Over fifty years ago, when American author Dena Merriam came across a copy of the book Autobiography of a Yogi, she was mesmerized by the face and eyes of the author (Paramahansa Yogananda) on the cover page. She felt an almost immediate connection to him and enrolled to learn Kriya Yoga of the Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) that Yogananda had founded.
Some two decades later, while her children were growing up on the outskirts of New York, Dena began having visions of her past lives that emerged from her meditation practice. She saw herself as a child born to aristocracy during the Russian revolution of 1917, an Indian Hindu princess during the times of the Moghul invasion a few hundred years ago, as a village woman in Africa around the time Africans were taken as slaves to America, as the only girl child of an impoverished Sufi master in Persia, etc. Dena could recall her past lives in the greatest detail, which she has documented in her various books (such as ‘My Journey Through Time’ ‘Untold Story of Sita’ ‘To Dance with Dakinis’ among others).
Around this time, she also founded the GPIW (Global Peace Initiative of Women) which saw her, often in collaboration with the UN, organize interfaith conferences in many countries. While travelling around the world, including to India and Japan post the 1990s, more past life memories surfaced within her, connected either to people she was meeting or places she was visiting in these countries. Thus began an odyssey to the universe within her as she began to explore the workings of the Law of Cause and Effect across her own various lifetimes. Even today, after Dena has restricted her work at GPIW in favour of writing books, this remains one of her central exploratory themes.
Here is the second part of the interview New York-based Dena Merriam gave to Ashish Virmani:
“I have many pulls to go to India. In part, it is because I feel much future direction for the world will come from India and so what happens in India over the next few decades has much relevance for the world.”
~ Dena Merriam
Ashish Virmani: As a spiritualist, one of the main themes of your journey has been the Law of Cause and Effect, which according to more than one Eastern religion is the fundamental operating law of the Universe. Tell us what you have discovered about this law in relation to your previous lifetimes.
Dena Merriam: I continue to write about the workings of cause and effect, because it is impossible to understand one’s life or our world without knowing this key principle. It is like the law of gravity – it just is and can’t be disputed. Every action generates a reaction. What you sow, you will reap. Every action, word and thought is a form of energy put out into the universe, and it will generate some return – how and when is the big question, and this is dependent on so many interconnected conditions and forces.
The law of karma is stated in some form in all the religions, but people don’t really grasp its significance and how it operates, because it is so complex. A great misperception is that it is a system of judgement and punishment. It is not. It is a neutral law of spiritual physics, and its main purpose is to help us learn and awaken, and to rebalance the energetic field. If you take money out of your bank account, you will have a deficit unless you repay that money. So, at some point you want to repay it. If you knock your head against a wall, it will hurt, but you might not make the connection. So, you might knock your head against the wall again and then a third time, but eventually it will dawn on you that knocking your head against the wall brings pain and you will stop doing it. This is growth.
I watch carefully how the law of karma operates in my own life, and in our collective lives because nations also have karma. In all my books I show the working of karma, which is why they all cover several lifetimes. It is easier to understand karma when you view several lifetimes than when you just look at one life. If you have a general sense of how this principle operates, you can more consciously direct your future course. We can’t undo the past, but our attitude determines whether we learn and grow.
You have mentioned in your books that in some lifetimes you were born rich and titled and in other lifetimes quite poor financially. How has your financial situation in different lifetimes had an effect on the overall quality of your life?
Dena Merriam: I mentioned that in the last life described in To Dance with Dakinis, I was very poor, but I had a happy life because of certain key relationships and spiritual teachings I received through my parents and two very dear friends. I had strong relationships in that life. In my following birth, which I describe in My Journey through Time, I was born into a royal household. That was not such a happy life because I was isolated and lonely, with little access to spiritual teachings. I did have a deep love for Sri Krishna, and this is what got me through some difficult times.
Although poverty brings many challenges and hardships, more than anything, it is one’s spiritual life, one’s understanding and attitude, the love one receives and gives that brings a deep sense of fulfillment. I see many of the wealthiest people today who seem empty of love and I think how far off course they have gone. Love continues as one moves from one life to another, but material wealth does not. Whatever you accumulate in one life, you leave behind when you leave your body. All of us have experienced both wealth and poverty, health and illness, good relationships and bad. It is important to reflect on what really makes one feel good inside, what brings a sense of well-being and happiness. If I were given a choice to lack materially, but have spiritual awareness and devotion, or be wealthy and have none of that, I would choose the first.
