This is my...

Personal Experience of Enlightenment

copyright © 2004 by Enlightenment-Online.com

How I discovered Bhagavan--
(Sri Kalki--the Avatar of Enlightenment):

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I'd never heard of the avatar Kalki Bhagavan until one evening--the night my mother died--a small "miracle" happened.....

I'd known for several years I needed to go back to India, but had no idea where, when, or whom I would see.  Then one day in November of 2003, as I was walking across my living room, having just finished watering my house plants, I received a message inside my head.  I don't know if you've ever had this happen to you, but it's almost like a voice.  It wasn't an actual voice, but the message was so loud and clear it may as well have been.

It said, "You need to go to India."

Well, that was the last thing I wanted to hear.  I'd been to India before and it's a really long trip, considering it's literally half way around the world from the United States.  Besides, my mother had been seriously ill for a long time, and I just didn't feel like it was a good time to leave.  Plus, I had no idea where I was supposed to go or whom I was to see.

All this time I'd intuitively known I needed to go to the very southeastern part of India in the Bangalore/Madras area, but all I knew that was located in that area was Sri Aurobindo's complex in Pondicherry.  And that wasn't "it."  That wasn't where I needed to go.

So, message from the "voice in the head" notwithstanding, I declared to the Universe that I had no intention of leaving the comforts of my home and traveling all the way to India without knowing exactly where to go and whom I needed to see once I got there.

Refusing to go was actually quite easy considering I really didn't want to go, and my mother's health was steadily declining.  Mother had been housebound for about ten years at this point, and one of the reasons I'd moved back to my hometown in Louisiana in 1998 was to be near her.  In early April of 2004 she took a serious turn for the worse and peacefully passed away two months later.

I knew that Mother's transition would spell a huge transition for me as well.  One from a life-altering focus on her as her secondary caregiver back to being free to focus fully on my own life.  I would jokingly lament to friends, "Now that I'm an orphan, what am I going to do for the rest of my life?"  I was definitely at one of life's big crossroads.  Never in a million years would I have believed where it was leading me.

Not just to India, but to the biggest surprise of my life.....

Why, I have no idea, but the night Mother died I went home, and among other things, I got on the Internet.  Considering the mental strain, physical exhaustion, and grief I was feeling there was no logical reason to do that, but I did.

In addition to all the other things I had to do in planning and preparing for a funeral, for some reason, that night I went home and logged onto the Internet.  Consciously I can only remember checking my e-mail.  A few days after that fateful evening I tried and tried to trace back how I came upon a particular web page, but couldn't.  I wasn't doing a web search, and the link didn't come in an e-mail, but somehow an article appeared on my computer screen about a man's personal experience of enlightenment that he'd had while in India.

My whole world changed drastically at that moment...

I just didn't realize it.

His story was quite intriguing to say the least and referred to a follow up article, so I left the article onscreen so I could get back to it later.  I cried myself to sleep that night out of grief and bone-dead tiredness.

The next day was filled with funeral plans, phone calls, and preparing to receive friends and relatives at the house after the burial, etc., so by nightfall I was grateful to get back to the quiet of my home and that article I'd left on my computer screen.  I read the second article which was a continuation of this man's personal experience in India.  (You can read them, too, here.)

He began by talking about meeting an Avatar who had only revealed himself in the past decade and who'd only began taking Westerners in the past two years.  He said this Avatar (Kalki Bhagavan) could bestow true and permanent enlightenment on anyone just by placing his hands on their heads and transferring what you might call a seeding energy (called deeksha or diksha).  Over time these "seeds" begin to grow into a full-blown state of enlightenment.  The author was speaking from his own personal experience of enlightenment because he had received this state of enlightenment.

He definitely had my attention.

He also went on to say that this Avatar's goal was to enlighten all of humanity by the year 2012.  Well, that was a pretty bold statement, not to mention quite an undertaking.  How could that possibly happen?

Enlightenment?!?  Laying on of hands?!?  All of humanity?!?  New Avatar?!?  My heart was soaring, but my brain was having a hard time wrapping itself around all this, plus a healthy skepticism was thundering through my head.

He continued by explaining that critical mass would be reached once 64,000 people are enlightened, and that by attending a special process at the Avatar's ashram in India you could not only receive enlightenment yourself, but be trained to bestow the seeding energies of enlightenment to others.  Thousands of people in India and in other countries have already become enlightened this way.

My eyes were bugging out--in hope, in disbelief, in amazement, but mostly in relief--because what he was offering was everything I'd ever wanted.  Not just to become enlightened, but to be able to pass that state on to other people--wow!

In the early '80's when I first began on a serious spiritual journey, I decided that if I couldn't attain total enlightenment in this lifetime I wouldn't bother with pursuing a spiritual path at all.  I always thought it was possible, but after twenty years of making what I thought was only a small amount of progress, I finally threw in the towel.

Two years ago I gave up.

No matter what I'd done I wasn't enlightened, and the one person I knew for sure who was wasn't teaching anyone how to achieve it.  So I gave up.  I finally decided that if it was part of your path to become enlightened in this lifetime you would, and if not, you wouldn't.  Apparently I wasn't, so I let it go.

In a way it was a relief, because now I didn't have to work at trying to reach such a seemingly difficult goal.  For fifteen years I had supported myself by teaching meditation and spiritual classes, and now with Mother's passing I could happily return to that fulltime.

I let my dream of enlightenment go.

(As I write this, I remember one of my early teachers saying that you would never achieve enlightenment if you had an attachment to becoming enlightened.  Guess the cosmic joke's on me.)

