Gregorian Bivolaru – an exceptional spiritual destiny, an example of life

Today we celebrate the birthday of Grieg, our beloved Spiritual Guide, the mentor of the Movement for the Spiritual Integration into the Absolute (MISA).

For me, he is the one that showed for the first time that life is more than just a physiological phenomenon, that having faith into a higher Consciousness brings you closer to who you are in reality, that love is the Universal force that embrace all … and he is the one that placed me on the spiritual path for the first time and guided me ever since.

For all these and many more I am eternally grateful and I wish you, Grieg, a happy birthday and life. May your message reach as many open souls of this world.

As an homage here is what I wrote as an additional chapter to his first book published in English …

Happy Birthday Grieg!

A short biography of Gregorian Bivolaru

(by Advaitananda)

(source: from the book: The Tantric Path of Love )

Truly we can say about Gregorian Bivolaru that he is more famous than known. For hundreds of thousands of people who have achieved transformation by following his teachings and advice, he is an utterly exceptional being, a genuine living tantric master, who has deeply and radically transformed their life in a positive way.

For hundreds of thousands of readers in Romania, he is the famous author of more than 100 books and articles concerning various spiritual fields of an encyclopedic diversity.

Young age – the call of cosmic consciousness

Even since childhood, Gregorian Bivolaru’s life was marked by the exceptional and the mysterious. It is hard to separate the person from his works, especially if we wish to give an objective picture of the author. One can say that Gregorian Bivolaru is the man that lives what he speaks and also very clearly explains what he is doing. In order to better understand his works, it is very useful to understand the circumstance under which this extraordinary man grew up and was formed.

However, even this biographical study can easily become a genuine exceptional work of attentive research and documentation if we wish to bring the truth into light, and this is not because his actions were not as clear as daylight, but mostly due to the physical and media attacks that the name and person of the author of this book was subjected to along the years by those, who felt threatened by the courage and example that Gregorian Bivolaru represented, represents and will surely represent to a larger and large number of people.

Gregorian Bivolaru was born in March 1952 and grew up in an idyllic village near the capital of Romania, called Tărtășești. Even since early childhood he manifested a special character, showing an inclination towards contemplation and an immense desire to know. Because his family did not have very many material possibilities, he went to the village store that had a library corner. There, the little Gregorian remained for hours and hours, reading the books so that he didn’t have to buy them.

After a little while, his family already noticed the dedication to learn and the immense curiosity that drove him to fulfill this desire, by devouring all the books he could find in his modest village.

As the author himself explains in emotional autobiographic sequences, even since childhood his spiritual intuition told him that he would have an exceptional destiny that appeared very clearly and naturally. Thus, in dreams and even in spiritual visions he had while being awake, Gregorian Bivolaru had revealed to him the call of cosmic consciousness. Upon return to the normal state of consciousness, he found himself crying for hours on end because of an inexplicable and objectless happiness, feeling a state of self-retrieval and completeness, a grandiose and eternal reality that continued to exist and manifest itself in his being in all moments of the day. These moments left him charged with a profound state of gratitude towards the Creator and with an unstoppable aspiration towards perfection. All these moments would actually be the beginning of a spiritual search that was crowned with success and exceptional achievements.

Assiduous Yoga practice and diligent study

Having reached the age at which young people begin to discover and affirm their personality, when adolescents mimetically follow all that fashion offers them, Gregorian began to visit the large libraries of the capital where he stayed for days in a row from the opening to the closing of the library, studying all fundamental yoga treatises, which he translated directly from English and French. Thus, at the age of 15 his life was already divided into two major parts: he was practicing yoga with assiduity and he was insatiably reading books from all the related fields, which back then were quite negatively regarded by the communist regime of Romania (alchemy, parapsychology, sexology, esoteric traditions). The discovery of the fundamental yoga tradition made him directly perceive the very strong authentic teachings that could lead him towards that Unique Truth towards which his heart aspired with great and unstoppable intensity. Together with this aspiration, the assiduous practice of yoga techniques for 8-9 hours a day major results already started to crystallize in his individual transformation, a fact which would soon bring him in a position where he was able to share the mysteries of the millenary yogic spirituality with his fellow men.

