Muktananda..Transmission through Touch

Catskills.  Shree Muktananda Ashram.  Summer of ’79.  I’m sitting cross legged in the serenely cool and dark Meditation
 Hall waiting for Swami Muktananda to walk down my aisle and give blessings with his wand of peacock feathers. I am surrounded by 1000+ people who have gathered to receive Shaktipat from a true and qualified Master of meditation.  He is about to transmit and awaken the Kundalini energy in each person present.  I soon began to catch a glimpse of a real potential to evolve my understanding, and discover a spiritual connection that I previously had not known.

 I don’t really know how I came to be here in this strangely holy environment.. a 28 year old small town girl from  Pennsylvania, now in the company of a man whose mere presence was so compelling that I was paying several hundred dollars a weekend, of my hard earned money, for three meditation intensives this “Guru” held there that beautiful and very hot summer.  Two long days, 8am through 5 or 6 pm of teachings, chanting and meditation presented by a brilliant, fun and wise holy man from India.  Having never heard of a Guru, I learned that the sanskrit syllable Gu meant darkness, and Ru, light.  It seemed to me that there was a larger meaning in this title, something beyond the man called Baba’s personhood.  If I were to describe what he was like, I'd first say he seemed to be made of a combination of love, light, compassion and devotion all wrapped up in a body of grace.  Gradually and gratefully, I was able to piece things together a bit as the summer and subsequent years of study and practice unfolded.  I did know the instant I saw him that I had much to gain by hanging out with this lovely and most kind gentleman...this exquisite being who taught me about my own true nature and the divinity that dwells within.  He was definitely on a mission to transform everyone’s experience and sought to inspire us to look beyond the “face value” of our lives.

The wand of peacock feathers he carried with him was scented with some deliciously intoxicating oils from India.  As Muktananda approached me during one of these sessions, I could smell the scent become increasingly heavy, and sensed the expansion of the Kundalini Shakti energy.  The whole hall seemed to be encapsulated in a protective cocoon of blessings as Baba showered each person with Shakti.  There was alot of energetic movement, shifting, and loud emotions expressed; laughing and crying and other classic auditory expressions of the awakening Kundalini.  It was a big unnerving.  But, I was glued to my seat.

During the afternoon session of the first day, Muktananda finally arrived and stood behind me. He stroked my face lightly and lovingly with his hands.  After a short while, he moved on to the next person.  It had been an unprecedented caress, very intimate, but pre-personal.   Like, I wasn’t Karen at this point.  As he was standing directly behind me, he couldn’t see my face. I couldn’t see him at all.  I just felt his hands on my face.

It was an incredibly powerful and mysterious experience. So amazingly simple but so other worldly.  I was totally present in my body in a way that I had never felt before. In a state of surrender, my personality was erased momentarily, and something very deep and very healing happened.  In those luminescent moments, my face was sculpted anew by someone who was certain of my true identity, and it wasn’t who I’d thought I was.  As old traces and samskaras were left behind and I was introduced to a love that was empty of concepts and duality, a love whose nature was pure and golden compassion and bliss.  It wasn’t just a sensual, physical or elemental experience but a combination of all of the kayas and realms, of both heaven and earth.  Only the singular presence of the lover and the beloved and the profoundly divine space that existed between us remained.  From that day, my experience of myself in my body has been  transformed and an alchemical process which began to integrate this awakened consciousness, has never stopped. He taught with his word, transmitted through his will, his thought and his touch.  Muktananda not only said “God dwells within you as you”, he masterfully willed this experience to the receiver.

written by Karen Ferguson

Muktananda Retreat

1. Being around Baba Muktananda was a bit like being in heaven, or as yogis say, samsara and nirvana become one.  At times, it was not easy.  Being with Baba was challenging, but nonetheless, it was heaven; happiness within lots of drama, the divine embrace within humanness. How could this be?

2.  Swami Muktananda was a master of TRANSMISSION.  Of course, as you and I know, people transmit all the time.  We can transmit our unhappy minds, unbearable affects, unhappy experience; i.e., what we cannot bear, we send and we discharge to another.  But, we can also place and transmit goodness and well being into the other. We transmit all kinds of stuff, you name it, and we transmit it.  This happens in couples, in families, it happens with children, in groups, in the generational field, in institutions and in countries.  Humans transmit…even to their cats and dogs and birds.

3.  What did Baba transmit so directly and pervasively?  He transmitted his own state, he transmitted his own experience of his innermost awareness, his own experience of consciousness, he transmitted consciousness. Not simply his mind but consciousness itself.  He loved giving this experience to everyone, this experience of luminosity and everyone (all kinds of people) felt this givenness, this generosity.  He could extend his own awareness field into everyone around him, this field of felt spaciousness and unboundedness, this field of light and the field of shakti, the energy.  He could transmit the sense of oneness and bliss.  He was master of great compassion, which actually is the transmission of true love, pure love…the heart essence or Hridayam.

