Introducing  Shri 1008 Mahamandaleshwar Maharishi Vyasanand Giri Maharaj

Introducing  Shri 1008 Mahamandaleshwar Maharishi Vyasanand Giri Maharaj

[00:45] The Naranjani Akhara

Jai Guru Deva. Thank you for tuning into my podcast, The Vedic Worldview. I’m Thom Knoles, also known as Shri 1008 Mahamandaleshwar Maharishi Vyasanand Giri Maharaj, and what’s that all about?

On the 12th of January 2025, I was inducted into the Naranjani Akhara. An akhara, A-K-H-A-R-A, is a council of senior swamis whose aegis is the entire Vedic worldview as represented by modern-day Indian culture, bridging into the past 10,000 years.

An akhara is made up of 13 senior swamis. A swami is a master of the Vedic worldview, and a Mahamandaleshwar (maha means great, mandala means the whole realm, and eshwar means a master and an undisputed and preeminent master). So, Mahamandaleshwar.

I had known for a year that I had been nominated to fill that role of one of the 13 in the most senior akhara in India, and coming as it did from the perspective of Jyotish. Jyotish is the ancient Vedic system of understanding the impact of the canopy of stars and planets on individuality and individual life, what we would call in the West astrology.

Jyotish designated the ideal day for my induction, my ordination as a Mahamandaleshwar, to be on the 12th of January 2025. The 12th of January 2025 happens to be the 108th birthday of my master, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. This was unbeknownst to the Jyotishis who did the calculations.

And to me this was, in case I needed it (which I didn’t), further indication, verification, validation of it being really ordained cosmically that I should accept this induction. And so, in a grand ceremony that lasted two hours, I was greeted by the other 12 Mahamandaleshwars and the King of the Yogis, the Shankaracharya designate Swami Kailashanand Giri, to become one of their members, and I had bestowed on me life tenure as a Mahamandaleshwar.

[04:02] Maha Kumbha Mela – The Great Gathering of Gurus

Most Mahamandaleshwars have a 12-year tenure that is reconfirmed at the Kumbha Mela. Kumbha Mela, K-U-M-B-H-A Kumbha, M-E-L-A Mela, is the great gathering of the gurus, where 70 million people appear each day at the confluence of three rivers (the Saraswati, the Yamuna, and the Ganga Rivers) which arrive in one spot and conflow there: a great bathing place for taking a sacred dip into the sacred waters.

And this astrologically happens once every 12 years. This was one of those 12. It’s called Maha Kumbha Mela. And on the day of my ordination, there were 70 million people present, and with modern technology, everybody in India has a cell phone, there were 1000 members of the Press Corps that were recording the ordination.

It was particularly novel because, first of all, about a year prior, one of the great masters had his mahasamadhi (mahasamadhi means the dropping of the body). His mahasamadhi had occurred, and so there was a space available, and the akhara, the Council of Swamis, had met together and agreed unanimously that I should be nominated and informed and invited to attend and to become one of them. And I couldn’t say no.

[05:54] A Meaningful Title – Shri 1008 Mahamandaleshwar Maharishi Vyasanand Giri Maharaj

And so, for all the reasons that I’ve just laid out, I’ve agreed to be in that position. The long name Shri… Shri means sublimely pure and adorable. But it’s also one of the nicknames of Lakshmi Devi, the goddess, one of the patron goddesses of our tradition who is the feminine counterpart of Vishnu. She is considered to be the goddess of all abundance. Shri.

1008. In Sanskrit, every number has a sound that goes with it. The number one is the sound ah. The number zero is the sound ooh. The number eight, which is an infinity sign when you think about it, is the sound mm, the continuum sound. Ah-ooh-mm comes out as Omm [Aum]. Omm. 108 and 1008 are both considered to be representative of that primordial sound.

