Swami Muktananda Paramahamsa 1908 - 1982
Baba’s teachings were refreshingly radical to the many people exploring meaning through anti-war demonstrations, mind altering drugs, women’s liberation, love-ins and dropping out of conventional materialistic pursuits. Ram Das, formerly Professor Richard Alpert and known for his psychodelic research at Harvard University, described Muktananda as a ‘saint’, as someone who delivered a ‘natural high’. He was the antithesis of an austere ascetic. He offered an appealing alternative for a generation of disenchanted materialists in the West.
Baba spoke in Hindi, his words translated into English, yet his communication was beyond language and culture. Audiences experienced his profoundly beautiful blissful energy and were enchanted by his warmth, his mischievous humour and the joyful spontaneity that informed every gesture. Baba was a perfect manifestation of his Sanskrit name, Muktananda, meaning the ‘bliss of freedom’. Baba met Nityananda as a young boy. He then left home to wander throughout India, took initiation as a monk and became Swami Muktananda. He studied yoga, Ayurvedic medicine, Indian martial Arts, Vedic scriptures and learned from many great yogis and saints. Meeting Nityananda again years later he received a powerful spiritual transmission. This precipitated an intensive nine years of profound meditation practice, culminating in Nityananda advising students “Muktananda has become enlightened, he is liberated”. Prior to his own passing in l961 Bhagwan Nityananda encouraged his disciple to live nearby and predicted that his spiritual accomplishment and influence would spread very wide in the future.
Westerners began to visit Baba’s ashram Shree Gurudev Siddha Peeth, two hours travel north from Mumbai in Maharashtra state. He instilled a daily routine of strict discipline which he enforced as a kind of selection process for students to remain with him. Hippies travelling through India looking for the endless high were either transformed by the daily routine of chanting, work and meditation, or quickly moved on. Devotees from Mumbai, Delhi and other parts of India came for weekend and celebrations. The temple and the halls resonated with melodic Sanskrit chanting and bhajans. Baba’s ashram took on the quality of an emperor’s court, with a steady line of faithful coming for spiritual advice, to make offerings of flowers and fruit. The lines included well-known Indian musicians who offered their musical gifts, local and national politicians, intelligentsia, Bollywood film stars and an endless stream of faithful pilgrims who saw him as the living embodiment of the tradition of enlightened yogis. His reputation as a meditation master had spread throughout the United States, Europe and Australia. Werner Erhard’s EST Seminars were a phenomenally popular personal transformation process throughout the U.S. He came to meet Baba in Ganeshpuri in 1973, and invited him as a guest to visit the US. Baba accepted and was introduced to huge audiences in the west.
Baba’s spiritual autobiography “Play of Consciousness” was published by Harper and Row as “Guru”. In it he documented his own devotional relationship to his Guru Nityananda and his profound spiritual unfolding as a result of the ‘shaktipat’ transmission of spiritual energy he received from his guru. On this second tour (1974-1976) Baba announced he was conducting a ‘meditation revolution’. He initiated a profound spiritual awakening through the medium of Intensives, a weekend experience of chanting, meditation and Vedic knowledge. The feature of these Intensives was Baba personally walking through all the meditators, physically touching with hands and a peacock feather wand and transmitting the energy of spiritual awakening “shaktipat”. For some the effects were subtle, bringing deep meditative stillness. For others the awakening was more dramatic. While remaining in meditation people laughed, cried, swayed. Later all had the opportunity to share their experiences. Among the many westerners who came seeking spiritual insight and understanding from him were scientists from Stanford Research Institute. They came with instruments with which they hoped to measure his higher states of consciousness. Baba found this extremely amusing and in many cases he was able to put investigators into “his laboratory”, by getting them to sit for their own inner experience of meditation. Politicians came, famous writers, actors, artists and spiritual teachers came to enquire and pay respect. People came by the hundreds to sit in the presence of a living meditation master who could transmit a direct experience of their own inner joy and wisdom, their bliss. Baba said “Meditation is universal. It is not the property of any particular religion or nationality. Through meditation we become aware of the fundamental unity of all creation.” He swept through the US via Route 66, with