Emails from Namrata

Dear Friends 20 June 2007
I thought you would be interested
It is Wednesday evening. I have just spent the afternoon & early evening with YM, Dar, Karuna, Punita and Anjali.
The doctor came today. He said Yogeshwar's body will die in the next 2 days to 2 weeks. He is skeletally thin and being fed water with a spoon.
He is so weak that he is always lying down but, at least until tonight, has gotten up to go to bed, though with support. We all like being there but have left for the evening, except one person stays. We sit in shifts with him and Darshana as Darshana is getting sick. It is a nice vigil just sitting together with him.
I will let you know when he dies or.... He says yoga is proceeding. He said now he will get divine body even if he dies, like Kripalu. He says he is at peace that his body feels washed in every cell as if cleaned by water from a mountain stream and has told of other different experiences that he is having or something about Lila Paradigm, mostly through sign language.
Lakulisha visited and told him not to worry.
God's blessings,
Namrata

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Dear Friends 22 June 2007
If you have written please know I will give your messages to him. I will try to answer your questions and update you here. We are Sati, Karuna, Punita, Anjali and, of course, Darshana here in Merimbula near Yogeshwar. We are all getting tired and Sati is ill from before Yogeshwar's recent rapid decline. As of this morning he still has not left the body. He is taking morphine as of 30 hours ago for the severe pain that has been plaguing him for months now. As always, everything, though, has been about yoga and he was reporting various stages of the flowing of amrit, kalakuta poison and amrit, and the formation of divine body. He told us yesterday morning that he won't be able to reverse the death process and he expected his body to die. Still, he would get divine body after death and that he would not be reborn. All of this has been written down from our satsangs with him and we are keeping notes of events and things that are said over the last three days when he no longer gets up. We are able to be with him most of the time, taking breaks to rest or meditate, or as each feels inclined. Mostly I think we are tired because it is hard to be away and it is a meditation in itself, sitting in his and Darshana's front room. He is lying on his side in a bed set up there for him. Kept quite warm, he eats nothing and has water by spoon. To look at he looks like a dying man. Ritam said it quite rightly I think, "I can only imagine that when Y leaves the body it will be a great release for him and perhaps allow even more direct contact with others who have gone before him. May the Divine Body formless form process continue rapidly for him!" I might add increased contact with us who hold him in our hearts.
Darshana holds up well, emotional the other day, then fine, trying not to get ill herself (there is a big flu hitting NSW at the moment), and we are discussing how best to keep her afloat when it is the toll on the body from little and irregular sleep and food that bothers her now. I feel dependent on her as she knows him so well and since he can't speak and now hand spells out words with difficulty. It is hard to get his thought and anticipate his needs. Also he and we noticed the morphine has made him paranoid and a little confused. Doctor is coming today to check on him. Pain killers without morphine base would be welcomed I think. (He has avoided pain killers up until now and maybe he realized the body will not survive but his sadhana can go on and the pain has been a big barrier. I do not know. He had said to us that whenever the prana works there, his subtle attachment to having the pain gone keeps it from transforming.
Reading my comment now later I think, as the death process went on, he still had pain despite the morphine. After the first night of some paranoia, as soon as he realized that that was what was happening, the paranoia was gone. He didn't exhibit any such symptoms.
He has made a living will regarding when to cremate his body and when to have a tomb and how to decide. We shall see what the doctor and authorities will do if it appears the body is dead and there are no signs of decay. We want to keep it with us for up to 10 days. These details will come out later and as I said careful notes are being taken and will be shared with those who want to know.
I find myself seeing that he is dying but still hoping that it would appear so even with formation of divine body.
I hope this answers your questions. I will write again as I can or like.
Today when faced with all your loving emails I felt compelled to write you asap.
Namrata

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Dear Friends 24 June 2007
He left the body at around 3:12 am Sunday the 24th June 2007. I wouldn't say he left in the usual way. I do not know that he left. He is no longer in that body. It was so obvious that he was not the body. His final countenance was beatific: large, wide open eyes, gazing at the Ultimate, hands in mudra.
It was one of the most beautiful, fantastic experiences of my life. He showed us how to surrender to the Divine to the very "end" and I know now without doubt his love for me and you.
There is more to tell but I thought you would want to know asap. Write me or call if you like. Easier to answer your questions.
I feel his blessings are with us.
Namrata

