Gurus, Mantras and Initiations

I am fortunate enough to have been formally initiated into more than one mantra by different spiritual masters. There is an idea that you should only take one mantra but I found myself very drawn to all of the experiences I had and in my soul, I knew there were good choices for me.  Early in my yoga journey I had a burning desire to find a guru. All the yogic texts I was reading, and I was reading everything I could get my hands on,  said you needed one to guide you on your journey and oversee your kundalini awakening. At that time, the kundalini awakening was a focal point for me. When I went to the ashram for my yoga teacher certification I really didn’t know much about it. It seems I have a bit of a pattern of getting into things without that much information and I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. Sometimes we can talk ourselves out of things that would ultimately help us grow by over educating ourselves instead of just going and having an experience without too many ideas that aren't based on personal experience. A fellow yoga student took the training in a split session meaning that she went for two weeks and then came home and went back to finish a little later. She had quietly told me that she didn’t understand some of the things she was being asked to do like chanting certain slokas in the morning before meditation and all the attention given to the guru. She said it might be a cult. Later my older very christian sister told me how she was worried that I had gotten into a cult as well. I don’t judge her for being christian but she was very ready to judge what I was doing not based on much of anything. I didn’t think much of it because my soul knew this was right for me. I was committed to going for a month and even though I was a little anxious about it I knew it would be at least part of the change my whole life was calling for loud and clear. The first time I saw Swami Satchidananda I was mesmerized. I couldn't tell you why but I couldn't take my eyes off him. And everyone was fussing over him and treating him with such reverence and love and respect. I had never seen people act this way towards another human being. As he sat down to speak you could hear a pin drop in the room. He quietly looked all around the room as if he were acknowledging each and every soul there directly. He was 87 years old at the time. He undoubtedly made an indelible impact on the world with his teachings, his incredible use of the english language, his sense of humor and his enormous appeal to the youth of the 1960’s. He is often called the woodstock guru as he opened up that massive event telling the crowd “the whole world is watching you. The entire world is going to know what the american youth can do for humanity. America is helping in the material field but the time has come for America to help the whole world spiritually also.” He never told his followers that included a number of famous people like Peter Marx, Carole King, Johnny Winter and Laura Dern, not to use drugs. He knew that if they simply did the practices he taught that those habits would fall away. He attributed the drug use of the woodstock generation to their frustrations with failed institutions of many kinds. He said “they are all searching for the necklace that's around their necks, eventually they’ll look in the mirror and see it.” I didn’t know any of this when I went to the ashram for what was one of the most important months of my life. 

Getting to see him was a big deal. He lived in a house up on a hill that you could see from another location on the ashram property that is quite large and has a big shrine on the top of one hill that they call Kailash which is a famous place of spiritual pilgrimage in India. And as it turns out, I’ll be visiting this famous place later in 2021. It has an enormous dancing Shiva inside a little glassed building that spins around. It’s magnificent. I’ve been to ceremonies there with Krishna Das and many others. The vista from there is breathtaking and overlooks the Lotus shrine which is shaped like a giant lotus flower. Lotus stands for light of truth universal shrine. Inside are 10 sections for the major religions of the world. Each has a light that merges into a single light tube that goes up and exits out the top of the shrine. It is a powerful place that I still enjoy going to. The slogan is truth is one, paths are many. This was the first time I had ever experienced tolerance for other paths, points of views or religions. No religion was being taught there. Tolerance was being taught. Acceptance for perspectives and beliefs other than your own. How valuable is that? We still, as a planet have not learned this. Swamiji attracted a wide range of people from other faiths. He made a point of bringing together these leaders so the world could see how it was done. We still have not mastered this. But the impact this had on me changed me forever. If anyone asked Swamiji if he was a Hindu he would say he was an undo, that he felt no compulsion to connect himself with any path. That became my way of being. It was perfect as far as I was concerned. It allowed me to allow others to be on whatever path they chose and to celebrate that with them without needing them to be on “my path” for us to get along or have other things in common. What a powerful teaching. And these kinds of revelations just continued during my time there. 

Gurudev as he was affectionately known, loved cars. His family had an automobile business while he was growing up and one day a friend and I saw him driving down the road in his car. I thought to myself well at least he has a moment to himself there in his car all alone. Whenever he came around, people were all over him, showing their devotion, gratitude and admiration in all kinds of ways and I'm sure hoping to get their questions answered. I just watched. He wasn’t affected by it all that I could tell. He just allowed everyone to be as they were and accepted their attention with love. 

