Thank you to all who participated in yesterday’s Shaktipat Intensive in celebration of the Guru Shakti and the birthday of Swami Muktananda. To begin yesterday’s event, Linda H. reflected on her trip to Gurudev Siddha Peeth in Ganeshpuri, India with Muktananda. An honest accounting of her trip to India with Baba, as well as her relationship with the Guru Mark Griffin, I think you’ll find that her humor and openness regarding these experiences is refreshing! Linda recounted….
Forty-three years ago, I got on a jumbo jet in Oakland, California, and flew with Baba Muktananda and group to Baba’s ashram, Gurudev Siddha Peeth, in Ganeshpuri, India. I was 25 years old at the time; it had been four years since my relationship with Mark Griffin began and two years since Mark introduced me to Baba. From the moment Mark met his Guru, it’s not as if he changed externally, but it seemed that something that was behind his eyes since the moment I met him got completely ignited and engaged. Yet, in true Griffin fashion, with his inborn capacity of Witness consciousness, his experience was very internalized.
My relationship with Muktananda and the ashram community was of a different nature. I was deeply magnetized by the Shakti and drawn to the vibration of the Light that pervaded everything around Baba. But, in a way, my life around Muktananda was almost like a full-time spiritual Burning Man festival. It was full of artistry, theater, adventure, and Bhakta, but I did not grasp the mechanics of yoga. As Mark went deeper and deeper into his internal self and more and more into his outward pursuit of artistic expression, I became more and more desperate for something to relate to. So, there I was in May 1978 on a plane to India without my dear friend, Mark. I assure you, I did not find what I was looking for.
People from all over the world had come to Ganeshpuri after Baba’s return to India following his Second World Tour. They came to celebrate Baba’s birthday and participate in a fire ceremony, a huge yagnagiven in Baba’s honor. I slept on a foam mat on the roof of the ashram with dozens of other people. Our slabs were separated by inches. Dogs barked all night long. The townspeople started shouting and clanging pots and pans at 3:00 AM. There was a huge outdoor meditation pavilion decorated with swastikas. It was 115 degrees and humid. I had no anchor for what I was doing or why I
was there. I only stayed a month, and I was in deep distress for most of that time. The one place that gave me any relief was in Bhagwan Nityananda’s temple, where I could escape from the circus and the wild crush of weird Westerners and find some respite from my turbulent mind.
On my return to the States, I was very shaken but changed. From that time forward, day-by-day, I continued to accompany Mark Griffin and subsequently Hard Light, once Mark became the Guru after Baba’s mahasamadhi. But, in truth, I never changed from that scared creature trying to find home. And all my practice and all my Seva has been somewhat of a continuation of the pursuit of identity through the spiritual, artistic personal theater of the Hard Light Center of Awakening with an intense focus locked on the physical form of Mark.
How a person can spend a lifetime next to a Siddha and still not have a grasp on the Science of Self Identity has been my primary contemplation since Mark dropped his body in 2018. Mark often would give the analogy of our attention being like a fluorescent light — flashing on and off so rapidly that it seemed to be continuous when in fact, it was not. And it is in that space between the flashes that the underlying substrata of the Clear Light manifests, veiled by the karma of our klesha-born proliferating obscurations. It is that karma that is dissolved by the ignition of the vibration of Shaktipat, Kundalini awakening, that is the Gift of this Siddha Lineage. And, our conscious, consistent, unrelenting participation in the cultivation of that force is the very definition of yoga and spiritual life. My experience and understanding of the Guru now continues to deepen with each passing day. I will
end here with an excerpt from Mukteshwari, Muktananda’s book of aphorisms. In all of his writing, Baba always directs these admonitions to himself, as disciple and servant of his Guru Nityananda:
“Muktananda, only when you become the Guru by merging with him
Will you understand service to the Guru,
Meditation on the Guru,
The Guru’s knowledge,
And Guru’s Grace.”
If you missed yesterday’s Shatipat Intensive in celebration of the Guru Shakti, you can always watch it via Livestream. As always, your support of the Hard Light Center of Awakening is vastly appreciated as it assists us in continuing to present this extraordinary content from the Mark Griffin archives!
English