After-Session Discussions with Master (Visions and Experiences)
by Chariji, December 20, 2006, Bangaore, India.
I would like to mention a vision I had in Babuji’s time. We have this sort of a cake built in layers, you know, like a stratigraphic view of the world, different layers of whatever you call it—strata, and on one side we have things which we are pulling down from above, and that is infinite. So as we pull down, it comes down to form the latest layer of our understanding, perhaps of knowledge, you know. But Babuji said, “There is no such thing as knowledge—knowledge is merely understanding of my relationship with Him,” through rather jaundiced eyes, and the instrument has to be cleaned before I can perceive properly. And he said, “There is an interaction between that and this, because that will reveal itself only when this is pure,” not that it is a volitional or willed effort to make itself understood, but it is a limitation in me. So as we draw down more, we have to become more and more pure.
Now I don’t know about ANF [Atrial Natriuretic Factor: a hormone secreted by the heart] and all these things that you have mentioned here. But when the heart is purified I think all these secretions and what have you, they only reflect higher and higher levels of purification. Like when you dig a well, you have a lot of rubbish coming up—buried things, rocks, sand, and finally water. So, here, as we clean I don’t know what we will end up with, which will be a different form of ANF perhaps in future—which will be the causative factor to science, not to us spiritual people, to science—“And see, this is what has made it happen.” Science wants something to explain things by; spirituality doesn’t need. Spirituality says, “It is,” what in Sanskrit we call ‘pratyaksha’—‘immediate presence of that which we see’. I don’t need to know whether it exists or not when I see it, otherwise I would be a patient in one of Ivor’s clinics—delusional: “Do I really see God, Ivor?” “Oh well, it depends you know, on what you think you see.” So this interaction goes on.
Well, to come back to the subject of this layer business, we draw down more and more, we create further layers, subtler and subtler, until this and this merge. Now we have to neither bring down nor throw up. But those below keep going into the substratum, as it were, forming a greater and greater buried resource from which we draw from the past: our subconscious—this is what Babuji explained my vision. Of course, He didn’t use these psychological terms. He said, “There is something in you which is buried.” Like when you draw water from a well, whether that water is good for you or not depends on the water and on you. So what we get out of our subconscious and (what did that fellow Jung have to say about it? What did he say?) the ‘collective unconscious’, things like that you see. The ‘collective unconscious’ is nothing but the fundamental substratum of all humanity, on which different sections have got more and more layers from above. So you have layered cakes of different varieties—including ice cream, which I was astonished to see when I first went to Denmark, a cake with ice cream in it, wonderful!
So we create a base from which we come up, and a future which we draw down from above—it has to be from above. Like somebody explained yesterday about water forming the circles and the coating over the universe, and ecology. Who was talking about ecology yesterday?—Arvind Kapatkar. So if that hardens it becomes ice, and it hardens in a sense to every particular human being when he has this resistance to accepting something which he is not yet able to understand. For him evolution stops, he has to come again. And in my opinion rebirth is nothing but our desire to come back to understand what we could not understand already. It’s like remaining in the same class, because you can’t move to an upper class until you have passed the requirements of this class, you see. Rebirth is not something which a malevolent God thrusts upon us, “Go back!”
If I might reveal a recent experience I had, I didn’t want to do it, but... You know I was ill last time I went from CREST here in August. I was hospitalized in Trichy. And I was suddenly sick in the morning and I had to be taken by ambulance and, it was a very modern ambulance, I am very proud of it! No, I was really proud, it had all the modern gimmicks, gadgets, what have you—blood pressure of course, pulse of course, everything you could imagine. And that nurse was chattering away you know, “The case is on its way, make sure the cardiologist is available immediately.” And there was Krishna at the foot of the stretcher in the ambulance. As we neared the city, ‘neh-neh, neh-neh’ [siren], what I had heard in America and in Europe, for the first time in Trichy, a place like Trichy in South India, you know. But the important thing is I find myself up there, I don’t see Babuji, and I am... I don’t even remember requesting admission. But something says, “Not yet. I am sorry you have to go back.” And I am back on the stretcher. I consider this a very profound experience because I could have gone into the nether region, you know where you find the Greeks and the other fellows when they have to cross the river Styx and lose your memory and things like that. I came back intact with the memory of that, for the first time. Thank you.
Abhyasi: [Inaudible]
Master: Yes, unless one last question if anybody wants.
Abhyasi: There are few books in the library also on regression analysis.
Master: Oh, we are building up a library. Teilhard de Chardin used to be... You know I read him when I was twenty-five, long, long ago. My interest in him arose because I was a student of geology in college, and he was a paleontologist, and he was a Christian, he was also perhaps a padre of the church, and he lived most of his life in China. And because his paleontological research led him to findings and conclusions other than what church dogma prescribed, he was banned from publishing his works until after his death.
Abhyasi: If I could just add, you feel the intense feeling he wants to communicate, and yet he had the humility to wait which was wonderful.
Master: So thank you, Ivor, for a wonderful session. Thank you for responding to our invitation. I mean... Yes?
Abhyasi: I would like to ask Ivor Browne, that there are a few here who can swear by and who have witnessed that Master was there in the bed, but then he was not there. You understand?
Master: Well, this is in a different field, you know.
Abhyasi: I think he was describing a near-death experience.
Master: No, no, this is not a near-death, it is a physical experience. You know in one case, I was in Courmettes, I had a room upstairs—the only room, it had a balcony on two sides, and a staircase going down. I could view the whole countryside from three angles, behind me there was nothing except the mountains. You remember Courmettes? And we were there for about three months. Every weekend I used to go down and give talks here and there. I used to go to bed at about half past ten. Jacky used to be sleeping in my room, looking after me, which he has been doing for almost two and a half decades I think—very faithfully, very lovingly and some times very impersonally just to impress me that I am not his real boss, but his patient as it were, you know. But I owe a great deal to Jacky.