4.  He could transmit through speech, he could transmit through touch, he could transmit through his heart and through his mind.

5. He could amplify the intensity of the field of divine consciousness, so intense at times.  He could pacify the energy; he could magnetize and bring forth this experience from within a person, from within the hiddenness inside a person.  He could summon the awakening of awareness, the awakening of the kundalini.  And, he was person who loved this function and loved bringing forth this capacity in everyone.

6.  Baba was his own person and he loved the guru.  Once I asked him this question. "Baba, I have a problem.  I love you and yet I am cynical about the guru.  Can you help me with this dilemma?"

7. "You love me…you love me….so what? Do you see signs saying,' love Baba' here?  Is that what you understand?  Loving Baba will get you nothing, absolutely nothing." Then, he paused a long time. "The criticism you have of the guru is the criticism of your inner self.  The guru is your innermost self." Then he paused again. "You know, you should get beyond your mind.  You should get beyond right and wrong, better and best, good and evil and even truth and falsity, and then, you will live in the oneness of the self forever and ever, life after life and death after death."

8.  It was a great moment. It was a moment of true empowerment.  I began to slowly come to know that the guru was not a person but awareness itself, divinity itself in me and in others, not simply by what he said, but in his saying, he transmitted the experience.  Just a bit of what he was saying to me about self revelation and self recognition, that authorship became my own. Slowly but surely, one senses the guru in ones self, as ones self.  The guru is within situations and the guru is within others. That is why Baba would so often say, "Wherever I am, I only see only the guru". He also so often would say, "The bliss of samadhi is the bliss of the world.  God dwells within you as you.  See God in each other. Welcoming you is my highest practice."

9. There is a poem from the Siddha tradition that goes like this:

Ah…my own awareness is the guru…

In self recognition I take refuge

The awareness of self liberation is always present in everyone….though momentarily hidden

The primordial guru is always so pure

And this knowingness gives protection in every event and in every moment.

When the widespread purity and oneness of existence and appearance manifest

The blessing of direct perception takes places…direct knowingness…gnosis…jnana.

The differentiation of the meditater and what is meditated upon dissolves

The always existent truth of my innermost awareness being the guru,

Provides abiding stability in the vastness of the all pervading essence of events

My own nature as consciousness purifies and dissolves the very lack of knowingness.

My body, my speech and my mind are the very manifestations of this divine consciousness

Just as they are

And the essence of all events are free of failure and success

And free of rejection and acceptance

In this awareness everything is the play of the essence, the play of consciousness

Repeat the mantra guru om, guru om, guru om

And you will experience the body of light which is the great transmigration guru.

10. One of the great pleasures of being with Baba was sitting in large room with hundreds of people.  In the darkness Baba would slowly walk and touch everyone, saying the mantra, guru om.  In this way, he invoked the experience of the guru, the guru as shakti, the guru as unbound openness, as pure love, pure presence. 

Slowly but surely, over time, one integrates ones mind and body into this experience of the light of awareness.  One integrates thinking and judgment, feeling and sensation and memory and fantasy.

11.  Baba was once asked what realization is like.  He said that it is like you alone exist as oneness itself, in everything and everyone.

So, with this understanding, we will meditate on the guru as our own awareness.

Written by:  Rudolph Bauer, Ph.D.

Edited by:   Karen Ferguson

PRACTICE

I found out that standing in line at the Post Office is a great place to practice my practice. A few weeks ago, I got into an old favorite practice of mine...as I shall now recount to you....

...the vastness of such incompetency blows my mind... these poor customers waiting for the two bored and uncaring postal employees who were taking their good old time and had not the slightest interest that the line of folks staring at them was about 15 people long. Their attitude of “we’re going to take our good old time” laid heavily in the air. This Indian woman and her two childish sons were hogging the desk for the entire 20 minutes that I was standing in this motionless line. Her children were playing “as if they were on a playground” and their achingly loud voices echoed in the swollen silence of the stiff space around me. Of course, the mother was chatting away with the postal guy and didn’t even hear them. Every now and then, she’d glance their way, like, “oh, I have these two boys who are behind me and they are still there...”. The gentleman behind me was practicing “patience is a virtue”, he claimed. No one else seemed to care that these postal employees, eyes facing down, were oblivious to the folks in the line and that the ”head honcho” was idling in the back somewhere, probably munching from that box of ‘stale by now’ broken-off pieces of donuts from morning, along with about 10 other employees that were drunk with the same lackadaisical attitude. This soup of details was swarming around in my head like a bunch of mad bees that just got evicted from their hive.