And then Mahamandaleshwar. Maha, I’ve already said. Mandaleshwar. And then Maharishi, a great seer. Vyasanand. Vyasa is one of the great masters of our tradition, a pivotal member of the Vedic pantheon of great seers of the past, the writer of three quarters of all Vedic literature and also the Brahma Sutras (the sutras, the aphorisms of unity). Vyasa. Ananda means bliss. Vyasanand.

Giri. Giri is a mountain that stands alone. Like where I live in Arizona, there’s a mountain, a strata volcano, that rises up out of the desert floor. It’s not part of a range; it just stands alone, isolated with white caps on it, surrounded by desert. Very often the way I feel when I’m moving around the world, and I have been gifted over all these decades with a body of knowledge and experience, so it was decided by my counsel to call me Giri, which is the standalone mountain.

And then Maharaj. Maharaj is just a great king. It means I’m one of the kings of the yogis. And so I accepted this with great humility but also pride in my tradition that my tradition has generated yet another Mahamandaleshwar.

[08:38] A Common Lineage to Guru Deva, Swami Brahmananda Saraswati

Guru Deva, Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, was also a Mahamandaleshwar, and so I feel very, very blessed, humbled, but proud at the same time.

There is such a thing as humble pride, and I’ve mastered that. And the role that I have to play is a role of both being an exemplar of the Vedic tradition and what it can bring in daily life, and also someone who’s responsible for the purity of the teaching, keeping the teaching pure in generations moving forward.

The other 12 members of my akhara are mostly men, although there are two women who are also Mahamandaleshwaris, as a woman is referred to specifically. Mahamandaleshwar is the neuter form. A specific Mahamandaleshwar is either an ar or an ari: Mahamandaleshwari.

So there are two women swamis who are also on my council. Each of them refers to Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, that’s my master’s master, as Mahipita. Mahapita: grandfather, grandfather.

Why did they call him Grandfather? Each one of my fellows in the akhara, the Council of Swamis, was trained by a master who was trained by Guru Deva. And so I shared that with them; I was also trained by a master, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who was trained by Guru Deva. None of the others were trained by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, but their masters all were disciples, living disciples of Guru Deva, Swami Brahmananda Saraswati.

[10:35] Instant Camaraderie

In the ceremony of my induction as a Mahamandaleshwar, it was quite remarkable. Beautiful, beautiful setting. The setting was of a stage. This is mid-winter in India, and this particular city of Prayagraj, meaning the place of the confluence, where all the three rivers meet, is notoriously a cold place.

I would’ve estimated the temperature to be in Fahrenheit degrees in the high thirties, and all open air except for one covered stage: a big wooden-floored stage on which the other 12 Mahamandaleshwars and the Acharya, the king of the yogis himself, Swami Kailashanand Giri, all sat.

I arrived wearing a saffron dhoti. A dhoti is this raiment that you see me in now. And the first thing that happened was the king of the yogis looked at me and whispered, “Take off your watch.” I was wearing a watch, and who was to know that one of the subtleties of the ceremony is that one is not to be constrained by time?

So I had to take off my watch, and I just handed it over to some random person who was nearby because the urgency of the moment was far greater than me wanting to know where my watch went. I would’ve thrown it into the trash if I needed to. And so, having removed my watch, I was then asked to bow at the feet of each of the seated masters who were already there. And they were all sitting in lotus position, all in a row, with the king of the yogis sitting at their center and arrayed on each side, one of the 12 Mahamandaleshwars. I was to become the 13th of them.

And so I paid my respect one at a time to each one of those. Each one of them put their hands on my head, looked at me smilingly, and said, “I knew your master Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. He was the greatest saint. You know, you were trained by the greatest saint.” And this was really enjoyable for me to hear, which I knew already, but to hear that feedback from who were to be my fellows, under the grandfather of Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, that their masters and my master were brethren. And so we had that instant camaraderie and an instant fellowship just in that act alone.

[13:26] Vedic Mantras Fit for the Occasion

And then I was asked to step down off of the main stage onto a smaller stage, which was about the size of the couch on which I sit now. And in front of that smaller stage were about 1000 members of the Press Corps of India, all with their microphones, cameras, and iPhones, recording what happened next.

