Kalpataru Darshan

Finally back to describe my Kalpataru Darshan experience…  it is a week later than promised since someone close to me was in a motorcycle accident on the way to my home on the 6th of April.  A fun night of House and 24 turned into 7 hours in the emergency room.  The doctors all said he shouldn’t have lived, but he didn’t even break a bone.  51 stitches put his left knee back together and we kept his spirit well chanting mantras, laughing with med students and the wonderful butch-lesbian biker nurse from Texas, and most of all remembering our blessings from the Kalpataru Darshan…

The Master’s Darshan is a very special gift.  To receive it is to experience Enlightenment, to get a glimpse of the Bliss that is waiting for you and that is yours already.  Not many are “lucky” enough to ever be in the presence of a  living Enlightened Master (although lucky isn’t really the correct word), especially here in the western world, and to receive his touch is something that couldn’t ever be fully described, only experienced.  The truly beautiful thing about receiving Darshan is that you don’t have to believe in anything to experience it.  It isn’t about religion or faith, it doesn’t have any requirements or restrictions.  You could never have heard of Nithyananda, you could know nothing about Vedanta and Hinduism, you could be Atheist or Christian or anything and nothing at all.  I suppose there are only two neccessities to having a true experience:  you need to be human and approach with an open heart.

Now normally Darshan time (usually at the end of a discourse) is a quick deal.  There are hundreds of people waiting (each Yoga sutra discourse here in LA had approx. 1200 attendees and at his ashram in Bidadi there are as many as 25,000) which means hours of Darshan even with two people going to the Master at once.  So many people means no time for chit-chat or lingering (although I find that when I’m near him, time stretches in strange ways and my mind loses all the questions it thought it had)!

The Kalpataru Darshan is a whole new experience – each devotee is able to approach the Master individually and if you want to talk to him there is time.  Some people ask for healing, some seek counsel or blessings, some cry and laugh.

Each time I approach Swamiji my experience is different and surprising.  It is always a moment outside of time, outside of everything I know.  Kalpataru Darshan was no exception.  When I first walked up to him I was already on the verge of tears, overwhelmed, elated and confused.  He placed his thumb at my third eye and his other hand on my shoulder and I could feel him pull the tension and fight from me.  I finally relaxed and he let go, embracing me as my head hit his shoulder and nestled there.  I remembered I had an arm and placed it on his back and I rested there as if I’d never have to leave.  When I stood up he looked at me and said, “I’m with you Ma,” and while that might not sound like much, it was exactly what I needed.  He handed me a red apple and held my hand with the apple perched on our fingers and asked, “Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

And there it was.  During the Kundalini Shakti meditation I had prayed for him just to know - know everything that I couldn’t say, that I couldn’t manage, that haunted me and kept me caged and for him to take it all, for him to accept my helplessness, my hopelessness, my fear and worry and even my joy, for him to know what a mess I feel like and how frightened I am that he will slip away from my too strong mind, leaving me again with my thoughts that run in circles and suffocate my Self beneath a million selves.

When he asked me if there was anything else I knew he had heard me.  I didn’t know how to answer him, my brain not processing as fast as my heart was.  I said, “Yes, so No.”  We laughed out loud, smiling at each other and I walked away all a churning whirling being.  I sat on the floor against the wall while the Darshan continued, covered by head with my wrap and sobbed.  I don’t know why I cried – they weren’t tears I could name.  There was no sadness, no grief, no happiness, elation or joy.  My tears were uncontrollable and felt like…  like utter loss and perfection all at once.

When I could breathe again and the blur left my eyes I watched him a bit longer.

And then I walked away reminding myself that each step further was still one step Closer.

here are a few photos from Kalpataru and the Yoga Sutra discourses at the Vedic Temple in Montclair, CA (these and more at Nithyananda Dhyanapeetam):

Kundalini Shakti meditation led by Swamiji

Swamiji with the temple’s Pantanjali moorti!

Most certainly cracking wise (and cracking himself up)!

