Many years ago I managed to obtain -
with great difficulty and for a hefty price - a book with secret techniques on
raising the Kundalini (sadly, this book is not in my possession anymore). It
contained many secret techniques for serious aspirants on the Yoga path. In
this book was described how, in the advanced stages, the seeker will experience
a great obstacle, a place of danger where many fail. The seeker would have to
traverse the void! According to the book this was a place, where the human mind couldn't function, and unprepared seekers risked getting stuck in
the void for good. The only way to traverse the void, the book said, was with the help of a symbol of great personal meaning that one could hold on to whilst in
this state. Only with the help of such a symbol would one be able to safely
traverse the void. However, here’s the catch: one would not be able to remember
that symbol unless it had been so ingrained that it had become part of oneself!
I read this chapter several times with
great interest. It intrigued me but it all sounded very abstract. I couldn't imagine what kind
of symbol could possibly carry me through a place of no mind and complete
nothingness, not to mention the paradox of keeping the symbol in mind when there is no mind! The void described in the book definitely sounded like a scary and dangerous place, and I had no intention to visit it, nor did I think
I was so advanced that it would just happen to me in the near future. Little
did I know...
A few years later my partner and I moved to another country. We both had a
very hard time there. I didn't get around to practising Yoga asanas much as
I worked over-hours in a stressful job. I did however keep up my mantra practice
and reading of the scriptures. My partner developed a skin problem which resisted
treatment and as a final resort he was told that a biopsy had to be taken. As he
didn't speak the local language he asked me to accompany him to the doctor to
translate for him and keep him company.
On the morning of the scheduled
procedure I woke up with severe cramps. This was nothing new. I usually
have severe pain during my moon flow. And though it made me feel awful I did
not take any medications, I never do. I had no appetite and we were in a
hurry so I didn't take breakfast. All I had was a cup of very strong Yogi Tea.
(For a while I blamed the Yogi Tea for the experience, but if Yogi Tea could
have this effect I reckon a lot of people would try.) To sum it up, on that day
I was slightly stressed out and in pain but otherwise in excellent health and I
had taken no medication of any sort, in fact I hadn't taken any medication for
many years.
At the doctor's everything went
smoothly at first. As it was the wish of my partner the doctor allowed me in the room
as a translator though she didn't seem very keen on the idea. The procedure was
easy and fast. A tiny bit of skin was removed. As she held it up with her
tweezers it looked like a tiny bloody pimple. This didn't bother me at all. I
don't get sick from seeing blood and am not squeamish in general. (As a child I
once performed "surgery" on my own foot with a nail scissor to remove
a glass shard!) Holding the tiny tissue sample aloft the doctor turned to me
and said, "don't look or you will get sick!" I felt a really
negative vibe from her and to reject her thoughtform I replied promptly, "no, I won't! I have seen
much worse things!"
But it was as if she had put a
thought in my head. I wasn't feeling sick but I saw strange bright blue specks of
light dancing around in the room. I figured this wasn't good and decided to leave
the room. With the words "if I'm not wanted here, then I'll leave!" I got
up and walked towards the door. The blue stars were getting bigger and bigger
almost blotting out my vision. (Interestingly the blue specks of light were the exact same colour I saw during the self-realisation and later on, when I had the blue pearl experience. I have come to associate this colour with Siva). I tried to breathe deeply and willed myself to
retain control over my body, but just as I stretched out my hand to reach for
the door handle, I lost it. I felt it coming, and so with my last bit of
control I managed to gently sink down in a squatting position, leaning against
the wall on my right. The last thing I heard was my partner shouting my Yoga
name "Sakti!" and then I faded from this reality.
I found myself in a place of utter
darkness where there were no features of any kind. All the pairs of opposites
had ceased to exist. There was no up, nor down, no inside nor outside. It was a
state of utter nothingness. None of my senses existed in that place. I couldn't
hear nor see anything, and I had no body to act or feel with, and there was nothing to interact with either. To make it worse,
I also didn't know myself anymore. All my memories and my identity were completely
erased. I wouldn't have known my dearest friends nor my worst enemies.
