atmosphere for a few hours. What I am describing is tantamount to seeing in your dream a holy figure offer you a golden ring, and then wake up and still hold that golden ring in your physical hand. Would you call that holy figure a product of your imagination, a product of your higher mind, or in general a product of mind? Do you believe that your mind has the power to materialize things? Then, if we have divine powers, why is it that they are elicited after an interaction with the guru, whether in the physical or in the astral? Do you deny that it can be done in the physical and hold that in the astral it is a mere projection of a dream? Then how do we project, in this case, what emanates from the guru and permeates our body for ever and ever after – the divine energy, which is something we could never imagine in our wildest dream, and how is it that it remains with us for ever, when every other thing that we have ever dreamed of, ends together with the dream? Do you realize that after the shaktipat its receiver has a new body? And can you see that the projection of a person cannot be better or greater than the person himself, but shaktipat brings into you something that was outside you, a part of the universe? It is like you being a pot and water coming from outside and filling you in. It is not at all like this water was already in you. A pot has water in it, say at the 30 cm level. But during the shaktipat water is inserted into the pot and now it rises to the 60 cm level. These extra 30 cm had not been in the pot before. They had been in the skies, in the rain clouds. For the subject to be merged with the object, something has to come from outside and enter inside. You are being impregnated. It is necessary for a sperm to come and enter you. To say that the sperm already existed inside the egg is inaccurate thinking. The sperm potentially exists inside the egg, but for that to happen it has to enter. The entering of the guru's energy inside you is a very sexual act. Your sexual system changes after that. My sex drive became completely manageable after the shaktipat and I became a brahmachari. There are many changes that occur after this spiritual impregnation, when the energy enters you.
Perhaps you know Pushpam, a young woman who spent time on the ashram now and then, later becoming a yoga teacher. She lives in the countryside of Greece. Pushpam wanted to go to India and take the TTC, but knew no English, so, while I was staying in the ashram at an earlier period, I tutored her on the language a few times. That's how we got to know each other.
A long time after, she related to me her experiences in India. I will refer to a particular experience. The Greeks as a group had gone to visit Pji in Rikhia. Pji had the rule of not being worshiped (pranam), but after the satsang a swami approached Pushpam and told her that Pji would allow her to worship him (worship was not the word used, I don't remember the exact word, I refer to pranam, to prostration before the guru). So she went, stooped to her knees and placed her forehead into the open palm of Paramahamsaji's hand, that was facing upwards. Immediately the energy ran into her and she passed into a transcendental, ecstatic state. At the same time, she got fever that was 40 degrees Celcius, very high fever. She left and swamis were telling her to take a pill for the fever to subside, but she didn't want to, because she saw it as a blessing. The fever kept for two days.
Someone unaware of Pji's energy will say: "Oh, it was just her subconscious". But think about it a little: Isn't it a bit strange that her subconscious produce such a strong experience? And why is it that it never comes again, even to a milder degree?
I had darshans of Pji in my sleep three times, when I was around 22 years of age. Since then, in the 25 years that have elapsed, I have seen Pji, Swami Sivamurti and Swami Niranjan in my sleep a few times, but none of them have been other than a mere dream. A dream may be vivid, it may be interesting, it may be inspiring, it may be symbolical and it may have all sorts of positive and spiritual qualities. But these do not make it a dream coming from beyond, coming from something other than you. It is still your own mind producing it, the better part of your mind, the lofty part of your mind, the deeper part of your mind, but still your own mind.
A dream that truly comes from Pji is something else. It comes from outside you, from the big world, and it contains information, imagery and an energy that are not part of your makeup. Of course, in a figurative sense, you may say that the world is inside you, as you may say that the girl has the woman inside her. But this is just figurative, it means merely that the girl has the potential of growing into a woman. In reality, it may never actualize, because the girl may die sooner. For you to become whole, for the inside to be filled with the outside and thus to now contain it, there has to be an inrush of the outside inside, the "not you" has to enter and become "you". This is the role that the guru plays, of being the "not you", the bigger you, the outside you, that gets translated into you. This is what the yoga tradition describes as the transcendental goal of yoga. You may take that out and do yoga simply for a bit more relaxation and wellbeing. And this is fine for starters. But sooner or later you have to be drawn to the more important stuff, the one that your soul longs for.