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Dear Friends 30 June 2007
I am still working on the details of the notes from Yogeshwar's last days in human form. I still can't say this in a way that is satisfying to me. He remains very available. I now know why Indians call it mahasamadhi. He was in samadhi. He did not leave the body but it was as if he expanded. He did not disappear or go away. He was just no longer using the body as a viewpoint There was clearly surrender/yoga still happening, at least to me, for example because the movements in the etheric body were apparent but my knowing was buzzing too.
The look on his face was exalted then beatific. There was no death rattle and his mouth, although slightly opened, closed and remained that way for around 24 hours. Only then it started to slowly open/relax again. Also it was clear that this was a crisis brought on by sadhana. He had permanent upward flow of the sexual energy. It may be that the disease defeated him. He was unable to reverse the weight loss and other purification happening at that stage of sadhana (read Jnaneshwari chapter six verses 211- 292 in particular and to some degree the verses following to 348) and whatever was causing his pain and swollen lymph was part of that. Many of you have asked if he had some final words for us and all I can say is that his life and final days using a physical body to relate with were his final words. He showed us surrender to Truth and he showed at the time of his last physical breath Truth, Lila and the One and the Many. I am trying to communicate this all to you as best I can. I continue to work on that project.
After 2 and 1/2 days of laying at home unmoved as he requested we got caught up in the smell (strong, unpleasantly sweet, thick odor increasing) and called the police and coroner. We forgot that he asked to remain unmoved for three days until after. Just like with Kripalu and his disciples, I felt I let him down. After some other brief uncertainties about how to prevent an autopsy (his request), he is now at a funeral home. There will be cremation next Tuesday at 2 pm. If you would like anything said or done at the service (it will be whatever any of us decide to do) let me know. I will do my best on your behalf.
He talked about having a tomb on a property just north of here where people could be inspired to do Yoga. Lo and behold the beautiful young family who own it are quite open to his ashes being there. The father works with stone and has offered to build the cairn or shrine where the ashes will be kept.

May the blessing of God rest upon you
May His Peace abide with you
May His Presence illuminate your heart
Now and forever more
Namrata

Eva Orinsky

Lieber Charles,
ich habe nicht die Ehre gehabt, dich persönlich kennenzulernen, aber ich habe durch deine treue Schülerin Nanna von dir gelernt. Du hast mir mit deinen wunderbar hilfreichen Methoden geholfen, mich und Gott zu finden (was - wie ich jetzt weiß - dasselbe ist), und ich werde noch vielen Anderen damit helfen.
Vielen Dank.
Ruhe in Frieden
Eva Orinsky

Dear Charles, I had not got the honour to get to know you personly, but I learned over your faithful student Nanna from you. You helped me with your wonderful helpful methods to find me and God (what - I now know - is one), and I will help many others with it.
Thank you very much.
May you rest in peace
Eva Orinsky

Justin Pomeroy

Charles Berner (Yogeshwar Muni)
by Justin Pomeroy

The soundtrack to the 'life of Charles Berner' wouldn't be the Grateful Dead. That would be for Mark Ederer or Elad Levinson or Ed Riddle or me. I'd be hearing the Dead in one of their long, gorgeous jams or listening to the Almond Brothers' "Blue Sky", when then, after Osha Reader turned me on to the Eagles, Wishbone Ash and Dave Mason, Charles would come to visit me at 'Origin' , Osha's picture-perfect carved-out paradise in the California Sierra mountains. It would be after a particularly intense Enlightenment Intensive that Charles had just mastered and he needed to—wanted to—re-create, vacate his usual, ordinary scene on the coast.

I was house-sitting Osha's Origin while she traveled around Europe. I needed this remote, hermit-like existence to sooth and balance my bodymindspirit after having taken 5 Enlightenment Intensives in a row in Milwaukee. I was blissed-out and Chicago seemed too harsh for me at the time. And so here I was alone at Origin with another visit from Charles Berner! He had brought a tape of Swami Muktananda singing the Guru Gita and so this was our soundtrack! And this was the second time I was "hanging" with him—the first was at the Institute of Ability in Milwaukee where I'd taken those Enlightenment Intensives: with Sandra Gratz (later to be "Bhavani"), met Osha Reader (then karen) when she was chief monitor), Jim Scheuneman and Norm Fredrick, a former Catholic priest who now, (then) had become an avowed Abilitist Enlightenment Intensive master. Charles had come to Milwaukee to lead a "Past Life seminar." I attended and learned a lot about Charles and his relationship with Jane ("Anatta") who also hung with the Grateful Dead. I didn't seem to remember my past lives that weekend though I remembered remembering my past lives on a 1968 acid trip so I was a "believer" and Charles was "amazing!" so I thought at the time. (I had had a breakthrough, yet mild enlightenment at the time. I was conscious that I was eternal but presently (then) I was young and working on my "purpose" in this "new" life). Charles' new religion, Abilitism was like a gnostic secret reminder of a clandestine group that comes together to always understand why we create life and how we can do it more effectively. Charles had inculcated the "secret" of the gnostics and, like prometheus, had "stolen" some of the accelerated pathways from the well-guarded Scientology system and other models like Zen.