I didn't even know my own name,
whether I was a man or a woman, or indeed a human being or an animal! None of
the names and forms that make up our physical reality made any sense to me
anymore. There were no names or forms, no concepts of any sort, no words, no language,
nor any sound in the void. There was nothing, and yet it wasn’t empty. It is
very hard to describe.
And though I had neither body nor
mind in that state, I existed! I couldn't think or reason, all verbal language
was completely wiped out, nor could I think in pictures. In fact to give you an idea, if I were to compare my mind with a computer, I would say it was as if somebody had wiped the hard disc including the BIOS. That's about the state
my mind was in then…
I was pure existence, a tiny spark of
consciousness. It was however not an illumined state, but rather an inert state,
devoid of any higher knowledge. Later on I had many realisations about that state,
but at that time all I could do was experience myself as a tiny speck of
consciousness floating in a vast, endless, timeless void, surrounded by
darkness and utterly alone. It was terrifying though I couldn't really feel anything, nor worry about what could happen.
Somewhere in the deepest recesses of my consciousness I knew - and this knowing was completely independent of any mental process, thought or sensory input,
for I had neither mind nor senses in the void - somewhere in there I "knew" that this was wrong and that I
couldn't stay “there” (though there was neither “here” nor “there”). Somehow I
sensed a wrongness and felt an urgency to correct that wrongness, and that's about
the best I can describe it.
The experience was so vast and alien that I was totally overwhelmed by it. It was definitely a state of “no mind”
yet there was consciousness. It was totally timeless and yet I felt that I
spent an eternity there. Imagine being forced to spend an eternity in a state
of nothingness! Some may crave it, but this has never been my idea of the
afterlife! The sense of wrongness and urgency intensified until I was filled
with utter dread and horror. The desire to end this endless nothingness,
fuelled by the horror of the experience built up like steam in a pressure
cooker.
Fortunately I had been reciting my
mantra daily ever since my mantra initiation which was about four years prior to
this. I hardly ever left the house without my mala. Repeating my mantra had long
since become a mental habit. So much so, that the mantra started automatically
whenever I was in danger, or distress, and even in my dreams (I used to have frequent
psychic attacks in my sleep but soon found out that the
mantra would keep the attacking entities at bay). Somehow my mantra had become so
ingrained that I remembered it even in my sleep.
And so it was now as well. When the
desire to end that horrific state intensified, the mantra suddenly started on
its own and filled the void. It seemed to reverberate in the void until there was nothing but the mantra. The remnants of my mind latched on to the
mantra and began to frantically repeat it. With each repetition of the mantra I
felt myself becoming more solid. With each repetition the world seemed to slowly come back into being.
My eyes, which had been opened throughout the
experience - even though earlier on I had seen nothing but blackness - now saw a
colourful swirling mass in front of me. I couldn't move my head yet nor my eyes. At first my mind
couldn't interpret what it was I was seeing. Full mental
function hadn't returned yet but the mantra was still going on in my head. And
then I recognised the weird pattern in front of me as "floor tiles"!
I felt myself being touched and then I heard voices. The voices sounded very concerned as they asked me whether I was okay. Only then
did I remember who I was and where I was. What a relief it was to be back in
the physical world! I could think again and hear and see! But I couldn't move
or speak at first. "Are you okay?" my partner and the doctor asked several times until I
finally managed to weakly say, "I'm okay, but I can't move."
They then grabbed me by my arms and legs
and carried me out of the room and into another smaller room. On the way we
passed a waiting room where the other patients stared at me, probably in horror
about the awful treatment I must have had at the hands of the doctor! I found that immensely embarrassing. I was still totally limp and unable to move. The doctor put me on a bed and took my blood pressure --
which turned out to be normal, which astonished the doctor and me. (My blood
pressure usually is on the low side but this has never affected me
negatively.) The doctor thought it must have been the shock of seeing the biopsy
that made me faint. I was in shock, but not from the surgical procedure but
from the experience of the void! However I did not enlighten her on that.
My partner told me that I was deadly pale which didn’t help to make me feel any better.
I felt extremely weak and as if I had been through a terrible ordeal.
