I was 10 years old when I started having yearnings of wanting to see God. At that age I was reading the myriad of colourful Hindu myths. Mahabharata, Ramayana, the Siva Puranas to name a few. My enamour of God was very much like the adoration of comic superheros like Batman, Spiderman, Superman. What interested me the most about the Hindu myths were the sages who would meditate and do severe austerities to ultimately have God appear before them. It wasn't the superpowers that some of the sages gained after their meet with God that attracted me (especially since most of the fellows misused their newfound abilities!), it was simply that it was possible to see God face to face while living on earth. It intrigued me. All through the Hindu myths are peppered here and there the exhortation to pray to God to reveal Himself. Being scientifically inclined from a young age, oblivious of yoga or esoteric Hindu philosophy, I tried some of the things that the sages did such as sitting in the lotus pose for meditation while chanting mantras of God's name, until it was too painful for me to sit in the lotus pose. I never did get to see God as I had hoped at that time. However when  I look in retrospect of how my life evolved with meeting my guru and receiving precious spiritual training from him which led to my spiritual development, as far as I am concerned God heard my deep prayer and gave me what I wanted. Thanks God!

This final Yogic Personal Development Seminar will be far less technical than the previous five. I guess if you actually got through to this point of the seminar, after all that effort that the previous seminars detail, you deserve a reward. Thus this seminar will be based on my anecdotes of the spiritual training I had with my guru to inspire you on this wonderful path of exploring God. Truly this is what yoga is all about, it is about discovering the divinity within oneself and then enjoying the many faceted exploration of God's Consciousness and Presence. These experiences also create a perspective of life that is unique that is unique to the accomplished yogi as it is now based on the experiential reality of God's existence instead of an unqualified belief of God.

The final two steps in the eight fold path to God Realization of Ashtanga Yoga are the easiest. The final two steps which are dhyana (true meditation) and samadhi (God Realization) are automatic occurances if the all the other six steps preceding them (yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara and dharana) are well in place. In fact these six steps are the effort while dhyana and samadhi are the rewards.

God is as simple as the feeling of love that one feels. The effort of yoga is to break the barriers of limitations we place on love within our personalily so that it may expand to encompasses an ever growing circle of acceptance until it includes the entire universe. Imagine you are in love with life itself. That is, you accept everything there is on earth; the magnificent, the sublime, the profound, the mundane, the horrible. Without a shadow of doubt you accept all of these without need for justification nor explanation–this is a God Realized perspective. You are totally secure that there is no loss in life once you have experienced the ocean of love that all existence returns to–this is what it is like living as a God Realized person.

Here is a mystical exercise that can help you have a sense of God's existence at your most basic level. Lets peel away at our existence, hypothetically of course. First drop off all desires that the physical body craves for–all sensory pleasures of that the body needs and wants, such as food and drink, sex, going to places, watching movies, being in the company of family and friends. Already you will be feeling that life is becoming very basic! With all this now out of the mind, there is no need for the physical body, therefore drop off the physical body itself. Imagine the physical body disappear.

What will be left will be your ideas, your emotional attachments, your ambitions and personality. Imagine putting all these facets of your life into a big bag and see it disappear. Having done this you will have no use for the ego, the intellect or the emotions, so drop these from your consciousness. What is left then, anything else to let go? Yes there are still elements of you and the next thing to deal with are your memories.

Without the intellect and emotions to indulge memory, it will be useless, so shove it all in another proverbial bag and throw it out of your mind. At this point you will be literally speechless since you have even thrown out language which is held in memory. So what will be left after all this? Anything at all? Yes, despite removing almost all the processes of our mind there is still an element of the mind that is left, this is your individual sense of being, the 'I'ness if you will. Now isolate and dump this too.

Now what is left, you are still there. Can you even imagine yourself still in existence. Mysteriously you will still feel that you exist but not in the normal way you would identify yourself as a person anymore. You are at the most basic level of your existence or the purest state of your being. Such a state of existence, yoga calls God It is right here within us, hidden amid the variety of layers of what we call our individuality.

When I was a boy, about 11 years old I used to have a mysterious recurring experience. I would feel that despite my body changing and growing literally everyday and my mind learning new things, that there was a part of me that remained unchanged. At that time what this mystery was, or why I was having such thoughts meant little to me. My friends whom I confided in at the time could not say that they had similar experiences. Later however uncovering this mystery would become a most important quest in my life. I finally did identify this unchanging part of me as my soul during my training with my guru.

