Swami nirmalananda saraswati biography of abraham
By Gurudevi Nirmalananda
An Ashram is a spiritual center where people dedicated to spiritual development live and practice under the direction of an Enlightened Being. The key is the Guru’s generosity, who is willing to share their life with others. This sweet and intimate gift makes the students’ spiritual process move more deeply and quickly.
I first benefitted from Ashram living in the 1970s. I already had figured out that I didn’t get much out of television and other media. I preferred yoga and meditative practices over the social scenes I had tried. It was a big relief to me that there was live music in the evening’s chant and meditation. Better yet, the teacher gave discourses several times weekly. I still love this lifestyle!
There are variations on the main theme. An Ashram might be headed up by an accomplished yogi who is not yet Self-Realized but is working on it. Most often, they have been authorized by their own Guru and are directed and supported in the process. Other Ashrams were founded by a great Master, even decades or hundreds of years ago, with yogis continuing to live the lifestyle as well as to offer the teachings they have learned.
Svaroopa Vidya Ashram is my home, which I share with other dedicated seekers. We offer several retreats and trainings each year, with participants staying in our retreat center. Our yoga classes are offered online as well as locally in Downingtown PA. I set up our online Freebies almost ten years ago, then the pandemic opened up new possibilities. Thus you will find many online offerings on our program calendar, including twice-weekly meditation satsangs.
Like ours, the Ashrams you hear about and find in online searches generally offer retreats and trainings. Other Ashrams are closed to the public, allowing few visitors or none.
I have visited and lived in many Ashrams in North America, Europe and India, both Yoga Ashrams and Buddhist ashrams. In spite of the different p Jai Shiva Nataraja! ૐ ShivayaShiva In India the masters initiated Jesus into yoga and the highest spiritual life, giving him the spiritual name “Isha,” which means Lord, Master, or Ruler, a descriptive title often applied to God. It is also a title of Shiva. The masters also instructed Jesus in the form his spiritual teachings should take and the specific yogic practices that should be given to his disciples. It was also decided that one of those disciples should be sent to India for the identical spiritual empowerment and instruction that was being imparted to Jesus. For some time Jesus meditated in a cave north of the present-day city of Rishikesh, one of the most sacred locales of India. In the years He spent in the Himalayas, He attained the supreme heights of realization. To augment the teachings he had received in the Himalayas, Jesus was sent to live in Benares, the sacred city of Shiva. The worship of Shiva The worship of Shiva centered in the form of the natural elliptical stone known as the Shiva Linga (Symbol of Shiva) was a part of the spiritual heritage of Jesus, for His ancestor Abraham, the father of the Hebrew nation, was a worshipper of that form. The Linga which he worshipped is today enshrined in Mecca within the Kaaba. The stone, which is black in color, is said to have been given to Abraham by the Archangel Gabriel, who instructed him in its worship. Such worship did not end with Abraham, but was practiced by his grandson Jacob, as is shown in the twenty-eighth chapter of Genesis. Unwittingly, because of the dark, Jacob used a Shiva Linga for a pillow and consequently had a vision of Shiva standing above the Linga which was symbolically seen as a ladder to heaven by means of which devas (shining ones) were coming and going. Recalling the devotion of Abraham and Isaac, Shiva spoke to Jacob and blessed him to be an ancestor of the Messiah. Upon awakening, Jacob declared that God was in that place though he had not realized it At the time of Jesus of Nazareth there were two major currents or sects within Judaism: the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Pharisees were extremely concerned with strict external observance of their interpretation of the Mosaic Law, ritual worship, and theology. The Sadducees, on the other hand, were very little concerned with any of these and tended toward a kind of genteel agnosticism. Today these two groups might be compared with the Orthodox and the Reformed branches of Judaism respectively. There was also a third sect which both was and was not part of Judaism. They were the Essenes, whose very name means “the Outsiders.” (“Essene” is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Chitsonim–“the outsiders.” Since Philo and other Jewish historians used “Essene” in writing about them, that has become the common usage.) Whether they chose this name for themselves or whether it was applied to them by the disdainful Pharisees and Sadducees is not known. But that they were incongruent (even incompatible) to the normal life of Israel at that time is certainly known. Jesus of Nazareth was an Essene, as were most of his followers, including the twelve Apostles. When Jesus said “I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18), the word used in the Greek text of the Gospels is ecclesia, which literally means “the called out” or “the separated” in the sense of “the aliens.” It is not far-fetched, then, to wonder if the correct translation should not be: “I will establish My Essenes.” Many elements distinguished and even separated the Essenes from the rest of Israel. Their claims about their very existence was certainly a controversial matter. For the Essenes averred that Moses had created them as a secret fraternity within Judaism, with Aaron and his descendants at their head. The prophet Jeremiah was a Master of the Essenes, and it was in his lifetime that they ceased to be a The History of Isha Messiah: Jesus the Christ
Isha's life in India
Among the Essenes of Israel at the threshold of the Christian Era, none were better known or respected than Joachim and Anna of Nazareth. Joachim was noted for his great piety, wealth, and charity. The richest man in Israel, his practice was to divide his increase into thirds, giving one third to the temples of Carmel and Jerusalem and one third to the poor, keeping only one third for himself. Anna was renowned as a prophetess and teacher among the Essenes. Their daughter Mary [Miryam], who had been conceived miraculously beneath the Holy of Holies of the Temple, had passed thirteen years of Her life as a Temple Virgin until her espousal to Joseph of Nazareth. Before their marriage was performed, She was discovered to have conceived supernaturally, and in time She gave birth to a Son in a cave of Bethlehem. His given name was Jesus (Yeshua in Aramaic and Yahoshua in Hebrew).
This Son of Miryam was as miraculous as His Mother, and astounding wonders were worked and manifested daily in His life-for the preservation of which His parents took Him into Egypt for some years where they lived with the various Essene communities there. But before that flight, when the Child had been about three years old, sages from India had come to pay Him homage and to establish a link of communication with Him, for His destiny was to live most of His life with them in the land of Eternal Dharma before returning to Israel as a messenger of the very illumination that had originally been at the heart of the Essene order. Through the intermediary of merchants and travellers both to and from India, contact was maintained with their destined Disciple.
At the age of twelve, during the Passover observances on Mount Carmel (not in Jerusalem), Jesus petitioned the elders of the Essenes for initiation-something bestowed only on adults after careful instruction and scrutiny Scroll down for videos describing stories from The Christ of India
Essene roots of Christianity