Many inspired and dedicated souls are, for many reasons, unable to live in Ananda communities. So they read the website and books by Paramhansa Yogananda, Swami Kriyananda and others. They meditate. When possible many visit our communities worldwide for inspiration, renewal and spiritual satsang fellowship.
Yogananda said that “Environment is stronger than will”. In order to create an environment around them more conducive to spiritual practice, some feel inspired to sponsor or attend a local meditation group where souls of like mind and aspiration can gather in support of each other and meditate together. These groups often sprout other meditation groups nearby and so it goes. As Jesus said, “When 2 or 3 are gathered together”. Some groups even go further and found small centers where they can gather in a more centralized location for larger and varied activities.
Such is Ananda Tucson.
For many years here in Tucson, Arizona, a small group of dedicated individuals met in each others homes to meditate and discuss Yogananda’s spiritual principles. Many have visited and some have lived at Ananda village at one time or another. The greater Tucson area is very geographically widespread with 2 current active meditation groups thriving through weekly meditations, one on the East side and one on the West with travel time being over an hour between. And now, thanks to some very committed souls, the Ananda community in Tucson is growing with a real physical center closer to the middle on the north side.
Countless hours of selfless effort and numerous weekend work parties has resulted in the creation of a beautiful, peaceful harbor and spiritual center for those Tucsonians and their friends. This small unassuming house in middle an older neighborhood on a relatively busy street, was purchased and has been remodeled in order to provide a large meeting area with open kitchen for gatherings, a small meditation room and even guest quarters. The house also came with a prized second lot in the back, which can be used for off street parking. Landscaping is just being added to provide garden areas in both front and back for everyone.
It is easily identified from the street by a spiritual eye painted on the mailbox out front.
Now they can call themselves “Ananda Tucson” with a center that can support many additional activities such as study groups and special events can be held for larger groups. Last weekend, Sraddha and I led Sunday Service followed by a satsang with everyone complete with a feast provided by volunteers.
It’s not just the physical place, but the spirit of all involved who create this blessed experience for all in the coming years. This can happen anywhere and has in many locations. All it takes a vision along with dedicated group of cooperative individuals willing say, “God is the Doer here” then channel their time and energy into making it happen.
As every Ananda community worldwide has experienced early in their lives, this is a humble beginning for Ananda Tucson. Who knows what Divine Mother has in store for its future.
Thank you Ananda Tucson for your deep commitment and love of God!
This week I became an Ananda minister. I’ve played the role of assistant minister for some time so this step was a natural one, but I still found myself a bit surprised.
Ananda doesn’t have a seminary or a list of requirements that must be met before one can serve as a minister. There is no diploma that is issued, a test that must be passed, or any outward achievement that puts one on the minister role call. Yoga is about inward unfoldment and discovery. It is also about directional energy – meaning: What step will help us move toward greater expansion, conscious awareness and self-forgetfulness? The invitation to serve as a minister in the Ananda Portland Sangha was a recognition of commitment and attunement; but even more importantly, it was a loving challenge to keep moving in the right direction.
We are beings of energy and energy is movement. You can’t stay in one place if you are a sincere seeker on the spiritual path; energy is always flowing in some direction. It may look like the place you are standing is a really nice place to be for a while. To just stand and look out at the scenery and be comfortable is a sweet temptation. But very soon the waves of the world are washing the sand out from under your feet and you have to move or get sucked under.
So now I am a minister and I realize that I was a little too comfortable where I was. Now there is a new mirror to look into and check myself for wrong thinking. The title “minister” is just a minor part in the play of life, but I want to play it sincerely and wholeheartedly, so I thought memorizing the Prayer for Ordination of Ministers would be a good idea. It is simple:
I offer my life in service, to be a channel for Thy ray, Thy love.
May my body express Your energy.
May my hands express Your servicefulness to all men.
May my eyes express Thy joy.
May my heart express Thy love.
May my voice be rich with the harmony of Your presence.
Use me as your instrument,
always in the awareness,
that Thou art the Doer, not I.
