Identifying other centers, finding and inspiring people
Ma Sachitananda was continuing her calls to various friends and families all over United States. In fact she had a very large extended family in the United States. Often it was quite amazing for me to see that in her family, they kept in touch with their 3rd or 4th cousins! With all the enthusiasm and zeal, we opened our rolodex and started calling all the members of the family. Little did we realize that friends and family were the hardest to convince about exploring the spiritual path. Invariably they gave us the standard answer, "This spirituality thing is not for us," or "We are not that old yet to think of meditation," or some who would say, "We do not believe in Swamis." So after making hundreds of phone calls, we came out with a big zero in terms of who we could inspire. In fact there are some of my friends who have taken 5 years to finally come to attend Swamiji's programs! Nowadays, thanks to You Tube on the internet, we are able to give them a link so they can view the discourses in the comfort of their homes!
Ma Sachitananda then got a list of all Hindu Temples in USA and started calling them one by one. The responses she received were a mixed bag. In some cases some people expressed interest to work with us to introduce Swamiji to their community. Sometime individuals got right down to business – if we were to host Swamiji's events in the temple we need 50% of the proceeds from your meditation camps. Invariably when people proceeded on a business relationship path we dropped them, since Swamiji's mission was really based on volunteerism and not any particular business arrangement. After all, whatever funds we generated went towards serving and giving back to the society. In fact right from day one, Swamiji believed in volunteerism. Those that have been touched and transformed by the master put in their time, energy and intelligence to help spread the mission. Even to this day we do not have a paid employee in the mission worldwide.
Ananda Spurana Programs (Life Bliss Program - LBP Level 1)
January – April 2004 – first tour of 2004
We start planning for Swamiji's second visit
We had a couple of breakthroughs. In Seattle we were able to reach out to a devotee who worked with a major software company and was also member of the temple board. In New Jersey another family started showing interest in spreading the message and awareness of Swamiji. Then there was Columbus, St Louis and Dallas where we started seeing openings and potential support. In Columbus, Ohio we had a contact through a relative of Priyamayi. In the west coast, in Los Angeles and San Jose, we already had a devotee base.
It is only when I started writing these reminiscences that I looked back at what all happened in the early days of the mission. The seeds of the mission were being sown all over the world by the master. It was quite interesting to see the amount of planning and meticulous attention to detail that had to be done for this tour. When it comes to organization, Swamiji is a stickler for details. He expects nothing short of perfection. At the same time He is the ultimate 80/20 CEO (80/20 is a common word used in organizations. In many situations we find 80% of the work gets done with 20% of the effort. It is the last 20% that tends to take 80% of the time. 80/20 manager therefore means someone who quickly executes with 20% of the effort and does not strive for perfection). The interesting thing is, when it comes to matters such as producing a book or releasing a DVD, He is an 80/20 person, but when it comes to administration or matters relating to the temple, He will be a stickler for details.
I can tell you, Ma Sachitananda worked relentlessly those days, day and night and ensured every small detail was taken care of, from ensuring we had the appropriate microphone/PA system to making sure Swamiji's detailed itinerary from morning till evening everyday was planned for the 100 or so days He was traveling during this first tour. She developed a tour guide and made sure someone cooked a good satvic meal (Satvic food is a style of cooking from Ayurveda. In this cooking, onions, green chilies and garlic are avoided. According to Ayurveda, these substances have a medicinal value, but are not good as a food).
Ma Sachitananda would go into intricate details of what curry to cook, how to cook, what to avoid feeding Swamiji, etc. She also made sure that all the cities had fliers to advertise Swamiji's programs. We developed a Tour Information Guide for the first time, since everyone, including us needed a roadmap of how to receive an enlightened master, how to plan for the various programs, how to publicize, etc. While Swamiji was quite simple in His needs, we wanted to make sure His programs and calendar went off smoothly.
