Awakening Into Oneness The Golden Ball

Transcription

1 The Golden Ball Father, there s a golden man in my heart, and he talks to me. The School Director looked up from the papers on his desk at Krishna, his 11-year old son, and smiled. The Director had a round and gentle face, big cheeks, and eyes that smiled all the time, even when the rest of his face was at rest. What does he say to you, Krishna? asked the Director. His voice was warm and deep, conveying a feeling of security, that all was well and at peace with the world. He tells me different things, Father. Krishna paused. He knew he could not talk like this to anyone else they would laugh or call him crazy. But with his father, it was different. It had been like that as long as he could remember. I ask him to give me different experiences and he gives them to me. This morning I was hungry, and I asked him for an apple. Right away I could taste the apple, and then my hunger was satisfied. Sometimes he tells me what will happen, and then it comes true. The director paused and looked intensely at his son. I m not making this up, Father. It s completely real and it s there all the time. I know, Krishna, said the Director, slowly. I know. From how you describe it, this sounds like you are having a vision of Prajapathi. It happens sometimes, that people have visions like this. It s a very special thing, Krishna, a very great blessing. You must cherish it, and tell me often what is happening. Krishna loved his father more than just as a father. He was his best friend, too. He never questioned what he said, as he trusted his father more than anyone. He had never heard of Prajapathi, but if his father said it was a good thing, he knew it was so. All the children at the school loved the man they knew as Director Sir, and his wife, Padmavati, they raced in their direction when there was a chance to be with them, amidst peels of laughter. No one ever felt judged by them, everyone could be themselves, just as they are. Krishna raised his hands, placed them together on his heart in the traditional greeting of namaste to his father, and ran back outside. He ran past the big sign which greeted visitors to the school: A Foundation for World Awakening. He ran past the bottle-brush tree, with its bright red

2 flowers. He ran past the large Buddha statue in the middle of the lawn, and past more signs that had been erected around the school: Your thoughts are not your thoughts. Your Mind is not your mind, read one, and Man is mad, Enlightenment is the natural state, read another. Krishna kept running, past the white washed-buildings with their red tiled roofs, past the mango trees. There was only one thing now on his mind. Cricket. Krishna, where have you been? cried a shrill voice. It belonged to Giri, Krishna s best friend, one year his senior. A small and thin boy, his eyes were permanently sparkling with enthusiasm. His mother had died when he was only seven, leaving only his father to care for him. He would often remain at the school even during the vacation time, with Krishna and his parents. The two became inseparable, like brothers. We re just starting a match. Come on, Krishna, you ll miss the calling out of the teams. The two friends ran together now, past another sign inscribed with the words of the great Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran: Your children are not your children, and onto the open space which served as a cricket field, where at least fifty other boys had gathered. Jeevashram was no ordinary school. The Director had founded it in 1984, to provide an alternative form of education. He and Amma saw that the current educational system was destroying the child, and they wanted to create a school where children could truly flower, discover who they really were. The primary focus, right from the beginning, was on spiritual maturity: to free the child of the sense of a separate self, and self-centered preoccupations. They aimed to create an atmosphere free of fear, free of competition. They started out with nothing, just a vision. They found some land in rural Andhra Pradesh, far from civilization, which they took on a lease. The first year they had a handful of students, and just one building. They had initially planned for one classroom with tables, and a separate dormitory with bunk beds. But for lack of funds the two had to be combined into one building, and the Director invented the tablot, a table by day, which transformed, with the rolling out of a thin cotton mattress, into a cot by night. The children loved it. After just a few years, the school had grown to house a hundred and eighty residential students, both boys and girls. It also welcomed two hundred poor local children from surrounding villages, most of who came in every day without fees. The Director oversaw everything: gardens were planted, he erected the signs around the campus, and that one original building grew into a sprawling campus of dormitories, classrooms, dining and meeting rooms. Children excelled at gardening, woodwork, music, and crafts, as well as the more traditional disciplines.