To do that, you need to have a trust, a respect for the guru, and to be connected to him. But now an impossible situation has developed in Satyananda Yoga, with Pji's image tarnished by what seems to be true and valid accusations regarding his previous conduct. How to resolve that? Even if some of the descriptions are inaccurate, even if some of the things he did had an unseen good motive, there still seems to be much that remains that needs to be explained. Could it be that he had a secret dark side? How big was this side? How great a part of his personality did it envelope? Did he change over time? Can a being with divine powers (as I know him to have had from as early as 1990) also have a dark side? Is there a way to view what he did in a way that will not be incriminating him? What is the role that tantra has played in his life?
These things must be considered, but with no undue tendency to find excuses for his behavior. We need an open but also fair mind to understand and interpret what he did. And for that, I believe that Swami Niranjan should acknowledge the issue and address it. In many ways, as many people have pointed out, carrying on a silence is worse that the acts committed, because it implies dishonesty. If you are clean from blame, why not openly address the facts? It is a fact that problematic stuff are surfacing. Is it not your role to tell us the truth about them? At the very least, this stuff shows that the image that you project does not tally with your ostensible actions. Have disciples, friends, well-wishers and people no right to know what is going on? Can you just look the other way (or, as has happened in Australia, try to intimidate the one who "dares" to say the obvious)?
Another point I could make in relation to the good things about Pji that his accusers prefer to overlook, is the humanitarian organization that he developed. Very much work was materialized there by people who had a good intention for society, and Pji was the absolute source of inspiration for this work. It was his words and his kindness that uplifted, energized and inspired people to do this work, and these attributes do not come, can not come from someone whose mind is set on finding the next young girl to fuck. Such a mentality can not produce the kind of inspiration that he produced to carry out this work. It can't, if you understand human psychology.
I have translated six books of the Bhakti Yoga Sagar series, and they mostly deal with kindness and selfless offering. His words come from deep within and carry a power obvious and strong. This power has unequivocally been the inspiration behind his philanthropic movement.
In conclusion, I invite both of us to openly and accurately perceive the whole picture. It is not easy, and there may be pieces of the puzzle missing. But it is worth it. For me, because he is my ishta devata – the god that I have seen inside me. And for you, because you have given to him twelve years of your life, and you would be doing injustice to yourself if you now think you were deluded as to the central focus of this effort, which was the perceived (partial) divinity of the inspirers of the organization.
The above I tell you in all earnestness and with no desire to justify more than what can be legitimately justified, if anything. I don't believe in negating one's mind. I believe in lifting one's mind to a higher dimension, where the events of material life can be perceived and understood in the light of dharma, of true justice. Our human mind, with its sense of right and wrong, I understand to be part of that Higher Mind. But some times we have to consider further and deeper. What such an attitude would produce in this case I have no idea, and I am open to the possibility that it might not exonerate him much, maybe not at all.
Whatever the case, I can not erase my experience of him. I know it is true. It has proved itself in the way I have explained. The rest I would like to consider and comprehend. But how can a divine being, someone whom you know to be a divine being, stop being a divine being, no matter how bad the things you hear he has done? Because here the divinity is not inferred. It is known in a direct and transcendental way.
Two more accounts now come to mind, that speak of Pji's divinity.
The first is an account by a woman who relates that she had drunk wine and got dizzy and was ready to fall from a balcony, one night, when Pji, whom she didn't know at the time, appeared hovering in mid-air, outside the balcony, and pushed her inside. A few days later she heard of a lecture by a spiritual teacher in the neighbourhood and she went and it was him.
