Mystical Experiencer: Man in his mid-sixties
Submission date: September 15, 2023
Current location: Spain
Age at time of experience: 24
Many years ago, after some years of being deeply involved in Siddha Yoga, a traditional Indian spiritual system that included, meditation, chanting, “self-less service” and a study of classic spiritual texts, I saved up enough money and spent almost 3 months in an ashram near Mumbai in India. When I arrived, there was about 30 people staying there, but after a few weeks the guru returned and that number increased to 350.
I was a serious Siddha yoga practitioner and had previously experienced a number of kundalini experiences (blisses, states of expansion, visions) and surrendered joyfully to the non-stop 24/7 demand to practice chanting, meditation, work, and study. I was rising at 4.30 in the morning and meditating a number of times a day, chanting for five hours a day, working as demanded and studying Indian spiritual literature.
My meditation practiced spontaneously changed from internally repeating a mantra, to noticing my breathing, to simply allowing all movements in awareness and external phenomena to be exactly as they were.
After a few months, one beautiful evening while looking at the pink-tinged skies, in an instant it was obvious that there was only the evening. I had completely lost a sense of duality; no myself and a separate environment. Only one event.
There was a sense of great relief, great expansion and a subtle bliss to this “experience of non-separation” between myself and the environment.
After a few days, I still couldn’t find a “myself” or conventional mind. I also knew I had to shortly return to the UK and function in the world.
This sense of non-separate headlessness continued. I would wake with “no head” and spend the day “headless”.
A state of subtle unease arose, how could I function in a Western environment in such an unusual state? I felt powerfully drawn to go to the samadhi (burial) shrine of the guru’s guru in the nearby tiny village.
I went there one afternoon. There was no-one in the temple and trusting completely, I threw my body in full prostration on the floor and surrendered.
In an instant, the full, deep and overwhelming force of eternal divine love-bliss swept me away completely.
It was obvious that this love-bliss is the real nature of every moment of existence. The ever-present undercurrent of all experience.
No time. No space. No form. It is eternal, because all sense of time had disappeared and formless because no sense of a boundary occurs..
When I left the temple, a young Indian boy ran up to me and gave me a small photo of this guru with his hands raised in front of his face. I went to give the boy a few coins, but he said, “No! Bhagavan wants you to have this”. It felt like external confirmation that what had just occurred was not simply an just an internal experience.