Baba Muktananda -The first hundred years

by Mark Edwards

My connection with Baba began in the 1970s at a satsang at the Fremantle Pottery Studio of Joan Campbell. Campbell, who had visited Baba in India, was clearly deeply affected by him. Her rustic pottery studio was adorned with photographs of Baba and his guru. The combination of incense, puja items and the beautiful chanting while sitting cross legged on the floor created an exotic and mysterious ambience which was at once both foreign and oddly familiar.

A deep curiosity about Baba was evoked and within few years I found myself sitting in an Indian bus, travelling down the dusty, bumpy road leading to his ashram. My initial visit to Baba’s ashram opened me in a way I could never have imagined, redefining my most fundamental ideas about who I was.

Baba’s central teaching that true spiritual progress occurs through the grace of a Guru raises the thorny issue of how to distinguish a true Guru from an ordinary teacher. According to Baba, a mark of true Guru is that he causes an internal revolution in the seeker.  This inner revolution can be a challenging and unsettling process. While it may include peak experiences of blissful clarity and expanded consciousness, a range of confronting emotional and psychological experiences are also commonly reported.

When asked what was more effective for spiritual development, intense austerities or spending time with the Guru, Baba laughingly replied that spending time with the Guru is the most intense austerity. While Baba was perhaps being flippant with this answer, it is certainly true that being with Baba was a rich experience but not easy. It is difficult to define why it was so challenging. Certainly Baba demanded adherence to discipline. One Australian who visited Ganeshpuri in the 1970s returned describing the ashram as a spiritual concentration camp. Baba joked that he was known as the ‘military swami’ because of the intense discipline he demanded.

But in my experience, the discipline was not the hardest thing. Certainly being in India required adjustment but that too was manageable. No, for me, the greatest challenge was the unending intensity of the inner process precipitated by Baba’s company. It was as though so much went on inside during every day in the ashram that often it felt almost unbearable while, simultaneously, it seemed the most extraordinary, compelling and worthwhile experience I could ever hope for.

While being tossed around by this extraordinary inner process, the daily contact with Baba played a special transformative role, offering hope, inspiration and love all in one. There were many aspects to Baba. Sometimes he would sit silently radiating a stillness and awesome other worldly power.  In those moments, it was as though he had ceased to be human. But there was also the warm affectionate Baba of intimate moments, laughing and joking, putting people at ease with childlike delight.

Darshan times with Baba involved an unmistakeable element of adventure. I never knew which aspect of him to expect. Walking towards Baba, it felt like something was being stripped away, creating a psychological nakedness with nowhere to hide. Baba seemed to see through me, ignoring the personality I thought I was and connecting directly with something more real. Usually he did this without saying a word.

Baba seemed unfailingly to respond directly to my inner state. If I was contracted or fearful as I approached him, Baba would look away, perhaps to study a book or to inspect a possible blemish on the floor; anything but look at me or acknowledge me. On other days when I was in an expanded and open emotional state he would smile broadly, nod and look directly into my eyes. It seemed like a continual reinforcement of his teaching that the world is as we see it; that the only change required is to our inner perception.

Being with Baba, a plethora of teachings would continually spill forth. He had a wide knowledge of yoga and its various traditions and philosophies and was also conversant with Ayuruvedic medicine. He spoke and wrote about a range of practices and approaches to sadhana, and he was insistent about the effort we should make. From this array of teachings, one central plank seemed to stand out, namely that we should meditate every day.  This became the one enduring teaching from my time with Baba.

Looking back, it has indeed been a great blessing. As my life unfolded; marriage, babies, career, mortgages and all the other stuff, this central teaching stayed fresh. Daily I would set aside time to meditate. Meditation became my inner refuge, a place to return to, to connect with something deeper inside and to stoke the process commenced by that initial contact with Baba.

Whether Baba initiated the meditation revolution he intended, I can’t say. For myself, my first visit to his ashram initiated an inner revolution inspiring me to turn within, a practice reinforced by an enduring reverence for Baba and the lineage he represents. Gauging from the level of enthusiasm and energy generated around the world by his centenary celebrations, I would say Baba’s impact on the world is by no means spent.

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