A thief used to come and steal from Swami Sivananda’s ashram in Rishikesh. During a festival, the ashram was giving prasad in the form of blankets and other necessities to poor people living in the area.

The thief came to be given this prasad.

Prasad is tangible nourishment blessed in a ritual invoking a form of the Enlightened Self: a Guru or Deity.

Some residents of the Ashram came to Swami Sivananda and advised him not to give prasad to the thief. They felt that the thief had already taken many things; why should Swami Sivananda give him more? (more…)

A student from Oregon asks:

I have been feeling very neutral about everything (people, work, general things) as if I am just existing and these things (people, work, things) just happen around me. Is this normal? I first thought that I was falling sick and this was a reaction to that but so far I have not fallen sick and the neutral feeling has not gone away. Do you have any thoughts about this? (more…)

Real shamanism is about working directly with the elemental forces of nature and other beings in order to help people. Shamanism on its own is not a path of Self-realization, but the the shaman--as healer, divinator and mediator between worlds--is an honored person in all direct realization traditions.

Shamans are produced through a complex set of circumstances. A person is made a shaman by nature, not by workshop. No one who really understands the genesis and path of the shaman would undertake to dabble in it. The stakes are high, the birth process is often frightening and the responsibility is enormous.

I recently came across this wonderful documentary and am happy to be able to share it with Jaya Kula readers. The shaman who speaks here gives us a rare opportunity to enlarge our View of how humans, animals, other being and the forces of nature cooperate and communicate.

I bet many Jaya Kula readers won’t feel so jazzed about reading a post titled “Modesty.” Check in with yourself and see. Perhaps some of you are considering moving on right now, without clicking or reading. Modesty is, well, a modest topic. Maybe it’s even a little bit boring, you might feel. (more…)