New Blog
After posting the piece “What I got From the Buddhists” as a blog, many have asked me to continue writing, and to share about my years with Baba Muktananda. There are several things that have brought this topic to the forefront of my consciousness lately and so I will begin sharing as things arise. This will necessitate a new blog with a new title and since I have no real topic, I have decided to use the extremely vague title “Musings.”
In one way or another, I have been bumping into Siddha Yoga ever since I left the ashram in 1992. Sometimes the content is positive and sometimes it is negative. Recently I bumped into a mixture of the two and it brought up the question of what I got from my immersion in Baba’s world. These days, I am saddened to see the same old arguments against Baba still being presented and I am particularly saddened by the unresolved anger and despair behind them. In the past I also experienced feelings of anger and despair and thought it might be of some benefit to share my own story of moving beyond them.
Looking Back
It wasn’t until I actually moved away and separated myself from identifying with the culture of Siddha Yoga that some degree of spiritual maturity and some peace and wisdom could emerge. It took a long time. It is hard to say what the real cause of the change is. There are so many factors – time, distance, practice, grace.
I remember going back to Ganeshpuri, the scene of my first 3 years of sadhana or spiritual practice in the early 70s, and sitting in the courtyard where years before I had sat and wept so many times. I had also experienced great happiness and fulfillment sitting at Baba’s feet. The mixture of feelings flooded back. With great surprise, I realized that the sadness I had once felt in that spot had totally vanished. It was just gone. I didn’t know how it happened. It seemed as if it had just worn itself out. Perhaps the same is true for the anger, shame, grief and despair I had experienced later around various scandals, my own included – that it had just worn itself out.
Separating the True From the False
Baba was formally known as Swami Muktananda Paramahansa. The word “paramahansa” means “supreme swan” in Sanskrit. This title refers to the mystical powers attributed to the swan, a creature which is said to be able to separate water from milk when drinking a mixture of the two. When this name is used as a spiritual honorific, it presumably refers to the ability to separate the true from the false, the divine from the ordinary.
If milk and water were placed in two different containers, there would be no problem distinguishing between the two. What makes the feat of discrimination a mystical power is the fact that the two substances are mixed together, just as good and evil, dark and light, truth and falsity are mixed together in the world.
At the beginning of the traditional spiritual path, the student is helped to develop discrimination by being given rules to follow – perhaps a set of things to avoid. Many paths lay out a lifestyle to follow which may involve moral and even dietary restrictions. One example of such restrictions is the list of the five things one promises to eschew when taking refuge in Buddhism. One version of these rules says “no killing, no stealing, no lying, no sexual misconduct and no drug-taking.” This is similar to the yamas and niyamas of yoga found in Hinduism.
By observing a discipline such as this, the student is placed in a favorable environment for attuning himself or herself to the subtleties of higher consciousness and the path to enlightenment. It is a protection - a guide which makes the task easier and clearer. Things become difficult soon enough when life itself presents quandaries not easily solved by adhering to moral precepts.
Tantra/ The World as God
Spiritual disciplines are a way of separating the water from the milk so that the student can learn. This approach to the spiritual path is more Vedantic than tantric. The tantric approach aims to show the student that the truth lies right in the middle of ordinary worldly experience - that peace exists not only in the eye of the hurricane but that the hurricane itself can be a portal to transcendence. The supreme view is that the hurricane is a manifestation of the divine.
Baba’s approach was more tantric than Vedantic, though he taught both, and he favored the philosophy of Kashmir Shaivism. The dharanas of the Vijnana Bhairava - a text of Kashmir Shaivism said to be Baba’s favorite scripture - are designed to elicit the tantric experience. These contemplations point out that the experience of God is accessible through a subtle shift in awareness, one which can be brought about by a sneeze, by great joy, by staring at the sky, by tasting food, in the sexual embrace, in comtemplating the void, etc. Baba was a master of tantra, of seeing God in all aspects of life. When asked once by a reporter if he saw God in the tree standing nearby, Baba replied, “No, I see God as that tree.” Training in the dharanas of the Vijnana Bhairava can bring this view.
