I
called him the monk. I called him the demon. I called him my friend, a most
unusual human being to say the least with the qualities of a Buddha, except for
one integral part, compassion. Loving compassion for the human being was exempt
from his person. He said he hated human beings, especially Indians. He called
them stupid. Meeting such a one as he was seemingly an accidental circumstance.
I
had been sitting next to Prasad, My favorite temple priest, who gave me my
healing coconut on my first visit to Ganeshpuri in 2005. I’ve been indebted to
him since he handed me the ‘blessed at babas’ feet’ coconut and instructed me
to retreat to my room and eat each and every part of the inner coconut while I sang
/ chanted, making up my own song for Bade Baba. The miracle made my illness
vanish or at least retreat into a ten year remission, so far, through faith in
the healing power of Bhagavan Nityananda. We will get into that part in a
little bit …
Prasad,
on various occasions would spontaneously sit next to me in an empty temple
while I recited the guru gita, or while I was performing my rudimentary monkey yoga
stretching (as the monk called it)
after my hot spring bath. Babas kunde, or hot springs were just outside the
darshan temple hall and baba had a reason for instructing his devotees to bathe
there before presenting themselves to him in the hall.) (insert info) at that
time I was in every way open hearted, blown away by the energy, completely
drawn to and healed in his temple each and every time I sat there. My dearest Great grandfather guru, Bhagavan
Nityananda who would allow me to sit in his temple and contort my body and let
out sounds of sighing and yawn and stretch some more.
One of the ‘knowing’ moments for me connecting to this ‘dead’ guru was being able to relax into the space enough to begin the yawning process, the true doorway for me to relax enough to let go of some of my minds activity. This always happened while sitting with Mark. That diving into the breath … allowing it to slowly deepen and fill my belly … honoring, being completely in the moment honoring that breath as God, honoring each sip with gratitude… each pausing of the breath, resting, allowing the emptiness or the stillness to produce that final burst of energy spontaneously, all I had to do was have the thought of gratitude, I call the atom exploding with bliss. Those atoms and the explosion happening ONLY in the empty space between the breaths, more on that later, but for now just know that doing this on a daily basis. Saying hi to God, recognizing that my only connection to him on this physical earth was to receive him through my breath. This is what transforms the molecules of my DNA on a daily basis… this is why I am alive and many times have more energy and life-force running through me than your average 20 year old... and finally the full vessel of expanded awareness… in that I would remain … happy … and finishing with that yawn, sometimes audible sometimes just a stretching of my jaw (In that connection some other longer sips of oxygen could arise spontaneously and I would be honoring each breath through this very slow movement … Hey I can relate to my acting movement classes in NYC and our relaxation stretches.. Temple time is keeping me alive. I explained it to someone like this. When I sit with Mark Griffin I am aware of the deep bellows breath for the first 40 minutes or so I am working … yawning, sighing, stretching, but actively working … when I sit with Bhagavan Nityananda, at least in the early days, I did nothing to receive these waves after waves of bathing my soul in pure love and bliss.
My habit was to sit under the last fan before the exit. It was daytime and our first introduction, while Prasad was discussing with me the possibility of using one of my rooms for his music school, the monk entered and sat beside Prasad listening, with a curious smile, beguiling, beaming in his eyes, his head shaven at that time. I was shocked though by his teeth, rotted to the core, appearing as if it had been decades since he last brushed his teeth. I would find out later that he took on the appearance of a beggar, a delinquent, in order to shun the people away from him. He said they were always there and it was those voices seeking liberation from their suffering that kept him from sleeping at night. He said he retreated at one time to a monastery named ‘high hill top’, in Nepal, a very secret place. He said he stayed for an extended visit just to learn the techniques from one special Tibetan monk who helped him learn to turn the voices on and off. Yes there were times he listened, while at his house burning match boxes in the middle of his hall to perform yagnas for those yearning to be liberated from the Bardo, or intermediary dimensions, some of which were the hell realms. In other words, those stuck between rebirths. Or as we like to call them, ghosts.
One of the ‘knowing’ moments for me connecting to this ‘dead’ guru was being able to relax into the space enough to begin the yawning process, the true doorway for me to relax enough to let go of some of my minds activity. This always happened while sitting with Mark. That diving into the breath … allowing it to slowly deepen and fill my belly … honoring, being completely in the moment honoring that breath as God, honoring each sip with gratitude… each pausing of the breath, resting, allowing the emptiness or the stillness to produce that final burst of energy spontaneously, all I had to do was have the thought of gratitude, I call the atom exploding with bliss. Those atoms and the explosion happening ONLY in the empty space between the breaths, more on that later, but for now just know that doing this on a daily basis. Saying hi to God, recognizing that my only connection to him on this physical earth was to receive him through my breath. This is what transforms the molecules of my DNA on a daily basis… this is why I am alive and many times have more energy and life-force running through me than your average 20 year old... and finally the full vessel of expanded awareness… in that I would remain … happy … and finishing with that yawn, sometimes audible sometimes just a stretching of my jaw (In that connection some other longer sips of oxygen could arise spontaneously and I would be honoring each breath through this very slow movement … Hey I can relate to my acting movement classes in NYC and our relaxation stretches.. Temple time is keeping me alive. I explained it to someone like this. When I sit with Mark Griffin I am aware of the deep bellows breath for the first 40 minutes or so I am working … yawning, sighing, stretching, but actively working … when I sit with Bhagavan Nityananda, at least in the early days, I did nothing to receive these waves after waves of bathing my soul in pure love and bliss.