Charles had come to Origin to relax, to rejuvenate, to replenish his post-intensive energies. He wanted to run, run out from the sauna and into the snow and then over Osha's frozen lake-like pond, or, if it were summer, he'd jump into the lake and swim over the lake to a stranded rowboat and I'd marvel in his ability to operate the oarlocks as he rowed on and on into the sunny afternoon until he'd then return to the sauna for more purification and release rituals. (I'd be busy listening to the tapes of him teaching the "Basic Truths of Life Course" and then, finally he'd come into Osha's kitchen to play a game of chess with me. Of course I'd lose the games gracefully while scurrying around trying to fix him a fantastic, magical dinner with escargot appetizers and herbal concoctions that I'd learned from Osha once upon a time. Then, Charles got out the tin cans with wires connected to the e-meter and audited me (cleared me)! On one of these ad hoc, impromptu, post intensive happenings, Charles brought along this new goddess woman, Jennifer, named (by him) "Shobha". She was a magical, wild, sophisticated, yet beautiful, high cheekbone shakti woman who dug the sauna and didn't care how many people were in it while she sweated and went into kriyas. Shobha and Charles spent a lot of time doing bonafide, e-meter clearing sessions and relating exercises.

Charles wanted me to go to India with him; he was taking a lot of his California students with him to visit all the modern enlightened teachers of India and Tibet: Ananda Mayi Ma, Swami Chitananda, Swami Mukatananda, the Dalai Lama, Madhusudandasji, and, the great Swami Kripaluananda. Kripalu, upon noticing that Charles had many American students traveling with him who held him in high esteem, tactfully and stealthily asked Charles if he'd like a "private area" out back in a straw hut where he could finally really totally surrender to 'beloved God'. Charles was hip enough to know what this meant and he went out back and let go into being totally free—with no resistance. Spontaneously, he ended up in Sahasrara, the headstand, and felt the bliss of egolessness.

Subsequently, Kripalu gave him the new name of "Yogeswar Muni"—lord of yoga in the muni lineage and, along with the name, the empowerment to "give" shaktipat diksha initiation—like the "Bridal Chamber" of the Valentinian gnostics, the ancient, advanced awakening of the kundalini or evolutionary energy!

I missed that India trip but I had given Charles an original Tibetan thankha painting of Tara in her gorgeous dhakini aspect. Charles used this image as the figurehead or logo for his new "Anubhava School of Enlightenment". This made me feel happy to be connected to a man of truth, a school of truth and soon, after India, Charles, as "Yogeswar" gave me the life-altering, life-transforming kundalini awakening. It was at Yan Kane's home in Richmond. I'll never forget that day, that sunny morning in that special room with the closed curtains when I received Shaktipat Diksha!

Another memory:

The first 14-Day Enlightenment Intensive, 1973 Dixon, California

I attended Charles' (Yogeshwar's) first 14-day Intensive in a farm house outside of Davis, California near a small town called Dixon. Wild, histrionic Shobha was there thrilling us with self-generations of Kali and Durga. Dan Karan was there and Yan Kane and many old Abilitists like Shirley ?. I drove Osha's Land Rover to Dixon, signed in with Mark Ederer, the Chief monitor. Mark was strict and tough in those days—the "Humphrey Bogart" of Enlightenment masters! "This is about 'enlightenment', man!....let's get going!" Mark and Elad Levinson brought along Werner Ehrhart, the founder of the EST Training. I had Werner for a partner a couple times. WOW! Was his consciousness ever vast! He had a "second level" *another* enlightenment experience at this intensive—so Charles claimed. During the work period, I was Charles' secretary so I took dictation for him as he wrote letters. This was while Dan Karan was busy constructing seiza meditation benches in the woodshop and we all kept the farm afloat. Werner had left after the 3-day period, after his enlightenment experience and had written Charles asking for a "certificate" signed by Charles authenticating his enlightenment. Charles had me type a letter which essentially said, "Sorry Werner, but your enlightenment was very shallow and I don't feel moved to write out a declaration of enlightenment for you at this time." Yan Kane and I stared into each other's eyes on the 13th night (all night) of that two-week intensive asking the question to ourselves, "what is another?" Needless to say, we were "oned" into an intuitive, unity space forever.

Another memory:

January, 1974, The Kahoutek Festival of Consciousness
(Kahoutek was the name of a giant comet that was witnessed in the sky at the time)

Held at the San Fransisco Civic Center, this incredible festival featured Werner Erhhart, Ida Rolf, Ram Dass, Ken Keyes, the "Living Love" guru, Yogeswar back from India, and Claudio Naranjo, the author of The Psychology of Meditation. I noticed that my hipster friends from Chicago and their religion, Naturalism were featured there also. Naturalism was a new religion (like Abilitism) that I entered into after I left the mystical Christian monastery, The Holy Order of Mans which was born in Haight-Ashbury but was also sprinkled throughout the Western world including Chicago. Naturalism's philosophy or theology was that final and unequivocal enlightenment came from doing samaritan services in the world (a kind of Bodhisattva ideal, as in Buddhism) but then, also having intensive time of LSD use inside, for example "orgone-generator" houses with sensory-deprivation tanks (samadhi tanks). Meanwhile, we had "LSD Rescue" centers, a 24/7 free service available in Chicago, New York, Toronto and LA. My first experience as a "therapist" was working at Chicago's LSD Rescue while I was in college.

As I arose on the elevator of the exclusive Mark Hopkin's Hotel on Knob Hill in San Francisco that first night of the Kahoutek Festival, I was alone with Charles and we had been invited to a Naturalism party in 3 suites of the 4th floor! All the luminaries and consciousness rogues were to be there. "Remember what I told you, Justin—don't drink the punch! It's spiked with acid, I know these guys!" Yogeshwar warned as he pointed his index finger. Later, I had to call Pat Liles so she could drive over to the party to meet her "idol", astrologer Zipporrah Dobyns and subsequently drive me back to her house in the Berkeley hills to "ground my cosmic visions." (I finally did really see comet Kahoutek on an early morning in Marin a few weeks later while driving with Elad in his van down Mount Tamapais at dawn. All the cars were pulling off on the side of the road to witness this startling and terrifying phenomenon.

Addendum

Charles was a teacher, a good teacher who knew how to communicate. He had an "old fashioned" gravelly James Stewart voice. His lectures were mind-blowing. He defined "space" as "the thought that matter is located" and "time" as "the illusion that we're getting somewhere". He told me that in the Bible, in Genesis, the first chapter, when God says, "let *us* make man in *our* image,"(elohim) that the *our* was us, all of us still there at the beginning of every cycle when we perpetually play the game of life and "creation", the game with all its risks of pleasure, pain, illusion and delusion, love and loss, forgetfulness and re-awakening, success and failure, sinner and saint-climber. Charles gave the world a great gift—a synthesis of all of the best— designed to accelerate awakening and final enlightenment. Borrowing from the creme de la creme, syncretizing and eclecticizing the best of tantra, sutra (jnana), karma yoga and dzogchen and bhakti devotions. Blended with progressive Western honest communication in a Scientology-fashion of repetition. He performed this feat while still battling his demons of materialistic visions and sensual egoistic desires. I have many other, far more sublime memories of Yogeswar Charles Berner, the California guru with the message of accelerated enlightenment through communication and understanding and evolutionary energy awakening and finally through self-surrender to the ultimate absolute truth.

Stephan Betz

I took my first Enlightenment Intensive as a college freshman seeking guidance and truth beyond what college could offer. Through Yogeshwar I learned that I had to know who I am before I could make real choices about my life, and I started living that truth. This changed my life forever and I tried to become a kinder person. It has been an uphill battle ever since. Yet, Yogeshwar not only supported me in this endeavor but he insisted I continue to get better at being kind to my children.
Later on in life, Yogeshwar and I had our differences in opinion. Even then he lived what he preached in acknowledging his and my free choice in deciding on different paths.
Stephan

Katya Betz (Satyavati)

