Ajanta Caves

"Excuse me, I just thought you might like to know that some of them don't think its respectful to point your feet at the Buddha like that", a fat Spanish tourist pointed out to me as I struggled to take a photo in the dim light of the cave, seated on the floor to steady myself.



In exasperation, I remove my hat and thrust my face close to his. "I'm Asian!" I say perhaps a bit too loudly. The idea of a foreign tourist teaching asian values to an asian was too much of an irony.



But in later moments I had come to understand his well meaning intentions behind it and I regret my outburst. My ego is still very much at large 8(.

What a coincidence to have the latest entry in the Nithyananda Newsletter talk about the Ego.

In Jalgaon

Autobiography of a Yogi is a very engrossing read! In his life recollections he has embedded ideas and notions that are tying up all that I have learnt so far in the past few months into a coherent whole. My head has been in the book since Aurangabad and all through the busride to Jalgaon this morning. That is, till I meet a chatty Indian student on his way to his university in Jalgaon who keeps me company half the trip and buys me the first taste of country roasted corn straight from a charcoal fire - The saying "Guest is God" is upheld as a practice here, one that India can be extremely proud of carrying. Paramahamsa Yogananda himself wrote in appreciation of this in his book.

I have developed a curiosity for Kriya Yoga. I first heard of it from Masha who was initiated while she was a devotee of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and taking courses in Art of Living. Then came Divyanand Swamiji whom we met in Gokarna during the monsoon, who took us to his home up on the hills overlooking the beach. And finally picking up Autobiography of a Yogi, a book strongly recommended by my Guru himself.

Kriya yoga is a meditation technique to control the senses and their grip on consciousness.

Kriya Yoga and Vipassana are now the 2 things on my todo list. I am hoping to attend a 10 day course on Vipassana in Igatpuri in end september, and maybe get deeksha in Kriya Yoga in Rishikesh. Whether I achieve this or not, I leave up to the wisdom and guidance of existance.

Ellora Caves

I bed down in Aurangabad while exploring Ellora Caves today. What an enormous site to cover in a day! It did not help that several of the footpaths leading from cave to cave were closed. This meant several painfully long detours via the vehicular road.



I see a camel today, the very first in my India trip. I guess I must be moving pretty northwards..

Osho's Meditation Resort

When the connection with a certain Guru and his organisation and teachings isn't there, it certainly shows! I wake up late and miss Osho's famous dynamic meditation!! Instead I find myself having breakfast instead at the German Bakery, non-chalantly entering the resort hours later.

Osho's resort is getting a little dog-eared with age. It certainly still is the snazzy overpriced and polished rich man's resort as advertised, however I could not help but feel that I had painted perhaps too rosy a picture based on the hype I heard about it prior to visiting.

I did not like the use of the color black on all the buildings, nor the faceless, impersonal feel of the featureless monolithic shiny stone clad look that is more at home in an office building than a meditation resort. Perhaps if I had not visited the Isha Meditation Center and Dhyana Linga Temple I would have lower expectations.

If I be a rich man in the near future and need a meditation resort refuge (and assuming my guru hasn't made a resort himself by then), I'm afraid its going to be at the Dhyana Linga Temple.. plus the Isha Temple had a palpable energy field that I did not sense at all when attending the poorly presented meditation sessions conducted under the famous pyramid roof of the Osho Center Auditorium. The only semblance of an aura I felt was when attending the "Silent Sitting" session in front of Osho's Samadhi.

And what a strange Samadhi it was too.. to get there you have to cross 2 rooms, the first is a library full of dusty books, the second is a strange room clad in mirrors from floor to ceiling, with a dentist's chair in the corner.. finally arriving at a room with a marble floor with a natural finish that required us to wear socks to protect its surface.

And how strange it was to have had his remains cremated. As far as I know the remains of enlightened masters are never cremated..

Pune

I am watching the snazzy "New India" of Pune and Osho's Meditation Resort whittle my funds away. 180 rupee autorickshaw ride in from the bus stand with late night charges, 728 rupees for Sunderban Hotel Room without even an attached bathroom (which I had to argue incessantly for them to charge me only for one night's stay as opposed to 2, as I had arrived in the night way after their strict check-in time), 200 for food in snazzy but bland Prems Restaurant, 1200 Aids test and registration at the Osho Resort (btw I am HIV negative 8) ), 300 for maroon robes. Way above the 6-800 rupee a day budget I was trying to maintain!

