Spiritwalk
Writings
Sharon Janis
- Here Sharon shares with us Chapter 10 of her new book,
- "Magical Meeting," where she tells of her meeting with Swami Muktananda
- and the marvelous experience of the moment of that meeting.
Check out her website at
http://www.kumuda.com/
Magical Meeting
A FEW MONTHS LATER came an opportunity for me to meet the
swami in person.
There was going to be a Health and Healing workshop in the upstate New York
monastery, and I was going. Still, beneath my lighthearted excitement played a
soft note of apprehension. I had been going to chants and programs at the Ann
Arbor meditation center for several months. During that time, I’d developed
quite a friendly relationship with this teacher through the big bright picture
in front of the hall. It is one thing to relate to somebody through a photo,
and quite another to meet them in person.
But mainly, I was thrilled and excited. Once again I was
moving into the
unknown, taking a leap off the cliff of the ordinary. Who would ever have
thought I would be making a pilgrimage to meet an Indian guru?
- It was a twelve-hour drive to New York. I went with my
professor, his wife,
and another student. We spoke a bit here and there about when to stop for gas
or change drivers, but for the most part we drove quietly. It was a very yogic
way to begin the pilgrimage, sitting still for twelve hours in silence. I don't - know if I had ever done that before in my life!
We arrived just in time for the evening program. I dropped
my suitcase off
in the dorm room, and made my way to the meditation hall. My professor and his
wife were going to introduce me to the teacher in what was called a darshan
line of greeting. I became more excited as the moment of meeting came near. I
expected that the swami would be happy to see me. After all, I had come from
so far to see him, and had heard about how he was filled with pure,
unconditional love.
We moved forward slowly in the line of greeting, until
finally I could see
his face. He looked very different, not quite as handsome as the photo I had
come to relate to. I thought he looked better with the beard. Yet, there was a
brilliant glow around him, an intense visual and kinesthetic brightness that
went beyond what I had perceived from his photo.
The swami was seated in a slightly elevated chair. People
would bow their
heads in front of him, and he would brush them on the head or back with a big
wand of peacock feathers. He was interacting with four to five people at any
given time. We knelt down in front of him. My professor introduced me as a
student from Ann Arbor.
A beautiful Indian woman translated the words into Hindi.
The swami looked at
me with a very serious face, and grunted. No smile, no hug, no "Where have you
been, O great disciple?" Just a serious look and a grunt. My professor and his
wife got up to leave, and I realized that the meeting was over.
I began to walk away disappointed, when a bolt of energy
shot through my
body. At first, I thought I was angry. "How could he snub me like that!" I had
never felt this kind of force in my body before. The closest label my mind
could create for the sensation was the adrenaline rush of being really angry,
and so it pinned that fabricated anger on the most obvious target.
I ran out of the hall and practically flew up to my room.
Nobody else was
there. I jumped onto an empty bunk and lay down on my stomach. My
consciousness became immediately focused inside, and there I broke through
into a new kind of awareness.
These inner spaces were different from the places I had
tapped into during my
previous self-hypnosis-style explorations. They were more active, more
colorful. A series of visual images surfaced in my awareness. It was like
dreaming, except I was wide awake. This was a new experience for me. I had
never hallucinated with visions, even when taking drugs as a teenager.
At one point, I was shocked by images of lizards with big
scary teeth,
glaring at me. With this image came another big rush of energy. Lying there on
my stomach, my arms and legs jerked up, totally out of my control. It was like
the reflex action when a doctor hits your knee. My arms and legs continued to
fly up and then come back down, filled with more energy each time.
You might think I would have been frightened by these
bizarre experiences,
but it seems my endorphins had kicked in. I was witnessing it all from a
soothing, peaceful state. My brain’s consistency-making mechanisms had stepped
in to save the day.
Our minds have a latticework of defense mechanisms to keep
them from having
to confront the discomfort of new information that might disrupt our ever-
nebulous sense of personal control. When an event happens for which we have no
pre-established context of understanding, our mind will often flip into "make
it okay" mode. My body was doing things it had never done before, and I didn’t
even think anything was strange. My mind made the experience seem more or less
ordinary, just as the woman in my hypnosis class had convinced herself that
jumping up and down like a gorilla was normal behavior.