Yoga philosophy stipulates that everyone will in one life or another realize the truth of their oneness with God. This spiritual inevitability creates some unique perspectives that yoga is known for. One is that there is no such thing as getting lost or going astray from the Godly path. The belief in reincarnation, which is part of yoga philosophy means that there is no rush to accomplish perfect spiritual evolution in one life, or that one has to experience all of ones ambitions and desires in the same life. The yogic point of view allows one to set his or her own pace of spiritual evolution in any particular life and it values life for the opportunity of spiritual evolution. There is also the perspective that since we are all from the same Creator and bound by an inextricable destiny, we are all brothers and sisters within God's huge family. There is a glorious view of life that comes out of spiritual enlightenment where one experiences rapturous affinity with all peoples in the samadhi state of Satchitananda. From this vantage point the world as a family is a reality, not an idea.

Yoga is not a religion. While there are many people in the world who practice it, yogis have never ever banded together and created a religion or a exclusive cult out of it. This has been held true since the beginnings of yoga which is more than 2000 years old. While there are religions that use the structure of yoga as their base (these are mainly the Eastern religions such as the family of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism and such) yoga philosophy itself promotes universality and, its exponents, especially those who have arrived at the profound spiritual experiences of God Realization, know that such a science and art can never be limited by barriers of race, creed nor nationality. Yoga is after all about the individuals quest for the truth of their existence, no different from the quest of science to understand how and why nature works. Thus, just as science is globally accepted across all barriers, yoga too has a similar appeal. This is how a young western man who was Christian by birth could study yoga from theosophists, then find his way to India and eventually to Sri Lanka, learn further under a Buddhist master, then  muslim mystic and finally get initiated by a Hindu guru to become a master yogi and Hindu satguru. He then taught the science and art of God Realization to all who sought to know the Truth as he did. This in a nutshell is the stroy of my guru, Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, whom I have referred to all through these seminars.

Yoga techniques for spiritual enlightenment are not complex. They can be quite elementary. What is complicated when it comes to achieving spiritual enlightenment are the barriers that we have in our mind that veil us from feeling our innate unity with God every second of every breath of our life. Extricating these barriers is what is complex and creates the challenge of yoga, that can at times be quite daunting. One of the first instructions I got from my guru regarding my quest for God Realization was, "Live in your own mind. Don't live in others' mind." I was with my guru and another colleague in a beautiful place in our Hawaiian monastery we called the Rishi Valley. We were sharing a quiet moment together after a question and answer session. As we were walking out of placid Rishi Valley, Gurudeva gave me this instruction. I didn't understand what he was trying to tell me and when he saw my confounded look, he went on to give an explanation that I will paraphrase. He told me that I was too concerned with what other people taught of me. I was constantly living in others' mind, trying to make sure the image of me in their mind was a good one. He told me to give others the freedom to think whatever they wanted about me and be secure in myself about who I am and what I do. Mind my own mind and don't worry about others. I took this advise to heart and worked very hard on it. It was a most rudimentary advise, but to me it set me on the path of spirituality as the cornerstone practice of my life. Now, many years on from that day in Rishi Valley, "live in your own mind" has become a natural habit of mine. To me this terse statement that my guru concocted especially for me became a potent spiritual technique. Like this advise, every individual has his or her own unique one-liner advise that has to do with maintaining the clarity of their subconscious mind which is essential to achieving spiritual enlightenment.

My guru achieved mahasamadhi, as Hindus term the passing of a spiritually enlightened being,  on November 13, 2001. Cancer was what laid his body to rest. During his last days, all of us, his monks in his ashram in Kauai, Hawaii would sit around him in communion. Even in those tenuous days he was a source of inspiration and did not give in to any sense of loss. He humored us saying that from the time of his death he would be with us 24 by 7, being unhindered by the limitation of the body. On one such day he talked about enlightenment. While most of what he said has already been covered in previous seminars, there is one important point about spiritual enlightenment that I have yet to share. It is this, that God Realization does not make someone great. It just make the person complete. My guru was always on guard with his disciples to make sure they did not fall into the trap of spiritual pride. Spiritual pride is when the ego claims greatness from spiritual accomplishments. It is the fastest way to digress on the spiritual path. So my guru set some rules amongst us monks to avoid this pit fall. He did not encourage us to discuss amongst each other about our spiritual experiences. We could discuss it directly with Gurudeva or a senior monk that he designated. When we did discuss our experiences with Gurudeva he discussed them with us as a matter of fact with little fanfare. So anyone who came to him hoping to bask in some kind of glory because of their accomplishment would be sorely disappointed. Some monastics even left their training because of this, which was just as well, because it would have been counter productive to continue if spiritual pride is the goal instead of enlightenment.

