Spiritual Name

Swami Satyananda Saraswati

The spiritual name first of all indicates your inner spiritual person. The spiritual name is beyond nationality, religion, culture and tradition. It indicates your evolution. The physical body has a name given by your elders or priests, but the spiritual name has to be decided by the guru looking into your inner nature. At the same time, it indicates the way you have to proceed. You cannot be anything, you cannot be everything. There are millions of faculties that exist, and everyone should decide one goal and one symbol.

When my guru gave me the name, he indicated that that was my spiritual personality. Besides that he also wanted me to aspire to perfect that state. Therefore, I have been striving for that. Ananda means bliss, satya means absolute. So I have to strive to experience absolute bliss. I should try to achieve this irrespective of anything that happens in my external life.

In India there is a very important tradition. On the ninth day after the birth of the baby, the information of his time of birth, the planetary constellation and other heavenly factors is given to a wise man. Then his zodiac sign or rashi is decided. On the basis of that, quite a few syllables are discovered and a name is designed for him. That becomes his name. Someone may be a hopeless man, but he has an exquisite name like Amarnath, immortal lord, immortal consciousness.

When you select names for your children, your choice should not be just a choice, you have to discover the type of being that has come into this body. The child is born through you and is from your body. You have contributed no doubt, but only sperm and ova. Out of millions of sperms and millions of ova, millions and trillions die, but some have united to make one a criminal, a Napoleon, Mahatma Gandhi, Jesus Christ, Moses, Krishna, Arjuna, or me and you.

What energy must have flown through that sperm and ova! It is not merely a combination of chromosomes. There should be something else that the sperm and ova must be carrying, combining, creating and integrating. That is the vibration of the energy of the soul. That soul finds the expression through your body. The name of the soul is called the spiritual name.

28 December 1981, Munger