From Jiva to Shiva: Satsanga, the Four Yogas and the Untouched Screen
In the morning satsanga of September 28, 2026, Swami Jyotirmayananda taught that the company of truth turns poison into nectar, that the four yogas support one another, and that behind every changing scene the screen stays untouched.
The satsanga opened with salutations to Lord Rama, the Lord of the Raghu dynasty, whose complexion is like a blue lotus, with Sita at his left side and a bow and arrow in his hands. Then came the Hare Rama and Hare Krishna mantra, and after it a poem on the revelation of "I am." In it the presence of God shines within the heart with the effulgence of millions of suns, a nectarine shower of light descending into a downpour of love, light and bliss. The rays flood the universe, create the whirling wheels of countless world systems, and vanish into the vibrant void of eternity.
The Ego and the Real I Am
That light of light is what a person truly is, Swamiji taught, and not the ego. The ego lives in the world of mortality, and everything it gains becomes a skeleton; the whole world becomes a cremation ground. When it moves away through your own spiritual movement, something else comes forward: "Then the real I am shines." Take yourself to be the jiva, the individual soul, and you go on tumbling through the cycle of birth and death. But you are not the jiva.
Neither Shaken nor Elated
Swamiji then turned to action. Motivated karma keeps a person bound. You never know when happiness will arrive, and hardly have you begun to enjoy it before it turns; the mind is elated one moment and sunk in despair the next.
For one becoming a yogi there is no such difference, because each condition gives a spiritual support of its own. "Adversity teaches you lessons of patience." Prosperity teaches its own lesson, because all the prosperity of the world is eventually lost. When that insight develops, a person is neither shaken by adversity nor elated by prosperity, because both come from the same divine hand. With that one becomes a karma yogi and begins to discover that you are not jiva, you are Shiva, and there is an internal stability of wisdom whatever the world arranges.
The Blessing of Satsanga
All these episodes of the Ramayana, he continued, show the profound blessings of satsanga, the company of truth. Where that blessing is present, "All the poison becomes nectar." The many people and situations one does not like, which stand in life like enemies, all become friends.
A person caught up in desire-driven action is carried into the cycle of birth and death, and from inside that state escape looks impossible, like crossing an entire ocean. But satsanga turns that ocean into a puddle of water standing in the print of a cow's foot.
The Four Yogas Help One Another
Karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga and jnana yoga all become sources of spiritual progress. To practice yoga is to turn your karma into yoga, an integral movement within the whole personality. Action becomes karma yoga. Feeling becomes bhakti yoga. The wandering mind, which pulls a person in many directions, becomes raja yoga. And ultimately jnana yoga, "The revelation of I am Brahman."
All four are interconnected, Swamiji said, and each one helps the other: karma yoga helps bhakti yoga, bhakti yoga helps karma yoga, and the help is mutual throughout.
Lines in Water, Lines on Rock
The emotions enter practical life, he said, and cannot be removed completely; all of them are needed. If a child is about to do something wrong, anger has to be there to correct him. But how long should it be kept? It should be like a line drawn in water: you see it as you draw it, and then it is not there. The danger is letting happenings, negative and positive alike, cut deep marks in the mind, so that every line is drawn on rock instead. Much of the trouble a person experiences comes from himself, from holding on to animosity.
Against that, Swamiji set graciousness. Acts of goodness are many, but the greatest goodness comes when graciousness develops in the personality. One may give a great deal of charity; what touches the heart of people is a loving smile. Turn toward a person's face and smile, and he immediately feels he needs nothing more.
Sannyasa in the Heart, and Every Language
Following the path deeply, Swamiji taught, one becomes a sannyasi in the heart. The renunciation is threefold: the practical, the sentimental and the intellectual worlds. Those three are like a great ocean that does not allow enlightenment, and trapped in it a person goes on experiencing birth and death. This is why enlightenment is called crossing over Bhavasagar, the ocean of the world process. Yet all three, seen rightly, are Brahman.
He also warned against limiting the mind by language. Sanskrit is powerful, and so is whatever language you speak, Hindi or Urdu or any other. "Through that language of yours, you are going to become the greatest sage." Use the mother tongue you already have.
The same holds for pilgrimage. Agastya, he recalled, brought the Ganges and the Mandakini south, so that people there need not travel north; and north or south, the God worshipped there is the God of every temple. Where Rama abides in the heart, one can sit relaxed, recite the mantra, and receive the shower of grace.
The Screen Behind the Show
"The world is a cinema show." One is constantly caught by the story running across it, but "The screen is untouched." Between two frames there is nothing but screen, and the limited human mind cannot see that space. So the same appearance is charming in one moment and terrible in the next, while in between stands what is real.
The ego, Swamiji noted, bows down before gracious sages and before God, and an ego that has bowed cannot raise itself again. "So it follows divine law." Bowing is enough; there is no need to stand asking when success will be given.
The satsanga closed as the Guru places a hand on the head and blesses a little water, with a prayer for the grace of God to shower over everyone present.
Terms in This Satsanga
- satsanga — the company of truth, whose blessing turns poison into nectar.
- jiva — the individual soul, the identity a person mistakes for himself.
- bhakti — devotion; the feeling movement of the personality turned toward God.
- jnana — knowledge; its yoga ends in the revelation of I am Brahman.
- sannyasa — renunciation, made in the heart, of the three worlds.
- Bhavasagar — the ocean of the world process, crossed at enlightenment.
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