After I drank some water I felt a bit better. I could move feebly but it
took about half an hour until I
could get up from the bed. I refused to go to a hospital or see a doctor. All I
wanted to do was go home and that’s what we did. But I found no rest even in bed because my
mind was constantly going over the experience and I was horrified that it might happen again anytime. I couldn't understand why I had
fainted. When I was very young I had once fainted from overdoing sauna, but
that was different, that time I had been completely unconscious, and when I came to I was slightly weak but nowhere near as debilitated as I was now.
My body recovered surprisingly fast. The
next day I was fit enough to go to work as if nothing had happened. But my mind
was extremely traumatised by the experience. For weeks I thought it was
something bad that had happened to me. I didn't trust my body anymore. When I
went swimming I worried about fainting in the pool and drowning before somebody
noticed it. Whenever I crossed a busy road I thought “what if I pass out now? I could get run over...”
Deep inside I knew my “fainting” had
nothing to do with the biopsy, nor could I blame my health which was as always excellent. So
I made up all kind of theories in my mind. I blamed my period pain and the Yogi Tea, the fact I had left house without breakfast, etc. But I am very used to pain,
I had drunk Yogi tea before without ill effects, and had fasted for two weeks while
working hard and never fainted from it.
For weeks after the experience I was
going over every moment of that day, every aspect of the experience, looking at
it from all angles, pulling every minor detail out of my memory. I needed an
explanation, because I didn’t want this to happen to me ever again. It was in a
way worse than death, because when you die you at least you still have your astral
body (for a while...), and your identity and memories, and then you go on to
wherever you need to go, but not to a state of eternal nothingness, or so I had
thought. I found this nothingness much more threatening than the destruction of
my physical body.
After I had exhausted all logical
explanations and discarded all my theories one by one, I finally surrendered to the unknowable. It was then that understanding came. There was nothing wrong with my
health or body. I was meant to have that experience. Had I not gone to
the doctor, I would have had the experience in some other way. I might have knocked my head and gone to the
void that way. Somehow it would have happened. But that wasn’t the biggest realisation by far. The big realisation was that
By the grace of Siva I had been allowed a glimpse beyond the illusion!
I had experienced how it is to have
no body, and no mind, and then been allowed to return so I could learn from it!
What I had held to be reality had been false. It had been taken away from me within
a second, and could be taken away again anytime. This realisation put quite
a lot of things into perspective and made me even more determined to strive for
self-realisation.
We get so attached to our bodies, our
identity and personal history, friends and family and all the objects of material
reality. And while we are caught up in our daily affairs we forget that this material
existence, which is but an illusion, can end anytime. Death can take you or me
anytime, today, tomorrow, in fifty years. Fact is, we don’t know how much
longer we have! The experience in the void made me understand what the
scriptures say, that this world is an illusion, that everything is consciousness,
and that we must exert and strive for self-realisation or we waste the precious
gift of the human birth.
I knew that I still had a long way to
go. I knew I hadn’t reached the Oneness yet, because I hadn’t experienced pure
knowledge, nor bliss. The nature of the Self, according to the Vedas is Sat –
Chid – Ananda. Sat, means pure existence, without beginning or end. Chid is perfect
knowledge, omniscience. And Ananda is the bliss that results from union with
the divine. When you realise your own divine nature you will feel that bliss. It
was clear to me that I had experienced a state of pure being (Sat) without the
upadhis (limiting adjuncts) of body and mind. But I also knew the void was just a
milestone, not a place to get stuck in, nor the ultimate goal on my spiritual
journey.
Later I recalled what the book had
said about the void, and realised I had actually managed to traverse this
dangerous abyss, the place where many seekers get stuck and fail! So my mantra
had after all been ingrained enough to carry me out of this state again. It had
done it once, and it could do it again, if need be. That was when the void lost
its terror for me. I also developed more faith in my mantra and Siva as a result of the experience.
I honestly believe had it not been
for the mantra I would have been comatose, and no doctor in the world would
have been able to bring my soul and my mind back to my body. Once again the
mantra had saved me. (The first time the mantra saved me from a car accident, which you can read about in Power of Mantra). Once again, by Siva’s grace I had been given a great gift,
not just the gift of life, but a gift of insight into the nature of reality and
existence as well.
