This is My Goal

Evelina Kukudova, Bulgaria

Dear Swami Niranjanananda Saraswati, I address you with the utmost respect and good feelings.

I want to express my gratitude for your Message of Bihar School of Yoga on the 7th International Yoga Day 2021. For me personally, it has had a great impact, an impact on my thoughts, my choices and my actions.

My daily life is simple but dictated by the rhythm of the modern world. The day is hectic and dynamic, work, children, family responsibilities. It is accelerated by the expectations of the employer for rapid growth and implementation, with a growing desire to gain market share and make a profit; the school requirements for increasing intensity of the curriculum and extracurricular activities for children; the whole society’s greater aspirations for possession and pleasure. The world around me is changing so fast that my world is spinning.

When I was little, famous people developed services and products and worked to provide them to more people. That made them rich over the years, very rich. Nowadays, famous and rich people have other goals – to invest in space development and to cross the boundaries of the planet Earth, expanding their holdings by putting their brand on other planets.

It changed everyone’s lives completely. Now I am quite grown up, I have my own family, home, enough food and I make efforts to raise and educate my children, and for all of us to be healthy. Written like that, it should make me a happy person, but I can’t say such a thing. I feel that something in my life is missing and I’m restless – something is wrong in the society in which I live. The pace that is imposed on our everyday life by the employer, by the media, politics, by the public frame of mind is not in the right direction. Years ago, I stopped following the media, but that didn't help much because society is soaked with them.

And here I can say that my salvation is yoga. Yoga, which has been going deeper and deeper into my world for more than a decade and ennobles my mind. It sets aside nooks in it that become an oasis of salvation and stability of emotion.

It is precisely in this world of yoga that I make an effort and strive to get a balance within myself, in my perceptions of the world, in my understanding of what is happening around me, to find a way to maintain my health and sobriety of mind given to me by the Lord. I don’t know if I will be able to develop it, but at least I’ll try not to make it worse.

The paths of yoga and Vedanta are very deep and all encompassing to my simple human mind, and it is impossible to read all the scriptures within one lifetime, let alone understand them. But it turned out that my mind feels calm only when devoted to yoga and ancient teachings. Spirituality gives meaning to my life. This is the moment to express my great appreciation to you, Swami Niranjanananda Saraswati, as a guru who inspires energy and life for us humans, so that we can perceive and apply the teachings of Swami Sivananda, developed and synthesized by Sri Swamiji in the Bihar School tradition.

The Yoga Capsule given to us by you during the pandemic and lock-down, in these difficult times, has become a blessing! The daily practices conducted in the system and the sequence you provided gave us perseverance, discipline, strength to control at least a little bit of our perceptions, understanding of our actions and confidence that we make an effort to follow the right path. Following the Yoga Capsule, yoga ceased to be just a practice and grew into something more. It grew into a little seed that nested in our daily thoughts and began to develop. This little seed began to change me, to lead me to the next step, to another stage – another moment. Daily sadhana turned me inward, deep inside me, revealed a different world of light, turned off the earth’s noise, and captivated me for life.

The articles in the monthly magazines that you provide so generously, e-books, e-prasad, for me is an invaluable treasure – a source of knowledge and wisdom. Mahamrityunjaya havan gives us a chance to follow the tradition maintained by the inhabitants of Ganga Darshan, thus strengthening our connection with the spiritual home thousands, millions of kilometres away, sitting in our homes.

All this leads us to internal changes, fundamental changes. Tapping into ancient knowledge made me restless and turned my views, feelings, emotions, and my perception of the world. It awakened a desire in me to bring together the Five Divine Nectars of distinction, detachment, balance, determination and clarity of mind. Please Guru pour them into me.

I am very grateful for the article Basant Panchami published in the May 2021 issue of YOGA magazine. It shed a light on the material human nature of our desire for success, on our individuality, our ego, and how much we need Saraswati to handle and manage our materiality. The article helped me realize how all knowledge must be managed with the help of Saraswati and it must grow into wisdom so that knowledge can flow into wisdom. Applying knowledge has often been spoken about, but it is still not applied enough, somehow its importance has not been acknowledged.

I want to express my sincere and heartfelt thanks to you, Swami Niranjanananda Saraswati, my Guru. But words, even well-arranged beautiful words with colour and aroma, are trivial and cannot convey everything I would like to express. Daily with a lighted candle, I thank the deities for having you. I thank Swami Satyananda with all my heart and soul that you specially are his ‘Manas Putra’. The covenant that Satyananda has given us is becoming more and more difficult. “Whenever there is darkness in your life, when you do not find the way, he will guide you successfully and bring you back to the light. I have full confidence that he will come as a light in your spiritual life.”

And yes, I can’t find more appropriate words than Swami Satyananda, but I am here in the darkest moments of our time, in Kali Yuga leading to the deterioration of everything: physical, psychological, emotional, humanistic, benevolent . . .

I have full confidence that YOU, Swami Niranjanananda Saraswati, are the light that has come to guide us successfully through this difficult stage of darkness in the life of mankind! And the only thing I can do (as an imperfect human being) and that flows from the bottom of my soul and heart, is to surrender completely into your hands, to follow your words and writings, and to make daily efforts to be loyal to the Guru and the teachings. This has become MY GOAL. The times are such that this struggle won’t be easy, but all my life and spiritual forces will be directed to pursue this goal.

Oh, Guru!
I bow at your feet.
Lead me on the path of truth.