“the most auspicious of all auspicious days”, it
was the day that Bhagawan Nityananda, by then
living in Ganeshpuri, gave him shaktipata DIKSHA,
spiritual initiation. This was followed by nine
years of intense meditation under Nityananda’s
direction, until the guru declared that Muk-
tananda was “one with BRAHMAN.” In 1956 Bhaga-
wan Nityananda installed Muktananda in a tiny
ashram just down the road from his own. That
spot, where Swami Muktananda’s tomb and shrine
now stand, remains the heart of what has become
an international center for spiritual learning and
the Siddha Yoga “mother” ashram, Gurudev Sid-
dha Peeth.
Shortly before Nityananda’s death in 1961, he
made Swami Muktananda his spiritual successor.
After his guru’s passing, Muktananda began for-
malizing Nityananda’s teachings, which he called
the Siddha Yoga path. Siddha Yoga is the way of
an enlightened, or SIDDHA, master; the practice
is to follow the master’s guidance and teachings
with the aid of the master’s enlivening grace.
For all siddha yogis, the path begins as it did for
Muktananda, with shaktipata diksha, spiritual ini-
tiation. The goal is permanent dwelling in a real-
ization of the divinity that exists within and as
everything. Muktananda’s emblematic teaching,
one that he repeated again and again through-
out the two decades of his teaching mission, is
“Meditate on your own Self. Worship your Self.
Respect your Self. God lives within you as you.”
By the capitalized s of Self, he emphasized that he
was referring not to one’s individual ego but to an
expanded identification of the Self with supreme
consciousness.
Baba Muktananda, as he became known, trav-
eled throughout India and completed three world
tours, initiating and guiding students of Siddha
Yoga meditation. He created the Siddha Yoga
Shaktipat Intensive as the ideal environment for
spiritual awakening. He founded ashrams around
the world, established the SYDA Foundation to
manage the Siddha Yoga mission, and created
the canon of Siddha Yoga philosophy through his
own writings and his synthesis of the teachings of
VEDANTA, KASHMIRI SHAIVISM, and the writings of
the BHAKTI poet-saints.
In 1982, Muktananda named his disciple
Swami CHIDVILASANANDA to carry the Siddha Yoga
lineage forward. The ceremony that announced
and enacted this transmission was held publicly
in Gurudev Siddha Peeth in May 1982. On Octo-
ber 2, 1982, on the full Moon night of Sharad-
purnima, Baba Muktananda left his body (took
mahasamadhi).
“Baba Muktananda’s shakti [energy] is sat
[being],” Guru Chidvilasananda has said. “It was
experienced strongly in the past; it is powerfully
with us now; and it will continue to be so in the
future. His shakti awakens an ever-new life in all
those it touches.” Through his teachings, his ash-
rams, and the exemplary story of his own spiri-
tual life related in Play of Consciousness, people
continue to receive transmission of energy and
spiritual awakening, which are the basis of his
spiritual mission.
One of the first American disciples to receive
shaktipat from Muktananda was Albert Rudolph
(1928–73), who became Swami RUDRANANDA, a
teacher of Shaivism in the United States. Later,
Franklin Jones became a disciple of Muktananda
and returned to the United States to become a
spiritual teacher called Bubba Free John (now ADI
DA SAMRAJ).Further reading: Douglas Renfrew Brooks et al., Medi-
tation Revolution: A History and Theology of the Siddha
Yoga Lineage (South Fallsburg, N.Y.: Agama Press,
1997); Swami Muktananda, from the Finite to the Infinite,
2d ed. (South Fallsburg, N.Y.: SYDA Foundation, 1994);
———, Play of Consciousness: A Spiritual Autobiography
(South Fallsburg, N.Y.: SYDA Foundation, 2000); [Prat-
ibha Trivedi] Amma, Swami Muktananda Paramahansa
(Ganeshpuri: Shree Gurudev Ashram, 1971).mukti See MOKSHA.
K 296 mukti