Although there was a discipline at his ashram, it was more along the lines of guiding the students to pay attention to the spiritual power available through the guru’s blessings than it was to instill morality. The true education lay in Baba’s presence. He taught through his being. He didn’t teach about finding God in all aspects of life, he demonstrated it.
The Storms of Sadhana
In many ways, life in the old days in Ganeshpuri in the early 70s was like being thrown into the deep end of the pool without a life jacket and then being told to have faith in the guru and to keep one’s mind connected to him at all times. For those who naturally had that faith and were drawn by Baba’s enormous spiritual power to stay in the experience of his force field, negotiating the deep end of the pool was a piece of cake. They floated in bliss and were buoyed up by the abundant and powerful energy available. This was my experience in the early days. I felt that I was in heaven on earth, that I had finally found the promised land.
One feature of the awakened kundalini, however, is that it speeds up one’s spiritual evolution and this entails bringing up everything that stands in the way. All the negative habits of heart and mind arise and are intensified so that they can be experienced strongly and transformed. Actually, all the habits, whether positive or negative, are brought up, which is why some people have a much easier time of sadhana. Sadhana is the unwinding of one’s karma, whatever it may be. Even the bliss, the ecstasies and divine visions wind down as one approaches spiritual maturity.
A reporter once asked Baba how he purified the karma of all the people living in the ashram. He said that all he did was put them together and they rubbed up against each other to do the work. The ashram was like a huge stew filled with many kinds of different vegetables all cooking together. Ideally the fire would soften and cook everything into a delicious dish.
In the process, however, one could experience extreme suffering. This could come from interactions with fellow ashramites, from issues arising out of one’s seva or ashram work, from old unresolved conflicts coming up once again, or from a clash between one’s beliefs or concepts and the perceived realities on the ground. Baba’s personality itself could be the source of this clash. For example, in my mind a saint or guru was supposed to be concerned with the feelings and inner suffering of each of his students. When I saw Baba seemingly impervious to the hurt feelings and emotional suffering of the ashramites or visitors, I made a negative judgment of his personality.
In retrospect, this was not about Baba at all, but about my own values and beliefs clashing with reality. In my ordinary life, I would have simply moved away from situations in which I didn’t feel comfortable. I would not have chosen to deal with many of the confrontations with reality that I experienced in Baba’s ashram. In my mind, an ashram was supposed to be a refuge from the world, a better place than the so-called marketplace. In fact, it was more of an intensified experience of the world. The spiritual energy was turned to high, which impacted everything in our lives.. It was like hyper-reality with everything intensified.
The World Is As You See It
In the world, we are used to accepting that there is war, crime, and all manner of evil, but we don’t easily accept that the same human passions might be part of ashram life. In reality, these human passions exist in our own hearts and minds. They are always projections. Baba frequently expounded on the aphorism, “The world is as you see it.” I got this intellectually, but for a long time I could not see that my judgments about him and things that happened around him were not really about him, but arose from my own concepts and attachments, in short, my own projections.
Even if my judgments were “right,” in the sense of being factually true, they were irrelevant to the purpose of my being there, which was to benefit spiritually from Baba’s grace. The only useful object of scrutiny was my own heart.
One of the arenas of transformative experience arose from my desire for Baba’s attention and love. I would jealously watch others getting love and attention and wonder how he could love some of those whom I deemed quite obnoxious. I would sink into an emotional swamp of self pity and would sit for hours in front of him weeping mindlessly. He usually ignored me completely, but occasionally he would appear irritated and move someone to sit right in front of me blocking his view of me.
Only much later, when these emotional kriyas or yogic upsurges of psychic material began to wind down, did I see that he was right to ignore my indulgence and neurotic fixation. My negative feelings about him were just the projections of my ego and arose from childhood conditioning and my relationship with my father, who adored me. The fact of projection was clear when I saw it happening to others, but not so clear when I was willfully clutching my opinions and beliefs and immersed in my own emotional projections.
