“May I ask Pratabi and Jyoti please [to say a few words]
Jyoti: “(Prayer in Sanskrit) Seeking the blessings of Swamiji and offering all that I’m going to share with you at the feet of my Gurudev Swami Rama.
Jyoti: “I would like to share one beautiful experience. There are so many, innumerable but cherish and both of us cherish in our lives. It was in 1992 we met Gurudev in Akase (??) that’s near Bangalore in India. Both of us didn’t know anything about Swami Rama. We went just to attend a Shiva Yoga conference narrated by our Gurudev. In the big crowd we were just waiting to meet him not knowing what we were about to get. We went, it’s very interesting that we went to ask for some donations for our ashram construction because somebody told us that Swami Rama was a very rich Swamiji. SVB: Wasn’t he? Jyoti: The files and all the project reports, construction things and all that. He looked at us, said beti you have come. I was waiting for you and I knew you would come. You know if you had not come I would have made you come. That is how our spiritual journey began and a very interesting thing was that he just tried to explain about our projects and things like that. He just threw it across the table and said forget about al these things. All your projects, men, material, name, fame, everything will come provided you do your sadhana. Tell me what sadhana you have been doing? Of course we had to meet in our silence when it came to sadhana. Of course he consoled us and said you are my son and my daughter and you belong to the parampara. A very interesting thing that he said was that even after I leave my body the entire tradition and the rishigan, he looked up and said rishigan will be taking care of you always. What you have to do is just you connect yourself with the Guru mantra and you are always taken care of and we are experiencing that you know.
Jyoti: “Eternal blessing and guidance and grace always and just one more small thing. After he left his body the next day that was November 13th, 14th rather I was very upset and down, depressed. Didn’t feel like meditating and had decided that I wouldn’t meditate any longer because Baba left us and I was in the kitchen early morning and I was preparing the breakfast I heard his voice. I remember ___. Beti why are you crying? I don’t like you crying over my physical body. Why are you attached to this physical body of a Guru? Come to the mediation room. We have a meditation room in our house. He virtually forced me to go and sit there and knew even if I tired to meditate I would end up crying but then he made me go and sit there. Within two minutes I was not myself. I could see my Guru instructing me and showing me the body of light which I would experience sitting before me and he was instructing me saying look this is what it is and in this life time I have set you the target that you are going to reach that and this is your sadhana. Now are you convinced that I am always with you and I don’t like this stupidity any longer. That you sit and cry over the physical body of your Guru and then he just disappeared and I was a transformed being but I never feel that my Guru is away from me. At every step he has been guiding us in all possible ways and if at all I am on the spiritual path it is because of my Guru.
Jyoti: “Another thing a big confusion when I met Swami Rama. So I went to Rishikesh then somebody asked me have you met Ushrabudh Arya? We didn’t know about Swamiji. Then we said we don’t know who he is. He staying in that house. You better go and meet him. We went and met Swamiji. He was in his Guru ashram at that time and Swamiji gave one blessing and said I told Swamiji I don’t know what is happening to me. I didn’t want to come into this path. I don’t even know what is spirituality and Baba has brought us into this. Swamiji said even if you on the other path, on the worldly path all this sufferings and sorrows still you have to go through considered that you are blessed to be on the spiritual path and you understand how to go through this worldly path and also the spiritual path and then cross over and reach the other beautiful world. I know it has been so soothing. It is so convincing the words from Swamiji I always carry as a great treasure and whenever I am in a big confusion I always think of him and I get the answer, you know ready before me. So both of us are really blessed to have our Gurudev and then Swamij and we are extremely happy and I never even dreamt that we would come to this place and then stand before Swamiji and share my humble feelings and experiences and I am just overwhelmed. I really don’t know what to say about this meeting. Just that. Thank you.
SVB: “Pratabi?
Pratabi: We would like to hear Swamiji. SVB: No, no, no, Pratabi. No, no, no I’ll blab my mouth later.