Ma Sachitananda would organize weekly conference calls with all the centers and make sure the various venues were booked, flyers were distributed, appropriate pre-trip announcements were made in local radios, and flyers were mailed through various mailing lists. I personally did not dedicate as much time during this first trip. It was only during weekends and after-work hours I was able to work on the mission. I have attached Swamiji's itineraries during his world tours in 2004 and 2005 in Appendices 2, 3 and 4 to give you a sense of the untiring schedule. This only covers His USA schedule. When He was in Bharat, His schedule was even more hectic since organizers were trying to utilize every minute of His time. While we took a break when we got back to Bharat, the Master's schedule was always 24 x 7 x 365!
I am called to join the tour
Swamiji started the second tour to the United States in January 2004 and it lasted until April 2004. Swamiji started from Bangalore on January 10, 2004. During this tour, He was accompanied by Sri Nithyatma Maneeshananda (then Shailendra Tiwari who was taking care of e-Mails and video taping) and Sri Nithya Sevananda (Public Relations Officer – PRO, and then named Palaniappan. He took care of Swamiji's itinerary and running the Ananda Galleria mobile store). Swamiji first toured Singapore, Malaysia (Penang and Kuala Lumpur).
During this tour, He delivered discourses and this was followed by a weekend meditation camp on Saturday and Sunday. Swamiji himself conducted the Ananda Spurana Program. Swamiji completed His tour of Singapore and Malaysia and arrived in Los Angeles on January 22, 2004.
I received a message from Sevananda from Malaysia that Swamiji wanted us to meet Him in Los Angeles to discuss mission activities. Since Ma Sachitananda was busy organizing various programs, I promptly boarded a flight on Friday morning from Oklahoma City to Los Angeles. During the first trip Swamiji stayed at the Mayfair Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. The hotel was owned by a couple of Hindu businessmen who now are Swamiji's devotees. I caught a taxi from LAX airport and proceeded to the Mayfair Hotel. Swamiji was very happy to see me and wanted to know about all that went on since His last visit.
We unpacked the luggage and started organizing books, malas, discourse CDs, DVDs, kirtans for the Ananda Galleria store. I spent several hours with Swamiji and enjoyed spending time with Him that evening.
Since we did not have any way to record Swamiji's discourses, I purchased a basic mini DV camcorder unit that did nothing but tape the discourses. We did not have proper equipment or a proper way to capture His voice clearly into the video. So you will see that discourses recorded during this tour were of a lower quality. All of us were amateurs and really did not know the ABC of video capturing and processing to make DVDs.
Amazing talks are delivered
The following morning, Swamiji visited one of the devotee's home. The evening discourse was held in one of our early devotees' home. They had invited several of their friends and family for it. Swamiji spoke on a beautiful topic, 'From Place to Space'. The deep truths revealed here is the basis of Vaastu Shaastra, the science of creating and designing homes. This science is also the basis for Feng Shui, the Chinese system of home design. In this discourse Swamiji talked about how our thoughts can impact the space we live in. He described to us why our thoughts affect the immediate space around us. The essence of this discourse was later published in one of the Hindu newspapers where Swamiji writes a weekly spiritual column.
It is also interesting to note that all of Swamiji's discourses are never prepared, they are impromptu. It is only when you realize how so much wisdom can emanate from a young, unassuming Swami, you will realize that this is something very special, very spectacular and something beyond logic. You will realize and appreciate that He does not need preparation since all His discourses are expressions of His own personal Experience. I will describe more on this topic a little later.
Here is the summary of what Swamiji spoke in the discourse:
From Place to Space – THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM, Published in The Economic Times daily in Speaking Tree column
One man was telling me, "Swamiji, I am alright as long as I am outside my house. The moment I enter my house, I start feeling irritated."
Not just this one man; many people tell me the same thing. They say they are alright till the moment they enter their house.
You see, the space inside our house is filled with ether, which is a subtle form of the Existential Energy. Ether is one of the five elements that are earth, water, fire, air and ether. These five elements are all forms of the Existential Energy.
The space inside your body is called chittakasha, the space in which you are living is called ghatakasha and the space of the Universe is called mahakasha. The third that is mahakasha always remains pure. The other two get impure by our thoughts.
