How an Accomplished yogi faces old age sickness and death Part 2

The Meditation Revolution

His visit seemed to correspond with a burgeoning area of research into the field of “consciousness”.     Baba was recognized by many influential people in areas of science, psychology and  physics as a realized master yogi of an exceptional  and rare level.   Each day there were lines of people coming to meet him for private meetings.   Actually not private, there would be a group of people scheduled for each morning or afternoon  session, and they would discuss their concerns or interests in  the company of another 10-l5 people.  [1]   These groups were always very lively as they included well known personalities such as Alan Ginsberg, Carlos Castaneda, Werner Erhardt,  politicians, film personalities, journalists, astronauts,  physicists.   Each session was filled with dynamic  interactions where Baba was influential in his efforts to get the individuals to turn within for their own experience of higher reality.  Whatever people came to him with, professional curiosity, or  personal dissatisfaction in their lives, it was clear that Baba had one agenda: to facilitate a direct awakening  of  the higher consciousness within each individual.

The scientists came with their kirilian cameras, and various high tech equipment in an effort to somehow measure or gauge Baba’s heightened level of spiritual energy.  He would always have a good joke with them saying, “Ultimately  these instruments are created by the human mind, and beyond that mind is the supreme universal consciousness.  You should try to discover that directly.” 

Initially when Baba undertook this Second World Tour, he was simply responding to the requests and invitations that came to him.  He told reporters who enquired that he planned to be there about a year and then return to India.    But he began to see the level of interest in spiritual awakening, alongside a very pervasive sense of  dissatisfaction that people expressed about their lives. To his surprise,  it seemed  in the America that he was observing ,  no matter how wealthy, how successful or  how famous the people  were, somehow genuine happiness was eluding them.  As he listened to the tales of unhappiness, or lack of self worth, and general sense of despair expressed by  the people who came to meet him,  he began to emphasize the practice of meditation as a source of extraordinary limitless happiness and fulfillment in life. He described meditation  as being  universal  like sleep – one did not need to hold any particular religious belief, simply to discover their own innate consciousness or the Self as it was translated.   As he responded to the needs of the people, his Meditation Revolution began to take shape. 

After spending time in Oakland and Los Angeles, we set off on a tour across the USA via Route 66.  It was Baba’s Meditation Revolution on the road. We had several cars, a school bus which carried all the recording equipment, cooking pots and a pickup towing Baba’s Kitchen in a small trailer. Baba was extremely particular about his own diet and it was essential that wherever he went he could control his food to protect his own health. 

Baba would often fly from one place to the next destination, and our road crew would drive all night to arrive at the next house or retreat spot, unload, unpack, prepare the hall setup, Baba’s quarters, kitchen, and then be bright and with faces shining with joy to greet Baba as he arrived. From that time onwards our role was to assist him with his work, to offer service so that others could experience their own inner awakening.    

Baba did several of the EST Present seminars which were usually packed with up to a thousand students.  As Baba and his translator and organizers began to interact more with Werner’s students they came up with the idea to hold meditation Intensives in which Baba could teach and transmit meditation via shaktipat  to people on a large scale. 

  These began to be scheduled across the country, with the first Intensive held in Aspen. The program included sessions of chanting Om Namah Shivaya, the initiation mantra that Baba gave to people on a printed card, talks by Baba about various aspects of yogic lifestyle and an experience talk by someone who had had a profound inner awakening.    During the meditation sessions  Baba began to go around the room with a wand of peacock feathers and hit people on the head, tweak them above the nose, or gently kick them at the base of the spine. Sometimes the room would erupt with sound of laughter, weeping or rapid breathing.  Clearly the awakening of the inner energy was occurring in many of the participants.  Later during sharing sessions people would describe extraordinary experiences of energy moving through their bodies, spontaneous movements, feelings of ecstasy or supernatural joy. 

This introduction of shaktipat on a mass scale was a very radical departure from the way it was classically given and the way in which Baba himself had always given it.  Some years later he described this to some center leaders.

“I could not give shaktipat to so many people without the grace of my Guru. I never gave shaktipat like this in India.  The people from India are wondering how I am doing this, and some of them are even coming to receive it in these intensives.  Previously I would ask people to do austerities in the ashram for at least one year and ask them to purify themselves for a long time, before I could give the touch of shaktipat to them.  That is the way it should be done.  Otherwise all of their negative karmas come into me. At the time of shaktipat the sins of the seeker are burnt and at the same time all those negative effects come to me.  I have to meditate and through the process of meditation I am able to burn up those negative karmas.”