a caravan conducting Intensive retreats in New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Oklahoma, Ann Arbor and on to New York. He left in his wake students committed to chanting and meditation who offered him properties and created meditation centres. As trusted students committed themselves to serving their Guru, the Siddha Yoga Foundation was formed; meditation centres and ashrams were founded in Oakland, South Fallsburg, New York, Ann Arbor, Texas, Los Angeles, Melbourne and Sydney, London, France and Spain. Baba spent two years teaching meditation, awakening individuals to the richness of their inner Self. People realised they had the power to create their own reality, that the world they experienced was the creation of their own mind. They were enormously empowered by this and shared their experiences. He was featured prominently in magazines, television documentaries and newspaper articles. An article in Time Magazine recognised his rare accomplishments and status describing him as “the guru’s guru.” When he departed from the US in 1976, he did so with a jumbo jet filled with 400 devotees travelling for the cultural and spiritual experience of his Indian Ashram. The courtyards of Shree Gurudev Ashram in India were filled with bejewelled elephants, villagers chanting ecstatically, musicians playing, streams of Western and Indian devotees. Baba insisted on setting aside all caste conventions and racial prejudice, all pilgrims, high or low, famous or simple villagers were received equally and shared the same meals in the spacious dining hall. Baba himself often participated in the preparation of the meals, adding his very special magic to the food. Throughout these times he experienced several serious illnesses, complications of diabetes, and heart disease. Despite medical procedures, he showed the extraordinary capacity of a yogi to be unaffected by any physical limitation. He demonstrated to his students that the power of the mind was greater than any karmic obstacles arising as illness. The continuous lines of pilgrims wound through the marble courtyards as Baba greeted each person with warm hearted respect. He gave of himself, constantly expressing his devotion for his own guru as being the momentum for sharing his understanding and experience of what he himself had received from Bhagwan Nityananda. Baba sustained a delicate balance between the popularity he received from his tours of the western countries and the traditional institutions of Indian culture. The majority of his students returned to their homes, and he encouraged them to meditate as a means to deepen their spiritual understanding and to integrate that illuminated understanding into their lives. He also instituted a traditional order of monastics, swamis both Western and Indian initiated by Mahamandaleshwar Swami Brahmananda Giri from Haridwar. These swamis were trained and sent to teach, run Intensives and courses and represent Baba in his expanding centres throughout the world. During his third world tour (1978 – 1981) Baba’s teaching penetrated the mainstream of the prevailing western culture. Programs such as the prison project and conferences for large groups of psychologists, actors and creative artists demonstrated the practical and transformational benefits of meditation and the exploration of consciousness. Siddha Yoga Foundation was established internationally at the forefront of meditation training, making Baba's teachings available through courses, intensives, and books through its numerous ashrams and centres. In July 1981 Muktananda was concluding a celebration at the Nityananda Ashram in South Fallsburg, New York. He called the then newly appointed Swami Nityananda to come forward, placed a garland around his neck and announced to the hundreds of people present, “This man will be my successor.” Some time later he announced that Swami Nityananda’s sister would be a co-successor and in May 1982 Baba formally established Swami Nityananda and his sister Swami Chidvilasananda to carry on his work. Baba’s passing five months later in October 1982 precipitated a period of progressive upheaval and evolution. It led three years later to the creation by Swami Nityananda of a new organisation, Shanti Mandir, through which he pursues the legacy of Baba’s teachings, while Swami Chidvilasananda continues her work with Siddha Yoga. In honour of the 100th anniversary of Baba Muktananda’s birth, every person whose life was touched by him is invited to participate in the 2007-2008 “Footsteps of Bliss” tour. The tour by Swami Nityananda and company will re-visit many of the places Baba travelled to, and will also visit some of the numerous places where his teachings continue to be practised. The tour programs will focus on sharing Baba’s teachings through satsang, chanting and meditation. All are welcome to attend.
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