In the materialistic world humility is often seen as a sign of weakness. A strong ego, the 'alpha' is an often sought after quality in a leader. The materialistic conciousness is the 'dog eat dog' world. However in spiritual consciousness and in the striving to live spiritually in a material world, humility is the greater strength. This fact often escapes many aspirants looking for a master, as many seek out the alpha even in the spiritual circuit. Gurus and spiritual leaders who exploit this situtation often go to the extent of calling themselves incarnations of God, or that they can guarantee enlightenment or prosperity to whoever who came to them ( for a fee, of course ). One of the signs of such groups are usually exclusivity in membership.

What I have learnt and have come to know about the path toward spiritual enlightenment is that it is synonymous with the path of ever greater acceptance. It is about tempering the barriers within our mind that define our ego with love. While the ego still persists, it is a humble one. This humility deepens as the state of enlightenment takes a greater hold within one's consciousness. My guru's guru, Sage Yogaswami quiped, "We know not" referring to the nature of God. Such a humble statement coming from an enlightened man. Then there is this statement that my guru made on one fine morning after we concluded our group meditation. We were all in a profound mood and Gurudeva said in all seriousness, "The Self–Timeless, Formless, Spaceless and absolutely useless!" Until he himself burst into laughter none of us who were meditating with him had a clue how to react to the statement!

Despite their humility enlightened persons radiate a strength that is very palpable. It draws people to them like bees to honey, especially those actively seeking spiritual development. This strength is born naturally from the outgrowth of their spiritual experiences and their sense of security. They fear no loss nor do they have any need for gain. The realization of their oneness with God, The All, erases the need for materialistic gain for solely personal fulfillment. Thus the need for an ego with a hard shell evolves to one with no shields but sustained by the experiential knowledge of Oneness with God. Spiritual enlightenment does cause some losses in ones life. They are the need for personal security of any kind and the desire for ownership. These loses are the natural byproduct of basking in the loving presence of God within oneself.

Yoga philosophy identifies three main aspects of Godly experiences. The first and most basic of these is experiencing God as a person. For instance, God appearing in front of a devotee. The second is experiencing God by visions or feeling within oneself. Such feelings can be described in many ways, such as love, pure consciousness, pure energy or sensing the presence of the divine within others. The visions includes the perception of Divine Light within oneself, seeing an ocean of light interconnecting all existence and seeing one's awareness expand into spiritual spaces. The third aspect is known as The Mystery or The Secret. It is the experience (some call it the non-experience) of God Who lies beyond all perception of our physical and spiritual senses.

Yoga does not dwell much on the first experience God (the experience of God as a person) since it is not an experience of union with God. One can certainly pray for God for a manifestation and from my own personal experience and of course that of my guru, I can vouch that it does happen. Yoga instead directs spiritual striving to the latter two experiences of Oneness with God and has terms for them, which are savikalpa samadhi (experiencing God through seeing or feeling within oneself) and nirvikalpa samadhi (experiencing God beyond all perception).

The Personal Lord is any manifestation of God as an Individual. 'The Personal Lord' is a term coined by my guru to differentiate such experiences of God from the other two more meditative experiences. Gurudeva himself had experienced the Personal Lord as young boy in the form of Lord Nataraja, the Dancing Lord. In his youth, Gurudeva was an accomplished dancer before evolving into a spiritual perceptor. Later he had experienced God giving him instructions on the placement of the temples he started in his monastery in Hawaii. Gurudeva described God as having the most perfect face that seemed neither male nor female, Whose eyes were so profound that it seemed to contain the entire the universe and such subtle skin that comprised of particles of light.

My most notable experience of our Personal Lord happened in India while I was on pilgrimage. I was 17 years old then. It was during the time of celebration of Lord Nataraja in December, at a rural and ancient temple in Tamilnadu. I had the chance to approach a deity of Nataraja that had been on parade. I was alone with the deity in a large hall after following the parade around a village. It was night and everyone else, including the group I was pilgrimaging with, had gone to have prasadam (the temple's sacramental food offering) for dinner. While standing in front of the deity of Lord Nataraja I closed my eyes in prayer asking God for some sort of spiritual revelation. As I prayed I was beset by a strong urge to touch the beautiful bronze statue of Lord Nataraja. In the Hindu tradition the Feet of God are known as the Feet of Grace. Hindu saying and poems often point to 'surrendering to the Feet of God' as a gesture of seeking relief from suffering and gaining salvation. To be able to touch the Feet of God or of a God-realized guru is a much sought after spiritual privilege. Thus after I opened my eyes I approached the deity to touch Lord Nataraja's upraised bronze foot. I was expecting to feel the cool bronze the deity was made out of. Instead I got the surprise of my life when the touch felt of a soft warm human-like foot. Almost immediately after the surprise while still touching the foot I felt a strong current of spiritual energy gush into my body from the connection of my hands to the deity. The gush of energy pushed me back. I released my hands from the deity and had this vision of Lord Nataraja standing above me. I was transfixed for awhile gazing at the Lord. The vision slowly faded as I gained my bearings. This was the first tangible proof for myself that God existed. I always believed in the Hindu adage that one can only attain the deepest faith in God after having a personal experience of God. To me this experience ignited my quest to want to know God deeper. It brought my mystical inclinations to the forefront of my ambitions and made the pursuit of knowing God within myself a goal worth my life.