My habit was to sit under the last fan before the exit. It was daytime and our first introduction, while Prasad was discussing with me the possibility of using one of my rooms for his music school, the monk entered and sat beside Prasad listening, with a curious smile, beguiling, beaming in his eyes, his head shaven at that time. I was shocked though by his teeth, rotted to the core, appearing as if it had been decades since he last brushed his teeth. I would find out later that he took on the appearance of a beggar, a delinquent, in order to shun the people away from him. He said they were always there and it was those voices seeking liberation from their suffering that kept him from sleeping at night. He said he retreated at one time to a monastery named ‘high hill top’, in Nepal, a very secret place. He said he stayed for an extended visit just to learn the techniques from one special Tibetan monk who helped him learn to turn the voices on and off. Yes there were times he listened, while at his house burning match boxes in the middle of his hall to perform yagnas for those yearning to be liberated from the Bardo, or intermediary dimensions, some of which were the hell realms. In other words, those stuck between rebirths. Or as we like to call them, ghosts.
Early
on I would only see him as he came in for darshan with Baba, never going to the
feet, but sitting near the front for a few minute visit. He would make a point
to catch my eye as he left, giving me that all knowing look that I came to
admire and love and fear.
I
was working with my first sadhu, Rajeev, who said he had been sent to
Ganeshpuri to teach Nityananda yoga and exclaimed that baba sent him there to
teach me. I let him share my room, my food and my cigarettes for 11 days. We
would practice his calisthenics at the kunde and I would sit after breathing in
each limb with the mantra, ‘who am I’ … on the eleventh day he asked me to
deposit money in his bank account monthly after returning home from a trip to
buy ganga (on my rupees) and for him NOT me. He would be the first of many such
charlatans to cross my path, each and every time I was gullible enough to be
‘taken’ by them. When the monk found us sitting across from one another at the
baba canteen, he took the opportunity to confront the man by asking him, ‘by
whose authority have you been given the right to teach yoga in the name of
Bhagavan Nityananda’. The sadhu left abruptly from the village. I was mesmerized a second time by the monks persona.
After
a few weeks I was invited to go to Gujarat and receive the initiation from Baba
Shivanandaji for the siddha healing mantras. My healer friend, Rajan, had
traveled all across India following his guru to the various trainings and the
previous year I had been sent by baba to Bangalore to receive the teachings for
the first time. I was intrigued and went, but found the crowd of 5000 to be
terribly amusing, crying and making howling noises when the guru went into his
production of rolling his eyes back to show only the whites… I did receive
something from this guru. I was featured sitting in lotus in the one of the aisles
and became a topic of discussion in my village, unbeknownst to me, as Shivananada had his own tv channel.
You see I too had been captured with my eyes rolling back.
Tapping into the ocean of Bliss that resides in every human being is really no big deal ~ its there for each and every one of us and the rolling back of the eyes is certainly not necessary. Sometimes it happens sometimes it doesn’t. its just a practice of focusing the attention on the agni point (or the control center of the psychic apparatus).
Tapping into the ocean of Bliss that resides in every human being is really no big deal ~ its there for each and every one of us and the rolling back of the eyes is certainly not necessary. Sometimes it happens sometimes it doesn’t. its just a practice of focusing the attention on the agni point (or the control center of the psychic apparatus).
When
I returned to the village I was practicing daily the siddha healing mantras in
the temple with great fervour~ the bliss, the connection to shiva~ the healing ~
all magnanimous. It was a short time there after, maybe not even a week of
doing my new practice that the monk came up to me in the temple and asked me to
meet for a short talk. He said, “my friend, someday you are going to be a Great
Healer, you will be giving vajra empowerments, but for now you Must stop all of
your healing practice as you are only sending these people your bad karma. I
had no idea of the word he spoke ‘vajra’ it completely escaped me but later I
learned that my guru Mark, who had been Kalu Rinpoche’s disciple, was in fact,
a Vajra Master, the Lightening Bolt path of the shaktipat from a siddha guru
directly to the disciple, this is and was a secret terminology for his
‘shaktipat’ initiations. When we get into the tantra, simply put, Tibetan and
Hindu Tantra is one and the same. Different words and perhaps the Tibetans came
up with a better more comprehensive way of writing the texts. That’s another
argument. For here I shall simply say, I am, by way of karma and root guru, in
a complicated vortex of energies that are actually ONE and the SAME !!!