As I sat in my spot on a little rug, I realized that the other masters were behind me, and I couldn’t see them. They were arrayed from left to right on a stage slightly above me and behind me, and I just sat there quietly and, intuitive enough to know that I was to sit still and not say a thing.

Then one of the masters of the akhara began chanting Vedic mantras. A Vedic mantra is different to a bija mantra with which we meditate. A Vedic mantra is something like some of you have heard me teach, Aham Brahmasmi, I am Totality, Tat Tvam Asi, Thou Art That, or Agnimile purohitam yagyasya devam rtvijam hotaram: the first verse of Rig Veda.

And so these are mantras that can be spoken, unlike our bija mantra with which we meditate, and they work on the level of meaning, unlike our bija mantra with which we meditate, which doesn’t work on the level of meaning; it works on the level of sound. And so many Vedic mantras were being chanted, sometimes by one, sometimes by many of the masters who were sitting above and behind me.

[15:14] A Mountain of Petals and Shawls

And then after a while, everything just went quiet, and I felt a few drops of water being sprinkled over me from behind, but I couldn’t see what was happening.

And then some more mantras started to be chanted, and I felt some flower petals land on my head and shoulders from behind, and I knew they were. Somebody was showering me with a handful of petals.

Well, at first it started to be a handful. And then it began to move to what I would sense was like buckets full of flower petals. And the flower petals began raining down and raining down. And I only know from subsequent videos, where I was able to look at it from the other perspective to see what was happening behind me, each one of my fellow Mahamandaleshwars, in turn, were putting handfuls and handfuls of petals on me.

After a while, the flower petals, the yellow flower petals, had come up to my waist, and I had no expectations, but I was willing to experience whatever was happening. And then the petals came all the way up to my elbows. And then the petals continued showering down with all mantras being chanted, and it came up to my shoulders, and the petals continued showering down, and it came up to my ears, and only my face was emerging from the mountain of flower petals that had been showered on me.

At the end of that time began the placing around me of what’s called the vastra. Vastra, V-A-S-T-R-A. Vastra means like the top half of this garment that I’m wearing now. It is considered in India, when you want to show high respect for someone, you wrap around their shoulders a cloth shawl made in some variation of the saffron color: either the darker red of saffron, or the more yellowy part of saffron, or somewhere in between.

And so then, without me being able to see who was doing it, shawls began getting wrapped around my shoulders. In later videos, I was able to look at it and see who it was: it was members of my own college, Initiators, and also each of the Mahamandaleshwars, each wrapping me one at a time in shawl after shawl, and these wrappings were happening on top of the flower petals.

I could sense at one point that it had got up to about a hundred pounds of weight, and they continued coming. And, all in all, about 130 shawls were wrapped around the flower mountain under which I was, and the ceremony continued going on.

[18:10] A Slow Exit

After having sat there for about two hours being celebrated this way, one of the masters of the tradition came and kind of peeked in at me through all of the flowers and the shawls and everything, my face barely emerging and very barely visible, and helped me up.

And I was able, with some help, to stand up, and all of it fell away, it was about up to my waist in shawls and flowers, and then one at a time I received blessings from each of the masters.

Actually, even during the shawl part, different masters were stepping down from their stage onto my stage, peeking in at my face through all the shawls and through all the flowers, and giving me their blessing.

So it really was a very, it was a grand ceremony, and at the end when it was all over, I was mobbed by the media. There’s no other way of putting it. It was just literally people sticking microphones in my face and, by the dozens, all at one time, just crowding around me. And in order to walk from that stage to the vehicle that was taking me away, I needed to have at least half a dozen blockers who were kind of making a wedge through the crowd of media who were so fascinated by this Westerner who had been awarded this honor.

And then eventually I got into the car, and even then it was like you would see in movies: people crowding around the car, banging on the windows with their microphones, wanting me, hoping I would open up the window and say a word or two or something to them.

