Indian artist S. Rajam depicts Gurudeva giving darshan from the Guru Peedam, his legacy trilogy beside him. We are honoring that life and that legacy today, honoring his presence still in our lives, his many gifts we are still unwrapping eight years later. Today, we offer a small excerpt from the book "Seven Mystic Gurus" the monks are working on, sort of our version of "Autobiography of a Yogi," the stories of our spiritual lineage. One day Gurudeva told us, "A sannyasin of attainment has had many, many lifetimes of accumulating this power of kundalini to break that seal at the door of Brahman. Here is a key factor. Once it is broken, it never mends. Once it is gone, it's gone. Then the kundalini will come back--and this gives you a choice between upadeshi and nirvani--and coil in the svadhishthana, manipura, anahata, wherever it finds a receptive chakra, where consciousness has been developed, wherever it is warm.

"A great intellect or a siddha who finds the Self might return to the center of cognition; another might return to the manipura chakra. The ultimate is to have the kundalini coiled in the sahasrara. I personally didn't manage that until 1968 or '69 when I had a series of powerful experiences of kundalini in the sahasrara. It took twenty years of constant daily practice of tough sadhanas and tapas. I was told early on that much of the beginning training was had in a previous life and that is why, with the realization in this life, I would be able to sustain all that has manifested around me and within me as the years passed by. Results of sadhanas came to me with a lot of concentrated effort, to be sure, but it was not difficult, and that is what makes me think that previous results were being rekindled."