We were fortunate enough to receive our spiritual names from him and were the last group to have this honor. Receiving a spiritual name from a guru is a pretty big deal. It was offered to everyone but not a requirement. I’ll never forget that day as we all sat in his presence and he came to each person and gave them their name. My heart was racing as he looked squarely at me and said “Ganga. Hum.One who goes swiftly” Then he drilled a hole into my heart and put the name there. It was incredible. I didn’t know anything about this name except that for a while. But it is a highly significant name with great purpose and meaning. The river Ganges is called the Ganga. The Ganges river plays a significant role in Hinduism or Sanatana Dharma which means eternal duty. It is considered to be a crossing point between heaven and earth as well as the most sacred river. It is seen coming off of Shiva’s head as he agreed to soften the flow of her descent into the universe. She is called Ganga Ma and it is believed that you can bathe in her waters to cleanse your karma. But that karma is waiting in the trees as you exit so it’s not just that that is needed. I knew I had accepted the role as mother with my new young sons at home and I definitely wanted to go swiftly on this path. Who doesn’t? It’s very common to want to go as fast as possible right? But speed is not really possible unless many other factors are already in place. So those understandings satisfied me for many years until I came to understand another reason why I had been given that name. 

One year during Navaratri which is a very powerful nine days in reverence of the divine feminine, I was celebrating with a friend and we were singing a song called Mahishasura Mardini which is about Goddess coming in to conquer the forces of evil. It’s a long song and each night at a certain point, I would start crying and just cry and cry. On this particular evening just she and I were there and she told me before we started that she wanted me to really get all the crying out, that she was going to leave and let me have some privacy. So true to the pattern, I began to cry and she left and I whaled and sobbed until there was nothing left. And I quietly asked what all these tears were about once again. I had asked that question each night and not gotten an answer. I got up to drive home and on the way it suddenly struck me that I thought I had wasted a lot of time this life on things that didn’t really matter and I had some level of shame and guilt about that. And I thought that I had to go swiftly because I had wasted so much time. That was my perception. I am very hard on myself as many of us are. I know now that I am able to go swiftly because of what I understand about my existence from my previous lives. It’s not a statement about how much time I have wasted but about how much I already know. Integrating that is a valuable process I’m still in. Whenever I tell someone especially an Indian that my name is Ganga, they pause. Some ask me who gave me that name and I tell them. It’s a big name. It’s a lot to live up to as they say. But I embrace the opportunity that name represents and am humbled by it.

We were also given the chance to take what is called mantra initiation while I was receiving my yoga certification. Again, I really didn’t know what that meant and there wasn’t that much encouragement to do it or not do it. I read the information shared and felt strongly that it was something I needed to experience. 

Mantras are sacred sounds that have deep spiritual significance and have a direct impact on the physical body, mind and soul. They don't have any traditional meaning. The results it delivers are based on repetition of the sound. Mantras are meant to be experienced and used to reach higher possibilities of life. Mantras are consecrated by the guru that realized it. Today the word mantra is applied to many things but you can see this is not the true embodiment of these sacred phrases. About 8 of the 25 or so participants in the program decided to receive the mantra initiation. We were told that the guru’s energy would be shared with us in this sacred ceremony. We were asked to fast and wear white to the ceremony. It was a highly charged atmosphere as we all gathered in a place called Gurubhavan and sat down in a semicircle. One of the swaminis explained that we would be touched on the head from behind as we chanted the mantra. She said we may or may not feel anything but that we shouldnt have any concern about that. We all began chanting and closed our eyes. As I was touched I felt an electric charge shoot through my body. It startled me a little but it felt nurturing and peaceful. As the ceremony ended I remember being called into the woods where I wandered around with no direction or destination for several hours. It was quite a beautiful experience that I cherish. 

When you take a mantra from a guru you are agreeing to minimally say it a certain number of times every day. Each guru gives their own instructions to the devotee. A mala is used to count the number of times you say the mantra. A mala is traditionally 108 beads of some kind. There are many kinds of beads used to create malas and they each have their own unique properties that they bring to the process. Malas are not just pretty jewelry! And the one you use to count your mantra should not be worn in public or ever allowed to touch the ground. Some traditions teach that you should never even let someone else see your mala and they keep it in a special bag and count from inside the bag. The practice we agreed to involved singing some shlokas, and saying the mantra three malas which is 324 times. There were a couple other things as well. Another rule many traditions follow is that you do not talk about your spiritual practices with anyone else. They are considered sacred and private. So it is a big commitment to take a mantra from a guru. The guru is agreeing to guide your process. It  was very important to me that I had that support, wisdom and knowledge guiding my way. The texts make it clear how important a guru is. When I got home, I immediately set up a sacred place to do what I had agreed to do in taking the mantra initiation. It has served me extremely well and laid a very solid foundation for life. It’s really that simple. It prepares you for life and all the twists and turns that happen. It is always there and the deeper the relationship you develop with the mantra the more it is present throughout your day, not just when you are chanting which is called japa. 

As is often the case in America, we have taken this word mantra and turned it into any kind of positive phrase someone chooses to use to support themselves. I’m sorry but that’s just not what a mantra is. It’s great to create positive things to say that support you but they are not mantras. in the truest sense of the word.