The realms beyond

The ten days Vipassana meditation course expanded my inner world beyond my expectation. What surprised me more were the incidents related to the outer world.

It was total silence and almost eleven hours of meditation for nine days (the silence ended on the tenth day). There was not to be any communication of any sort with any body. So I left my mobile phone at home in Belgaum when I went to the Vipassana centre in Kolhapur.

On coming back after the course I called up my friend to tell her of my experiences. She told that on the second day of my course she dreamt of me. My face was same, but I looked very tall and my hair was very long. She was surprised and asked me how I became taller at this age. I explained to her that my spiritual aura was expanding due to the meditation practice and she saw it in the physical sense.

My daughter told that she dreamt of me on the fourth day of the meditation period. She saw me with my head covered, and I told her that this course was too much and that I was leaving. She exclaimed, ‘Oh mom, how can you do that? This is not expected of you at all.’ During the time at the centre, I was always covering my head to keep away the cold breeze. And on the fourth day I was thinking, ‘This is too tough. I will never recommend this course to any body else.’ So the sentiment that she dreamt about was correct. But as she told, quitting in between is not my nature.

My friend from UK told that she had never felt so connected with me than those ten days, when we didn't even talk over the phone. Routinely we talk once every five days or so. Hence it was surprising that without having any contact with each other, she felt very much connected with me.

But what really took my breath away was the information I got four days after the meditation period. I got a call from an old friend. She told she had a missed call from my cell phone on the day when I was at the meditation center. She had some visitors at her house and there were two couples who had experienced miraculous healing effects of Reiki. Then she told them that her friend (myself) is also into Reiki and similar practices. At that particular time her phone rang and she saw that it was a call from me, of course it went as a missed call.

I explained to her that I had left my cell phone at home and I was in another place doing meditation in total silence. So it must be divine intervention that she got a missed call from me at the moment that she was talking to her friends about me.

I have been into different spiritual practices for the past three decades and each one has taken me forward and added tremendously to my understanding of life and its mysteries. During the ten day Vipassana practice, they insist that to give a fair trial to the technique, one should abstain from any other spiritual practice. Before entering the campus for meditation, I left everything outside, including my extra sensory perceptions, intuitive capabilities etc., In doing that, in effect, I had left a part of me outside. According to my daughter’s explanation, that part of me was doing all these things. Well, to me the explanation sounded logic!