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Cybertalk: This is a radio interview conducted by Loni Petranek with Gurudeva. The interview gives an overview of Gurudeva's worldwide mission. In the thirteenth part today Loni asks Gurudeva about the completion date of the San Marga Iraivan Temple and if the temple will be open to the public.

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Date: March_13_2001
Title: Gurudeva Interviewed by Loni Petranek Part 7
Category: The Guru
Duration: 3 min., 47 seconds
Date Given: August 20, 2000

Loni: Now you also are situated in a very sacred area for Hawaiians and that is the Wailua.

Gurudeva: It is the 'Pihana-kalani' area and that means, 'Where Heaven touches the Earth'. There has been a temple there, for a couple of thousand years. The hereditary priestess lives on Oahu and her great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather established the six temples going right up the mountain to number seven, at the top of Waialeale.

Loni: And you are situated in?

Gurudeva: Temple number five.

Loni: Temple number five. That is very apropos, if you look at the chakras.

Gurudeva: If you look at the chakras, it is the communication chakra. So, when we are doing books and magazines and CDs and videos, we do communicate. Everybody at the monastery has a computer and an e-mail. We get hundreds of e-mails everyday. In fact, they are forwarded on to families of our Church on the mainland, who also answer them. Questions all the time. We have a beautiful internet site, one of the largest ones in Hawaii. So, we manage to keep busy.

Loni: I think it is really wonderful. Barbara Marx Hubbard, who came with the 'Women of Vision and Action' conference is a futurist.

Gurudeva: I am waiting for the men of vision and action too, to come up one day. They haven't arrived yet.

Loni: And we will have you as a futurist, then!

Gurudeva: Okay!

Loni: But she mentioned when she came here, how in this day and age, with communications as it is in technology, it really represents the nervous system of the planet. That is quite profound if you look at it that way, that you can move right through the body of the planet with this capability to affect and to communicate with everyone.

Gurudeva: Definitely.

Loni: Now, this magazine 'Hinduism Today' goes out to many, many people around the world.

Gurudeva: It goes out to many countries. It is a leadership magazine too, because Hindu leaders in many small countries use it on the radio and on television, in their lectures in the temples. So we work very hard to put it out every month. We have a staff of permanent writers and also part-time writers, over one hundred and fifty working with us in major countries, that Hindus are living in. But there is something in it for everybody. It is not only preaching Hinduism. In fact, it really doesn't preach Hinduism. It gives a broad perspective of what one-sixth of humanity is doing. Over a billion people live this faith.

Loni: It is translated in different languages?

Gurudeva: Actually, it is not translated unless somebody would get on the radio and translate it, being inspired. It is only in English.

Loni: Well, I am going to take a music break and when we come back, I would like to speak about the 'Lemurian Scrolls.' That particularly intrigues me.

Gurudeva: Okay.

Loni: We are in conversation with Gurudeva and he is a spiritual leader of the Hindu temple. Actually Gurudeva, the temple has a name?

Gurudeva: It is called the 'San Marga Iraivan Temple'.

Loni: Okay, I wanted to be sure that I put that out. And, we will be back after this music break.
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The monastery hosted 70 plus Rotarians from the Poipu South Shore Rotarian Society . They came early and enjoyed a specially prepared traditional style Sri Lankan breakfast. Chick peas with dosai, coconut chutney, kesari and sweet rice. Many remarked how impressed they were to get such a wonderful and tasty home cooked meal.

The group represents some of the most prominent business people on the island of Kauai and have hosted Gurudeva and the monks to speak to them on several occasions.

The monastery reciprocated today with this breakfast and a tour of the property.

Sadhaka Thondunatha gave everyone a thorough description of our Iraivan temple building project.

As always, they all stood in awe at the beauty of our location and the view of Mount Waialeale. Today was a perfectly clear day and the colors were brilliant. Can you see the wonder of God in their faces?

Sadhaka Thondunatha points out the foundation of the new temple which can now easily be seen at a distance by the red and white cloth that is draped completely around both sides of its 117 foot length.

After this we took our walking tour out to the flag pole and the overlook to the river.

The group joined us in the publications building to learn about the other side of our "operation." The Rotarians on the island know us by our community work on Kauai. Here they get a vision of our international educational and publications distribution.

Martine Thom came this morning with her two-man crew: Zack Green, our sound man, in the foreground, and Zachary Williams, the camera man, on the left.

Zachary Williams said this morning that "I have done six documentaries so far. I think this will have to be my last because I don't know if I can find a better subject. I guess I just will have to move on to films!"

Martine and her crew were beautifully sensitive to the monastery routine and we hardly felt their presence among us. They worked hard, 14 hours a day for about 2 weeks. Now they go home with 53 hours of footage to put together a final documentary.

We told Zachary: "We hope this piece will launch you into a successful film career." He said, "I also hope the film will do a lot to promote Hinduism and your work. Frankly I am not that religious a person, but after being with all of you I have really learned something. It was really wonderful."

Our 11-acre village in India is home to 75 Indian master craftsmen who live there and work each day on the carving of the sacred white granite Siva Temple which will soon be shipped soon to Kauai and assembled. See our latest February 2001 Building Fund Progress Report and join our family of contributors today!

Yesterday you saw the giant stone that was extracted from the quarry. Today you see that same stone. This is the "Vimanam" or capstone of the temple. Tomorrow we will show you the finished piece and a special story of all three images.

12 Glorious Days, 8 Enchanting Countries and One Chance in a Lifetime! Imagine spending 12 days with one of the greatest spiritual leaders of this century. Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami will be leading this exotic educational and spiritual voyage himself combining the mystical path of Indian spirituality with a superlative retreat from it all. Take advantage of this one chance to be in close proximity with a living master. Come with us on an inner and outer voyage to Northern Europe and Russia. www.innersearch.org