Divine Jennifer: Namastey!
I have received your emails with all your news and I was very happy to get caught up on all your latest adventure. I want to thank you for the book The Yogi and the time, trouble and expense you went to get it to me. It is very valuable, also because it shed quite a bit of light on Swami Sivananda. I feel you are organizing your life with a Yogic core, and that pleases me. You are dear to us! Hariharan got married to Patrizia on September 16 and they are both here in the Ashram. Hariharan is becoming beautifully refined. You would be most welcome to join us for the Yoga Festival. We have a great group this year - very diverse in all aspects. Thank you for sharing the photo of your apartment. It will be your own little Ashrama. I really feel happy with the report of your activities, that you are teaching - learning (both are the same). I am also pleased with your effort to connect with Swamiji. I was sure he loves receiving your sun salute! Thank you for your loving and affectionate thought. You know I have a profound interest in you - especially in the “Real Jennifer” who manifested in all her glory on her graduation day. That was a great experience for me - one imprinted deeply and sweetly in my heart. Below some general news. Sit in your lovely apartment with a nice hot cup of tea and catch up on Ashram news. By the way, your Yoga Life expired on June 2005. I will extend it one year to June 2006 to compensate you for your expenses in sending me the book.
It is hard to believe that my 62nd birthday came and went more than six weeks ago and I still have not thanked all those who remembered and sent their very best wishes to me on that anniversary of my entrance into this present body so long ago, exactly half way around the world (you could drill a hole in a globe at Pondicherry and come out exactly at Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA where I was born. Half way across the globe, on a cold autumn day. First of my mother’s twelve children, would anyone have predicted the strange trajectory my karmic forces would propel me through. Definitely, it is better not to know the future in advance. It is much easier to digest it day by day! The days since September 13th have fled so fast - past of the reason being the arrival of little Anandraj into our midst. A darling little boy who is the centre stage of our lives right now! A new routine has to be constructed with not only a physical baby in our Ashram but also sixteen spiritual babies who have joined us for the six month course. We have an excellent group this year, and all have made it successfully through the first, most difficult month of adjustments on so may levels and cleansings. So, time is collapsed (as they say in physics) and perhaps space as well. My office desk is a metre high with papers and books, as I also struggle simultaneously to continue at least token work on my “History of Yoga from Ancient to Modern Times”. I have finally finished up to the period 2005 in a general sense The last chapter to write is a general survey of the Yoga scene in the West. There are so many self proclaimed Gurus right now, whose fame is fueled by advertisements, that this may prove somewhat difficult. I will do my best! Ananda and I already did the general survey of Indian Yoga teachers, which was published in YOGA LIFE last year. I would like to do the same thing for the Western teachers, but of course, that is so vast, it is a book in itself!
We have had excellent weather, some rain, but not enough to make us gloomy, just enough to recharge the water table and to freshen up the garden. We are building a small circular Mantra Hall in the back garden, because I needed a place to install the lovely one-foot-high granite statue of Patanjali I found on a trip to Mahabalipuram! I had planned just to build a thatched hut but it has evolved into a pucca tiled roof circular building! The construction (destruction) of the city center goes on. We have had to tear down a lot in order to re-build! It gets frightening! Fortunately, with the new building we have been able to shift all the classes there. Our new building is much more spacious than I had thought! Still, all this disruption does have an unsettling effect.
Ananda is super busy. He may have to take a leaf from his own book on “Yoga for Stress” soon. He is working with Auroville Health Services and travels to the villages to treat patients, sometimes 50 patients per day. He teaches the Mantra-Yantra class daily, all Yoga and dance classes for seniors at the City Centre, handles all my email, has actively organized the new Pondy Music and Dance Artistes Association, runs the Pondy Yogasana Association, teaches weekends at the Community College Yoga course, his own clinic twice a week on Tuesday and Thursday at City Centre, is making a DVD on Mudras since the producer of his DVD on Pranayama were so happy with it - plus, he is a new (Anandraj) and old (Dhivya Priya) Father! Too much! Whatever, he has to find some balance! Yet all this work is extremely useful and his talents are getting exercised to the full.
Devasena is fine, doing her best to nourish the new little creature which has chosen to be born to her. She has to juggle Dhivya, Anandraj, supervise staff, teach Sanskrit, Dance and Yoga - so she also has her hands full!
But we are fortunate that all of our work has a deeper higher meaning than sheer survival (of body or ego). It does evolve us, it does make us grow, it does stretch our spiritual skin. Swamiji has made sure that we do not have idle hands or idle minds.
We celebrate Diwali on November 1st, the Festival of Lights. We light 108 oil lamps and put them around the Ashram, wear new clothes, chant shanti Mantra as we walk around the Ashram, eat good food, and make a mental resolution to strive for enlightenment.
May all open to that Divine Light! May it penetrate every corner of our consciousness! May we see Reality! With Guru’s grace, may the Light of Wisdom dispel the darkness of our ignorance.
Affectionately yours in Yoga,
AMMA
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