You may notice that there is nothing passive about the prayers at Ananda; Self-Realization comes with very intense activity for God! But it’s the inward movement of energy that is important, not the outward activity or label. This prayer could be used by anyone who seeks to forget the little self and move toward greater freedom and joy.
Minister is not just a role at church; it is an attitude and self-offering for all the circumstances of our lives. As I helped hold squealing guinea pigs this afternoon so my daughter could clip their claws, I had to laugh as the thought came across my mind, “Is this what Ananda ministers do?” Yes, that’s what they do – whatever it takes to move the energy in the right direction and be an instrument for God’s presence.
This past Sunday I was speaking at the Sunday service at our local Ananda Center in York, Maine and the scripture reading included Christ’s words in the Bible, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God”. One can contemplate and meditate upon these words for a lifetime or for many lifetimes to experience the glorious truth of these words. Another may experience in an instant the promise of these words due to already having a pure heart.
What is a pure heart? The great Masters share it is a heart that is free of any egoic attachments, desires or preoccupations. A pure heart feels love and devotion to God and the realization of God’s presence in all things including one self.
How do we free ourselves from the bonds that contaminate the heart’s purity?
The entire Bhagavad Gita is about the battle of slaying the evil qualities in our hearts that the Divine may shine forth triumphant in the end. Arjuna’s faintheartedness and questions to Krishna are our own. It is a long, difficult battle to say the least and yet it is the one battle we simply have no choice but to fight. The alternatives sooner or later only promise misery and we will ultimately be confronted with the same choices. The choices of truth verses dishonesty, love verses hate, sharing and giving of oneself verses anger and greed. The list goes on and on.
Fortunately we have the opportunity to use the tools Krishna advises, the tools of devotion to God and Guru, (Divine Teacher, one who has realized his oneness with the Infinite, such as Christ, Krishna, Buddha, Paramhansa Yogananda, and other Masters) In addition we have the teachings of yoga and meditation which the Masters have taught, “Be still and know that I am God”.
The teachings our Masters brought for all who care to have inner communion with God are our “sacred keys of awakening” as our Festival of Light ceremony mentions. Any of us who have been practicing the techniques of Kriya Yoga can attest to the power of transformation that occurs in purifying the heart. We ourselves know from experience the lures of the world are but “stale cheese” as Yogananda described them compared to God’s bliss in meditation.
Today as I was meditating on “purity of heart” I felt Divine bliss in my heart, the essential bliss of being. Is this not God? The ancient scriptures define God as Satchidanandam; ever existing, ever conscious, ever new bliss.
Each of us is starting right now with whatever purity of heart we have within. We are all destined to realize the sacred promise of Christ’s words. Are we willing to simply practice these teachings daily with devotion and love for God? I am and I invite you to join me.
This year I’ve been teaching a class at Ananda’s Living Wisdom Highshool entitled, “Sharing Nature Leadership Training.” The Sharing Nature with Children book series was written by Ananda Village member Joseph (Bharat) Cornell and is used in virtually every part of the world. Joseph wrote the Sharing Nature activities to give inspiring nature experiences and to bring participants (both young and old) to a place of stillness within themselves. For as Henry David Thoreau said, “one cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind.”
The most challenging and ultimately most rewarding part of working with these students is learning how to work with their energy and enthusiasm, or lack thereof. No matter how well prepared I am going into a class, I almost always have to tweak or sometimes even completely let go of my personal goals and work with their level of energy at the moment.
To help in this process I use a technique developed by Joseph Cornell called Flow Learning.™ Flow Learning is a technique of working with energy to calm the mind so learning can take place much more effectively and peace be felt much more deeply. It has four stages:
Let me demonstrate the process of Flow Learning in pictures…
1. Flow Learning first starts with a lively activity to awaken their energy and enthusiasm by having fun. In this activity, “Animals! Animals!” the girls act out a Dragon Fly.
