Amazing Grace

POETRY

HOMEPAGE

Pe. One day I went to Haridwar and bumped into Ramda, just the day before he was due to go to Delhi and fly back to his home country Brazil. He said, "Oh! Peter how nice to meet you here. I'm just on my way to go and see my Guruji, would you like to come?" I said, "Yes! Yes! I have some time and would like to come." So we went through some back alleys of Haridwar to the house where the Guru stayed.

P: Up to that point you had had other Gurus?

Pe. Yes, I had attended satsang and darshan with saints in Rishikesh, but nothing really caught me. I never felt, “This is my Guru.” I wasn't really looking for a Guru. I did believe that it would happen sooner or later if it was to happen. I wanted something, but I didn't know exactly what it was that I wanted. People were talking about freedom, enlightenment, and self-realisation; but I didn't fully understand what they were saying. I definitely wanted something. I saw so many saints and teachers in Rishikesh. Nothing really worked. Nothing happened.

Then after a while this meeting with Ramda and he taking me to the man in Haridwar. We came to the room and there was this beautiful man sitting on a bed, half-naked. He wasn't wearing a shirt. He had all these tattoos on his arms and he was amazingly strong. I almost felt some fear; his presence was so powerful, incredibly powerful. He invited me in. He said, "Come in and sit."

I was invited to sit in front of him and he asked me where I was from. I said, "I am from Australia." Immediately he gave me a smile and he said, "Do you know the kangaroos, have you touched a kangaroo?" and he started talking about nature and animals. At one point I told him that I was a diver also; I used to go diving. He was so interested in this that he lit up. He was so happy to talk about nature. We talked for a very long time about this and I got completely lost. I felt so beautiful with this man. Everything that I would have thought of before went away. I was just being with this beautiful man and feeling so good. I didn't know what was happening. He gave me chai and lots of biscuits. Lots of prasad.

After some time he said, "Okay Peter. Now, you go back to Rishikesh, and I am going to walk with my disciples by the Ganga." I thought, "I would really like to go walking with this beautiful man, along with his disciples by the Ganga." But I knew I was not to ask him, as he gave me a clear order to go back to Rishikesh. He sent me off. I said to myself,"Okay, I will go", but I felt really sorry that I had to go.
I went back to Rishikesh, and this man never left my mind again. After a few days I thought, "I want to go back to this man, maybe he would let me in again." I went to Haridwar but I couldn't find him.

I went back to Rishikesh, and this man never left my mind again. After a few days I thought, "I want to go back to this man, maybe he would let me in again." I went to Haridwar but I couldn't find him. I couldn't find the side streets where he was, because I hadn't paid attention while going there and certainly not while leaving that house. I had been in an altered state. I had failed to ask his name. I didn't know who he was. So I had to go back to Rishikesh, and then I started asking people if they knew this beautiful man. I described him, but nobody seemed to know.

It came time for me to leave India. I went back overseas and traveled around the world to South America. I went to live in San Francisco for some time. I often started thinking about this man. I wanted to go and serve him, completely surrender to him. I just wanted to be with him, he was so beautiful. But I couldn't find him. Nothing brought me back to him. Two or three times I went back to Rishikesh, still asking for him. People said, "Come and see our Guru." I said, "No, no. This is my man. I think I have found my Guru." I searched. I saw all kinds of Gurujis, in South India also, and people were talking about a man in Lucknow, Poonjaji. I said, "No, no. I want to find this beautiful man."

One day, in January 1994, I went to visit a girlfriend in West Bengal. I was in love with this girl whom I had met in Rishikesh. She had left, as she had a prior arrangement to work in West Bengal. She sent me a letter to come and join her, which I thought would be a good thing to do. Arriving there, she had decided that it was off. I was really distraught, really unhappy.

So in twenty-four hours I left. I just wanted to go back to Rishikesh. I couldn't really think. I was so hurt and disappointed. I went to the train station on the main line from Howrah to Delhi.

I went to the station master who asked, "Where would you like to be going, Sir?" I said, "I just want the next train going west." He said, "Surely you must know where you want to be going." I replied, "No, no, just put me on the next train. I want to go. I just want to get out of here." He said, "Shortly there will be a train, I can't give you a reservation." I replied, "I don't care, just put me on the train. Give me a ticket please. That train I will take." He replied, "Don't you want to know where it is going?". I said, "Okay. You tell me." He said, "It’s going to Lucknow." So, I said, "Okay. I will take it. I will go to Lucknow." I thought, "Okay, Lucknow sounds right. I will go and see this man who people are talking about, who is now so popular."

