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About Anandajay
Anandajay (1955 NL) is a person touched by the essence of life, who has been working as a spiritual teacher for more than 50 years. From his inner openness, his life naturally became devoted to deepening his relationship with his essence and the desire to support others in their spiritual development from that place. He has developed twelve spiritual teachings (practices) to bring you closer to the natural basis of your existence, your spiritual authenticity, and its wholesome, joyful essence, so that it can also be your shining, spiritual guide in your life. To support this, he released around 50 music albums (mantras, pujas and ragas) and some twenty books.
About his life
His early years
Since childhood, Anandajay has felt a natural connection to the spiritual sense of oneness. Due to his longing for connection with the world around him and the lack thereof, he began to engage in self-exploration and yoga at the age of ten. At fifteen, he decided to follow his own path in life. It became clear to him that he wanted to focus solely on the spiritual values of life. He left secondary school to devote himself entirely to themes such as life, God, inner peace, existence and the deeper layers of consciousness, and began taking yoga lessons from an Indian teacher.
By spending a lot of time in nature, he explored the organic aspects of his experience of being. Based on his religious feelings, he sought recognition of his inner experience in Christian, Buddhist and Hindu traditions. A few years later, he secluded himself for a year in the quiet nature of Finland to explore his own consciousness more deeply. After various travels through Europe and North Africa, he left for India in search of deeper meaning.
To India
For a period of 10 years, Anandajay regularly stayed in India, with occasional breaks to teach yoga in the Netherlands. He spent time both in solitude in the Himalayas and travelling around to talk to as many teachers as possible about his inner experience.
His affinity with aspects of traditional Indian spirituality brought him into contact with yoga, meditation, pujas, healing and classical Indian music at an early age. It soon became clear to him that he wanted to express his own deep experience of being human, of being alive, of being in touch with his own essence, and that he could do so easily with these elements.
The jnanis (spiritually liberated teachers) Sri J. Krishnamurti, Sri Nisargadatta and Sri Ramana Maharshi strongly affirmed and supported him in his self-inquiry. When he was twenty-seven years old, he went to Yogacharya Sri S. Sundaram, the respected founder of yoga therapy and accessible yoga practice for the West, to deepen his yoga, and was trained individually by him to become a yoga teacher and yoga therapist. The profound meetings and conversations with him brought about a special relationship.
In 1983, Sri S. Sundaram indicated that, after being initiated by him, he should return to the West, because it was important to teach meditation, various forms of yoga and the spiritual depth of life there, rather than in India. Anandajay humbly and gratefully accepted this unexpected encouragement as a valuable gateway to a new phase in his life.
At the age of nineteen, he had already started teaching yoga and, a few years later, he began holding meetings based on satsang (being together in truth) and Jnana Yoga (being together through insight). After his return from India, he quickly established a thriving yoga centre in the city of Groningen. In the 1990s, Anandajay also developed Universal Yoga and Universal Meditation, focusing on the reintegration of spirituality in both meditation and yoga. In 1995, this led to the establishment of a retreat and training centre in Leens (Groningen).
At the age of forty-three, during a long meditation while staying in India, he was given the name Anandajay. This loosely translates as: the blessings of the heart, or surrender. Taking on this name was accompanied by an immense feeling of light and space, which moved him deeply and at the same time brought him intense inner peace. Since then, he has been sharing everything he wants to share with others under the name The Light of Being.
Many of his experiences are intuitively connected to the spiritual heritage of ancient India, but are fully integrated into the freedom of contemporary life. Characteristic of his approach is that he repeatedly shows you that your being is very simple, uncontrived and of unparalleled beauty. And also that this natural state of happiness requires no effort, while the liberating light that emanates from it is a blessing for everyone and for society as a whole.
“The Light of Being” is the inner quality that Anandajay experiences as the light of the Self, in which everything can and may awaken. He experiences this light of life as simple, receptive, embracing, loving and vibrant life force. This quality of life is the result of an open attitude to life and is free from training programmes and goal-oriented behaviour. It corresponds to the most natural state of your humanity and is independent of specific philosophical or religious backgrounds. The Light of Being is the foundation of life and being in which you, as the “receiver”, recognise yourself as the most essential and interact with the world from that relationship with your own individuality.
Allowing this light of life connects you to the source of life and your inner being, your loving soul, your spiritual essence, and bringing this innate connection back into people’s experience is the core of his work. All the activities of The Light of Being therefore invite you to return home to that what you are and to experience that in everything that you meet, in yourself, in situations, in your surroundings or with others, love once again plays a clear role.
The beginning of The Light of Being
In the period after receiving his name, the spiritual centre in Leens developed into the Anandajay Centre, which he moved to the East Belgian Eifel in 2002. There he founded The Light of Being®, in order to share his message of insight, love and peace, now also together with others through The School of Spiritual Awareness.
He chose the name The Light of Being® because this inner “light of life” that he naturally experiences in his openness, brings you into the most natural state of being human. Light, both from outside and from within, allows us to grow, live and become aware. It gives us the openness to experience life in its entirety. In the openness of being, the personal drive for manifestation disappears, allowing “The Light of Being” to flow freely through us from within. This Light of Life will influence every aspect of your existence and thus unveil its source, the loving soul, to you.
His work
The contrast between the many ongoing emergencies in the world, on the one hand, and the loving purity of the essence that every human being carries within, on the other, has encouraged Anandajay time and again to contribute in his own way to making this peaceful and soulful experience, which connects you to the unfolding beauty and resonance of your essence and to a different, more spiritual and open-hearted intention, more accessible to others.
From 2005 onwards, Anandajay gave intensive retreat programmes at his centre in an old watermill in the woods of Igelmondermühle. During those years, he also developed the current twelve practices (yogic teachings), which helped his students to connect more deeply with their essence. This led to the creation of the LightMessenger, BeingMeditation, ShantiYoga, PeaceBreathing, MantraPrayers, HeartSinging, LovesharingTantra, ChakraHealing, KoshaMassage, AuraAwakening, SacredDance and Soulguidance, as well as a six-year yoga and tantra education programme.
During these years, he also released his music albums with mantras and pujas, and introduced his students to the meditative depth of playing the tanpura and singing from the heart. Previously, Anandajay had published the books Hatha Yoga (1986), Jnana Yoga (1993) and Als de bloem zich opent (When the Flower Opens, 1998), and during this period in the Belgian forests he also wrote extensively and published books about yoga, essence and inner depth, such as his books on insight (Inspiration through Insight and Blessings of the Heart), meditation, puja (mantra prayers), the Surya Namaskar and sacred dance.
In 2019, the Light of Being centre moved from the pine forests to the hill of the hamlet of Hergersberg, about 6 kilometres away. Finally, the annexe and living quarters of several students and Anandajay's home and workhouse, which had been there for years, were now located together.
Everything Anandajay now offers is rooted in what he has found helpful in his relationship with his students during his fifty years of teaching.
He now gives a fourteen-day Light of Being Retreat every year, in which he offers supervision in the twelve working methods and guides students in deepening their spiritual life path.
He also wrote the extensive trilogy of workbooks for this purpose: “Ontmoet je Essentie” (Meet your Essence), which can serve as a self-guided, integral, spiritual life path. This path is structured around 21 life themes, is offered through workbooks and e-books, is based on the twelve working methods, and is combined with mantras, pujas, meditation and themed videos.
Anandajay invites everyone who desires a deeper relationship with their essence and inner self to embark on a guided journey to encounter the mystical, valuable and joyful depth of their existence.