2. Next you take that newly awakened energy and bring it to a calm focus. In this activity, “Duplication,” students are given 15 seconds to memorize natural objects before they are covered up. They then go and search for those objects.
3. Now that their energy is focused and their mind is calm, it is easier for them to experience nature deeply. Here Mark is practicing “Still Hunting” in a tree!
4. Finally the students gather to share their experiences. Sharing helps to extract meaning more immediately from an experience.
So far the boys and girls have had a wonderful time working with and teaching Sharing Nature activities. They’ve taught to mostly all of the younger students at Living Wisdom School and the girls recently got back from their trip to Hawaii where they taught a class of 7th graders. In May we will be Traveling to Ashland, Portland and Seattle to do a series of workshops and next year we will be taking Sharing Nature into the schools in Nevada County. Maybe you’d like us to lead your family or group in Sharing Nature activities? You’ll be sure to have a joyful time!
Tulips sprouting at Crystal Hermitage.
If you read my last post you knew I would be writing to you next from India. However, shortly before we were to leave we got one of those phone calls nobody likes to get. A beloved family member passed away.
I went over to one of my favorite places: Crystal Hermitage and found solace in the springlike weather and vibrant greenery. I was completely alone and completely immersed in the stillness of the gardens.
The tulip sprouts were reaching for the sun and all kinds of birds were singing and hopping from tree to tree. The soil was rich and nurturing. I walked up to the Shrine and spent time listening to the wind chimes that seemed to want to remind me to pause and go deep in the sounds and the silence. I offered prayers for people who have written to Ananda for prayers and for friends I knew that were also dealing with loss and trying times. I felt connected to a calm joy. Even the Bhuddha statue seemed to radiate prayers and peace.
Here is a teeny little video (58 seconds) of a few of the sights and sounds in the garden. I hope that it conveys some of the peace I felt. Om Guru. And blessings to you all. Barbara
This article covers a technique, Khechari Mudra, that is one of the most unusual in yoga and therefore a bit too strange for some people. I’m posting it here because there is quite a lot of confusion around this technique, and what Paramhansa Yogananda taught about it.
Khechari Mudra (also spelled Khecari or Kechari) is an ancient yoga technique that is used in the practice of Kriya Yoga as taught by Yogananda and his lineage of Kriya gurus. It has also been practiced by yogis and meditators for perhaps thousands of years, due to its wonderful benefits.
Yogananda privately recommended Khechari Mudra to some of his disciples, but only occasionally mentioned it publicly. He explained that he was teaching in a country where yoga was already strange enough — without also telling people about a yoga technique where the tongue is turned upward and placed into the nasal cavity, above the soft palate!
It’s important to remember that techniques alone can’t give one enlightenment or liberation. Yogananda said about Kriya Yoga:
Kriya plus devotion works like mathematics. It cannot fail.
Right attitude, devotion, and attunement to the Guru are more important than an over-reliance on exotic techniques such as Khechari Mudra. However, Khechari can be an aid to deeper meditation when done with the right attitude.
Yogananda didn’t fully describe the technique in his writings and lectures — it is explained more fully in The Art and Science of Raja Yoga, by Swami Kriyananda, and in the Khechari Mudra Booklet (an e-book available for those who have been initiated into Kriya Yoga through Ananda - please contact me for details).
In the ninety years since Yogananda began teaching in the West, unusual yoga practices, such as Khechari Mudra, have become more well known. Many people are confused about whether Yogananda even recommended Khechari. In fact, Yogananda both wrote and spoke about Khechari Mudra.
Yogananda wrote about Khechari in an early version of his home study course, published in 1926. The “little tongue” that he mentions below is the uvula, the soft tissue that hangs from the roof of the mouth, at the back of the throat:
This Kundalini moving brainwards, and helped by the union of nerves in the tip of the tongue and the “little tongue,” and certain centers in the nasal cavity, brings about the secretion of a fluid with union of the Life Energy and Cosmic Energy.
This secretion of nectar and union of energies do not involve any loss, but mean immense spiritual realization.