On the light side of things, eating my first real chocolate donut and cinnamon roll I've had since setting foot in India, at the famous German Bakery in Kodagaon Park, was defintely the highlight of the day, as was my locating "Autobiography of a Yogi" when visiting the Gold Ad Labs Shopping Mall.

Tonight will be spent in the serenity of pooja, meditation and reading this intriguing book recommended by my Guru. Already into the first few chapters I found myself in tears at inexplicable points. I will put away the consternation of trying to find a place that will babysit my luggage after the 12pm check out tomorrow for now.

Stuck on the Road to Gulbarga

I take a bus from Bijarpur to Gulbarga hoping to catch a connection to Bidar. The route is so bone jarring I get airborne in my seat at many a bump.. and wonder how the bus manages to stay in one piece during the journey. Within hours after this thought, the bus breaks an axle, as if reading my mind, and we are stranded in the pitch darkness of an unlighted country road.

Without any means to fix this we are forced to squeeze into the next incoming bus. Thats right, two indian busload equivalents squeezed up into one bus! There was only 50kms to go but it was the longest 50kms I've had!

By the time we reach Gobarga it is already 10pm and my bus to Bidar arrives at midnight!

That meant an extremely exhausted backpacker arriving at Bidar in 3am in the morning, yelling his lungs out to wake the sleeping counter staff at the lobbies of the few hotels available for a room, being followed by packs of stray dogs barking at the top of their lungs..

And while settling into a hastily prepared and uncleaned hotel room it dawned on me what an adventure I've gone through. The trip had taken a turn for the monontonous up till this point. So despite myself I find the time to be grateful..

How have I forgotten how fun it was to stay up late at night, or not sleep at all. And here I have all the freedom to do it.



So I've been awake since this morning and I have spent the time in the extremely peaceful and beautiful Bidar Fort ruins.

Bijarpur

Badami Caves and Village

Aihole and Pattadakal

I arrived in Badami last evening and head out to the outlying villages of Aihole and Pattadakal today. I got stranded in Aihole! After visiting the ruined temples there I try to take a bus to Pattadakal only to find that the next bus comes after a 2 hour wait!



So I head back to the main temple in Aihole and start propositioning the tourists there for a ride in their snazzy rented cars. Lo and behold the second group I ask takes me to Pattadakal and I get a free coconut. Thanks a million, Pinaki and Amrita wherever you guys are right now!

Independance Day @ Hampi!

Happy Independance Day India! The locals are out in the truckloads in Hampi. They pass by with their catcalls and their cheers as I plod along with my bicycle through the ruins.



The skies bless them with good weather all day. When I reach Vittala Temple in the evening, I am amazed to find clear skies and a warm evening sunlight bathing it in a very photogenic glow!

Hampi isn't Raining!

Fugitives from the west coast monsoon: Masha has gone to Mumbai to party and I'm in Hampi, which seems like the tourist central of South India as there are more tourists here than locals! There is no rain here but the river is swollen with floodwater and some of the roads to key attractions are closed.. sigh.



Internet is 50 rupees an hour in this tourist trap town so I'll be uploading photos in my next destination, perhaps Badami.

Goa in the Monsoon

We reach Goa with the intention of connecting to our next destination, Mumbai for Masha and Hampi for me, and were blessed with gaps in the deluge enough for a half decent trip to old Goa to visit the cathedrals and to fort Aguada.

In the Bom Jesus Cathedral I am aflood with telltale sensations of an energy field. Prior to this I had not realised that such a dogma-driven religion like Christianity would be host to such a spiritual place!

The rains are so intense and incessant the damp comes through the walls. Masha's Rudraksh mala is so overrun with mold that it looks sugar coated!

Gokarna

Have met up with Masha at rain-swept Gokarna. The day after I arrive the heavens decided to show me what the west coast monsoon is capable of. It'd had rained all night and all day.

