Are There Still Saints in India ? Part 3 (End)

Part 1

Part 2

This defied all the laws of physics !

Now, when I went back to Delhi, I started doing this mantra japa. Then one day, after coming back from Dubai, I started doing small havans (a type of fire ceremony) in my room and I started doing this mantra more seriously. One day during the afternoon I felt tired. I lay down on the bed, and with a particular awareness, I could see a God and Goddess on the roof of our flat with a book in front of them. The pages of this book were being turned over by the wind which was blowing. The whole atmosphere was charged with divinity.

Another day, I saw that through some astral process I had again come into Mahatma Hans Rajji’s room. Before going in, through the roof I saw a boy lying on the floor sleeping; and then the boy told Mahatma Hans Rajji that some ghost had come into his room. But he replied,
“Oh no, there is no ghost here. It is only one of my devotees, but in his spiritual body.”
So he took out a little piece of prasad, a piece of burfi (a type of Indian sweet) and dropped it. I took it and came back.
While coming here to the ashram through this astral process, near the room, I saw Lord Shiva on the sandy beach, and then I saw Mahatma Hans Rajji in the form of Lord Shiva. So I was quite surprised and it developed my devotion to him.

So I continued my japa and various things started happening. I had a lot of visions of Lord Shiva and many other things. Then one day, the entire process culminated, during the night. It must have been about one thirty in the morning because all the lights were off and I was sleeping in my room. Suddenly, I felt something moving my eyelids, while I was asleep. I wondered who could be trying to disturb my sleep, who wanted to open my eyes? So I opened them to see who was moving my eyelids, and I saw a whitish-bluish light, and it was focused on a particular photograph of a saint called Swami Shivananda (great saint who lived in Rishikesh up to 1963) which was in my room.

I remember that suddenly the light took the form of a bearded saint. And out came the face of Mahatma Hans Rajji. I was so surprised. This defied all the laws of physics! Moreover, I had studied physics as a student, and so I wondered how it was possible that such a light could be focused in such a way without any tungsten wire or without a bulb, or without any particular medium. And suddenly out of Mahatma Hans Rajji’s two eyes flashed a small whitish-blue light which entered my eyes. When it entered me, I closed my eyes suddenly, and when I opened them again, I saw that the light which had been focused on Swami Shivananda’s photograph had gone. Suddenly I felt a command, “Go and sit in the next room.”

So I obeyed and got out of bed and went to the next room. I sat there in padma asana (sitting on the floor, cross-legged) Suddenly I lost total consciousness of the outer physical world and of my body; my mind had stopped. I had an experience which lasted for about two and a half hours because at about four thirty the birds started singing and my consciousness became externalized.

This is how the experience usually goes. When the Guru’s grace dawns, the mind stops and the breath is stilled. Sunyatha (absolute stillness) occurs and then the Self Being - the swyambhu (the Self-Existent) flashes forth in all its divinity as existence, conscious awareness and bliss, bringing forth everything in divine love. That was my experience which I wrote down when it happened. (End)

Are There Still Saints in India? Part 2

Oh, my God, this man is a true saint !

I was quite surprised because the next morning when I went to his room, I saw the shivaling, symbolising the cosmic creation of the universe, which is on the mantelpiece in his room, and I had a feeling that somehow Mahatma Hans Rajji had been able to stop my mind and give me an answer to the second question I had asked the day before, within my own mind. So I stayed at the ashram for three days. I wanted to stay longer but then Mahatma Hans Rajji told me later on that I should go back to Delhi and then he would answer my first question regarding the existence of saints in India nowadays.

I went back to Delhi, and within a week, on a Sunday afternoon after having lunch, I lay down for a snooze - an afternoon siesta. Suddenly, I saw that my own consciousness had been drawn back into Mahatma Hans Rajji’s room in Rishikeskh. I saw Mahatma Hans Rajji sitting on his bed as usual and his entire body became light. And in that light I saw Guru Nanak there. I was shocked. Suddenly I opened my eyes in my afternoon siesta, and I woke up. And I said, “Oh my God! This man is a true saint! How can he catch my consciousness in Delhi and bring it to his room in Rishikesh?”