In the not so distant past, I would have taken up the martyr role as easily as scooping up a free sample of cookies at the grocery store. I would have maybe gone up to the desk and pleasantly (fake smile) asked if there was anyone who could work the empty windows since, glancing pointedly with my eyes, there was “quite a line here for the last 20 minutes”....I would have thought about it before I did it, and how there wasn’t anyone else for the job, and it would have to be me, or I’d be stuck there with these weird Indian or “something” kids all day. Of course, I’d been nursing this and this is just one example...of my personality in action.

That was then.

I sighed to myself. I thought, wait a minute! I could practice here! So, I took the whole scene in with all it’s idiosyncrasies. The sounds of the kid's screeching and echoing voices, the buzz of the florescent lights, the vacant desk windows, the stale donuts, the bees..and I extended and saw this scene before me just manifesting as time in space.. Everything was moving or not moving, people’s mouths were moving or not moving, everything s-l-o-w-e-d down so that I could really see what was right in front of me. The judgements went. The scene took on a hue of radiant reflections in time. It became the Post Office and people just mailing stuff! I saw the light glistening in the kid’s eyes...the love they had for each other in their shoving and chasing, their mother’s delight in being a mom, the post office people just doing their jobs, and smiling! To my surprise and relief, my mind became still. I SAW time in timelessness and as I extended into the space around me, my heart took it’s rightful place. I saw things as they really were...and it was just beautiful. So simple and simply divine. I felt an ethereal presence within and beyond myself, in an eternal and infinitely luminous and lovely sphere of purity and beingness. I was in bliss...and felt great. Yes, then the line moved, and I, along with it.

The important thing for me was that this wasn’t a “self-improvement” trip or exercise I was trying to “accomplish”. It was a practice with no goal and my intention, I guess, was to just change the direction my mind had taken me and end the “self-suffering”. First, I suspended my mind. Then I extended into the space around me. That was the simple practice. The transformation occurred within me through the generosity of grace. And, my understanding took the shape of this scene in time, colored and carried by the light of love.

Written by Karen Ferguson

ALONE

I had a dream as a 4 or 5 year old girl that I did not remember until I received an assignment for a college English class to write about an experience that shaped my character. I had no idea... but as I was thinking about this, I relived something that seemed like a dream. I called my mom and asked her if she remembered me telling her about this dream. She did!

One beautiful summer evening when the sweet smell of hot roses and and soft peonies filled the air, I was home alone. The reason I was alone isn't really relevant. But, alone I was. I was dressed in my Sunday best in black shoes, white socks with lace on the top and a pretty dress. I walked from the living room window after I watched my family drive away in an old studebaker station wagon (green and tan) and felt the silent space around my body. I walked into the dining room and noticed that the window had no glass. Just a window sill. Curious, I went over and knelt down on my knees and put my elbows on the window sill and looked up into the sky. In the blue, black sky, swarms of stars and moonbeams shined their reflections upon each other. A pregnant fullness was in this night, that made it different from any other. I was full of peace and light, and my eyes and heart were open wide.

Already enraptured, I watched as Jesus made his way to me from this pure sky space. He didn't speak out loud or move his lips. I only remember his beautiful and kind face and his eyes that were so soft and looking so deeply into mine. He said he had come to visit me and I asked him if he would like some tea. Yes, he said. So I ran and got my little tea set and put it on the window sill. We sat together in this sequined silence and drank our pretend tea. As we sipped from the tiny cups, I was washed by the love in his eyes. His heart melted into mine.

There was just this gazing of his eyes into mine. In this way, he fed me his own love. It seemed like our gaze was all that existed,as I drank it in for what seemed like an eternity.

Whenever "then " was, Jesus sat down his tea cup and told me that it was time for him to go. He said, "There's something I want to tell you...then he paused. He looked even deeper this time, directly and stongly into my little eyes.

"Never be afraid to be alone, because I will always be with you." With that, he left as magically as he came.

As a child, I gazed into photos of Jesus that were large on the walls of our church. They were alive for me. As the preachers words faded into the background, there was Christ knocking on a door to a cottage... such a beautiful, soft door with flowers surrounding it. I couldn't figure out who was on the other side of the door...but my heart came to know the answer...

Written by Karen Ferguson

In Between

The in between zone of time and timelessness has been worth it’s weightlessness in gold in my life lately.. and for that, I am very grateful to all of the teachers who continue to inspire me. That space seems to be filled with gratitude and compassion and light. So pure and so supportive, surrounding my whole being, in my whole being. It does pervade the space around me- around everything.

