Vinay Kumar Bansal family from New Jersey on right side of photo, and Indu and Chandra Mundra family from northern California on left side of photo.
In the next photo is Ramachandran and Priyanka from Phoenix, Arizona, making their first visit. They attend our 6am homa and public tour the other day, then returned this morning for darshan with Satguru Bodhinatha.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1EE8GPbFz0

In September of 2011 Paramacharya Sadasivanatha and Sannyasin Senthilnathaswami flew to Toronto, Canada, for a rare meeting and interview with Dr. James George, who spent many moments with and was profoundly influenced by Yogaswami in the early 1960s when he was the Canadian High Commissioner to Ceylon. (A lifetime scholar and diplomat, he was at other times the High Commissioner to India and Iran as well.) Here is their tale: We embarked in the morning and ended up in his apartment in a tightly-secured and upper-crust building in the city, an apartment filled with ten thousand artifacts, most of them of a spiritual nature: thankas (old ones) covering the walls, at least the walls not covered with his vast library of religious and spiritual books. We set up to interview him about his time with Yogaswami near a window in his dense office, amongst computers and printers and papers and files. We thought the morning would be a journey into history, capturing his times with Yogaswami. It was that, but far more. At 93, Dr. George is a bright light, capable of imitating Yogaswami's raucous laugh and powerful voice, inclined to take each question we asked and make it a reflection on life and truth and life's search for truth. Our queries would stop him and for a full minute he would look off, not so much into the distance as into the inner sky, then finally he would return with a gem, some insight into consciousness, some delightful comparison of George Gurdjieff, the Russian mystic who stressed the now and the Great I Am.  On and on it went, question after question, all captured on our camera for you to enjoy later. Mostly he was thoughtful and faithful to the task of describing his times with the Lion of Lanka (who did roar, he said), but now and again he exploded: his voice rising, his eyes gleaming, his body leaning forward to convey a moment when Yogaswami said something potent to him. It was so evident that those moments are still alive in this wonderful soul, that, as he told it, they changed his life and his family's too. Here is a man who can field the most sophisticated question on consciousness, who can set two spiritual traditions side by side and compare them, who can speak of presence with perfect presence, a kind of soft intensity you rarely encounter, who knows what not knowing is, who believes the universe is ultimately perfect and yet bemoans the "rise of negativity in all spheres." Fun, gracious, "What would you like in your tea?" humble, "I hope your journey here from Hawaii has been worth these small remembrances" generous "Taxi? No, let me take you back to your hotel.." Our interview with Jim, as he insisted we call him, turned out really to be a satsang of kindred souls, of those who explore consciousness and who strive as often as possible, as much as possible, to heed Yogaswami's stern yet utterly simple instructions: "Summa iru. Just be."

This morning during the chitra nakshatra, the monastery observed its monthly padapuja for Gurudeva. Nirvani Nilakanthanatha and Natyam Rajanatha performed the puja, invoking Gurudeva's light and blessings.

"So great is the Sanatana Dharma that it defies all who doubt it, all who disdain it, all who disregard it, all who degrade it, with personal realization of its Truth." - Gurudeva

The Nandi Mandapam is the primary thrust of our carving team in Bengaluru, and they are pouring their best skills into it. Today we received these photos of the ceiling stones, just completed in India. 
The mandapam is almost a small temple in front of the larger Iraivan Temple, and it will be the most elaborately carved of Iraivan's stones. In part, this is due to its smaller size, just fifteen feet square, and in part to the new tools that have evolved in just the last few years.
These are the carbide-tipped chisels which not only last longer but because they are sharper and lighter, they give the silpis better control of the magical process of sculpting one of the world's hardest stones--granite. If you ever sit with the silpis during the carving process, you are first impressed with how tedious and slow the process is, requiring almost superhuman patience as the art slowly emerges from the raw rock. 
Looking closer you see something surprising: they are not carving so much as pulverizing the steely stone molecule by molecule. Each blow of the mallet on the chisel removes a tiny bit of dust. Not rock so much as dust, which accumulates near the impact zone and is brushed away every few minutes. 

Bodhinatha will be visiting Adelaide on December 11. We invite you to attend if you are there. If not, invite your family and friends in or near Adelaide.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nF30SXaYxNU

Every year on the Chitra nakshatra in October-November, our Gurudeva, Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, the founder of Kauai’s Hindu Monastery, is honored and remembered with special ceremony. The monks worked hard to make this year's a special one, acknowledging this twelfth annual event. Over a four-day period, two priests officiated several elaborate homas and pujas, for which a 16-foot square yagasala with a five-tiered pyramidal altar was built inside the Banyan Mandapam. One hundred devotees, including the monks and local devotees, gathered to celebrate Gurudeva’s life and legacy. A namakarana samskara, membership vows and initiations into chanting the Aum Namah Sivaya mantra took place, and daily satsangs with Bodhinatha centered around understanding energies and meditation. Gurudeva’s presence and continuing blessings were felt by all.

