About Gyaneshwara

Sant Gyaneshwara (Dyaneshwara) was an incarnation of Shri Kartikeya, who resides in the right Mooladhara chakra. His Guru was his elder brother, Shiva incarnate Nivruttinatha. His sister was Vishnumaya incarnate Muktabai. Bhramadeva incarnate Sopandev* was born between Gyaneshwara and Muktabai. they lived in the 13th century. Full biographies are online

Shri Mataji on Gyaneshwara on his 700th Birth Anniversary (Pune, 1996):

"Today I am going to tell you, we have within us all these powers. As Shri Gyaneshwara had described in the sixth chapter, that there is a force called Kundalini within us which when awakened gives you the self. But as you know everywhere, there are fundamentalist, we call them dharma martanda. And they said that “This is something that one should just avoid, this we cannot.” Because they can't do it. So that was not read anymore. Neither people ever tried to have.

But in these modern times, it is predicted that is going to happen to thousands of people... A specialty of this age, that it is happening all over the world. I am surprised Myself. This is the power that you have within yourself. I am not obliged. Neither you are obliged. It is your own power that rises and gives you this self-hood which is being described by Shri Sant Gyaneshwara. And this state of Sahajavastha is very easy to achieve."

Rajshri Productions produced an cheesy, yet informative animated short chronicling the life and work of the lives of these divine brothers and sister:



* 1988 Fatima Bi Puja, Switzerland

Realtime Righteousness in Second Birth

At the turn of the year, a yogi asked another yogi: What are your new year resolutions for 2010?

Yogi #2: Realtime Righteousness

Yogi #1: What's that exactly?

Yogi #2: Well, in the previous stage of growth in self-realization, righteousness and spiritual conduct had been establishing within me, but it was a process which entailed listening to the Guru's advice externally, mentally processing the advice into positive conditionings, eliminating negative conditionings and meditating for silence. The brain was an intermediary which instroduced necessary but inefficient brokering of righteousness. Necessary, because the inner being, the soul hasn't evolved enough for lesser brain and more heart based righteousness. The next stage is when the connection with the all-pervading is less riddled with doubts, fears and thoughts, so that the righteousness can just flow instantaneously. Just like dial-up and broadband internet.

Initially we needed to dial-up to the provider, we counted the minutes of use, downloaded data, wen't offline and processed it. It was inefficient, but the best approach at the time. Now that broadband connection is available, everytime you are working at the computer, it is impossible to do 90% of the tasks without a live connection. Thus, when the new bandwidth is available in our subtle system to handle the new age of spiritual conduct, we just jump onto that mode spontaneously one day, because our dial-up was too broken to fix and we needed to upgrade - no choice. Similarly, the first stage of offline righteousness had worked until December 2009, and the crumbling of the approach had begun. It was terrifying at the start, but the grace of the Comforter was standing by, assuring yogi #2 to witness the awesome creative power which destroys only selectively, and to make space for new spiritual infrastructure within. The accuracy of destruction is astounding as all innocent parts of the soul were retained and built around.

In the end, it seemed like the bird had been hatched out of the egg. The destruction was only the temporary protective egg shell, which was bound to break one day, anyways. Now the bird is out, can see reality directly, rather than interpret indirectly it from the sounds and words of the Mother outside and above. Now, in the lap of the Mother - not as an egg, but as a bird ready to fly fearlessly and do all that the Mother wishes Her offspring to do.

So its not the end, just the beginning of a new stage, which may also reach saturation one day and be abandoned in favor of newer, higher life. Like a rocket, dropping off propulsion stages on the way up, the ascent goes on, the old keeps burning up and dropping off and we attain higher and higher orbits. We only need small correction jets once we've escaped the ocean of illusion. We don't feel guilty for the initial noisy and hot state because we start seeing it as a temporary necessity. Now the old one is dead, burnt up and dropped off and the new life begins in second birth, where the only worry is "are we having fun"?




JSM!

Photo Credits: flickr users' Creative Commons photos
1. Erica Marshall of muddyboots.org (we are all connected)
2. chidorian (egg/bird)

Correction and Hurt

 When we want to correct someone, there is a chance that we will hurt them. But when we go out to hurt someone, there is no chance we will correct them.

