One of us happens to touch the trunk. "A water-pipe kind of creature." Another, the ear. "A very strong, always moving back and forth, fan-animal." Another, the leg. "I find it still, like a column on a temple." Another touches the curved back. "A leathery throne." Another, the cleverest, feels the tusk. "A rounded sword made of porcelain." Each of us touches one place and understands the whole in that way. If each of us held a candle there, and if we went in together, we could see it. Jalaludin Rumi - The Elephant in the Dark Room -
This website has been established as an archive to present the collected teachings of Swami Maheshananda. This is also a place to share memories and maintain connections among Swamiji’s worldwide community of friends and students.
Swamiji’s wisdom was most often delivered in conversation: human to human, without tape recorders rolling or scribes taking notes.
Anyone who visited him in the kuti at Kaivalyadhama, or met him on a tour overseas, became aware that they had become part of a community of people in all corners of the world. We all shared a connection via the teachings and friendship of Swami Maheshananda and Angelika. Many of us had informal recordings, or photographs, videos, letters, chains of email or text conversations with them.
After Swamiji took mahasamadhi we felt a deep sense of sadness, but also a determination that the teachings we had been given should be shared.
As in the poem of the blind men and the elephant, each of us had been given a glimpse of one part of a complete teaching. This website is where we can each share the light of the candle we hold – and perhaps begin to see the whole.
How to contribute
For the project to succeed requires three kinds of energy:
Swami Maheshananda
manpower, materials and money.
Manpower
You can help the site by sharing your time and skills. We will be delighted to have your support with the project, in any way you can offer it. This could include:
- translating content into other languages
- transcribing audio recordings
- video production/editing
- editing audio files to improve sound quality.
If you are able to help in any way please contact us.
Materials
The photos, recordings and writings presented on this website have been crowdsourced from students and friends of Swamiji and Angelika in many different countries. We would like to thank all our contributors for sharing material and helping to achieve the goal to make this the most complete archive possible.
If you have material to contribute we would love to hear from you. Collecting and organising your material takes a little effort but as we have found, it is a wonderful opportunity to revisit Swamiji’s teachings.
Or as Swamiji himself once said: “when you give silver you get gold!”
Learn more about what to send and how to send it in the Contributor Guidelines.
Money
Swamiji’s teaching was always given with no expectation of payment. In the same spirit, we have made all material collected on this website free to access.
If you would like to see this website continue to grow you can support us with a financial donation. This could be a one-off donation or a monthly or annual membership. These donations will help us to cover the costs of maintaining and growing the Swami Maheshananda archives.
The following link will take you to our page at buymeacoffee.com. Here you can make donations in your currency without having to set up an account. Or you can join us as a member to provide a monthly donation.