I arrived in Lucknow. The train was late. Long before somebody had given me an address. I had to go to Indira Nagar and to Satsang House, which I found without any difficulty. I arrived and went inside and it was all very beautiful. I immediately liked it very much. Some people were playing beautiful Japanese flute and another Japanese string instrument. Everything was very peaceful. I sat there and didn't expect anything. I was just happy to be there. I felt relieved. It was nice to be with these beautiful people. Suddenly everybody got up. The music stopped. Everyone turned around and started bringing their hands together in Namaste.

I looked and I couldn't believe it. In comes this man I was missing so much. It was the man who sat on the bed in Haridwar. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't think. Everything changed. Suddenly there was this incredible sensation within my body. Every cell, every atom in my body went out. Something changed. It’s very hard to describe this feeling, and it was so powerful.

This man, Papaji, walked towards me and I was quite beside myself. I can't describe this state. I look at him. I look in his eyes and he looks at some people; then he brings his eyes to me and looks deeply in my eyes. I was completely gone. It was complete surrender without me doing one thing. There was no thought, no decision of surrender. It was completely automatic. People asked him questions, and when he answered them it was as if he was talking directly to me. Everything was for me. I couldn't think of asking him a question. I didn't do anything. I didn't even think of doing anything. Things just happened.

WRITINGS

Tales of Awakening

Short Stories

POETRY

Somewhere

Nowhere

HOMEPAGE

Excerpt from Eoin's Tale

E. I then went back to Australia, got back into my work and practice. I returned to India last year, which was the end of '91, and came to Lucknow. I just came out of curiosity, felt the pull to come, nothing specific. And when I came I was very fortunate to meet Poonjaji and actually spend personal time with him, working on his body, trying to help some physical symptoms that he has. In our dialogues I was impressed with his humanness and his clear, clear perception of the Truth.

I wrote a note – "I've had a little bit of enlightenment, but it’s not enough." Poonjaji read it out, and he knew me and he said, "This is from Eoin."

Normally he would call people up to the front. He just looked at me. I was sitting a bit of a way back, and he said, ”A little bit is enough.” That's all he said. Then he went on to the next person. What he said had a profound effect on me. I was in a very strong and quiet space with Poonja and it was as if the vibration from Poonja was entering my body.

After that I felt very touched and moved and very privileged to be here, but I didn't feel the pull to stay. I went to Bodhgaya to do the retreat with Christopher. About three days into the retreat I was sitting in meditation and this huge force came over me.

P: Just after you had been with Poonjaji?

E. It was four or five days after leaving Poonja that I had this experience. Having had many meditative experiences, I can differentiate some difference in this experience. It was as if the Self came to visit. Some deep change was happening. My thinking mind could still think, but what was happening was beyond my thinking mind, way beyond. It was as if my body was in me. This went on for forty-five minutes and then at the end of it, a voice from within, which I had heard a few times in my life, said, ”This will happen three times and then you will be enlightened.”
That's literally what it said. I thought, "This is fantasy, how can this happen?"

Part of me was thinking, "Oh, quick, I want the other two times to happen." And part of me was saying, "This is fantasy, this can't be true." Yet, inside myself I knew it to be true.

I knew before I even came to India that this time would be the time. It's like I prepared my whole life for this time. Papaji is fundamentally a big catalyst for this.

During a break in meditation I told my wife of what was happening.

P: Is this a wife you had for some time? You didn't mention her before.

E. Oh, I got married a year and a half ago. Kerstin, my wife, she's been very important in my life.

P: A wife is quite interesting.

E. Yes, she is. I told my wife who was also on the retreat what had happened, and that I really needed to sit the extra ten days just to see.

A couple of days into the next retreat, sure enough it happened again, very strongly, this time even stronger. Very definite. I was wondering, "Wow, what's going on here?"

I was coming out of the bathroom and I saw the teachers talking, having lunch, and I was a little annoyed that they were making so much noise on a silent retreat, and then I said, “Ah, it doesn't matter.” When I said that, again, like the experience a long time ago, reality fell apart. It was like a big hole in reality. I stood in awe of it.

P: How long did that hole last?

E. A momentary thing, I don't know, one or two moments, but very strong, it touched my being to the deepest I'd been touched, and I have been touched a lot.