Yesterday we were blessed with meeting Divyanand Swamiji at the steps of the temple overlooking the town beach, whom Masha had heard about from a friend she made in Kerala. A Sanyassin, Kriya Yoga Archarya and warm-hearted person who is open to discourses on anything under the sun, and who's dwelling is a deserted stone building at the top of the hill with gorgeous views of the beach, he is the quintessential wise man on the hill!



Masha and Divyanand Swamiji at his shelter at the top of a hill overlooking Gokarna beach.

08-08-08 Happy Birthday to Meee

That's right! I'm one of the lucky people having birthdays today.

I'm 34 years into my present incarnation!

Dhyana Linga Temple, Isha Yoga Center, Coimbatore

It's most beautiful modern vedic temple I have ever seen in my life!

I arrived in Pondi from Coimbatore on a rickety bus full of school children eager to practice their English on me. I find the Isha Yoga Center waiting at the end of the bus route.

Not having as much of an affinity to Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev's teachings as compared to my Master's, I was nonetheless taken aback by the photos of the temple on the net and the scientific processes involved in its design and conception, so much so that I resolved to make the trip to Coimbatore for a visit.

The entire ashram is constructed from inexpensive materials and methods characteristic of the rural south indian style in the region. But the terracotta roof and ceiling tiles, painted plaster walls, wrought iron works, granite slabs and blocks, and timber are put together in such a modern, beautiful way as to transcend the utilitarian, pragmatic manner of construction of said rural dwellings. Most creative is the use of the snake symbol popping up as decorative motifs in the most creative of places!

Sadhguru uses the image of the cobra as a symbol for Shiva, the snakes also correspond to the feminine kundalini shakti counterpart.

The Pièce de Résistance is of course the Dhyana Linga, housed in a dome built by unskilled devotee volunteers, yet constructed in such a geometrically precise manner that every small sound in its enclosure is amplified and reveberated into an otherworldly ambience (my guess is that it is in the shape of a parabolic dom centered on the linga itself). Faint lines on its huge monolithic form section it into seven parts corresponding to its unique characteristic of possessing the energies from seven chakras. In place of the conventional yoni base is a serpent coiled seven times.

I stayed overnight in an extremely clean and beautiful room (only 550 rupees!), the whole ashram felt like a five star resort, minus the exorbitant prices.

Meditation sessions in the temple begins with a dip in the Theerthakund, a huge underground pool with a submerged linga made of mercury, sheltered by a vaulted roof with a beautifully colored mural on the ceiling. In its copper lined icy cold confines, your body and mind is prepared via the energised waters to be receptive of the energies from the Dhyana Linga. This I know to be true because the second time I emerged from its waters I felt my body humming with a beautiful intensity!



Inside the temple itself no poojas or ceremonies are performed. Sahdguru intended the temple to be for pure meditation and transcending religious boundaries, hence the name: Dhyana.. the energy field of the Linga is very very strong. It manifested itself as a throbbing on my agnya and pressure in my Sahasrara. In my afternoon meditation session it got to be so intense I actually felt a discomforting headache. The pain went away after another dip in the Theerthakund.

Had I not been in a hurry to reach Gokarna I would have stayed longer!

Leaving Tiruvannamalai

Kamaa leaves for Pondicherry to get her Nadi Leaf Astrology reading done and I head to Coimbatore to resume my journeys.

Its hard to keep travelling now after the reason you started travelling for in the first place is fulfilled. After all have I not already found what I've been looking for?

So the journey is no longer a searching. Its now a pilgrimage and a celebration, and a playground of experiences for my new spiritual awareness.

We visit Arunachalaeswara Temple for the last time, thankful that the throng of humanity that was the Vaazhum Valaru crowd were no longer around. While getting darshan of the main Shiva Linga in the temple the priest surprises us by taking 2 garlands off the linga and garlanding us!

And we meet a very friendly Mrs. Bhanu, who's grandfather was a good friend of the late Ramana Maharishi, who spent her time at the temple walking with us and guiding us with detailed explanations.

Goodbye Ma Kamaa!

