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About the Author More on Graham Ledgerwood Graham Ledgerwood began practicing meditation, yoga and mysticism as a youth in Canada in 1958. While living in New Haven, Connecticut, he officially became a neophyte mystic in 1963. Then in 1964-66 he was a law and business reporter and copy editor for the Arizona Weekly Gazette in Phoenix. During that time a number of local mystics became his friends and mentors. And in 1966 he became a US citizen. In 1966 Graham also experienced a mystical initiation, an expansion of consciousness, which changed him. This experience, called universal awareness or cosmic consciousness, was a major event in his life. It stayed with him for three months. During that period his mother contracted breast cancer and his younger brother fell seriously ill with sugar diabetes. Graham went back to Canada to care for them and, during those months, the mystical state gradually dissolved. When his mother and brother were able to care for themselves, he moved to San Jose, California in order to study with the great mystics there. He was deeply seeking a return of the mystical awareness which had shown him "heaven on earth" a year before. Graham worked as a radio announcer, wrote plays, did narrations for numerous mystical programs, planetarium shows, audio tapes, and also movies. His mystical brothers and sisters loved and encouraged Graham but he couldn't break through spiritually. Instead, he experienced the mystical purification called "Dark Night of the Soul." During this Dark Night, a friend from Bombay, who was studying mysticism in San Jose, suggested Graham resume his practice of Eastern mysticism by studying with the yogi, Sri Kriyananda, in 1968. Once or twice a week for a year and a half the two friends motored to classes and lectures. But overall, Graham's Dark Night continued. Tired of the sound of his own voice and desperate for a spiritual reawakening, he entered a five-month period of solitude and silence in the Sierra Nevada foothills, outside Nevada City, California. There, during that summer, mystical awareness returned and indwelled Graham. As a consequence of this development, Graham became a teacher, minister, and director of the Yoga Fellowship ashram in Sacramento, California. Called to serve in Southern California, Graham founded the Yoga Center of California and the Spiritual World Society in Costa Mesa, California where he taught Yoga, Mysticism, Metaphysics, Meditation, and world religions from 1970 through 1995.
In 1974, Sri Surath of Calcutta, India further initiated Graham as a Guru and teacher of many spiritual paths. Sri Surath also conveyed on Graham the high honor of spirituality, naming him Ramakrishna Ananda, after the great Avatar and Eastern mystic of the 19th century, Sri Ramakrishna. Then, in 1976 and 1977, Sri Paramananda Nath and Sri Surath found that Graham had become a Master and, in recognition, initiated Graham as an Avadhut, which signifies a spiritual Master, literally "one who lives in Spirit." Graham has also received a number of other titles and honors, including illuminatus and maharaj, indicating a realized mystic. Graham has written KEYS TO HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS, an inspiring book about spiritual awakening. Also, he's written a number of plays about great mystics, saints, and other historical figures — Vincent de Paul, Teresa of Avila, Abelard and Heloise, William Tyndale, Sri Ramakrishna, Frederick the Great, Augustus Caesar, and Benjamin Franklin to name a few.
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