I remember finding a pinpoint of an opening into this in between zone and stepped inside of it, one little extension at a time. I had to go very slowly and inch my way, waiting for this space to warm and expand around me, and then I had to integrate it into my life.

Then, another tiny step, expand, integrate. More light. More space. I was still in the dark but carried on this tedious task out of pure stubbornness sometimes. Sometimes, I would totally lose my place in this process and even forget about it.... somehow, though, I kept moving and inching my way forward, like a little green inchworm. I wriggled my way into the light very carefully like I was trying to get into an old dress without ripping it.

Holding onto the light, and letting it go at the same time has been like walking a tightrope made of angel hair, and the suitcase of stuff I was carrying with me definitely had to go. What is was filled with had to be taken out and dealt with in my own way.

I had to let go of so much stuff that really wasn’t me or mine. That was the work.

As you know, this isn’t easy. It takes time. Patience. And, faith that this is all for a reason and to fulfill the highest purpose of one’s life...faith and patience to keep walking one step at a time towards finding this freedom, this pure blissful consciousness where one would find that the inside and the outside are one.

Everyone has there own way and their own process...this is just mine. I feel that I’ve finally lost the weight and was able to zip that dress up. It suits me. It is comfortable and I’m not walking a tightrope anymore. I’m not carrying a suitcase. I am still learning. I’m still working. I’m still integrating. But, there is more time where I am sitting in the space in between here and there which is both here and there. There is a feeling of the inside and outside being the same. There is a lovely light in my heart that is guiding me now... into more light, ever opening, ever expanding, ever radiant. Extending into that truth and stepping into it fully is my walk.   I've come to know this as Timeless Awareness.  To come alive in Timeless Awareness, to step into that realm holding non duality in a world of differences,  is a divine invitation.

THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE PATH OF YOUR AWARENESS AS NATURAL LIBERATION

Dudjom Rinpoche would say: Know the one thing that frees everything, your own awareness.

It is also important to know the difference between your mind and your awareness. Your mind is your thoughts, your affects, your sensations, your fantasies, and your memory. Your mind is your ego and it is really good to have one. You, the essential you, is awareness; the innermost awareness that is within your mind and your body and the mind-body continuum. Primordial awareness is your basic self, your subjectivity, your awareness. Awareness is non conceptual knowingness…the knowingness of knowingness within yourself as yourself and your knowingness of knowingness within others, and within the world. Awareness is direct and not always mediated through the mind although it can be. Mind is really important, and awareness is really really important. You really want to know the difference because in that sense of difference lays mastery, esoteric mastery. If you only know your mind, only conceptualize your mind: your thoughts, affects, sensations, memories, fantasy, desire, you have a great skill but you must go further.

It is useful to free yourself from you mind temporarily, to suspend your mind just a bit to actually know this awareness. As you focus within awareness as awareness on awareness you will experience space or openness, or even at moments a void, vast and space without reference, sky-like space or even nothingness as no thingness or emptiness. Initially, this is not always easy, but to have this base of spaciousness as your self is so freeing, and un-containing. This experience of spaciousness becomes the base of your experience, base of arising thoughts, feelings, sensations, memory, fantasy and the base of the dissolving of experience. This base of awareness is your essential self. We might even consider that you are a place, the place of awareness in time and space. Awareness is not a thought, or affect, or sensation, or memory, or fantasy. Awareness is a place. For you to be aware of the place of awareness is to be grounded in awareness. Awareness, the space of awareness is ground, is place.

This place that you are, this ground that you are is unbound and is actually a field. It is not a thing, or little entity. This field goes beyond the body boundaries, that is so amazing. Its horizons can extend and extend, your base, this original ground is actually infinite in its horizons and even multi-dimensional. This space, this openness, this non conceptual knowingness is also light, or luminous, namely, it illuminates itself and illuminates your experience. Light or illuminosity is another way of speaking about knowing, consciousness. Knowingness is openness.

This space is a sense of potentialities. There are no fixations in this space, it is unformulated spaciousness. To remain in this place of awareness is to experience potential in an un-fixated way. This unformulatedness, or unfixatedness is both great and scary. And this awareness is also energy, energy arises and emanates from within this place, this space, this essential you is more you than your thoughts, sensations, memories and fantasy, more essential than your affective states, more essential than your history, your story. Your story, your history , this narrative is actually experienced from within this place of awareness, of openness, energy, and light.

