The Power of Siddha Yoga: Path of the Heart

You don't have the software installed to listen to the audio excerpt. Download Adobe Flash Player and follow the prompts to install the player.

Excerpts from Lesson 1: The Path Opens Before You

Welcome to the Siddha Yoga Home Study Course —
           The Power of Siddha Yoga: Path of the Heart.

The Gurus of the Siddha Yoga lineage — Bhagavan Nityananda, Baba Muktananda, and Gurumayi Chidvilasananda — teach us that God dwells in every human heart.

The purpose of this course is to learn to access the heart’s wisdom and to express it in every aspect of your life.

To accomplish this, you will be doing what students of enlightened masters have done throughout the ages. You will walk the path laid out by the Guru — a path of teachings and practices enlivened by the Guru’s grace.

Over the coming months, you will study and learn to put into action five essential Siddha Yoga teachings. Each teaching conveys the very essence and power of the Siddha Yoga path, the knowledge and experience of the Self. And each teaching guides you to your own essence, the heart of your being, and the treasures that abide there.

As you explore teachings from Bhagavan Nityananda, Baba Muktananda, and Gurumayi, you’ll learn to penetrate their meaning on subtler and subtler levels. You’ll contemplate and meditate on the Guru’s words. In time, the teachings will become part of you, assimilated into the fabric of your being, and expressed through your words and actions. As this happens, you will see your life becoming a manifestation of the wisdom that you’ve received from the Siddha Masters and made your own. You will experience directly The Power of Siddha Yoga: Path of the Heart.

As I prepared to write this lesson and to explore the Guru’s teachings with Siddha Yoga students around the world, I contemplated my own experience of The Power of Siddha Yoga: Path of the Heart.

Again and again, my mind came back to words of Gurumayi and Baba that have guided every aspect of my life for the past thirty-five years —words that are utterly priceless to me. Following their teachings has brought greater meaning and purpose to my life than I ever imagined possible.

I remember the first time I heard Baba Muktananda speaking. At one point, in one of his characteristic ways of illustrating a teaching, Baba began to sing a verse from a poet-saint of India. As I listened, Baba’s voice seemed to reverberate in my own chest and throat.

Why do you wander looking from forest to forest
when He dwells in your own heart?
This one looks in the East, that one in the West.
Without the Guru you cannot find Him.¹

Baba was singing about something I had never heard of. And yet, deep inside, I knew that it was the truth. He was teaching that God was in my heart and that I could know Him there. This was completely revolutionary for me. And it was what I had been seeking for many years — the true purpose and meaning of my life.

Baba moved on to other cities, other countries. Yet he remained very present for me in the form of his teachings. As I read Baba’s books and reflected on his words, I came to understand more completely what I had heard him sing. I recognized that after years of restless wandering, looking for something I could not name, I had found my spiritual master. He had unlocked a great force within me, my own innate power. And now his words were teaching me how to align every aspect of my life with that awakened power.

Since then, as I follow Gurumayi’s and Baba’s teachings, I continue to access inner resources I never imagined I had, and to put them into action. I’ve discovered within myself the courage and wisdom to transcend self-imposed limitations, to share love and joy with others, and to step forward in service. I’ve seen myself becoming more light-hearted and steady, happier, and more free.

The teachings I’m speaking about are the teachings that Gurumayi and Baba have made available to great numbers of people throughout the world —teachings that have been printed in their books and translated into many languages. And yet, their inner meaning and liberating power can only become fully apparent when we take them into our being and start to apply them. Then these teachings come alive for us. And it is then that we understand how priceless they are and how fortunate we are to have them.

¹Manpuri, an 18th century saint of Daulatabad, India.