Be Blissful!

Kalpataru – Fulfillment

The Kalpataru program and darshan is a time to pray to your Guru, your Master, your God or simply your Will for fulfillment.  The Master is there to shower you with compassion, to give you what you ask for, to give you exactly what you need.

The day began with Mahacharya Nithya Medhananda Swami leading us through several meditations to prepare us for Swamiji’s presence.

When Swamiji arrived he shared his own experience with us, the keys to his own Enlightenment.  And then a meditation, the most powerful one I have ever experienced.  It was in two parts:  first we prayed with all our intensity for fulfillment (i found myself praying for release, for relief from the pain my mind causes me, for the ability to be alone and enough unto myself, and for awakening).  During the second part, we were instructed to allow whatever happened inside our bodies to happen, allow the Master to work on us as he initiated our Kundalini Shakti.  During the prayer I found myself crying uncontrollably, letting my prayer pour from my eyes and heart, feeling my complete helplessness and total surrender to Swamiji (I now truly understand the “powerless” concept that they use in AA which is a lovely side effect for me).  I really have no where else to put all of Me but at his feet, I am out of solutions, I am tired of giving in to my mind that only ever works to destroy me.  During the Kundalini Shakti portion my experience was profound, both physically and internally.  I don’t think I can even give a description, but Kali did come to me and to see her was everything…  for as long as I’ve loved her I have never even dreamt of her.

Strangely (but i suppose neccessarily) we took a lunch break.  When I looked at the clock I couldn’t imagine how it had gotten so late.  The meditation that seemed like it had filled 30 or 40 minutes had actually occupied more than an hour and a half.

Since time is in short supply tonight, my account will end here until tomorrow…  Kalpataru Darshan was unlike any other.  It was more than I ever could have asked for and I want to give it it’s needed time.  So tomorrow then, Kalpataru Darshan…

Nithyananda speaks on Pantanjali’s Yoga Sutras cont’d.

a brief word on tonight’s (April 1) discourse to preserve continuity and memory (sleep is calling):

i will avoid trying to remember the translation since 1) i can’t remember his exact words and 2) he said more than once that the translation loses too many dimensions.  but after two hours of talk, explaination, stories and jokes it was summed up rather perfectly as:

“Anything done intensely is Yoga and brings health.  Intensity has it’s own intelligence and will lead you to Enlightenment.”

with this Sutra, you can let go of all technique because no matter what you do, what your practice or worship, whether it is done “correctly” or not, all you need is to do it (whatever it is) with intensity.  The intensity itself has intelligence that will lead you to what you need to liberate yourself.

He gave a beautiful example (my favorite of his stories and one have been lucky to hear now twice):

At the temple where Ramakrishna worshipped there was a Kali murti that he fell in love with.  He would feed and dress her and was entirely devoted to her care.  When he fed her he would taste the food himself first to make sure that it had good flavor and temperature (which was incredibly offensive to the temple priests – when feeding the gods one should never even smell the food, let alone taste it, before offering it to them!).  The devotees would bring conch bangles for her wrists and slip them over three of her four hands, but in her forth hand she held the severed head of a demon (representing the ego) and since her hand and the head were one continuous piece of stone, the one piece conch bracelets couldn’t be slipped on without being broken.  One day the temple priests found a bangle on her wrist holding the head and they panicked, looking for where the bangle (or murti) had been broken.  They found no breaks in Kali and the bangle was in one seamless piece.  When they asked Ramakrishna for an explaination he said, “I asked her to put down the head so that I could place the bangle.  She did, then I gave the head back.  That’s all.”

One day an enlightened yogi came to the temple and told Ramakrishna that he would train him in technique, leading him to enlightenment.  Ramakrishna said that he had to ask his mother for permission and ran off to the temple.  When he returned the yogi asked him for her answer and he said that she had given her permission.  The yogi asked Ramakrishna where his mother lived and he said she lived in the temple.  Ramakrishna had run to ask Kali for her permission to take lessons from this yogi!