CC licensed photo by photomequickbooth

The Ship Hath Sailed

One of my favorite proverbs is

"A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for." Grace Hooper

Our agnya chakra is the most critical, most delicate and most easily affected. A person with no conflicts of any kind is either realized or completely oblivious. Conflict resolution approaches are the best way to test a person's agnya chakra. Without conflict, there is no way to confirm who will survive the new age that is rapidly closing in.

As the grand illusion, the Mahamaya, separates the wheat from the chaff, she sets up these serious games for our personal learning. These serious games can be harmless as long as we are not involved in the emotional aspect. Because it starts of with small seeds of discontent amongst a so-called brotherhood, which ultimately erupts in a fight which will for a part of the collective to leave. The reaper is at work testing people who can truly humble themselves and forgive others.

Last Monday, it occured to me in a morning meditation that the one quality I still lack as a Sahaja Yogi, is the ability to express love. I had genuine love for most acquaintances, but my failing had been the ability to express it. I did develop the ability to express it for seekers over the past few years, because that genuine love is the only thing that a seeker of truth can feel. However, there was a serious lack of ability to express love openly to other enlightened souls. Since the morning meditations were now regular and improving, I felt courageous to ask for this new ability. As the Chinese say, be careful what you ask for, because it may just come true.

The very next day, I played good cop/bad cop to pull over a organizationally speeding brother and issue a spiritual ticket. What I got in return was the culmination of his months long plan to slow poison our common friends. This slow poisoning was successful only because of, guess what, my total lack of ability to openly express love and adoration of my fellow realized beings. This comes partly from my Indian descent, where I leave communication with ladies to my wife or other female representative of the family. The passive aggressive negativity had thrived in the brain of my weak friend, and had him sow seeds of discontent quite discretely so that some of my other weak friends were starting to cut off their time with me. I suspected something, but the "speeding ticket" brought out the complete masterplan.

Like the unfortunate cop who gets shot by a druggie on a stop-and-bust, I was repeatedly shot down in the back multiple times as I asked for the drivers license and registration. A routine stop and check had turned fatal for me.

Now came the real part - will I give in to the ideas of hatred or bring down my ego, make the ultimate sacrifice of pride and humbly apologize, even though there was a clear violation of natural law. Like many ironic court cases of America, the process started with me issueing unconditional apologies to the poisoned friends for anything done unknowingly in the recent past. Asking for forgiveness. And as that started, they their poison revealed to me. If I had aggressively pursued the matter with the poisoned innocent, they would have frozen up and confirmed the trash talk about me.

Honestly, I was surprised by my mind's ability to express unconditional apologies and ask for forgiveness and acceptance. This could be the greatest jump in evolution of all the fantastic jumps I have seen this Fall of 2009. I am tempted to analyze the motivations of my malefactor, but the mind simply refuses to co-operate with thoughts of hatred. I would have never discovered this depth granted by Sahaja meditation, the blessing of the agnya chakra to humble down immediately. I would have expected that it would take me months before I would consider leveling with them. But the stakes are too high. The social capital we build is more precious than our fragile egos and one cannot implement this self-belief in any other system of yoga meditation. This is simply Sahaja, simply unique and simply amazing.

As the proceedings proceed, I sometimes feel distinct "working out" of negativity in different chakras. Clearing of this nature usually takes years. I am happy that this dynamic training environment exists within Sahaja Yoga where our false knowledge is actively removed, our theoratical learning is tested and corrected -- all without an institutionalized system of education.

Once you begin Sahaja Yoga, your ship, i.e., your being, will truly sail off the harbor into the wild seas and your captainship will be tested, improved and blessed.



CC licensed photo: symera_serin

Everybody Hates Chris, But Loves Raymond

Happiness & Sadness are a state of mind and that is exactly where the trap is.  If we shoot for joy which is a constant, always-on property we will not be dissapointed.

The shortcut to a high is usually exciting the parasympathetic sympathetic channel (Sushumna), through egoistic means: drugs, cigarettes or alcohol. Perhaps even food sometimes. Exciting the parasympathetic makes one happy, which leads to a crash eventually because we are simply  fighting fire with fire. De stressing the sympathetic requires detachment from the mind and the sympathetics. The good news is that that can happen in just one instant by acknowledging your spirit & denouncing your body.

