ABOUT
SWAMI K.M. TAYUMANAVAR

"It's a mistake to worship
someone else's spiritual experiences.
You must seek your own." -Swami Tay

Swami Tay is an Advaita Yogi initiated into an ancient Hindu Saivite lineage. However, as those who study with him are continually finding out, he can never be categorized or made to fit into any of the usual "swami boxes". Swami Tay has never discarded the deeper aspects and practices of the myriad of religious beliefs he has studied during his life. Being a Westerner, he, like most of us, needed to search to try to answer his deepest questions.

"I had this vision going that no one of the religions had the total truth, although so many claimed to be The Only Way," says Swami. "They certainly all point the way, but my path became a melding of bits and pieces of various disciplines that held meaning for me." The result for his students is a teacher that understands where they've "been", and can integrate what they know into an understanding of their own unfoldment.

Swami feels that he is not so much a teacher as he is a catalyst, sparking the inner light that will take the student toward his own enlightenment. He will not, however, do it for you. "I do ask that you work and do your practice. It's so much easier on both of us."

The following newspaper article appeared in the
HERALD AND NEWS
Klamath Falls, Oregon
Sunday, March 28,1982

Surprise Valley Swami:
HE TRAVELS MANY PATHS IN SEARCH OF TRUTH

by LEE JUILLERAT,
Regional Editor

"The whole truth is available. You just have to look for it. "

CEDARVILLE - Searching for the truth is Larry Shippen's quest.
Over the years it's taken him full circle from his Surprise Valley home - to places as near and far as San Francisco and Sri Lanka and back to Cedarville, where cattle ranchers regard him with a blend of tolerance, humor and bewilderment.
"Some of them are real impressed, but most of them think I'm just kind of weird," says Shippen with a typically friendly chuckle.

Shippen's story begins in October 1940. But ask him his age and the answer isn't 41.
"I've been telling people I'm 45. I go in five-year lumps. That way you don't have to change so often."
His great-grandparents were Surprise Valley pioneers. But their greatgrandson was, and is, something of a maverick. Shippen refused to participate in high school athletics, serving as a trainer-aide instead. After graduating in 1958 he hightailed it for San Francisco.
"I couldn't get out of here fast enough.''
He started college at the University of San Francisco, but left his Jesuit studies after developing an interest and taking classes in Hinduism. "It was instant rapport."
Instant, but not consuming.
He returned to Cedarville and built trails in the Warner Mountain Wilderness for 3 1/2 years. But many nights he awoke to the sounds of himself chanting Sanskrit, an ancient language of India used for sacred and scholary writings, including Hinduism. Shippen about-faced back to San Francisco in 1963.
"I was one of the original flower children in the Haight-Ashbury."
He worked briefly with the controversial Hare Krishna sect, "but I was never attracted to that ... it was still just a lot of hopping around. A horrible diet."
Other Eastern religions were briefly alluring, but on New Year's Eve 1974 he returned to the Hindu temple where he had taken classes several years earlier. Within two months Shippen entered a monastery in Virginia City, Nevada.
"One of the reasons I got interested in Hinduism is that both sides of my mother's family were quite psychic," he says, explaining that traditional Christian clergy gave him no understanding, but Hindu priests tried. "I wasn't particularily impressed, but at least they had explanations."
Shippen's formal search was under way.

* * *

Nine years he studied, worked and meditated. Along with 50 to 60 others he alternately worked -- sometimes at a print shop in Virginia City, other times in San Francisco as a waiter or busboy, more than three years herding goats in the jungles of Hawaii -- and secluded himself in monastaries for spiritual contemplation.
His order led travel groups to raise money. Stopovers in Switzerland, France, Portugal, Hawaii, India and Sri Lanka were intermixed with sightseeing and intensive religious studies.
Shippen graduated from being a monk to a swami to a priest. During his studies he lived nearly a year in India, another many months in Sri Lanka, the country formerly known as Ceylon. Although now formally a priest, Shippe's busiress card identifies him as "Swami K. Murugan Tayumanivar, Yoga, Meditation and Metaphysical Healing." When he feels himself ready, he can assume the title of guru.
According to Shippen, he has the equivalent in India of a PhD in comparative religion.
But still he searches.
"I had this vision going that no one of them (religions) has the total truth. They all point the way."

