Yoga means unification 'union' and with meditation you can learn to experience this unity on a deep level, inner silence and infinite peace. To learn this we need a good Master teacher, who knows the way and has gone the way himself.
A teacher in meditation can help you in your spiritual development and is necessary for pure energy transmission to find the path to your heart, the silence of the mind, and to deepen your spiritual process. It is a search for most people to find their connection to a personal yoga master and experience which tradition over lifetimes maintains the most important connection for you and helps you in your further spiritual development.
A master who has achieved a certain state of self-realization in this unification is called a yoga master or guru. Gurus are rare in this world and their 'being' on this earth is very special. I would like to tell you about my experiences ...
On my path I have encountered several masters. Around age 20 I was given some books by Sai Baba by my father, although my father himself did not believe in Spiritual masters he bought these books for me and I read them... I didn't have the physical strength to travel in those years, but a little later in life I felt individually drawn to start with meditation. Several years ended up going by there before I really found the spirit to do my meditations on a deeper level. When I started meditation on 'being of service' then things moved quickly, I received a call from a Tibetan nun as you may have read, and experienced the divine opening of light when I met her at the entrance of the Boddhanat temple in Kathmandu. In my quest after this initiation to integrate the light deeper into my body, I met the kundalini yoga teacher Gurbatschan in 2006. He invited me to his home, but he told me he could not teach me much, that my heart was already opened at a high level. I felt some disapointment, but not long after, I felt the power from within to deepen my process and for two months I was in a state of silence, deep meditation - an experience of trance and cosmic awareness. I received inspirations, visions and information.
During this period we sold our house and since we couldn't move into our next house yet, we put our belongings in storage for a period, then we traveled for almost two months and went to Switzerland to camp in the mountains with our three children. During a storm, we got shelter in an apartment with a Swiss woman and she reached out to me the book written by Paramahansa Yogananda. As soon as I received the book “Autobiography of a Yogi” in my hands, I again experienced the transcedental state of breathlessness, just as I had experienced it after the initiation of the Tibetan nun, and a deep inner peace came over me. I knew I had found a home. I immersed myself and began the original exercises and teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda's Kriya Yoga from the SRF in Los Angeles.
Shortly thereafter, I came into contact with Prema Baba Swamiji. At first I had doubts about taking on Prema Baba as a master teacher as well, since I had found my home with the SRF - Kriya Yoga. The same day I turned deep into meditation and received a beautiful vision of Paramahansa Yogananda, who was clearly visible in our bedroom and spoke to me. He told me about the importance of the special energy transmissions that Prema Baba could give me directly in the lineage of Babaji. That it was an opportunity I had waited many lifetimes for and that the intention was that I would be Prema Baba's disciple and accept him as my personal Master and stay with him. I had found my personal teacher, guru, on earth and was grateful for the tremendous deepening of my process and the connections and energy, the Prema Shakti of Babaji, to receive directly from Prema Baba. For the first few years Baba worked with me remotely, guiding me by phone and online for many years and reaching out to me with his teachings and initiations on many levels. His teachings and personal worldly approach have been of unprecedented value to my process and development. To experience a guru like Prema Baba up close, the divine experience in a human body has been very special and enriching in my process of trust and my spiritual development.
In the following years my process deepened, but I was also frequently sick, my entire body had to undergo the transformations to the higher light frequency. During our first trip to Mount Shasta in 2011, I received a particularly life-like vision of the Divine Mother Amma, Amritananda Mayi Devi, where she held and nurtured me in a lake like a baby. Then we visited her and a deep loving relationship developed. She is an avatar on earth, mercy itself, an inspiration and a beacon of light for many in this world.
In the Chinese tradition in earlier years I met Master Lin Ji (Lin Dzi), she is a great Qigong master and radiated a visible light when practicing Qigong. Through meeting her, I understood the power of nature and the confidence that we can experience and express inwardly in simplicity and through body exercises. She gave me a special transmission of energy.
The Masters work together
All highly evolved masters are deeply connected and work from the same field of light and communicate with each other in this field. They all carry their own unique quality to earth, having first gone through deep inner transformations. Some masters work more personally, others more for large groups or at a distance. Some very earthly, others in silence. A personal relationship helps to better understand the concept of the guru, and being faithful to your original teacher helps to deepen and integrate the whole into your life, but essentially you can receive from any guru.
There are also so-called levels, but they are all so divine that you can't imagine exactly what that means, and it is better not to compare gurus, masters, with each other, because they all have their unique quality and comparing them could disturb your relationship with them.
It is unique when people can receive the techniques and darshan (personal spiritual insight) from a true meditation master and remain faithful to following their meditation practice, no matter what you encounter internally.
A master can help you in your development needed to stay on your path and deepen spiritually. It is a quest for most people to find the connection back with their personal master and to experience which tradition over lifetimes maintains the most important connection for you, that connection helps you in your development and allows you to experience which path is best for you, regardless of which master you are currently learning from.
On my path, I have encountered several masters. Around the age of 20 I was given some books of Sai Baba by my father, later I read the book “Seven Days of Shirdy Sai” and also read it, sometimes slightly adapted, to my children.
When I began the Kriya Yoga of Paramahansa Yogananda, shortly thereafter I came in contact with Prema Baba Swamiji, in whom I had found my personal companion as a master. I felt very grateful for the tremendous deepening of my process and the opportunity to receive Babaji's connections and energy directly from Prema Baba. All Gurus have a different approach and I found out over the years that they know each other's insights and the deepening processes, even when devotees receive the guidance of more than one Guru.
A number of synchronicities occurred over the years, through which I understood that one Guru can speak to me through the other from the same field of love and light about the future, present or past and that they communicate telepathically with each other.
On one occasion when I was close to Mother Amma's stage and approached her for darshan I suddenly felt from nowhere the desire to ask her for a spiritual name. As soon as she took me in her arms, she started saying something that I understood as “O shan ...o shan...”. I forgot that I had asked for a name and thought of my son and thought she said “O son, o son.” As soon as darshan was over, she held me for a while and she smiled at me so exuberantly, she smiled completely. She looked so happy and stared straight into my eyes for a moment, so deep that I felt overwhelmed by her love and beauty. As soon as I walked to the back and sat down in the spot she indicated to me on the stage, I remembered that I had asked for a name, but I thought I didn't receive it.
When I came home two weeks later and attended a satsang of Prema Baba Swamiji, he unexpectedly asked me during the livestream with the group if I wanted to announce my spiritual name, although I had not spoken to him about asking Amma this question. I was perplexed and too surprised to speak in English at that moment ... a few minutes after the satsang, I wrote Baba an e-mail and asked him, “Then what is my name?” and he wrote me “Babaji calls you: Oshianna” (he described the pronunciation and emphasis as Oceana) and at that moment what Amma had whispered lovingly in an Indian accent in my ear a few times thousands of miles away came clearly to my mind ...