Meditation Teacher
Claudiu Trandafir is an experienced meditation teacher with over 25 years of experience in yoga, Tantra and Advaita Vedanta . Through his spiritual practice, he has been blessed with a penetrating insight into the nature of being and existence. As such, he is sharing his experiential and direct spiritual knowledge via highly efficient methods, designed to allow us to transcend our daily existence and bring us closer to the nature of Truth. The Revelation of the Spiritual Heart retreat is one of the most beloved ways to spend time delving into the mystery of one’s Self, in silence, and in the depth of the Spiritual Heart where language and symbols become superfluous.

Teachings
The Revelation of the Spiritual Heart Retreat is led by Claudiu Trandafir, whose meditation, for years now, has been dedicated to the Revelation of the Spiritual Heart through Divine Love and the opening of the soul. Claudiu, an engineer in electronics by education, was formerly a professor at the University of Parapsychology in Bucharest, Romania. He has been a Yoga teacher for 25 years, specializing in solitary cave retreats, following the example of Ramana Maharshi and other Jnâna Yoga masters. In 2001, after many solitary retreats, Claudiu began to guide groups of people using this method. He has led this special retreat for thousands of participants across Europe over the last seven years, and has also started to lead Retreat programs in Mexico and Thailand. By popular request, the Retreat program is now available in Canada, Great Britain, Romania, Israel, Switzerland, Thailand and India. Please check our calendar and retreat pages for prospective planning and for updates on dates and places where the Retreat for the Revelation of the Spiritual Heart is offered in your area.

About the meaning of the Spiritual name Sahajananda
On July 14th, 2010, as part of a Hindu spiritual initiation tradition, Claudiu Trandafir has been given the spiritual name of SAHAJANANDA .

Even if, based on the Advaita perspective on non-duality, this ceremony has only a relative character as it (the ceremony) is inclusive of the concept of nama-rupa ("name and form"- a concept which refers to the relative nature of the transitoriness of the existance), the Hindu wisdom and tradition attach a significant role to the name and its significance.

Although the Divine is, ultimately, beyond name and form, the Hindu soul's need to open through reverence and adoration has been expressed in various manners.
For instance, there are sacred texts, such as Sahasra-nama (the 1000 names of the Divine) which simply list the names to be chanted to invoke the Divine Presence.

Even merely reading and repeating them is a source of inspiration and transfiguration.
Lalit Mohan Vyas - the main priest of the Hindu temple of Dev Mandir from Bangkok (Thailand) has performed the ceremony and offered explanations regarding the symbols and the significance of various instances of the ceremony.

From this viewpoint, the ceremony had a nearly didactic character as well.
The recording constitutes an interesting material documenting the specific character of the Hindu tradition and its beauty and sacredness.

The recording also mentions another interpretation of the name Sahajananda, slightly diferent than the one offered below.

Sahaja - means naturalness, spontaneity, innate.
The word "sahaja" is derived (ethymologically) from "saha" (=together) and "ja" - (to be born) to suggest the fact that the Divine, the Spiritual Heart, Atman , is our fndamental nature and not something external or located somewhere far away in the "heavens".

Therefore, the relative world ( samsara ) and the Supreme Transcendent reality ( Nirvana ) are "born / begotten together" and despite the personal limitations, there is a reality which contains everything: our essential nature.

It is That which we are Here and Now.
He who understands that the Spiritual Heart is the ultimate, silent and essential substratum of the whole existence finds himself in a state of naturalness, spontaneity - the SAHAJA.

He does not deny or exclude the world from this Fundamental Realization of the Divine Essence.

Ananada means beatitude.
It is a suffix which is often part of the Hindu spiritual names.
May the utterance of the name of Sahajananda inspire all the students to reach the state of spontaneity and naturalness in which it is essential not TO DO one thing or another, but just TO BE, a Conscious Existence.

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