Rohini Ralby

From an early age, Rohini Ralby was committed to finding the best teachers in every field she pursued. Originally from the Boston area, she completed her undergraduate studies at Washington University in St. Louis and earned a graduate degree at Mills College.

While at Mills, she began intensive study of Tai Chi Chuan, and subsequently ran her own school in Cambridge, Massachusetts while also earning a degree in acupuncture and studying Chinese calligraphy and Alexander Technique.

In 1974, she met Swami Muktananda Paramahamsa, and remained a close disciple until his mahasamadhi in 1982. Over those years, she served her Guru in different roles, including his head of security as well as his personal appointments secretary. Muktananda, affectionately known as Baba, taught Rohini spiritual practice, one-on-one, every day for years. In the four decades since Baba left his body, she has continued to devotedly live that practice. Since 1990, she has shared it with students all over the world. In 2012, with Bancroft Press, Rohini published Walking Home with Baba: The Heart of Spiritual Practice, a guide to the inner practice she learned from Muktananda and continues to share.

Living the Practice: The Way of Love is the first of two books that collect Rohini’s shorter writings in both prose and verse as well as some of her paintings, organized thematically so readers can locate, read, revisit, and contemplate her teachings and reflections.

TBE: Can you tell us a little about your new book, “Living the Practice“? What prompted you to write this? How did you get the idea for this book?

Rohini Ralby: Living the Practice is the first of two volumes that together will collect much of what I have communicated, in different forms, about the nature of spiritual practice. Underlying all of those expressions is the same Love. I feel compelled to share what my Guru, Swami Muktananda Paramahamsa, taught me, and doing that it through books allows me to pull it all together. I see all of my books as forming one evolving communication of the essentials of what I have learned.

TBE: In the book, you talk a lot about “spiritual awakening.” Please explain what you mean by this state of mind.

Rohini Ralby: Spiritual awakening is not a state of mind. Spiritual awakening occurs when the Guru initiates a student by putting a spark of his or her shakti into the student, thus awakening the dormant energy of spiritual growth within the student. The student must then nurture that flame through steady, committed spiritual practice as instructed by the Guru. Awakening can be transmitted by four means: touch, look, word, and thought. This awakening is not about an intellectual realization or surge of feeling or what have you; it is about setting in motion forces that will transform your life if you are willing to let that happen. After the initial awakening, the shakti quiets down, and the person then has to choose to do the work that will get them to the place they may have been afforded a glimpse of in their awakening experience.

TBE: Would you explain more about your teaching and about Siddha Yoga?

Rohini Ralby: My teaching is based on my experience of being guided one-on-one by a Great Being, Swami Muktananda. He taught me to be with my experience, whatever it is; let whatever comes up from that experience come up, without judgement; and function appropriately on the physical plane. These three things are done simultaneously. From this practice, along with the Guru’s grace, the vibrations that obscure who we truly are dissolve, and we are revealed to ourselves. Siddha Yoga is a term for the yoga that encompasses all other yogas – such as those of meditation, knowledge, selfless service, or devotion to God – and is guided by a Siddha, a perfected master.

TBE: Have you always been spiritually inclined? Do you remember any incident that propelled you towards the spiritual path, or has spirituality always been an integral part of your nature?

Rohini Ralby: Even as a child, I longed for a relationship with God. I had experiences that took me beyond normal experience. And so I began early on to search for the bottom line of life and to understand what we are doing here. I sought out teachers who could lead me in that direction through various disciplines. Those teachers passed me on like a baton, from one to the next, until I was ready to meet Muktananda. And once I met Baba and had the awakening from him, I knew that I was home, and that I would leave everything behind to be with him. And Baba gave me everything, and never let me down.

TBE: Do you believe that true self-realization can only happen by relinquishing all worldly possessions and all materialistic attachments? Did you ever feel that, as a normal person with a set of duties and responsibilities, your spiritual growth was confined or slower in any way?