Working closely with Baba during these events, we could see him come out of the meditation hall.  Sometimes he would say, “My whole body pains from giving   shaktipat to so many people.  Still I will feel the effects for maybe one day, with some fever, and just rest and do my japa and meditation and it will go away. “  This was  said with his characteristic joy and good humour.  Clearly this work of bringing about the awakening of so many people was a source of great joy  for him, despite whatever ill effects there were on his body.

These events went on as we travelled across the southern US, through New Mexico, Colorado, Georgia, and finally ended up in New York City. An old school was rented on the upper West Side  as temporary accommodation for our  mobile Ashram.  There we stayed for some time with daily programs of Guru Gita, chanting, seva, and the never ending stream of visitors.  Somehow the energy in  Manhattan and the people seemed to be particularly heavy as we held several Intensives on the premises.  I recall that at the time Baba was affected severely after the Intensives and undertook a fast for some days to restore his health and vitality, along with his unflagging daily meditation and practice routine.   

An old hotel was purchased in Oakland that was to be renovated as the first American ashram.  It was in a rough part of town, and had been a derelict hotel filled with druggies and prostitutes.    A dedicated crew of workers  worked for months to refurbish it into a sparkling clean ashram premises fit for Baba’s arrival.  I had gone there early after the purchase to assist with preparations but I was not able to stay there more than one night. I had dreadful nightmares of violence and horrific pains in my body throughout the night as I was affected by the vibrations of the place.  But after the renovation work, painting, and a lot of chanting the new Oakland Ashram  had a sparkling, clean atmosphere and was suitable as an ashram. The whole process reminded me of what happens to us during the process of spiritual practice, we come with lots of scars and bruises from our mishaps in life, or wrong choices and actions, and the Guru goes to work with his crew of skillful practices: chanting, meditation, pure food , preservation of the vital energies, and one comes out sparkling clean and able to live a good, wholesome, useful life.

During the time in Oakland Baba continued meeting many distinguished visitors and maintained friendships and dialogues  with interesting characters.  One such was a psychologist  who was a regular visitor and had many extraordinary experiences in his time meditating with Baba.

  In one conversation with him Baba told him, “Only after coming to America I started touching people.  Before that , my Guru Nityananda Baba was very severe.   Shaktipat was given only in a certain way.   The person receiving had to have a bath, be pure,  done much tapasya and austerities.  Then only was shaktipat given.  And before my Baba, Gurus were very strict about whom they would accept food from..  But my Baba used to tell us, ‘Now you should not discriminate between cast and creed and if anyone prepares food with purity and a good heart, then you can eat it.’”

“Shaktipat Diksha was also given in a certain way, behind closed doors in solitude, and the Guru would touch the disciple in certain places while reciting mantras.  Often the Guru would touch the base of the spine at the area of the sexual organs as a way of awaking the Kundalini energy.” 

“Though I am quite an old man because of the retention of the sexual fluid inside the body I feel tremendous youth inside.  In fact I feel like a child inside.  I get up at 3 am, and tonight because there is a lecture I won’t be returning until after midnight. And it is because of this sexual fluid that you have any vigour, energy, radiance. So one should conserve that.  Just as you like to lay by your savings I the bank, likewise you should save your sexual fluid.” 

Psychologist : isn’t it true that the body rejects sexual fluid every so often, to clean itself.

Baba: No the body won’t eject it.  A yogis body will digest it, assimilate it.  The body ejects it through a dream when we have violated dietary or lifestyle rules. If you overeat the body will generate more sexual fluid than it needs and the body will eject the fluids.  But a meditator has to go further.  The sexual fluid not only needs to be conserved, but it should be moved upwards through meditation, whereas in ordinary life it moves downwards.  Through meditation it flows upwards. You can feel it move upwards and it goes into the cerebral center.  From there it purifies the nerves, and this process become more and more subtle. This is the source of great joy for a meditator.  I’m not saying you should not have children.  All I am saying is that you should value the sexual fluid and you shouldn’t waste it.  You should be aware of its great value for health and spiritual development.”

Psychologist:  Can you say something about the fear of death that all of us have at some time or another or perhaps as we grow older it becomes more intense.

Baba:  As you move closer and closer to your inner Self through meditation, the fear of death loses its hold over you progressively.  Why should you fear death when death is inevitable.  If something is inevitable there is no point in fearing it. Anyone who is a pure and noble soul will be able to die peacefully;  he doesn’t feel the slightest pain or hardship at the time of death.  It is the fear of death which results in agony at the time of death; if you meditate that fear will dissipate.

