Introduction🔗

THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM addresses the LA Yoga Community

I welcome you all with my love and respects.

Firstly, I will speak about the real experiences I had with a great yogi in my native place. Most of you are from the yoga community and I feel it will interest you. Then I will take your questions and respond to your questions.

Arunachala - Tiruvannamalai

The first thing I wanted to say is that hill near here looks just exactly like Arunachala. The place where I am born and brought up in South Bharat is considered to be one of the great spiritual incubators on earth. An incubator is required for a premature baby. It is needed to take care of the baby until it can manage on its own. The incubator is needed to supply

prana (air), food, water and all those kind of things. In the same way, for enlightened masters to land on the planet earth, they need a spiritual incubator. Arunacahala is a spiritual incubator. It is a space where so many masters have lived and left the body. Because of which, it has become a spiritual incubator. This very place today really reminds me of

Raghupati Yogi

Arunachala.

I had the fortune to be under the guidance of a great master called Raghupati Yogi.

When I spent time around him he was aged maybe around one hundred and four or five. He was a very healthy man and a man who had mastered yoga. He had experienced all aspects of yoga, not just in the physical level but in a much deeper way. He would express so many different powers of yoga. He would just take a stone and create a hammer sound. You know what sound is created when a hammer hits a stone. He would create that sound and the stone will break into two pieces!

He had a complete knowledge of the science of sound frequency. Simply by just using sound, he would be able to do anything! He would create a vibration and snakes will come from the bushes. He will just create the sound of a dog and from all over dogs would gather around him. Simply by sound he was able to do anything he wanted. He had amazing power.

Even the physical strength which he expressed can't be imagined. He would tie an iron rope around his chest and just inhale deeply and the rope would break into pieces.

Usually with a logical mind, one can't accept or understand that all this is possible but this great yogi proved it was all possible. I had the fortune to be around him. Not once but at least twenty times I saw him levitating. He would inhale deeply and the moment he inhaled and filled himself, his body would simply lift from the ground.

From the age of three to thirteen, I had the great fortune to study at his feet. Every day from morning until noon, for at least four to five hours, he would make me do all the techniques - asanas (yoga postures), neti, dauti (cleaning the body) and all those things. To tell you honestly, it is only now I feel happy about it. In those days I used to hate him because from six or seven o'clock in the morning he would start my training and it was practically torture. Any beginner in yoga will know how torturous it can be. He would make me bend this way, that way; right and left, backwards and forwards.

The temple where he used to teach me yoga has got a beautiful stone pillared mandapam (stone pillared hall). Raghupati Yogi would make me climb up and down the stone pillars. There were about twenty to thirty pillars I would have to climb up and climb down continuously. I am still not able to find any reference to support why he made me climb the pillars because no yoga sutra refers to this practice and I have not read in any yoga book that climbing pillars is a yogic technique! He would make me climb using one hand. I was not allowed to use both hands. I had to use only one hand, climb each pillar and come down. Also, he will make me swallow that long cloth to clean the intestine and the digetive system. He would make me do all kinds of things.

Until the age of thirteen, he prepared the body and the mind to enter into the experience of enlightenment and to stay in the experience of enlightenment. Entering into the experience is not a big thing. To have a glimpse of the no-mind state, to have a satori, to have one experience of unclutching is not a big thing at all. Actually it is not very difficult! But to stay in that state, not

The stone pillared mandapam (hall) only stay in that state but also express that energy through your body, for that, your body and mind needs to be prepared. That is the real thing. Just having one glimpse is not a big thing. Anybody can have that. But staying in that same space, staying in that same consciousness and expressing it needs a little preparation. I think that is why Raghupati Yogi was concentrating on that aspect of my training. In so many ways, he really helped me to understand, to experience and, above all, to stay in that same space, to stay in that high energy plane and radiate that experience.

THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM age 10 in padmasana (full lotus pose) with chin mudra**

From the Lineage of Patanjali

From The Lineage of Patanjali

Raghupati Yogi is from the lineage of Patanjali, who is the Father of Yoga and the founder of the yoga system. Patanjali is the first master that created a clear, logical, scientific system, to reproduce the experience of enlightenment. Until Patanjali, enlightenment was an accident. Somebody may get it or they may not get it. It was more like a gambling game; you have to play, but there is no guarantee that you will win. Patanjali was the first master, I can say spiritual navigator who really did the mapping and the complete directions. He created clear-cut directions, a step by step formula to reproduce the experience of enlightenment. Just as scientists create formulas to reproduce the understanding of the outer world experiences, Patanjali created a beautiful formula and technology to reproduce the experience of the inner world - enlightenment.

