Gayatri Prayer
Transcript:
And one of those pieces of knowledge that Swami Kaleshwar always kept on the table was the Gayatri mantra and the Shakti Gayatri mantra. He said many times that most of the ancient formulas and the Vedic traditions are well and good, but they’re not that effective right now on the planet for getting us where we want to go, but he said the Shakti Gayatri and the Gayatri never lost that. And actually when we hear the story of Vishvamitra in a minute then we’ll get some clues about why that was the case. I remember the first time I meditated, when I first met Swami in 1997 I didn’t know anything about India at all. You know, I would have been hard pressed to find it on a map if it was not labeled right. I didn’t know anything about the tradition at all. And I met Swami in Ojai, California, he taught The Five Elements there in his broken English and at the end of that program he invited everyone to come to South Central LA where he was staying and working (spiritual works), and he was doing a fire puja that night. And he said, but you have to know the Gayatri mantra. He made a condition, I thought maybe we were going to be tested or something on it. Of course, we weren’t tested on it, but all the way driving from Ojai to South Central, the person I was with and I, we just had this tape of the Gayatri and we just listened to it over and over trying to memorize that. And we did memorize that and that was the mantra that was used at that fire puja. Then, in my first trip to India we went to Shirdi (in Maharashtra state) on this power journey with Swami, it was my first trip to Shirdi too. And the first night we were there as a group Swami had us all come to the Dwarkamai and it was a very different situation in those days (compared to how it is now), it was totally open and empty. It was really sparsely populated and we just wandered in and kind of just arranged ourselves in certain places and he said everyone should meditate and he told everyone to meditate on the Shakti Gayatri or maybe it was just the Gayatri, I don’t remember which form of the Gayatri it was.
Ramakrishna: Just the Gayatri.
Nityaananda: Yeah, just he Gayatri. And then all these experiences started happening, it was like, it was quite remarkable.
I mean that’s Shirdi too, Baba is, Baba’s here, he makes a point of saying if you think I’m only in Shirdi then you don’t understand me at all, that is absolutely true. But he is definitely in Shirdi and if you want to know Baba, Shirdi is a place to get a good taste, even the most skeptical mind is, if you are awake and not too intoxicated in whatever way you’re going to find Baba there and Baba did that, you know, with all of these things. And then finally, and Swami was meditating with us, we’re doing the Gayatri and it was a moon, I think it was a full moon night. And then he said, he left and he said you can stay and meditate as long as you want. And I stayed as long as I could, and a few people did as well. And at a certain point in the meditation, it was hours of japa with the Gayatri in this really high power spot place. And at a certain point I noticed that if I paused in my repetition that picking up the silence where I wasn’t meditating anymore I heard another voice singing the mantra. And at first I thought that there must be some mistake, I don’t know, I’m dreaming, so I tested it a few times, you know I opened my eyes and looked around and then I closed my eyes and started doing the mantra and then stopped the mantra, and the voice would pick it up and then I’d start it again and then I would stop at a different place in the mantra and I would go slow, I would go fast, I mean I have a doctor’s mind you know, skeptical mind. But ultimately it was a proof for me of the consciousness, it was a woman’s voice singing that mantra, that makes sense, doesn’t it? And it was an initiation in a way, you know, the energy teaches itself, and so I’m a believer in the Gayatri mantra.