3 The Director took charge of the spiritual direction of the school, and invited a friend he had known since childhood to become the principal, caring more for the academic side. The Director gave classes on meditation, on different spiritual disciplines, and philosophy. He encouraged the children to think for themselves, to ponder on deeper philosophical questions for days at a time. Sometimes he also conducted classes in mathematics in which he had himself graduated or in history. They also hired a headmaster who coordinated with government authorities, and hired other specialty teachers. The school conformed to all the government standards, but the children were never placed under academic pressure of any kind. There were not ranked or graded, and no child was ever kept back in a grade for lack of academic performance. All of the emphasis was placed upon the quality of relationships between the children, their relationship with their parents, and their state of internal happiness and well-being. The teachers were instructed never to scold the children or to punish them. The headmaster would go to great lengths to find teachers who could love the children as well as teach them, and who were themselves experiencing internal freedom and joy. The experiment was a huge success: by the time the children graduated their academic grades were far superior to other schools. Many of those children today have become doctors, engineers and business leaders. When Giri was admitted to the school he was only nine years old. Each year only seventeen new residential students were admitted. When Giri s father took his son to meet the director for the first time, he has different ambitions for his son. I would like my boy to make it to IIT (Indian Institute of Technology). That is the best school for engineering and technology in the country. I want him to become a successful software engineer. Can you manage that? he demanded of the school Director. The Director looked at him with those same calm laughing eyes. I am sure we could do that, yes. I am sure it could happen. But first I have one question for you. What if your son has a different passion? What happens if he prefers to work with herding cattle, or he wants to work with clay and be a potter? What happens if that is what will make him happy? Are you also prepared for that? Will you still love him then, will you still support his vision? Giri s father was quiet for a few moments. He had not expected this question from the Director. He had assumed they would just want the tuition payment, and that would be that. Finally he agreed that he could accept these terms. Applicant admitted, grinned the Director as he stamped the application form with a flourish. All of the children remember Jeevashram as a magical place. Physically it

4 was quite simple, made up of simple concrete buildings. The director and his wife lived in a simple whitewash building, with very little furniture. They had no vehicle. Jyoti, a young girl who joined the school in the same year as Giri, remembers: From the very beginning, it felt so good to be there. Physically, it was such a beautiful place. I did not consciously know what silence was then. At least I didn t know to define it as silence. Right away there was a feeling of great space, and a sense of awe. The feeling of great space was outside it was a big campus but it was inside also, inside me. It was filling me up with peace. We felt so much love and affection from the Director and his wife. Within three or four days, I was resolving, I will be with them forever. The director s wife looked after the general administration and she also took care of the girls. She was like our mother, our best friend. She was somebody who would totally build us up, who made everything possible for us. There was no limitation in her presence. From the very beginning it became a normal thing for children to have mystical experiences. Prayer became very strong for them, they got used to the fact that whatever they asked for came to them. Then, in the summer of 1989, things dramatically deepened. Mathew was a very serious and academic boy, from a Christian home. His prayers were always to do better in his exams. One day the Director called him in to the office. Your prayers are so strong to do well in class, said the Director, why don t you pray that Grace descends into you, and you become enlightened. Mathew did as the Director suggested. Later in the day, when he walked into the dining hall, he was like a sage. His eyes were deep and penetrating: his body movements slow and deliberate, like a dancer. He could hardly speak. The next day he explained to the Director that a huge golden ball had appeared before him and descended into him. The ball had spoken a word to him, in a language he did not understand. A few days later exactly the same thing happened to Chandra, one of the more mischievous students. He loved to play with frogs, and often played jokes on people. It gets very hot in south India in the spring, during a math class one afternoon the children were getting sleepy. He also suddenly felt a golden ball descend through the top of his head and settle into his heart. He was immediately drenched in silence, in a feeling of ecstatic peace that filled him completely. When the class ended and the children filed out into the hot afternoon, Chandra remained in his place, still absorbed in his rapture. It took several hours until he could move again, and when he did, he was transformed completely. Soon after, almost the same thing happened to a two other children.