***

Shippen returned to Cedarville in 1973. For several reasons.
"I really don't have any particular plan. We are not allowed to teach for five years after we leave because they want us to be alone and get solid in what we are."
As a swami-priest, Shippen is regarded as "he who is his own master" and beholden to no spiritual order.
He returned, too, because "it just seemed like the thing to do at the time." He lived with and helped his dying grandfather and, after his death, stayed. "I was really enjoying being back here."
Shippen finds continued enjoyment at nearby "natural temples," places pike Mount Shasta and peaks in the neighboring Warner Mountains.
A spiritual teacher, Shippen has carefully selected students in the San Francisco Bay area, Surprise Valley and Alturas. Periodically he teaches hatha yoga classes, which allow him to earn money, meet prospective students and keep himself physically healthy "so I can put my attention on my spirit."
Yoga, Shippen believes, allows a person to clear out the subconscious, permits the "super-consciousness" to sharpen its latent awarenesses and, eventually, nurtures the individual "white light" of consciousness.
One level of his consciousness flirts with expanding his semi-known religious practices. Some of his student-disciples consider him their guru, or "venerable one." He mulls the possibility of broadening his teaching and establishing a temple.
But Shippen earns a living wage by his yoga classes, periodically waiting tables in restaurants, clerking at a hardware store and doing when-available carpentry-electrical jobs.
In the "talk stage" is a four-to-six week study tour to Hindu temples in India, possibly with stopovers in Thailand, Australia, Japan, Paris and New York.
Usually Shippen's appearance is unthreatening -- his "Father Sebastian" look: a full beard and mustache, seemingly short hair, and glasses. His demeanor is as gentle as his appearance. He speaks gently, patiently, and always with infectious bursts of humor.
But when he unties his hair bun, a shock of curly hair falls to his waist. The long hair, he explains, has a purpose -- it's necessary to be recognized as a priest in India. Without his glasses, otherwise mellow face lines sharpen. When he adds his red robe and beads Shippen admits his being feels "transformed," a different person.
There is a difference. Otherwise twinkling eyes seem more penetrating, studying, searching.

***

At his Cedarville home Shippen works, reads, studies, meditates and, when visitors arrive, shares his jocular humor and insights. He wanders along Cedarville's main street greeting townspeople, most who know only fragments about his multiple-personality. And, yes, probably would say he is a little weird.
Weird? If it be someone who searches for truth, Shippen relishes the label.
"The Hindu religion says all religions are paths to experience the diety," says Shippen. "The whole truth is available. You just have to look for it."

His search will continue. Probably, he believes, beyond his lifetime.

SWAMI TAY TALKS ABOUT HIS TRAINING

This interview with Swami K. Murugum Tayumanavar was conducted by Atmananda [Arthur Baxter] in the Swami's living room in Cedarville, California, on Nov. 14, 1987. Updated by Swami Tayumanavar on Feb. 15, 2000.

WHAT IS A SWAMI?
Generally it is considered one who has come to a point in his or her personal evolution where an external preceptor is no longer required.

WHAT'S AN EXTERNAL PRECEPTOR?
It's commonly called a "guru" or “remover of darkness” from “gu” -- darkness and obscurity and “ru” -- removal. In actuality there is simply no such thing as an external preceptor or guru, there is only your own higher being. However, many traditions suggest that an external teacher currently living in a physical body is required to connect one with the inner teacher.

IS THAT BECAUSE A PERSON CAN ONLY
REMOVE THEIR OWN DARKNESS?
Yes. What the common guru does is apply acquired knowledge to you and take your money. That is a very valuable service. What an uncommon guru does is vibrate to his or her own Being -- that's with a capital B -- until those around him start doing the same thing. It's sort of like the difference between P. G., & E. [the regional electric utility company] and the sun. (Laughs.) But both of these approaches are of value.

THEN WHY DOES ONE SOUND SO MUCH
MORE ETHICAL THAN THE OTHER?
Well ... because in the West we're taught that the material world is real, the only true reality. The world is very real until you realize God. Then only God is real and in the world you can play.

HOW DOES ONE COME TO THE REALI-
ZATION THAT THIS WORLD IS NOT REAL?
The world is real as long as it is the only reality that one is aware of; however, when your awareness expands, the material world seems less and less “real” until Self Realization, and then the whole mind seems unreal by comparison. These states are discovered through meditation. The way my teacher explains the process there are six steps:

  1. Attention,
  2. Concentration,
  3. Meditation,
  4. Observation,
  5. Contemplation, and finally,
  6. Absorption (Self Realization or Samadhi).
Or, more simply put, “All you have to do is watch your mind think.” By doing that you learn concentration, the only step of the six that you have to learn. Everyone can pay attention. Concentration, successfully sustained, flows into meditation, meditation into observation, and so on to the ultimate realization -- Absorption into Reality.

DID YOU HAVE ANY FORMAL TRAINING?
Yes. The core of my training was twelve years under formal discipline, including nine years in a series of monasteries, all under the same Teacher (Guru).

