What the Guru Taught; the Essential Teachings of Gururaj Ananda Yogi
An experienced meditator recently asked for the essential teachings of Gururaj. Of course, deep spirituality is not something acquired by books or even from great spiritual teachers. It arises spontaneously as the wisdom of experience, arising as the result of prolonged and engaged spiritual practice. This is what our guru taught. Nevertheless, he did encourage us to “cognize” or to think through this process. We can’t just understand it on our own, or else the guru would not have given his hundreds of satsangs. The following is NOT intended as a substitute for reading and contemplating the satsangs themselves. And they cannot be fully understood without the support of years of dedicated spiritual practice. Our Guru always insisted that he was only a guide; that we had to put in the effort. As he said, we get nothing for nothing and very little for five cents. We must put in the daily effort. The satsangs should be read and listened to over and over again, contemplated, thought about, and discussed. The following list of essential teachings are intended to orient the student to the satsangs themselves; to serve as an outline or a syllabus to your own spiritual journey.
Gururaj’s Essential Teachings:
Our problems do not stem from the state of our lives, or even from our beliefs and experiences.
Our real problem is that we don’t know who and what we really are.
Each of us identifies with an Ego-Identity or Ego-self which is the “I”-self or Individual mind.
This Ego-self experiences an outside world of events, people, and situations, and an inner world of desires, emotions, beliefs, and habits.
This Ego-self is frequently at war with itself, experiencing conflicting hopes, desires, and beliefs.
The Ego-self is nothing else but our thoughts, which are based on our beliefs, conditioning, and emotional reactions.
Thoughts arise in response to feelings, emotions, perceptions, and sensations.
Thoughts are always fleeting and insubstantial, and we learn through meditation to be less dominated and controlled by them.
The ego-identified mind is composed of an Unconscious, a Conscious, and a Superconscious level of awareness.
The Ego-self is deeply influenced by the Unconscious area of the mind, which contains traumatic memories, conditionings and biological instincts.
These unconscious patterns or impressions are called samskaras.
These samskaras influence the beliefs, hopes, dreams, desires, addictions, habits, and the personal temperament of our Conscious mind.
Samskaras influence your perceptions and beliefs about yourself and your world; you do not perceive what really exists, but what you believe to exist.
Samskaras from previous births determine the circumstances of your present life, and also influence your rebirth.
Gururaj took reincarnation for granted, but did not insist on belief in rebirth.
The influence of samskaras can be modified and changed through meditation and spiritual practices, making us happier, healthier, and more sane human beings.
You can’t fix the world, but you can fix yourself. A happier, more conscious “you” will have a very positive effect on your environment and on those around you.
Gururaj taught that spiritual evolution is always progressive; we are here to learn and to grow in spiritual knowledge.
The Guru is a guide. More than an ordinary teacher, he or she is an expert in spiritual practice who has completed the spiritual journey.
The most effective spiritual practices are individually prescribed by your Guru. You can’t learn them from books, therapy, or hearsay.
Individual effort is all important. The Guru can only illuminate the path; you must make the journey.
Through regular and proper spiritual practice, you soften or neutralize the influence of your negative samskaras or patterns that are stored in the Unconscious Mind, and receive more and more influence from the Superconscious level of the Mind.
The Superconscious level of the Mind is the pure awareness or consciousness of just BEING.
The superconscious that shines through us, and which can increasingly influence our conscious experience, is the light of the Divine.
The influence of the Superconscious level of the Mind, which is activated through our meditation and spiritual practices, allows us to become the Observer.
To be the Witness or the Observer of the activities of the relative mind allows us to unfold our innate non attachment, serenity, forgiveness, loving-kindness, generosity, patience, endurance, empathy, joyousness, self knowledge, and all other positive, spiritual qualities.
These spiritual qualities are not acquired or learned, but are innate qualities of awakened spiritual awareness; we unfold or uncover our innate spiritual awareness, rather than acquire them as a set of beliefs or convictions.
Spiritual Practice does not eliminate the joys and sorrows of ordinary life, but it puts our life in a completely different perspective.
Through our spiritual practices, we come to realize that we are not what we think we are: our relative ego-selves.
We are not even the observer of the Superconscious level of the Mind, which is still the finest possible level of the relative or individual mind.
We are that power of Grace or Divinity, which projects or empowers these passing and impermanent states of ego-identity.
We are that light or space of the divine in which all that transpires is like an image on the computer screen of Consciousness.
This Consciousness is universal, impersonal, omnipresent and omniscient, and absolute.
In Indian thought, it is called SAT CHIT ANANDA, or “Absolute Existence, Absolute Consciousness, Absolute Bliss”.
SAT CHIT ANANDA is all that actually exists; what we experience in our minds through our senses is a superimposition upon this essential reality.
The experience from the Superconscious level of awareness of this Sat Chit Ananda brings the “peace that passes all understanding.”
It brings a joy that is not conditioned by passing desires or pleasures.
This joy is called “Ananda,” or bliss. This ananda can pervade our lives, and transform the ways we experience our ordinary joys and sorrows.
As Gururaj once put it, instead of drowning in the ocean of the world, we become a surfer, riding the waves of relative existence with laughter and understanding.
Divinity has two aspects or expressions: the Relative aspect of multiplicity and form, the world of our everyday perception of duality, and the Absolute aspect which is a single, equal, and self-aware Divinity or Unity Consciousness.
Gururaj called these two expressions of the Divine the Manifestor and the Manifestation. They are essentially two aspects of the One reality.
Gururaj taught that the goal of human life is Self-Realization, which is the complete integration of body, mind and spirit in the direct and ongoing experience of Divinity.
There are traditionally four principal paths to Self-Realization: the Path of Devotion (Bhakti Yoga), the Path of Action (Karma Yoga), the Path of Knowledge (Jnana Yoga) and the Path of Spiritual Practice (Raja Yoga). Gururaj integrated all four yogic paths.
When we lose all identification with the relative mind and continuously experience our true nature as this all-pervading, all aware and all-encompassing consciousness, or SAT CHIT ANANDA, then we are Self-Realized, in which the self realizes its identity with the Self.
The Self-Realized person simultaneously experiences the Relative and the Absolute nature of existence that All is One.
At the same time, the Self-Realized person retains a personality and can fully partake of ordinary human experience.
In truth, it is all One Consciousness, which Gururaj called Divinity.
From the Upanishads: TAT TVAM ASI, or “Thou Art That.” Thou are Brahman; the Absolute Consciousness.
From Christ; “I and my Father are One.”
In truth, you are Divinity itself.