But I realized that if I even cracked it open that much, there was going to be no end to that. And the car had to move through a crowd of people that was assembled that were chest to back, shoulder to shoulder, thick with people. The car, moving at about half a mile an hour so it didn’t run over anybody’s feet, just gradually made its way through that crowd back to the encampment, and all of that ride took about half an hour or so. It was a very memorable evening.

[20:37] Down to the River We Go

I should add that one of the highlights of the Kumbha Mela is being able, in a particular window of time, this window of time happened to be about six and a half hours, but you have to imagine three times the population of the entire Los Angeles County: three times the population.

So 17 million people, all jammed into one place, wanting to get into a body of water that is about half the size, maybe even less, maybe a third of the size, of an American football field. And there is a cordon of army officers, women and men, one woman, one man, one woman, one man, who link arms, and they press their back up against the crowd and back the crowd up very gently but definitely pushing them back, pushing them back.

And this crowd goes as far as the eye can see, up and over every horizon that you can see. There’s just people shoulder to shoulder, back to back, and chest to back, I should say. And all of them surging in the direction of this little patch of the three rivers, which is called the Triveni.

Tri means three, and veni means like a blood vein. That’s where we get our word blood vein. It means a stream or a river. The three rivers, three rivers, sangham. Sangham means together. Triveni Sangham. Very, very, relative to the crowd, a very tiny spot.

And leading down into the spot, a pathway covered with straw so that it’s not muddy from all the people walking on it. And then as you approach the slope that goes down into the water, not a very big slope; if you were standing in the water, the slope up to the top of the bank would only be about shoulder high, so only about from shoulder high down to the water, but sandbags to keep it from becoming a slippery slope that people would slip and fall in.

And the cordon was doing its best to hold the surging millions back. And when I say millions, we use that word like, “Oh, you know, do you have some pancakes? I have millions of them.” You didn’t have millions; you had four.

When I say millions, I mean millions. Tens of millions, jamming, trying to make it past this cordon, pushing against the cordon of people with their arms linked, holding back, holding back the crowd. And they were all shouting at me in Hindi, “Challo, challo, challo, jeldi challo,” meaning, “Run, we can’t hold the crowd back any further.”

And Peter, who in India is referred to as Shankar, one of the names of Shiva, was with me, and another one of the Brahmacharis of the king of the Yogis was also with me, fortunately built like a football linebacker, and we penetrated into that corridor, and then we had to run. And I’m not in the habit of running. And I had some flip-flops on, and one flip-flop went, so I thought, “No use having one.” So I just threw the other one off and kept on running over the straw.

And then the cordon was not able to keep back the surging crowd because it’s unimaginable what the weight of that crowd is: millions of tons of human moving against that cordon, and nobody who’s in the crowd has any control over what the mass is doing.

Like there’s no 40 people who are behaving badly or anything. It’s just the crowd itself is just constantly surging, like a tidal surge of ocean water. And so it, when it would push forward, it was pushing forward from probably two or three miles back.

And what happened was the cordon collapsed, and the crowd swelled in and closed in on us. And so Peter and I, and our friend whose name I’ve forgotten, we had to shout to be heard, just drove through this crowd like a wedge. And we probably had another maybe 50 yards to go before we got to the water, and eventually broke through and then tumbled into the water.

[25:26] A Cold Plunge and a Ride on a Chariot

And you’re supposed to go under three times. It was about chest deep, and the water was cold, cold, cold. For those of you who know Fahrenheit, I would say probably about 40 degrees Fahrenheit and like a cold plunge. And, figure it out in Celsius, it’s about three degrees or something, Celsius.

And then three dunks under, holding hands, going under three times. And then after our three times in and out, which was all of about 30 to 40 seconds, the last remaining guards who hadn’t been knocked over by the surge of the masses of people started shouting, “Challo, challo, challo. Go, go, go. Get out of here.”

