Umaji studied Veda formally after chanting and teaching mantras for years, but she loves the experience of unlearning and relearning. She tells Veda Studies how the ancient poets of India got her interested in Sanskrit grammar and prosody.
By Sophia Ann French
Yogacharya Ellen Grace O’Brian, known by her friends and students as Umaji, is the Spiritual Director of the Center for Spiritual Enlightenment (San Jose), an award-winning author and poet, and a Kriya Yoga Teacher. She did her undergraduate degree in English Literature and creative writing, and then pursued a Master’s Degree in Educational Counselling. By then, she was already teaching yoga. Her teacher, Roy Eugene Davis, was a direct disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda. Recalling her teacher’s story of how he found his guru, she feels yoga and Vedanta were part of her life even before she knew it. “Paramahansa Yogananda brought Kriya Yoga to the West in 1920. My teacher, who was a young man living in the Midwest, read the Autobiography of a Yogī, and he just caught fire with recognising Paramahansa Yogananda as his teacher and this as his path. It’s a very unusual story, but he knew that was his path, so he hitchhiked from the Midwest to California to meet his guru. Yogananda accepted him as a disciple, trained him, ordained him — he went on to teach yoga nationally and internationally for 60 years. I met him in 1979, and that was my introduction. I had read a bit about Vedanta. My introduction to Vedanta was the eclectic teacher of Zen and Vedanta, Alan Watts, and when I was in college, I had a Shakespeare teacher who I think was a hidden Vedantist. So there were always little sparks of this quest for self-knowledge, and when a friend invited me to a lecture by Roy Eugene Davis in 1979, I knew I met my teacher,” says Umaji.
Before that, she didn’t know Paramahansa Yogananda or yoga as a philosophy and a practice, but says that after the lecture, she “recognised I was home.”
That was over 40 years ago. Umaji calls yoga her home and appreciates Kriya Yoga as she feels it is “comprehensive — for the heart, for the body, for the mind. I could have a spiritual path where I didn’t have to leave my intellect at the door, and that was really important to me. I have been learning and teaching all these years. I’m still learning and teaching, and I consider it a great honour and privilege. My guru passed seven years ago, and it’s a blessing to be part of a tradition, and also a tremendous responsibility.” Given her respect and love for tradition, Umaji felt right at home again when she began studying Veda recitation with Veda Studies. She tells us that she loves being nurtured and challenged by Veda mantras and how they make her appreciate the origins of her yogic practices.
Sophia: How did you learn about Veda Studies, and how long have you been studying with Shantalaji?
Umaji: I first corresponded with her in 2022, and I don’t know exactly how I became aware of Veda Studies. I think I saw something about learning to chant the Yoga Sūtras. I was attracted to that because I teach Yoga Sūtras. I’ve been to India several times, so I have heard Veda chanting. My experience was that you don’t just hear it; you feel it. It’s very transformative. When I came across chanting the Yoga Sūtras, I had no idea about Veda chanting. I hadn’t made that connection. This morning, I wrote a question for myself, which is the question that I have had ever since I started studying with Shantalaji in 2022. How do you learn to swim when you’re already in the middle of the ocean?
I’ve been teaching Kriya Yoga for decades, and mantras are part of our practice. But we have taught them just as we learned generically in the West, which is incorrect in terms of Veda chanting. So while the mantras still have power because of their meaning and origin, they don’t have the power that you experience when they’re chanted as they were offered in the Veda. I came in through that door of interest. How do I at least pronounce the words correctly in the Yoga Sūtras? I corresponded with Shantalaji right away and said, “Help!” She was incredibly generous and guided me on what I could do — starting with invocation mantras (which several years later, I’m still learning) to get my svaras right. I had no idea of the wealth of knowledge and practice she is making available to people everywhere. It’s so inspiring for someone like me, who has been teaching for decades. We have been offering mantras like the Gāyatrī or the Mahāmṛtyuñjaya mantra, but not in the Veda way of doing it. One of the reasons I’m so slow as a student is because I’m unlearning, you know. I start one way with my svaras, and then the brain takes off in another direction (laughs). I have been working with one of Shantalaji’s teachers, Ellen Miles (a graduate of the Indica Veda Studies Teacher Training Programme 2023-2024). It’s wonderful that she has that system worked out because I need more remedial help in addition to the online courses. It’s also very good for my ego in case I feel accomplished after all these decades. It’s humbling, but in a very good way, I think.
