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Cybertalk: A cyberspace devotee wants to know about the nature of the soul. Gurudeva says that the nature of the soul is absolute bliss and perfection.

Cybertalk Ends"
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Date: March_21_2001
Title: Gurudeva Interviewed by Loni Petranek Part 13
Category: The Guru
Duration: 3 min., 13 seconds
Date Given: August 20, 2000

Loni : As we were mentioning, with Gandhi saying, "The future belongs to the women." So, I believe we can work together. It is not a matter of one or the other. I think, we all need to come together and work in harmony.

Gurudeva: It is togetherness situation.

Loni: Yes, it is unified. The unified field, as Einstein said. Now, we are winding down this show, Gurudeva.

Gurudeva: This has been a very nice show. I have enjoyed talking with you.

Loni: So have I! I would like to, maybe just end with, when do you think the temple will be available for people to visit? What is your projection for the completion? What do you see as the future with the temple?

Gurudeva: We look at it as completed, at any point of time. Especially now, with this fantastic 4-foot foundation, over 100 feet long, and 50 feet wide. But, next year, when the stones arrive, you will be able to help chip stones and fit the stones yourself. The entire community will be able to help in building the temple and, it will be a wonderful experience for everyone. We have magnificent pillars, upto 17 feet tall. Some of them are polished black granite, others are white granite. It is going to be one of the wonderments of the United States of America.

Loni: I think so, my goodness! So, it will be open to the public? Or, will you have to be making appointments when this particular structure is finished? How are you going to do it? Because, it is going to be so fabulous, that people are going to, probably, come from all over the world!

Gurudeva: We will have the same programme that we do now. We have Visitor's Day, and will be open from 9 a.m to noon, nearly every day, some days not. So, as I say, it is a place of pilgrimage, where pilgrims will come. Even if they live on the island, they will come like, one week out of the year, for certain spiritual practises. Sitting by the river, practising pranayama, practising hatha-yoga, practising personal meditations, chanting and sadhana. So, it is for that purpose.

Loni: Beautiful! You are travelling an awful lot now. I guess because of the books, and coming out of retreat.

Gurudeva: Just coming out of retreat and I am on way to the country of Mauritius, where we have another center. It is a fantastic 'Spiritual Park'. I will be a guest of the Government there, for 6 days. We are opening this center to the public. I will be going to Singapore. Also, Malaysia. We will be talking to thousands and thousands of people. We are going to talk about a lot of these subjects, of wife abuse and child abuse. Work out methods and ways that we can re-educate the public. That is what we are trying to do, on a very grand scale. Re-educate the public to a better way of managing home-life, with the mother spirit coming up and everyone respecting that.

Loni: That is a wonderful service.
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Kulapati and Kulamata, Deva and Tara Katir and their son Kumar in the back. Deva and Tara have been with Gurudeva for about 30 years. One "golden rule" for the family was to ALWAYS live near a temple where Gurudeva and his monks were. It wasn't always easy, but they made it work. Deva is a school teacher now on Kauai. He and Tara are actively promoting "Positive Discipline" on Kauai.

(A note for all our other Kulapatis and Kulamata's... please send pictures of Gurudeva's sishya in different countries, we will post them here on TAKA for everyone to get to know each other!)

Sadhu Paksha, our two phase retreat began today. But we had not made any announcement on the phone system so we ended up with a big tour group on the last day of the phase as usual. This time we had a big group of local people, including 12-year old Okone (in front in shorts) who lives just down the street from the temple. He became a local "tour advocate" and invited some of his school teachers to come to the monastery and conducted part of the tour himself!

Bala Sivaceyon with his son Thambynathan Nutanaya. Before Nutanaya was born, Bala and his wife had planned to offer their son to Gurudeva. As a result, the lucky Nutanaya has had a very special up-bringing. Raised at home in a very religious way, he was sent to India to study for a time at the Guru Kulam in Trichyswami's ashram in Bangalore. Then he returned home and went to school for a year and then came to Kauai Aadheenam where he continues his education in a home schooling course.

When Nutanaya is "of age" he will make his own decision about what to do with his life. Whatever he chooses to do, get married or become a monk, he will have a truly wonderful upbringing that most young men would never get to experience. And with all the high powered departments and older monks around him he gets not only a regular school training but "on the job" experience with a lot of real world tasks.

During Sadhu Paksha, Gurudeva talks to the monks about many deep inner things. Today he elucidated how to use meditation not only for going to deep inner states of awareness, but also for mastering even the mundane tasks of the external world, but working on them from within.

Many thanks to Indivar Sivanathan who is in Honolulu for a while with her father (she lives in Oregon). She sent over these rare plants. Acharya Palaniswami takes a whiff of the incredible "Rose Jasmine." It's a flower with a large head of petals, but with the potent fragrance of the tiny jasmine flower. We plan to propagate these everywhere!

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!

Our team in Bangalore was having some camera difficulties but finally some photos are coming through and we are going to have a great series of stones being prepared to come to Kauai. Here is an overview shot of one area of the temple carving site from a roof-top.

Another "aerial" shot of two of the pillars that stand in front of one of the work sheds.

This is a wonderful shot giving us some idea of the scope of the site. Oh, look... there on the left in the lower corner: stones on palettes, ready to be loaded into containers. And how fortunate they are to be able to grow roses!

Gurudeva's other monastery in the island country of Mauritius
in the Indian Ocean near South Africa

Mr. Seevanand Ramrekha's former student is needing the solace that comes from the sincere worship and communion with Ganesha. So he brought her here to get the book which changed his life -- "Loving Ganesha (Hinduism's Endearing Elephant-Faced God)" by Gurudeva. They came and went so fast we didn't get her name! She'll be back, she said, with her daughter very soon to visit Ganesha.

Virendr Ramgoolam from Bon Accueil brought the Gooroochurn family from London just at sunset to have Ganesha's darshan.

Postcards from Mauritius:

This humble but quaint little building on the grounds of the nearby Labourdonnais sugar estate has been converted into a shop selling the vegetables and fruits produced on the estate. This is actually a nice example of the stone work done by Tamil stone masons brought from Pondicherry in the early 1700's.

The Labourdonnais sugar estate has a great orchard of mango and litchee trees, as well as a very fine nursery. Mango chutney is produced here. Here's one of the Hindu employees displaying a bottle of their chutney. Last year's harvest of mangos from the trees surrounding the Ganesha Mandapam in the spiritual park was purchased by the estate for use in their chutney.

Here's a photo of Brahmachari Rajadeva Alahan in front of another fine example of the stone mason's craft. This is the chimney of the old sugar mill. Chimneys such as this dot the island. In addition to the chimneys and windmill towers of the sugar estates most of the original buildings in the capital of Port Louis were constructed by the masons from India. The same skills that are being used today to create Iraivan temple had migrated to Mauritius and were used for another purpose.

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