Contents Editorial + Spend time with God + Accepting the Mother + Swami Replies + Understanding Each Other + Viprit Nauka Prana Apan Mudra Asana + Amethyst Part 2 + Understanding Energy + The Art of Leadership + Sri Yukteswar + The Key to True Knowledge + Navaghara + ABC of Life + Meditation and the Art of Action + Inspiration + GitaScendence + Science and Power of Gayathri + Truth 4 Youth
Selected Articles
Editorial
Namasté all.
This is our penultimate Transcendence issue for 2006. We hope you enjoy it.
We have some inspiring reader contributions and letters this month. Thanks to all of you. Our Feature article covers the life of Sri Yukteswar Giri. Although an article was included on this Master in the August 2005 issue, we thought it appropriate to cover some additional aspects of the life of Yogananda’s Guru, who also graces this month’s MasterCard and whose masterpiece, The Holy Science, is discussed in Off the Shelf.
This month, Swami Shankarananda speaks to us about accepting and embracing the Mother in our daily lives; we find out why men are so direct and we learn about the key to true Knowledge from Swami Murugesu. We have a new contributor to our Healing from Within article: Yvonne Jarvis, a yoga student of Swami’s who will supply us with a series of fascinating articles on Understanding Energy.
In Faith we learn about the purpose of the Navagraha Pooja, a prayer that is so important but not sufficiently understood by devotees. Suren enlightens us on meditation and the art of action, and we find out about the symbolism of the words of the Gayathri Manthra from Swami Murugesu.
Remember, it is Babaji’s birthday celebration on the 25th of November (see Happenings page), so please try to attend.
On the 26th November, the Jadatharaya Institute will be present at the Mind, Body and Soul fair, held every three months at the Westville Civic Centre. Yoga students will give a demonstration and Bhajan will be performed on stage by Guruji and His musicians. Entrance is free and there are always lots of interesting spiritual items for sale, including a great selection of gemstones and crystals.
We have included prayers, happenings and workshop dates for the rest of 2006 so that you can plan your holiday itinerary and the Jadatharaya Institute is in the process of compiling the 2007 Workshop/Discourse/Retreat calendar. If you would like a copy of this emailed to you when it is ready, then please let us know.
Also, take a look at the back cover of this issue for more interesting articles to purchase. All funds generated by these sales go to the Jadatharaya Institute of Right Living and Yoga for the production of workshops, inspirational writing and recording of Guru’s CDs.
In Love and Service always,
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Message from the Master
Spend time with God.
Develop an intimate friendship with God. By spending time with God you will speak only about God only to everyone you meet. Make yourself a sanctuary for God to live in. Repeat ‘OM’ daily, as many times as possible. you are a miniature incarnation of that Divine Intelligence.
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My Beloved,
An intimate life walking hand in hand with the Divine Mother
is the most exquisite relationship you can ever have.
Doubt not that God exists,
as it is by the grace of God that the planet spins on its axis,
and that the sun and moon exchange places each day.
The Divine Mother is the master mathematician
controlling in a divine way every moment of every day.
Deanadayalan
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Accepting the Mother
by Swami Shankarananda
The Divine Mother wants you to acknowledge Her relationship with Her simply because of Her great Love for you. The great sages have created nine days to fulfill this love and rekindle the relationship. Do you still remember these nine days, or are they something of the past, not to be remembered, like every other Divine function?
The Divine Mother knows every wrong Her children do long before it is done. Yet she still wants their relationship and Love. This is what is amazing about the Divine Mother and also human mothers. When your relationship with the mother is unhindered, the result is as that of the Ganges River flowing out of the inner alter of your innermost being, blessing you and all around you. This Ganges River will create an aura so great and brilliant that every being passing will give you a second look, wanting what you have.
But the flow of this Ganges River can become blocked by many obstacles, and if you are not a true devotee of the Divine Mother, wanting to fully enjoy your relationship with Her, then it is necessary for you to deal with everything that could possibly stop, or create a blockage in your relationship with Her.
