In beginning this chapter I want to start out by saying that I am not a disciple of Baba Muktananda and have never been inclined to follow the path of Siddha Yoga. It is a path that requires one to surrender to a particular lineage of Siddha gurus which does not personally resonate with me. According to Baba Muktananda, receiving shaktipat (transmission of spiritual power) from a Siddha guru, and their particular mantras and meditation given by the guru is essential. My personal path is much too universal and eclectic. I am also not really into having a guru. I choose to have more of what I would call Spiritual Teachers, and also use God, my monad and soul as my teacher. In saying this, I do not, in any way, mean to criticize the Siddha path. It is actually one of the most popular of the Eastern paths in America.
Baba Muktananda was an extraordinary spiritual Master, and His teachings and meditation experiences are universalistic enough that I feel my reader will gain great benefit from hearing what He has to say, even though they may never give their lives to this particular path of spiritual growth. With this perspective in place, I share with you now the most beautiful life, teachings and experiences of Baba Muktananda.
Baba Muktananda was born in 1908 near Mangalore in South India. At the age of 15 he left home and began His life of seeking God. He immediately took His initiation as a sanyasin (renunciate) from a Siddha Master named Siddharudha Swami. It was given the name Muktananda which means, "Bliss of Liberation". He traveled throughout India for the next 30 years searching for God realization. He met, during this time, over sixty great spiritual Masters. It wasn’t until He met his guru, Bhagawan Nityananda, that He recognized His true guru and teacher. Nityananda gave Him shaktipat initiation to awaken His latent Kundalini. This began a nine year period of intense meditation which culminated in His attaining self realization in 1956.
In 1956 Bhagawan Nityananda took Mahasamadhi (conscious death) and transmitted the power of the Siddha lineage to Swami Muktananda. During the following years, many people traveled to India to see Baba Muktananda. This lead to Him being invited to the West for the first time in 1970.
He went on to make three successive tours to the West teaching meditation, and giving Shaktipat initiation into the Siddha Yoga lineage, to hundreds of thousands of people. Before Baba’s passing in 1982, he transferred His full spiritual power to His disciple Gurumayi Chidvilasananda.
The term Siddha means, in essence, that one has realized the Self. The path of Siddha Yoga does not oppose any religion, sect, or code of ethics a person may be involved in. In that sense it is very universalistic. The essence of the teachings is that we all are the Self already. We are here to just remember and realize this great truth.
It is a path of love that recognizes that the Self is embodied in all aspects of creation. In that sense we are embodied in all aspects of creation, not just in our puny little physical body. The Siddha path culminates in the experience of "I am that", our identity with God. The Siddha path eradicates all differences, and leads to transcendence of duality. This leads to unchanging joy, bliss, and the release of all negative emotions and qualities.
This path leads to the full awakening of the kundalini. This begins with the disciple receiving Shaktipat initiation, which starts the process. This is then increased by devotion to God, pure and regular life, repetition of a mantra, meditation, study of scripture, chanting, faith and love for guru, darshan with the Siddha Master, satsang (keeping company with truth seekers), asana (yoga postures).
The chant that is used is "Om Namah Shivaya". It means, "I bow to the Lord, who is the inner self." The chant is to be done with great love and at the speed at which one speaks. It is also to be done with the understanding that you, yourself, are the Deity of the mantra.
The other mantra for meditation that is recommended is the "So Ham". It means, "I am He", I am God, I am Shiva, I am the Self. Interestingly enough, this is the same mantra that Sai Baba recommends. The idea is to say this mantra in accordance with one’s breath. On the in breath say "so", and on the out breath say "ham".
