Guest guest Posted December 13, 1999 Report Share Posted December 13, 1999 I mentioned Dr. Mishra...I met him in 1964, when I was in the 9th grade, and he had just started Ananda Ashram outside of New York City. He taught me to meditate and introduced me to Vedanta. I remember Elsie Becherer of the East-West Bookstore was a very serious meditator and she thoroughly disapproved of his allowing me to meditate with the adults because I was too restless, but he always defended me. He had a daughter about my age, who was in India, and I think I must have reminded him of her; in any case we developed a very close, surrogate-father/surrogate-daughter sort of relationship. I was separated from him for a number of years when I was sent off to boarding school and college, and during that time (70's-80's) I gather he did give a lot of respect to Rajneesh's teachings. I became a follower of Meher Baba of Ahmednagar but I was reunited with Dr. Mishra (now Sri Brahamananda Sarasvati) a few years before his death. I also had a hard time believing that he really could approve of Rajneesh, but I think it was his way to see the core of truth and unity in any person or situation. He had a serious stroke in the 80's which left him half-paralyzed and his speech very hard to understand without an interpreter, but he continued to write, travel, teach Sanskrit, give darshan, and do devotional chanting literally until the very end, in spite of a failing heart; he was teaching Bhagavad Gita even as he was having the heart attack that killed him. He never lost his sense of humor or his enthusiasm. He was a remarkable man, and it is nice to hear from someone who remembers him when he was well. Zo (Sarada) Newell _________________ Why pay more to get Web access? Try Juno for FREE -- then it's just $9.95/month if you act NOW! Get your free software today: http://dl.www.juno.com/dynoget/tagj. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted December 13, 1999 Report Share Posted December 13, 1999 Someone mentioned Dr. Ramamurti Mishra as being his/her guru on the Advaitin list. I was reminded of the time back in the 1970s when I walked into the East-West Book store in Manhattan and saw Dr. Mishra looking through some new age books including those of Rajneesh. I said "Hello Dr. Mishra" with a big smile. Back then I was reading every book of discourses by Rajneesh (later known as OSHO) that came along. I thought, Dr. Mishra would be quite critical of Rajneesh as were most orthodox Hindus and Jains (Rajneesh was born a Jain and had been a professor of Philosophy and lived in Bombay). During the conversation, Dr. Mishra spontaneously started singing very high praises of Rajneesh and I started laughing. "Are you joking with me Dr. Mishra?" I asked. "No! No!" He insisted and went on and on about Rajneesh." I could not help laughing. Dr. Mishra was a good friend of my teacher and they did several retreats jointly, if my memory serves. Dr. Mishra's book on pranayama was quite interesting and contained some highly advanced techniques. He was a great advocate for concentrating on Anahata sounds (inner sound heard in the ear) to attain Samadhi. Dr. Mishra eventually became Brahamanda Swami. He had a stroke later on I believe, but could still sing devotional songs. I spoke to my teacher about Dr. Mishra, Rajneesh, Swami Muktanananda, Swami Rama, Amrit Desai, Swami Chidananda, and all the "famous" gurus of the day. He knew most of them personally and had done conferences and retreats with them. If he wanted to encourage me to listen to someone or read them, he would say, "Yes, he is a good man." My teacher visited Ramana Maharshi as a teenager and spoke to me about him. I cannot really pinpoint my connection with Ramana Maharshi in time. It is like I had always known Him. My teacher has kindness and warmth but let me know in his own way not to be much impressed with gurus. He had known them (swamis and all) as ordinary people with all the weaknesses and strength human beings have. "Be independent and do not rely on any guru", he would say. "What if the guru goes crazy and nuts, what will you do," he would ask? Then I would laugh and laugh. Harsha Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted December 13, 1999 Report Share Posted December 13, 1999 Hello Harsha-ji. Several times you've mentioned your teacher, but I don't remember the name...? Who is/was s/he? With love, --Greg Harsha wrote: >My teacher has kindness and warmth but let me know in his own way not to be >much impressed with gurus. He had known them (swamis and all) as ordinary >people with all the weaknesses and strength human beings have. "Be >independent and do not rely on any guru", he would say. "What if the guru >goes crazy and nuts, what will you do," he would ask? Then I would laugh >and laugh. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted December 13, 1999 Report Share Posted December 13, 1999 Sri Rajneesh was great master of Vedanta but his style was quite different from the traditional learning process. We shouldn't judge anyone on the basis of what we hear and see through the media (negative messages from news reporters with preconceived opinions). He was quite imaginative in telling illustrative stories to getting the attention of his audience and across. A sample story is shown below and this story is posted by Dennis White (Rajneesh's devotee) few years back. Ram Chandran ============================================ An emperor was coming out of his palace for his morning walk when he met a beggar. He asked the beggar, "What do you want?" The beggar laughed and said, "You are asking as if you can fulfill my desire!" The king was offended. He said, "Of course I can fulfill your desire. What is it? You just tell me." And the beggar said, "Think twice before you promise anything." The beggar was no ordinary beggar, he was the emperor's past-life Master. And he had promised in that life, "I will come and try to wake you in your next life. This life you have missed, but I will come again." But the king had forgotten completely--who remembers past lives? So he insisted, "I will fulfill anything you ask. I am a very powerful emperor; what can you possibly desire that I cannot give to you?" The beggar said, "It is a very simple desire. You see this begging bowl? Can you fill it with something?" The emperor said, "Of course!" He called one of his viziers and told him, "Fill this man's begging bowl with money." The vizier went and The whole palace gathered. By and by the rumor went throughout the capital, and a huge crowd gathered. The prestige of the emperor was at stake. He said to his viziers, "If the whole kingdom is lost I am ready to lose it, but I cannot be defeated by this beggar." Diamonds and pearls and emeralds . . . his treasuries were becoming empty. That begging bowl seemed to be bottomless. Everything that was put into it--everything!--immediately disappeared, went out of existence. Finally it was evening, and people were standing there in utter silence. The king dropped at the feet of the beggar and admitted his defeat. He said, "Just tell me one thing. You are victorious--but before you leave, just fulfill my curiosity. What is this begging bowl made of?" The beggar laughed and said, "It is made of the human mind. There is no secret . . . it is simply made of human desire." This understanding transforms life. Go into one desire-what is the mechanism of it? First there is great excitement, great thrill, adventure. You feel a great kick. Something is going to happen, you are on the verge of it. And then you have the car, you have the yacht, you have the house, you have the woman . . . and suddenly all is meaningless again. What happens? Your mind has dematerialized it. The car is standing in the drive, but there is no excitement any more. The excitement was only in getting it . . . you became so drunk with the desire that you forgot your inner nothingness. Now--the desire fulfilled, the car in the drive, the woman in your bed, the money in your bank account--again excitement disappears. Again the emptiness is there, ready to eat you up. Again you have to create another desire to escape from this yawning abyss. That's how one goes on moving from one desire to another desire. That's how one remains a beggar. Your whole life proves it again and again--every desire frustrates. And whe The day you understand that desire as such is going to fail comes the turning point in your life. The other journey is inwards. Move inwards, come back home. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted December 13, 1999 Report Share Posted December 13, 1999 Greg Goode [goode] Monday, December 13, 1999 11:58 AM advaitin ; (AT) onelist (DOT) com; NondualitySalon (AT) onelist (DOT) com; Advaitin (AT) Onelist (DOT) Com Re: Teachers/Gurus Greg Goode <goode Hello Harsha-ji. Several times you've mentioned your teacher, but I don't remember the name...? Who is/was s/he? With love, --Greg Hello Sri Greg Mahatama Ji! The person I have called Gurudev is Sri Chitrabhanuji. He is a Jain teacher who guided me closely and advised me in my early twenties and initiated me as Harshadeva. He will be 77 years in the summer. Love to all Harsha Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted December 14, 1999 Report Share Posted December 14, 1999 Zo Newell [zonewell] Monday, December 13, 1999 11:20 AM advaitin Re: Teachers/Gurus Zo Newell <zonewell I mentioned Dr. Mishra...I met him in 1964, when I was in the 9th grade, and he had just started Ananda Ashram outside of New York City. He taught me to meditate and introduced me to Vedanta. I remember Elsie Becherer of the East-West Bookstore was a very serious meditator and she thoroughly disapproved of his allowing me to meditate with the adults because I was too restless, but he always defended me. He had a daughter about my age, who was in India, and I think I must have reminded him of her; in any case we developed a very close, surrogate-father/surrogate-daughter