Swami Prajñananda Saraswati

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Swami Prajñananda Saraswati

Yoga & Meditation Teacher
Teacher Trainer at Svaroopa Vidya Ashram I am a Teacher Trainer at Svaroopa Vidya Ashram. I teach both yoga & meditation.

My joy and goal is to share what my Guru, Gurudevi Nirmalananda has given to me. This yoga is amazing and I would love to share it with you. 🙏

07/22/2025

I had no idea how many shades of orange there were until I became a swami. I hadn’t even worn orange much, but now I love it! I feel like a walking flame. This is meaningful to me for we call the power of transformation and upliftment as the fire of yoga.

Wearing the color of the flame reminds me of my commitment to this path, to my Self and serving as a flame to guide others through the support of my Guru.

You too can be a walking flame when you do the practices. This flame will burn up the things that limit you and keep you small so that you can shine with your own divine light all the time.

Gurudevi describes it this way:
“This is the fire of yoga, which opens up the radiance of your own being, so that you can know your own essence and recognize it in everyone and everything that exists.”
- Physics, Anatomy & Yoga February 2006

https://svaroopa.org/assets/pdfs/2006_Contemplations/0602_Physics_Anatomy_and_Yoga.pdf

07/05/2025

We saw the fireworks last night from the Ashram roof. It was ecstatic - the fireworks bursting forth right in front of us like we were sitting in a panoramic theater with the sky as our screen. 🎆

It made me think of the wonders of yoga. Just like how on the outside the fireworks show was amazing, so too on the inside the stages and steps of yoga are a wonder:

Vismayo yogabhumika.h - the stations and stages of yoga constitute a fascinating wonder
- Shiva Sutras 1.12

Once you receive the inner awakening from a Guru, called Shaktipat, there is an ecstatic expansion of your inner being. As you apply yourself to your daily practice, sadhana, you will experience many wonders inside which fill up your senses with different sights, sounds, smells, feelings and tastes. You experience bliss and profound peace.

And each day is different like a different firework revealing itself in its own unique brilliance. Your life too is touched by the inner wonder. You are filled with a joy for no apparent reason, you’re just happy. You can be watching fireworks or simply sitting on your own reading. Your bliss fills you from the inside.

While every moment of your life may not be bliss-filled yet, it is your future as you continue on the path.

It truly is a wonder this yoga. 🎇🙏

06/29/2025

It feels good to get my hands in the dirt while doing some weeding seva. As I pull out the weeds it feels like I am also pulling out the weeds of thoughts in my mind. 🍃

And while this feels good, in a Shaktipat tradition, you don’t simply rely on your own efforts. You get the support from the inside through the grace of the lineage. This grace can be experienced as an uprising of fullness and presence. It not only clears out the weeds in your mind, it takes you to the space behind your mind and even deeper, to the source of your mind - your own Self. 🙏

Gurudevi discussed this in her Swami Sunday discourse today. She quoted Swami Muktananda:
A simple and natural love dwells just behind your complaints about the difficulties of worldly life… If you rid yourself of mental conflict, then… love will begin flow spontaneously wherever you may be.
- Swami Muktananda, “The Perfect Relationship,” page 43

You can check out her discourse in our video archive: svaroopa.org/deep-teachings-videos

06/28/2025

I love the time in-between two things. Like dawn or dusk. It’s not day time but not yet night time. For me, there is a feeling in the air of opportunity and possibilities.

Last weekend my flight was cancelled coming back from teaching. I ended up staying the night in Florida. And there was the same feeling. I wasn’t where I was for teaching and not yet back home. I was in the liminal zone - with this spacious feeling of freedom to do and be anything.

In yoga, there is a name for this liminal zone. It is called the vyutthana. And it used as a technical term meaning the liminal zone between deep meditative absorption and your usual waking state. However, if you linger in the in-between without leaving your deep inner state, you could live your day and your life in the vyutthana, in an inner state of depth and freedom even with your eyes open.

