Amazing revelations and a joyful and exceptional spiritual gathering: The International YOGA Congress
Hundreds of enthusiastic and joyful yogis full of aspiration towards true knowledge have filled last night the Pipera 1 Hall. Some of them have come from abroad, full of curiosity and desire to have acces to rare and priceless informations that they can find here. Important schools of YOGA from Europe, America and Asia are participating to this celebration of spiritual realizations.
From the opening festivity and during the hours that have followed, the participants have plenarly felt a indescribable state of GOD’s presence and a misterious conection with.. their inner Selves, with the Divine.
Jocelyne, Bucharest:
This Congress it’s a true celebration for all the human beings who aspire to complete fullfilment. It’s a soul’s joy who feels that vibrates and refluents with wholeness. I felt this state of celebration in my soul from this morning, when I woke up. I felt really happy and I felt how SHIVA calls us to Him. He gathers the yogis from everywhere to be together and to share the experiences lived on this spiritual path.It’s wonderfull ! I love this YOGA school and our spiritual guide !
Emily Johhansson, Sweden:
I come to Romania for the first time and is the first time when I participate at Yoga Congress like this one. This evening is the opening, the atmosphere is wonderful and the conferences have been profoundly inspiring and full of useful information. The motif for which I came all this way is because ever since I started practice Yoga I can’t see anything more important in y life that to connect to the Divine and to reveal my True Self , so that all world could be cured.
Veronika, Hungary:
I am very happy to be able to participate this year at the Congress and I’m waiting with enthusiasm the conferences and all the other venets from the program. I believe that this Congress it’s an excelent oportunity for all to learn new things, from beginners to advanced yogis, we can experience something new and usefull. The program is very rich in topics and subjects to be presented and the YOGA contest can help us to come to an objective image about our YOGA practice.
Adina Stoian, Denmark, organiser:
This IVth edition continues the successfull tradition already seatled of the International YOGA Congress and Oriental and Occidental Alternative Therapies with a subject that stirs up the curiosity as well as the desire of introspection and meditation: ”High states of Counsciousness and exceptional experiences trough YOGA practice”. The Congress reunites participants from over 20 countries who share their own experiences in the same time comunicating the methods who granted their succesfull practice.
The first conference from the program, ” GOD’s guest”, was held by the Yoga teacher Advaita Stoian, from Denmark. His profoundly inspiring testimony about a spiritual retreat at Şirnea described the peak moments and the exceptional states of Consciousness that he reached in that place, following the methodical practice of Yoga techniques, a certain way of life and of the spiritual principles.
Advaita also presented some essential keys in order to reach the success on a true spiritual path: an alive relationship with the spiritual guide; the careful methodical and persevering practice of adequate Yoga techniques; the capacity to keep our attention focused for long periods of time, into a meditative state and the centering in the spiritual heart.
Advaita shared with this occasion certain revelations he had, from which the most important beeing the continuous and plenary presence of GOD in our lives, in our daily activities, no matter of how small and without meaning they seem to us.
” GOD is never absent. We are absent ! ” he explained. When beeing asked if it was an experience of liberation and of what plan of manifestation he liberated himself of, Advaita answered playfully:
”This was a top spiritual experience, the result of guided Yoga practice. I didn’t liberate myself of no plan because I didn’t made any plans when I went there! ”
It followed then the exceptional conference held by Yoga teacher Nicolae Catrina : ” The esoteric practice of forgiveness: an extraordinary direct path to the overwhelming manifestation of the Divine Atribute of Divine Forgiveness and also of the Divine Grace within and through our being.”
The Yoga teacher explained for everybody to understand the steps that we have to take on the forgiveness path. The complex experience of life place every one of us in situations in which we often feel hurt, not understood and mistreated. Most of us have the tendency to blame the others, to consider ourselves victims of the persons, situations, or, no matter how absurd and contradictory this idea, we sometimes find GOD responsible for our sufferings.