But one night he had an experience that I was not on my bed, because he used to sleep just by the side on the floor. And his first thought was that I was probably gallivanting around with some of the French beauties, you see, who were there. But he knows, or he thought he knew, that those propensities had been removed by Babuji Maharaj much earlier. So he went and checked the door, whether it was bolted inside—it was. Then he thought maybe I am in the bathroom; so he went to the bathroom and I was not there. Now he was in a quandary, ‘where could Mr. Chari be?’ So not knowing what to do, he came and sat near the bed, put his hand on the bed like this, on his elbow, and relaxed. And you know when he was tired he put his hand out and there was Mr. Chari! So even today he does not know that whether I was really missing or I was really back, or somewhere in between the two. Ever since then I have been afraid, that when I go to the bathroom at night and come back, I will find somebody else on my bed, and that would be the real Chari, and I would have to wonder ‘who is this?’
The second experience was in Satkhol, in my Himalayan ashram. I have a bed, there is only one door out, there is a second door onto the small balcony, there is a window facing not looking on to the Himalayas, and a southern door next to the balcony door leads into the bathroom. Two people were sleeping in my room that night, one Dr. Dhareshwar, you would know Dhareshwar, and another Ganesh, you probably know Ganesh also. They found the door slightly ajar—the bathroom door—and it was light inside. So they both got up one on each side of the door, waiting for me to come out. They waited, they say, about fifteen, twenty minutes. I didn’t come out. Then timidly they opened the door to see whether I was inside. I was not inside, and I was not on my bed—where was Mr. Chari again?
You know, I remember an old Arthur Clarke’s “2001”, where he goes off from the moon to that monolith and he abandons everything—Dr. Bowman, you know, and weeeee he goes through that, and at one place he suddenly stops. And there is a bedroom scene, and somebody in night suit and this, what is it you call it?—jacket, coat, at the table. And as Bowman looks at him, he looks back, and he sees Dr. Bowman there. I used to be terrified when I saw this initially. Now I am terrified of myself, and I am wondering what spirituality is doing with me, to me, whether it is for me or not. Don’t be afraid—wherever you see me, it will be me.
Abhyasi: I have never told this to anybody, not even to my wife. Two times I have experienced Master here, two times, both times in the night. I wake up, suddenly I am all awareness, come out, stand there. Once I have seen him walking around the thing, another time I saw him sitting and giving a sitting to the whole audience in the dhyana mandap. But I am brought up in a faith which accepts all these things.
Master: We are in Sahaj Marg.
Abhyasi: Somehow, I think transcendence is possible; this kind of coming out and being seen around is all possible. I have that deep intense faith in that, so I didn’t make a big story of it, I didn’t even tell the Master but...
Master: Thank heavens! I would probably stop coming here.
Abhyasi: Maybe I do not know in what state of mind but I experienced it; maybe I am a little psychotic or science oriented, whatever he said.
Abhyasi: It’s very important to be a little psychotic.
Abhyasi: Why?
Abhyasi: Because I think the sane people like Bush and Thatcher are the ones we really have to be afraid of. There is a lovely poem by Emily Dickinson, where she said,
Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness,
T’is the majority
In this, as all prevails.
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur,—you’re straightaway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.
Master: Bravo!
Abhyasi: Babuji appeared like that, in many places like this.
Master: Oh, yes! Now I wouldn’t like to say anything. The first time, you know, it is well known that after Lalaji Maharaj passed away, Babuji was severely ill for about six to eight months, almost dying. And his constant prayer was that Lalaji Maharaj should appear physically. And after eight months, when he was a little better, Lalaji did appear. And, as Babuji described Him, “There he was in his golden form you know, more beautiful than I have ever seen him in life,” etcetera, etcetera.
And Lalaji said, “Ram Chandra, are you satisfied that I am still here?” He said, “Master, yes.” He [Lalaji] said, “Are you sure that I am here, you can touch me if you like.” And Babuji touched him and he felt him. Then he said, “I have come because you were so ill, and I did not want you to depart this world because you have a lot of work to do, therefore I have shown you myself in the physical form. Never call me again.”
I have also seen Babuji physically, this was soon after his mahasamadhi, I think three months later. I was very depressed and beginning to doubt myself. I am ashamed to say that the first time I had to give a sitting, I doubted whether there would be any transmission, because Babuji is there no more you know, the source is missing, and I had to slap myself hard, because it was a superb sitting.
Three months later I was giving a sitting to somebody, intensely thinking of Babuji, and suddenly I felt someone come and sit next to me. I turned around, and there was Babuji Maharaj, next to me, and like a stupid fool you know, I just bowed to him and went on with the sitting. And later on I felt what an idiot I had been, I could have asked him questions, I could have said... I mean so many things could have happened. But like this is where a dutiful disciple is often a stupid ass. I could have been disrespectful and said, “What are you doing here, my young Master?” or something like that.
I could have asked him a question, but this only shows that the futility of asking questions when the Presence is there. And all questions arise in your mind when that Presence is not felt. It’s not absent—we don’t feel it. And, as Ivor said, there are messages in this room, not in the thousands, but in the millions, from all eras past and present, eons of time in the future. If we knew what is going on here, some of us could very well be mad. They are there because there are presences here, from the primordial past, to the infinitely divine future of the future.
Abhyasis: Thank you, Master.
Master: Thank you, sir. Thank you, everybody. Most of all, thank you, Ivor.