The
Presence of the Divine
Experience
from the 21-day Process
Namaste to
everyone… So you would like to know about the 21-day
process? You want to understand Life and Universe and
Everything? Will I become enlightened, whatever that is
:-)? You want your consciousness to expand to a point
where you are one with the Universe? Will I experience
the deep inner silence of Ramana Maharishi? Will I experience
the deep Peace and appeasement of craving as experienced
by the Buddha? Will I experience the Love and Compassion
of the Christ consciousness? and so on and so on and so
on… These were some of questions and desires with
which I went to India for the 21-day process between Jan
6 – Jan 26…
In the first
few days of the process, we were asked to look into all
our relationships. We were asked to invoke the Divine
or God or Supreme Intelligence or whatever in any form
we liked or were comfortable with (whether it be Christ,
or Shiva, or Ramana, or Buddha, or any other Guru or God
of your choice, it does not matter) and then to invite
each of our relations (all the people in our lives whether
they be relatives or friends or acquaintances) one by
one and to tell them all that we have ever wanted to,
whether it be love or gratitude or anger or hate. In the
presence of the Divine, it is so easy to express whatever
you are feeling at that moment in that relationship. One
evening, I invoke the Divine simply by saying inwardly
“Deeksha AmmaBhagavan” and began to talk and
speak and express the various feelings and emotions in
each of my relationships. I started with my mother and
father and then was spending time with my maternal grandmother
(who is still here in this world). As I was expressing
my gratitude and love to my maternal grandmother, a voice
or thought spoke in my heart saying “what about
your (other) paternal grandmother?” Now, my paternal
grandmother has passed on from this world some 17 years
ago and I had not spared a single moment of thought for
her since her death. I felt a very deep anger and resentment
towards her for her treatment of my mother (a classic
case of a mother-in-law daughter-in-law relationship).
In fact, at the news of her death, I remembered now that
I actually laughed. In these first few days, when I invoked
the Divine, the fingers in my hand would disappear. As
I was relating to paternal grandmother, my entire hand
disappeared and became so completely weightless. I found
suddenly that my hands which were on my lap went up in
the air by themselves and ended up on top of my head.
As I was expressing this anger and resentment towards
my grandmother, I found myself feeling guilt for having
laughed at her death and for not having thought of her
in so many years. At this point, the Divine spoke saying
“See, your hands move by themselves, you really
do not have any control over them, you have no control
over your thoughts or feelings. What did you do in this
case? The thought of your grandmother happened. You are
really a robot being controlled by the Universe…
how can you blame yourself for what you felt for your
grandmother?” A profound sense of relief flooded
my being and the Divine spoke again saying “What
about your grandmother, she could not help being what
she was? how can you blame her either?”. I found
myself smiling at my grandmother and she was smiling back
at me and there was gratitude and she blessed me! Waves
of laughter…Bliss…Joy! After that, many powerful
healings in various relationships happened automatically
without any effort fuelled 100% by Divine Grace. All I
had to say was “Deeksha AmmaBhagavan”
After relationships,
the Dasajis (monks/guides who conduct the process) began
to show us the experiences of other people from previous
21-day processes. The topic for the day was on “Freedom…
Is there Freedom from Anger, Jealousy, Fear, etc.?”
As I was watching and hearing people talk about their
experiences, a feeling of jealousy arose in me and I completely
tuned out from what the people were talking. I found that
I was resenting their experience and then I invoked “Deeksha
AmmaBhagavan”. I immediately saw how that these
feelings of jealousy arose because I was trying to become
the experience of the other. I realized that not only
was I trying to become the other’s experience, but
I was trying to become or recreate some of my own experiences
from the past when I had felt good. For the next few hours,
I was seeing this constant becoming in everyone of my
action, how I was constantly trying to find an answer
in every experience, how there was the “What next?”
in every action. This was going on constantly until I
was seeing this becoming machine called “I”.
At that point I was taking a walk and I picked up a few
pieces of broken glass from the floor and I found myself
looking for a meaning in that action. I saw the complete
absurdity of such a quest and was laughing at myself…
and I found that the becoming had ceased and there was
just being, i.e. the act of picking up the broken pieces
of glass. Becoming started again, but I was seeing this
becoming with Joy. Through the eyes of the Divine, becoming
was such a beautiful experience, I saw how that this becoming
is one of the factors that makes us function in this world…
my writing this is a becoming in some sense… A deep
peace descended… often when people spoke to me I
could hear only the sound, i.e. I found that there was
no interpretation of what they were saying. there was
only the hearing in the hearing. I saw now what Dasaji
meant by “Freedom”. There is no Freedom from
Jealousy, Anger, Love, etc. There is only Freedom with
Jealousy, Anger, and so on. Freedom simply happens when
you are experiencing whatever is happening. And to try
to do this is not Freedom, it is Becoming. Freedom happens.
