How and why I became interested in Sahaja yoga:
First let me say a few words about myself: my name is Remus, I am from Romania, I study mathematics and right now I am doing my Ph-D at UCLA. If you want to learn more about me please go to my home page. If you have any questions about the content of this page or just want to say "Hi!" please email me.
Since I was little I've been interested a lot in spirituality...being a mathematician, it has always been difficult to me to accept the existence of God without any proof, or I should rather say I always KNEW there has to be something more in what we call reality than what can be seen and interacted with, but I still needed a way to prove it to myself...just the fact that my family and so many other people belived so was not quite enough and yet I knew it is so but why?
I am not the type of person who belives a thing just because a lot of people say it, so I knew that somehow in our genetic information it is distinctly written "God Exists". So how to read this or shall I say how to know what this enigmatic figure called God wants from me? I kind of knew since I was 2 years old that He pretty much wants me to be "good" whatever that means. But sometimes it was so difficult to decide if I am being good. I remember I used to pray a little before going to sleep since I was 5 or 6. Nobody told me to, I just did it for me. My mom would take me to church a few times every year...I did not like it to much it was kind of a sad place and I always had to wait a lot in line but I figured this is something that God wants so...
In time my image of God changed: when I was really little I use do think of Him as some man somewhere that knows as much as my mom does, but in time this man became more and more abstract, until it completely transformed in some kind of energy that was omnipotent and all-knowing. I read a lot of books about a lot of supernatural things, like extraterestrial life and pyramids, and I was always trying to find the connection between these things and God.
Getting older I started to find
out about different religions and ask myself questions...I knew that Jesus
existed, I was and will always be sure of that. If I only look at it as
a scientist, it is impossible that so many people could be wrong about
this, for such a long time...if something really special wouldn't have
happened 2000 years ago it wouldn't have left such a mark on humanity as
to be remembered in such a distinctive way even now.
But then I was also pretty sure
that Krishna existed, or Mohamed or Buddha. For the very same reasons.
So this is when I started to not like so much the church which was basically
saying "if you don't belive in Jesus you go to hell, but it is ok (and
even mandatory) not to belive in the others". So if I was borned in India
or in China I had pretty good chances of going straight to hell right?
Unless some good cristhian would try to save me.
Fortunatelly in my mathematician's head I had this set of axioms that was perfectly compatible with the given data: if God is some kind of energy and everything is God in fact why would we be surprised if He chooses different physical forms in different key moments in time in different places of the Earth, when people need special guidance?
So it was very nice having thoughts like this, but I was feeling I am not going anywhere I am not progressing at all, I still have no clue about what God expects from me as a human being since I can not really trust the church because of all I said. So I knew I needed to look for a different and deeper way of getting in touch with my own spirituality.
Now I am sure most of you when they hear yoga start thinking aobut some difficult physical exercises and a lot of stuff that involves having a very strong will and giving up a lot of good things. I was thinking the same and I have to say it is pretty much the truth for most other types of yoga. But even like this I needed something and I was willing to try anything until I feel satisfied.
I was 14 years old when I saw this poster with "Sahaja Yoga", about a talk given by a lady from India, Shri Mataji. As it did not say anything about difficult physical exercises I went with my mom.
Sahaja
Yoga assumes the existence of a "subtle body", a very complex system of
channels and energies that exist in our body and can't be seen, but are
responsible for our health, and for our well-being in general. At the basis
of our spine there is a triangular bone called "the sacrum bone" since
ancient times and for a good reason: here resides an energy that people
named Kundalini (since thousand of years ago). This energy is dormant but
if it is to be raised it will start traveling
through the our body going upwards and eventually going out through the
top of our head (a region called fontanella in anatomy, which means small
fountain, a very suggestive name). Sahaja means "borned with" and Yoga
means "union". Therefore Sahaja Yoga provides the way of raising this energy
and connecting it with the "all potent energy" that is all around us, which
is God.