This yogi, Raghupati Yogi, mastered the whole science and not only the physical aspects of yoga like bending the body and all those things which we call asana or hatha yoga. Apart from that, he had mastered all other aspects of yoga; working with prana, working with the mind, working with visualization power and working with emotions. He mastered all other dimensions of yoga, all other aspects of yoga and had deep insights into the core truth. His insights were sometimes revealing, sometimes shocking and sometimes what Raghupati Yogi (and Patanjali) said even looked very contradictory.

I used to tell him, 'I am able to understand what is written in the book (the Yoga Sutra) by Patanjali but I am not able to understand your commentary and your explanation'. He would answer me in a beautiful way. He always used say, 'In the books or Yoga Sutra*,* only the verbal language of Patanjali is recorded, not the body language!' The experience of what he wanted to convey is not recorded, therefore, naturally much is lost.

For example, I say, 'Be Un-clutched'! Fortunately, we have a video recorder to record all that I am saying and the purpose for which I am saying these things along with the ambience in which I am saying them.. If you only take the verbal message and convey it to the next generation, after two hundred years, only the words 'Be Un-clutched' will be delivered. Someone might ask, 'What is the message of THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM?' The other person says, 'He always used to say 'Be Un-clutched'. Then the person will understand, 'Oh, to be un-clutched means that I should not drive any vehicle with a clutch. I should stop using cars'. The friend will say, 'Not only cars! You should not use anything with a clutch! That is the meaning of THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM's teachings'.

We don't know what the difference will be between the original reason for which I uttered the words 'Be Un-clutched' and what kind of interpretation will be given after one or two hundred years! This is because only the verbal language is recorded and the body language is not recorded, or the purpose for which the word is uttered is not recorded.

Only a person who has experienced the consciousness of Patanjali can bring Patanjali back to life. I had the great fortune to be with this Master who experienced the consciousness or the same inner space of Patanjali. That is the reason he was able to reveal to me all the deeper level truths of the yoga science.

A Few Revelations

Maybe I'll share few things with you all, a few revelations....

The base of Patanjali's yoga is called ashtanga yoga. People always translate this as the eight steps of yoga or eight steps to yoga. However, Raghupati Yogi used to say, 'It is not eight steps but eight parts'. He meant that all eight parts should be practiced together! We can't do number one first, then number two, number three and number four, etc. No!

The first part is yama (which includes *satya* (truthfulness)). The second part is niyama. If you decide that you will try to accomplish the first step before advancing to the second step, you will never be able to go to the second step! Why? Because the first step (truthfulness) happens in you only when you are in samadhi (the eighth part*). Only after you achieve samadhi* can real truthfulness can happen in you. Until that time, whatever we speak is a lie or at the most, facts. That's all. It is not the truth. Fact is not truth. Fact is truth as understood by your senses. Whatever part of the truth you understand with your senses, you call that as a fact. You can neither speak the truth nor live the truth until you experience the eighth part samadhi (bliss or enlightenment). It can't be steps of yoga. It has to be parts of yoga.

There are so many other beautiful revelations that I had from him. One of the most important revelations came when I asked him, 'Why are you making me climb all of these pillars? I don't find any books saying or any sutra saying that climbing pillars is a yogic technique'. He told me a beautiful thing. He said, 'For any purpose that you bend or move your body, that memory, that idea will be completely inserted or recorded into your body and mind'. It is a very shocking revelation! He would say, 'With any intention you move or bend your body or make your body active, that intention, that purpose will be recorded into your body. That purpose, that idea, that samskara will start expressing in your body'. He meant that the way in which you bend your body, the method in which you stand up or the method in which you do yoga asana (postures), are not too important. He meant that the intention that we have in our mind when we move our body is what really matters. For example, if you have the intention to have good health and do whatever you want for that intention - move your body any which way for that intention, simply health will happen to you.

Particularly in the West, too strong of a connection has happened between disease and asana. For this disease you have to do this asana. For that disease you have to do that posture. For this problem you have to do this technique. This idea, this connection is relied upon too much in the West.

Raghupati Yogi gave me this shocking revelation. Any asana practiced, not only asana, any movement practiced, any physical movement practiced for some purpose or with some intention will create that effect in your body.

He said that this is true with even ordinary sitting. If you strongly believe that by sitting you will have health and you sit just for health, simply you will see the health happening in you.

I used to question him, 'How can this be?' He would simply reply, 'That is the way it is'. I used to expect an intellectual explanation from him, however he would simply say, 'That is the way it is!' It was only later I understood that our body itself is made out of our memory. Whether we believe it or not, accept it or not, we are an expression of our own self-hypnosis! Any way that we move the body with the faith that this or that will happen in us, simply it will start expressing. Raghupati Yogi used to say that memories are recorded in our muscles and he also strongly believed even if some parts of your body are removed, memories related to that area will disappear from your inner space. He used to strongly believe in the idea that memories are recorded in your system, so when you change the memories you can change the system also. Your system can respond to the memory that you are creating.