There are many hindrances on the spiritual Journey, many of these are of the mind alone. To enjoy a relationship with the Divine Mother, you need to renew and refresh your mind daily, not allowing any negative thoughts to affect you, but always encouraging thoughts that are positive, pure and enhancing. You should love unconditionally, always walking in Love. Do not have hate for anyone. Love all and serve all.
Lying is one of the biggest problems on the spiritual path. It is so easy to quickly tell a lie. This will hinder your progress. Alway speak the Truth and, in time your mere words will manifest Truth. Stealing is the strongest act of negativity as it involves both body and mind, and often violent behaviour. Always ask if you want something. Do not take - this is stealing. Coveting the property of another is a form of mental stealing. This is wrong and will surely affect your spiritual journey. Prayer, although it appears last here, is the most important aspect of the journey. By not praying, how are you to know who the Goddess is. In the nine days mentioned above, did you worship the Mother in her many forms, or are you waiting for next year some time - again?
Some time ago I was battling with many challenges at one time. I struggled to be a good husband and father, and tried not to complain. I avoided any kind of argument, believing in the Divine. Slowly, many of my issues vanished and everything became peaceful. This only happened after I had accepted Mother Gayathri totally. I recited silently, daily and eventually I attained what I needed: peace, peace, peace . . . bliss.
You should now restore your relationship with the Divine Mother.
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Understanding Energy
by Yvonne Jarvis
Big ideas sometimes deal with very small things, and small things are often exceedingly important. Consider the atom. Though atoms cannot be seen, in the search for more information on them, scientists are gradually learning more about the energy within.
The entire universe – the stars flung to the furthest corners, the rocks and sand under our feet, the air we breathe, the light that illuminates our way, the trickling streams, the tiny cells that flow through our veins – are made of only two things… one is matter, and the other is energy. It is only in the last 100 years or so that scientists have begun to fathom out what matter and energy really are. At first glance they seem quite different – matter weighs something and energy does not. But physicists have been puzzled that energy sometimes acts like matter and vice versa. This page is matter – it seems solid, blow on it and it moves, and it has mass. The breath you blow with is not solid like the page, and it seems to weigh nothing. The matter in your breath is much more loosely arranged than the matter in the book – it has body, and when you blow up a balloon, you can feel the air inside. A blimp carrying fuel and engines and crew floats in the sky by weighing a bit less than air, just as a submarine floats in the sea by weighing a little less than water. So even thinned-out matter has mass.
But the light by which you are reading this is something else… it seems to weigh nothing, you can shine light into a balloon and it does not fill, it will not move if you blow on it. It is not thinned-out matter, but energy. Yet when we examine matter using sophisticated equipment, it looks almost like thickened-up or frozen energy.
We still do not know clearly what energy is, but we know what it does. It does work (technically, applying force over a distance). More simply, this is using energy to move things or change things like lifting girders to erect a building, or weaving cloth; or changing the insides of matter like changing iron to steel in a furnace; or magnetising and demagnetizing such as happens in a loudspeaker; or changing the temperature of something. We measure energy by the amount of work it does, in units like joules, calories, horse-power-hours, kilowatt-hours, depending on the kind of work.
In 1905 a brilliant young German-born scientist, Albert Einstein, wrote a sentence which became one of the most famous sentences of the 20th century, in a paper called his Theory of Relativity. This sentence was written not in words, but in algebra: E = mc2. This means that energy is stored in matter, and takes the form of a little additional mass, and when the energy is released, the mass goes back to what it was. It also means that any mass can be changed into energy. The constant c in the equation stands for the speed of light at 186,000 miles per second, and when squared, gives us a gigantic number. This means that an astonishing amount of energy is locked in to matter, even with very little mass.