This fact would also very quickly bring him into the attention of the communist authorities that were still very reticent to any “stepping out of the box”.
Besides, we must not forget that even from the beginning Gregorian Bivolaru spent his childhood and youth under the regime and sad memory of the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, in a country that was suffocated by the pressure of the iron curtain and was under the mute terror of the famous “Securitate” (Romanian Secret Service). Under these conditions, the young Gregorian had to make sometimes huge efforts to obtain certain treatises of yoga or oriental spirituality. For fear of any tendency of freeing people from the influences of the regime, dictator Ceaușescu had already ordered the complete repression of spirituality of any kind, so valuable books of yoga, meditation, parapsychology and Tantra were very rare and kept in the secret depositories of libraries and most of the time could only be obtained through friends that still had the possibility to leave of the country. More than that, as soon as any person would display interest towards non-materialistic fields that were far away from the accepted State philosophy (namely, dialectic materialism) – he or she was placed on the black list of the famous organization “Securitate” (the communist secret service organization assuring the state security – completely subordinated to the dictator Ceaușescu) – which began to systematically follow him and monitor his activities which were considered dangerous for the national security.

Prime suspect of the communist regime

Thus, without suspecting this, Gregorian Bivolaru became a suspect of the repressive bodies of the communist state. When he began to share letters with certain famous spiritual personalities from abroad (such as Mircea Eliade, the famous Romanian historian of religion), the pursuit of his person became even more assiduous, because the Ceaușescu regime totally forbade contacts with people outside the Romanian borders (the so-called dissidents). Thus, in 1971, before his 20th birthday, the first abusive intervention of the Securitate bodies took place in Gregorian’s house, which was searched. By giving a dazzlingly absurd explanation (namely that they had to search for weapons that had been stolen from a storehouse), 3 secret service officers who were given the job to intimidate him searched his entire house, eventually leaving with all his spiritual books, all the journals, book-notes and records that he had made related to the spiritual path, and all the correspondence with the people from abroad that he kept. And this was only the beginning of 19 years of terror that was assiduously performed by the communist Securitate – until December 1989 when the Ceaușescu regime ended.

Also that year, accepting the dangers that he exposed himself to, Gregorian Bivolaru began to teach yoga, first to quite a limited number of people who showed interest in following his advice and teachings, still knowing that the communist regime strongly condemned any spiritual activity.

As a first alarm signal, in 1972, when he wished to begin a new group of yoga practice and he had placed posters around the city in order to announce this, the Securitate blocked the phone number given as contact on the respective posters, thus sabotaging Gregorian Bivolaru’s activities.

Thus, with obstacles, Gregorian Bivolaru taught yoga openly, in various cultural houses and student centers until 1982 when the great scandal around the Transcendental Movement in Romania was set up, an occasion at which the Ceaușescu regime arrested and imprisoned and then blamed, completely destroying the careers of tens of thousands of students of the Transcendental Movement under the accusation of suspect mysticism that might lead to the destabilization of the state.

At this occasion, absolutely all spiritual practice, especially the ones originating from the Orient, were forbidden. What few people know nowadays is that also at that time (1982) meditation and yoga were made illegal in communist Romania, considered activities against the state, punishing anyone breaking this law. Thus, the official yoga courses were closed considered outside the law, a situation that was without precedense in the entire world. Nevertheless, by taking on much greater risks, Gregorian Bivolaru continued practicing yoga and also teaching it to those who wanted to attend his course – but in great secrecy.

Gregorian Bivolaru was continuously harassed and pursued, the Securitate seeking to intimidate him in order to force him to give up spirituality and yoga.

On April 17th 1984, the Securitate showed up in the private house of a student where Gregorian Bivolaru was practicing together with 17 people. For the first time, he was arrested and brought to the Militia Precinct no 17 and accused of plotting an attempt on the life of the dictator, Ceaușescu! This aberrant accusation was based on the deceitful confessions of informers (people who were hired by Securitate to spy and report on various activities) and who said that the activity of the yoga students led by Bivolaru were extraordinarily dangerous, that they wanted to make a group of yogis that would annihilate Ceaușescu by paranormal means!