This spaciousness is the path of natural liberation. Liberation is not a function as some would think of having a perfect mind, perfect thoughts, perfect feelings, memories, sensations. Liberation is not simply a moral issue, an issue of conscience, of being better, gooder, smarter. Religion can be really useful and fun, but liberation is not limited to religious framing. Liberation can take place within religions, but liberation is the very nature of awareness and is independent of religion.

To live within the place of awareness, to experience the unfolding experiences of your life, is the method of liberation, natural liberation. Liberation is the embodiment of awareness, the heart essence. You get a glimpse and then you habituate the experience. You liberate through experience. Liberate means becoming free, unbound, untied, locked down,

There are many methods. I will describe one method by guru rinpoche, Padmashambhava.

Do not think or focus on the past experience, do not live in the past, and do not think about the future, do not live in the future, no repetitious remembering and no obsessional futuring, such framing takes you out of awareness. Sometimes within awareness the past may manifest and even at times the sense of the future may manifest, but being in your mind about the past and being in your mind about the future, takes you out of potential space, dharmakaya. Do not focus on past thoughts, or chase after the future. Stay within the sense of awareness and experience the arising of everything within this awareness field, remain in the place of awareness. And experience not only the arising but the dissolving of experience-becoming an expert and master of arising and dissolving, appearing and disappearing of phenomena. Become a master of the arising of affects, arising of sensations, arising of memory, arising of fantasy, arising of conceptualizations and the dissolving of sensations, dissolving of memory, dissolving of fantasy, dissolving of affective states. Living in a spacious awareness field is very very lucky.

By being in indeterminate space everything is possible; do not conceptualize desire as hope or hopelessness. Live in awareness, the place of awareness which is unfixated, unformulated, less organized by your mind, that moment, that duration is dharmakaya, or that moment is timeless awareness, self liberated awareness in time. This timeless awareness will in time illuminate your mind your thoughts, your affective states, even your memory, enhancing your sensations, enhancing your feelings……

Equally important, there is past, present and future, through the present we experience the 4^th time, timeless awareness, you will stabilize in timeless awareness. Within awareness you will not internalize other peoples’ affective states- this is also liberation. You will know what is happening within and without, but in knowingness you will be free of the internalization of other people’s affective states- then you will have uncluttered inner space-the space is actually your own continuum.

Finally this awareness is not uni-dimensional. It is actually multidimensional and as you live in awareness ,this place of awareness, the dimensions reveal themselves to you, you will experience the dimension of pure potentiality, the archetypical dimension of energies, luminous vortexes, symbolic elaboration of powers or shakties of awareness field and you will experience nirmanakaya as luminous flesh, luminous earth.

Written by: Rudolph Bauer, Ph.D.

Edited by: Skip Ellis, MSW

Speaking of Consciousness

Speaking of consciousness, a smile arises with my breath, like the ocean waves coming into shore, happily greeting my toes. The smile extends there, into my feet. I sense the outline of my body, the substances filling it, the structure supporting it, the personality abiding. Past, present and future are all accounted for in time and timelessness. Traces of truth remain, as I watch the water dissolve into the sand.

The sun and the moon make great companions, but rarely see one another. One is hidden, the other displayed. Sometimes, they can be seen in the sky together, when they whisper as dawn breaks, our light is one. They appear separate; the sun and the moon, the forest and the trees, the sky and the birds, the water and the sand.

Speaking of Consciousness, my breath once again becomes a smile upon my face. The sun is there to warm me, the moon cooling my back, shooting through my heart's abode. It is here, it is there. It is in- between here and there. Mirrors surround and catch the image of the mandala, constantly changing it’s perfect display of colored seconds of time, washed clean with a crashing wave. Foam crested waters immerse what was held in that instant, sheer, like the mist. Don’t be fooled by the changing scenery.

Speaking of Consciousness, my feet want to dance. My arms want to swing and my heart wants to jump for joy. My hands want to come together, to clap, to pray. My body wants to twirl and reach to the sky, my nose wants to take in the smells of the dirt and all the rotting leaves and the chill in the air. My ears are free and sounds swirl through them. I want to give birth. My child is born of this smiling light. Countless babies of bliss bounce through the air, like bubbles or balloons making there ascension. They are gone now.

Speaking of Consciousness, all of nature take their places, like the pages of a book , blank until the words are written. What once was a black and white world has become a magical spiraling field of light, full of colors that have no names. The base is this radiance, brilliant light. Who is mixing these gorgeous hues? Who is the palette holder and who is creating this scene before my eyes? I’ve heard the name whispered in the wind. It contains all the letters and all the names and all the sounds. They swirl together like leaves falling, and delight in carrying them softly to the ground. The sound they make as they touch the earth, that is the name, speaking of consciousness.

written by Karen Ferguson