After a half-hour of this inner carnival ride, I went back
downstairs to the
meditation hall to hear the swami’s lecture. I no longer felt angry or
snubbed. Instead, I wanted to know more about this man who’s energy had
affected me so strongly.
The swami’s voice was melodic, his manner jovial. Every
now and then he would
break into a deep, growling chuckle. I couldn’t help but smile. He was so
wonderfully animated. As he spoke, my attention was drawn to his hand
movements. There was something about the way he moved his hands that intrigued
me. He appeared so graceful and free. It was almost as though his hands were
dancing. Sitting there amidst hundreds of people, I began to imitate his hand
movements. It’s not that I thought about it or intended to imitate the swami.
In fact, I was feeling a little embarrassed about my strange behavior.
Fortunately, the audience around me was focused on watching him, or I’m sure
they would have thought I was odd. I became puppet-like, spontaneously
reflecting the swami’s movements. My arms were moving as though I was in the
middle of an animated conversation.
Finally, I thought, "This is ridiculous. What am I
doing?" I made myself
stop imitating him and put my hands in my lap.
He put his hands in his lap.
I quickly moved my hands out to the sides. He moved his
hands out to the
sides. I was shocked. He wasn’t even looking in my direction! For the next ten
seconds or so, he imitated everything I did with my hands. First I felt
confused, then amused. The swami was playing with me!
The next evening I had an idea. I would make him interact
with me by asking
for a spiritual name. Most of the people involved with this path had received
Indian names from him. It was considered a gift to be named by this great
saint. There was also a psychic element. What would this supposedly omniscient
person name you? I thought a name request might start us off on some friendly
conversation, hopefully more than a grunt!
I arrived at the front of the darshan line, and asked the
swami for a name.
He looked into my eyes for a moment, reached over to a little business card
holder on his side table, and handed me the top card. It said, "Kumuda."
I was disappointed that this teacher had just pulled a card
at random. I’d
expected him to take a good, careful look at my karmas or whatever and come up
with a special, perfectly appropriate name on his own. Even I could have
picked a card from the top of a stack! I had not yet developed the
understanding that universal perfection can express through apparently random
circumstances. Later I looked up the name and discovered several meanings for
the word Kumuda. Two of my favorites were "one who gladdens the earth" and
"a
lotus flower that grows in mud without being sullied."
I thanked him for the card and went back to my seat. As I
sat down, the
strangest thing happened. It was as though someone had inserted a big straw
into me, blowing me up like a helium balloon. I felt my body getting bigger
and bigger, really fast, and really big. I expanded to fill the whole room. I
kept expanding and growing, until I seemed to encompass the whole city, and
then more. I knew this was impossible, yet I was experiencing it clearly, not
in a dream state, but right here in the supposedly trustworthy waking state.
The sensation felt normal and strange at the same time. I seemed to be in the
wrong dimension. We’re not supposed to do things like that here.
But again, I wasn’t scared. Rather, the experience was ecstatic. It was
extremely pleasurable to have so much energy inside me that I had to expand to
contain it all.
It was interesting to see how quickly I was able to let go
of everything I
held dear, my very conceptual structures of reality, as soon as this new
experience came into the picture. No longer was I just a person sitting there
in this meditation hall. I was an energy field, expanding far beyond my body.
Thus ended day two of my visit.
On the third and final night, I went up to see the swami one
last time.
Ever the optimist, I hoped we would be old friends by now. Surely, he would be
aware of all the breakthroughs I had just experienced. Clearly, they were a
consequence of being in his presence. I reached his seat, knelt, bowed my
head, and looked up. The swami was looking everywhere but at me. I waited for
a few moments, then gave up. I walked away, disappointed by the lack of
attention, but still feeling a tangible, warm vibration invigorating my body.
With each step, I was getting more upset. We were scheduled
to leave the
next morning. This might be the last time I would ever see the swami in my
life. Why hadn’t he said good-bye?
