About Mahamandleshwar Swami Nityananda Saraswati ji

 

 

Mahamandaleshwar Swami Nityananda’s title signifies he ranks in the top echelon of spiritual teachers in India. However, he is a gentle, unassuming presence who makes spirituality a practical part of daily reality.

He leads people in the pursuit of spirituality by modeling non-violence in speech and action, guided by the prayer, “May all beings live in peace and contentment”.  He favours simplicity of action, enabling him to pay attention to everything and everyone in an unhurried and undistracted manner.

Swami Nityananda was born in 1962 in Mumbai, India and raised from birth in an environment of yoga and meditation.  His parents were devotees of the famous ascetic Avadhoot Bhagwan Nityananda, and then became disciples of his successor, the renowned Siddha Meditation Master, Swami Muktananda (Baba). 

Much of his childhood was spent in Baba Muktananda’s ashram in Ganeshpuri.  He lived full time with Baba from the age of 15 and under his Guru’s guidance he was schooled in the major classical disciplines of yoga and the philosophies of Vedanta and Kashmir Shaivism (right).  In 1980 he was initiated as a Hindu monk in the Saraswati order and given the name Swami Nityananda, the name of Baba Muktananda’s own Guru.  In 1981 Baba announced Swami Nityananda would succeed him to carry on the lineage.

In 1987 he established Shanti Mandir as a vehicle to continue the work of Baba Muktananda’s ‘meditation revolution’ centred on Baba’s message, “Honour and meditate on your own Self; your God dwells within you as you.”

He has subsequently established three ashrams to enable people to pursue the teachings and practices of yoga and meditation. He travels between the ashrams in India and the United States, stopping in various countries to share the spiritual practices in which he has been trained. 

His Shanti Mandir Ashrams also support three Community Projects in India including; Shanti Vidya Mandir a free Sanskrit school providing a rounded and authentic  exposure to Vedic teachings, Shanti Arogya Mandir a mobile clinic and bi-annual eye camps, and Shanti Hastkala which supports the development of small-scale handicraft industries for poorer rural people.

In 1995 at the age of 32 he was installed as a Mahamandaleshwar by the Acharyas (right) – the spiritual heads of India’s monastic orders.  He is the youngest recipient in the history of this spiritual title which was established by Adi Shankaracharya in the eight century.

The title was bestowed in recognition of his spiritual work around the world, and his capacity to uphold and continue the teachings and practices of his Guru,  Baba Muktananda.

May 2008 marks the 100th Anniversary of Baba Muktananda’s birth. To mark the occasion Swami Nityananda is conducting a year-long global pilgrimage from May 2007 to May 2008, visiting many places where Baba is revered and his teachings practiced. 

By traveling and meeting with people around the world in the same way Muktananda himself did in the 1970s,  Swami Nityananda aims to rekindle the people’s enthusiasm for the path of inner transformation which marked Muktananda’s own travels.

In continuation of Muktananda’s tradition of welcome and “Paraspar Devo Bhava” - See God in each other – he  invites all to participate in following Baba’s footsteps of bliss. 

 

 

Some Teachings

                                              Meditate on your self

                                                worship your self

                                                respect your self

                                      God dwells within you as you

 

Baba Muktananda affirmed that he was not offering a new path but simply beckoning Humanity to the timeless principles of truth expanded by sages. He said:-

"The all-pervasive Lord dwells within you..

awareness of your own self is the Supreme Reality.

Do not renounce your home. Do not retire into forest.

Live in the world.Pursue your atrs, skills and sciences.

MEDITATE.

Your inner bud will open through your faith and reverence."

Pictures taken from babamuktananda.com

Baba Muktananda ~ Part I

Swami Muktananda was affectionately known by all as simply Baba. He travelled from India to make his first World Tour of Australia, The United States and Europe in 1970. In that time of social and political upheaval his message of discovering one’s own inner wealth was particularly captivating. “Look inside for happiness. Honour your Self. Love your Self. God dwells within you as you”

Baba’s teachings were refreshingly radical to the many people exploring meaning through anti-war demonstrations, mind altering drugs, women’s liberation, love-ins and dropping out of conventional materialistic pursuits.

Ram Das, formerly Professor Richard Alpert and known for his psychodelic research at Harvard University, described Muktananda as a ‘saint’, as someone who delivered a ‘natural high’. He was the antithesis of an austere ascetic. He offered an appealing alternative for a generation of disenchanted materialists in the West.

Baba spoke in Hindi, his words translated into English, yet his communication was beyond language and culture. Audiences experienced his profoundly beautiful blissful energy and were enchanted by his warmth, his mischievous humour and the joyful spontaneity that informed every gesture. Baba was a perfect manifestation of his Sanskrit name, Muktananda, meaning the ‘bliss of freedom’.

He returned to India in November 1970 to the small Ashram presented to him by his own Guru, Bhagwan Nityananda, renowned as an eccentric ascetic yogi who seldom spoke and lived in simplicity in the nearby village of Ganeshpuri.

Baba met Nityananda as a young boy. He then left home to wander throughout India, took initiation as a monk and became Swami Muktananda. He studied yoga, Ayurvedic medicine, Indian martial Arts, Vedic scriptures and learned from many great yogis and saints. Meeting Nityananda again years later he received a powerful spiritual transmission. This precipitated an intensive nine years of profound meditation practice, culminating in Nityananda advising students “Muktananda has become enlightened, he is liberated”. Prior to his own passing in l961 Bhagwan Nityananda encouraged his disciple to live nearby and predicted that his spiritual accomplishment and influence would spread very wide in the future.