The ‘Securitate’ was thus staging a paranoid masquerade stating that through the arrest of Gregorian Bivolaru one would even save the life of the dictator, Ceaușescu. Thus, officers involved in this case would receive promotion to higher ranks for foiling such a plot and the Securitate as an institution would have further consolidated its authority and its position inside the state. Thus, the Romanian Securitate arrested Gregorian Bivolaru for the first time, through an utterly abusive procedure, placing him in isolation although there was no criminal warrant against him, avoiding releasing any information concerning him and pursuing his prosecution, but for an undetermined time.

Gregorian Bivolaru – the only breakout from ‘Securitate’s prison ever, in the history of the communist regime

Waiting for this to occur, Gregorian Bivolaru was preventively imprisoned in the Securitate prison without the possibility to communicate with family or friends, without having the possibility of consulting a lawyer!

By seeing this completely abussive attitude of the state Securitate – which could even have led to his secret annihilation – Gregorian Bivolaru decided to express his protest in a novel way and thus he staged his own prison break. Through this – as Gregorian declared in 2003 in an interview given to the national Danish television DR1 – he wanted to draw the attention to his case and to protest concerning these abuses of Securitate officers.

Thus, by using some of the paranormal endowments that he had acquired following the yoga practice, Gregorian Bivolaru managed to break out of the state Securitate prison by himself, an exceptional and unique fact in the entire history of this institution, renowned for the severity of their surveillance!

After this famous breakout, he got in touch with his friends, with his family and with some lawyers – who advised him to turn himself in, because there were no actual reasons for accusing him. Thus willingly, Gregorian Bivolaru turned himself in and, through another immensely abusive action, the corrupt communist justice system condemned him FOR HAVING ESCAPED from the arrest of the state Securitate, without being able to show anything concerning the reasons for his imprisonment in the first place. He was sent to prison in detention with CHAINS ON HIS FEET, as was done with the most dangerous criminals for one year and a half.

Since then, Gregorian Bivolaru was constantly mentioned on the list of the ten most dangerous people for Ceaușescu communist regime, considered much more dangerous than serial killers, and this only because he taught yoga!

This was the first conviction, but in the following period he was also harassed and arrested but did not cease to practice and teach yoga even for a moment, thus performing an act of active spiritual resistance towards the attempt of assassinating spirituality in Romania, which the communist regime was striving to carry out.

Imprisoned in a so-called ‘clinic for mental patients’ for political reasons

Everything culminated in the year 1989 with Gregorian Bivolaru’s arrest and conviction as a political prisoner, being sent to Poiana Mare – a so-called clinic for mental patients – actually a desolate and pitiful place where undesirable political prisoners were condemned to gradual extermination, being tortured by the medical personnel through all means available (beating, psychological torture, drug injections). This place was officially revealed (after 1989) as the place where the communist regime sought to rid of the most dangerous dissidents through their total annihilation. In the records of prisoner Gregorian Bivolaru there were indications of a drugs prescription that would have killed any man in a few weeks. Still, the doctor who was supposed to administer this treatment risked his career and did not apply what was demanded of him. Many years later, Dr. Leonard Hriscu, the doctor who was designated by the repressive bodies to deal with Bivolaru’s case stated in an interview: “Gregorian was not a man requiring any psychiatric treatment, he was a man of great culture and knowledge such that many times I could not match up with him during our conversations, needing to withdraw. I did not accept the imposed diagnosis by any means…”

All these abuses and violations of the most elementary human rights that were directed against Gregorian Bivolaru were very clearly presented in the book of the well-known professor Gabriel Andreescu, a famous defender of human rights in Romania and a known dissident and anti-communist fighter during the Ceaușescu regime. In his book, The Repression of the Yoga movement in the 80’s (Polirom Publishing House, 2009) Mr. Andreescu makes a very well documented analysis of the repression of the yoga movement in communist Romania, an analysis that is even based on the documents of the feared “Securitate” which the author directly accessed in order to document himself for writing the book.

After the changing of the communist regime

In December 1989, the communist regime officially ended in Romania – and a commission was urgently established such that Gregorian Bivolaru be freed from the prison-hospital of Poiana Mare. In the same tonus with which he had accustomed his friends, on the 12th of January 1990, Gregorian Bivolaru was already giving the first lecture on yoga and also opened the yoga course, thus restarting his activities in an apparently free country.