Reference: The How and Why Wonder Book of Atomic Energy by Paul Blackwood
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Feature: Sri YukteswarGuru of Paramahansa Yogananda
Yukteshwar, means: union with Ishwara (the aspect of God controlling nature). Sri Yukteswar was the guru of Paramahansa Yogananda, a Vedic astrologer, or jyotishi, a yogi, and an exponent of the Bhagavad Gita. He was a member of the Giri branch of the swami order. His guru was Lahiri Mahasaya of Benares. Yogananda later styled Sri Yukteswar Jnanavatar, or “Incarnation of Wisdom”.
Sri Yukteswar was born in Serampore, India on 10 May 1855, to wealthy parents, Kshetranath Karar and Kadambini. The wisdom that readers are familiar with in Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi was evident at an early age. He was a bright student, though his formal education ended with a few years at two different colleges. For a time, he attended Serampore Christian Missionary College, where he developed an interest in the Christian Bible. This interest would later express itself in his book, The Holy Science, which shows the union of the scientific principles underlying Yoga and the Christian Bible. He also attended Calcutta Medical College for almost two years.
He married and had one daughter. His wife died a few years after their marriage, and Sri Yukteswar entered the monastic Swami order some time after that.
In 1884, he met his guru, Lahiri Mahasaya, who initiated him into the path of Kriya Yoga. Sri Yukteswar would spend a great deal of time during the next several years in the company of his guru, often visiting Lahiri Mahasaya in Varanasi from his home in Serampore. He converted his family home in Serampore into an ashram, where he had resident students and disciples.
Sri Yukteswar had few long-term disciples. However, in 1910, the young Mukunda Lal Ghosh would become Sri Yukteswar’s chief disciple, and spread the teachings of Kriya Yoga throughout the world as Paramahansa Yogananda. Yogananda attributed Sri Yukteswar’s small number of disciples to his strict training methods, which Yogananda said “cannot be described as other than drastic”, but whose purpose was to aid the disciples in the difficult challenge of achieving self-realization.
Sri Yukteswar wrote The Holy Science in 1894, at the request of Lahiri Mahasaya’s guru, Mahavatar Babaji. In the introduction, Sri Yukteswar states the goal of The Holy Science thus: “The purpose of this book is to show as clearly as possible that there is an essential unity in all religions; that there is no difference in the truths inculcated by the various faiths; that there is but one method by which the world, both external and internal, has evolved; and that there is but one Goal admitted by all scriptures.” Many ideas revolutionary for that time were introduced in The Holy Science.
One of them is Sri Yukteswar’s break from Hindu tradition in showing that the earth is not in the age of Kali Yuga, but has advanced to Dwapara Yuga. His proof is based on a new perspective of the precession of the equinoxes. He also introduces the idea that the sun takes a ‘star for its dual’, and revolves around that star in about 24,000 years, which accounts for the precession of the equinox. Current research into this theory is being conducted by the Binary Research Institute. They produced a documentary on it called The Great Year, narrated by James Earl Jones.
The theory of the Sun’s binary companion expounded by Sri Yukteswar in The Holy Science has attracted the attention of Dr. David Frawley, who has written about it in a several of his books. He explains that the theory offers better proof of the age of Rama and Krishna and other important historical Indian figures than other dating methods, which make some of these figures out to be millions of years old - too old for the accepted chronology of human history on Earth. Sri Yukteswar was especially skilled in Vedic Astrology, and prescribed various astrological gemstones and bangles to his students. He also studied astronomy and science, as evidenced in the formulation of his Yuga theory in The Holy Science.
The noted author W.Y. Evan-Wentz met Sri Yukteswar, and described him in the preface to Autobiography of a Yogi: “Sri Yukteswar was of gentle mien and voice, of pleasing presence, and worthy of the veneration which his followers spontaneously accorded him. Every person who knew him, whether of his own community or not, held him in the highest esteem. I vividly recall his tall, straight, ascetic figure, garbed in the saffron-colored garb of one who has renounced worldly quests, as he stood at the entrance of the hermitage to give me welcome. His hair was long and somewhat curly, and his face bearded. His body was muscularly firm, but slender and well-formed, and his step energetic.” Sri Yukteswar entered maha-samadhi on March 9, 1936, at the age of 81, while at his Puri ashram.
