The Journey of Divine Joy in Sahaja Yoga
In Sahaja Yoga, as we grow spiritually, we begin to experience different layers of joy (Ananda). Each stage of ascent opens new dimensions of happiness—deeper, more subtle, and more fulfilling. Let’s explore these stages of divine bliss:
1. Swananda (स्वानंद) – Joy of the Spirit
- This is the joy you feel when you experience your own Spirit.
- A deep sense of inner happiness arises when you recognize your true self.
- It is a pure, self-generated joy — unshaken by external conditions.
2. Parananda (परानंद) – Joy of Giving Realization
- When you give Self-Realization to others, you feel the joy they feel.
- It is a collective joy — the happiness of spreading light to others.
- This is the joy of sharing your Spirit with the world.
3. Brahmananda (ब्रह्मानंद) – Joy of Total Satisfaction
- When your body, mind, and material life are in a state of complete contentment (Santosha), you feel Brahmananda.
- It is the joy of being in perfect balance with the world around you.
- A sense of well-being, health, peace, and harmony pervades your being.
4. Krishnananda (कृष्णानंद) – Joy of Sweetness (Madhurya)
- At the level of Shri Krishna, you experience sweetness, playfulness, and charm in your joy.
- It is the bliss of divine love and Leela (divine play).
5. Shivananda (शिवानंद) – Joy of Generosity
- When you witness your own generosity, detachment, and ascetic strength, you experience the joy of Shiva.
- It is the joy of being beyond ego, yet full of compassion.
6. Ganeshananda (गणेशनंद) – Joy of Innocence
- When you are with children or pure innocence, you feel Ganeshananda.
- It is the joy of being surrounded by purity, simplicity, and love without conditions.
7. Nirananda (निरानंद) – The Indescribable Joy
- This is the highest, most mystical joy—a combination of all the above Anandas.
- It is the joy of the Mahamaya, which cannot be put into words.
- Your Sahastrara opens fully, and a constant flow of divine vibrations pours in and reflects out, like waves reaching and returning from the shore.
- There is total thoughtless awareness, and complete silence within.
- Words fail here — they “break with the force of the Ananda,” unable to contain its power.
🕉 The Speciality of Nirananda:
You feel the Divine Mother (Mahamaya) so close, and yet so infinitely beyond.
It is the final union — silent, complete, and transformative.
This map of spiritual joy in Sahaja Yoga reminds us that as we rise in our awareness, we don’t just experience peace — we discover an ever-deepening bliss that transforms our very existence.
Jai Shri Mataji!
Original Lecture of Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi –
THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF ANANDAS
In Sahaja Yoga, as you grow from one to another, there are different types of Anandas.
Like we can say, the spirit, when you see the Spirit, you get an Anand, called Swananda. That means you feel your spirit yourself, and you feel very happy. Then you give Realization to others, you get Parananda, joy of others. But when you get the enjoyment of well-being, in health and materially all right and everything all right, everything in “Santosha”, in complete satisfaction, then it’s Brahmananda. And like that you start feeling higher and higher joys within yourself. Because your nerves start opening to new dimensions.
So you can say that at the Krishna level, you get Krishnananda, where you get the sweetness, the Madhuria. And when you see your generosity, then you get Shivananda. And when you are with children, you get Ganeshananda. And that can be described, all those can be described, but Niranand cannot be described, because it’s Mahamayas’ joy. All these joys put together is Nirananda. So there is no place for ego and superego at all. The complete Sahastrara is opened out, and nothing but the complete rapport is established with the divine.
And there is a pouring of light all the time in the head and the light going back, that you have seen in my photograph. As if the Sahastrara becomes like a sucking child from the Universal Mother, sucking the joy inside, and it is again reflecting back. It would be like the waves reach the shores and then they are again repleted, they go back and then they form a pattern.
Now the joy out of that pattern, how can you describe? The only thing about Nirananda is, that you have Mahamaya so close and so far away, that’s the speciality.
Completely thoughtless, silence there, complete silence, you don’t think. Its just silence you cannot put into words anymore, because the words break with the force of the Ananda. They cannot hold it.
Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi
02-May-1985