Daniel is Dead

Some weeks ago, during the Nithyanandam course, I had decided that I was ready for a name change. A spritual name is a name chosen by and given by the Master to aid you on your Sadhana. It is chosen for you alone, it empowers and liberates you, and is a clear pointer to the spiritual path you need to take to your enlightenment.

I sent my application to the Welcome Centre in the Bidadi ashram. Once the application is sent to Swamiji he typically takes 2 days to come up with your name. But the sheer difficulty and inertia in getting the attention of the people at the welcome centre, getting them to hand me a form and getting my form processed pretty much suggested to me that maybe the time was not right for me to get the name. This in addition to having to wait 2 weeks only to find that the application did not reach Swamiji, and he had left the ashram to go to Tiruvannamalai, which according to the welcome center staff meant I could only get my name in January (!!!) pretty much took the wind out of the initial intent.

But in the Vaazhum Valaru (Living Legend) talk I meet a woman who told me to just go and ask Swamiji directly during the energy darshan, thereby bypassing all the red tape and possibly having my name given to me in 2 days time after the darshan. Having nothing to lose I did just that.

I wrote my request on a slip of paper (so I wouldn't be tongue tied in front of him as is usually the case!) and handed it over to him when it was my turn to be in his presence. He smiled as he read it and slammed his thumb on my agnya extra hard. The resultant energy flow into my body was felt like a strong wave that descended and rippled. When it was done he gave me the name then and there!!

"Nithya Priyan" he told me. And, he told me the meaning of the name. Nithya Priyan means Eternal Love.

The ways of the Master are unpredictable and surprising indeed! Eternal Love was radically different from what I had thought my path was supposed to be. I had known of the problems associated with my Anahata and my general lack of meaningful relationships in my life as an obstacle to my enlightenment, but I had no idea it would also be the path I am destined to take to my liberation! But in receiving my name and its meaning, and sitting quietly away from the devotees dancing in celebration to the loud kirtans playing, the little clues that have been there in my all along start falling magically in place and a new perspective dawns in a matter of minutes.

I had been an intellectual person for as long as I know, my self worth has always been directly proportional to the size of my bookshelf and the intensity of my heated discussions. Even after meeting the Master I had kept the idea that my path to enlightenment would involve the gathering of knowledge or Gnana. I see now that it was a pretense all along, the seed sown at an early age when I found I could obtain all the approval and attention I seeked from bookwormish pursuits. I was goaded along that falsehood when I realised that I had an IQ of the top 5% of the population, having been evaluated by a Mensa test.

How shrivelled my heart must have looked to Swamiji during that first darshan, when he had put his finger on it! To have had the key to my enlightenment fall into atrophy all this while. To have ignored all the signs and hints in place of the suggestions from a misleading, chattering mind.

For even when I was busy trying to be who I am not, did I not respond to ideas and people in an intense emotional manner? How did I not see my violent mood swings as symptomatic of an untapped and ungoverned source of energy? Why did I not relate to the times when I threw myself so completely into relationships so as to be coughed up completely messed up at the other end? How have I glossed over the truth that the most important decisions I have made in my life were the result of intense emotional impulses, hidden by a patina of post-rationalisation? How does all this relate to the cold, intellectual persona I had thought myself out to be?

And the clues that were given since my coming to India.. during the friendship meditation with Masha in BSP, she told me she saw into my heart and that it was so pure. While talking to a lady during Nithyanandam she had told me I had the warmest smile she had ever seen. And a strange chance meeting with a man who told me Enlightment is possible for me in a very short period, that he had a feeling something was holding me back in the past but no longer. It only dawned in me later the significance of the meeting, when I remembered that he introduced himself as a HEART SURGEON.

As I sat I repeated the name to myself. "Nithya Priyan" I said in wonder at how much in love with the name I was, and how inadequate my old name is compared with it. I repeated it like a mantra and it changed me inside. My heart exploded and the tears began.

So Daniel is dead to me now, he is part of a past patchwork of ideas and experiences borrowed and slapped together in order to be loved and accepted. As Nithya Priyan my awareness feels constantly flooded with a white noise, a feeling of love for everything or nothing in particular, and a concrete connection to my Master who made it all happen.

