Tattvika Laksman - Robert Eklund

 

Initiated in 1970 at the age of 20, Laksman worked as an LFT from 1970-1974 in Memphis and Alaska. Then he entered the University of Tennessee Medical School, and the extremely stressful environment eventually caused him to stop his sadhana. 

From his memoir:

"Twenty years later, in 1995, I was 45 years old and in pain. For several months, my knees, arms, and feet were quite inflamed. My body would not let me do the activities I loved to do: swimming, hiking, bicycling, rock climbing, and contradancing. I felt deep envy toward my wife and friends because they were still healthy. I did not think that I would ever recover. I hated myself for being disabled. Multiple times a day I considered suicide.

"Finally I decided that I had to do something to get rid of those suicidal thoughts. I remembered the mantra I had been given and used for six years. I started meditating twice a day again. Gradually my suicidal thoughts and negative feelings faded away. The terrible inflammation also started to decrease. By the second month of daily meditation, the negative feelings were completely gone. Years later I learned the inflammation was apparently caused by gluten intolerance.

"One morning in the third month after I started to meditate I saw Baba, also known as Shrii Shrii Anandamurti, sitting in front of me. I recognized him immediately but thought, ‘I do not want a guru.’ I tried to ignore him and meditate. Then a thought came into my mind that Baba knew everything about me, and yet he still accepted me. I started to feel overwhelming unconditional love from him, much more than any other love I had ever felt. It permeated and saturated every particle of my being. I felt a river of divine love flowing through me.

"That powerful experience changed my life. Afterward, I looked up Ananda Marga on the Internet and attended an Ananda Marga retreat at the dome in Marshall, North Carolina, that is now called the Prama Institute. There I learned that Baba had left his physical body in 1990. That he came to me in physical form and helped me five years later made me realize that he is beyond any limitation and that he very much wants to help me."

In 2002 he bought Ananda Arpana Master Unit in Andersonville, Tennessee.

From 2005 to 2013 he taught a weekly yoga class at the University of Tennessee Knoxville Student Union.

He built a pole barn on the didis' Master Unit in Asheville. He bought two forty-foot diameter geodesic dome kits that today are part of the Neohumanist College of Asheville.

From 2007-2010 he attended the Nashville School of Homeopathy and practiced classical homeopathy until 2018.

From 2007 to 2019 he taught two or three 8-week meditation courses annually.

He traveled to India in 2017 and became a qualified Grhii Tattvika.

In 2018 Laksman was diagnosed with ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig's disease), a degenerative motor neuron disease. 

"Slow ALS like mine gradually takes away the function in my hands, arms, and eventually everything.... I am gradually getting weaker and weaker. All these changes for the worse have helped me tremendously with my development as a human being because I am burning my mental baggage. Another significant benefit is a growing relationship with my Baba based on love. As I continue on this spiritual path my life becomes more and more infused with the love of the Supreme Consciousness. I have become enriched beyond measure. The Supreme Consciousness is infinite Bliss, infinite love."

See a video of photos from Laksman's life.

The cover of his published memoir, available from Amazon as paperback or Kindle: