By Sat Siri Kaur, Vedic Astrologist
I was asked me to contribute a few astrological insights for the coming year and I decided a look into the chart for the founding of the Mother ashram would be of interest.
The predecessor of the current ashram was Maharaj Ashram, founded and named by Yogi Bhajan at the time of Summer Solstice, 1969. The members started camping out in tents and tepees on land located three miles out from Santa Fe on 132D West Alameda Road.
Two years on, in 1971 the heavens conspired, as they constantly do, but now to birth something truly wonderful, the planting of the family of the Singh, the Man-Lion, in the welcoming valley of Espanola in New Mexico, half a world away from his spiritual home of Amritsar.
The finding of this property that would become Hacienda de Guru Ram Das, as mentioned elsewhere on this website, came about in late September 1971, with a little help, along with the famous sunbeam, from the proprietors of Sam’s Auto along the highway, who knew of land for sale. They mentioned it to one of the members of the Maharaj ashram, Bill Steen, whose ears were opened when the original hosts of the Maharaj Ashram on Alameda, Dawson and Karen Hayward, suddenly decided to pull up stakes, leave 3HO, and kick out their young guests.
When Bill Steen told Yogiji that the Maharaj Ashram was closing, he also said the group was going to Espanola. Yogiji said, "Walk there if you have to!" To which Bill Steen exclaimed, "Wah Guru!" Upon which Yogiji said to him, "And that's your name-- Wah Guru Singh."
Some of the other early members were Krishna Singh who joined Maharaj Ashram in August, 1969, Bill and Celeste Steen, Andrew Ungerleider, and Dr. Kirpal Singh, who came to Maharaj Ashram after the 1970 Summer Solstice. Dawson and Karen had been living in a tiny Airstream Trailer.
It was a very powerful ashram from the beginning. The Ashtang Mantra was the 2 1/2 hour sadhana, and the male inhabitants were individually spaced several hundred yards apart. Yogiji had trained them to chant very powerfully from the navel point, and each one could be heard several hundred yards away. The purpose was to "clear the land" of any negativity, past, present, or future.
Maharaj Ashram was named as a homage to Maharaj Virsa Singh, the main teacher that Yogiji had studied with. He was a fair-weather friend in name only. When the first group of students went on Yatra with Yogiji to India in 1971, Virsa Singh thanked Yogiji for bringing "his" (Virsa Singh's) students to him from America. Yogiji immediately responded that these students were students of Guru Ram Das. Then Virsa Singh asked Yogiji, "Who is your Guru?” He responded, "Guru Ram Das." Virsa Singh replied, "How could he be your Guru? A Guru has to give you a mantra." Yogiji replied, "I'll tell you that mantra tomorrow." This is what we know as the story of how Guru Ram Das appeared to Yogiji personally, visibly, and told him, "Your mantra is Guru Guru Wahe Guru Guru Ram Das Guru.
Wha Guru Singh, then the leader of the group, was able to scrape together funds with the help of a Hollywood star’s granddaughter, to buy the Ranch house, barn and 6.5 acres for $24,000. The group had two weeks to relocate from Santa Fe, where they worked at Nanak’s Conscious Cookery on Old Santa Fe Trail, from dawn to way after dark, to the new place far out in the country. On closing day, the guys rolled up everyone’s tents, bedrolls and luggage, and trucked them out to the adobe farmhouse where the Sadhana room was laid out. The even balance of 10 single women and 9 single men along with Wha Guru Singh and Kaur, and another married couple and their baby started to work the transforming magic to make the Guru’s real home.
The Ranch, Ram Das Puri, the Sombrillo lands in the hills, and the main ashram land including the Gold House area comprised over 200 acres of property. The ongoing physical changes are symbolic of the inner growth. Thousands of residents and visitors have walked these lands magnetized by the vibrations of the Guru’s consciousness and each found their unique relationship to the guiding energies that abound.
To see the chart that is the starting point, we have the exact time of the Summer Solstice in 1971. That summer’s high point held the seeds of the future home of the Guru in Espanola.
On the left is the map of the heavens (laid out in the style of Vedic astrology) and on the right is the Kalachakra, a special diagram showing the energy forces at play.
The diagram has Mars prominently featured in the East, in its highest exaltation degree. Mars represents the avatar of the Man-Lion, the Singh. A favorite mantra we would come to learn makes one a conqueror of evil, kills the devil and lets the angels live. It works on the evolution of energy, and the strength of masculine energy.
"Har Singh Nar Singh Neel Naaraayan, Gurusikh Guru Singh Har Har Gayan Waheguru Waheguru Har Har Dhiaayan, Sakhat Nindak Dusht Matayan"
Narsingha Deva is worshipped in the Vedic scriptures as one of the primary avatars of Maha Vishnu the Divine Sustainer. Half-man and half-lion, this divine force is referred to many times in the Siri Guru Granth Sahib ji with the story of Bhagat Prahlaad.* This energy was rising in the east at the Solstice that is the seed time for how the ashram came to be planted and grow in this valley.
