Explore classes & events by subject        Nov. 08–Jan.09

Practical Spirituality

Attunement: The Foundation of the Spiritual Path
Saturday, November 1, 10 am–1 pm,  $30  Register
Paramhansa Yogananda stressed repeatedly the necessity of attunement to the guru. Without deep attunement, the spiritual progress that the soul longs for is simply not possible. 
Through the Masters who have come to this Earth, God has provided us a clear pathway to our most cherished desire, complete happiness. In this class you will explore what attunement is and  how to develop it in yourself more deeply.
Instructor: Asha Praver

 

The Chakras—Your Destiny Revealedlotus
chakras = subtle energy centers in the spine
Wednesdays, Oct. 8– Nov. 19, 7:30 pm, Cost: $90  Register (or $15 per class)

Your chakras are where your karma is stored and how it is carried from one incarnation to the next. Everything about you is determined by your chakras: gender, nationality, health, attitude toward life, hopes, fears, expectations, even your DNA. The chakras are the transfer point between your soul and your physical body. They are where your karma is stored, and how it is carried from one incarnation to the next. Even your hour of birth, and therefore your horoscope, is determined by your chakras. Understand your chakras and you’ll know everything about yourself. Change your chakras and everything in your life will change.

Learn how to experience your chakras and how to harmonize and influence
within them. Each week focuses on a different chakra
Earth Chakra
This is your foundation. It makes you steadfast, courageous, loyal to truth. When out of balance, you become ungrounded, or the opposite— inflexible, dogmatic, heavy-minded.
Water Chakra
This is your creativity. It gives you intuition and the ability to flow with life. Out of balance, you become wishy-washy, unable to commit or hold to a straight course in life.
Fire Chakra
This is your power. It gives you self-control, enthusiasm, and the ability to manifest your dreams. Misused, it becomes fanaticism, self-destructive habits, or abuse of others.
Air Chakra
This is your heart. It gives you devotion, love, and the ability to empathize and connect with other people. Out of balance, your emotions run away with you. You become moody, and a slave to your likes and dislikes.
Ether Chakra
This is your voice. It is your self-expression, your ability to communicate through words, images, or music. Used rightly, this energy makes you expansive, calm, peaceful. Out of balance, you are restless, spacey, mercurial, bored.  
Super-Ether Chakra
This is surrender to a power higher than your ego. It makes you selfless, serviceful, radiant, attuned to joy. Misused, you become over-intellectual, too rational, cold, even  The seventh Chakra, the 1000-Petaled Lotus that unites you with God.

Instructors: Raghu and Tyagini Clark, Tushti Conti, Rick Bonin, and Barbara Fiesterman

 

The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita lotus
Guidebook for Right Living
Tuesdays, November 4, 18, 25, 7:30 pm, $15 per class (drop-ins welcome)
A study course based on The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita, explained by Paramhansa Yogananda,, as Remembered by His Disciple, Swami Kriyananda

The whole of the Bhagavad Gita can be read in an afternoon. To absorb its wisdom, however, is the task of a lifetime—many lifetimes, in fact. Yogananda’s explanation, however, makes the task easier. It is the “airplane route” to understanding the Gita. “Millions will find God through this work,” Yogananda declared. “Not just thousands: millions! I have seen it. I know!”

This commentary is thoroughly modern in language and content, with examples from life as we know it now. Yogananda does not dismiss the material world as merely an illusion, the way some teachers do. All parts of human nature need to be developed—physical and mental as well as spiritual—or lacks in one area may obstruct progress in others. Yogananda shows how the Gita can and should be applied to all levels of reality.

The commentary is deep so we’ll move slowly, about 10 pages a week. This is just Part I in a series. It will take several courses to cover the whole book.

The story behind the story
The Gita is one small section of a much larger epic called the Mahabharata. It is the story of war between cousins. The two families represent our inner
qualities; the field of battle is our own consciousness.

Who dies?
The allegory is war. It is kill or be killed. Even Arjuna, the great hero of the Mahabharata, hesitates. The Gita is Krishna’s response. Civilizations rise and fall, but the task for man is ever the same: to realize God within himself.