So understand: The space in which you are living is not just matter, it is Energy and it becomes impure by your thoughts. Every single thought of yours settles down in the energy level of your house like a cobweb. Once the energy is contaminated with these thoughts, the energy that is in the house radiates these thoughts back on us. Because of this, we feel irritated the moment we enter our house.
If you analyze our thought patterns, you will observe that the same set or the same pattern of thoughts keep getting repeated in our mind. These thoughts are our mental make-up. They are what you call our worries. They are nothing but collective negativity that we keep repeating to ourselves. But this negativity settles in the space of our house; that is the thing. We are totally unaware that this is happening.
Our irritation when we enter our house is nothing but our own thoughts being reflected on us. Instead of understanding the root cause of an unhealthy atmosphere in the house, we call experts in Vaastu Shaastra or read books in Feng Shui and try to restructure our house, or we perform fire rituals to cleanse our homes. All that is alright, but the fundamental science behind the space in our homes has to be understood.
We work so hard in maintaining our homes in a neat and clean fashion. We scrub the floors and walls and keep the best of furniture in our house and what not? We keep the 'place' clean, but what about the 'space'?
The space has to be kept cleansed. By doing regular meditation in our house, we can cleanse the energy that is circulating in it. The energy created during meditation will cleanse the space. Secondly, we should imbibe a clear and positive mental setup and stop airing repeated negative thought patterns in our house.
After Los Angeles, Swamiji visited San Diego, San Jose, Seattle, Oklahoma City, Dallas, New York, New Jersey and Columbus. Thus the divine mission of a young enlightened Master THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM started in USA. We feel especially blessed that He allowed us to work on this mission during the early days. It is only when I am seeing the itinerary summarized, everything is coming back to me. I can now recollect every day in this calendar and I tell you, every day was a special day, every moment was a special moment, that we spent with the Maser.
Both Ma Sachitananda and us had the fortune of serving Him and accompanying Him on various tours around the world from 2004 to 2007. After this period, as the children were growing up in the Hindu Gurukul, Swamiji wanted Ma Sachitananda to focus on the children's education. So starting from May 2007, she has stayed back in the Bidadi ashram.
I began to realize that WHATEVER the master says and does has a much deeper meaning and it is always for our own good, although it is not always obvious at that moment. I began to see that once the disciple was ready to take the jump and ready to undergo the 'surgery' (i.e., surgery to remove the ego) a whole new dimension of the master can be experienced.
In each city, Swamiji talked on various life solutions. He spoke on topics from lust, love, sex and life style to deeper truths about enlightenment, aloneness, surrender and the super conscious state. Everyday His schedule was quite hectic. In the mornings several devotees would invite Swamiji to visit their homes and bless their place and family. In those days He had the time to visit devotees' place. When I speak to devotees, they consider this a true blessing, since, due to the exponential growth of the mission, Swamiji's schedule has become very hectic and He is therefore not able to visit devotees' homes. After lunch and a few visits, we would return to the host family's home by late afternoon, a few hours before the evening's discourse. If time permitted we would go along with the organizer for sightseeing.
Swamiji barely had time to prepare for any discourse. In the car when one of us was driving to the discourse venue, he would ask Ma Sachitananda or me, "What am I supposed to speak on?" Then we would give Him the title and he would simply say 'OK' and close His eyes. Swamiji does not allow me to drive Him because I once slept on the wheel and almost steered off the road when driving Him in Oklahoma! Even now Swamiji makes sure and asks me, "Shiv, are you OK? Not sleepy?!"
I can tell you a couple of more amazing facts about these discourses. After the first tour, a few of us got together in the Bidadi ashram and brainstormed and came up with a list of about 100 titles which formed the basis of the upcoming discourse titles for His 2004 and 2005 world tours. We showed the list to Swamiji and He really did not even look at the list. He said, that's fine. Then, just before the tour planning started, we would ask Ma Nithya Bhaktikananda to come up with abstracts. She would come up with these abstracts say 2-3 months before the discourse.
