Sharing my experience wrt DLS and Swami Sivananda.....
My experience with spirituality is completely out of luck. Which people say as by chance not by choice. I belong to Odisha. Odia people are known as loving and eating. All our families, culture are around that only. In any festivals we have a menu to prepare. If you say which festival then our people can say what to prepare to eat. Even our God is like that. Jagannath does not eat unless there are specialy parepared food with 56 verities. In any temple, you will get all delicious food.
If we categories odia people from spirituality perspective then they are mainly Bhakti Yogi. They treat as very lively. Prepare food accordingly to meet the need of God. Preparing, eating, sharing food etc are the 80% to 90% of the work. Remaining 10% to 20% are rituals.
I want to talk about our Gurudev.... I read this book Autobiography of Swami Sivananda. You will dfinitely find it as a direct communication between you and gurudev. He has writen this in such a way that he is talking to you directly. That book will work as a Mirror. You can see Gurudev through this book. Also you can understand yourself after reading that. It is writen in simple English but the impact it can create is me is huge.
In that book Gurudev has told that, Ganga is his mother and Himalaya is his father. It is not a mere poetic expression but this is a word of a true saint. Once we go the Gurudev Kuteer we can realize that why Gurudev has told Ganga as his mother. Gurudev was just staying in the lap of Ganga. If you think ~ 90 years back around 1925-1960 duration what would be the environment in Gurudev Kuteer. Only person who has visited there and reliazed that would only understand. It must be full of himalayan forests and River water is there till Gurudev Kuteer. Human survival is impossible there. No human can survive there. If anybody survived there must not be a human. So is Gurudev. This may be one point why he has told that Ganga is his mother.
He slept with snake, lived with tiger and made friends with other wild animals. He faced Negative energy and it was impossible to stay there but Gurudev prayed and the energy vanishes....
Viswanath temple - Exists because of Mahamrityunjaya mantra as suggested by Gurudev.
Dance with all drunkard, smock people. People used to touch his feet even after drinking alchohols..... multi dimensional personality ...Govinda govinda donot smoke govinda.....
When we say Om namah bhagabate Sivanandaye and not remembering all these then we are missing the true swarupa of Sivananda Maharaj.
During his sadhana he used to go to ganga river at 4 AM and tilll his navi water. Use to do chanting till 8 AM for 4 hours. Ganga river water is ice cold there.
Second Point the role model Big Big brother Vishma. In many of his book Gurudev has referred Vishma as a great person. Guide us to be like Vishma, Absolutely fearless... life time ramhachari....strong during worst situation as well.... Knower of Dharma. Gurudev has shown all these as a deserving brother ...
Vast like Himalaya - His knowledge is vaste ,
Beautiful life Himalaya - See Gurudev's physically...
He never see a bad person. He describe there as Negative divinity. He glorifies them that because of bad good exist.
Sivananda Books quotes