So as soon as I could, after two or three days I caught a bus and came back to Rishikesh and I told Mahatma Hans Rajji that I wanted to be initiated. He replied that he would do so, but he first had to go to Dehradun. As promised, I was initiated by Mahatma Hans Rajji when he came back. He gave me a particular mantra, as well as specific recommendations concerning this mantra. (Continued in Part 3)

Are There Still Saints in India? Part 1

The mysterious attraction

My name is Premi. In 1993 I had come down to Rishikesh and I went and sat at Mastram Baba’s place on the left bank of the Ganges. I was doing some japa (reciting a mantra) and meditation on this rock where Mastram Baba’s small mud hut is, and when I saw the tree near the platform on the other side of the riverbank, there was an attraction. It was a sort of magnetic attraction. So in the evening I walked along the Ganges from Mastram Baba’s place up to the Laxman Jhulla bridge which I crossed, and I came to the place where the people have their baths.
When I came up to the spot I was looking for, there was a swami (one who dedicates his life to God) called Midhaji drying his clothes on the clothes line. He saw me, and I saw him, and I asked him,
“What is this place?”
“This is Sacha Baba’s place,” he replied.
So I asked him who Sacha Baba was. He then invited me to his room to have a cup of tea, and said he would show me Sacha Baba. So he took me to the temple after tea, at about four o’clock in the afternoon, and I pranammed (bowed) to the statue of Sacha Baba in the temple. But I was still not satisfied, and I told him that I wanted to meet the real Baba. (Baba means a sage, a saint)
“There is one real Baba here,” he explained. “His name is Mahatma Hans Rajji. He is in his room, and he will open his door at about five o’clock. Then you can have his darshan.” (meeting a Master)

The two questions

So at five o’clock he took me to Mahatma Hans Rajji’s room. He had opened his door so Swami Midhaji went in and told him that someone had come for information. So he sent me in, and when I saw Mahatma Hans Raj Baba, I felt that I had met him previously, maybe from a previous life, but it was very difficult to say at that time.
When I sat down, I looked at him and kept looking at him, and I still felt there was some sort of connection which I was unable to explain. The first thing the Mahatma (Mahatma literally means a great soul, a saint ) asked me was where I had come from, so I told him I had come from Delhi. I told him I liked his place very much and that I wanted to stay there. I also said I wanted to ask him one or two questions.
He replied,
“Yes, you ask me.”
“I was reading about Guru Nanak (great Indian Saint born in the 15th century and who founded the religion of Sikhs), and he said that if you meet a true saint it is a great blessing. But how can it be possible to find a true saint in our time? There are no true saints in this country anymore!”
“Acha!” (Ah yes !)
Then I asked him how this world had come about, because according to science, there is this “big bang” theory, whereas when we read the Upanishads and the Indian Shastras (Upanishads and Shastras are holy Texts), they talk about something else.
“That’s so !” he replied. Then he added, “Listen, first of all go and sit on that particular platform where Sacha Baba used to sit. Then stay here at the ashram for two or three days.”

And the “big bang” ?

I accepted and went and sat on the platform. And when I was sitting there, at about six o’clock, I found that suddenly my thoughts had stopped. No thoughts were coming anymore. But I could still see the Ganges, all that was around me, and I was aware of everything. And suddenly, in that awareness, a word came. The word was sankalpa ( a sankalpa is a thought-force, a decree, directed will power used to materialise something or a new situation or event). So I immediately realised that I was reading something that might have happened sometime in the past, that this entire world is a “notion” or a “thought” which takes form in the great cosmic world. It is known as sankalpa. (Continued in Part 2)