Although we want to forgive often we fail to do so or we don’t know where to begin at. The road starts many times by forgiving ourselves. Nicolae Catrina showed that the spiritual traditions underline the importance of forgiveness in order to have a harmonious, fulfilled, happy life and to atain inner peace. The Yoga teacher continued to explain fully what is and what is not forgiveness and which are the main obstacles that we confront on the forgiveness path, and also many practical keys to awaken the divine virtue of forgiveness. Forgiveness calls for love, kindness, compassion, wisdom, understanding, humility. To forgive is to open our heart and see GOD. The act of forgiveness can’t change our past but can open the future to us. His conference generated joy and effervescence, many yogis beeing now able to access new understanding.
Monica, Bucharest:
It’s wonderful to be with spiritual beings, who are aspiring to true knowledge, full of light and warm at heart. I feel that within my soul awakens a state of spiritual aspiration, joy and effervescence that I can participate in this wonderful event. I feel in tune with the Divine. Listening to Nicu’s conference I become aware of the necessity of forgiveness, the importance of giving this subject much more attention in order to harmonize my being and the relations with loved ones.. or less loved from my life.
Thomas Tolazzi, Austria:
Participating at this spiritual celebration, I feel that the Unity in Connection is one of the core elements of Existence. I understand that as soon as a being becomes aware of her natural state, she will be again aware of her continously connection with the Divine. For this she should be able to transcend her ego, her mind and emotions reaching thus her true Self. I understood that everything is resonance; contraction is Matter and Expansion is Space. When a being can be aware of her True Self it means that in her case the expansion is prevalent and also becomes possible for her to experience the state of spiritual liberation: Unity in communion with the Divine which cannot be described but only experienced. Namaste !
The subject of this year’s congress is: “High states of Consciousness and exceptional experiences through the practice of Yoga” – a subject that touches the very core of yoga, and which is one of the supreme goals of yoga practice. Unusual and highly elevated states of consciousness are an essential element of Sadhana – a Yogi’s systematic spiritual practice – and such states have a special importance now, as yoga becomes more and more popular, while its fundamental message is often forgotten. This Congress aims to be a living reminder that fundamentally, yoga is a genuine spiritual discipline that leads to a full awakening of consciousness and that the practice of yoga is not simply a method for achieving bodily fitness and relaxation.
For thousands of years, elevated states of consciousness and exceptional experiences of fusion and union with the Divine have been one of the main goals of all yogis, as well as an important sign of the authenticity of one’s path. Over the last two centuries, modern psychologists and psychiatrists such as William James, Carl Jung, Stanislaw Grof and Abraham Maslow have studied these elevated states from a modern scientific perspective. Maslow examined the biographies of great leaders and personalities of mankind, such as Albert Einstein, and he discovered to his surprise that many of them had experienced “oceanic states of consciousness”, in which they felt their own personal consciousness fused with the universal spirit. Maslow named these states “Peak Experiences” and went on to study them in depth. His definitions of these states are both scientific and poetic: “Sudden feelings of intense happiness and well-being, possibly the awareness of an ‘ultimate truth’ and the unity of all things … the experience fills the individual with wonder and awe… he feels at one with the world, and is pleased with it.“
Yoga tradition is known to have studied the many subtle functions of the human being. It offers methods, techniques and guidelines for obtaining states of bliss, inner peace and oneness, as described by Maslow. Through an attentive and systematic application of yoga, and by means of self-observation, we can easily find out where we truly stand in our spiritual development. Along the path we may enjoy inner experiences such as the awakening of the heart and soul, an expanded consciousness that allows perceptions beyond common reality, or an inner revelation of the Supreme Self, known as Atman in Sanskrit. But spiritual high peak states may appear in many different ways, such as:
– A strong uplifting and refining of energies (sublimation)
– A rising of the fundamental energy Kundalini
– An opening of the crown chakra, Sahasrara
– Supra-mental states such as extreme clarity and wisdom, inner peace and silence, divine love, unshakable faith
– Experiences of miracles and phenomenal subtle worlds
– A powerful mental focus
– Being fully in the present moment, the ‘now’
– Oneness with all things
Blissful states such as erotic, mystical or spiritual ecstasy, known as Samadhi in Sanskrit
These are just some of the many different forms of peak experiences known of in Yoga, which will be the subject of the lectures, workshops, panels and shows at the IV. International Congress of Yoga and Alternative Therapies.
yogaesoteric
december 2014
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