A sanyasin (Swami) has moved beyond one family to embrace the world-family in equal love. For this reason, swamis do not normally speak of their pre-sanyasa families. They refer to their pre-sanyasa families as ‘poorvaashrama family’, the family from the previous Ashrama, the preceding station of life. I will call it their pre-history.

However, some high level swamis have written autobiographies in which they have detailed the pre-histories of their physical families as context for a guidance that the readers/students/disciples may receive from such writing.

Hoping that this writing may give guidance and inspiration, this swami is giving a glimpse of part of his pre-history.

The Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan, who built the Taj Mahal, had a stepmother by the name Noor Jahan (1577-1645). She was a powerful empress who wielded the true royal power in the entire empire during the reign of Shah Jahan’s father, Jahangir (1569-1627).

Noor Jahan spent her childhood at a small settlement in Punjab, and later decided that the place where she grew up should be re-established as a proper township.

She invited a Brahmin family to settle in the new town and help establish it.

The founder of this family branch was a yogi. After serving the empress by helping establish the township, he took jivita-samadhi, a term used when a great yogi decides that s/he has completed his/her life work and it is time to leave the body. A hole is dug in the earth, the yogi sits down at the bottom in meditation, and leaves the body. Disciples/descendants then cover up the body with more earth and a grave or mausoleum may be built. Such ‘graves’ are called ‘samadhis’.

There are hundreds like these all over India where worshipful honouring continues for generations and centuries.

The samadhi of the founding father of this branch of the family is one such holy place.

This yogi founded the family line from which Usharbudh Arya is descended.

The sacred knowledge was passed on to the founding father’s daughter. She also followed on her father’s footsteps and took samadhi the same way. It has been a tradition in the family, established by her command, for four centuries, that a new bride must be brought and presented to this founding matriarch at her samadhi to become a full member of the family.

The land grants given by the empress Noor Jahan sustained the family for 300+ years. How much of the yoga or Vedic knowledge was carried on through these generations I cannot say.

The family is now scattered all over the world and hold successful positions. I have met them in Nairobi, Vancouver and elsewhere. In order to respect the privacy of the diverse living lineage of this family, I do not include the place or family names.

350 years passed. Usharbudh Arya’s father decided to give himself to the pursuit of this knowledge and dedicated himself to raising a son who should become a ‘rishi’.

That is again a long story of much family ‘tapas’.

In order to accomplish the spiritual goals for his son Usharbudh, his father Pandit Durga Das, cut himself off from all relationships and external worldly samskaras that might touch his son. The result is svb.

Dedicated to the transcendent, avoiding confinements of personal relations, svb met one of these physical relatives for the first time in his life only 4 years ago – the only first cousin who searched and found and came to see svb at SRSG Ashram.

These family members think that this svb may be the same founding father re-born.

Now, 400 years have passed.

Even though countries, cultures, circumstances, education systems have changed, the thread of spirituality continues. There are pictures of two granddaughters (actually grandnieces) meditating under the tree next to the holy samadhis.

Who will be the yogi descendants in the family, how many generations and how many centuries from now – cannot be said. The family samskaras continue to be passed on.

Would the founding father of the American branch of the family be thus blessed four centuries from now, with a yogi down that line ? Let us pray that a positive answer manifests itself.

One last word:

Some months before Gurudeva left his body he called over to his chamber and instructed :“The day you sit down in Samadhi and ‘will’ it that ‘I will now leave my body’, only then you will leave your body.”

Svb now wishes to prepare for that moment, of Guru’s prediction/instruction coming true, by taking five years’ silence from 2013.

More than 400 years will have passed since this family’s founding father sat in samadhi and willed himself to leave. Only the Guru knows whether svb’s wish to follow the footsteps of his ancestor and other yogis will be blessed with success.

Editor’s note

Swami Veda Bharati ji plans to take a five year vow of silence on the auspicious night of Shivaratri 2013. Before Swamiji goes into silence, he invites all of the initiates, Swamis, initiators, teachers, and potential teachers to Swami Rama Sadhaka Grama in Rishikesh, so he can impart special guidance on secrets of effective teaching and give further spiritual teachings.  For more information about this gathering, please follow this link:

https://www.ahymsin.org/main/index.php/2013-Gather-of-the-Sangha/2013-all-teachers-and-sangha-gathering.html

Question to Swami Veda

You encourage us to meditate on the full moon day. Through the meditation we are connected. You are in India and we are in Taiwan. What is the mechanism by which this happens?