Then in a small group, everybody was laughing about the nature of reality and making a big joke about how it's all empty. I said, ”I don't think it's so empty. I don't understand what's going on. I don't see how you can laugh at it.”
I was really choking up, and I told Christopher of the experience that had just happened. I hadn't told him of the others.

We dialogued a little bit. He told me I was on the edge of something. He said, “You have very little lunch.” This was just before lunch. I had never heard him give people specific instructions before. I was taken aback. I got my meal and put some food in my mouth, just choked up, spat it out, and started crying, and things started happening with my body.

I put my meal down and went to lock myself in a room. My whole body was shaking. I was crying, and waves of energy were going through me. This experience was incredibly traumatic. It went on for at least an hour or two. I came out of the experience and said, “Something is really going on here; I don't know what's happening.” I still hadn't told Christopher of the dream-vision.

The next day we went to the Bodhi tree where the Buddha became enlightened, where there is an ancestor of the original Bodhi tree. I was sitting under the Bodhi tree just contemplating, wondering what's going on. I looked up to the Bodhi tree and said, “Lord Buddha, if this is true, send me a Bodhi leaf.”

I really felt on the edge. I felt like reality was shifting, and I wasn't sure what was happening. I looked up. I don't know why I said that. It wasn't the time of year that leaves fall, and it was highly unlikely that what I asked would happen. Anyway, a few moments later, an old Tibetan guy came into my vision and wandered over near me. I offered him a seat next to me and he sat down. I gave him a little candle, because I had a spare. He went and made an offering. He was an old guy. We never said a word through this whole time.

He came back and sat. We were looking up at the tree, looking at the leaves, and then he got up and wandered away again and talked with a guard who was wandering around with a big bamboo stick. I don't know what they said, but all of a sudden, the guard turned around and knocked a bunch of leaves off the tree. The Tibetan guy grabbed a small branch and ran off behind some stupas, obviously plucking the leaves off. I glanced back once but I really didn't want to pre-empt this situation. I just sat there observing.

Then the old guy wandered back in front of me, reached in his pocket and gave me one leaf. I was blown out, and I said, “My outer world and my inner world are both saying the same thing, what's happened?”

I went back to the course and meditated. Things were moving in my body again. I talked to Christopher and he was quite pleased, quite happy with what was happening. We talked and dialogued about it, and the third experience came shortly after that. Things were happening even while I was walking. My body was shaking, and everything was sort of settling; it was quite dynamic.

P: Your body could function; I mean, you could walk and talk?

E. Yes, but I would fall into these quiet spaces where reality just looked so amazing, things looked so beautiful. After that I actually got a slight attack of malaria and was sick, but it didn't bother me. My body was a little weak, but the vision I was seeing was so wonderful.

I particularly remember one scene in Calcutta where I came out of the hotel and sat down in a chair. I was looking at the street and it looked like perfection, just utter perfection........

WRITINGS

Tales of Awakening

Short Stories

POETRY

Somewhere

Nowhere

HOMEPAGE

Excerpt from Johan's Tale

J. In Argentina I started feeling something was missing in my life. I had a very interesting job; it gave me a lot of freedom. It gave me an opportunity to travel, to meet people. Financially there was no worry whatsoever; I was living a very comfortable life. However, there was something missing in my life which I felt I did not know how to find. Moreover, in a way I was not even looking for it. I felt that there was something missing in my life which was important. I knew it was in a spiritual direction.

Then I moved to Brussels, and I went to Holland to see my mother. I remember I asked her once what book she was reading. She told me The Mustard Seed by Rajneesh. She told me it was a very interesting book. I asked her if I could borrow it when she was finished. I'd never heard of Rajneesh before.

P: I think The Mustard Seed is when he is talking about Jesus. So your mother was a Christian?

J. A Christian background. My mother was very free-thinking. She was reading Krishnamurti, Sufi books, Hindu books, without really living it herself; keeping it on the level of reading. She was reading Rajneesh. I felt I wanted to know more about it, so I got the book when I returned to Brussels.

P: This was about ten years ago?

J. That was thirteen years ago, in 1980. In that book there was the address of the Rajneesh centre in Amsterdam, so I called them to ask whether there was also a centre in Brussels. They said that there was, and gave me the address.

I remember the first time I went to that house. I had to climb up some stairs. I had a feeling that something important would happen. When I went up, there were all these people dressed in orange robes, ready to do that kind of meditation where you shake.

P: The Kundalini.

J. Yes. I joined the group, changed my clothes and got this orange robe; and they expected me to do the Kundalini, which was a completely different concept than I had about meditation. I remember I was fascinated with all the shaking and dancing.