While yogis do hope to see God in person while on earth, they know that the most rewarding quest is experiencing God within themselves. Since our soul is hot-wired to finding the truth about its identity, at some point during the soul's sojourn on earth the enthrallment of materialism will fade and its focus will turn to its spiritual quest. Sometimes an experience such as the one I had in the temple will trigger this pursuit. Sometimes the trigger will be a bitter experience of loss that creates disenchantment with material pursuits. Whatever the initial cause, the pursuit is the spiritual destiny of all souls. This quest is the fountainhead of yoga philosophy.

Meditative yoga techniques comes in handy when a yogi seeks for the presence of God within oneself. Yoga divides the meditative experience of God into two categories. The first, which can be termed entry level experiences are discovered in the purest state of one's being. We explored this a little in the earlier exercise where we simulated dropping off different faculties of our mind until reaching the most basic level of existence.

The exploration of our pure existence confers various sublime experiences of divinity within and is known in yoga as savikalpa samadhi. Savikalpa literally means 'with seed'. Samadhi means 'to become One with'. Seed in this context refers to a spiritually tangible experience; one that can be described and felt by our spiritual and physical senses. In savikalpa samadhi God's presence can be experienced through the mind in such a variety of experiences that one can literally explore God. Yoga very simplistically describes this state of God experience as Satchitananda. Satchitananda are three sanskrit words, Sat-Chit-Ananda put together. Literally it means Truth-Consciousness-Bliss. Within each of these words there are diverse experiences of God. Savikalpa samadhi can happen from the the fourth chakra which is the anahatha chakra (the heart chakra) onward to the seventh chakra, which is the saharara chakra (the crown chakra). Within all these chakras profound yet sublime experiences lie awaiting within the seeker. Once the yogi learns to access these chakras through sustained meditation the joy of meditating becomes like a child in a candy store. The sublime and intense experiences of God that one can encounter through sustained savikalpa samadhi can come entirely from one chakra or it can be a combination of two or more chakras. It is through the various spiritual experiences of Satchitananda that a yogi can come to understand the truth that God is Love.

The experiences of savikalpa samadhi are experiences of love that can be had through other means apart from meditation. However I must differentiate the love in savikalpa samadhi which I would coin as spiritual love from the human experience of romantic love. Spiritual love is boundless and unconditional, whereas romantic love is specifically directed towards certain individual(s), is generally possessive in nature and conditional. Spiritual love is the Pure Love that is God and is tangible in savikalpa samadhi. Pure Love can also be felt when doing selfless deeds driven by causes for the betterment of humankind or the environment. When we are enjoying the beauty of nature and when we are deeply engrossed in the performing arts such as dance, music and song we can also touch into Pure Love. All these activities allow us to easily feel God's universal love flowing through us as we connect or touch into the presence of God within us. These are brief albeit fulfilling encounters of Satchitananda. The yogic seeker of God however prizes the meditative experiences of savikalpa samadhi because of its intensity and sustained effect in his or her consciousness. Savikalpa samadhi is an intimate union of awareness of the seeker and God's Consciousness which confers precious and fresh spiritual perspectives in ones view of life.

So vast is the mystical experience of God through Savikalpa Samadhi that my Guru found it practical to devise an entire language to aid in the exploration of this mystical frontier. He called this language Shum. It has its own unique alphabets, syntax and shum words are interestingly organized according to the chakras from which a mystical experience originates.

One of the first shum words that an aspiring mystic learns while in training with Gurudeva is Ka-Eef. Ka-Eef is a state of awareness, where awareness is only aware of itself. Gurudeva would give us a simple exercise to identify Ka-Eef. He would have us think of some part of the body, for instance the right arm.

"Feel your right arm", he would instruct. He would then ask, "Are you aware of your right arm?" Then he will command, be aware that you are aware of your right arm. Then forget your right arm and just be aware that you are aware and you will be in the state of Ka-Eef.

In this simple exercise you can touch into Ka-Eef, it will be a fleeting experience, perhaps one can hold it for a few seconds before other thoughts, emotions or some situation distracts awareness from it being aware of itself. The true experience of Ka-Eef is attained when one's awareness is within the sixth chakra, the ajna (the brow chakra). It is a state of contentment that is unfettered by the need of any kind of fulfillment. It is attained when the physical body, intellectual mind and emotions are quiet and one's awareness is free to dwell in it's original peaceful state of Ka-Eef, which is awareness singularly aware of itself. Ka-Eef is just one of many other experiences within savikalpa samadhi.