Once this has happened, our health and our life in general will radically improve. In fact while you may think this is very nice in theory but there is no way to prove it is true, one can feel this energy once it is awake. One can feel it as a cool breath above his/her head, and also in fingers. Morover one can feel any kind of problems and disbalances that one has (or that other people have) in the form of heat sensations and pains in the fingers. As you can see in the pictures each finger is related via energetic channels with different parts of the body. So you can completely know what is wrong with you and correct the problem, even before getting sick.
There is much more to Sahaja Yoga that healing yourself. The connection between Kundalini (which is the reflection of the universal energy in our bodies) and the omnipotent energy gives you a state of perfect balance, armony and pure joy that I simply can not describe in words.
Another
way of "proving" the existence of this energy is through photographs. Sometimes
when we take the photo of someone with the Kundalini energy awaken we can
see different manifestasions of this energy in the picture. There are thousands
of such different photos, in fact I took myself a few. The picture to the
left shows a group of yogis meditating but you can bareley distingusih
their bodies anymore because of the energy. Look also at the photograph
of Shri Mataji at the begining of this page. Click
here for more.Click here to
learn more about Sahaja Yoga. If you want to try online a 5-minutes experiment
which will make you feel the Kundalini energy please go here.
Who is Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi?
The
founder of Sahaja Yoga is Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi. Since 1970 she is traveling
all around the world, having public Sahaja Yoga programs, always free of
charge, in more than 75 countries. Sahaja Yoga is entierly her work. Shri
Mataji was borned with the Kundalini energy fully awaken, and has the power
to raise it in other people also. It is enough to be in her presence and
feel the vibrations her body emits to understand she is truly a special
personality. In fact even her photograph emits vibrations that one can
feel once the Kundalini energy is awaken (click here to try it). Read
here more about Shri Mataji.
If
you read so far you are probably trying to learn more about yourself, and
the meaning of life. You probably read a lot and saw a lot of things in
your life, and not many turned out to be true. This is why your attitude
when reading this should be that of a scientist doing an experiment. It
is easy to say a lot of things and make a lot of claims but for you it
shouldn't have any meaning unless you KNOW it's the truth, and there is
only one way to know for sure: TRY IT. The first step in Sahaja Yoga is
raising the Kundalini energy. This is what Shri Mataji always does in her
public programs. Shri Mataji's body, her photograph, her voice emit vibrations.
These vibrations resonate with your own energy and make it rise. When this
energy is awake it can be felt in different ways. Some people feel it very
strongly, others just a little in the begining but almost everyone feels
something. This is the only way you can convince yourself that Sahaja Yoga
is real and it's working. Of course after that if you want to use this
energy to heal yourself or to reach a state of inner peace you will need
to practice Sahaja Yoga and learn how to use thisenergy. Click on the picture
to experience it now!
As I said before I had my first encounter with Sahaja Yoga when I was 14. I could feel very strong vibrations when I went to Shri Mataji's program and I learned a lot in the next years and a lot of the questions I had were answered. However I did not understand imediately that raising your Kundalini is just a first step in your spiritual evolution. I was happy with my knowledge and I was feeling kind of important thinking that I can explain to myself a lot of subtle things other people can't. I was going from time to time to Sahaja Yoga programs and this was it. In about 3 years or so I started to realise that I wasn't making any progress. I needed to meditate. Only by meditating daily I started to grow. And the I started to see after so much time what Sahaja Yoga really can do. I had very serious problems around that time, I was getting very mad for any little thing and yelling at people and I could feel a lot of anger inside. So I started meditating, I went to a Sahaja Yoga camp for only 3 days where I was meditating twice daily with other yogis. When I came back I was a change person, my parents couldn't belive it. Never again I lost my temper.
So this was the day when I would say I started to practice Sahaja Yoga. Since then I used it to overcome a lot of otherwise difficult or impossible problems, concerning my health and my general well-being. Having meditation, especially having collective meditations is such a joy I couldn't begin to describe it. It is something very balanced and yet so powerfull, so calm and at the same time so lifting. It is beyond thoughts and words so there is no way to talk about it. Only in meditation can you become one with everything, with your Creator.
To learn more about Sahaja Yoga visit www.sahajayoga.org . There you can find a lot of information, including the meeting places for your country, where you can go and attend the free programs and find out how to use the Kundalini energy to improve your health and your life.