In the Words of Sri Yukteswar
“Firmness of moral courage when attained removes all the obstacles in the way of salvation. These obstacles are of eight sorts, viz., hatred, shame, fear, grief condemnation, race distinction, pride of pedigree, and a narrow sense of respectability, which are the meannesses of the human heart.”
“The Holy Sound Pranava Sabda appears spontaneously through the culture of Sraddha the energetic tendency of heart’s natural love, Veerya the moral courage, Smiriti the true conception and Samadhi the true concentration.”
“It has been clearly demonstrated in the foregoing pages that “Love is God,” not merely as the noblest sentiment of a poet but as an aphorism containing an eternal truth.”
It is said that Swami Maharaj used to say the following to disciples at initiation: “hear this! You should never think that you will be liberated by this touch or that a carriage will be ready to just take you up to heaven! You should never allow yourself to get this blind faith way of thinking towards achieving to kaivalya!!! The initiating touch of the guru just helps to encourage to realization. You yourself have to practice with greatest sincerity to achieve the divine goal and this will be through your own self efforts.”
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Meditation and the Art of Action
by Suren Pillay
In life there is so much scope for human action. An action may be strong or weak, depending on the results of another particular action. One question that many don’t ask is why some people accomplish so much with little or no effort. How is it possible for these people to achieve such great results with minimal effort? Many students of metaphysics would answer such questions by stating that such persons are gifted with good karma, and are thus just experiencing the fruits of the actions of their previous lives. This may be partially true, but there is another cause for such minimal action producing powerful results.
The way of contemporary business is to achieve more output in less time. Certainly, in commerce, effectiveness is judged by how fast an action or product can be completed. The world economy is producing more today than it did five years ago. However, a major reason for this is that people are working longer hours. Our time spent on activity has increased which also has the consequence of possibly lowering the quality of our actions since we are working longer and are more tired in our last few hours of work. The rise of technology has also made production and communication more efficient in their application.
Whether you are a student or an employee, or a self-employed businessperson, the laws of success governing efficient action are the same for everyone. Every action has a cosmic source. Actions stem from thoughts, and the stronger the mind, the more powerful the action. Actions are the expression of the strength and purity of ones own thoughts. A man whose mind is perfectly concentrated will achieve more in eight hours than a man whose mind is restless.
How is this so? A concentrated mind is goal-oriented and purpose-driven. Information is assimilated and organised, and actions are planned to achieve defined goals. This process will work efficiently for one who is able to calm his thoughts and remain free from anxiety no matter how desperate the situation might appear. Calmness, therefore, is the key to effectiveness and the art of mastering actions. In meditation we learn to still the mind by developing one-pointedness towards an object. Gradually we become totally immersed in the object and remain in complete peace. If we can retain the after-effects of meditation in our everyday working lives, all our actions will be naturally effective, since they will be born of calmness and reason.
For the man who is continually stressed and anxious about life, his effectiveness becomes inhibited by his own restlessness. The mind is unable to remain concentrated on the goal he is trying to achieve. He thus requires a lot more time than the meditator would, to achieve the same goal or desired output.
The clarity in thinking processes, born of calmness, leads the meditator to prioritise actions better and organise himself in more effective ways to achieve desired outcomes. It is thus incumbent on every human being who wants to maximise the effect of his own actions, to practice concentration and meditation. There is no loss and only gain in this practice and, whether you desire spiritual enlightenment or material wealth, the answer is still the same: meditate; achieve, grow, prosper, create, innovate and realize!
The Season of Spirit
by Suren
I make a promise to thee, that if I make you the summer of my life,
I know that you shall be with me for all seasons, rain or sunshine.
You remain ever still, watching my every moment.
Blessed are those who make you the prize of all their life
For their purpose is accomplished in that thought!