Ramakrishna had no trouble letting go of the world, he had no attachments – except to Kali.  When the yogi told him he had to severe that attachment as well he ran to the temple, telling Kali that the yogi wanted him to rid himself of her.  Kali told him to do what he said and instructed Ramakrishna to take her knife and cut her form.  Gathering his courage he did just that and attained Enlightenment.

Inside this most lovely and inspiring story is the perfect example of Intensity.  Ramakrishna’s practices weren’t “correct,” they were simple and sometimes even offensive to tradition.  But the extreme intensity of his devotion was such that it knew exactly what he needed and led him to it.

Swamiji said tonight that if there is a fire in you to find a Guru, look around because he is already there.  Existence will never light that fire in you without first bring the Master to you.  Your Master (whether he is an Enlightened Being, a simple rock in your backyard, or a thief you meet on the road – another story from tonight i will tell soon!) may not be what you are expecting, he may not look like you think he should, he will not fit the frame you aim to squeeze him into.  But he is there.

A beautiful night…  and one full of my very own Ma Kali.  I didn’t go to darshan…  I didn’t feel drawn or need to be so physically near.  I was full and dark and well.  Instead I went to Dakshinamurti and then to Durga (Kali’s own mother) and was blissful.

Two more days…  one more discourse tomorrow night and then Kalpataru on Saturday.  Swamiji said something “interesting” about Kalpataru darshan (I’ve heard so many different things from different people that I’m not sure what’s real and not about Kalpataru except that the word translates to “boon tree”):  he said that during Kalpataru darshan he is supposed to grant anything anyone asks for.  Wow.  All I could think was, “Why did I sign up for this program?”  That’s a bit much for me to wrap my head around.  I understand that people go for healing and receive counseling.  I want two things which I believe are the same thing:  a spiritual name and to be told what my path is (supposedly the spiritual name should in itself define your path so that everytime it is said it calls you back to Yourself).

I’m afraid to ask for either.

What to do?

Yoga Sutras night #3

Yogam:  this will be short and nonsensical because i’m sleepy!  but i don’t want to lose the moment by leaving it for tomorrow…

Pantanjali’s Yoga Sutra 10 (?):  god, i could have sworn that this one i would remember almost word for word.  ha!  well, it’s about Sleep.  let’s see…  Sleep:  anytime we are not present in the state we are in.  oh, that didn’t make much sense.  Ok, three “sleep states:”  awake-sleep (daydream, missing time, etc), dream-sleep, and deep sleep.  And then two types of awake-sleep:  outer-world (when we misplace our keys, glasses, etc) and inner-world (when we lose focus of what’s important to our spiritual development and watch tv instead!  most dangerous!).

so i’d love to elaborate on the beautiful discourse tonight but my brain is sluggish since i’m ready for Sleep.  let me get to the technique (because this one i’m going to practice for the next 10 days):  take an image, something that brings you joy to think of:  your Master, your beloved, a beautiful place and bring it fully to mind and hold it until you fall asleep.  imagine the image so fully that is real and clear and touchable.  do it every night and it will penetrate your dream sleep.  eventually it will penetrate your deep sleep.  and then it will penetrate your awake sleep (and well, we all know i have a “problem” with awake sleeping!).  as he would say “Just see what happens.”  this is the perfect technique for me.

for certain my favorite moment of the night was Swamiji quoting Shankara:

if you have these three things:  humanness (or a human body, but he thought “humanness” was a better translation), the desire of a true seeker and the closeness of a living Enlightened Being and you don’t achieve Enlightenment it is “utter stupidity!”

he made sure to let us know that we had all three (just in case we weren’t sure) and laughed himself silly.  most of us laughed too.

tonight was funnier than ever.  i ended up with a stomach ache i was laughing so hard.  i’m still laughing.  and Darshan was painful…  sometimes i think i know now what it must have felt like to be ripped from my mother’s womb (and i actually was ripped away after being almost a month overdue and 12 hours of labor.  yep they stuck a suction cup to my head and pulled me out!).