The second account was related to me by an other student when I was studying at BYB. He was a Canadian of Indian origin and his mother had sent him for this course, because she was friends with Swami Satsangi. When he went to Rikhia he asked for an appointment with Pji. I think he was to get it the same night, but finally he didn't. Next morning he saw Pji hovering in mid-air outside his window or balcony. He approached and Pji said to him: "So you came". The guy answered "yes". Pji said "Acha", meaning, "is that so" or "aha".
Then the guy ran away from the window to see Pji from another perspective, not quite being able to believe his own eyes!
I met this guy by chance in New Delhi at some office that was supposed to issue for us a paper we needed to exit the country. The course had ended and we would never see each other again. He related to me the story and said: "I tell you because I know that if I tell anyone else, they won't believe me." I said, "I believe you."
In fact, in one of his books, there is a satsang in which Pji relates of himself levitating. I came across it one day when in the Conversations office, and was reading it out aloud to Karmamukti, who found it fascinating. Pji was relating that, during the meditations that he did in the early years at the place on which subsequently the Ganga Darshan was built, it happened two or three times that his body rose physically. It went high up, high enough for him to have reason to fear that, if he falls, he will break his bones. He described his fear about it and the measure that he took for this to not happen again, because he was afraid that, if he suddenly fell, he would break his head.
Well, a lot of wonder-mongering, you may say! Work of magic to be believed by the feeble-minded! But is it not a wonder in itself that this man, without external help from anyone, managed to create an international organization of this scope?
"He fooled the world" say his detractors.
Could it instead be that we are fooling our own selves, by refusing to look at the whole picture?
As for the mechanics of physical levitation, I can say the following: when I had my spiritual experience of the anahat awakening, the one that I have described Pji giving me, … I have already described that this was ignited after I saw him in the astral while sleeping. He came near and touched me on the shoulder. Then I stopped dreaming and it was like I was hit by lightning, or like I became myself a thunderbolt, light, travelling fast in spacetime, ascending into the heavens, towards the beginning of time, God, the common source. During the ascension I did not see anything (there was no visual aspect to it), I just went, with light speed, higher and higher and higher, all my prana, my physical prana, ascending into the heavens. After that I had the sense that, if that energy, that ascension, had gone higher, it would have lifted me off the floor (the bed where my physical body was lying). I have uploaded a video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOd-yidYdE8 where you can see a shaman levitating. When I was studying psychology I underwent, in parallel, group psychotherapy for one year. I enjoyed it. It followed Reich's system and there was a competent psychotherapist running it. I also did a few private sessions with him, before qualifying to start with the group. In one of these sessions he related to me that, when he was studying in Italy, he had gone to a municipal centre to attend a spiritual lecture. A Westerner was giving the lecture, and he had with him an Indian yogi. After the lecture, he asked the yogi to present levitation, and the yogi levitated.
I asked him how the audience reacted. He said that some where clapping, others were looking in disbelief.
Anyway, this is just a detail. The wonder is multidimensional, and no undue focus should be given to the physical.
By the way, when I returned from the transcendental experience, I didn't open my eyes here. I opened them somewhere else, and I was a black man serving white people at a table. I went on serving them for some time and then, without a break in consciousness, I found myself back. I stayed in bed for two days, it took me a third day to start reading again. I was exhausted, like a thunderbolt having struck me. Needless, to say, at no other time in my life did I stay in bed for two days. I couldn't do so even if I wanted. I would be restless. But when you get hit by a two trillion megawatt thunderbolt, you don't feel much like moving after that. You can rest happily at bed.
A few years after that, I read in a book Paramahamsaji describing that when the guru gives you a certain type of samadhi, you will experience "the glory of your previous life". This is how he described it. That was the first time that it occurred to me that what I had lived at the end of my experience was a former self of mine, me in a previous incarnation. Until then I had no conception of how it can be that I am Sankalpa until then and then suddenly I become someone else (at a different place) and then again Sankalpa.