Here are a couple of other Shum words that name two other experiences of savikalpa samadhi. Eef-Tya and De-Ee-Sa-Reh. Eef-Tya is a very bright, clear whitish light that is experienced in the seventh chakra, the sahasrara chakra (the crown chakra). It is God as the Divine Light. Compared to Ka-Eef it takes more yogic effort to attain this experience of Grace within oneself. De-Ee-Sa-Reh is a more easy state of savikalpa samadhi to attain. It is of the fourth chakra, the anahatha chakra (heart chakra) and is similar to the experience of feeling wonderful awe when looking out at a beautiful nature-scape such as the scenery from a mountain top. It is an exhilarating and uplifting experience of savikalpa samadhi. There are many other savikalpa samadhi experiences sequestered within each petal of the four chakras that are within the heart, the throat, the brow and the crown.

Thus savikalpa samadhi is a vast spiritual playground for the adept yogi. The eastern myths talk about spiritual masters spending years in meditation. During these marathon meditations their body and conscious mind may be quiet, but their awareness is immersed in savikalpa samadhi and completely engrossed in its explorations.

The inner spiritual realm within ourselves is a frontier waiting to be discovered.Unlike science where every discovery makes the discovery 'undiscoverable' anymore, the mystical realms within each person is reality that can only be discovered through personal experience. No amount of reading nor vicarious simulations can confer true mystical experiences, especially such experiences as can be found within savikalpa samadhi.

Beyond the wonderful variety of experiences of savikalpa samadhi there is a deeper state of God Realization. This is nirvikalpa samadhi. The reason for describing nirvikalpa samadhi as a deeper state is simply because generally the yogi attains savikalpa before breaching into nirvikalpa samadhi. Nirvikalpa samadhi is a state of union of ones individual awareness with God Who is absolutely transcendent. There are no words nor concepts that can describe this experience. In the Shum language, there is a simple word that refers to nirvikalpa samadhi. It is Em-Ka-Eef. You will remember from the previous section that Ka-Eef is awareness aware of itself. Em-Ka-Eef is 'no awareness'. The Secret, is also occasionally used in reference to nirvikalpa samadhi. However nirvikalpa samadhi is not a secret because there is some esoteric instruction or special formulae to learn to attain it. It is just that even after one has attained nirvikalpa samadhi, it remains a  mystery. One can have and know the experience of Em-Ka-Eef and still be at a loss for words to adequately describe it as if one has not experienced it at all. After all what can the mind say of that which lies beyond its finite limitations. Nirvikalpa samadhi can only be known by the knower and will always remain that way.

Gurudeva usually used the word Self with the capital S to refer to the experience of God in nirvikalpa samadhi. He constantly encouraged his monks to pursue the realization of the Self. He would often remind us not to linger in the enjoyable states of savikalpa samadhi and instead concentrate on reaching the Self first. Once the Self has been realized one can explore savikalpa samadhi at leisure. Apart from the guru's exhortations, our soul too naturally thirsts for this experience. It is just the way God designed the spiritual quest. Despite the pleasures of savikalpa samadhi, until the Self is attained, one will still feel that their spiritual striving is not complete yet. There is always this lingering sense that one has to go deeper still and not stay complacently in the realms of savikalpa samadhi. Only after one atttains the Self does this mysterious yearning go away.

There is nothing grand or glorious to say about nirvikalpa samadhi itself, if anything, my guru proposed a simple exercise to give a sense of what the experience of nirvikalpa samadhis might be like. I will excerpt this exercise from his divinely inspired talk–The Self God.

"The Self, you can't explain It. You can sense its existence through the refined state of your senses, but you cannot explain It. To know It, you have to experience It and the best you can say about It is that It is the depth of your being, the very core of you. It is you."

"If you visualize above you - nothing; below you - nothing; to the right of you - nothing; to the left of you - nothing. If you visualize in front of you - nothing; in the back of you - nothing; and dissolve yourself into that nothingness, that would be the best way to describe the realization of the Self and yet that nothingness would not be the absence of something, like the nothingness on the inside of an empty box, which would be like a void. That nothingness is the fullness of everything, the power, the sustaining power, of the existence of what appears to be everything."

