Contents
Chapter 1: The Set-Up
The Trip to Adivarapupeta; Adivarapupeta & Yashoda; The New Guest Building; Getting Connected; Censorship
Chapter 2: Adivarapupeta
The Process; The Barber; V. Surya Rao; The Man Who Bought Pan; Whether Swamiji Learned Anything; Drowsiness
Chapter 3: Adivarapupeta
The Atmalingam; All the Powers; Two Contemporaries; Goru Mallana; Village Undercurrents
Chapter 4: Adivarapupeta, Bhava Samadhi
The constant presence of bhava samadhi in Adivarapupeta, in the early 1960’s and now.
Chapter 5: Staying at the Adivarapupeta Ashram
Swamiji’s Physical Presence; Unusual Outside, Bliss Inside; Daily Meditation & Bhajans; Scratching Swamiji; Mahashivaratri & Interviewing Two Annapurnas
Chapter 6: Adivarapupeta: Something Old, Something New
Learning about Bhava Samadhi, Swamiji's Childhood, His Tapas, His Support for His Village, Some Corrections, and the Dark Side.
more to follow!
Sharing & Collecting
Devotees’ Experiences of Shivabalayogi
When Swamiji was visiting the United States from late 1988 to 1991, we knew very little about what it was like to be with him in India.
What little we knew was from reading General Hanut’s biography, Spiritual Ministration, and later the short booklet The Lahari. Spiritual Ministration contained a lot of detail about Swamiji’s childhood and twelve-year tapas, but very little about his two decades of travel and programs throughout India and Sri Lanka. Even when Tapas Shakti was written, the experiences that I collected were almost all from the United States. Most of us in the U.S. had very little knowledge about India or Indian traditions.
Then there was bhava samadhi. General Hanut wrote about it, Swamiji talked about it, and we asked about it, but at least at the programs I attended, there was very little of it. We saw nothing like what was described in Spiritual Ministration.
So I had several reasons to be interested in learning more about what had happened in India after Shivabalayogi completed tapas. When we asked Swamiji about traveling to India, he would tell us not to bother. India was coming to us.
My first opportunity was when Swamiji asked me to attend the public presentation of his new biography, Tapas Shaki. That was January 24 of 1992. So I got to attend a birthday function in Bangalore. The next year I attended the tapas anniversary function in Bangalore and Parvatamma’s mahasamadhi function at the old ashram on Bannerghatta Road.
In 1994 I spent some four months in India, traveling to Adivarapupeta with Swamiji for his last return. After Swamiji entered mahasamadhi, I visited Delhi, Dehradun and Agra. I visited Bangalore and Adivarapupeta again in 1995, but it was in 1996 that Jagadish and I traveled around India for five months interviewing devotees and collecting histories and experiences.
We very roughly tried to followed Swamiji’s own route. We started in Adivarapupeta, interviewed devotees in Kakinada and Rajamundry, then traveled to Tapaswiji’s ashram in Kakinada, via Madras (now Chennai) to Bangalore. From there we went to Dodballapur, Tapaswiji’s ashram in Nandi Hills, Hindupur (Muddireddipalli), Venkatapuram, Anantapur, Tadpatri and Hyderabad. From there we returned to Adivarapupeta for Mahashivaratri, then to Guntur and back to Bangalore. Then it was time to go to North India. We visited Jaipur, Sambhar Lake, Jhansi, Delhi, Agra and Dehradun. Returning to Bangalore, we then went to Ratnagiri (near Rolla, A.P.) and Sriharikota.
Much was left out. I was in too much of a hurry. But the experiences we did collect contributed to the book Divine Play and are preserved in considerable detail in the large book, Swamiji’s Treasure.
Maybe I will write a book about that five-month travel around India. For now, you can read about it in these web pages.