He also gave a similar explanation once to Swami Kriyananda:
Sex seems pleasant to you now, but when you discover the joy of real inner union, you will see how much more wonderful that is.
This union can be achieved physically also, by what is known in yoga as kechari mudra—touching the tip of the tongue to nerves in the nasal passage, or to the uvula at the back of the mouth.
—Conversations with Yogananda by Swami Kriyananda
In an early article Yogananda described one of the benefits of practicing Khechari Mudra:
It draws energy from the cerebrum and medulla by connecting the tip of the big tongue with the little tongue (uvula).
He gave a more esoteric explanation in a lecture in India during his visit there in 1935-6:
While practicing Kriya… a divine nectar-like current flows from the sahasrara (chakra, or spinal center, at the top of the head).
Through the performance of Kechari Mudra, touching the tip of the tongue to the uvula, or “little tongue,” (or placing it in the nasal cavity behind the uvula), that divine life-current draws the prana from the senses into the spine and draws it up through the chakras to Vaishnavara (Universal Spirit), uniting the consciousness with spirit.
The entire body is thereby spiritualized and energized. As a result, a perceptible glow may emanate from the body. —Mejda: The Family and the Early Life of Paramahansa Yogananda by Sananda Lal Ghosh, pp. 279-28
As you can see in Yogananda’s lectures and writings, he described the different stages of Khechari: first touching the tongue to the uvula, or “little tongue” at the back of the mouth, and then placing the tongue into the nasal cavity above the soft palate.
In The Art and Science of Raja Yoga, Swami Kriyananda gives a more complete explanation of Khechari:
Kechari Mudra, “the tongue-swallowing” technique that I taught in Step Five, creates a cycle of energy in the head that generates enough magnetism to draw great amounts of energy from the universe around you.
This energy is actually experienced in the mouth as a slightly sweet, and very pleasant, taste that has been described (accurately, in my experience) as resembling a mixture of ghee (clarified butter) and honey.
This is what is known in various mystical writings as “the nectar of the gods.”
Kriyananda goes on to explain:
The positive and negative energies in the tongue and nasal passages (or uvula), when joined together, create a cycle of energy in the head which, instead of allowing the energy to flow outward to the body, generates a magnetic field that draws energy upward from the body and from the base of the spine to the brain.
It is said that the tongue turns back of itself in samadhi. The assumption of this mudra helps to hasten the advent of deep spiritual states of consciousness.
The difficulty for most people is that the frenulum, the membrane under the tongue, isn’t flexible enough to allow the tongue to reach so far back and up. Over time the frenulum can be gently stretched to enable one to practice Khechari Mudra.
Yogananda was extremely vocal with his disciples that under no circumstance should one try to cut the frenulum, as some unscientific and ill-advised “teachers” recommended.
It is possibly out of such concern that certain teachers in Yogananda’s lineage are afraid of discussing Khechari Mudra. But there are some very simple exercises which enable one to gently stretch the frenulum and tongue enough to practice Khechari.
How did Yogananda recommend adding the practice of Khechari to one’s meditation and Kriya practice? Gradually, as Swami Kriyananda has explained:
He (Yogananda) didn’t talk about (kechari) much, but when he found somebody who could do it, he was very glad and urged them to do it.
One time he said to Dr. Lewis, “You’re not doing Kriya right.”
And doctor said, “What do you mean, sir?”
And Master said, “You should be doing kechari mudra.”
After Doctor told me, I asked Master, “Should I be doing kechari while practicing Kriya?” And he said, “Not yet.”
He didn’t emphasize this a lot. I think it was because he was teaching thousands and thousands of people in America who weren’t ready for this kind of thing. All Master did was bring people into the technique step-by-step rather than giving them everything all at once.
Khechari Mudra clearly isn’t for everyone — but it is extremely helpful for all meditation practices, including Kriya Yoga. And again, right attitude, devotion, and attunement to the Guru are more important than technique alone.