What makes the realization of the Self so cherished and valuable to the yogi is its aftermath. If you can imagine the impact of an out of this world experience on yourself, well, realizing the Self is similar. For example, most of us have never been to outerspace. We may, however, intellectually know a lot about outer space from our studies. Now tell an astronaut that you know all about space and he will point out the obvious, that you cannot fully know outerspace until you have been there yourself. What is it that makes going to outerspace so crucial in truly knowing it? It is the experience of being in outer space that confers new experiential understanding and appreciation which cannot be found by just reading about it. Only after that can one truly claim that he or she knows outer space. However unlike outer space which can be described and sensed tangibly by our physical senses, the Self lies beyond even our spiritual senses. Thus the mind and all its faculty cannot comprehend it. How then does the Self impact our day to day life? It lies in the paradigm transformation of perspective caused by the aftermath of Self Realization. Imagine this, out of nothing you witness the process of seeing yourself remanifest. You see yourself as the initial spark of life from which your awareness originates. Then you see, one by one, your faculties of the mind reappear and finally you realize yourself as having a physical body. I can write reams about how the experience of nirvikalpa samadhi has made me see life through a glorious fresh and wonderful perspective. Perhaps I will write about this in the future, but for now I will leave you with this. It is that I do not fear loss and that I feel invincibly secure no matter what happens in my life, This is because there is a place I can go within myself that can never be effected by the physical senses, the mind nor the emotions. To me nirvikalpa samadhi is God's most gracious gift to mankind. For you to fully comprehend this requires that you realize the Self too. Then it would be The Secret that we share.

I stated earlier in this seminar that the final two steps of Ashtanga Yoga, dhyana (true meditation) and samadhi are the easiest. Whereas the preceeding six steps–yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara and dharana take the most effort. The six parts of Ashtanga Yoga have to do with maintaining a clear subconscious mind and concentrating of the conscious and subconscious minds. With clarity in the subconscious and total concentration, one gets naturally into the true state of meditation or dhyana which naturally culminates in a state of samadhi.

When I was living in my guru's monastery in Kauai I also had the opportunity to meet many other yogis and gurus who would come to visit Gurudeva. Of all of them, by far the most entertaining and one of the most brilliant was a very accomplished yogi, Swami Bua. Swami Bua is a centenarian since he is over 100 years old. Swami Bua in one of his talks explained meditation. He said, "you cannot meditate, meditation has to come to you." He explained this statement by using sleep as an analogy. He would say, sleep has to come to you. If I asked you at exactly what time you went to sleep, you cannot say. You can say at what time you went to bed but not to sleep. Sleep has to come to you and not the other way around. Just like that meditation has to come to you, you cannot go to it.

This state of meditation that Swami Bua talks about is what I call the true state of meditation. These days meditation is a term that is so common that as soon as someone is seen sitting quietly in a corner with eyes closed many people assume that this is meditation, what more if the person is sitting cross legged in the yogic lotus posture. What determines if someone is in meditation or not is what is happening in the mind. If the mind wondering all over the place with not particular direction or if it is in a mental discussion with someone, then the person is not meditating. They are just sitting there, perhaps in an endeavour to achieve the true state of meditation.  The true state of meditation occurs only when the conscious and subconscious minds are maintained in the super-concentrated state of dharana for sometime. While in this state the awareness is poised and ready for the meditation. Medidation then occurs naturally when the super-concentration of dharana thrusts awareness into the superconscious mind.

In this state of meditation, with awareness immersed in the superconscious, that yogis say that the subject of meditation reveals itself to the meditator. The simple thought process of the intellect is circumvented and revelation occurs. One can even say that meditation is a faculty of the mind just as the emotions and the intellect are. However meditation operates in a much more efficient manner, by providing revelations to ones subject of meditation without having to go through the processes of analysis or  thought as one would do when pondering a subject intellectually. In a sense meditation provides the answer first. We can work out the reasoning afterwards. The process of meditative revelation is also know as intuition.

Samadhi like meditation also comes to you. It is in fact the conclusion of every string of meditation. After the revelation from meditation, by virtue of being in the superconscious mind the meditators awareness gets to enjoy savikalpa samadhi as a conclusion of meditation. Depending on the spiritual strength and experience of the meditator he or she can then linger on in that blissful state or go into another state or savikalpa samadhi, or work towards nirvikalpa samadhi.  Getting into nirvikalpa samadhi for the first time though is not as easy as getting into savikalpa samadhi. To attain nirvikalpa samadhi involves the concentration of shakti and awareness within the superconscious itself. Advanced yoga techniques are required to attain nirvikalpa samadhi.

Before I went to the monastery in Hawaii to pursue my quest for God Realization, influenced by television mini-series of the 80's such as Kung-Fu, I thought I could learn meditation from a martial arts master. The idea was so romanticized by television that I thought that was the way to find a master of the mystical arts. I was only 12 and had no access to traditional Hindu gurus. If I was in India I think I would have found someone there, but I was in Malaysia and during the early 80's I was not exposed to the few Hindu gurus who come and go on short visits to Malaysia. However after a few years of learning how to fight and seeing that the 'black-belts' did nothing but learn how to fight better I realized that the idea of learning meditation from a martial arts master was misplaced. By then however, I had discovered Gurudeva's teachings and knew that he was the guru for me.

