Have you seen the Paramahamsa?

In the last article of 2018, I like to share a beautiful story told by His Divine Holiness, Paramahamsa Nithyananda (fondly known as Swamiji). It is a story about a Paramahamsa and the fish.

Paramahamsa means ‘great swan’. A Paramahamsa swan is special because it never touches the ground! It only flies in the open sky, never touching the dust and dirt of the earth. Even when the Paramahamsa swan lays its eggs, the egg drops from the sky and hatches in the mid-air and the baby swan flies out before the egg touches the ground. As per the Hindu scriptures, the Paramahamsa swan is the symbol of the enlightened being who always flies in the enlightened space and can never be caught in anything worldly.

There was a Paramahamsa swan who was flying over a lake, and its reflection fell on the lake below. When the reflection fell on the water, the fish in the lake started jumping, “Oh, a new big fish has come, a new big fish has come!’, and they went around the reflection, admiring it. Some fish started jumping on the swan’s reflection, some fish started dancing around the swan’s reflection, and some fish started making a fence in the water, saying, “This is the ashram for the big fish!’ Some fish started finding ways to get close to the ‘big fish’. Some fish started crying, ‘Oh, this big fish is so loving, so caring, so graceful and so beautiful!’ Some other fish started jumping to the other side and saying, ‘No, this fish is not paying attention to me at all. It is not at all loving and caring!’ Some fish started saying good things about the reflection and some fish started saying bad things about the reflection. Some fish started creating a place for the ‘big fish’ to live; some fish even threw a few stones at it.
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Get out of Apasmara – Forgetfulness

If you were to distil all the suffering of humanity to one key reason, do you know what would it be?

I’ve discovered that it is the problem of forgetfulness (Apasmara in Sanskrit). When I first heard this word in 2012 from my Guru who is a living Avatar, his name is called Paramahamsa Nithyananda (fondly known as Swamiji), I didn’t quite grasp its meaning fully. It was only when I started to cognize it myself in my life and recently after having worked with many seekers that I began to understand the illusion (Maya) of forgetfulness. Be it sickness to health, depression to enlightenment, poverty to wealth, business failures to success, leaving spiritual seeking or going through the ups and downs of life, the root cause of these struggles in us is forgetfulness of our original state, space and powers as the Super consciousness, Paramashiva.

In Vedic tradition, Smaranath means liberation. Right remembrance liberates, Smaranath Mukthi. The remembrance of the right powerful cognitions is all that we need to bring liberation. One such powerful cognition that I learned from Swamiji is life is a continuous rhythm.

Here’s a small story!
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Life is a Guru

How do you respond to life whenever something traumatic happens to you?
Do you ask WHY?
Do you fall into guilt or depression?

In the first 5 months after my return from India, I have been undergoing major changes in my life which shook the very core of my being – everything which once gave me the false security were removed from my life. I plunged into a state of utter insecurity, but it only took me a few days to crawl out of this black hole of Maya (illusion).

I remembered one lesson I learned from my Guru, His Holiness Paramahamsa Nithyananda, a living incarnation (fondly known as Swamiji) when he had a compound fracture in his right hand after a horse-riding accident in 2011. He didn’t experience any pain because he never look back. He explained that whatever happened is a time shaft. Time shaft should not be looked back, no post-mortem. Either look at the time with complete acceptance or gratitude. He looked at Kalabhairava (Lord of Time) only with gratitude.

He said “Kalabhairava is Guru (dispeller of darkness). Life is a Guru. Don’t look at life with a ‘WHY’. A ‘WHY’ towards life always brings suffering. ‘WHY’ does not give answers. It gives only more and more suffering. So, look at life with either complete acceptance or gratitude.

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