Pratabi: “I will share only one experience. When I was attending the Sri Vidya conference in Rishikesh and Swamiji was leading us and it was about fifteen days conference. Fourteen days, not fourteen, thirteen days I was trying to understand Swamiji’s descriptions about Sri Yantra and also the chakra and all those things intellectually but every time I was failing miserably to understand that and I was really frustrated about my self. What is it? I am not able to understand what Swamiji is trying, you know, share with us. That day I was looking at Swamiji. Swamijij was giving a talk. I was looking at Swamiji and I was in tears at that time I heard a voice from our Gurudev, Swami Rama saying beti serve the humanity the rest will be taken care of. I felt so happy, I felt so happy. That gave me the real inspiration. Next day morning I was meditating, every morning. I heard again the voice of our Gurudev and he gave me the insight into what Sri Vidya is and whatever Swamiji had spoken previous day all those words I could relate, I could understand and I could feel. Just one or two minutes of this guidance from our Master. Then at that time Swamiji was performing Gayatri havan so we all went and sat. Within two minutes, you may not believe, I closed my eyes and in fact I shared with Swamiji also, when I closed my eyes and when I was in that feeling and Swamiji was offering ___ and performing Gayatri havan I experienced Baba coming there and cut open the skull this part and he opened the skull like a surgery. He opened the skull and he put some golden light into that and again he put back the skull. He sealed it and he went off and after that lot of experiences I’m able to experience with the grace of Gurudev and with the grace of Swamiji and Swamiji in fact to come to this place. Again Swamiji was somewhere in the remote place of London and we sent an e-mail Swamiji we need your support, we need your blessings, we need the letter of invitation. Swamiji could sent the letter of invitation immediately and because of that letter of invitation we are here and again we are fortunate because on this very auspicious day we are at the feet of our Master. So we seek Swamiji’s blessings in our endeavour to serve the humanity and spread the message of Baba. Thank you very much.
SVB: “We still have a few minutes. Any one would like to share? Anyone would like to share any memory of Swami Rama. ….
SVB: Oh yes. …. The way the Guru spirit is still working there are some examples that Kate K is sharing is from two e-mails we recently received.
Kate K: “Well I’m always interested to hear stories about Swami Rama because when I was at the Himalayan Institute I so much wanted to meet him and when I did I was introduced to him he didn’t talk to me. He held my hand and he kept holding my hand. When I was introduced to him and he talked to all these people that came by but he kept holding my hand and I thought isn’t he going to say something to me but I thought I should just keep holding his hand and so I did until he looked at me and he said very good now and it was after that, that I came back to Minneapolis and started a healing business and people would come to me for treatments and they would say these amazing things happened and somehow I was feeling that when he was holding my hand he was.
SVB: “He passed on the healing power to your hands.
Kate: “Saying something, and so he didn’t say anything in particular to me but I feel like in that time that he did give me a blessing and so there you have it. It’s not always in words and we have a couple of letters here that were sent to Swami Veda and they were about experiencing the Guru’s grace and this is what some anonymous people would like to say.
Letter #1 “Back in the 1970’s I first discovered hatha yoga with a wonderful teacher in Minneapolis named Chandler. He in turn directed me to the Mediation Centre where I took your Super Conscious meditation class. All of the ideas and practices I learned from Chandler and you were brand new to me having come from a tradition of Lutheran background and they changed my thinking and feeling in a positive way to a remarkable extent but I didn’t know how much they did until a couple years later.
“I went to New York City and one night I was accosted in a street by a man with a razor blade. He held it to my throat and threatened to kill me. I believed with certainty that he was going to do just that. Instead of panicking my mind suddenly played back to me yoga teachings.
“I was still practicing hatha and especially the experience I had in our last mediation class where I believed you gifted us all with a glimpse of higher reality. I felt the same peace and the knowledge that it did not matter so much what this man did do. I had absolutely no fear of death so at that moment I remained as calm as I’ve ever been outside of sitting with you and the other students in the class. It was a remarkable experience. The man was so astonished that I had no fear of him that he dropped the razor and told me his life story and ultimately walked away. This man was later caught and I heard that other people had not faired as well at his hand. I have always been grateful to you and want to thank all of you as much as possible. Very sincerely yours XXXX.
Kate: “We have one more letter here. On the twenty fifth of February two of my friends were….
SVB: “This is from Denmark from people we don’t know. We have no connection with. They just heard or read about the world group mediations and started sitting.
Kate: “We are a small group of women here in Denmark that participate in the world group mediations. Two of them are coming to the ashram very soon and my friend Jenna and her daughter Maria. They are looking forward to seeing you and to being in the ashram. This is their first visit to India. They are very new meditators. At the time being the total number of meditators in this group is eight to ten and I will try to organize the feedback that I send to you because people are having amazing experiences. Besides from myself only one other friends ever meditated before and now they can hardly wait for the next session.