I sat down near the back of the hall and felt bad. Not as an
adjective, but a
noun. I felt myself feeling bad, without actually feeling bad. I experienced
the whole set of electrochemical and hormonal patterns that creates the
sensation of feeling abandoned. I was able to watch objectively as my body
synthesized the necessary ingredients for this "rejection soup" that I had
cooked up so many times before. I watched myself preparing to, and then
feeling bad. It took the subjective experience to a completely new level,
where I was witnessing the emotions without being stuck in them. The
psychophysical factory was synthesizing this recipe of rejection, while I
watched from an inner balcony.
A strong force then began to spiral up my body. From my
detached
perspective, I could see that this energy was the pattern of rejection
emotion. It was the archetype itself, the root from which so many painful
branches had flowered and faded away, year after year.
Through the swirling energy, I began to see face after face
of people who
had abandoned or rejected me throughout my life. A series of images moved
across the screen of my mind, opening old pockets of repressed emotional
energy that had been trapped inside the memories. I must have gone through
years of psychotherapy in ten minutes, becoming aware of people and painful
experiences that I had long ago forgotten. Some individual faces were
prominent, but the experience was essentially an indistinguishable mass of
associated images and feelings spiraling up my body. I was shaking with deep
emotion. It felt as though every system in my body had been activated.
Had I not been in a room with hundreds of people, I might
have burst out
sobbing with the intensity of grief and energy that was moving through me. Yet
I sat quietly, streams and rivers of tears pouring out of my eyes. Not a few
drops here and there, but the holy bath of deephearted tears.
It was as though a "karmic Roto-Rooter" had been
sent to purge my system of
this mass of psychic tissue that had grown inside me through the years. The
vine of childhood rejection had wrapped itself around the events of my life,
coloring them with its painful flowers. Now it was being pulled out by the
root.
Eventually, the emotional force began to subside, and I
opened my eyes. There
was the swami, still seated in his chair at the front of the hall, a long line
of people waiting to greet him. I felt myself yelling to him with my mind,
"What are you doing to me!?!"
To my utter amazement, he began to disappear. I could see
the lines of the
chair’s upholstery through the image of his body. My eyes opened wide. As the
swami completely disappeared, a blue circular flame began to form in his
place. It became a big, swirling, bright blue ball of flame. It was such a
bright blue, that it almost looked like a cartoon. I watched this
extraordinary sight for some time.
The program ended and I walked back to my room. All night
long my body and
mind were pulsing with the powerful vibrations of all that had just happened.
The next morning, my car-mates and I met in front of the
main entrance. As
we began to put our suitcases into the trunk, I looked up and saw the swami
walking directly toward us from across the street. What a surprise! His orange
robes shimmered in the rising sunlight as he returned from his morning walk.
One woman who had just arrived flew into his arms with a big hug. I felt a
twinge of sadness that I could never hug him like that. I was way too shy.
The swami continued walking toward us and stopped as he
reached the front of
our car. He stood right in front of me and looked into my eyes. I looked back
at him with a breathless innocence. Right there, he gave me the big, beautiful
smile of recognition I had been longing for, and he waved at me. From two feet
away, he waved! I smiled shyly and waved back.
Though the interaction only lasted a few moments, there was
a sense that we
had met one another on a deeper level. With this simple gesture, I felt that
we silently accepted the respective roles of teacher and student. It was like
a handshake. He agreed to guide me, and I agreed to learn. I would continue my
life-journey on this path.
My teacher turned to go into the front doors, leaving me
with a big, goofy
smile on my face. As we began the drive home, my eyes gently closed. It felt
as though I was dragged into a deep pool of consciousness. It was like taking
a bath in golden light, but this light was more than just visual. It was like
waves of golden bliss, folding me under as they caressed and hugged me. The
smile remained on my face throughout the twelve-hour drive. Every now and
then, I would come up for air, becoming aware of the car and the external
world for a few moments through a thick molasses of peace. Then I’d be pulled
under again into this pool of shimmering sweetness.
Thanks to Sharon Janis for her generosity in sharing this with us...
- For more information
- or to order her book,
- check out her website at
http://www.kumuda.com/
© 1998 Sharon Janis
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