But
I diverge. The monk said he saw what I was doing in the temple the week prior,
when I felt such an immense heat come over me. I had been practicing my new Sri
Vidya, the siddha healing mantras that Bhagavan Nityananda had brought to me
through two different teachers. He saw me from many kilometres away from
Ganeshpuri. In his minds eye, yes, or as he described a term called scathing,
entering the body of an insect or animal to view a scene from a far off. He was
not amused knowing the shaktim was spreading his bad karma with his unperfected
healing practice.
For
some reason the sweeper lady pointed toward me and a woman with her crippled
child moved toward my area and sat only inches away from me, her son in between us,
his gnarled legs and the souls of his feet twisted toward me. Heat came over me
as I started to pray for him. Such an immense heat I thought I could explode.
That’s when I felt the urge to lay my hands on the crippled boy. I told myself
“NO, that’s just ego, you can do the sri vidya for him in your prayers with
you’re your eyes closed” I fought myself and that little voice kept urging,
‘no, touch him’… I looked up at Nityananda, his statue that lays over his
grave, his gold murti and thought, baba this thought is not from me. This must
be from you because it is unrelenting.
When I laid my hands on his legs, I felt a quick rush of energy through my crown chakra…the weight of the guru was palpable, a sudden movement from the boy expressed his receiving the gift baba was giving him. I kept at the mantra, but prayed only that baba could please give him decreased pain and a way to become happy in this form of his. I did not pray for a miracle of untwisting his figure. But the monk had an entirely different perspective on the laying of hands on another person explaining cruelly that because I was not perfected, this practice must cease immediately at the feet of Bade Baba. He seemed very angered by my simple gesture of sharing what to me were miracle mantras.
That’s when I began to think He was Nityananda in Rudra form here to correct me. There were many more clues as he seemed to know each and every detail of a Baba Nityananda that is not written about, including that as part of his Nath initiation in the Himalayas he was required to eat meat and drink liquor. If I should say that aloud in Ganeshpuri today I would surely be thrown out. But I listened, fascinated as he said Nityananda was Matsyendranath who created Gorakshanath out of dust.
I listened as he would spout out these what seemed to be endless sermons on how each and every detail of my life should be properly attended to. He even came to teach me how to cut my vegetables with love. I did my practice and prayers for the boy and silently got up and nodded to the mother. I Left in a daze and walked home feeling as if the blessing baba just gave me was a completion stage event to my 10 plus years training as a siddha aspirant. I know something happened for the better, but I did not have to listen to the monk as the very next time I tried to call the symbols and mantras, NOTHING happened. He, the monk, had Cut my healing energies.
I succumbed to his training and went to the various places he instructed me to go, but almost always I failed. He kept saying the enlightenment is beyond the physical bliss. He said he did not believe in all of this talk about the bliss of meditation. Later he said he was in a realm, beyond the physical bliss, but oddly, he could explain each detail of HOW to breathe to connect the different bindus to the bliss, both the right and left hand paths.
When I laid my hands on his legs, I felt a quick rush of energy through my crown chakra…the weight of the guru was palpable, a sudden movement from the boy expressed his receiving the gift baba was giving him. I kept at the mantra, but prayed only that baba could please give him decreased pain and a way to become happy in this form of his. I did not pray for a miracle of untwisting his figure. But the monk had an entirely different perspective on the laying of hands on another person explaining cruelly that because I was not perfected, this practice must cease immediately at the feet of Bade Baba. He seemed very angered by my simple gesture of sharing what to me were miracle mantras.
That’s when I began to think He was Nityananda in Rudra form here to correct me. There were many more clues as he seemed to know each and every detail of a Baba Nityananda that is not written about, including that as part of his Nath initiation in the Himalayas he was required to eat meat and drink liquor. If I should say that aloud in Ganeshpuri today I would surely be thrown out. But I listened, fascinated as he said Nityananda was Matsyendranath who created Gorakshanath out of dust.
I listened as he would spout out these what seemed to be endless sermons on how each and every detail of my life should be properly attended to. He even came to teach me how to cut my vegetables with love. I did my practice and prayers for the boy and silently got up and nodded to the mother. I Left in a daze and walked home feeling as if the blessing baba just gave me was a completion stage event to my 10 plus years training as a siddha aspirant. I know something happened for the better, but I did not have to listen to the monk as the very next time I tried to call the symbols and mantras, NOTHING happened. He, the monk, had Cut my healing energies.
I succumbed to his training and went to the various places he instructed me to go, but almost always I failed. He kept saying the enlightenment is beyond the physical bliss. He said he did not believe in all of this talk about the bliss of meditation. Later he said he was in a realm, beyond the physical bliss, but oddly, he could explain each detail of HOW to breathe to connect the different bindus to the bliss, both the right and left hand paths.