To have your entire life put in perspective, to have your future path mapped out for you with so much understanding, I can't help but feel blessed. I have big shoes to fill and I will fill it best I can!

Vaazhum Valaru

In Vaazhum Valaru (Living Legend) Swamiji returned to his home town of Tiruvannamalai, spending 3 days recounting his history and his path to enlightment.

Outside of the wedding hall where he gave his discourses we had roamed the streets in processions and were taken to see the special places he had spent his time as a kid.

It was a great experience but with over 1000 participants there was the long food queues, the pushing and shoving, the stampedes and the crush to unclutch from!

Back in Tiruvannamalai

Nithyanandam is over. It had been 12 days of extremely intensive meditation and I am extremely grateful to have been able to attend it. We were told not to disclose course details (so as not to spoil the fun for non-participants who wish to sign up for the next one). What I can say though is that I've felt real changes happen during and after the course. My mind chatter is now almost non-existant. The sweet blissful high I felt during my first Kundalini awakening I feel now every time I meditate, and sometimes when I am not! And friends staying in the ashram but not participating in the course have said that the participants actually look different physically after completing the course. Swamiji had worked on our Sangeetha Karmas during the period and we emerged as Tabula Rasas, clean slates unencumbered by the burden of our pasts. I guess it was written on our faces!

I travel to Tiruvannamalai with Ma Kamaa, an extremely blessed american lady who is a Poojacharya at the LA ashram, and Ma Vibhuuti.

To come back to this town again is such a blessing. This time around I am able to feel the peace welling up from the very ground of this place as a very real sensation. Inside Arunachalaeswara temple I am overcome with a very solid wave of energy each time I near a diety for Darshan. I was not able to feel any of this the first time around. The Nithyanandam course must have done something to me!

My Agnya and Sahasrara which had been very active since the course go into overdrive here. A strong buzzing feeling and pressure in the Sahasrara, and an intense throbbing in the agnya.

Last night Ma Kamaa tells me one night that she had a darshan of Shiva and Ganesha while staring at my face. She saw them between my Agnya and Sahasrara and that they were working on my transformation.

Kamaa herself has had so many inexplicable things happen to her. And here in the spiritual center of India the experiences are really ramping up for her. But I am not allowed to blog about them =P.

What Happened in Dhyanapeetam Bidadi?

From the 10th to the 23rd of June I was in Paramahamsa Nithyananda's Ashram in Bidadi, near Bangalore (also called Dhyanapeetam). The end result of that experience was the opening of my Ananda Ghanda chakra, the unequivocal acceptance of Swamiji as my guru, and a radical turn in my spiritual development. Yet all I have managed to write about my time in the ashram was "I <3 ashram living", a small scratch compared to the pages of drivel I manage to write on the other aspect of my travels.

In truth, the experience itself was too grand to be put into words, let alone squeeze into a blog post. It was an experience, that alone speaks volumes, at least in the book of a person who's experiential spiritual life was all but non-existant, but fat from intellectual to-ing and fro-ing.

Before I return to the Bidadi Ashram tonight, I will sit myself down in this seedy Internet cafe in Bangalore, and I will not stop typing till I have my experiences written down.

How to Disappear Completely
Three years ago I walked away from my life, which at the time included great prospects in the web programming line, a great fiancee to be, and a great circle of friends. Within the framework of the accepted means of living in Singapore, it was great. But it was not enough, somehow, and staying in that state was not an option I could tolerate. I had abandoned many pursuits in the past, it was a Daniel thing, to pick an interest up with burning fascination, to explore it with fanaticism and with great success, only to have it dropped and left behind in boredom. My family calls it my "flashes in the pan". It wasn't a very responsible way of living, but in most cases I simply lose all motivation of continuing once the interest wanes.

I had fully expected, having left my life at the time, to be instantly connected to the next interest in life. Trouble was, I had run out of options and avenues and interests and attractions to explore.

What followed was three years in depression, low energy, general aimlessness, and isolation from friends. Yea, I was lost.

I can't explain what happened next, it seemed like a very self-sustaining kind of depression, the kind that can swallow all the years of your life, yet I got myself out by deciding that things should change.