One way to cultivate the vyutthana is to linger after your meditation period and journal - contemplating your experience in meditation. Your mind becomes saturated with Consciousness and is more inclined to focus on Consciousness throughout your day.

Samaadhi-sa.mskaaravati vyutthaane bhuuyo bhuuya”s-cid-aikya-amar”saan-nityodita-
samaadhi-laabha.h. — Pratyabhij~na-h.rdayam 19
Meditative absorption leaves internal impressions.
Linger in the threshold zone, again and again contemplate your oneness with Consciousness...
- Translation by Gurudevi Nirmalananda

**ra

06/25/2025

Saraswati is the name of the energy that underlies the ability to learn - both things of the world and spiritual knowledge. She is the Goddess of learning and wisdom, speech, poetry , music, the arts and more. 🦢

I’ve always felt an affinity for Saraswati, because ever since I could remember, I’ve loved to learn and to share that learning as a teacher.

When I took initiation as a swami, I became part of the Saraswati order of monks. By becoming a swami you make the choice to focus your life on the ultimate knowledge of knowing and abiding in your own Self. And then, as a swami, you have a choice, will you leave the world or will stay and give and share? I chose to participate in this world and give what I have to share and continue to learn as a student. Serving my Guru, and anyone who comes to the ashram, is such a joy and an honor. 🙏

Anyone can choose to know and abide in their own Self. You don’t have to take any sort of vow to do it. You simply need to apply yourself, just like you would with anything else in your life.

Yaa kundendu tushaara haara dhavalaa
Yaa shubhra vastraa-vritaa
Yaa veenaa-varadanda mandita-karaa
Yaa shveta padmaasanaa
Yaa brahmaachyuta-shankaara prabhri-tibhir
Devaih sadaa vanditaa
Saa maam paatu saraswatee bhagavatee
Nihshesha jaadyaa-pahaa

O goddess Saraswati, white as snow
Or the moon or the k***a flowers,
Clothed in white garments,
Holding a magnificent veena,
Seated on a white lotus,
Ever glorified with offerings from the gods (Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva).
Protect us from all forms of ignorance.

06/23/2025

“To give up the ego means to merge it in the bliss of the Self, to dissolve our smallness into the vastness of Consciousness. When bubbles arise on the surface of the ocean, they seem to be different from the ocean, but after a while, the bubbles burst and merge back into the ocean. In the same way, when our bubble of ego bursts, when our sense of limitation leaves us, we will realize that we are nothing but that Consciousness.” 🌊💙🙏
- I Have Become Alive by Swami Muktananda p8

🙏🌊🙏🌊🙏🌊🙏🌊🙏🌊🙏🌊🙏🌊🙏
Meditation with Gurudevi Nirmalananda every Wednesday 7:30 pm ET and Sunday 10 am ET onsite or online svaroopa.org/calendar

06/18/2025

I was working on a project today for the Ashram. And as I was looking at the fabric and the way the wrinkles were set into place, it made me think of how the mind too gets set into certain thought patterns or vasanas. These patterns get stuck in place and change the shape of the cloth of your mind. You see situations based on those wrinkles. These patterns then underlie the way you make decisions in your life.

And as I was working with the cloth, even when I shook it out, the wrinkles stayed in place. It’s like that too with your vasanas. It’s very hard to change them once they are set. Yet, as I put the iron to the cloth the heat dissolved the wrinkles. They smoothed out and became part of the cloth in a seamless way again.

Ah! That’s it. The mantra is for your mind like the iron is for the cloth. When you repeat mantra, the wrinkles of your mind, those thought patterns, begin to dissolve into the fire of Consciousness. 🔥 You aren’t driven by those underlying vasanas anymore. This gives you the freedom to make choices from a deeper place inside.

Share a comment of what you get from repeating mantra!
🕉️ namah shivaaya

06/01/2025

Happy Shaktipat Anniversary, Gurudevi. 🔥

Today marks the day when Baba lit your inner flame. And now you do the same for so many. So much gratitude for you and Baba and this lineage of great Masters who light us up from the inside.