Passage to freedom
Chakras, kundalini, the hidden workings of karma, the need for guru’s grace. Esoteric secrets of spiritual success. Hidden pitfalls to the soul’s progress. All are contained (and explained) within the Gita.

That which was hidden can now be revealed
Eternal truth is never out of date. From time to time, though, the expression of that truth needs to be renewed. To Yogananda was given the divine task of reinterpreting this ancient scripture for modern times.
Instructor: Asha Praver

Finding the Spirit in Relationships
Saturday, November 15, time: 10 am–1 pm, Cost: $30  Register
Discover how to express your own highest potential in all of your relationships: friendship, love, marriage, family, even at work where the challenges may be the greatest. Relationships offer us an opportunity to experience our greatest joy, but they can also present our biggest challenges, or, thought of another way,  our greatest opportunity for spiritual growth.
Instructor: Dr. Shanti Rubenstone

Yogoda2—Energization Exercises
Saturday, November 22, 10 am–1 pm, $30  Register
The highest purpose of all exercise is to awaken the inner source of one’s life energy. Join Luca Moschini in this transforming Yogoda workshop and experience the Energization Exercises, a series of divinely inspired body movements, to awaken and access that healing energy source. You will also learn meditation techniques, enabling you to rise avove self-limiting beliefs and utilize the endless power of energy that is always present within yourself.
Please wear comfortable clothing.
Instructor: Luca Moschini

Revelations of Christlotus
Tuesdays, December 2–16, 7:30 pm, $45  Register
Christmas is a time to make great spiritual progress. The veil between the material and the spiritual world is reduced to gossamer by the outpouring of grace from God, Christ, and Gurus. A natural time to study the words of Christ and tune into the mystical meaning too often obscured by sectarian dogma. Jesus was not a “fundamentalist,” he was a Self-realizationist, a guru in the same lineage as Yogananda and Babaji. Attune to the living Christ. Transform your experience of Christmas and your everyday life.  Based on the newly published book of the same title by Swami Kriyananda.
Instructor: Asha Praver

Practicing the Presence of God—An Experiential Workshop
Saturday, December 6, 10 am–1 pm, $30  Register
A perfect solution for those who feel: “I am too busy for serious spiritual practice.” Or for those who are already meditating, but would like to deepen their everyday experience. Learn how, in the midst of all your other activities, to feel God's presence flowing through you.
In this workshop you will dive into the vibrational power of Yogananda's devotional techniques to stimulate and awaken your own innate inner bliss.
Instructors: Raghu and Tyagini Clark

 

The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita lotus
Guidebook for Right Living
Tuesdays, January 6–27, 2009, 7:30 pm, $15 per class (drop-ins welcome)
A study course based on The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita, explained by Paramhansa Yogananda,, as Remembered by His Disciple, Swami Kriyananda

The whole of the Bhagavad Gita can be read in an afternoon. To absorb its wisdom, however, is the task of a lifetime—many lifetimes, in fact. Yogananda’s explanation, however, makes the task easier. It is the “airplane route” to understanding the Gita. “Millions will find God through this work,” Yogananda declared. “Not just thousands: millions! I have seen it. I know!”

This commentary is thoroughly modern in language and content, with examples from life as we know it now. Yogananda does not dismiss the material world as merely an illusion, the way some teachers do. All parts of human nature need to be developed—physical and mental as well as spiritual—or lacks in one area may obstruct progress in others. Yogananda shows how the Gita can and should be applied to all levels of reality.

The commentary is deep so we’ll move slowly, about 10 pages a week. This is just Part I in a series. It will take several courses to cover the whole book.

The story behind the story
The Gita is one small section of a much larger epic called the Mahabharata. It is the story of war between cousins. The two families represent our inner
qualities; the field of battle is our own consciousness.

Who dies?
The allegory is war. It is kill or be killed. Even Arjuna, the great hero of the Mahabharata, hesitates. The Gita is Krishna’s response. Civilizations rise and fall, but the task for man is ever the same: to realize God within himself.