The first thing I did was to resume communication with friends. Through conversations with the long lost, and amazement at how much they had progressed in life, at how much life I had missed while I was under, I resolved to get on with life and to rejoin the human race. But before I did, I would spend all my savings and resources on one last ditch effort to find my meaning and direction in life.

It would be a trip to India, I decided, for as long and as far as my savings would take me.

Why India?

Why not India? Most certainly it had a great endorsement by writers such as Madame Blavatsky, who's book: The Secret Doctrine, I was reading at the time, one of a plethora of books I've read in my life in an attempt to connect to the divine, something which I had never experienced even in my time in the Roman Catholic church, or in any cut and dried religion that I had knowledge of.

And while sourcing for ashrams and temples to visit to India, while splicing together an itinery for travel, I come across a young tamil mystic speaking on You-Tube.

Swamiji

Paramahamsa Nithyananda's words were simple but they wreaked havoc inside of me. Every sentence made so much sense, he put things in a perspective that I've felt I've always known, yet somehow did not connect correctly to lead to the symphony of synapses he was firing in my brain.

The truth can be known, he said. The truth is an experience, not an intellectual understanding. So why are you searching for it intellectually? The truth is inside you, so why are you seeking outside means of understanding it?

I got extremely hooked to viewing the Life Bliss Videos on youtube. I must have watched half the collection. More importantly I started meditating with an intense hunger. It was a clumsy form of meditation pieced together by the hints I got from watching the video snippets, but it was already a radical move for a person that is more inclined to reading about it than to jump into the act itself. Listening to Swamiji's words somehow gave me a motivation to step forward.

I tracked down the Singapore Center where I met some really beautiful people who were the devotees and the staff for the center, who's Life Bliss courses turned my clumsy meditations into a more complete process.

There were doubts in my mind of course. You can't expect an intellectual based blind person like me to recognise and see beyond the maya and identify an enlightened master in a click of a finger! My main problems at the time were the fees involved in taking up the courses. Why weren't the courses free if they were for the greater good of all? Why limit eligible participants to those that are financially able only? More importantly, I had felt the tightness of my savings for the Indian trip and I had doubts as to whether I could afford attending the courses.

The answers came very beautifully! Shortly after attending the first course (to which I had an unequivocal spiritual experience) I receive the exact amount of the fees from the course from my mum! She had won a big sum from the lottery and was sharing her winnings with me. I had attended the first course for free!

And while signing up for the follow up course, my mum would win the lottery two times, twice in a weekend! Which meant she had won three times in a month, a statistical improbability to say the least! And for icing on the cake, while going through my old bags to decide what luggage to take for the trip, I come across a great wad of forgotton cash. $200!

To say that I had turned into a dumbfounded believer would be an understatement!

There would be other coincidences, as if encouraging and guiding me along a path I had finally stumbled upon, that had been waiting for me to set foot on my whole life. And while on the path, to be guided down the road to an exciting future.

Armed with this I began my trip to India, and so started the journey that has been recorded here in this blog.

My life had taken a turn for the immensely exhillarating. To this day I still look back in amazement at how quickly one's life can change, and more importantly, how completely one's mindset is able to be turned around!

In the Ashram

When first I set foot in the Bidadi Ashram I was pretty intimidated to say the least! I felt like a stranger amongst the ashramites. They dressed in white, and were beautiful and near-perfect physically! In the daylight they looked like angels on earth. More importantly they radiated a happiness that did not seem dependant on anything except the happiness itself.

I felt inadequate, awkward. I felt like running away! Alone and unsociable for three years, and having an introverted personality to start with, and now thrown amidst such a community of individuals! The only thing stopping me was a talk by Swamiji I heard on youtube. In it he warned that when we approach the master we will feel like running away. But stay the course, it's just your ego trying to protect itself. Stay the course despite your fears.

So I stayed. I found some work in the temple having befriended Tiagaraja, and Mureili, who worked there. Tiagaraja became my unoffical boss, instructing me on temple duties and doling out the workload. He somehow seemed to know that I would take refuge in my duties at the start. I had a healthy dose Ananda seva to pre-occupy me and take my mind of my social awkwardness. But gradually he would lessen the load, instead giving me more opportunities for meditating under the sacred Banyan Tree, the spiritual center of the ashram.

Swamiji had spoken about the "energy field" of the ashram and of the banyan tree. Though not directly feeling it as a solid entity, I could definitely notice the change in the clutter of the thoughts in my head, and the intensity that I could ramp up my meditations in the shade of that sacred being.

And it is while meditating under the boughs of that tree that this intellectual blind person finally experienced the spiritual. It was while pondering over the truths spoken by Swamiji himself.. in his words:

"You were never born,
You will never die,
You are always here."

.. that I have finally crossed over from the realm of blind, intellectual theories of the spiritual realities, to a connected understanding from unequivocal experience and truth.

I will not disclose the details of the experience except to my closest friends. Sharing it reduces the experience to the banal intellectual level, and forms an attachment to the experience which impedes the progress to further experiences.

In the days following that experience, just touching the tree itself would result in an unstoppable physical reaction from me. I would burst into tears and cry and laugh at the same time in inexplicable emotions. I would cling on to it seemingly forever while experiencing beautiful sensations of energy flow.

To this day I long to be under that tree again.

Course work

The courses I attended there were the Bakti Spurana Program and the Healer's Initiation.

During course time, the ashram exploded from a peaceful retreat to a bustling and very overpopulated crowd! In three years did Swamiji start his Life Bliss Foundation and grow it to such a phenomenal level. The speed of its growth is unparallelled and evidenced by the attence for both courses bursting at the seams.

And the attendants of the courses. Let's just say its such a normal occurance to have strange looks from fellow participants who are strangers - the feeling that I had met or seen these people before in some forgotton past kept cropping up! And from the glances returned it seemed that the feeling was very mutual. And when exchanging experiences with fellow devotees I find that strange coincidences occuring in their lives are the order of the day for them as well!

It was during these courses that I met Masha.. we became what she calls "Spiritual Friends" ever since we buddied up during a meditation exercise involving the staring into each other's eyes to find the divine in a person. What a blessing it was to have met her and to have us travel Tamil Nadu together for a week or two!

But the best was yet to come.. during the last day of the Bakti Spurana course I set eyes on Swamiji for the first time. He made a surprise appearance and gave us an impromptu energy darshan.

Meeting My Guru

Of course I was one of the hundreds who queued to have this darshan. Never mind the fact that I had an earlier flash of deja'vu of being in the same situation before. To top it off it seemed very strange that he kept throwing glances at me! I know this because my eyes had adamantly settled on his form and did not leave him till it was my turn! They were not very friendly glances, if anything they looked like glares of consternation.

It put a very real fear in me. What was I doing there? What did I do wrong? What is wrong with me? Why is he mad? Is he mad??? Should I leave the queue? The closer I got to him the more my mind raced and the more unsettled I became.

What happened during my Darshan? First you have to understand what happens during darshan. The devotee kneels in front of the Master and the Master presses his thumb on the devotee's third eye while the devotee receives the energy with closed eyes and palms together in front of chest in devotion. This is done without any words spoken by the Master usually.

Next you will also need to understand what I knew about myself at the time. I knew that I was a very mental person trapped in my own little world of theories and assumptions. That if only I looked beyond that Maya I would strengthen my experiences. I knew that my heart was a shrivelled, unused and very much locked up energy center compared to my brain.

When it was my turn for darshan i knelt in front of him with eyes closed and arms outstretched not knowing what to expect. I felt his thumb on my forehead but was very surprised indeed when I felt another hand pushing my hands down from in front of my chest. I felt Swamiji's finger pressing my heart chakra!

He kept it there for as long as his thumb was on my third eye. When it was done I opened my eyes and he spoke to me! It was a very quiet voice but it seemed to penetrate the blaring bhajan music playing in the background without any difficulty, almost like hearing words inside your head. "Are you coming for the Healer's Initiation Course?" he asked. I nodded. "Good, that will help."

(The healer's initiation course is where Swamiji open's your Ananda Gandha Chakra to allow you to channel his energy for healing others and yourself.What is the Ananda Gandha? This site explains it.)

