Woman Thou Art God - Importance of the Guru

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE GURU

The Blue Person is a person who is completely in the consciousness of God. The two gurus shown above are Baba Nityananda & Baba Muktananda

In yoga, unless you have a Guru, you are looked upon with suspicion, insofar as your spirituality is concerned. They believe totally that the Guru is the LINK with God, and it is almost impossible to attain God by one's own discipline. The Guru MUST link you with his/her grace, when you are ready, in order for you to enter the Kingdom. This is EXACTLY what Christians think, except that they believe there is only ONE Guru, and that is Jesus. I believe that the yogis are right and Jesus is perhaps the Greatest, but not the only Guru who can link you with God. I do not think Jesus wanted us only to worship Him, but He truly wanted us to follow His way, truth and life and become self-realized, evolved souls - be just like Him rather than worship Him from afar. We will speak much more of these things later.

BABA NITYANANDA
& MUKTANANDA

Baba Muktananda wrote glowing chapters about his great guru, Swami Nityananda. I actually felt some of the statements were mushy until today I FULLY realize what he meant. He praised Nityananda because Nityananda was his LINK WITH GOD, and without this link Muktananda could not have gotten anywhere at all. Thinking deeply at the devotion Muktananda had for his guru, and the words he said, his relationship with Nityananda was profound. When Nityananda gave him Shakti on that great day of initiation, Nityananda actually transmitted not only God's abstract power into him, but that power, which was transmitted through the instrument, Nityananda, contained the guru's SPIRITUAL DNA. And so, Nityananda lives forever in Muktananda. I have also been filled with the Shakti of Muktananda, and so it means that Nityananda also lives in me, and all his predecessors of Siddha Yoga. This is the lineage of Siddha Yoga, and the way God is transmitted from guru to devotee. It is as profound as what we experience with Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.......RVW

Since 1968 I had been studying yoga and the small amount of books I could discover about it. Most of the material was substandard and had you spinning trying to find out what they meant. I can’t stand ramblers and rambling, and obtuse language which convinces you that they don’ really want you to know. You finish the book and you feel dry and empty as you had when you started. I could go on and on. Then there are the scholars. I call them “word technicians.” These are the ones whose books get published. It’s not what they say, (sometimes) but how they say it. They are geniuses with words and they impress everyone with their glib, witty, cagey way of expressing things. Some of these, when you get done with their books, once again you are as dry as ever, because the books really have no content to lift your soul, to fill you with grace or put you on the right path. These types are about definitions and more definitions and thousands of questions but no answers. Example: Rollo May on “The Meaning of Anxiety.”……Four hundred pages that convince you that there is anxiety, but in the end, not the slightest clue of how to get rid of it. Very helpful. A lot of the yoga books were like that. Esoteric, obtuse, cagey, roundabout and not to the point. No personal startling experiences of God. Nothing that would grab or touch you emotionally.

HOW IS BABA DIFFERENT?

How is he different? He’s honest. He tells the truth about things straight out. Most people are also afraid to tell you their mystical experiences and their “personal” spirituality secrets. Baba was told by some not to talk about the sexual excitement or other secrets, but both he and his guru decided that the West – to which they were dedicated – had to know the truth about yoga. The last really inspiriting yoga saint that I know of was in the thirties – Paramanhasa Yogananda. I read him as a teenager. He probably was the one who got me started in curiosity about the East. Yes, I was a cradle Catholic, but there was a big world out there and a big God Who belonged to all religions. I had always believed that religion was made for woman, and not woman for religion. Go to Baba Muktananda! Not only will he teach you by books, but if you have my luck and follow the installation process he teaches, he will appear to you and download graces into your soul. They will manifest at the appropriate time. The installation? You must want the guru within yourself and you must empty yourself and welcome him/her into yourself. In his book it talks about head to toe. That didn’t work for me. Then I tried the heart, imagining him entering my heart. That night he started appearing to me and did so for two and a half months. I was in bliss. He had given me all his graces. This downloading is like putting programs into your computer. You may not need them all at once or in the beginning, but as your life continues, the graces or programs are utilized. When Baba left me after those months of bliss I went back to my Christian disciplines, feeling rather lost for a while. But things got better. Later on, I was trying to do some audio tapes on the teachings, trying so hard but not being able to do what I wanted. I knew less about the subject then I assumed I did. It was at that point that both BM and Nityananda appeared to me in a dream. They were having a dispute. BM wanted to use “tough love” on me, which means to leave me on my own. But BN said, “You are wrong. She has no living guru or saint to consult with, nor any other good books. She is in a place where she has no resources. She needs help, and if you don’t help her any more, I’m going to.” Baba was pissed, but I understood that Nityananda was his elder and his superior, and what BN said is what went down. It was not long after that that a person came to me who was the first person I ever found who wanted to speak to me about God for hours on end. We did so. He inspired me just by listening and sharing what he knew. This went on for about two months. At the end of those months I was ready to go into action and that I did. I started working on projects, and as each one proved to be less than perfect, the one perfect thing came to me: INTERNET. And so, this site was born. Did BN have a part in leading me to this? I think so. I believe Jesus and Mary, Muktananda and Nityananda all had a part in leading me to this site and as they live in me, they also live, or their wisdom lives, within this site. They are all giving me grace and light. Praise God and the great saints of God!