Love you Ma.

arms and arms and love and love.

Ma Eda is over and out.  let’s get my sleep experiment started.  report forthcoming.

Yogam night #4 coming on April 1st…

Yoga Sutras night #2

Another night of Ma Eda gushing gooey-style over Paramahamsa Nithyananda:

Yogam:  tonight was Sutra 9, in succinct form:  Imagination leads to suffering.

before you (and that includes me) get up-in-arms, we are not talking about creative imagination but the imagination that creates non-reality around reality.  the one that (in the manipurika chakra) imagines our lovers cheating on us until we believe it is reality.  the one that (in the anahata chakra) makes us need, crave, thrive on attention.  the one that (in the swadistana chakra) creates worry upon worry until we are sick and stuck.

it was a beautiful discourse, but because i understood the concept so well before hand, it led me to only more questions (and it is rare that i find myself asking much after he speaks).  it was an especially memorable night becuase Swamiji’s first discourse was delivered when he was 11 years old on this very Sutra.  his teacher knew that someday he would be speaking to thousands and wanted to be the first to present him publicly so he gathered up his disciples and sat Nithyananda (who at that time was Rajasekaran) on his throne to give discourse and he spoke on Pantanjali’s 9th Sutra.

it was a night full of laughs… by far the most “guy walks into a bar” jokes i’ve ever heard!  it got to the point where all he had to say was “so this guy was in a bar” and the giggles were already rolling.

Darshan was Good!  I have a new mala made of lotus seeds and i took it to be energized…  he threw it over my head and gave me traditional Ananda Darshan at my third eye…  i was sort of bent over and he put his arms around me and said

Love you Ma.
Be Blissful.

i squeezed his arm that was wrapped around my head and stood up to talk to him for a minute.  it was lovely and we laughed and i don’t ever want him to go.  and if he must then can’t i follow?  maybe next time.  this is how life should feel.  all the time.  confusing and joyful and anguishing and just at the melting point.  you know when Ma Eda says, “I am glad that I was born and I am glad that I am here now,” something must be right.

Yoga Sutras night #1

Yogam:  Pantanjali’s Yoga Sutras night 1 (acutally Sutra 8 since it’s Swamiji’s first night at the LA ashram, but has been delivering discourse for a week in Canada so far)…

i really need to take notes, but if i do it’s hard to be present to Listen.  “What to do?”

i cannot recall the exact words (in Sanskrit or English) of the Sutra and when i try to even convey the idea it escapes me.  it deals with “wrong knowledge” or how current cognition becomes faulty when past or generalized knowledge is used.  it is about how our thoughts are generalized but we are local beings.

the moment that was truly beautiful for me, what Swamiji would call a “click:”

“We murder the present with the past.  We are always killing the present with the past.”

i can’t say more than just to say that it is true.

He also spoke on the power of words and gave a beautiful example:  There is a brahmachari at Swamiji’s ashram in Bidadi who is trained in all the traditional rituals of the temple.  He went to another temple to perform some rituals and the temple priest was so impressed with his grace and presence in these rituals that he assumed he was a Brahmin.  He gave him all of the honors of a Brahmin and touched his feet (a practice that shows the highest respect).  Several days later someone went to the temple and told the priest that he wasn’t Brahmin but just a Brahmachari.  The priest spent three days bathing himself and wouldn’t enter the temple because he had touched the feet of a non-Brahmin.  Sawmiji said, “What is this?”  in his adorable way and laughed.  “It was auspicious at the time to touch his feet.  If it wasn’t, shouldn’t he have been unclean from the moment he touched the feet?  But it wasn’t until he heard the news that he became unclean!”  (now mind this is me quoting from memory, but it’s pretty close)

tonight was a lovely night.  i was actually one of the first in line for Darshan (instead of lost in the multitudes) since they need all us volunteers to work while everyone else stands in line!  it cracked me up!  even though they said that the volunteers would go first as an honor for their work it was really more of a practical “let them go first because they have so much work still to do” type of thing!