“On the twenty fifth of February two of my friends were hit by a wave of bliss of such a way that they had to lay down while feeling flooded with bliss for hours. I experienced this at four o’clock in the afternoon and did not move for hours. Just sitting there and enjoying it, uninterested in moving even a hand. It was great. All day long and all evening I did not suffer from tendonitis. It was gone completely but it came back the very next day. Anyway an interesting side effect and we are changing our lives in quite a rapid speed for what reason to stay in close contact, to support each other because this simply never happened before and we just love it but it is overwhelming. Please continue this and inform us when a new mediation will be. We are all for beauty and bliss. We cannot get enough of it. Some of us now do a daily mediation. We light a candle in the night and thus connect the days with prayer. We pray for friends that are having a hard time and we pray for those in need and send them hope and wish that they feel confident in do not fear. It works well. It’s great.
SVB: “So much has been talked about the Guru. Yesterday I read a passage from a text called the Guru Grant Sahib. The holy book which is the Guru which is the holy book of the Sikh community. You might have seen people of the Sikh community. Originally the sikhs, followers of great saints. Such saints of high order that I cannot begin to describe. In succession they have had ten Gurus.
“Later they had to become a very martial community to fight the Muslim terrorism in India way back four centuries ago and have continued to be very great defenders and they developed an ideal of saint-solider. The tenth Guru said no more succession of Gurus. The holy book is the Guru in which they collected six thousand say psalms or songs from thirty six previous saints and it’s a text that is replete with reference to the Guru and the word “Sikh” means ‘the disciple’. Just that, nothing else.
“Sikh and I have sent out a letter to you in which I have recommended further reading on the Guru but no matter what reading you do it is the interior connection that counts. No matter how much we try to enter an inner subtle force we still maintain an identity with a physical body and the moment someone mentions the Guru we think of the physical form but to the beings of that level physical form means absolutely nothing. Having a body or not having a body means nothing, absolutely nothing. Even after Swamiji has left his body like the way Jyoti was describing Swami Hari has seen in his ashram in Tarkeshwar. Recently he has been seen wandering around on our, on the grounds of our new ashram Sadaka Grama scattering blessings and so this continues.
When I was watching the cremation of his body I kept going to and fro between bouts of crying and then suddenly something would shake me inside and say you silly fool, idiot what are your doing because there were so many people around and my job is to assure them so I have to completely forget my own sorrow of loosing the physical form of the Guru and then I would around Guru never dies, Guru never dies and then after a few minutes I would go sit down and cry again. So no matter what you know we always think of the form. When he built the Himalayan Institute in Glenview he said I am going to bring my Guru here. He was talking of his Guru and everybody, Dr. Arya did you know Swami Rama’s Guru is coming and I looked at all the excitement and I said in my mind Swami Rama’s Guru is something like hundred and fifty or hundred and sixty years old. I don’t think he is going to make this journey by plane. It must be some other kind of coming. What he meant was the presence, the Guru presence, the force that dwells in sacred places that dwells in the altar here. The Guru is present. That dwells in our mediation hall at Swami Rama’s ashram in Rishikesh. That dwells in Tarkeshwar whose keeper is Swami Hari and you can actually go and you can talk to him if you know how to hear with the ears of silence. The Guru for us is a wave that touches us from time to time. People do not know this secret. The celebration like Guru Purnima the full moon. The movements of start and planets, conjunctions of all of these bodies are all part of an immeasurable network of spiritual waves. Apart from their physical form and physical activity and you have certain special days when the Gurus, the rishis, the sages have chosen to send that wave to humanity. Those who are attuned to it on those days can do nothing but sit with the eyes closed in solitude because the wave pulls them from within and at that time a true disciple is just totally helpless. There is nothing else he can do at that time.