sort of relationship. I was separated from him for a number of years when I was sent off to boarding school and college, and during that time (70's-80's) I gather he did give a lot of respect to Rajneesh's teachings. I became a follower of Meher Baba of Ahmednagar but I was reunited with Dr. Mishra (now Sri Brahamananda Sarasvati) a few years before his death. I also had a hard time believing that he really could approve of Rajneesh, but I think it was his way to see the core of truth and unity in any person or situation. He had a serious stroke in the 80's which left him half-paralyzed and his speech very hard to understand without an interpreter, but he continued to write, travel, teach Sanskrit, give darshan, and do devotional chanting literally until the very end, in spite of a failing heart; he was teaching Bhagavad Gita even as he was having the heart attack that killed him. He never lost his sense of humor or his enthusiasm. He was a remarkable man, and it is nice to hear from someone who remembers him when he was well. Zo (Sarada) Newell Thanks for sharing Zo. Yes. Dr. Mishra was a very colorful personality and highly knowledgeable about a variety of yogic paths. Although he was controversial in his own ways, his knowledge of intricacies of pranayama as given in his book was impressive. The fact that he was a medical doctor added credibility to his detailed explanation of Kundalini Shakti in terms of different centers of the brain and the vagus nerve that he had identified. His book on pranayama is out of print but probably available through Amazon. Did you know that (probably in early 1960s?) Dr. Mishra shared an apartment with the founder of the Hare Krishna movement, who used to cook very nice vegetarian dishes for him. I always found that humorous. This came to my mind because in the late 1970s I used to go to the Hare Krishna temple on Sundays to eat to my heart's content their free meals and they were really great tasting! Harsha Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted December 14, 1999 Report Share Posted December 14, 1999 Dear Harsha, I am not familiar with a book by Dr. Mishra on pranayama, but I am very interested!! Is this different from the pranayama material in his FUNDAMENTALS OF YOGA? What's the title? He had a series of "kundalini" exercises that involved inhaling and retaining the breath with the arms in various positions, some of which I remember, but I didn't know they had been published. I did know he had lived with Swami Prabhupada...in fact I was told that he sponsored Swamiji to come to the U.S. Ananda Ashram has some really sweet old home movie footage from the '60's that includes the two of them eating ice cream cones, I think at the World's Fair. I don't know if you ever had a chance to taste Doctorji's cooking but he was a great cook himself, maybe one of the things that brought him and Prabhupada together. (By the way, is it appropriate on this Listserv to be having sort of personal reminiscences like this, or would people prefer that side-conversations be conducted privately? ) Nitin, Thanks for your post re: origins of Advaita. I would like to know more about Gaudapada. This may sound funny but I always thought of Sankaracarya as being an incarnation of Shiva, so I never even thought about his having a guru, although why wouldn't he? Where can I get more information? Zo _________________ Why pay more to get Web access? Try Juno for FREE -- then it's just $9.95/month if you act NOW! Get your free software today: http://dl.www.juno.com/dynoget/tagj. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted December 14, 1999 Report Share Posted December 14, 1999 I dont think Sri Gaudpapada was the Guru of Sri Shankaracharya. The Guru of Sri Shankaracharya is Sri Govindacharya whose guru was Sri Gaudapada. Sri Gaudapada is most famous for his Mandukya Karika, his exposition on the Mandukya upanishad. Interestingly the Mandukya upanishad(one of the major ten) has only 13 verses in it. However these 13 are extremely profound. Gaudapada's explanation is supposed to be an authority on Mandukya Upanishad. The Guru is one who can full you inwards to your source when all your self effort has failed. In this sense every person needs a Guru. No one gets Self Relaization by self effort only. Grace of the Guru is absolutely essential. That is why the scriptures say The Self , God and Guru are One. Anand > >Nitin, Thanks for your post re: origins of Advaita. I would like to know >more about Gaudapada. This may sound funny but I always thought of >Sankaracarya as being an incarnation of Shiva, so I never even thought >about his having a guru, although why wouldn't he? Where can I get more >information? > >Zo > >_________________ A FREE web-based e-mail service brought to you by the PC World Technology Network. Get your FREE account today at http://www.myworldmail.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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