Enlightenment is a deeply personal and intensely spiritual process and comes through self awakening. This awakening then needs to be channelizedto the path of emancipation through the guidance and advice of gurus or the already enlightened ones.
In our quest for such elevated entities we often end up spending huge amount of money on self proclaimed ‘Baba’s or ‘Gurumata’s. We also do not hesitate to spend hours in sessions or at seminars, listening to their finely-crafted words and emotionally evocativeexcerpts, often between bites of a freshly-prepared crudité tray.
Now consider this. ASannyasi, who left the rarefied air of Stanford University and California, nearly 25 years ago to live the life of a renunciant at a quaint ashram on the banks of the river Ganga, effortlessly enumerating the most-profound and most-comprehensive words of wisdom!
And, what if her deeply inspiring words are impeccably penned in a divinely-inspired book available for less than the overly-inflated price of some celery sticks and Ranch dressing, often brazenly flaunted at a seaside resort?
MeetSadhvi Bhagawati Saraswatiji, and her less-than-a-gnosh-at-the-shore book Come Home to Yourself: Wisdom for Life from the Parmarth Niketan Ashram.
The book chronicles her spiritual journey thus –
“Twenty-three years agoI moved into Parmarth Niketan ashram for one week. It was the second week of my backpacking trip to India in September, 1996. I was 25 years old, and I had taken a semester off from my PhD program in California to travel abroad. The unanticipated, indescribable experience of spiritual awakening that I had on the banks of the Ganga River was richer, deeper and more meaningful than anything I had ever known.”
“In India, at the feet of my Guru, Pujya Swami Chidanand Saraswatiji, and steeped in a spiritual culture that emphasizes content over form, essence over packaging, I began to have a glimpse of what wisdom looks like. We only learn about life through living – through living with focused awareness on essence, on content, on life in the depth of the ocean rather than in the frenetic undulation of the waves on the surface. Wisdom is what emerges from the Source within ourselves when we are quiet and still enough to create a space for it.” – continues the liberated soul.
Armed with deep spiritual awakening and complete awareness of the human soul and purpose, Sadhviji started teaching and sharing her newly-acquired wisdom in public appearances and satsangs, spiritual question-and-answer sessions. Today her sessions hosted each evening at Parmarth Niketan, are attended by captivated audience from across the country.
“People ask questions in person or send them in advance by email or via social media. I am humbled every evening by the gratitude in the eyes of the audience. I am deeply aware that, as they are grateful to me for being the vehicle of wisdom, so am I grateful to God for blessing me with the opportunity to be this vehicle,”she shares.
“I don’t know the answers. They are not generated within me. Rather, through the grace of God and the blessings of Mother Ganga and my Guru, the answers come through me. What each person needs to hear at a given time and in a particular way simply flows through me, by Grace. To be used as a vehicle for this flow of graceful wisdom is the greatest blessing in my life,” adds the emancipated one.
The pages of this book are replete with direct transcriptions of satsangs, this illuminated mind has held over the years. What makes the book unique is that the pages are not filled with mere teachings of Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswatiji which one breezes through and feel momentarily charged with higher thoughts. The book actually becomes a manual for what we call -‘every day simple living and high thinking’.The book has the rare potential to touch, to transmit and to transform.
Read it to let Sadhviji’s words carry you to the banks of Mother Ganga in Rishikesh, and to the source of truth within yourself. The truth from which she so spectacularlyspeaks!
Towards light always!