Dilemmas of Surrender
There is a choice that a seeker or disciple has to make and that is whether or not to surrender to the process of having the ego destroyed. Most seekers begin a spiritual path with this aim, but without a deep understanding of what it entails. One thing it entails is always bringing the focus inside and not blaming others for one’s suffering. It is difficult to give up the habit of pointing out flaws in others. When I hear people complaining about others, I am reminded of children having tantrums and screaming “It’s not fair!” It is true that life is not fair, but it is virtually impossible to get a small child to understand and appreciate the big picture when he is totally immersed in his own agendas. We are all small children when it comes to attachment to the ego.
When I heard stories of Tibetan monks who used their experience in labor camps under the Chinese to practice compassion, I was impressed with their ability to actually live by their philosophy, to really apply it in horrendous circumstances. It made my suffering in the ashram seem very small indeed. The monks took the situation as the guru and applied the teachings on wisdom and compassion to their circumstances. We may be able to understand a story such as this, or a story about someone facing death who gradually moves through the stages which include anger and despair, to arrive at the peace of acceptance, but it is very hard to understand that surrendering to a guru can provide the same inner transformation.
That there is value in surrendering to circumstances which are not fair or not right, by ordinary standards, is a point which is missed by those who take delight in pointing out the flaws of gurus. From the outside, it seems potentially destructive to be in a relationship without give and take, without a balance of power. From a psychological point of view, to always regard any problem as one’s own and not to hold others responsable, is disempowering and quite wrong.
The Guru Function
The usual psychological stance is to empower the individual, to develop the ego to full maturity. The role of the guru is to work with a healthy ego and to take the individual beyond that “maturity” to transcendence, to God-realization or enlightenment. It is a completely different ballgame. The lack of clear cut delineations makes things even more difficult. In individuals who are mature for the most part, there are always areas of immaturity, of darkness and unconsciousness. The guru rarely deals with fully mature and conscious disciples.
Here I am talking about competent gurus, who have the spiritual attainment and the power to work with disciples and guide them along the path. There are, of course, many cases of incompetent gurus. It is said that a true disciple can grow and benefit, even from an incompetent guru. The important factor is the faith and purity of the disciple. This is why one of the primary teachings in both Hinduism and Buddhism is that one must see one’s guru as perfect, as a Buddha. The fruit always depends on the projection.
Regarding a guru as perfect seems deluded and dangerous from the ordinary point of view. That ordinary point of view stems from the belief that our experience comes from outside of us. When life is looked at this way, then it is possible for others to harm us. In the spiritual realm, it is all an inside job. We project negativity and then suffer from it. When we project love and devotion we receive their fruits. It is why Baba said daily, “Honor yourself, love yourself, worship yourself. God dwells within you as you.” If one follows this dictum, one will never go wrong.
East and West
Realistically, beginners on the path are not able to truly love, honor and worship themselves. Often it is their lack of self esteem, self hatred and other psychological defects which lead them to the spiritual path. My own suffering prior to entering the path, although ultimately spiritual, was experienced as psychological. I think this is the condition of Western seekers for the most part. We have neuroses, hang-ups, quirks and unhealed traumas. This is how we regard ourselves and others.
Older Asian gurus were not raised in cultures with psychological awareness. The systems designed to raise the consciousness of seekers through religious and spiritual traditions worked well for generations, but I feel that they are not sufficient for Westerners who were brought up in a culture in which psychology took the place of religion and spirituality in dealing with their inner lives. I feel that there is a need for some bridging to the treasures of the East which takes into account and utilizes the psychological bent of Westerners and which deals with their psyches. This, of course, is now being done by psychiatrists and therapists who are steeped in Asian spiritual traditions.
I have always been helped by regarding Baba in the context of his background. I suppose my training as an anthropologist led me to view things with a kind of detachment. I would study Baba and try to understand what was really going on. One small example: I remember when he learned the word “upset.” For a time, whenever he saw one of the girls weeping, he would say, “Upset?” It seemed to work like a charm and shift their mood. I am guessing that they felt understood - that they thought Baba was empathizing - but my perception was that Baba had just found a word that seemed to calm things down. He was supremely pragmatic and not at all self reflective in a psychological way.