Swamiji was quite disinterested in seeing the abstracts. Months later, when we compared the abstract with what Swamiji actually spoke, it would invariably feel as though the abstract was written for the discourse. When we would ask Bhaktika about it, she would say, "I really do not know how the abstract would flow, but I would think of Swamiji and get into a meditative state into my Ananda Gandha chakra and the words would simply come!" This is another one of the many mystical, illogical happenings that one can only experience firsthand to believe.
Swamiji visited Seattle in the Pacific Northwest for the first time and I was not present during this incident. Ma Sachitananda called me one day and narrated another incident which defied logic. In the early days we would all call each other and discuss these experiences with great excitement and enthusiasm. We heard about all the experiences around a living enlightened master that one can read from the reminiscences from disciples of Ramakrishna, Ramana or Yogananda. Now seeing these events and incidents unfold in front of our very eyes was quite exciting. Swamiji would never encourage discussing these aspects and would often say, "If I start doing miracles such as materialization or teleporting, I will have a very big following, but I will be surrounded by idiots! If you want to see magic, you can go to P C Sarkar, the magician, why are you coming to me?" He would often tell us, "The greatest magic is your own personal transformation, the making of a diamond from a stone."
Narada Muni in Seattle!
It was the first trip to Seattle. Swamiji, just before landing in Seattle said, "Hmmm…I am somehow feeling the presence of Narada Muni (the Hindu Rishi and enlightened master who lived in Bharat thousands of years ago) here…" Two or three days later, Ma Sachitananda along with a couple of devotees took Swamiji to Mt. Ranier near Seattle. Just when they stopped near a highway rest stop, Swamiji quickly got out of the car and walked fast towards a very insignificant area. We suddenly saw that there was a waterfall there and when we turned around and looked, there was a plaque which said the falls was called 'Narada Falls', named after the Hindu ascetic Narada! The plaque mentioned that American Hindus had seen this ascetic here and hence these falls were named after him.
The numbers increase in every city
After Swamiji completed touring the west coast, the tour moved to the central part of the United States. Swamiji conducted programs in Oklahoma, Dallas, Columbus and New York. In Oklahoma we had a large gathering of people and conducted the ASP at a hotel owned by a Hindu family.
We now started seeing several people city hopping – they would attend programs in San Jose or Seattle and then follow Swamiji around to other cities! From San Jose we had Ma Nithya Dayananda Mayi (LA Ashramite, Sanyasini and then named Jyothi Sheelum), Ma Nithya Nischalananda (LA Ashramite, Sanyasini and then named Usha Subbarayalu), Ma Nithyananda Prabha (LA Ashramite and then named Sharmila) follow Swamiji around from weekend to weekend! From Seattle there was John Thomson who attended six ASP programs and followed Swamiji around. Swamiji would jokingly tell them, "You guys did not do all the meditations intensely so you have to come back to me and follow me around. At least do it intensely this time!" Actually there was always a group of people who would follow Swamiji around wherever He went, and attend all the programs!
In all the cities, the ASP programs concluded late nights on Sundays. On Monday mornings Swamiji initiated people to become healers through a technique to open the ananda gandha chakra - the point within, where pure blissful awareness permeates matter. The ananda gandha chakra is located where energy and matter meet, where gross matter and atma shakti (energy of the soul) meet. It truly emanates an aroma of happiness or bliss, both within and without. The technique of ananda gandha chakra meditation allows one to perennially experience inner bliss and be in a deep meditative state all the time. In fact the side effect of such a state is healing. This is the basis of Nithya Spiritual Healing.
By initiating healers, Swamiji is now able to reach people far and wide in all corners of the world. Today this service of free healing is provided by healers in 35 countries across the globe. Nithya spiritual healers offer free healing services. In subsequent trips, Swamiji initiated medical research on Nithya healing system. There have been people who have benefited from Nithya Spiritual healing and now we are in the process of initiating more scientific research in this arena.
After completing a very successful tour of Oklahoma City, Swamiji and I traveled to St Louis for a day. Here he went specifically to heal a devotee's husband, cancelling one day of the discourses in Dallas. After healing him, Swamiji delivered a discourse that evening at the Hindu Temple in St Louis. He told me later that the person's cancer was advanced and wished He saw him earlier. He passed away a few months later.