When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. When you are finally open to learning new things, your world opens up. This doesn’t have to be literal; “a teacher” can just be your mind, expanded. My teachers manifested as an amazing man and a powerful place that changed me forever.
A close friend died a few years ago, and I was abruptly forced to understand my own mortality. I felt for the first time the selfishness of my existence. I woke up one day and realized that the life I was living was not all that it could be. I realized that there was something more going on, but I didn’t know what it was.
Gripped with this inner turmoil, I found myself checking out a yoga studio I had never been to before. They were playing a movie about Swami Satchidananda, a yogi from India who came to the United States in the 1960s and started a revolution. He taught peace and harmony among all religions and people. He started an ashram in Virginia. An ashram is a spiritual community of people living and learning together, normally studying under one guru. I was immediately enchanted by this man. He had a joyful presence that was infectious, even through a videotape. A few days later, I was on a bus heading to the ashram in Virginia, Yogaville.
I studied at Yogaville for almost three months. I spent my days meditating, doing yoga and studying ancient scriptures. Everyone there was so open, so honest. There was no judgment, and fear was addressed head on. There were far-out hippie types, but there were average people, too — people who just wanted to connect to something beyond themselves, people who had lost their faith and wanted to find it again. There were Catholics, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists, and those who followed “faiths still unknown.”
That was the beautiful thing about studying at Yogaville. I could call it Jesus, Shiva, the non-self, the universe, God. It didn’t matter. One of Satchidananda’s main beliefs was that we are all one. Those who study the teachings of Satchidananda can follow any religion and perform any rites or rituals, as long as they bring peace.
I call it the universe-energy. There was a cook who called it stardust, a self-proclaimed “Jesus freak,” and my roommate, who loved Mother Earth. But we were after the same thing. We would go to religious ceremonies together in the Light of Universal Truth Shrine, which contains altars for all faiths.
Satchidananda did a lot of ecumenical work in his lifetime, pushing tirelessly for interfaith cooperation. I saw it in practice. It works. We can live and worship together, being of different faiths. Satchidananda recognized that there is one “god,” and that god resides in all of us. He wanted us to recognize our “essential oneness.” I learned a Hindu prayer at Yogaville, which ended: “May the entire universe be filled with peace and joy, love and light!” This is what Swami Satchidananda and the people at Yogaville strive for. This is what I learned is possible.
J. Karin Curley can be reached at [email protected]