He was not able to - or even interested in - psychologically understanding his Western students and I think that much of the scandals arose from this gulf between East and West. He had reached his attainment through the blessings of his guru, the great siddha Bhagwan Nityananda who wandered naked over the length and breadth of India. Baba too spent years as a wandering sadhu. He had undergone a dramatic inner process in which his individuality was either replaced by or overlain with the awareness of supreme oneness, with the constant awareness of his own divinity. He did not doubt or second guess or hesitate. He had surrendered to the power flowing through him and lived in it. This is my interpretation of his being.
Such a being might be regarded by the western psychologically centered mind as sociopathic or even psychopathic. Seen from this perspective, his behavior might have been scandalous. Baba was aware of the tendency in society to fear and punish those who exhibited higher consciousness in a way that pushed their buttons. He used to tell the story of Mansur Mastana, a Sufi ecstatic who was hanged for proclaiming his experience: “I am God.” That would never have happened to him. Baba was worldly-wise, in addition to his other qualities.
I don’t think, however, that Baba understood the Western culture and consciousness and the ways in which his just being himself would be received. Perhaps he did and just chose not to conform and appease. Even when confronted by disapproval, he never changed his behavior. My feeling is that his surrender to his inner inspiration was total and unwavering. This was called surrendering to the shakti.
In looking at Baba from an astrological perspective, one thing which stands out and which seems relevant to this discussion is the conjunction in his natal chart of Mars and Pluto. These two planets represent personal will and divine will, respectively. In his chart they were joined. One way to interpret this is to say that he manifested the divine through his actions and movements. I would call it a shaktipat-conferring conjunction. There was no separation in his experience between his desires and impulses, represented by Mars, and the higher evolutionary purpose of the kundalini, represented by Pluto.
Continued Unfolding of Grace
Baba often told us that the touch of a siddha never goes to waste - that the awakened kundalini will inevitably lead to a spiritual unfolding over time. All of the difficulties which arise during the unfolding are temporary and unimportant in the long run. He knew that his touch would ultimately free beings and did not worry about the process and its rough waters.
Even when I decided to leave the ashram and to separate myself from all outer connections to Baba’s world, I still believed that his grace was always with me and was in fact propelling me forward on my journey. I wanted to clear away all the outer connections, which after 22 years seemed more of a burden than a blessing. I felt that I wasn’t making any progress and wanted a complete break.
After some time, I began to miss something about ashram life. It was certainly not the politics or limitations, but it was something like “meaning.” I wanted to be connected to something that felt meaningful, which to me had to do with the goal of my life, about which I had no doubt. Of all the doubts which arose, one thing of I never doubted was where I was headed. From the moment I met Baba, the desire for enlightenment solidified from an inchoate yearning into a defined life goal.
I believed that it was this seed planted by Baba that led me the gonpa of Chagdud Rinpoche where I spent 12 years deeply immersed in an apparently new path. In fact, when I first spoke to Rinpoche about my life with Baba, he told me that Baba was my root guru. This was just a continuation in a different mode, dictated by my needs and my karmic connections. While studying with Lama Drimed Norbu, Rinpoche’s lineage holder, the spiritual process began to bear fruit. It was during my yearly retreats that I was able to bring the conflicts inside and to realize that every complaint, criticism, judgment and opinion I had had over the years were all simply movements of my own mind arising from my own karma.
Taming the Mind
The task was to “tame my mind” as they say. This involved immersion into powerful practices with just this aim. Although Baba had taught us that whatever arises after the awakening is just a manifestation of the shakti, or spiritual energy, I had always felt that my thoughts were my own and were part of who I really was. Partly because my thoughts were so tied up with my identity, I regarded them as necessary to protect me from forces which seemed capable of destroying me. The ego couldn’t allow the possibility of relinquishing them. They were my ego, in fact.
It wasn’t until much later, when I was introduced to the idea that what we think of as our self is just a conglomeration of conditioning, that I began to see my thoughts as merely the flotsam and jetsam of conditioning and not really me. The only real me was the vast oneness, the totality of all that is, the ineffable radiance of the divine. This view of the mind destroys the very root of all argument. The “I’m right and you’re wrong” cannot coexist with the unreality of the personal self, which is its great virtue.
I slowly moved into a space of just letting my thoughts be, without believing them to be true. The more I relaxed my identifying with them, the less power they had to buffet me about emotionally. I clung to the teachings I had received about the nature of mind as I spent weeks and months in solitary retreat allowing whatever welled up to just be.
