Ananda yoga – the path of ecstasy!

Nanda means something that can reduce in quantity. Ananda means that which cannot reduce in quantity. Ananda means bliss! It is not joy. Ordinary joy brings suffering with it. Ananda is beyond joy. It comes without a reason. It just is.

Joy is what you feel through your senses, based on an outer object — music, a fragrance, a beautiful sight, physical touch. When you feel joy without sensory inputs, not even inputs of forms of God, just from your inner core, your soul, it is bliss! There needs to be no reason. It simply comes from within. That is ananda.

Yoga is not physical exercise or breath control; these are just parts of yoga. Yoga literally means union; the union of the self with the divine; union with the cosmic power. It is the cessation of the mind, to take it beyond the mind, to be one with existence. The blissful technique to unite your self with the divine is ananda yoga. It uses bliss itself to unite.

Ananda yoga is the path of ecstasy, not the path to ecstasy. The very path, the very travel itself is ecstasy. Life has no goal, it has only purpose. It is not something you find at the end, you find it all along the way. Living has a purpose. If life is a goal, it’s a rat race. In the rat race, even if you win you are only a rat!

The very living is bliss when you go without a goal; only with the purpose of enjoying the path.

You cannot look at God as a goal. You cannot run towards God. In the inner world, the logic is very different. Goals are not reached by running towards them. Zen masters say: When you stop seeking, you will find it. Seeking makes you tense; it makes you miss your purpose.

Just look at all your guilt, mistakes, and failures; just look with deep acceptance. Even if you cannot accept, accept that you cannot accept. You will then relax; guilt will drop from your mind. If your mind is tense, it can never stop. Only when you relax it can cease.

You have to drop being goaloriented. If you accept what you are, what is, the mind will lose its roots. Mind and bliss cannot stay together. When mind is, bliss is not. It is either mind or bliss.

So drop your mind and simply decide to walk the path of ecstasy!

Be Blissful!