Becoming also happens.
This constant
witnessing of whatever became so automatic, that even
when I was not aware of it, it was constantly going on
and deep Inner Peace was felt. The conflict with the “What
is” had ceased. In the next few days, many insight
and realizations with regard to the nature of ourselves
and everything around us happened. There was the physical
experience of Fear which ended up teaching me one of the
characteristic nature of life. I will relate some of these
to you in the days to come. As states came and went, I
began to see that the only thing common to all the “beautiful”
and “not-so-beautiful” experiences was the
Presence or God or Divine or whatever. As I began to recognize
the Divine Hand in the whole process, things which can
only be termed as “magic” began to happen.
I was looking up at the star-filled night sky and wished
for a shooting-star and lo and behold, a shooting star
appeared in the sky. One night, the guy in the dormitory
was snoring so loudly that I could not get any sleep.
I prayed to Amma to stop the snoring so that I could sleep
and the snoring stopped. I then thought “Dear Amma,
you actually listened to my prayer, start the snoring
again so that we can relate some more” and immediately
the snoring started again :-) :-). As I was seeing all
of this, I realized that the Divine is present not only
at the 21-day process but has been and will be present
in my life always. It is immaterial whether I felt It
or not, I just knew It is always there. It is like the
air we breathe, whether we feel the wind on our face or
not, the air is always there. So is the Divine…
With this recognition of the Divine Presence at every
moment of my life, I found that every moment is some form
of relating to the Divine, everything (whether it be Love,
Gratitude, Fear, Conflict, Becoming, etc.) was simply
an expression of God and is completely automatic. All
we can do is to take our hands off the steering wheel
of the car of which we are under the illusion that we
are in control. Just, jump into the passenger seat and
look at all beautiful scenery and sights that are going
past us. Enjoy life, enjoy whatever is, for the whatever
is happening is perfect.
I went to India
seeking heightened states of consciousness, enlightenment,
and so on. What I found was something much, much, much
more extraordinary. I discovered the Divine Presence in
everything. Why wait for the Big Bang or Mystical States
of Being to happen when the “Whatever Is”
is the Divine? When Fear is an expression of the Divine,
when Joy is an expression of the Divine? I discovered
my relationship with God, my Supreme Friend who can be
like a Mother at times full of Love and Compassion, who
can be like a Teacher gently guiding, who can be Humorous
or Serious, who can be Joy or Suffering, who can be Peace
or Anger, who can be anything. States come and states
go, but the Divine is always present. In that sense I
am awake now to the beauty of life. Everything is perfect
as it is. At every moment, whatever is happening is what
should be happening. When I shared and conversed with
several of the people who went through the process, I
found that they too had discovered the special relationship
with God or Collective Consciousness or whatever in their
own unique and personal way. The content and details of
the experiences were different, but everybody recognized
and related to the divine in whatever form, whether it
be as Christ or as Buddha or whatever. When we formed
a circle and meditated praying to the Divine Presence
for the experience of Oneness, the hands of me and the
person next to me become one. We found that there was
only one pulse beating in our hands. When the meditation
ended and we were asked to let go of our hands we found
that we could not do so for his hand and mine were one.
One evening, meditating in the presence of Bhagavan, I
found myself breathing in sync with Him. There was no
difference in our breathings. Many a time, I would find
myself laughing or crying or feeling anger with the other
people in the retreat. The phenomenon of mass enlightenment
or mass awakening of the human consciousness is unfolding
before my eyes. The day we have been waiting for, the
Golden Age, where every person would walk and talk with
their personal God is happening right now, right here.
Whether we want it or not, it will happen to each one
of us in our own unique way. Once enough people have awakened,
human consciousness will evolve to a point where this
process will become spontaneous. Oneness is here on earth
now!
So why go to
the 21-day process at all? We have to remember that God
and Man/Woman are not separate. We are co-creators of
this vision of the Golden Age. All of us at some point
in our lives have always dreamed of transforming the world
in some way or the other. Here is a golden opportunity
to realize that dream. What an extraordinary blessing
to become an instrument in the awakening of the Human
Consciousness. What a benediction to be the empty vessel
for the Divine to flow through and touch the lives of
each and every person on this planet. All you need to
do is to have the intent in your heart and go to Golden
City in India and everything you wanted and much, much
more will happen. Sri Amma and Sri Bhagavan with the help
of the Acharyajis (direct disciples of Amma and Bhagavan)
and the Dasajis (monks/guides who conduct the process)
have created a space at Golden City in India where you
can directly experience the Divine, where you can discover
and experience and live the truths of your religion, where
you begin to live life with joy and peace, from where
you can come back and awaken the rest of humanity to the
phenomenon of Oneness in the Here and Now.
With deep heart-felt
gratitude to Amma and Bhagavan, to Acharyaji, to all the
Dasajis, and to you my friends…
Vijay Krishnamurthy
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