Also in January 1990 he founded what would become the biggest yoga school in Europe and also a genuine pole of promotion of spirituality and yoga in Romania: MISA or the Movement for Spiritual Integration into the Absolute.

As a consequence of the merits acquired in the yoga practice and through the studies he did, Gregorian Bivolaru was in 1990 awarded the title of yoga teacher by the International Himalayan Vishvaguru Yoga University and later on he was given the certificate as a yoga teacher by the High Studies School of the Universal Academy for Peace (France).

Unfortunately Romania’s situation post 1989 only changed on the outside … the communist regime revived from the void that followed (and which seems to be lasting even today) showed its true face shortly after. The harassment of Gregorian Bivolaru continued more or less openly, accompanied by a genuine lynching in the media – with the purpose of fully destroying his public image.
Over the years, important voices from Romania’s post-communist democracy have spoken against these abusive behaviors. The reports of Amnesty International and the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights are only a few of the most fervent supporting statements and organizations emphasizing such obvious mistreatments by the various state departments of Gregorian Bivolaru and the new MISA yoga school.

A study performed by a human rights foundation (SOTERIA INTERNATIONAL) showed that until 2006 there had been printed over 8000 libelous articles against Gregorian Bivolaru or MISA and over 10000 rapports in the TV news, making MISA and Gregorian Bivolaru one of post-communist Romania’s most popular subjects.

Despite this, Gregorian Bivolaru continued his rich literary activity writing more than 35 books and 100 articles. At the same time, the yoga course he structured trained hundreds of teachers, practically teaching all over Romania and eventually, according to the school’s official web site (www.yogaesoteric.net) it reached 40000 active practitioners.

Persecuted also by the Romanian new-crypto communist regime

Strongly believing, that a person who considers himself to be into spirituality cannot be indifferent towards the reality of his time, Gregorian Bivolaru wrote various articles and at the same time held many lectures where he bravely disclosed the government’s plots and shadow actions of various interest groups. Moreover, he was one of the first persons in Romania who drew the attention to the strange orientation of the new governmental power that took over in 1989. Because he continued this, even after he was threatened in order to make him stop this activity, in February 1995, a devastating explosion practically destroyed his apartment. This true terrorist attack – meant to slow down Gregorian Bivolaru and his activities – was revealed by the analysis of two independent commissions that proved that explosives had been purposely used.

Although still under a huge pressure from the Bucharest authorities, Gregorian Bivolaru went to develop one of the most comprehensive and intensive yoga courses in the world, so that by 2004 yoga schools had been opened in more than 30 countries, following the same teachings as the Romanian yoga school, a true first time for any yoga system.

An active supporter of a new spiritual paradigm that would help modern man find the balance between millenary wisdom and contemporary science, Gregorian Bivolaru became a pioneer of the new wave of spiritual awakening of this planet. Through his writings, as well as through the easy methods accessible to anyone that he revealed (among which: the art of blessing, the simple method for the self-induction of beneficent trance states, the “lightening rod” technique for tuning in with the Divine Will) Gregorian Bivolaru became an initiator for many of the domains that currently are on the borderline between science and spirituality, building a bridge between these two traditions that in essence in many areas have been separated for hundreds of years.
His revolutionary ideas brought the Romanian yoga school in the vanguard of world spirituality, Gregorian Bivolaru being the one who proclaimed concepts such as OCCULT RESONANCE as a universal principle long before they were discussed in various contemporary spiritual circles.

He is also the one who reintroduced – in the West – the idea of Sexual Continence, an ancient self-discipline (as he defines it himself) allowing modern man fully enjoy the gifts bestowed upon him by God the Father Himself, which he though due to ignorance wastes because of his lack of control over his sexual energies.

Since this yoga school developed so fast promoting so many new spiritual orientations in the Romanian social climate, the governmental power wanted to take advantage of this position for its own dirty political games. So in March 2004, in a desperate attempt to create an event that would draw the public attention away from an imminent scandal around the name of a close associate of the prime minister at the time, a future candidate for the presidency, the government started the so-called operation “Christ”. The prime minister of the time, Adrian Nastase ordered the arrest of Gregorian Bivolaru, setting up a legal file with the full support of the media. This order is very clearly stated in the official minutes of Adrian Nastase’s conversations with other leaders of the social-democrat party, which was governing the country at the time. These minutes were published by a former employee of the secret services in a book that stirred lots of reactions at the time. In a recent interview for the Romanian TV station Antena 1, Adrian Nastase admitted that operation “Christ” was a big mistake he made as a prime minister.