However my romantic ideals did not end with my foray into the martial arts. I had this vision of doing hours of meditation and severe austerities under the personal tutelage of my master, again like how you see in the movies! When I first arrived at the monastery, I met monks with beaming smiles and much politeness. I was ushered to meet with Gurudeva and he offered me homemade oatmeal cookies and ice cream in his cosy and plush office. There were monks doing all sorts of things from working in the garden, working on computers, making books, cooking, carpentry. I did not see one person in meditation anywhere and there was lots of laughter and friendly banter. My romantic ideal of this somber, intense, super strict monastery was crushed by my first impression of the place and I realized that I could actually enjoy myself in the monastery!

From then on the spiritual training that my guru provided was very matter of fact and mainly consisted of learning to live harmoniously with others, doing the tasks that was set out for us to do to the best of our ability and learning to do all sorts of things. From how to publish books, writing for a magazine, administering an organization to running a dairy, doing temple services and providing spiritual counsel. The training expanded our consciousness and ability into many fields. In our daily schedule we only had 45 minutes a day that was organized as a group meditation session with the guru. After that between doing all our daily tasks if at all possible one might be able eek out another 45 minutes or so for personal meditation. Many people are surprised when I tell them the monastery schedule. Most expect that we would spend more time meditating. However, cloaked in our daily, seemingly ordinary activity is an intense amount of spiritual development. For all through our daily activity we are constantly engaged in the first six steps of Ashtanga Yoga. As Gurudeva put it, "yoga happens 24 hours a day even in your sleep."

Basically the first six steps of Ashtanga Yoga provide three crucial elements necessary for personal spiritual development. The first is the ability to control our actions and thoughts, essentially to be the master of our body, mind and emotions. For instance learning to master fear, not getting angry, not to be greedy or jealous. As basic as these seem, the mastery over our base instincts develops the spiritual strength of our awareness more than any yoga posture or meditation technique. The best way to achieve mastery of the baser instincts is to provoke them to manifest. This way we can learn to tussle with them and eventually learn to lord over them. There is no better way to stimulate this important spiritual exercise then by working with other people. Hence gurudeva's emphasis on organic spiritual training by working and living with others. Gurudeva had a golden rule in the monastery that everybody had to abide by. It is zero tolerance for disharmonious conditions. If two or more monks were involved in any type of misunderstanding or emotional flare ups, they would have to sit together and work out the problem amongst each other until they were harmonious again. Until the harmony is reestablished they cannot go to sleep even if the discussions take the night. If you tried living with such a rule in your personal life you will know just how challenging this is and how much personal development it can offer you.

The second important element of spiritual development that the practical training in the monastery offered was the development of our willpower. To this end Gurudeva would give us projects or tasks to manage that were very alien to our natural inclinations. In my case one of my first assignments was to be the chef for the monastery. At first I was terrified by the assignment, not only had I never cooked before, I had no desire to cook. I enjoyed good food like everyone, but to cook? It was beyond me as far as I was concerned at the time. However this assignment was more than learning how to cook, it was a spiritual training that involved using my willpower to breakthrough the barriers in my mind. I learnt how to step out of my personal comfort zone and build a new foundation of security out of nothing. Like my assignment all the monks had theirs that was meant to challenge the very foundation of what they taught was possible out of themselves. Of course we were given basic training first by starting as an apprentice before taking on the responsibilities and Gurudeva was there to guide us, however for the most part it was an exercise of willpower to overcome our doubts, fears and limitations.

The third crucial element necessary for optimal spiritual development is an unburdened and clear subconscious mind. A clear subconscious makes the concentration of the conscious and subconscious natural and achievable with relatively little effort. As described in the previous seminar, in the monastery we employ three exercises to unburden and maintain clarity in the subconscious. They are worship, hatha yoga and vasana daha tantra. Gurudeva even instituted the last three months of every year as a time to concentrate on introspecting into our subconscious mind and digging out any unresolved issues that may be there to be cleared using vasana daha tantra. Gurudeva worked personally with each of us in working with our subconscious. When the subconscious reached an optimal amount of clarity, then Gurudeva would begin instructing us in advanced meditation techniques.

Monks come and go during their training under Gurudeva. Some who left early, were disenchanted with Gurudeva's training methods. They came hoping to get magical initiations that would allow them to sit in meditation for hours on end and even gain magical powers! They were disappointed early on when they realized spiritual development involved raw personal effort; and during the initial stages this can be very mundane. Those who stayed on and completed the training were those who had the natural thirst for God Realization and were willing to do whatever it took to reach their goal. To that end working with the guru and trusting his methods is important.