“I was born many times as a woman and often felt I didn’t have control over my own life. The Global Peace Initiative of Women was the fulfillment of those times when I had no say in matters of importance. Then, over numerous lives I’ve had to be the bridge between cultures and religions, and so it made perfect sense that I became an interfaith organizer.”
You founded Global Peace Initiative of Women, which has worked with the UN on several peace and spirituality summits in the first 15 years of the new millennium. Do you see a connection between your soul’s journey over several lifetimes and the work you do in society currently?
Dena Merriam: I was born many times as a woman and most often felt I didn’t have a voice in my own affairs or any control over my life. Choices were made for me – who I was to marry, how I was to behave and conduct my life, etc. In my current life, I sort of backed into a situation where I could create a global platform for women to have a voice on key issues. I had no conscious intention to create the Global Peace Initiative of Women, but it was the natural outcome of karmic conditions from the past. It just happened, but looking over my past births, I see it is the fulfillment and completion of those times when I had no say in matters of importance.
I also had no intention to become an interfaith organizer, but over numerous lives, I have had to be the bridge between cultures and religions, and so it made perfect sense that I bring this work to completion. I spent 25 years doing interfaith work and creating a platform for women leaders, and now I feel that work is done. I don’t need to do it anymore, and so I have moved on to focus on writing my memories, and all I have learned over the past many centuries and millennia.
How often do you travel to India? Do you have a guru there or some friends or publishers that you would like to mention?
Dena Merriam: For the past 25 years I have been traveling to India almost once a year, for some project, to meet with friends and to embark on pilgrimages. I have many dear friends throughout India, and we have taken pilgrimages together. I am also on the International Advisory Council for Auroville, and so I come annually for those meetings. I meet my guru on the inner planes, so I don’t need to travel externally for that. But I have other pulls to go to India. In part, it is because I feel much future direction for the world will come from India and so what happens in India over the next few decades has much relevance for the world.
“It is easier to understand karma when you view several lifetimes than when you just look at one life. If you have a general sense of how this principle operates, you can more consciously direct your future course. We can’t undo the past, but our attitude determines whether we learn and grow.”
Can you talk about your next book ‘Sita’s Yoga’ – its theme, its purpose and what compelled you to write it? Also, maybe elaborate on your relationship with Ma Sita over your previous lifetimes?
Dena Merriam: I have nearly finished this new book titled Sita’s Yoga: The Yoga of Awakening. After writing the Untold Story of Sita, I did not intend to write another book on Sita, but a dream came to me, which led me to write this book. It goes more deeply into the teachings of Sita, teachings she gave to those who came to her from neighboring villages during the latter part of her life when she retreated to raise her sons.
The writing of this book has been a profound experience as those teachings are now being conveyed to me. For the first time I am not writing about my own memories but am conveying the memories of another – a spiritually advanced village woman who is telling her story of Sita.
I have a very deep connection to both Ram and Sita. I have felt this connection since I first read the Ramayan when I was in my twenties, but it became much stronger when I began writing the Untold Story of Sita. It was as if she appeared to me and never left. The same is true of Ram, because I see that story as being as much about him as about her. They became living realities, presences in my everyday life, and this is part of the message I seek to convey. If you only think of Ram and Sita as historical figures, or legendary ones, they will remain so, but once you experience their active presence in the world today, a completely different relationship unfolds, a very intimate one. I won’t give any more away because that is the subject of my upcoming book.
In terms of my relationship with Sita, while I was writing the book, I relived the life of her servant Meenakshi. At first, I wondered if I was experiencing a past life recall, or was channeling that servant, but either way, I had become the servant and was brought into the presence of Sita. In any case, I am not that personality any longer. That is not who I am now.
Recalling past births in such detail has been an interesting and eye-opening experience for me. While I recognize karmic seeds set in those past births, unresolved relationships and tendencies I have retained, I am clearly no longer those past personalities, for I have grown through all those earlier experiences. In the same way, at a future time, I will look back at my current birth and recognize traits and relationships, but I will no longer be this personality.
So who am I? This is the ultimate question. Past life recall and all paths lead us to search for the answer to this question.
Contact: https://www.denamerriam.com; email: info@gpiw.org
For first part of the interview, go to:
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