Why? Because that entire mass of millions was about to descend into that water and just pour into it. And so we managed to get out from there, climbed up over the sandbags, and there was a kind of a tidal surge of people who had been in the water and who were moving in one direction, and another surge of people who was much larger pouring into that water field.

And we managed to make our way out. And when you’re a Mahamandaleshwar, you don’t just walk along the path like everyone else. You climb up a ladder onto a chariot, an enormous wooden chariot with carved swans and carved animal figures all over it. And so this chariot then rolls along through the crowd of millions, and all of the millions are all waving and shouting various kinds of Sanskrit mantras at you, and they’re hoping for a blessing from you.

And so I was waving and doing my hands like this. People were throwing sweets up onto the chariot, and sometimes members of the press were trying to climb up the ladder and get a microphone up to me and things like that.

And we creeped along for about another hour or so, creeping along at about half a mile an hour in our chariot through the massive crowd. And finally, we made our way back to our encampment, and that was an exciting morning too.

[27:46] At Home in India

The unusual thing is that I was the first and only non-Indian person in history to be made a Mahamandaleshwar of this akhara. And the uniqueness of that was instant publicity and got into the feeds and onto the television sets of about 360 million Indians on the day of my ordainment.

One of the consequences of that was that I became an instant celebrity in India, and now when I go to India, there’s no more anonymity. Everybody’s seen me on YouTube, or they’ve seen me on their favorite video feed, and it was big news. So I’m very happy to be playing this role and, moving forward, I hope that I’ll be able to, with some dignity and with humility, to bring advancement to the Vedic worldview.

One of the things expected of me by my akhara is to be the bridge between Western culture and ancient Vedic culture because I am a master of English and I’m a kindergartner in Hindi, which is the primary language of India. I can speak kindergarten level of Hindi and understand it at a kindergarten level.

All of my fellows are all experts in English. They all speak English perfectly and so I’m on a learning curve there because when we do have meetings of the Mahamandaleshwars, I’m the only one in the room who needs a translator who can help me understand some of the nuances of the Hindi language, which is a language. Next to English, the most common language in India is Hindi.

There are about 200 languages in India. About five major language groups, but almost everyone in India speaks Hindi, about 1.4 billion people, and I’m hoping to add to those numbers by being one of the ones who can actually master it and be fluent in it. Right now I’m not totally stumped.

When I listen, I’m probably at 60%. When I speak, I’m about 30%, and I often get my tenses wrong, or I’ll put the verb in the wrong place in the sentence, but mostly people are very accommodating. And it’s very difficult when you’re learning Hindi in India because English, the country having been under English rule for 247 years, English is so common that very often when they see you struggling a little in Hindi, they’ll just default to English and make it easy for you.

And that ends up being actually something that gives greater longevity to my illiteracy in the language. So I’m hoping that Indians will actually help me learn Hindi by speaking to me in it and expecting me to answer their questions in it.

[31:06] Cultural Appropriation vs A Choiceless Duty to Perform

So this is an opportunity for celebration by everyone who enjoys the Vedic Worldview, and one of the things that it has done is it brings an end to any argument of cultural appropriation.

You know, the idea that somebody would’ve gone to India, learned something of great value, and then come back to the West and begin purveying that and teaching it to Western culture.

There have been occasions where certain people who were feeling a little superior raised an eyebrow and said, “Isn’t this cultural appropriation?” And I’ll respond to that argument; in the following lies: that I’m not actually entitled to or even granted permission to teach the Vedic worldview in the West; I’m commanded to do it.

It’s incumbent upon me. I’m made choiceless by my role as Mahamandaleshwar. So I intend to bring the purity of the Vedic worldview and continue bringing the purity of the Vedic worldview into the West and all the rest. Is there anything other than West and East? Well, there’s North and South: to the North and to the South as well.

And let this be the dawning of a new era of the dignity with which my Master’s knowledge is arriving on the Earth.

Jai Guru Deva