The police operation of March 18th 2004 was the largest troop operation after the communist regime in Romania, as it can be inferred from the police announcement of March 18th 2004. The main target of this abusive action was again Gregorian Bivolaru. He however managed to get out of Romania and ask for help in other more democratic countries. The Romanian government authorized abuses against MISA and Gregorian Bivolaru in the days that followed March 18th 2004 has been submitted to the European Court for Human Rights, as hundreds of Romanians sued the state for these illegal actions.

Political asylum in Sweden

Forced by such dramatic circumstances and believing that he would stand no chance of a fair trial in Romania, Gregorian Bivolaru left the country and applied for political asylum in Sweden. Even so, the Romanian state asked Sweden to arrest Gregorian Bivolaru and hand him over to them through immediate extradition.

Although the Romanian state repeatedly sent its best prosecutors to have Gregorian Bivolaru sent back to Romania, thus preventing him to talk about the injustice he had been subjected to, after a dramatic trial, the Supreme Court of Stockholm decided to free Gregorian Bivolaru and even more, granted him protection and political asylum!

Currently, this is one of the few cases in the European Union where a citizen is protected against another state inside the Union. The decision of the Swedish Supreme Court shows that Gregorian Bivolaru’s life will be endangered if he returns to Romania due to the attitude of the Romanian authorities.

Meanwhile, after 6 more years of delays and absurd trials, where the Romanian authorities ridiculously continued to validate the arrest warrant against him preventing him from attending various activities, he was invited to other countries, on April 23rd 2010 Gregorian Bivolaru was found not guilty by the Sibiu Court of Law in Romania. The court decision mentioned that “the incriminated deeds are nonexistent”.

During all this time Gregorian Bivolaru stayed in Sweden, writing yoga courses and books on various spiritual issues, preparing and delivering an impressive number of lectures for international specialty congresses, answering a huge number of letters and messages from all over the world from people asking his advice or simply expressing their admiration for his work. The international sympathy and support for Gregorian Bivolaru and the Romanian yoga school increases day by day being reflected even in several interventions before the European Parliament, where more than once, the authorities of Bucharest were asked to stop these abusive actions against innocent people. Moreover, courses taught by hundreds of yoga teachers all over the world using the materials structured by Gregorian Bivolaru are another confirmation of the value of his work.

As if willing to acknowledge the elements discovered during the preparation of this biographical material, there was a significant incident. We were contacted by some so-called “nice people” who wanted to warn us that we are making a huge mistake by publishing the book of a man, who is not what he seems to be and that we risk serious consequences.

The fervor of the approach intrigued us and we tried to find out more about the interlocutors. These people, despite the fact that they sent us a detailed report claiming to be highly objective, did not want to disclose their identity, stubbornly refusing to show themselves for a source validation as required by journalism ethics. As we attempted to verify the data included in this so-called “report” we were quite surprised to see that neither did the names listed exist nor did the story fit at all the contents of this “document”. In the end we concluded that this event was no more than a confirmation of the long line of actions these people did in order to try to stop Gregorian Bivolaru from his activities. However by doing this, they involuntarily add new pages to the fascinating story of Gregorian Bivolaru, the man and the author.

Under such circumstances, submitting this book to be published is a true act of civic courage and verticality from Gregorian Bivolaru, an example for many intellectuals nowadays who prefer to stay silent when their opinions are welcomed with ice-cold smiles or even rejected by those who want things to stay as they are and for whom transformation is a dangerous word.

His personal example as well as the spiritual path initiated by Gregorian Bivolaru helped and transformed so far thousands of people all over the globe and publishing this book will definitely contribute to the process.

May this book reach and light the way for all those who need its advice in order to fully experience couple happiness.

For more information regarding Mr. Bivolaru’s works (he wrote more than 100 works – books, articles, translations) please refer also to www.gregorianbivolaru.net.