When I returned to my seat I was one shaken individual. How did he know about my heart?? I kept asking himself. Who is he?? WHAT is he? My mind felt like a racecar going downhill without brakes.

Later on I would exchange this experience with Masha, the way we usually exchange experiences, like giddy schoolchildren who discovered the play ground for the first time both trying to make ourselves heard. She had wanted to attend the Healer's Initiation course as well but did not have the course pre-requisites. In her darshan with Swamiji, Swamiji smiled at her as if he already knew her and told her to attend the course anyway!

Opening the Ananda Gandha

During the healer's initiation course, Swamiji blessed us with a miracle. Sitting there in an overcrowded hall, listening to him speak in Tamil while a translater feeds the english version through headphones..

"Close your eyes." he said. "Let your Kundalini Energy be released". Those were the words. That was the technique. Of all the complicated procedures of awakening kundalini energy I have read in all the dusty books.. and all he does is to simply command it to awaken, to a hall of hundreds.

And inside me, a stirring. No visualisation was required, no action on my part. No preparation, no chanting, no mudras, no breathing exercises, no mantras. Just being quiet, just accepting and watching in awe inside at the changes and the stirrings.

All around me I hear convulsions, babbling, people falling over in fits as their bodies fight with the energy. My experience itself was thankfully unimpeded. Just a cool gentle flowing felt behind my third eye and Sahasrara chakra, and a stirring in my Mooladara, but strong enough to be beyond doubt.

The real experience began later! After eating dinner, while washing my plate, I suddenly came to the realization I was washing my plate for ages! I had somehow been sucked into the act of swishing the water over and over. It felt that I was extremely high on some kind of narcotic! There was time dilation, time slowed down, experiences and sensations coming in such abundance I had to walk extremely slowly and move with extreme deliberation just to keep up with them! I felt super alive, super alert, super drugged out! Eventually I managed to return to my seat. All around were evidence of people in the same experience! Drugged out, in a daze. The music started, I began dancing in my seat, a very gentle dance. I hardly moved my body but it felt like a very intense dance! Every motion filled with so much sensation.

He did it again the second night of the course. It turns out awakening the Kundalini Shakti in a person was needed to open the Ananda Gandha.

And while I was in drugged out in Kundalini bliss he brought the spot to focus. A region between the Manipura chakra and the Anahata. When it opened there was pain. A sharp aching that felt like a surgical incision. Swamiji sealed it open with an energy darshan. When it was my turn he smiled at me knowingly.

I have a special spot in my body now. It throbs when I think of my guru, and the energy pouring out heals anyone and anything. Besides healing myself of my knee joint pains and my skin irritations it is also healing my heart and preparing it to blossum. By putting my awareness on it I reach such peace and bliss in such a short time as to be almost instantaneous.

I have a new body. I hardly recognised it the last time I saw myself in the mirror. It looks so much younger and very very perfect. I wonder now if I look as beautiful as the other ashramites in the sun in their white clothes and perfect smiles.

I have a new mind. It no longer goes around and around in circles like a dog chasing its tail. Every day it grows more quiescent and controlled. I think about the thoughts, obsessions and knots my mind used to tie itself into in the past and I can't help but marvel and be in gratitude.

I have a new life. My eyes water when I think about how much bigger existance is than what my mind insisted it would be. Every new day brings such hope and adventure as to be downright unpredictable and exciting! Every day a new lesson learnt and a new step forward in my evolution. I hardly feel the need to read my usual fare of fantasy fiction, I am living it!

Most importantly I have a guru. His name is Paramahamsa Nithyananda. He is 4 years younger than me. He was born in Tiruvannamalai in Tamil Nadu. Because of him I have realised now that all these years I have been searching, in my own way, for something inexplicable. A search that finally culminated in my India trip. When one is searching, it is more important to know what you are searching for, than to find it. Here in the Bidadi ashram, I finally know what I was searching for all along - all this while when I was searching, I was searching for HIM. And I have found him. And for the first time in my life I feel a deep belonging, I feel I have arrived. I feel a great sense of meaning and direction. I have finally found someone who truly understands me when I throw myself at his feet and tell him that I want to go home.