New Website on Teachings of Swami Rama

Someone has created a new website on the teachings of Swami Rama. It has over 50 separate articles by Swami Rama on very practical matters of yogic and spiritual life.

LINK:
https://sites.google.com/site/swamiramateachings/

DESCRIPTION (from the site)

One of the greatest gifts of Swami Rama to humanity was bringing the depths of the wisdom of the ancient sages of Yoga meditation, Vedanta, and Tantra to the people in highly accessible ways. His style of writing is extremely clear and practical, speaking from the highest perspective of a Himalayan master. The writings on this website are a small sample of that wisdom.

Although Swami Rama was most known for guiding people on the path to the highest spiritual realizations, his finest worldly accomplishment was founding the Himalayan Institute Hospital Trust near Haridwar, Rishikesh, and Dehradun, India. This includes a 750-bed hospital, a 400-student medical college, a 300-student nursing school, the major cancer center in the region, and a rural development program serving over 1000 villages in the region, including the high Himalayas areas of the sages near the source of the River Ganges. HIHT is also the home of Swami Rama Center, which is dedicated to preserving and promoting the teachings of Swami Rama. Swami Rama also founded Sadhana Mandir Ashram, which is located nearby in Rishikesh.
http://hihtindia.org/
http://sadhanamandir.org/

Swami Rama was born in the Himalayas, lived a life of service to humanity, and left the body on November 13, 1996 at his residence on the grounds of the Himalayan Institute Hospital Trust.

QUOTES FROM ARTICLES (from the home page)

The following quotes of Swami Rama are excerpts from the articles linked at the left.

You are the Architect: When a human being learns to seek religion not in gods, but in his own potentials, then he will know that he is great and that within his greatness lies his happiness. When he rapidly unfolds the chapters of life's manuscript, of which he himself is the author, he begins to realize who he is.You are the architect of your life. You build your own philosophy and construct your own attitudes. Without right attitudes, the entire architecture remains shaky. Once you realize this fact, you will look within.(more)

Enlightenment and Freedom: People continue to build shrines, chapels, churches, and temples. You don't have to do this, just realize that you are a living shrine. The day you have attained the knowledge that the Lord lives within you, you will be in samadhi. All questions will be answered, all problems will be resolved. (more)

Knowing Yourself: The aim of life is Self-realization. The saying, "Know thyself," was written on the temple of the oracle at Delphi in ancient Greece. This is where East and West meet. Both East and West agree on this goal, though they might hold different ways of attaining it. The one important part of life is ignored by the educational systems at home, in society, and in the colleges and universities: "Know thyself." You need to understand yourself on all levels. You don't need much external information; you already have true knowledge within. You need to learn how to apply the knowledge that you have. (more)

Arise, Attain, and Serve: Today's society is waiting for selfless, spiritually enlightened, well-balanced leaders to guide them in how to live happily here and hereafter. Such leaders or reformers will not come from outside our society. They have to be born, raised, and trained right in our own society. We are the ones to become our own guides, our own leaders, and we are the ones to enlighten our own lives. Get up, my friends, arise: attain knowledge, and dedicate your life to the service of your fellow beings. (more)

Sushumna: According to the yogic scriptures, there are 72,000 nadis, or energy channels. Among them, ida, pingala, and sushumna are the most important. As long as the mind is outward, only ida and pingala remain active. But when the mind is calm and tranquil, sushumna, the central channel, is awakened. The joy derived from the mind traveling through the sushumna channel is unique; it cannot be compared with any sensory pleasure. Because of that inner joy, the mind loses its taste for worldly pleasures. Sushumna application is the most important factor in spiritual practice. The moment sushumna is awakened, the mind longs to enter the inner world. When the flow of ida and pingala is di¬rected toward sushumna, and distractions are thereby removed, meditation flows by itself. (more)

Keys to Successful Living: Everyone wants to be successful in life, but where are the keys to success? Do we have to go out and search for those keys, or do we have those potentials already within ourselves? When we begin to examine life, we can see that it is divided into two aspects -- life within and life without; internal life and external life -- and we can see that these aspects are of equal importance. Even if we have renounced the world, gone far away from civilization, and live in the wilderness doing nothing but meditation, we cannot ignore external life. We still have to see that we eat, do our ablutions, and perform our practices on time. So life in the external world is as important as life in the internal world. Even one who has renounced the world has to understand the word "relationship" properly, because life itself is actually relationship. (more)

Internal Dialogue: Developing internal dialogue is a very important step, but one that few students understand. To succeed in meditation you have to develop this important step. You do not begin with meditation itself. First you learn to set a regular meditation time, and then to have a dialogue with yourself. In this process you are coming in contact with your inner, internal states. You are learning about the subtle aspects of your mind, your own conscience, and at the same time you are training yourself. (more)

Mantra and Silence: Imagine that you are standing on the bank of a river and you hear the current as it flows. If you follow the river upstream, you will come to its origin. There, you will find that there is no sound. In the same way, a mantra leads the mind to the silence within. That state is called "soundless sound." The seven sounds, or mantras, of the chakras, if magnified, create a form. Each mantra will make a different form. But magnifying sound in the external world is not going to help you. You have to go to the source within, from which that sound comes. This form gives you a knowledge of the sound, and the sound gives you a knowledge of the silence from which all sounds come. (more)

Guru and Divine Grace: Guru is not the goal. Anyone who establishes himself as a guru to be worshipped, is not a guru. Christ, Buddha, and other great persons did not set up any such example. Guru is like a boat for crossing the river. It is important to have a good boat and it is very dangerous to have a boat that is leaking. The boat brings you across the river. When the river is crossed the boat is no longer necessary. You don't hang onto the boat after completing the journey, and you certainly don't worship the boat. (more)

Self Transformation: For a genuine and everlasting transformation, one must practice a systematic method of self-discipline and self-training. Mere philosophy and intellectual knowledge cannot stand in time of need, if one does not know how to use the essentials of that philosophy in one's daily life. Applying theoretical knowledge and living with it in daily life is called practice. Practice requires discipline. Discipline should not be rigidly imposed, but students should learn to commit themselves and accept discipline as essential for self-growth. Imposing rigidity and following it is not helpful at all. (more)