As I relaxed more deeply I began to view my life with Baba from a different perspective. At the distance of time and space and with the mellowing of age, I began to appreciate more about the unique opportunity I had had in my days with Baba. I benefited enormously from the sane and sober aspects of the Buddha dharma I had immersed myself in and my time there was a truly healing experience. Strangely, I saw that the gonpa was just like the ashram in many ways and was certainly not exempt from the maya I had judged negatively in the past. I was just in a different space and the negative aspects did not ruffle me.
I appreciated what I felt was the kinder, more civilized culture of the Buddhists, yet I felt that it lacked the incredible dynamism and almost other-worldliness of Baba’s world. Baba was more like a wrathful deity than a human being. His energy transported one to the realm of divine forces, outside of the ordinariness of conceptual thought. This almost psychedelic experience was generated during the Tibetan Buddhist rituals, but it was not an ongoing feature of day to day life at the gonpa. This was, in fact, a relief and I greatly appreciated it. From the security, calmness and safety of my life there, I was able to look back at my life with Baba and to feel enormous gratitude for the gifts I had received.
During the recent swami reunion in June, I was once again immersed in Baba’s world. The sharing and conversation that went on carried an energy that seemed to get ideas and feelings unstuck and to move the growth process forward. I decided to continue this movement of sharing through writing. One thing that has emerged over time is not taking things so seriously. Age and one’s impending mortality bring home the truth of impermanence and provide a calming long view of life. I resonated deeply with a key teaching I received in the last decade. It was simply, “Avoid all negativity.” When I heard the pith instruction that enlightenment cannot spring from negativity, I knew it was true and made a commitment to try to avoid all negativity.
The Question of Conduct
Padmasambhava said that one’s view should be a wide as the sky while one’s conduct should be a fine as barley flour. The teachings on the formless aspect of the divine can give the wide and expansive view, while the teachings on compassion provide the key to conduct. I felt that these teachings resonated with what I had gotten from Baba – that his version of the teaching on the nature of mind was contained in his motto “God dwells within you as you.” God is everything and everything is God.
The teachings of the Vijnana Bhairava are not essentially different from the teachings on wisdom I received from the Buddhists, but the Buddhist teachings on compassion struck me as something new. I gravitated to the path of the bodhisattva like the proverbial bee to honey. On some level I knew that this was it for me. It was a bit confusing since I had already decided that the path of dzogchen – the highest non-dual path - was it for me. Dzogchen, however, rests on the Mahayana, which includes the teachings on compassion.
Later I realized that the path of compassion had provided me with the answer to a question that had been weighing on me since meeting Baba. I had not realized that I had this question, but in finding the answer, I became aware of the question. The question was, “How should one act or behave?” On the one hand there were the rules of morality laid out by all religions and paths, while on the other hand there was the tantric view that everything was holy and sacred and that nothing was forbidden if viewed correctly.
The path of the bodhisattva with its focus on motivation provided the answer for me. If I looked at my motivation, all was clear. The highest motivation, I was taught, is the motivation to benefit all sentient beings in both relative and absolute ways. I took this as the pole star of my life and began to try to live by it. When faced with any quandary, asking how I can be of benefit at once brings me peace and clarity. The answer is different in each situation and for each person. Each person has the ability to benefit the whole in his or her own way and only by being true to oneself will this benefit flow.
From Darkness to Light
At this time and for me, the answer is to shed light on all the dark corners of my own psyche - to bring the shadow forth into the light - and to share my experience. One of the meanings of the word “guru” is “darkness to light.” This is also the basis of the practice of tonglen, which is one of my core practices. In tonglen we breathe in the dark and breathe out the light. The darkness is accepted and brought to the light of full consciousness in this process.
My wish is that those touched by Baba might have faith in his guarantee that the touch of a siddha never goes to waste. The good news is that with faith and with right practice, one cannot fail to become free of suffering and find happiness. One of the prayers of the bodhisattva, which I love, is very simple. “May all beings be free of suffering and the causes of suffering. May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness.” May it be so!