I’ve been practicing Kriya and meditation with Khechari for about thirty years. Because of the wonderful benefits it has for meditation, I would suggest that all Kriya Yogis, and any serious meditator, at least consider learning Khechari Mudra.
In many years of teaching Khechari, I’ve seen that most people can eventually learn how to do it by practicing certain exercises taught by Lahiri Mahasaya. These exercises, and a more complete explanation of Khechari Mudra, are explained in the previously mentioned Khechari Mudra Booklet (an e-book available for those who have been initiated into Kriya Yoga through Ananda - please contact me for details).
After Yogananda told Nayaswami Kriyananda that his life’s work was “writing, editing, and lecturing,” Kriyananda asked, “But Sir, haven’t you already written everything that is necessary?”
Yogananda looked shocked. “Don’t say that,” he replied. “Much more is needed.”
Since then, Nayaswami Kriyananda has gone on to write almost 100 books. And even so, I doubt he has covered even a tenth of all the ways of bringing Yogananda’s teachings into every part of life, if that! I expect the number could even be as small as a thousandth.
Kriyananda has said that he writes “seminally” — he wants his writing to inspire other works. I could see these delving more deeply into specific concepts, or into how those concepts apply in new fields. An effect of him writing in this way is that passages in his books often have deep meaning.
A small example: he wrote two plays, The Peace Treaty and The Jewel in the Lotus. But in each, how full of meaning the lines are! A close study of them, as an actor playing one of their parts must make, yields a wealth of insight.
Right now we’re rehearsing The Jewel in the Lotus at Ananda Village, which we’ll perform on March 6. The beginning of the play reveals a conflict between father and his son. The father is trying to get the son, who only wants God, to work for him in his shop. “My dear boy,” he says, “It’s perfectly obvious. Didn’t you yourself just say God is the money that we spend? Well, then — the more you have of money, the more you’ll have of God. Simple!”
I love that argument — the reasoning is perfect on it’s own level of ignorance!
The struggle between the father and his son represents the timeless struggle between material consciousness and soul aspiration. The son says, “I want to find God,” and the father responds by trying to pull him back into the father’s own very material world.
Nayaswami Kriyananda’s and Yogananda’s works reward exploration. In fact, as a “live” experiment, let me open a random page of Swami Kriyananda’s The New Path, and we’ll see where it takes us…
Daya Mata [a direct disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda, and the president of Self-Realization Fellowship] tells a story dating back to when she was a teenager and new on the path. At first, in her association with him, he had treated her lovingly, like a daughter (which indeed she had been to him in a former incarnation). Once her feet were planted firmly on the path, however, he began to teach her the superior merits of impersonal love. To her now, feeling for him as she did the affection of a devoted daughter, he seemed all at once aloof, even stern.
One evening in Encinitas he addressed her that way. She went out onto the bluff above the ocean behind the hermitage, and prayed deeply for understanding. At last she reached a firm resolution. “Divine Mother,” she vowed, “from now on I will love only Thee. In beholding him, I will see Thee alone in him.”
Suddenly she felt as though a great weight had been lifted from her. Later she went indoors and knelt before Master for his blessing, as she always did before retiring for the night. This time he greeted her gently, saying, “Very good!”
From then on he showed himself once more affectionate toward her. Now, however, their relationship was on a deeper level, for the disciple saw him at last in that impersonal light in which he beheld himself.
Nayaswami Devi once told me that, if ever she related to Nayaswami Kriyananda in a personal way, it was like a wall went up between them. I realized later that he didn’t put up that wall; it was the inevitable result of holding a personal attitude towards anyone. We have a choice in how to relate to people: as personalities; or as souls, unique expressions of God.
I’ve noticed this with Devi herself. I often relate to her as a personality, and at these times she can seem distant. But the more impersonally loving I am, and the more I think of God instead of “Devi,” the more expressive her friendship is.
And I’ve sometimes thought, What a gift! She places my spiritual needs above everything else. And she isn’t just doing this for me, she’s doing it for many, many people — maybe everyone. Wouldn’t you call this Divine Friendship?