5 One afternoon in August, the School Director called Krishna back into the simple room where he met with people sometimes. The room was empty, except for a long low table in the middle. The torrential monsoon rains were falling outside. Now we will see if it is possible for you to transfer your experience of the golden being to others, he told his son. Krishna admitted he had no idea how to do that, but the School Director reassured him that he would not need to do anything, it would all happen on its own. After some time had passed, he called Jyoti in to join them. She was about thirteen at the time. Years later she recalls what occurred: The director just said Krishna will give you something, take it. There was no other explanation given. Then he told me to close my eyes, Krishna laid his hands on my head for just a few moments, then he took them back and sat. All that I could see was a huge light, entering into me. As he laid his hands, there was an awakening, a fire. It shot from down under, intense heat spread up to the crown of my head, and then slowly each of the chakras in my body started blossoming. I saw all kinds of different deities located inside my body. The entire thing seemed to me as though it lasted a really long time. By the clock, it happened within two to three minutes. When I opened my eyes, I was dazed. I didn t understand what had happened to me. I went back to the dormitory, and still when I closed my eyes, there were visions of deities. It seemed to continue. What he had given me was still there, inside my body, like a seed. It was slowly unfolding itself. A few weeks later I went home for the vacation in September. I was reading a book, and I lay down and closed my eyes. An immense sweetness came over my heart, in the middle of my chest. I could not believe it, I saw the Director in my heart. There was Sir, he was inside me. After a few days I saw him with his wife there, too. The energy kept exploding. I felt it continuing from that day, till now. Love had taken possession. Suddenly, I had become a poet, everything had changed, it was divine love that was consuming me. After the vacation I knocked on the Director s door. Please, Sir, I'm able to see you inside my heart. You talked to me. All that he said was, It happens, sometimes. That was all. That fall Krishna gave this same Blessing to many of the children. They would queue up, and say please touch me, please touch me and right away extraordinary experiences would start to unfold. It became a fairy land, a magical place. They were from all kinds of religious and ethnic backgrounds. The Christian children would see Jesus after the Blessing, and feel his love, and come to know him in a personal way. The Muslims would meet the prophet Mohamed, and go with him to Muslim heavens. Some children would converse with Buddha or with

6 Krishna, Rama or Hindu gods. Many of the children just experienced a great and overwhelming peace, a bright light that illuminated their whole day. They would discover an intelligence that would guide them and tell them all they needed to know. The director explained to them in the spiritual classes that this was the called the Antarayamin, the indweller in the heart that guides all beings toward the greater truth. Many children found that they could travel outside their physical bodies. They could just lay down and visit their homes and see what their families were doing. Later, when their parents came to the school to collect them for vacation, the children would run out: Mother, Father, I saw you three days ago. Mother, you were wearing your yellow dress, Father you were talking to your friend from Delhi on the phone, you were telling him about the job you wanted in. Then the parents would ask, How do you know all this? And the children would say, I was there. This became quite commonplace after a while, like any normal talk. The children would go into states of great joy for no reason at all, and discover tremendous love for one another, for the animals, for the plants. None of this was taught to them, it came from within. Healing became a common occurrence at the school, children found out how they could heal each other. Giri recalls: Children would heal themselves of all kinds of diseases. Nobody wore glasses. If a child used to wear glasses, someone touched them and they were healed. For three years we never had a doctor in the campus. So many amazing things were happening. We used to move into other dimensions, lie down and touch the stars. Krishna and Giri would get up before dawn, jump on their bikes, and take off for the big rocks on the outer part of the campus. There they would lay on their backs, spread out under the stars, and find themselves transported into other dimensions. They would have visions of the School Director and his wife as divine beings. Sometimes they would appear in a golden form, sometimes surrounded also by other golden beings. When the visions dissolved Krishna and Giri would open their eyes, and whisper to each other what they had each seen. It was always the same vision for each of them. As time went by, many of the other children had similar visions of the Director and his wife, and came to regard them with completely different new eyes. They started to refer to the school director as Sri Bhagavan, which roughly translates to Holy One, and to his wife as Sri Amma, or Divine Mother. These names have stayed with them both to this day words