OM namah shivaaya 💙
Guru OM 🧡

04/02/2025

I love the vibrancy of flowers in spring. It reminds me of the inner effulgence that yoga opens up inside. Once you get a taste of the inner bliss of your Self, you don’t need the flowers of spring or anything else to give you joy. Yet, you don’t need to turn away from them either. You bring your joy with you even as you delight in the dynamic play of the world.

“The great being Jnaneshwar Maharaj said, ‘The effulgence of the Self is ever-new.’
The bliss of the Self constantly renews itself. Sometimes, when I was wandering around India, I would come across great beings who laughed constantly, and I would wonder, ‘Don’t they ever get tired of laughing?’ Now I understand why they were always laughing. They would feel bliss and laugh, and in the next moment they would feel a new kind of bliss, so they would laugh again. Because their bliss was ever-new, they would keep laughing and laughing.
One who depends on the senses for happiness is constantly looking for new things to satisfy him. He has to have new tastes, new music, new love. But since the bliss of the Self is always different, a yogi never gets tired of it.”
- Swami Muktananda, Where Are You Going? P 24

03/21/2025

Why do Swamis where orange?

When you take vows as a Swami, a yoga monk, there is a fire ceremony. It represents the burning away of all the things that limit you so you can be all that you can be. In yoga we say so you can be and know your own Self, your own Divine Essence.

As a Swami you take a vow to have that as your goal: that you will live in the knowing of who you truly are. And everything that keeps you from knowing needs to be burned in the fire of yoga.

citi-vahnir avaroha-pade channo'pi maatrayaa meyendhana.m plu.syati.

The Fire of Consciousness (Chiti), though concealed in the individual, burns away Maya’s limiting knowledge like fire burns fuel.
- Pratyabhijñahrdayam sutra 14, translation by Gurudevi Nirmalananda

It’s that fire, that heat, that you get when you do your sadhana (your spiritual practice) that burns away all that limits you.

Wearing orange is a reminder of this vow and it represents on the outside the fire on the inside.

03/19/2025

This photo is of Swami Satrupananda and I putting up a Guru wall in our Retreat Center dining room. It was actually more challenging than it looks! It took us some time to measure all the photos in comparison to the wall and each other and to get all the photos level. And while it was a challenge, it was also fun! And a great opportunity to serve my Guru and expand my skills.

It makes me think of the verse from the Bhagavad Gita 2.50:
Yoga.h karmasu kau”salam
Yoga is skill in action

I find this works both ways:
1. The more I meditate and apply myself to my sadhana (spiritual practice) the more effective I become in the world.
2. As I apply myself in the world, especially doing Guru seva, the more I can apply that skill to my inward deepening.

It is a win win!

Gurudevi says it this way:
“While seva is an activity, it’s also a perspective. Do what you do as seva, as an offering to God and Guru. Many of the things you do are for other people already, so do it as if I told you, “Take care of this person for me. They are a sacred trust.” With the things you do for yourself, do it as if I said to you, “Take care of yourself. Do it for me. I want you to be well cared for and you’re the one who has to do it.” Yoga is skillful action. Do more yoga.”
- Just Do It, Oct 2023

02/27/2025

Happy Maha Shivaratri
On this holy night of Shiva, all spiritual practices are supercharged, the veil of ignorance thins and you can become enlightened in one night.

“Shivena shivasadhana - Siva is realized by means of Siva. Therefore, you should discard concepts such as "world," "bound soul," and "evil thoughts" and practice identification with Shiva. Live in the awareness of your Shivahood, your divinity. You are Shiva's. Become Shiva and nothing but Shiva.”
- Swami Muktananda, Nothing Exists that is not Shiva p30

🙏💙 OM namah shivaaya 💙🙏

Address

Downingtown, PA

Website

http://svaroopa.org/, https://svaroopa.org/prajnananda, https://linktr.ee/swami.prajna

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