One night at a special year-ending, program-completely-changing kind of moment, Rama asked us for stories about some of our highest and worst experiences.
We tended to laugh through our own and each others’ “worst” experiences, which almost inevitably were situations which made it perfectly clear that we were not anywhere near as perfect, as smart, as humble, or as “whatever” as we had believed we were. Somehow, in each case, we had managed to get past that supposedly devastating moment intact and with a sense that neither our ideas about ourselves nor these events defined who we were.
The highest moments were mostly moments with Rama, either directly in his presence or at moments of spiritual transition which occurred when we were by ourselves, but knew that Rama had been the origin or means to our getting to that experience. What seemed to be common to the experiences people mentioned that night was that, in these experiences, we seemed to discover our own or others’ highest nature, realize personally something that had only been an intellectual understanding, or shift to another level of awareness from which we could see solutions to the problems plaguing us (or with which we were plaguing ourselves).
I quickly knew what experience I wanted to share, bypassing a more personal moment with Rama for one that I felt comfortable talking about in front of everyone else.
What I said was this:
One day at lunch time, a short time after we were initiated as “new buddhist monks” in early 1989, I went looking for the book by Joseph Campbell which we had been assigned to read for our next meeting. I was in a very mystical mode and just “followed my feelings” to a particular bookstore nearby where I worked. Not knowing exactly where to go, I found myself turning down a particular aisle and walking right up to the shelf at the end, where I saw a copy of a version of the Bhagavad Gita which I hadn’t read.
For some reason, I felt that I should pick it up. Since the Gita is probably my favorite book, my mind was saying something like, why don’t I take a look to compare this to the version I’ve read.
On the other hand, I was practicing the technique where you just open a book and see what you find. Quite often, this brings us what feels like an appropriate message from Eternity.
As I stood exactly where I had walked and read where the book opened, a huge jolt of energy surged through me.
What I had opened to was where in chapter four, Krishna says to Arjuna something like:
“He who recognizes my holy incarnation, and knows the noble nature of my birth, will come to me at his death”.
My mind stopped completely, and it took some time before I even started to breath again. Everything inside of me shifted. It was as if I had come to a doorway, and found myself on the other side without ever having walked through.
I put the book back on the shelf. For days – there was either no thought at all or this one: “That is who I am studying with. Me. Me, little me. With that.”
Suddenly I could feel this was true and I knew how important it was. I could have gotten a huge ego out of this, but actually it made me feel real humble. Not special but lucky.
I made it back to work, I took care of myself and did what I needed to do. I didn’t become a space cadet, but for days and days, my usual thoughts and emotions had no appeal in comparison to this feeling of silence. Eventually, I turned this into something like a mantra, and it lost its power, and gradually I started to think again.
But it’s a moment that always remains that I can go back to, when I start to forget.
As I started to tell this story (and I might not have been so detailed in the telling that evening), Rama looked at me very intently with that certain look of his that seemed to be pure focused “seeing”, then turned his body and faced directly towards where I sat in one of the front rows, to the side.
Gold light was pouring out of him, filaments filling in and then gradually becoming so intense and so “solid” that his body disappeared completely behind or within the ball of gold light. This wasn’t a trick of lighting or my eyes – the story was too long not to blink while telling it.
By the end of my story, there was just a block of streaming gold in front of me. The room was so still and full of light, it sounded odd to hear my voice struggling to tell the story.
And then Rama started to comment, and came back into focus in a human body. Watching him was like seeing ice freeze as his form became solid, only it was like a light-filled ice sculpture of his body. He still had a huge halo of gold around him.
“Yeah, but we don’t talk about that much any more. I’ve toned it down a lot for the last several years and you guys have mostly forgotten it. I’ve been learning to ‘veil the light’ as they say. It’s better that way. I just act more and more like a businessman. We focus on computers and business, because that stuff just isn’t understood around here.”
A few moments later, in addressing someone else’s experience, he added, “Actually I have been generating a lot more light than ever before, but I’ve learned to hold it in because people in the West just can’t handle it.”
After writing this story, I went and found my journal entry from 29th December 1996:
My highest moment, was picking up the Gita and turning immediately to the line about “He who knows who I am and the Nature of my birth…will come to me at their death”, and realizing that Krishna speaking was Rama speaking; that I study with God… Rama’s reply was, yeah, well, we don’t talk about that much anymore. I’ve toned it down a lot for the last several years and you guys have mostly forgotten it. I’ve been learning to ‘veil the light’ as they say. It’s better that way. I just act more and more like a businessman….
Rama made a similar comment after someone else’s story, in which he pointed out that he actually generates a lot more light than ever before, but he holds it all in because he’s learned that people in the west just can’t handle it.
Oh yes, funny how I almost forgot to write this also, as I was telling Rama my story (which I bungled slightly, well I was in the front row), he looked at me very intently, saw that I was telling something true or whatever, and then squared himself right to me and got that certain look of his that’s just pure seeing, I think. Gold light was pouring out of him, gradually filling in and replacing his entire body. By the end of my story, there was just a block of streaming gold light in front of me. And then he started to comment, and came back into focus in a human body, but still with a huge halo of gold around him.
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