This is another advise Gurudeva gave me once. A couple years into my training, I was sitting with Gurudeva after biringing him some green tea. Most of the one to one training with Gurudeva happened ad-hoc in situations like this. We did have scheduled sessions about once a week, but for the most part we got the guidance we needed most when we needed it. He had sensed frustration in me and asked me what was happening. I explained that I was frustrated with my meditations. Sometimes it was nice, but most of the time nothing happened, I see blackness and there is so much distracting thoughts. His answer; "Why are you trying so hard? Relax!" A few sips of tea later he elaborated that when an aspirant begins earnest striving for God realization it is as if you are flying to your destination instead of taking a land route to it. If you looked out the window of a plane while in flight, it will look as if you are moving rather slowly when in fact you are traveling many hundreds of miles an hour. Occasionally the plane will fly into a cloud and you will lose sight of your destination. The obscuring clouds are pockets of subconscious repressions that must be resolved. When you come out of the clouds you can see your destination again.

That is how it is with spiritual striving. The initial stages are the most challenging. The yogi will seem to be putting lots of effort with very little reward, when in fact he or she is building a very strong spiritual foundation whose long term effects will last for an eternity. Even when you look at any building construction, when the foundations is being laid, it would seem as if very little is getting accomplished despite all the activity, but, we all know how necessary a foundation is to the long term stability of a building. It is in fact the buildings most crucial structure. Thus the importance of working on the basics of yoga is vital to create the foundations necessary for sustained spiritual development.

Gurudeva continued to elaborate that I did not need to try so hard in reaching my spiritual goals as they will come naturally as I continued to work on my disciplines during the day. In fact when the subconscious mind is sufficiently clear; and concentration and willpower are second nature to the yogi, all he has to do is to sit quietly for a moment, close his eyes and he will almost immediately see his mind filled with Eef-Tya ( The Divine Light ).

This advise proved itself to me. It took about six years into training with Gurudeva after which true meditation and savikalpa samadhi became second nature to me. After reaching this point Gurudeva's intstructions became more esoteric as I delved deeper into subtle spiritual experiences. Every meditation was a wonderful exploration of the spiritual universe within.

What impressed me about my guru as I got to know him over the years was how loving he was. He accepted anyone who wanted to know God and taught them unconditionally to any level they wished to progress to. Even when aspirants left half way through their training, Gurudeva would simply say, "he came with an empty cup, now his cup is full and he has to go do other things." I have seen some of these aspirants return later in life, and usually they come with a bigger cup to fill the second time around. Gurudeva would say, "they came with a small tea cup to fill the first time, now they have returned with a swimming pool to fill!" He was unreserved in passing on the teachings of yoga to whoever who wanted to study. He would however only teach those who were committed.

Whatever you have read from these seminars are my gurus teachings from my perspective. From Gurudeva I learned how unique the practice of yoga must be tailored for each individual. There are some basic constants in its practice as these series of seminars reveal, however to achieve the deepest depths of yogic realizations one would need the guidance of a master such as Gurudeva to figure out the exact formulae of practice from the thousands of techniques that are out there. In many instances the guru would even create entirely new techniques.

Swami Bua, whom I had wrote about earlier asked us during one of his visits to the monastery, "Is science complete?" Nobody knew how to answer the question. Anyway none of us dared to answer it even if we had an opinion knowing how witty Swami Bua is. So he answered the question himself, "No!" he answered and continued, "science is still evolving. Scientists are still discovering new things. Yoga is the only complete science. It has reached the end of discovery." I believe what Swami Bua had said because of my experiences into the Divine. What more is there to discover whence you have gone beyond the very mind that perceives and gives reality to all that seemingly is.

However, the path toward reaching this ultimate discovery is constantly evolving. There seems to be no end to how one can reach the divine within. There has never been only one path to God and there never will be only one. This is why spiritual gurus constantly come up with fresh new perspectives of the same truth and continue to attract disciples centuries after centuries. My guru, being the accomplished yogi that he was gave us the language of shum to add another dimension to this wonderful path toward divinity. Gurudeva along with many yoga missionaries starting with Swami Vivekananda also successfully brought the teachings of yoga out of the age of mythical lore to the age of factual science. In all instances yoga easily adapted itself to changing perspectives.

Thus on the evolution of the path toward Knowing God, there will always be new areas and ways to explore. Yet the constant that God is love always remains. Every single person who steps on the path that yoga outlines will realize just how unique the path the he or she treads toward God. They will also equally realize how fortunate they are to have people such as my guru in the world to be their torch bearers. Thus I dedicate this entire seminar series to the memory and spirit of my guru. May you too find such a gem of a person in your life.