P: What had been your conception of meditation?

J. Well, just sitting, like you have with monks sitting quietly in beautiful serene surroundings. This was so completely different.

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J. I called my mother and said, "Guess where I am going for holidays? I'm going to Pune." She thought it was a big joke. And she was of course very fascinated what my experience would be.

I went to Pune for three weeks and did a meditation group. I wouldn't even know what to call it. I had to lie down for three days on my belly, and I was very peaceful. After the three weeks in Pune it was very difficult to go back to Brussels.

I remember the first day back. I was sitting in my office. I had to make a decision either to continue with the life I was living, which was all career bound, with so much work, all responsibilities; or go back to Pune to find out what it was really all about. I made the decision in five minutes – that it was time for me to go to Pune.

I met the big boss and told him what had happened and that I wanted to go back. He was very surprised. He thought I was being hypnotized. I was so valuable for society. He offered leave for a month, maximum two months. But I wanted to go as a free man, to decide what was going to happen. So I gave up my job. I had to wait for three months, and then as soon as possible I went to Pune.

P: If I can just stop you a moment, when you say you gave up your job, from the way you've described it, it was actually more than just a job. It had become your life. You'd worked with the company for twenty-odd years.

J. For about sixteen to seventeen years.

Well, it's funny really. My job was important; I enjoyed it to the very last minute. However, I never felt that I wanted to make so much of a career. It had all just come by itself. I would give all my energy during the daytime, but at nighttime, when I walked out of the office, it never stayed in my mind. I wasn't really going for a career, it just came by itself. I'm still always surprised why, without really having made an effort, I got all those positions. I remember that when I called the director to give him notice, I felt such a joy that I started dancing around my office. It must have been a weird sight.

P: You felt a real sense of freedom.

J. Yes, a tremendous sense of freedom, and too, I felt something that I think I had always wanted. The decision wasn't so difficult for me; that's why I made it in five minutes. I had no family to consider, and finance was not a problem. I felt, "This is something so important that I have to find it out for myself." That's why I went to Pune. After a few weeks, I became a sanyasin. Bhagwan Rajneesh gave methe name Dhyan Pakashuta, which means "ultimate purity".

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P: To visit this man Alexander Smith?

J. Yes. After the first year when I had seen Osho again in Bombay and Pune, I started visiting Alexander Smith. Alexander Smith is a disciple of, Nisargadatta, and after a very short time being with Nisargadatta, Alexander became realized. He was having satsang, but he never called it satsang, just meetings. He was talking about the essentials. Nothing else than just "That", very much in the sense of when you read the book I Am That.

P: What are the essentials for you?

J. Well, his trying to explain in all possible ways, "who you are". I must say for the first year I didn't know what he was talking about. Still I felt that I had to come to him. What surprised me so much after having been with Osho for five years, I'd never got a clue what it was all about. Mind you, it was nothing to do with Osho.

It was only after a year with Alexander that it started to dawn on me. He really pulled me by the hair, so to speak, by forcing me to ask questions. Then it finally started to dawn on me – what you really are. When I went for the second time to Osho, in Pune, and he was talking about setting up a Multiversity in Koregoan Park, I wondered, "Why don't you stick to your subject?" I left a bit disappointed.

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.P: What did you feel in the first few Satsangs, three weeks ago?

J. I was just happy to be there. The more I stayed, the more I felt the union of the Sat Sangha. I wanted to come up to him. Of course that comes into your mind the closer you are to the time of leaving. However, I had no questions to ask.

Then I came up with this question based on what I was reading in a book at that time. The question was concerning the possibility of realizing the Self in this split second. I was trying all the time to get close to "It". Since this question was coming up all the time, I felt that it was the thing that made it difficult to realize "It". I had doubt, in fact.

I raised this question with Papa, and amazingly, he so directly and yet gradually, made me see that this question is but a doubt. Just this thought came in the mind, this "I", and he made me look where it was, and suddenly I was nowhere. He just said, "That's it." If he wouldn't have said it, I would have missed it, because it is so simple and so close. Amazing. I am still dazed. Only a Master can do that. (Long charged silence)

P: Is there any way you can find words to describe this experience?

J. I feel peacefulness. You know that's It. It's very precious. I have to be careful with it. Since that event many people have come up to me and want to know about this. I’d rather not talk too much about it. You cannot lose it, but you can lose touch with it. That was the gift of Papaji.

Suresha

WRITINGS

Amazing Grace