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The
Progress Index, Volume 129 No. 287, April21,1995 By
MICHAEL GROSSMAN COLONIAL HEIGHT — Swami Shuddhananda Brahmachari slowly and distinctly explains cosmic consciousness — the awareness of all little sparks of energy which come together to form life. "Every single experience of our life, if we can elevate it to awareness and consciousness, we can try to unite it with cosmic consciousness," he said. "Everything animate and inanimate, ultimately all matter, dissolves into energy, and spirit and energy into consciousness," he added." This is the path of yoga and meditation. "People are unhappy because they have lost touch with this cosmic consciousness and become too narrow, limited and selfish. To us, everything is a divine manifestation : the fire, the air, the ether, the water, the earth." Born in 1949 in Calcutta, Swami Shuddhananda has devoted his life to his work in raising consciousness. For four days this week, his work brought him to stay at a home in Colonial Heights and speak at Virginia State University. "My purpose is basically for peace and harmony and understanding of the peoples of the world," he said. "Over all, we need to work for those who are poor, underprivileged, under-nourished, illiterate and bring hope to their life through education." Shuddhananda defined education not as just schooling, but a life-long commitment to learning. "The purpose of human life is self-realization and we human beings are born in this world to share love, compassion and harmony with everyone and the whole environment so that there is no place for hatred, distrust, violence and human degradation of values. Shuddhananda said when he was young, he wanted to learn what he terned "the truth." While beginning college at age 16 or 17, Swami Shuddhananda said he met a saint in India. "From the moment I came in touch with him, the inner-transformity started," he said. At age 22, the saint led Shuddhananda into the path of yoga. He worked as professor of commerce at Hyderabad University in India until he was was 26 years old. "At age 27 I renounced the worldly life and jointed the order of monks," he said. "Since then it has been the life dedicated in the service of the suffering children of God." Since 1990, he has been visiting the United States as well as Canada, England and Germany. "The whole idea is if we please the Gods, the Gods please us," Swami Shuddhananda said. "If I offer myself to the divine the divine also offers Himself to me" This communication of offering is done through prayer and meditation, including performing a fire ritual every morning. Meditations, however, are not limited to just when sitting during a ritual. "When I do my work, when I move, it is always with me, moment to moment," he said. Included in his work was founding the Lokenath Divine Life Mission in 1985. Through this and other projects, Swami Shuddhananda has adopted 55 villages in remote parts of eastern India and also 40 slums in Calcutta. Shuddhananda said the work in the villages begins at the grass roots level to help raise awareness to literacy, health and economical, environmental and ecological programs. In a video showing several of the villages, children play in sandboxes, swing on swings, paint and begin basic reading. "They were scared to go to school," he said. "Now education is fun for them." His tours through Europe and North America help fund the programs Shuddhananda stressed the work was not charity."This work doesn’t involve distributing food and clothing but all possible education and trainings and inputs by which children can be truly educated and men and women earn for themselves," he said. "If the family values — the responsibility of the parents toward the children and the children’s responsibility to their parents — are not properly defined and put into practice you cannot have a stable society," he said. " The child who doesn’t get the love of the father or the love of the mother is a deprived child from the beginning of life and will be in the course of time a problem for society. "If husband and wife are father and mother, then the love of the father and the love of the mother would blossom in the heart of the child as love for others," he continued. "That child will grow up to be an adult who in turn will be a wonderful father or mother and bring stability to the society. "If in America this value system is not rightly understood and practiced, the future will be quite gloomy." "My suggestion would be for people of America, through prayer and meditation in the path of their own religion, they should have true faith in God and tolerance in life," he said. "Here I find people have everything but faith in oneself. Janeshwar Upadhyay, a Colonial Heights resident and VSU professor who Shuddhananda was staying with, agree. "Every person has their own nature, that is their religion. They have the path, but they don’t know how to walk on it." Shuddhananda said people need to have a spiritual goal in life. "We have to have the understanding that human life is to achieve God realization or the realization of cosmic consciousness." As for Colonial Heights, the swami described the city as a "lovely, small little town. So peaceful. A lot of birds and the blessings of Mother Nature."
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