This is a very sweet, simple and soothing melody that I love to play with children. Here I am singing with the little girls at AMURTEL Family in Romania. Kiirtan creates such a loving connection when singing with children. I think of the meaning of the mantra “Baba Nam Kevalam”, as I look at each one of them, that each is a beautiful, unique expression of the Divine.
Kiirtan and Music
Kiirtan is my favorite spiritual practice. It means to chant mantra, to chant the divine vibration of God. This fills your heart and the entire surroundings with spiritual vibration. Without spiritual love, meditation does not go very far, and can become a dry, routine exercise. It is the singing of kiirtan that allows us to creatively express all the emotions of the human heart longing to return to the source, and it can express sadness, longing, bliss and even the highest heights of spiritual ecstasy.
Kiirtan
A simple kiirtan tune that I recorded for the students of my meditation classes at Morningstar. I hope that it helps to uplift your meditation with bliss before sitting to concentrate internally.
50 days Kiirtan in Jamalpur
50 Days Kiirtan, Jamalpur India from Didi Devapriya on Vimeo.
In 2005, I was invited to India for a very special, sacred moment: my avadhutika diiksha. I had already been a brahmacarinii (the equivalent of a novitiate) for four years, posted in Italy, but now I would have the opportunity to learn a special, advanced form of tantra sadhana called kapalika sadhana, and take a deeper set of sannyasi (renunciate) vows. I was full of excitement, and arrived in India, eager to begin the lessons.
Singing kiirtan with Loredana Groza
By serendipity – or rather the surprising Grace of the Cosmic Dance…I was invited at the last minute to a program at the Indian Embassy in Bucharest. Loredana Groza, a famous Romanian singer was one of the guests of honor. We ended up singing a kiirtan with Baba Nam Kevalam (a mantra that means “I am only singing to my Beloved”) and Loredana, with her warm charisma – involved all of the members in the audience in singing the mantra into the microphone. It was an unexpected moment that created a joyful and sweet atmosphere:
The program was organised in order to launch a beautiful book about yoga that has been translated in Braille. The embassy generously donated copies of the book to the Association for the Visually Impaired of Romania – I happen to know the president from a training that we took together about social enterprise, so it was a pleasure to reconnect with him as well.
Here is the entire news story that appeared on television, for those of you that can understand (or guess at) Romanian!
Song: What if We Made a Circle
Beyond “Us” and “Them”
In its essence, the Neohumanist philosophy is about continually expanding the radius of our circle of love to include the entire universe. Human love is nurtured from birth by forming attachments to those closest to us, but often, beginning in early childhood, those outside of our circle of love, are part of an unknown “Other”. We then begin to experience the duality of “us” and “them” – those that are part of our world and thus familiar, safe and approachable, while those that are not, and are unfamiliar, alien and often thus perceived as threatening on some level due to our basic fear of the unknown.
My live kiirtan recordings
I just made a playlist on SoundCloud of some of my favorite recordings of live kiirtans, that I made during gatherings with hundreds of Ananda Marga meditators. Kiirtan is the chanting of sanskrit mantras that create a deep resonance with Divine Love. There are many mantras in the tradition of kiirtan – but the one that I love best is “Baba Nam Kevalam” which means “I am only calling out to my Beloved”. It focuses and aligns the whole heart and mind to that core of unconditional, Divine Love that vibrates the essence of the entire universe.
Singing kiirtan is such an amazing simple way to experience pure spiritual bliss. These recordings give a taste of how that bliss intensifies when many people gather together to sing, creating a powerful flow of minds all moving towards that same Divine Nucleus.