Rohini Ralby: No, not at all. It’s not about externals; it’s whether we are internally attached to those externals that can be the problem. Someone without anything can be as attached as a person who has everything, and someone who has many things might not be attached to them. Baba used to tell the stories of King Janaka, and how he had everything and yet was attached to none of it. Few people become sannyasin, monks, renunciants. Most of us are householders, and many saints have been householders. Baba had wanted me to have a child. I have two sons, and while I took care of and played with them, I was doing the same inner work that I did around Baba. What I wanted, and what Baba gave me, was having the experience of connectedness with God without being at the mercy of any external activity. Spiritual practice is about your inner orientation, not your outer circumstances.

TBE: According to you, what role does a Guru play in an individual’s spiritual journey? Is it necessary to have the support and guidance of a teacher to achieve self-realization?

Rohini Ralby: There is a saying that if God and Guru both appear to you, you should bow first to your Guru, because without the Guru there is no way to God. The Guru removes the darkness, and brings us into the light. Until we have purified our vision, our decision-making will be distorted by our wrong identification. The Guru will guide us and help us navigate the world and disentangle from our false image of ourselves. Without the Guru, we are all liable to delude ourselves. So yes, a true teacher is necessary. We always seek out experts in medicine, trades, arts, and business, yet, curiously, we tend to believe we can undertake spiritual practice on our own.

TBE: What, according to you, is the essence of all that you have learned from Swami Muktananda?

Rohini Ralby: Baba used to always say this: “Love your Self. Honor your Self. Meditate on your Self. God dwells within you as you.” Baba taught, through experience, that Love is the essence of everything, and though we do not understand, Love informs everything.

TBE: Most people define happiness as depending on certain external circumstances or conditions. How do you define happiness?

Rohini Ralby: The truth for me, and the happiest of moments, are when there is the sweetest nectar dripping in my Heart, and it has nothing to do with anything external. In a broader sense, happiness is experiencing the Love that is our birthright and our true nature.

TBE: What changes for people in their day-to-day lives when they begin to walk on the route to enlightenment? What are the consequences of this realization?

Rohini Ralby: Just as a baby learns to crawl and crawls for a long time, and even after they start walking they will get on all fours and crawl, each of us, as we go on this path, crawls for a long time. After we receive the Guru’s grace, depending on how strong the experience is, our world will be completely turned upside down. Nothing looks the same. But, depending on where each of us is internally, gradually the world goes back to a somewhat familiar condition. Our job then is to work to still the obstacles that prevent us from seeing the world as divine. This divinity is an experience, not an idea. For many people starting on the path, they change their thinking, concepts, ideas – but they are no different. Who we truly are is always the same, but we are lost in our image of who we think we are. As long as that occurs, we relate with the world no differently than we did prior to awakening. Once we have truly awakened, we see the world as a vibrating, scintillating expression of God, and we are a part of that.

TBE: What would be the number one piece of advice you’d give to someone who is currently on a similar voyage? What do you hope your readers take away from reading your book?

Rohini Ralby: In sadhana, the word tapasya means austerities, and heating or burning up the dross so that the gold within us is us. Most people want to jump from bheda (duality) to abheda (supreme unity) and nothing in between. They want to go from the way they thought they were to being divine with no work. Sadhana does not have to be done by the soul or the Self of All; the individual has to do sadhana, and sadhana is the practice of dismantling the individual image, the shrunken self, and our identity with that shrunken self has to be dissolved. So if I were going to give one piece of advice: laugh at your image, laugh at your individual identity. It has to go. It is not who you are. Be willing to forsake your ideas and image for Love, and the Love of God, and God’s Love.

TBE: Is there anything you are currently working on that may intrigue the interests of your readers?

Rohini Ralby: I am taking the lessons that are revealed in my group teaching and applying them to the strategy of helping resolve greater world issues. My teaching environment is a laboratory in which all the behaviours and choices in the world are present. We each make choices, and they have consequences. Our motivations determine what paths of action we see, and what choices we make. This is all God’s play, so the greater world environment operates no differently than a small group. My Baba used to say, “Everything that is in the world is here in this ashram.”