Sophia: What do you think is a misconception people have about reciting Veda?
Umaji: As a Western yogī, I was in a tradition that emphasised meditation practice and dhārmic living, but there is not much exposure to Veda chanting. So if there’s any misconception, I would simply say that it doesn’t show up on the map. What Shantalaji is doing is revolutionary in terms of making Veda chanting show up on the map. So people who are learning yoga can learn more about the foundations and origins that are so rich and important. For me, as a yogīni in the West who teaches Kriya Yoga, it’s really important to honour our tradition of yoga masters and the tradition yoga comes from. We can’t separate it and make it some kind of product that gets sold in the West. We must respect the very heart of this living tradition, and I have always tried to do that — to point to where it has come from. Veda chanting and learning about these origins, deep in the middle of the ocean, has made that richer for me, personally. It also supported my responsibility to make sure that the teachings are not extracted and packaged for the West.
Sophia: What was your understanding of Veda before you started studying formally, and how has that impression changed over the past few years?
Umaji: I think it has changed in that Veda has become accessible to me through Veda chanting and Veda studies. I was aware of the six systems of Indian philosophy. We draw from three of them in Kriya Yoga. I understood that Veda was the ground. It was the source of the Indian philosophical systems that we were teaching, but I didn’t feel it was accessible to me. I had Jean Le Mée’s translation of the Ṛg Veda, which I found so beautiful, but that was really the only thing that I had. I’m currently attending the Veda Theory Masterclass course, and I feel like a kid in a candy store. I intuitively felt from the very beginning that the Vedas are a mystical foundation for the philosophies that evolved from them, but I didn’t have access to learning about the richness and the structure. Until now…
Sophia: Did anything surprise you about the pedagogy of the Veda studies system?
Umaji: All of it surprised me. And the accessibility — that was a very pleasant surprise. Not easy, but accessible. A student has to be serious to study with Veda Studies. You don’t have to be very adept — I am a good example of that (laughs). I am serious, but I am certainly not adept. There are so many things about the methodology that appeal to me. The discipline it takes is commensurate, in a sense, with what it takes to really practice your tradition, whatever tradition you’re in. For me, it takes that kind of discipline to really live the life that Paramahansa Yogananda put forth as a Kriya Yogī. The door is open, but if you want to learn and dive deep to find the riches, you have to be a disciplined student. Shantalaji’s dedication is to represent tradition and make it the foundation for what is being taught — always bringing students back to how she learned from her gurus. I find her skill as a teacher fascinating. She’s definitely in her dharma; she’s definitely in her Svadharma (in her right place). She was in engineering, I think, and she has that skill of making a system accessible — which she did for us with Veda, which I find absolutely fascinating. The kind of teaching tools she puts together are so useful. In the Veda Theory Master Course, she has her charts to show the different layers of the Vedas — the teachings are made accessible through her skill.
Sophia: What has sustained your commitment to the practice?
Umaji: I studied Sanskrit off and on over the decades. I started with Dr Sarasvati Mohan, who was my Sanskrit guru, but Sanskrit grammar and recitation did not capture my heart until Veda Studies. Grammar was too dry for me, so I slogged over the years, trying to learn the grammar through memorisation and writing, and learning declensions, but it didn’t stay with me because it wasn’t experiential enough for me. Besides being a yoga teacher, I am a poet, and probably, principally, that is my way of being in life — to feel from the heart. That’s what I felt when I found my guru, when I found yoga. This is led by the heart. So, I think what has sustained me in Veda chanting is that my heart is fed by it.
Sophia: How has reciting Veda affected the poet in you? Are you planning to write any poetry about Veda?
