Aum Namah Sivaya!
Jai Kailasa Parampara!
Jai Gurudeva!

Today begins our first of four consecutive days of worship in praise of Sivaya Subramuniyaswami. Every year during the Chitra Nakshatra in October/November we celebrate the day of Gurudeva's grand departure into the inner planes, honoring his life and teachings. This morning began with a puja at Gurudeva's shrine in Kadavul Temple. The monks chanted the sacred hymn of Sri Rudram after which Sannyasin Tillainathaswami and Yogi Haranandinatha performed the puja, offering flowers, incense, cut fruit and passing the sacred flame.

We thought it would be nice to bring you snippets from our 2001 Gurudeva memorial issue of Hinduism Today Magazine, so you can enjoy the outpouring of love and respect from many Hindu leaders. Click here to download today's pdf.

You can also read an online version here: www.hinduismtoday.com/magazine/april-may-june-2002/2002-04-tributes-and-testimonials/

Please enjoy this rarely heard talk from Gurudeva in the 1970's about the "Wailua University of Contemplative Arts." This wonderful talk explores meditation and the practice of stabilizing the mind force. It expresses many of Gurudeva's early teachings which give a foundation for decades to come. Our thanks to Namrata Ragade for her loving seva of listening to countless archival audio files, which helped to bring this talk out of the archives and into the present. Aum Namah Sivaya.

Jai Gurudeva!

This month, our celebration of Ganesha Chaturti and the September observance of our Chitra pada puja to Gurudeva fell on the same day. In the early morning, a puja and abhishekam for Gurudeva took place in Kadavul Temple, performed by Sannyasin Tillainathaswami and Nirvani Tejadevanatha. A wonderful way to begin a most auspicious day! Aum Namah Sivaya.

"Gratitude and appreciation are the key virtues for a better life. They are the spell that is cast to dissolve hatred, hurt and sadness, the medicine which heals subjective states of mind, restoring self-respect, confidence and security." Gurudeva

Jai Gurudeva!

Yesterday and today the the moon has been passing through the Chitra Nakshatra, one of 27 sections, and starts or constellations along the ecliptic. It was Chitra that was in prominence at Gurudeva's Mahasamadhi, and is thus the nakshatra used to determine our observance of our monthly padapuja. Yesterday evening the monks gathered in Kadavul temple for the event. Yogi Dayanatha and Yogi Haranandinatha performed the puja and abhishekam. Aum.

Jai Gurudeva!

Today our monks began their new week with our monthly puja at Gurudeva's shrine in Kadavul Temple. Yogis Dayanatha and Haranandinatha performed the puja and abhishekam. Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami and the other monks attended, chanting Sri Rudram and meditating. Aum.

"There is no intrinsic evil. God Siva has created the principle of opposites, which are the means for the soul's maturation--beauty and deformity, light and darkness, love and hate, joy and sorrow." - Gurudeva

Jai Gurudeva!
Jai Kailasa Parampara!

Today the mathavasi's enjoyed their monthly padapuja for Gurudeva during the chitra nakshatra. Yogi Jayanatha and Nirvani Tejadevanatha performed the padapuja to Gurudeva's tiruvadi, pouring milk, yogurt, honey and other prana-filled substances over the holy sandals. Aum.

Jai Gurudeva!

At the end of the previous lunar phase, our monks enjoyed their monthly puja and abhishekam to Gurudeva during the Chitra nakshatra. Our annual Mahasamadhi celebrations to Gurudeva take place close to when the nakshatra coincides with the new moon, making for a quiet and mystical observance. This recent puja was the astronomical opposite of that, coinciding with the full moon, making for a powerful ceremony of palpable love and blessings. Aum.

Jai Gurudeva!

Yesterday evening our monastics enjoyed their monthly pada puja to Gurudeva an his shrine in Kadavul Temple. Satguru and the monks gathered around to chant Sri Rudram while Yogi Jayanatha and Nirvani Tejadevanatha performed an abhishekam to Gurudeva's granite paduka.

"If we look at the past and we look at the future as both a series of dreams, and the only thing that we are concerned with is our immediate reactions and what we carry with us now, we see that the past is there to test us and the future is there to challenge us. We cannot change the past, but we can change how we react to what has happened to us in the past, and we can change the future, anytime we want to." Gurudeva

Now and again we bravely post some of Gurudeva's most profound insights and writings. Today is such a day as we share Gurudeva's description of Nirvikalpa Samadhi and actinic energy. It is short, but dense.

We partner his words with a series of microphotography images which have their own mystery and magic to accompany the bhashya.

Aum Namah Sivaya
For those that missed it, one of our latest publications is now available on our Himalayan Academy website. Gurudeva's Seven Dimensions of the Mind is a powerful guide to the inner workings of our own inner and outer being. It's currently available here in PDF, Epub and Kindle editions.

"The dimensions are a positive and helpful way of looking at life and understanding the experiences we have on the inward path. By identifying experience as being within one dimension or another, we are able to know at all times just where we are in consciousness, and that knowledge is the control over awareness that we need to continue the upward climb.

"At all times we are flowing through all of the dimensions. They all exist in total completion right now within us. However, we are only conscious periodically in one or another of them as awareness magnifies itself and registers the dimension by focusing upon it, shall we say."