Darshan is a strange time for me now.  tonight i walked up and was waiting my turn.  i was waiting near for quite a while and really, being five feet away is enough for me now.  standing there my breathing changes, grows deep and full and clean.  my body tingles until it partially dissolves (it’s the perfect alive opposite of being dissociated).  i feel on the verge of a complete emotional meltdown.  but tonight i was given a gift!  i didn’t remind myself to smell or feel…  and got to do both.  i walked up to him and fell into his arms.  didn’t even bother to put my forehead to his feet as i usually do.  his arms around me, i FELT my fingers grip his back and i could SMELL him – the clean sweat smell that i love so much – the one you only find on the skin of vegetarians.  i can still feel and smell him and at the same time, i’m not sure that either really happened.

tomorrow…  Pantanjali’s Yoga Sutras Night #2!

i’ve missed hearing him say, “Oh God!”

i got a hug from my Swamiji tonight.  it was nice and nothing special which is the best thing it could have been.  it’s been 16 months since he was here, since i first became so immediately and frighteningly attached, and i didn’t quite know what would happen, what i would feel…  and of course, as a yet-to-be Enlightened being i was unsure, doubtful and afraid.  i did my best to kill my expectations, but that’s all just another game.

he was suppose to arrive on the 24th to begin (continue) his discourse series on Pantanjali’s Yoga Sutras.  this morning there was a message from one of the temple ashramites on my cell phone…  “Eda!  Swamiji is here.  You’re not on my part of the call list but you are the first call I’m making.  Tonight at 7 we’re going to have Aarti and an informal gathering and dinner. Come!”

so i rushed home from work a half hour early to iron a sari and went to Aarti.  i always sit next to Dakshinamurti (the first Guru) who is my favorite diety (outside of Kali…  who doesn’t have a murti in Temple).  beneath Dakshinamurti are the Guru’s paduka (wooden sandals that represent the feet of the Guru) and they are always the first place i go when entering.  so i sat for meditation and when i opened my eyes after the beginning of Guru Puja i see a shock of orange to my right.  Swamiji is sitting next to me at Dakshinamurti’s feet.  it was the second best feeling i’ve ever had in this life (after receiving Ananda Darshan for the first time from Swamiji).

this informal gathering ended up consisting of hundreds and hundreds of people (most of whom i’ve never seen which always makes me laugh a snide little laughter…  where have you all been?  so you only come when Master is here?  don’t you listen?  Master is more HERE when he’s not here than when he is.  god, they remind me of Christians.).   Swamiji gave a little talk (and a funny one as usual) in the hall about Shakti and Buddhi, laziness and spirituality, potbellies and nightmares and living Enlightenment.  it ended and 2 and 1/2 hours later i was getting my hug and my almonds and candy.  Yep, two and a half hours later.  half way out of the hall Maharaj was pointing at me, calling me back.  Swamiji wanted me to come back, had something to say?  i don’t know.  i guess he decided to save it for later.  one of the ashramites asked me, “So how was it?”  “What?”  i asked him.  “Darshan!  How was it?”  i said the hugs was nice, but i want energy darshan.  “But that is his darshan!”  he said, looking confused.  “No, it wasn’t.  But it was nice.”  he still didn’t get it, which means his experience is not mine.  and that’s fine.  i’m certain that my experience is mine alone and i’ll keep it.  my hug was nice.  it was close and long.  but being so close to him i can’t even find enough mind to smell the air around him.  i can’t remember anything but being there, that i was there.  i can’t remember what his feet felt like under my hands and against my forehead.  but i think i may not remember because i wasn’t feeling them at all in the first place.  i know last time he was here, it drove me crazy to not remember these things and so reminded myself to remember.  to really feel and smell.  but it didn’t work.  what i do remember is how it felt to wake from meditation and find him sitting next to me.  that is something i can still feel and if i could have it forever i would never need another thing.