My Spiritual Path

While on my spiritual path I have had the constant guidance of many teachers both living and otherwise.  I have studied with Hindus, Christians, Buddhists and Sikhs, but first among them was H.H. Sri Swami Sivananda Maharaj who appeared to me in two dreams in 1975 twelve years after his Mahasamadhi.  It was another two years before I learned the identity of this character who was trying to gain my attention.  During the early 1980’s, in two meditation experiences, I discovered that Master Sivananda had been my guru and teacher in a previous life, when we all wore white robes and I believe we were Sufis.  With some difficulty, I obtained his name in that past life and later in India, I verified with some Moslem friends that he (Swami Sivananda) had been a great Moslem Saint and is still highly revered!

I had my first Divine contact with the Inner Self or God in 1975 and the second in 1979 whilst in meditation one evening with a good friend from many of my past lives, Catherine MacDonald.  We were both members of the board of directors of a charity in Montreal which took care of people waiting for kidney transplants.  We had been using the board room for our weekly Healing and World Peace meditation group meetings.  It had been decided by the board that we should move our meetings elsewhere and so we two decided one evening to meditate and fill the room with light.  Originally, we only meant to invest about 30 minutes.  However, it stretched quite naturally into 2 ½ hours!  During that time God pointed out to me three things I had left to do in this life, which I knew to be absolutely true.  Later, after coming out of the meditation rather abruptly, I realised I could no longer remember those three things in detail!  Arghhh!  A little reflection over the years has shown me why I was not permitted to remember consciously all the details.

This room was used ONLY for board meetings and thus several days later, found us all seated together in the same room for a board meeting.  The vice president, a good friend, later asked us “What have you guys done to this room?  It feels so different.  Have you not noticed, nobody smoked all evening?”  It was true, usually several people chain smoked in the board meetings!  (For those of my readers who would like to try something similar, simply sit with a friend and visualise as clearly as possible, for as long as possible, that WHITE light is filling the room, coming in from the floor, walls and ceiling as the light in the room gets brighter and brighter.  That's it!  Have fun!)

Just after the above fun, whilst in meditation in my motel room one morning before going to work as a computer consultant away from home (I was in Quebec city), I received initiation into Sannyas from my master Swami Sivananda Saraswati, whilst in the astral planes.  This is a very unusual way to become a monk, although not unheard of in India.  Indian religion is extremely flexible and easily absorbs other religions.  For instance, one will hear things like, “The Buddha was a Hindu anyway” and “God is everywhere, in all things and so all is one”.  Thus Christianity, Judaism (a group of Jews have been in south India since many hundreds of years) and other religions are all accepted and absorbed.

The spiritual path has led me to distant lands and back and I believe it has always been divinely inspired.  One example of this came in 1998 when I was beginning to take the idea in the Hindu tradition of a walk around America seriously.  (It is after all recommended humility training!)  I was sitting one early morning in meditation at the IMS ashram in Victoria and a very interesting thing happened.  I had a clear and very real vision of Paramahansa Yogananda sitting right next to me, legs in full lotus position, looking straight at me, but saying nothing.  His appearance was younger than any published pictures of him that I had seen up until that time.  It bounced me right out of my meditation and I said to myself, “What is he doing here?”.  I am still not quite clear about that yet, in spite of being a guest of the SRF (founded by Yogananda in 1920) for some months now, due to their need for a computer guy's help.

This pilgrimage or Yatra, is intended to be on foot as much as possible, however, I have been accepting rides when tired and as a means of meeting people.  I wish to meet as many spiritually oriented people, groups and organisations as possible and am documenting my experiences as diary entries on our web site for all to read (English only for the time being, sorry!).  Thanks to the wide availability of the internet to the general public, such as in libraries, I have been able to keep fairly up to date.

With the number of invitations increasing to visit people and ashrams around the USA and to give talks and teachings, I will of course keep moving, but will stop from time to time, perhaps never stopping permanently.  The latter is firmly in God's hands as is my life and the presence of the divine guidance and protection grows stronger by the minute.  May God bless us all with peace profound, unlimited happiness and bliss unending.  Big Hugs to everyone! (:-)

At His lotus feet and in His service.
Swami NadaBrahmananda.

Hari Om Tat Sat…

July 24, 2000
Hidden Valley, California