Now here comes someone who was saying it was definitely possible.  He had already become enlightened, and so had thousands of others.

Now you know why, despite everything I had to do involved around my mother's death, I couldn't wait to get home and read those articles.

By the third night I decided I'd better look into more about this Avatar called Kalki, or Bhagwan, and it seemed like the more I found out about him the more impressed I was.  Many others had reported having the same experience of enlightenment from him.

By this time I was beginning to see the handwriting on the wall, and slowly it began to realistically dawn on me what I'd known deep down for so long--I needed to go to India.

Then came the final "kicker."

I figured that since I was seriously considering going to India, I'd better find out where this Avatar and his ashram were located.  Some of the information I'd seen about him said he was located about three hours north of Chennai, but I'd never heard of it.

It took several seconds, when I realized that the city of Madras had been renamed Chennai, for the impact to fully hit me.  Madras/Chennai was located in southeast India and that was the exact area where I'd known all along that I needed to go.  Plus, they were giving a class for English speaking Westerners in just a few weeks.  Just long enough for me to get a visa and make plane reservations.

I packed my bags.

Almost a month later I returned, tired but happy, and definitely transformed.

 And the story continues.....

The plane trip home from India:

After being in the rarified and cloistered atmosphere of Bhagwan's ashram, so quietly nestled in the hills of southern India, I wondered what it would be like leaving its peacefulness and reentering the hubbub of western civilization.

I got my answer on the flight home.

India is a long way from the USA, literally halfway around the world.  I had a 9½ hour flight from Chennai to Frankfurt with a 2 hour layover, then a 10 hour flight from Frankfurt to Atlanta and a 4 hour layover, then another 1½ hours home to Louisiana.  With each leg of the journey there seemed to be a gradual easement from the heightened state I left the ashram in back to what can be considered "normal" for me now.  It's definitely not the same "normal" I knew before I left for India, and never will be again.  Thank goodness for that, or should I say thank Bhagavan and Amma.

Having had back and neck pain for years, I always dreaded lengthy plane flights since sitting for long periods in one position was very uncomfortable for me, and I definitely wasn't looking forward to having almost two ten hour flights back to back.  What I received was quite a surprise and a blessing.

Being in such a high state during that first leg my back didn't hurt at all, even though I never got out of my seat for the entire 9½ hours, not even to go to the restroom.  Gratefully, I slept pain free for the better part of 6 hours sitting straight up.  At one point, near the end of the flight, I awakened to find myself merging with the cosmos into a vast expanse of silence.  Nothingness.  No sounds, no senses, no thoughts--and no body.

I don't know how long I remained in this state, but towards the end a few thoughts began to float by, and it was the realization and impact of having "no body" that began to bring me more fully back.  My heart immediately began to open as gratitude and love for Bhagavan and Amma began to pour through me.  It was so immense I quietly burst into tears, although I tried to contain them and maintain some sense of composure since the flight attendants had begun to serve us breakfast by this time.

The residual effects of "no body" were still with me as I disembarked the plane.  So much so that I had to keep reminding Bhagavan that I needed my legs not only to cross the huge Frankfurt airport, but also to change from one terminal to another in order to get to my next departure gate.

My legs walked me and I got there, but it felt very strange.

The next flight from Frankfurt to Atlanta was even longer--10 hours--but again I was still able to sit pain free.  I slept less and twice was able to get up from my seat to move about and stretch.  My heightened state was still lessening though at one point I completely merged with the universe and found myself positioned above our galaxy watching its slow, quiet, elegant spinning.  A beautiful and awe-inspiring sight.

As the flight neared its end and the heightened state lessened even more, I was able to get a more realistic feel for how I physically felt now, and it was quite different than before I left for India.  It's difficult to put into words, but the best way to describe it is that I'm very aware of all the cells in my body and they seem to have more of an electrical charge to them than before.  This vitalized cellular state was quite noticeable through the third leg of my journey home and remains still today.

 And the story continues.....

A Miracle?!?:

I arrived home happily and safely but with two suitcases full of dirty laundry.  Six months earlier my clothes dryer had stopped working, but my mother's serious illness, months of her lengthy hospitalization, then her death kept me too involved to even take the time to call a repairman, much less go shopping for a new dryer.  So for six months I'd been taking my wet laundry to my sister's house and using her dryer.  This was a workable solution, but inconvenient and time consuming.

Occasionally over the six months, out of frustration, I would check to see if my dryer would miraculously start somehow.  I knew it wasn't completely "dead" because when I would try to turn it on it would make small electrical noises, but the drum wouldn't turn, nor was there any heat.

My new, cellular vitality notwithstanding, I was still tired from the long trip home, and wasn't looking forward to washing all my dirty laundry then drying it at my sister's house, but at the same time I needed some clean clothes.  During darshan I had asked both Amma and Bhagavan for greater healing abilities and received them.  Thankfully, at some point we were also reminded that healings could be given for anything--physical, emotional, spiritual, financial, etc.,--even mechanical.

I had washed several loads but before I hauled the heavy, wet clothes to my sister's house to dry I thought I'd try healing my dryer.  What could it hurt?

I did as instructed for conducting a healing, and with both skepticism and hopefulness I layed my hands on my dryer.  To my surprise I could actually feel it taking the energy!

Moments later and with a small feeling of faith, I turned the dryer on.  Lo and behold, it started.  Little did I dream that my first healing success would be on a machine.

It still runs perfectly.

P. J.
October, 2004

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