Answer

I am sitting here and you are sitting two meters from me. That is quite a long distance! And we are connected. How does this happen? If you are sitting behind that pillar, how does that connection happen?  Your body is limited in space and time. It has dimensions, a past, a present and a future, and you think you are a body. So long as you think you are a body, you will not understand the connections that exist in the universal mind. When you and I are meditating together, and there are periods of silence, we are connected. Because at that time, you are not thinking of the body, you are purely in the mind. So when you will learn about your mind and soul, you will know that there are no distances the universe. If a master was sitting in a galaxy, one trillion light years away, and you were sitting on this mustard seed size planet, the connection would still be there. And when the master is not in the body, the connection is still there. In fact, the true traditions of this earth are still being passed on, mainly by the disembodied masters. They are the ones who have brought you here. Somebody dreams something, somebody gets a very strong feeling inside. Something inside you says, “Let’s go and meditate for fifteen days in Rishikesh.” From where does that feeling arise in you? Who make you think that thought? You think it was your own inclination.

But there is some greater hand that is guiding you. There are times when people come to Rishikesh who do not know anything about this ashram. Somebody in Brazil gets a strong feeling to go to India and go to Rishikesh. The lady arrives and goes and sits down in a hotel. She does not know where to go. Seven days she sat in her hotel room. Then she got tired of sitting in the room, so she came out and started walking. Or took a vehicle, which stopped somewhere, and she started walking, and she sees the ashram and just walks in. Somebody from the reception says, “Swamiji, there us a lady here from Brazil, and she is leaving for Delhi and the airplane tonight.” I called her to my chamber. She speaks Portuguese but she understands Spanish. I gave her five minutes of meditation, and that was enough, her purpose of coming was fulfilled. And she meditates impressively.

Why ask about Full Moon Meditations? Somebody is broadcasting in a machine in Moscow, or Washington or Beijing. And you are hearing it in Taiwan. The person who does not know about radio waves wonders, “How does this happen?” It is not coming over some wires, but the instrument is tuned to the waves, because those waves are everywhere. So your mind is everywhere. Understand the nature of the mind. How is it that a mother is sitting in her house and her child is in an accident. And she gets this strong feeling inside, and she runs out and finds her child. How is the connection established?

Because it is a link of love between the two minds – the mind of the mother and the mind of the child. The mind of the masters and those who are serving the masters – their mind is a motherly mind. If you are not a mother, you cannot be a teacher. When taking a teacher training program here, whether you are male or female, learn to be a mother. A mother to anyone who passes by you. A mother to anyone who comes to your class. A mother to anyone who has any suffering. A mother to anyone who has any need. Then you are a teacher. And the persons should feel that they are being mothered. So the connection between the master’s mind and your mind is like the connection between a mother’s mind and your mind.

Please understand that this mind is not something limited to the size of your body. Your mind is not some kind of liquid or solid that is poured into the vessel of your skull, and kept there with a tight lid. Like the radio waves, your mind is an all pervading wave. You are a wave in the universal mind, and you are also the wave that is the universal mind. Can you take a piece of chalk or pencil and draw a boundary line between two waves in a river? Can you draw a line between two waves in the sea and say, “Wave number one, you stay on this side, and wave number two, you stay on that side. This is my country and that is your country?” Can you do that? You cannot do that. The energy is not in the shape of the water. The energy is that, because of which, the water becomes the wave. So the wave of your mind, and the wave of another’s mind touch each other. When the one mind wave and the other mind wave touch each other, and know that they are loving and embracing a fellow mind wave; when they know that it is the light waves of the mind that are embracing each other – what is that called? That touching of the minds, that hugging and embracing of the minds? What is the name for that embrace? It is called love.

And when you truly love, you can sense what is happening with the object of your love, even a thousand miles away. How does that connection happen? It happens even in those who do not understand that they are not the body. It happens even in those who do not understand the universality of the mind principle. And it happens much more in those who have understood the universality of the mind principle. When you understand that, then you are a teacher. Not because you can recite the relaxation exercise. If you are not a mother to the person you are teaching, then you are not a teacher. You be the mother mind and let that person be the child mind.

Swami Veda Q & A

27 March 2008

Speaking to TTP group from Taiwan