September 2008

(View this newsletter online at http://www.spiritual-happiness.com/nlpnewsletter10.html)

 

Dear Friends,

Best wishes to you!  It’s been a while since our last Night Lotus Newsletter – we've changed the way we send the newsletters, so please let me know if you have any problem reading the newsletter in this format.  If so, you can always click the link above to access it on the web.

We have many new additions on our Night Lotus website of free multimedia spiritual resources.  I'll share a few highlights here.

 

Peace Pilgrim on YouTube for Peace Day

In honor of the first annual Peace Day, September 21st, we’ve uploaded the entire 1-hour peace pilgrim documentary, “Peace Pilgrim: An American Sage Who Walked Her Talk”  to YouTube.

Back in 2001, I spent nearly a year scripting and editing this video as a labor of love from over 200 hours of footage, including interviews with friends and family members of Peace Pilgrim, along with Maya Angelou, Dalai Lama, Dan Millman, Dennis Weaver, and others. I was just completing this documentary when the events 9-11 took place.  While watching the McCarthy events shown in some of the video’s newsreel footage, I had wondered how such things could have taken place in a modern, intelligent, society.  Post 9-11, I received a demonstration of  how quickly delusion can come upon a country after completing this video and finding that somehow the word “peace” had been redefined by many as showing a lack of patriotism, leaving even churches hesitant to show the video.

But of course, every message has its time, and the inspiring messages and examples of Peace Pilgrim are as relevant today as ever, perhaps more so.  Within the few days since we uploaded the video, hundreds have come to view it, and we invite you to check it out on Peace Day or anytime. 

 

CLICK HERE to play the Peace Pilgrim documentary on YouTube

 

 

 

The Chidakasha Gita of Bhagawan Nityananda in Streaming Audio

 

 

Bhagawan Nityananda was a highly regarded spiritual sage in India during the 20th century.  He was also the guru of my guru, Baba Muktananda.  Nityananda spoke little and lived a very simple life, blessing the many devotees who would travel through jungle terrain to get to the small town of Ganeshpuri, which is now a couple hours drive from Mumbai, India. Some of Nityananda's rare enlightened words were written down by a devotee during his informal talks, and have been arranged by my friend and scholar Swami Nirmalananda of Atma Jyoti Ashram into 61 topics.  Swami Nirmalananda explains:

The Chidakasha Gita is a transcription of random teachings of Nityananda, given when he would walk unannounced into a house, sit down, and begin speaking. Though the devotees did the best they could, writing frantically in hope of keeping up with his words, the resulting records are often disjointed and sometimes make no sense since something is missing. This of course is a defect of the transcribers and not of Nityananda who was speaking spontaneously in spirit consciousness without interest in polished expression. Nevertheless, a devotee collected these fragments and had them printed under the title of Chidakasha Gita. They have been translated into several Indian languages as well as English.

The swami painstakingly organized these fragments into topics and was kind enough to allow me to record and make available all 61 topics that can be be played in audio right on the web page.  Each topic begins with audio of Nityananda's voice speaking.  These teachings are very powerful and wonderful -- certainly different from the usual spiritual self-help books of today's new age culture.  The page also links to a You Tube video of the topic “Self-Knowledge” with photos of Nityananda.

 

CLICK HERE to go to the Chidakasha Gita Audio Page