Umaji: I’m not planning to write poetry about Veda, but it does come through. I think that is why it speaks to my heart — understanding how the ṛṣis were poets that tuned into this higher level of consciousness and brought in the Word (with a capital W) as mantra, as this beautiful poetry. I relate very deeply to that process, and to have that accessible to me, through Veda chanting, to understand the language as symbolic and mystical is something I can totally relate to because that’s how my mind has always worked. I have been writing poetry since I was a child, and it’s how I see the world. I generally don’t see just flatly what’s there. I see many dimensions that are alive. And, of course, that’s what we understand from having access to seeing as much as we can, as the mind of the ṛṣi — as having this cosmic vision of what they saw. That’s the treasure trove for me. I am a dedicated student, and I love study; I always loved school, I loved learning, and so there’s that part of my mind that really appreciates Truth, with a capital T, and then the poet, the mystic… With Veda studies, both parts are fed, both parts are nourished. It isn’t only the poetry that keeps my heart fed and wanting more, but also the philosophy that is so profound. I really wish everyone had access to it and had the proper interest and respect for the tradition that allows it to open to you, because you have to have that.
Sophia: You’re the director for the Center of Spiritual Enlightenment, and you’re constantly working with people in spiritual spaces within the knowledge system. Do you envision sharing the Veda practice with your community, and how do you plan to do that?
Umaji: I haven’t taken the vision that far because even after a few years, I’m still such a beginner. But the one thing that has been there from the beginning is to try to make a course correction for any mantras that we do use, to stop singing them and have them chanted correctly. But I will say, when you have a community, and mantras have been sung for a long time, it’s like trying to turn a cruise ship. I have taken some small steps, and we’ll see where that goes. There are many yoga communities in America, and probably in other countries, where mantras are sung, so it’s a learning process for me to start with small steps to make corrections. Would I love to teach? I’m a teacher, so I can’t resist that fantasy, but I’m not doing it for that purpose. I’m doing it to learn.
Sophia: Did Veda recitation enhance or affect your already existing spiritual practices?
Umaji: Yes, I think when you’re inspired, you’re inspired. Veda Studies has been very inspiring to me, and so that carries over. Kriya Yoga is my life. Veda Studies is a way for me to be nurtured and challenged. I am being stretched. It is like learning to play a musical instrument for someone who doesn’t read music. I’m growing personally; I think that affects me as a teacher and my practice in terms of what I’m learning about discipline in this programme. Esoterically, many beautiful lessons come that are just part of Veda chanting. For example, that you don’t sing so you don’t have your ego in it. For many years, I’ve been leading kirtan chanting because Paramahansa Yogananda brought chanting with him. He sometimes would chant Sanskrit, but mostly he translated many chants into English. In that bhakti, you get to offer your voice with whatever magical thing you can do with it, but with Veda chanting, you let yourself disappear and let the chant appear. So there have been those esoteric lessons that have been very good. You are reciting in accordance with an ancient tradition. Those lessons are very valuable and I take them to heart. How to stand in a tradition, and offer it, and not elaborate on it, but be true to it. There have been many lessons underscored for me so beautifully, studying in this way.
Sophia: What is your advice to anyone who wants to study Veda and teach in the future?
Umaji: Study with Shantalaji and her cohort of teachers because it’s a beautiful, well-constructed system, and gets better all the time. She’s always improving, and more teachers are being trained, so the community is expanding. In Kriya Yoga, we have seen so much evidence of Guru Kṛpā, just divine grace in the work that has been given to us as a community. We have a beautiful ashram in a place that you would hardly imagine is possible — these things appear out of grace. So I feel that if you are inclined to study in that way, do it, and don’t give up, because your efforts are met by grace.
Find out more about Umaji’s work on https://www.ellengraceobrian.com/
Shantala has inspired so many of us that have studied with her.
It was so enjoyable to read about Umaji and her journey and feel so inspired.
Umaji is SO inspiring – it is a blessing to have such a rich community of learners.
Beautiful interview! I am so humbled to be in a position to work with Umaji; we are partners in learning and her dedication is so inspiring.