Here are some photos of a few of the hundreds of guests that came in November.  Almost without exception our visitors express heartfelt gratitude to Bodhinatha and the monks for opening their gates and allowing access to this most remarkable property.  They seem to sense that they are on sacred ground or at least something very special and unique.  We hear repeatedly from guests as we are walking - " I feel so spiritual here" or "I have never felt so close to God" or as one Muslim guest recently stated "Is this the heaven we have read about."  So the Sannidhya, the powerful shakti and emanation that is building and building at Kauai Aadheenam and pouring from the temple, from Bodhinatha and our monks is being felt by most who come in one form or another.  One guest who was very psychic saw Gurudeva's  big picture and said - "Is that your Guru?"  I said yes.  He said "He is sitting in the temple right now".  I replied that well actually Gurudeva left his physical body twelve years ago.  The guest became even more emphatic - "No - He is sitting in the temple right now!"

While Hindus are generally not very outspoken, it is natural and almost expected that when guests come here we tell a little of our story and share both a few of our beliefs and the Hindu view and way of life to visitors who come from many countries and every conceivable walk of life. It is a unique opportunity to talk about a few of the misconceptions and share the vision of loving acceptance of all, that all of life is a sacred process and that in the view of the Hindus, that we are all spiritual beings at one stage of maturity or another doing our very best to get in touch with our true soul nature.  When they leave they have a smile and many even a tear -  many purchase books, or at least walk away the little masterpiece and free booklet "All about Kauai's Hindu Monastery". This does well for a greater acceptance and understanding of Hinduism which we know is Gurudeva's hand still working tirelessly.

Today the monastery held a morning homa in Kadavul temple. This will be the last homa for several weeks, as the monks will soon observe Sadhu Paksha, a special retreat for which the monks change their morning routine, arising before dawn to worship and meditate in nature. Following the homa, Satguru Bodhinatha gave a talk about the human aura and the methods one can use in cleansing their inner aura.

From today's lesson:
Merging with Siva 229

The mystic learns how to use his already developed sixth sense, his third eye. It is used all the time, constantly, day in and day out, though not consciously. For example, someone may walk into your home. You look at him and say, "You are not feeling very well today. You seem disturbed." How do you know? Inside yourself you are seeing his aura. If he enters looking bright and shiny, you know how he feels inside because you see his aura. 

The spiritual path to realization of the Self, however, is not to see and analyze auras. The quest is to flow awareness through even the core of energy itself, into the vastness of the Self God, where awareness completely aware of itself, dissolves in its own essence, and merges into timelessness, into causelessness, into spacelessness, into Siva, beyond that still, still area of the mind. Yes, learning to read auras can be a hindrance on the path to enlightenment because one can become the center of attraction, for everybody wants to know what his aura looks like. The aura is constantly changing. To give a reading of a friend's aura would be like telling him what kind of clothes he is wearing. The next day, he may be wearing something different. Also, when you can see someone's aura, quite often you do not notice it. Generally if you do have this awakened inner perception of auras, you would only notice someone's aura if it were peculiarly dull or strongly radiant. A mystic who has control of this faculty does not generally see auras all of the time, but just when he wants to. But if a person's aura were outstanding in a certain way, naturally it would stand out clearly and be seen easily. And so, when we look into such an aura, we are actually looking into the area of the mind in which his individual awareness is traveling, for the mind is always totally in a state of creation with awareness flowing through the mind just as the traveler roams the world. 

The mystic has to caution himself not to become overly involved in the emotions of others. He must protect his inner life by living two-thirds within and only one-third in the external realms of consciousness. And he must be wise enough to know that each one has to walk either over or around all the boulders in his path. In other words, if you are around people who are not good, who have dark auras, who have deep-rooted subconscious areas that represent a lot of black, gray, red, green blobs hidden in the psychic nerve currents of their chest, and you are not quite out of that area yourself, the vibratory rate of those people will draw you back into those areas of the mind. That is why those who live the contemplative life like to be among themselves. They like to be with people of the same lifestyle. It is necessary. It is extremely necessary to surround yourself with a good environment to make progress on the spiritual path past a certain point. You can meditate a little bit to move awareness into a peaceful area of the mind or get a little burst of inner light, or practice breathing and have a healthier body and a sound nerve system. But if you really want to go deep within toward your goal, you have to move awareness, physical body, emotional body, mental body, in with a group of people that are thinking along the same lines and living the same lifestyle. The group helps the individual and the individual helps the group. 

The gift of psychic vision should be developed very gradually through the stages of sadhana. The veiling grace of Lord Siva is for very good reason. Some people are born with psychic sight and maintain it throughout their lifetime. As this faculty was developed in a prior birth, the wisdom and understanding of its proper use comes naturally to them. But more commonly, psychic sight develops slowly, almost imperceptively, through an unbroken continuity of sadhana. Through the unveiling grace of Lord Siva we are allowed to see what needs to be seen at the proper time in our life when we can sustain the resultant reactions. 

We often observe the facial expressions and body language of friends and strangers and thus learn the contents of their conscious and subconscious mind, and from this deduce how they are thinking and feeling. But much can be concealed if we see no deeper. For example, someone may be smiling when he is really feeling depressed. However, when we see with our astral vision, there is no mystery. When we peer into their subconscious mind, we see the colors of their moods and emotions that perhaps are not reflected in their faces. Yes, colors and auras do relate to the five states of mind, conscious, subconscious, sub of the subconscious, subsuperconscious and superconscious. 

Our November 2013 news video covers events in October 2013 including: Gurudeva's twelfth annual mahasamadhi observances, Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami's 71st jayanti celebrations, Media Studio construction progress and the restoration of the Narmada Stream.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec8SjoACzNM