This photo of Muktananda gazing lovingly at Nityananda is especially dear to me. You can see a mixture of LOVE and AWE in the face of Muktananda. How much a picture is worth a thousand words! What is he saying here? "I respect you ... I admire and love you... you are GREAT! Muktananda had a rocky sadhana with Nityananda. It took him nine years of hanging around to get ready for initiation. His ego, his know-it-all personality got in the way. Finally, he broke, just like we break when we're ready for Jesus and the Holy Spirit. We reach a point in time where we can't hold on any more to the lies and delusions, and we're ready for Truth. Only then could the great guru, Nityananda, transmit the Power of God into Muktananda.

When I look at the picture of Muktananda as a fairly young man, I can see the HOLINESS in his face and demeanor. You can see this man means business. He spent forty years walking about India, living off survival work (sometimes starving) in order to find God. He was looking for that great guru the yogis believe in. You've got to have a guru, they say, in order to find God. The guru is the link, just as Our Blessed Lord is the link for us. He met sixty saints, many of them quite eccentric, but couldn't connect. Finally, one saint named Zipruana told him to go to Nityananda. Baba had met Nityananda as a preteen, and here he was again, back with him. Baba had learned from each and every saint he met, and knew many disciplines, but the only saint that could break his ego (which is an absolute necessity for initiation) was Nityananda.


Baba Muktananda as a young man and as an older man

THE UNUSUAL
SAINTS OF YOGA

Muktananda also taught me another thing: the variety of what it means to be a saint. I mean he had guys in his book that would make you blush and wag your head. We would call them weird. But they were saints. He also insisted that one of the fellowship of the saints was a prostitute; Kamepatra. He said that she found self realization in that profession. Now in the West, nobody would allow the thought of a prostitute to be a saint. That was another way Baba opened my eyes. The man had a big heart, a big brain and a big soul. The saints that he describes in his books are eccentrics. This teaches me that it’s ok to be an eccentric, really beyond the pale. God doesn’t get mad at you for that. In the Christian world we are so uptight, buttoned up, pigeonholed and sticks-up-our-asses. One of these guys would go into abandoned huts, where he would use a corner as a latrine. Then he would smear the feces over his body, telling people that this would remind us that we are only shit. So true. And his feces smelled not at all, or had a pleasant smell. This was the special saint who told Baba that he would find what he was looking for in Nityananda. (Muktananda, by the way, had wandered India on foot for forty years, looking for the guru right for him. He met sixty saints. But he was arrogant. He hung around BN for nine years before BN could break his ego and thereupon transmit SHAKTI to him. That was the most propitious day of Baba’s life).

Another saint carried a group of boy disciples with him wherever he went, and they would raid schools, just walking through and taking pencils, erasers and the like, and believe it or not, the places where they went considered themselves blessed.

Another saint would languish in cesspools, throwing septic stuff onto guys with suits, telling them they were shit. This was to remind them of eternal life, and that the important life they had here was not all there was. This man was also recognized as a saint. There were other quirky ones, like the one that would arrive and always, always ask for the money for his cab far. Yet he was helpful and gave Baba some good tips.

RVW

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