Psychologist: could you say something about your belief in after life or reincarnation?

Baba:  Yes, birth is followed by death and death is followed by rebirth.  One who is born is bound to die, and one who dies is bound to be reborn and this cycle goes on until one can become liberated from it through the grace of God.

  A good meditator is able to see the world of the departed and the world where he will go after his death

A reporter also  questioned Baba on his feelings about death.  Q: Do you feel as much joy in contemplating your passage from this life as you feel in your life?

Baba:  Once you experience the inner bliss of meditation it fills you completely. Just as when you cry and lament you feel great agony and pain inside;  when there is an upsurge of bliss within you feel intoxicated on it and still this bliss is not just a brief episode, it stays with you continually and it also lasts as you leave your body.  Contemplation of leaving this body is as joyful as anything else and in fact the essence of yoga is not physical exercises the essence of yoga is conscious death.  Real yoga is to experience your own death directly through meditation while you are still alive.  Through this genuine yoga your sense of individuality dies and the self, the  innate consciousness survives. 

In meditation you can look at your own death with a serene mind.   When a saint dies, he dies laughing.  There is a photo of a great saint who was like a Guru to me.  (Zipruanna)  he sent me to my guru.  He wandered around naked everywhere, but he was a perfect celibate.   We call such a being urdvareta, one whose sexual fluid moves upward, not downward.  He had unusual powers, If any time I would set out to visit him  he would tell people around him that this boy is coming to see me.  His behavior was quite strange, in this country if you were to see him you might lock him up in a mental hospital. I will describe to you how he died.  There was a woman in his village who was a teacher.  He would occasionally go to her place to have coffee. One morning he landed at her place around l0 am and said, “I must have a bath.”  This surprised the teacher and her family very much, but they felt delight that they were blessed with this opportunity to give this holy man a bath.  Such an opportunity is cherished in our country.  He had a bath, then he asked the woman to cook some noodles for him, she did so and offered it to him.  He ate it, and then he said, “Zipru is leaving, you can cry to your hearts’ content.”  He made a certain sound and then he passed away.

What is the use of practicing yoga if it doesn’t give you power over your own death?  Before you see the highest truth in meditation, you must see your own death. That can be a terrifying experience.  But after you have survived that experience though the inner transformation of meditation, death loses its sting.  Then it is nothing more than deep sleep.  In the Yoga Vashishta, which is a great philosophical work, death is described as a profound sleep.

Psychologist:   I  have read in some philosophies that there is a world where people go after death, a kind of mental world and they are in the same state in this world, but without a body.  They exist in the mind and have to overcome the craving and desires that they had in the body.

Baba:  What happens is that you leave the body in the same casual body in    which you enjoy profound sleep when you are alive, and after your death you pass into a definite world which is the world of the dead or the ancestors. Just as a seed contains the whole tree in a potential form, when the soul leaves a physical body it carries all its desires and attachments in the seed form and they don’t disappear.  When one is reborn the impressions of those desires, karmas and attachments are carried forth into the next life.

Q:  Does the mind review the life it has had?

Baba:  For quite a while after death one remains in a state of unconsciousness and then the spirit wakes up and passes into the world of ancestors or the dead and then once it surveys its past life and that memory seems to fade away and just a part of it remains and then it is in that world where it is decided where the consciousness is going to be born next.  There is a central nerve in this body and it is there that the Kundalini shakti resides and there you also have the impressions of your past lives.  When you are reborn those impressions are still there in a subtle form  and once your inner shakti is awakened during meditation, it is possible to see your past seven lives very clearly.  I have seen that. 

There is a certain fort in a part of Maharashtra state that I used to visit in my younger days and whenever I went there I felt a strange fascination for it.  I would start crying and that fort would draw me over again and again and I used to wonder why I had such a strong attachment for it, and it was after I saw my past life in meditation that I saw that once in my past life I was a king and lived in that fort.  However after full knowledge awakens within;, then you don’t feel attachment for any of your past lives.  Now I don’t feel any attachment for that fort.  The science of Kundalini is a great science, it is a great yoga.  Most people don’t understand it.” 

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[1] Many of these conversations were transcribed and published in the book “In the Company of a Siddha”.

Edited by Swami Dayananda (Karen Schaefer)  Published by SYDA 1980.