“When he was in the body sometimes, ok whenever he was sending a special wave I would get a human desire in me because we are used to interpreting our experiences in very human terms. I would get a strong desire to call him or if I was in Honesdale or somewhere to go and sit by him and he would beat me up almost physically or I would make a phone call and Ma Yogalina would pick up the phone and Swamiji is saying I am doing something for you don’t disturb me. Those were times when your eyes closed per force. There is nothing else you can do but you still interpret that an urge to go meet your physical Guru and give him a call. He said no, no, no not that and one time a received a nasty letter. I have quite a collection of nasty letters from Swami Rama. I treasure it. I treasure it, that’s my greatest treasure in life. He wrote me a nasty letter. Your lectures are insipid. Your books are senseless. Sometimes you pick up like a great sage and then you fall back and this and that and all kinds of things ok. I received the letter living two blocks from here in those days when I was still in my puruashram as we call them. Previous state of life, householder state, many of you know. So received the letter I take it, I read it, I keep it and three days later he calls. Mrs. Arya picks up the phone. Did Ushrabudh receive my letter? Yes Swamiji. Was he disturbed? No Swamiji. He wasn’t disturbed? No Swamiji. Acha, all right. God bless you. Two days later he calls again and again Mrs. Arya picks up the phone. You say Ushrabudh was not disturbed?
“So they do all kinds of things ok and so once I received a nasty letter from him dictated to Rolf Sovik who was at that time director here and he was spending some time in the Nepal ashram and I had sent Swamiji some questions about some very practical decisions and so on which I seldom used to do and I got a nasty letter. Swamiji is saying have I not taught you how to contact me and talk to me? Why do you keep sending these silly letters? So the Guru trains him the disciple to take him away from the dependence on the physical form, on the body form and he did that with all of us. I could go on. You know these Gurus they are a mystery and they are a puzzle and they are a riddle don’t know why we get into their presence and they work day and night and they won’t let you rest. I sometimes get upset. Come on I want to leave but he knows and I know that I don’t mean it you know.
For about ten years from 1980 to 1990 he used to speak to us over the phone on the Guru Purnima day and we have the recordings of that and I’ll just read one from it. This was July 16th, 1981. Today is the greatest day of all the year called Guru Purnima day. The word Guru is not used for any particular person or being. It is used for the centre of consciousness, for the knowledge. There is only one life force. Therefore there is only one Guru from where consciousness flows on various degrees and grades. That is why human being is called Guru. Those who follow the spiritual tradition faithfully train themselves, practice and serve others selflessly. Love others and learn to give knowledge to others. They are called spiritual teachers and such spiritual teachers are also called Guru. This day is not like Mothers day or Fathers day or Brothers day or any other day. This day makes us aware of the reality that life has some purpose and the highest of all purposes is to get freedom here and now. Mother is your first Guru who gives you training in your childhood, who makes you aware of other people in your family. Then comes father who makes you aware of your neighbourhood, people around your home. Then you receive education from colleges and universities, environmental education yet you do not know the purpose of life. Anyone who honestly selflessly makes you aware of the purpose of life is a teacher, spiritual teacher and Guru. Then he says something about Dr. Arya I’m not going to read. Our Guru is still alive. He is in physical form. He lives in the Himalayas and I go to see him every year. He prays for us all but in a world tradition we do not adore a physical Guru. We just respect him because the knowledge that is imparted through the tradition flows through him. In our tradition the Guru is a messenger who imparts the knowledge imparted to him by the great spiritual teachers of the Himalayas. The purpose of a spiritual teacher and Guru is to make you aware that the Guru is within you and you should learn to understand life. Both aspects of life within and without. Let you learn to live in the world and remain above free from all worries and bondage. Let you be aware that the centre of spirituality is within you. Let you be aware that the Guru is within you. Let you become creatively intelligent, serve humanity, become good citizens, love all and exclude none. I pray for you in every breath of my life. I love you. God bless you. Peace, peace, peace. That’s what we heard. We used to have phone speakers here and he would speak to us.
The ashram is welcoming you. Come for ten days of silence. Come for forty days of silence. I am now building cottages for putting inside and leaving a hole in the door for three months of silence. The food will be served in and out. You don’t have to jump into three months. You can start with three days and remain aware of all the offerings there. We are now a recognized yoga institution. People can even get a student visa if they want to. I look forward to seeing you there and to honour Guru is to honour a disciple. … …
… allow me to at least pay respect to the disciples who are also a form of the Guru. In the Indian tradition we offer a shawl. Then we will sit for one hour ok for that everybody is sitting north and south America for at least one hour at night at 9 pm. It is a tradition in India to honour people with the wrapping of a shawl God bless and my younger brother Pratabiji, remain seated, please remain seated. Bless you, bless your work.
Pratabiji: Thank you Swamiji.
SVB: Share that one too.
You may also wish to read the 2004 letter sent everyone.
