New Years Awakening: Jayanthi & India

I cannot recall anything about that first flight to India, but I can recall the landing. I can recall feeling enveloped by velvety air. I can recall seeing a long low building and palm trees and a pale pink sky. When I walked out onto the tarmac, the very air felt pink and soft and warm, how a mother would feel to a child. After gathering my luggage, I rode in a tuk-tuk to Bidadi where I would be attending the first Nithya Yoga Teacher’s Training. Dusk was falling and I was so relaxed. The noise, the smell, the air, the sky, the land, was so alive!

It was New Year’s Eve December 2006. My husband and two daughters were taking me to Columbus, Ohio for the midnight flight to India. Before flying out, we headed north to the newly acquired property in Delaware, Ohio. 

---

 Swamiji had fortold of a Shiva Temple in the Columbus area in April and the property was acquired in December. There was a lot to celebrate that night as it was New Years Eve, it was the 30th Jayanthi or birthday celebration of Paramahamsa Nithyananda whom I had met in April, and who was the reason I was finally going to India. 

We arrived at the Shiva temple property which was undergoing its transformation as the first Dhyanapeetam Anandeshwara Temple. Viroopa was hanging Christmas lights out on the porch. We arrived just in time for Brian to climb a ladder and help her. People were decorating, getting ready to celebrate Swamiji’s Jayanthi or birthday. I  said goodbye, and it was off to the airport, to India!

Years earlier, in the 80’s and 90’s I could not have told you I wanted to go to India. I had a different list of places; Greece, the Southwest USA, Turkey, Chili, but no conscious awareness of the land, the place, the home called India. However, weird things were happening at that point in my life, things bubbling up inside me and spilling out, what I call “waking up”.  

I was working at Glen Helen in 1989 and a new intern named Anuja arrived. I got to know her and would occasionally see her around town after her internship ended. One sunny day I saw her across the street in front of the the Emporium, the local coffee shop,  and walked over to say hi.  She told me she was leaving for India. I burst into tears! I was as shocked as she was, as I was not particularly close to her. The minute those tears came, they were accompanied by a longing to go to India and a grief, a missing. When the burst of tears happened, it was as if I had ALWAYS wanted to go to India, a buried longing more intense and deep than any I had known. Of course Anuja thought the whole outburst was weird and we both mused over what it all meant.

The wheel of Dharma moves slowly for some, for me it was 17 years until I finally satisfied the longing, 17 years before I met Swamiji and India.

I cannot recall anything about that flight, but January 1 was Swamji’s Jayanthi and India was there waiting for me. I melted into her as she received me.

We arrived at the ashram and someone pointed to a building to go for instructions. This was long before there was a welcome center. I was sitting on a chair by an unattended desk and it was late and I was tired. No one came for a long time and I nodded off. Various monks came and went who did not speak English. Someone came and said I should eat and led me to a recently erected shelter with a dirt and straw floor. It was dark and not lit well and everything seemed brown; brown floor, brown straw, brown wood tables. No one else was there. They had all eaten and were off somewhere else. There were paper products, shoes, and garbage strewn everywhere. I searched for and found a clean paper plate and ate some rice and dal and went back to the office.

By now there was a lot of excitement in the air and I was led to another place where Swamiji’s Jayanthi celebrations were about to begin. I walked to a massive tent with hundreds of people. There was no room and I was way at the back of the tent. A young monk in orange robes was giving instructions for a new meditation technique called Nithya Dhyaan. From my view at back of the tent, he was tiny figure giving instructions to thousands of people.  

Then Swamiji himself was there. It was like looking in on a dream. The meditation had started and Swamiji was instructing in Tamil.  I’ll never forget how he rolled his r’s, how some phrases and words seemed to cement themselves in my ears.  

After the meditation the real show started. The lights went off except for a rotating colored light show on Swamiji. A kaleidoscope of colors; green, then red, then blue, then yellow then pink all kept flashing, and changing Swamiji from green, to red, to blue to pink to yellow. They started pouring flowers on him. In between the flashes of colored lights buckets and buckets of flowers were being poured. Soon he was encased in a mountain of flowers up to his neck, with the kaleidoscope of colors circling over and over on him. I had no idea what it all meant, but it didn’t matter, I was in India being held in the embrace of Swamiji, his Jayanthi, in India.

New Years 2016 and Swamiji's 39th Jayanthi promises to continue the process of waking up. As we complete with any smallness inside, any powerlessness, any hiding from ourselves, the spiritual powers called siddhis will have the chance to express through us, as we wake up to full consciousness. Too good to be true! Happy New Year! Happy Awakening!