The Divine YM

I met Yogeshwar in 1972 when I was 20 years old. I took an Enlightenment Intensive and walked through that cosmic door that would shape the rest of my life. Fueled with the idealism of my youth I spent the next 20+ years studying with Yogeshwar. I followed him to California, Hawaii and Australia. I studied and later taught intensives, relating exercises, mind clearing and sahaja yoga. When I learned of Yogeshwar’s impending death I thought back on what he had given to me. Sorting through the thousands of memories I found two strands that had a fundamental impact on me. Yogeshwar acknowledged and held true that we all have free choice. Through that I found my choice point and free will. I located the point at which I choose, and learned to act from that. Although it is certain that Yogeshwar did not always like my choices, he did recognize my freedom to choose. The second, of equal importance, is that he taught me surrender to God, Truth and the Ultimate. These two beautiful acts, free choice and surrender to God, have shaped my existence in this life and all future lives. Choosing to be open to the Truth of another is the golden gateway to heaven. While on a human level there were some fractures in my relationship to Yogeshwar, on a divine level the basic truth he has taught me is not breakable. So, with great love I bow and place my forehead on his feet and extend the greatest gratitude to Yogeshwar and to what he has given to me.
With Love,
Katya (Satyavati Katherine Ellis Noyes) Betz

Nishkala (Brock Palmer)

About 1980, after having been living and studying Yogeshwar's teaching about yoga and Energy Mastery in Yogeshwar's St. Helena ashram for about 3 yrs., I returned to college to study computers, math and science. Everyday Yogeshwar's teachings on Energy Mastery and contemplation (which I had learned from his Enlightenment technique) were with me, directing me, giving me the tools to apply myself and succeed in the environment of academia. As a result of my college studies at that time, I was hired by the college as an instructional assistant for their mathematics computer lab and later I went on to have a tutoring business and later a computer support business. I have Yogeshwar and his teaching of his knowledge and wisdom to thank for my being able to succeed so well in my college studies and small business successes. I don't think he ever expected a thank you. Thank you, Yogeshwar, for that and for so much more.
With love, Nishkala

Emir Salihovic

Yogeshwar’s passing away made me ponder a lot about his contribution to my life, and made me to re-evaluate what I learned from him, and what his teachings actually meant for me and my life.

In a way I was a bit surprised, as I brought it to the light of my awareness, how important Yogeshwar actually was in my life. I knew he was important, but I didn’t suspect he was so much important!

I took my first Enlightenment Intensive when I was only 17. In fact, I learned about Intensives when I was sixteen, and immediately understood the technique and was irresistibly drawn to it, but I couldn’t manage to do the one before a year later. I had my first enlightenment experience then, and it virtually changed my life completely, or better to say, as I was so young, it determined my future life completely. I took another Intensive only a month after the first one, and had such a profound self-enlightenment experience that it is still with me, and actually I am still into project of aligning my life with what I experienced those 22 years ago.

Since then I took many Intensives, including a 14-day one, and became an EI Master myself, but the impact those first few Intensives and experiences had on me and my life is eternal.

It was because of the power and directness of the Enlightenment technique that I was also drawn to other aspects of Yogeshwar’s teaching, so I started doing Holistic yoga course, Energy Mastery techniques, learned about Abilitism, did Fundamentals of Life course, You and Thought and other Mantra Level materials… I got immersed so much into Yogeshwar’s work, although I had been studying other spiritual schools too, that in 1989 I also asked him for a spiritual name, as a symbol of a spiritual bond between us, and he named me Brahmananda. In my heart, that little symbolic gesture made me his devoted disciple. But I still studied and practiced other spiritual schools too.

There were also some of my close friends who knew Yogeshwar personally, even lived with him in South Australia, so I was always feeded with fresh news about the ommunity, satsangs with Yogeshwar, his lectures… I was literally at the source of news when Lila theory emerged…

And again, all that time I was also studying and practicing other spiritual schools and systems too…

In the end, now when Yogeshwar left his body, I am looking back and see that I always evaluated and judged those other schools and teachings in the light of what I learned from Yogeshwar, and in the light of my most valuable spiritual experiences in life, all of those experienced in the context of Yogeshwar’s techniques and teachings…

I always planned my actions, evaluated my life experiences, related to other people, lectured or wrote in the light of what I learned from Yogeshwar.

In fact, everything valuable that I learned about life I learned from Yogeshwar. Not from my parents or my teachers. I learned many valuable things from other teachers too, but the essential, most valuable things, things that make the core of how I live and experience the life, how I try to live my life, it all came from Yogeshwar. That incredible individual that I never had a chance to meet in person happened to be my prime spiritual teacher, my ‘root guru’ as Tibetan Buddhists would say.

My love is with him, and I think all of us who learned from him do share a responsibility to further his teachings and pass it on to others.

Jaya Bhagawan, Lord of Yoga!