The object of meditation is the inner self, for that is the entire goal of the Siddha path. The kundalini does occasionally arise from merit accumulated from spiritual practices done in past lives. The four ways that shaktipat initiation is given are through touch, word (mantra), look, and thought. Any of these can be very powerful if the Siddha Yoga Master has fully raised their own kundalini. Siddha Yoga is also called Mahayaga because it encompasses all other yogas. Often after receiving Shaktipat initiation, and practicing the Siddha Yoga spiritual practices, one experiences involuntary bodily movements called kriyas. They are the spontaneous movement of the kundalini or shakti rising, which brings purification.
When the kundalini rises through the central canal, it pierces the six chakras and finally enters the crown where samadhi is experienced. During meditation one may experience inner spiritual sounds, tastes, smells, and visions. The visions come as certain colored lights, Gods and Goddesses, saints, holy rivers and mountains.
Baba Muktananda speaks of each of us having four bodies which he calls the gross physical body, the subtle body in which we dream, the causal body which is the body of deep sleep, and the supra-causal body which is the body of the superconscious.
The kundalini and shakti, as it rises, purifies and cleanses all four bodies. Baba Muktananda gives a fascinating account in his autobio-graphy, "Play of consciousness", of His experiences in meditation with these four bodies and much more.
He perceived these four bodies as four lights. The physical body is seen in his meditation as red light, the subtle body as a white light, the causal body as a black light, and the supracausal as a blue light. Every time He would meditate He would perceive these lines in succession, one within the other. The red light was the size of the physical body. The white light was thumb sized. the black light the size of a fingertip, the blue light the size of a sesame seed.
As the kundalini would rise, it would slowly, but surely purify the bodies, the sense organs, and the chakras, themselves, and deeply levels of meditation would be experienced. When the kundalini finally reaches the crown (which can take many, many years) there is a triangle, Baba says, that one sees, In the center triangle resides Shiva (God). This is the ultimate goal of the rising of the Kundalini.
Baba tells of His experience of seeing a brilliant light like that of a thousand suns when this experience occurred for Him. In the center of light as it quieted down he saw the "blue pearl". The blue pearl He describes as the Divine Light of consciousness, that dwells within every person. It is the actual form of the Self. It is the size of a sesame seed. The Infinite Universe is contained within it. The goal of meditation in the Siddha practice is to see this blue pearl, and ultimately to go inside it and merge with it. Within the blue pearl you will see the "Deity" you have personal devotion to, be it Jesus, Buddha, Sai Baba, Krishna, Rama, …Baba, at one point, experienced this blue pearl expand until it became the size of a human being. He saw a magnificent being made of shimmering blue light. This blue being gave Baba some advice and gave Him a blessing, and then reduced in size to the blue pearl and entered into Baba Muktananda. (It is interesting that Krishna was often seen as being a blue being in many of the accounts and pictures of Him).
As meditation is continued Baba says, the blue pearl will eventually explode, and its light will fill the universe, and you will have a direct experience of your as omnipresence as the Eternal Self. You will no longer identify yourself with physical body consciousness.
Baba had another experience where He also saw Himself, as the blue being inside the pearl. The blue person in Hindu scripture is seen as the one who grants realization of God within form. Shiva is seen as the blue Lord. This is the goal of the Siddha path.
The blue person is also known as the sphere of unmanifest light. The experience of this causes the feeling of Shivo’Ham (I am Shiva). When one’s vision has been completely purified, one can see oneself as a blue color in the crown chakra. One of the other interesting set of experiences That Baba had during meditation, besides seeing the lights and blue pearl, were of hearing the divine music or sounds. This is something that Paramahansa Yogananda has spoken of in His writings and also something I will speak of in great detail in the chapter on the science of soul travel.
Just as every body and/or dimension has a certain color of light frequency, each dimension, chakra and body has a certain divine sound. Some of the divine sounds that Baba heard in meditation were, the beating of waves, the roll of thunder, the rippling of a stream, the battle of a speeding train, the sound of an airplane in the distance, the crackle of a funeral pyre, the sound of a kettle drum, the sacred sound of a conch, honey bees, the calling of a peacock, the cries of the cuckoo and other birds, cymbals, or the flute.
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