Passage to freedom
Chakras, kundalini, the hidden workings of karma, the need for guru’s grace. Esoteric secrets of spiritual success. Hidden pitfalls to the soul’s progress. All are contained (and explained) within the Gita.

That which was hidden can now be revealed
Eternal truth is never out of date. From time to time, though, the expression of that truth needs to be renewed. To Yogananda was given the divine task of reinterpreting this ancient scripture for modern times.
Instructor: Asha Praver

 

Art and Science of Raja Yogalotus
Wednesdays, January 7–March 25, 2009, 6–9 pm, plus two Saturdays, January 24  and February 7, 9 am–noon 
Hatha yoga session, 6 pm–7:15 pm
Philosophy and discussion, 7:30 pm–9 pm
Cost: $350 includes all materials and the 450 page book, The Art and Science of Raja Yoga by Swami Kriyananda.  Register

Raja Yoga includes all the supporting principles and practices that awaken the desire to meditate, and make successful meditation possible.
Each class begins with an hour of gentle hatha yoga postures tailored to meet the needs of the group followed by a brief meditation. This course and the textbook on which it is based are the foundation for a lifetime of spiritual practice. Science is the objective understanding of how consciousness descends into matter. Art is the creative application of that understanding to expand awareness.

Philosophy
Principles of yoga are scientific, and eternal. Not dependent on human belief or dogma, but perceived by introspection and experiment. Esoteric principles explained: karma, chakras, Self-realization, kundalini, guru, attunement, astral worlds, astrology, devotion, selfless service, divine love, and more.

Hatha Yoga
The Ananda Method of yoga postures emphasizes the emotional, mental, and spiritual benefits, as well as the physical. Even if your dexterity is limited by age, health, or other factors, in the Ananda Method, inner focus and affirmations give you access to higher states of consciousness, the true purpose of Hatha Yoga.

Pranayama
Use the breath to harmonize, increase, and direct your energy. Fatigue, depression, lack of mental clarity, and other stress related illnesses are greatly improved through therapeutic breathing exercises. Pranayama—control of energy—is the key to success in meditation.

Meditation
Group practice, guided by long-time meditators, gives power to your personal practice. Learn or hone your technique, develop right attitude, understand the divine principles behind meditation, such as devotion, chakras, and the role of the guru.

Healing
Ancient yogic methods can bring immediate results, even to long-standing conditions. Yoga practices for nervous disorders, weight problems, digestion, heart ailments, sexual issues, insomnia, and more.

Diet
The yogic approach to diet is, “How does food affect consciousness?” Different foods have different vibrations, depending on the life force in the food itself, the consciousness of the person who prepared it, and the attitude of the one who eats it.

Instructors: Dambara Begley, Tyagini Clarkand Rick Bonin

 

 

Advice to Those Who Give Advice—The Art of Counseling
Saturday, January 17, 2009, 10 am–1 pm, $30  Register
Professional counselors, educators, group leaders, parents, friends—we all find ourselves eventually in a situation where someone is looking to us for guidance. But giving advice can mean much more than helping someone solve their problems: it could be an opportunity to inspire someone to discover and develop their higher potentials. In this class, you will learn how to hear and respond to the call of your soul wisdom and your unique ability to serve the highest in others.
Instructor: Asha Praver

 

How to find us:

Nearly all of our classes and events take place at the Temple in Palo Alto, except for a very few which take place at the Ananda Community in Mountain View (those are specially noted, so you’ll know).
Directions to Ananda Temple in Palo Alto.
Directions to Ananda Community in Mountain View.

When you come to a class or event at the Temple, even if you registered ahead of time, please sign in at the gift shop so we can greet you and direct you to the right classroom. The gift shop is located in a one-story building just behind the main sanctuary (enter through the sliding-glass door). Map of Ananda Temple grounds (PDF).

You may pay and/or register for classes and events. Payments are processed In a secure manner through PayPal. Fees shown are for an entire series unless indicated otherwise. If you need to miss a class in a series, an audio recording is available.