Svaroopa Vidya Ashram’s Podcast

January 2020 Teachings Article by Gurudevi Nirmalananda (read by Yogyananda)

For more articles and text, please visit https://svaroopa.org/teachings-articles .

In this New Year’s Eve discourse, Satguru Swami Nirmalananda invites us to celebrate with a different kind of intoxication. Exploring your own existence will allow you to realize the blissful intoxication within your own self. As the year comes to an end and a new year begins, reflect and cherish where you have come from and where you are going.

Without knowing your true essence, you don’t really know who you are.  You base your sense of self-worth on how well you do things, where you come from or where you go.  Learn how spending time with a great being will help you understand that you are Existence-Itself in a human form.

Gurudevi explains that a swami dedicates their life to serving others, giving up all of the other things that usually motivate people. However, you don’t have to be a swami in order to get enlightened. You can get enlightened in this lifetime once you have received Shaktipat, the inner awakening of the knowing of your own Divinity.

This is one in a series of talks given in the holy city of Ganeshpuri, India.  Gurudevi explains the meaning of her name, Nirmalananda, that she received at the ceremony where she became a yogic monk. Sharing her spiritual journey from birth-name Pamela to receiving the name Swami Nirmalananda, she brings the ancient yogic teachings to life.

This satsang offers a rich and nuanced understanding of the name given to a new swami. Sahajananda is the bliss, the ease of the natural state of absorption into Consciousness. Gurudevi explains, “The purpose of the yoga practices is for you to know the ever-arising bliss within that requires no external trigger, catalyst or condition.”

Prior to becoming a yoga monk, Shrutananda spent 25 years learning from Gurudevi, immersed in the yogic teachings.  Gurudevi discusses how Shrutananda’s name reflects her dedication and devotion to knowing and passing along this tradition's revelatory teachings. 

Gurudevi takes us through the process of choosing the name for a new swami that reflects their process and the way Consciousness uniquely shines through them.  Satrupananda names the truth of beingness and existence.  To get to our true essence, we must become free from the trap of getting lost in the external qualities of our humanness.