One other friend of mine got a darshan from Swami Niranjan. When I was studying there, I invited her to India. She came and, on a particular occasion, asked Swami Niranjan for an initiation (name or mantra, that is). He looked at her well, and then inclined his head in the characteristic way done by Indians, meaning "ok" or "let it be so". She had to leave soon and there was no time to receive the initiation. When she got back, for several months she prayed to Swami Niranjan to see him in darshan.
One day she saw the following dream:
She was waiting in front of the Main Building of Ganga Darshan with others for Swami Niranjan to come and give his satsang. Time was passing and he was not coming. Finally he appeared coming out of the building, but he didn't descend the steps. He stayed there, looking afar, towards the stairs that lead to the kitchen, with a far-off look, as if he was absorbed within himself, looking outside and yet inside, in a mood or atmosphere that she said she had never previously seen him in (of course she knew him just for a few days, she had seen him very little). Then she saw myself, coming from the steps that lead to the kitchen, the place where Swami Niranjan was looking at as if he was waiting for something. When he saw me, he turned around and moved back into the building, as if what he had waited for had come. I ran very fast and entered the building beside him. The scene remained as previously, people waiting for the satsang, but now the audience understood that he wouldn't come.
This was what she related to me. I asked her if she believes that the dream comes from her subconscious or from Swami Niranjan himself. She answered she has no doubt that there was Swami Niranjan himself inside her dream.
She felt that Swami Niranjan was presenting me (who had brought her there) to her as an example of someone devoted.
Another woman, a student at B.Y.B. at the same class with me, told me she saw a dream of this kind that also included me. She said that in the dream she was looking for something in the Main Building and descended into a kind of hidden room below where there were certain people, whom she named. One of them was me, I was singing kirtan and was "blissed out", as she described it. Pji and SN were also in the room. I would intuitively say that this dream also was "that" kind of dream, because it had such a magical atmosphere, but I can't be sure and she made no definite pronouncement in this regard.
There are many examples like this, as you probably know, and the same is true for all saints. I have read several books published by the church that contain letters written to the Church by the Christian faithful, where the latter relate different dreams of this kind that they had, where they saw a particular saint and they consider that they truly had his (or her) darshan. All these dreams share an otherworldly, transcendental, divine, symbolical atmosphere. If we, as outsiders, want to approach such a dream, how can we decide if the dream was a genuine darshan? We can choose to take a scientific attitude and investigate if there are aspects of the dream that were not part of the dreamer's previous experience and yet they exist in the real world. For instance, in these dreams of Christian saints that I am referring to, some times the saint would appear in the sleep (or waking state) of more people than one with a similar message, or with a message to one person for the other, or would inform them of true and verifiable things that they did not know through the five senses before that.
Karl Jung, who has talked about the collective unconscious and the different archetypes, has also talked about Abraxas, a particular guru in the astral realm, that Jung claims is a true entity who had spirit-to-spirit contacts with Jung and imparted particular knowledge to him, knowledge that Jung used to create his psychological system. Jung hid these occurrences, thinking that being thought of as a mystic would undermine his reputation, but relevant manuscripts of his were published after his death. [Some of the occurrences that relate to the authorship of these manuscripts also took place in a physical way (ie spirits that haunted his house) and other family members were also involved in the perceptions of these extraordinary happenings. This is how Jung was first introduced into the transcendental realm.] People know Jung only in relation to the concept of the collective unconscious, but it must be understood that he also denoted the existence of a collective superconscious, where you have the ability to meet the souls of others, actual souls and not personal or collective fantasies, in a super-etherial visual realm during sleep.
This aspect of the superconscious is not dealt with by yoga devoid of a master.
But then again, we can renounce many things, but can we renounce our sense of ethics? Should we?
Therefore it is not easy to understand how to judge Swami Satyananda, if you see at the total picture. Let's keep our cool, and try to see things as objectively as we can.
Let's be in contact, shall we? I value our interactions and any answers or ideas or information or news that you may want to send. After all, though we have been exposed to different sort of things and may have a different outlook, we share a desire for truth.