HOW DID YOU MEET YOUR TEACHER?
I was living in San Francisco. I would take the California Street Bus to the Spiritualist Church. I was beginning to develop psychically and was attracted to the vibrations of this little place on California Street when I was going past on the bus. But I was too shy to go in and all I saw of it was the door open once in a while when I was riding by.
And then there was the first big Civil Rights march from the Ferry Building to the Civic Center. I marched with the Catholic Interracial Society. And I saw this marvelous character in a red robe marching with Bishop Pike; he felt very familiar, though I knew I had not seen him before. In this life at least. I didn’t follow up and meet him at that time, but a few weeks later a friend of mine was out drinking in Pacific Heights with his girlfriend and they wandered into this peculiar little place which they thought was a cocktail lounge. It turned out to be a yoga meditation hall. My friend's girlfriend was quite insulted by the young monk in charge telling her that Jesus was a Yogi.
My friend was interested but he also was too shy to go back alone, so he asked me to accompany him. And I was delighted to find out the place he was talking about was the place I had noticed from the California street bus, and the marvelous character from the Civil Rights parade was a priest who was giving classes there.
So I signed up for a bunch of classes, none of which were taught by the head of this Order, who was to become my teacher. But one day he visited my class and announced that the priest I had seen in the march had recently had a great realization, and should now be called “Father”. Also, he announced that as the head of the order he would change his own title from “Father” to “Master.” And he was really cute and shy about it because, being called Master sort of made his skin crawl. But he explained that this would cut down on confusion because , “not only do we have another Father already, but soon there will be others, including Larry.” And he pointed at me. Remember, this was the first time that I had seen him. I didn't think too much about it at the time, but now I can see that it planted a seed in my brain.
I still didn't know that he, Master, was to become my main teacher. Then one day we both came out of classrooms at the same time and came face to face. We both looked startled and I felt a heart connection form between us. I immediately recognized him as having a connection with me prior to this life and as my teacher for this life.

SO THAT WAS HOW YOU GOT STARTED AS A SPIRITUAL TEACHER?
Well, at least as a formal student. Spiritual Teacher was a long way down the road. According to my teacher, though, I was born started. In other words, I made an agreement to assist him with his mission before I was born.
As a young child I read minds and had clairvoyant experiences very young. Since I began to talk, and in fact, before then. Once I remember, I must have been eight months or less, laying in a laundry basket ... I remember reading my uncle's mind. It was rather disconcerting to the relatives, because I was rather detached and matter of fact about my observations and they were not entirely up front with each other.

SOMETHING SPECIAL HAPPENED AT THE AGE OF NINE?
That's when my spiritual and intellectual quest began at the conscious level. And what I called the “door knockers” arrived. There were four or five more or less fundamentalist groups evangelizing, each with their own brand of Christianity. Each said all of the others were going to hell. And only their own brand was going to Heaven. I wasn't terribly attracted to their various pictures of heaven. It didn't sound near as nice as earth. But I was pretty sure I didn't want to go to hell.
Other than the horrors of Hell, the one thing they all agreed on was that God hears and answers prayer. So I started praying as only a terrified nine year old can. After a while I began to see visions of a saintly old man with dark skin and white hair and beard and wearing white robes. He didn't look much like the angels I had seen in pictures but he didn't look like anything else either. It was really clear to me that he had been sent by God in answer to my fervent prayer.

I asked him, “Which one of these groups should I join?”
He said, “None of them.”
I said, “But I don't want to go to hell.”
He said, “You won't.”
I then said, “But I want to know the Truth.” I meant the Real, Whole Truth!
He said, “You will!” He wasn’t very talkative.
But then he went on to explain that the whole truth is always available to anyone who looks for it, but it is never "vested" in any one human organization. That made sense to a nine year old. He then encouraged me to study as many groups as I could, knowing that they all have their own view of the Truth, which cannot be spoken, but which must be experienced anew by each individual.
I didn't understand the word ‘vested’ until I went home and looked it up, but I got the idea. So at that point I started digging through the libraries, and I discovered that Christianity was not the only religion. I found Jewish, Buddhist, and Hindu religions, and Chinese philosophy. It seemed to me that these were all part of a grander picture. I started seeing that picture also in the ways of the local native Americans due to the influence of my grandmother who was a Celtic Traditional and whose best friend was the half Paiute and half Chinese Shaman of the tribe.
So the next twelve years were spent gathering as much information as I could on different religions and philosophies.
When I met my teacher, I dropped off all of the other ways and focused very intently on one way for the next twelve years. I chose this one particular way because it was the only one I found that did not say all other ways are wrong. Rather it accepted all ways as valuable and appropriate for their own practitioners to reach the one goal of personal experience and knowledge of “the Kingdom of God which is within.”
After twelve years of focusing on this one path and achieving a certain facility of awareness on that path, I again began studying other ways, other religions, other philosophies, in greater depth from my new perspective in order to give color and texture to my own public ministry.
An interesting historical sidelight. During the years when I was nine to twelve and experiencing the most intense part of my personal unfoldment, my Teacher was spending time in India and Sri Lanka doing HIS sadhana -- or spiritual training -- and 15 years after my experience with the old man of my vision, my Teacher's Teacher left the physical body and I saw pictures of him for the first time. I recognized my teacher's teacher as the old man I had seen in my visions at nine years of age.

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