Vajra Star's Lineage

Born on the 3rd of June, 1956 in Troy, NY to a sheltered farm girl from Lake Placid, NY and a city boy who quit 8th grade to support his mother and sisters during WWII. Yet from these humble beginnings was to emerge a yoga savant who, as is now evident, is spear-heading the emergence of the profound Great Synthesis world view. Born a Frenchman, Wayne Charles Manny grew up in a small town in upstate NY a bright slim child with no apparent special virtues. As adolescence dawned, so did spiritual manifestations. Beginning at age 13, and again several times during teenhood, the Rishi experienced spontaneous waves of the sacred power Kundalini streaming up his spine, enticing out of the body rushes- blacking out after sizzling power coursed throughout his body.

Coinciding with this was his emerging musical talents. After classical guitar studies he transitioned to electric bass at the behest of friends in their Jr. High pop band.

He studied with professional musicians at the Troy Music Academy and was eventually passed on to jazz saxophone legend Nick Brignola at the age of 16 (here the Rishi is blowing jazz on Saturday mornings with an all-time jazz great). Recognizing a considerable music talent, Brignola passed Raj on to legendary avant-guard jazz bassist Dave Holland. Raj calls his tutelage under Holland, "My true entry into the rest of Music."

It was likewise Brignola who wrote Raj's recommendation letter for entry into the famed jazz & contemporary music college, the Berklee School of Music, Boston. Here Raj had access to Pat Metheny, played with Chuck Loeb (who lived right down the hall, now the #1 selling jazz guitarist), and multiple gigs and ensembles with drummer Vinny Calayuta (Sting). By the time Raj left Berklee after two short years he was being tapped for gigs by the Berklee faculty at the tender age of 19.

With tremendous talent and personal investment not withstanding it did not take long for Raj to feel the need to transcend mundane music, however hip. A longing welled up from within simply to know, "I wanted to know what music was; I mean, what is sound in Nature?" He turned to philosophy, and eventually yoga philosophy and the eastern traditions. "I started reading about yoga, the yoga texts, and, of course, Yogananda". Shortly thereafter Rajarshi happened upon the living master of the great Kriya Yoga tradition that had reared Yogananda himself. His Holiness Swami Hariharananda was a brother monk of Yogananda's and their guru Sri Yukteswar's last living monastic disciple. H.H. had inherited Sri Yukteswar's lineage in India and was visiting the west for the first time, teaching and establishing new ashrams in Washington, D.C. and New York City. "I recognized the unique opportunity that was presenting itself and jumped at it to be initiated into meditation practice at the hands of such a realized sage", Raj commented. After just months of Kriya Yoga practice the Rishi decided to part with his music career and leave for Washington, to move into the newly established Kriya ashram. "My friends and family were understandably flipped, but it's what I wanted to do".

Recognizing his sincerity and innate yoga talent, H.H. asked Raj to move the NYC ashram and become his personal aide. Shortly thereafter Swamiji surprised Rajarshi with an invitation to enter monastic life, "You are meditating very nicely, and I see that you have died some of your clothes orcher ... you want to become a monk?" To which Rajarshi responded without hesitation, ... "Yes". At his private ordination (Raj was the first westerner ever accepted into H.H.' s Oiri order of Indian monastics) the Rishi requested that his good friend at the time Andrew Cohen, be allowed to attend the ceremony. This in itself is a fascinating caveat of two reincarnate sages coming under the tutelage of a realized master at the same time. After a teaching tour together that included NYC, Washington, DC, Florida, Canada, and Los Angeles, H.H. invited his new protege to join him in India the following spring. After an extensive teaching and initiation tour on the eastern seaboard of India, H.H. chose the spring equinox celebration of "Founders Day" to publically recognize Raj as an incarnation and a dharma heir to the west. "I want you to become my disciple to the west". H.H. told raj in private, "You will answer to no one but me". It was there and then in a large public square in downtown Calcutta that Brahmananda , as H.H. aptly named the reincarnate Rishi, was publically recognized, with thousands of Hindu worshipers streaming past to offer money and flowers at the master and disciples' feet.

Returning back to the US and mundane responsibilities, Rajarshi realized that this organization, and perhaps monastic life, was not necessarily his final path. He bowed out, in search of a partner to help him establish his own teaching center and to broaden his studies in the eastern yogas. Unfortunately Raj did not have much luck in either area and spent years -several partnerships at a number of teaching centers and spiritual communities- to realize that perhaps he should go it alone, patiently getting ready to establish his own voice when and where an appropriate opportunity might finally present itself. In the mean time however, Raj spent time with Amrit Desai at Kripalu, Elizabeth Clare Prophet at her community in Montana, Swami Satchidananda at his Yogaville ashram in Virginia and even spent time surveying the egalitarian communities at Twin Oaks, Va. and Ganas in NYC.

Along with spiritual studies and practices the Rishi continued to add to his building trades experience and develop his art & music projects. In fact it was in NYC in the later 1990's that his growing love for and capacities on the cello fully blossomed into a fledgling solo music career. Realizing that there was nonetheless not enough there to have a music career that paid well enough to support himself, Raj connected with yet another temple building project -this time the largest Buddhist stupa in the west going up in the northern Colorado Rockies. Raj had, in the past, contributed significantly to a number of sacred structures over the years -a nunnery for Carmelite sisters, the LOTUS temple for world faiths at Yogaville, Swami Satchidananda's mausoleun, a Shivite temple to Lord Nataraja, and another monastery at Integral Yoga Institute.

There was an additional caveat to this opportunity that was particularly enticing. The Stupa was being built by the Shambala International Tibetan Buddhist organization, and it was this tradition that still retained the Mahamudra title and transmissions inititated by the great Padmasambhava -a legendary being born from a mythical spiral lotus who went to tribal Tibet from India. But the Rishi had already realized a great many things about Mahamudra from his devotion to the great Avatar Babaji, who he had initially learned about from the Kriya Yoga tradition, and through his proximity to that stream of realized yoga masters who were themselves in direct lineage from the Avatar and retained their own self-realization versions of Mahamudra (see Yogananda's monumental Autobiography of a Yogi). Raj left Ganas in NYC and his persuit of a cello based music career to contribute to finishing the stupa and breathe deeply of the Tibetan's emptiness version of Mahamudra. It was here that Raj realized he was in the right part of the country (ie, metro-Denver) and was adequately prepared to pursue the place and the means to open his own dharma ashram and wholistic center. And after three years of effort the means and facility did indeed manifest in Lakewood Co. After six months of exhaustive work a stunningly beautiful sacred space emerged from his hands. "It's a small and humble beginning, but a quality one", Raj has said, and everyone to a person who enters this teaching center agrees that the uplifting ambiance he designed is truly special.

At Trin-Star's open house the Rishi set the keynote for the center's vision,

"Certainly we need all aspects of wholistic life and a wellness lifestyle to be adequately represented here, however mundane. At the same time I ask this pertinent question. After good cooking, or downing vitamins and supplements, after yoga and deep breathing, or tai chi, after counseling couples on marriage or advising youth to keep off drugs, after arguments over proper government or venting about mainstream abuse of the environment... then what? We must be about profound awakening, and that as merely the beginning of a journey of deep spiritual realization, enlivening our service to others with patience and compassion. Only this will do as we dwell together and embrace the ups and downs implicit in the long travail and vigil towards enlightenment."