Instantly one moves from being "Chris" to being "Raymond". As an aside, I must mention that the concept of detachment from the body, mind I intellect has to be innate. Not by leaving society, meditating in the jungles or shaving the head and wearing funny clothes. It has to be innate or else the true high will hot be achieved. One will only end up fooling the self for years on end.

Photo credit: CC licensed photo by swamibu

Why Everyone Loves Raymond but Hates Chris

Knowing Thyself, Definitively

One of the first questions that arises after learning to meditate, is how do we interpret our meditations? How do we judge our feelings & sensations during meditations? How to know what we are seeing within is true progress in the right direction? Three approaches are examined below for merits.

Asking Others to Judge Us


Having another meditation expert or peer feel our chakras and work on them is a great way to cleanse. It does not work quite well to get an absolute measure of where we stand within. Asking others coldly to check vibrations, in my experience, is a common mistake. Since we are all progressing towards perfection, getting a definitive answer from someone else is a risky proposition. The answer may be biased by emotion or tainted by the imbalances of the person checking vibrations without entering a good state of meditation. I usually avoid cold calling on awakened friends to check vibrations, as the spontaniety of feeling vibrations is now constrained by emotion, "performance pressure" and other stressors.

Self Checking Vibrations
The act of feeling our subtle energy centers is called checking vibrations. It is a spontaneous process when our attention reports bliss or stress in the subtle energy centers. However, the approach and practice of it varies widely. Doing it ourselves requires complete detachment and a strong witness state. The willingness to face our faults without guilt and correct them with advanced practices, which are beyond the reach of a majority, one can safely state. The lack of detachment almost always results in confusing answers.

Giving Awakening & Inner Experience of Meditation to Others
In my opinion, giving stands out as the best way to investigate our spiritual depth & inner growth. It is independent of our personal biases and present state. Our ability to pass on the experience of bliss to others is the golden yardstick to measure our growth. "We can only give what we have within" The honest and willing reciever will honestly report their inner experience. If our awakening is true, we are able to awaken others by our mere presence combined with their active desire. And to rule out the reciever's inability to report back their blissful state accurately, we can draw a conclusion about ourselves by giving self-realization to many others - to eliminate estimation errors.

If we have the light, it well pass on effortlessly to most people we attempt to enlighten. Daily meditation keeps our mortal shell clean & transplant. A non-daily mediator usually cannot sustain their connection with the universe and any attempt to pay forward the experience will by futile. In conclusion, only in giving others we can really discover what's within us. By giving enlightenment to others we can know for sure if we have nourished our light within. Based on what others recieve from us, we can make a definitive conclusion of who we are. So get going and know thyself!

Wish you all the best in your journey of meditation and personal growth.

At a Quiet Courtyard in Ann Arbor

Last week at one of our meetings in Ann Arbor, an attendee shared a beautiful story of how he was helped with the knowledge of meditation during a stressful time. Here it is, with the name changed to protect his identity

Gerald is a graduate student pursuing his PhD at the University of Michigan in Economics. Most days he can handle the stress and juggle the busy schedule that comes along with being a doctoral student. But Someday even a seasoned student like Gerald cannot find a way to juggle all the balls tossed up so quickly by the virtue of his student life.

Today he had 3 grueling classes and to top it all, a final exam. The pressure has mounted and strolling through the streets of Ann Arbor he searched for a way to relieve his anxieties. That's when it struck him. He could try out some simple stress reduction he learnt at last week's meditation class.

He knew about the perfect spot - a little garden between the Michigan League and the Alumni Center, a small courtyard that would be the perfect place for an activity like meditation.

Ten minutes of silence and saying simple affirmations while placing his hands on his heart and forehead, he was already feeling good. The buzz in the stomach was gone. The racing mind was now working at a more normal speed.

A few minutes that morning put everything in perspective for Gerald He slipped into this dynamic. yet centered state where he was a witness to himself, sorting out a hectic day, one activity at a time.







Images:
"Stress" by flickr user otherthings 
"Butterfly" by author