New Year's Eve Ceremonies

As with our Christmas Eve service, we experimented this year with holding our New Year celebrations earlier in the evening, rather than doing a midnight service. Judging by the attendance at each, we have a lot of early birds in the community who appreciated it!

The evening began with a meditation, and a Nayaswami Order initiation ceremony, in which we welcomed in Adam, Joycee, and Amit as Pilgrims and a conditional (one-year) Brahmachari, respectively.

The initiation ceremony is very simple -- just an introduction from Asha and a recitation of the vows -- but incredibly powerful. Like a wedding, it has the power of human commitment supported by a loving community. But with God on the other end of each person’s vow the intensity is deepened immeasurably.

For the service portion of the evening we tried a completely new format, in which we got to go deeper into mantra chanting than we usually do. We began with 15 minutes of the Hring Kling mantra, for dissolving obstacles of all types, whether physical or spiritual. That was followed by 15 minutes each of the Gayatri and Mahamritunjaya mantras, more familiar from our Sunday fire ceremonies, which are chants for personal liberation, and for the upliftment of all beings. We ended with the Aum mantra, accompanying a purification ceremony -- an excellent way to set a spiritual intention for the new year.

Throughout the mantras and the purification ceremony, we had a large indoor fire, cleverly created out of candles fixed in the copper fire ceremony bowl filled with sand. This was very civilized for most of the hour and a half that it burned, but got much more exciting towards the end. The combined heat of all the candles (not to mention the burning purification papers thrown in with them) burned them down very quickly, until the bowl was one flaming mass of melted wax. It was actually quite dramatically beautiful, though it was also reassuring to have Nirmoha on hand with a lid, ready to intervene if it got out of hand.

Happy New Year!

Mahasamadhi Initiation Weekend

Yesterday was the anniversary of Paramhansa Yogananda's  mahasamadhi — the day he consciously left his body in 1952 — and we made excellent use of such an auspicious weekend by having not one but two initiation ceremonies.

Saturday night was the initiation for new members of the Nayaswami Order. Since the last initiation, a new vow has been added to the order: the Pilgrim's Vow of Intention. Since the other levels of the order require certain life conditions of their members, this one was added so that any sincere spiritual seeker may join, whatever their circumstances. Twenty-nine people took the Pilgrim vows this weekend, followed by 7 more taking the Tyaga vows (no new Bramacharis or Nayaswamis this time around).

Pilgrims (white scarves)

Tyagis and Tyaginis (teal scarves)

And then at Sunday Service yesterday we rounded things off with a Discipleship initiation, welcoming 8 new members of our spiritual family.

New Disciples

Truly a beautiful weekend all-around!

New Year's Eve Initiation

At the New Year's Eve service, Ananda Palo Alto held its first initiation ceremony for members joining the new Nayaswami order that Swami Kriyananda started in Italy last November. There are two lovely sets of photos that you can see, from Jeffrey and from Karen and David.

The three levels of this new order are identified by color, which can be worn as a complete set of robes, or as a single, symbolic item of clothing. In the case of this ceremony, the participants wore matching scarves.

Here, then, are the new initiates — congratulations to all!

Yellow - Bramacharis

Teal - Tyagis

Blue - Nayaswamis

Nayaswami Initiation at Ananda Village

On Christmas Eve, Ananda Village had its first initiation ceremony for the new Nayaswami renunciate order. Many people took vows at all levels, and you can see photos of the ceremony here.

Seattle's Nayaswamis

Nayaswamis Hriman and Padma McGilloway, of the Seattle community, have posted a letter and some photographs on their blog, describing their experience of joining the new Nayaswami order. Their perspective compliments Asha's letter nicely, and is well worth a read.

Nayaswami Blue

Sunday service yesterday saw David and Asha in the beautiful blue of the new Nayaswami order. While the general swami robes are entirely blue, the ones for service were blue on white, similar to the yellow on white of the other lightbearers. Correction: Once they have their full blue habits, that's what they'll wear for service as well. The blue and white just looked so nice that I didn't realize it wasn't the final version! Anyway, have a look: