In the name of spirituality

 Our journey into spirituality started in 1980 when we attended a week’s program by a Swamiji from Chinmaya mission in the evenings in Manipal. It was an amazing experience and we followed it up with joining and completing their one year correspondence course which benefitted us tremendously.

We were initiated into Simplified Kundalini meditation the next year and that brought about unbelievable shifts. Then many years went by in ‘Grihasthashram’ duties, but at the background there were always spiritual practices going on.

Getting serious about spiritual practices

Now for about a decade we are into ‘Vanaprastha ashram’, slowly slipping into ‘Sanyasashram’. We have more free time now, so spend a lot of time visiting sacred places and incorporating spiritual practices into our lives. We get many pointers from these places and we come back enriched.

This year beginning started off with a ten days silent retreat, which was deeply transformative.

Joining with high hopes

When we joined the Soul Coach Training program (SCTP) on March 22^nd 2019 for ten days, we were expecting similar experiences, but it was utter disappointment. Usually every Guru we have met, had something of ‘his/her own’ wisdom nuances, but here it was only bookish knowledge, that too many of them misrepresented and misinterpreted.

This was the program schedule for the training and we saw that there were time slots to relax.

We reached the venue on 21^st and got ready by 4.50 am on 22^nd for the ‘yoga and guided meditation’ at 5 am. To our horror, none of the organizers were in sight and the participants were roaming around like lost souls. And there were no yoga and meditation sessions that day.

Utter indiscipline

During the first lecture it was highlighted that discipline is very important for spiritual progress and one should ‘respect time’. But once they started lecturing, there was no stopping, with too much repetition of very basic unimportant details. . No clocks were present in the whole premise. Our 11.30 tea time used to be at 12o’clock (as late as 12. 45 on one day) or still later and the 1.30 lunch time at 2.30 pm. So we had to just finish the lunch and go for the lecture, whereas from the time table we had thought that those who are used to afternoon nap would get time as the earmarked time for lunch was 1.30 to 3 pm.

6.20pm to 7 pm was supposed to be rest time, which we hardly got, as the lecture will spill over. Then the guided meditation that should be over by 10 pm can go up to 11 or 11.15 pm. Yet, we had to be at the meditation hall by 5 am the next morning and wait for the masters who would arrive by 5.15 or 5.30 am.

‘Go beyond the silence’ in an atmosphere of cacophony

The meditation times used to be unbearable because there will be continuous guidance with words with a LOUD background music, which was sometimes shahnai tune. 

Once the meditation started with the guidance of words and just when I was going deeper, this loud shahnai tune burst forth and I was literally jerked out.

Every few minutes, for something or other everybody was asked to clap their hands loudly. Many members from the internal circle would share their experiences in great detail and then all would clap.

Sattwik food

There were no fruits, no salads, even vegetable preparations were more of gravy and less of vegetable pieces. They would tell during lectures that good nourishment for the physical body is important, with fresh fruits and vegetables, but also tell stories that on spiritual path, one shouldn’t bother about food.

4 toilets and 4 bathrooms for 50 people

There were 4 toilets (total 5 but one was locked up due to some plumbing problem) and 4 bathrooms for the ladies. The food didn’t make bowel movements easy and one didn’t get enough time for the toilet.

Importance of Shramadan

7 to 9 am was the time for Shramadan. They extolled the virtues of cleaning the toilets because ‘cleaning the shit of others would clean all your inner shit.’ I was not averse to cleaning toilets and took up the task of brooming and mopping two ladies' dormitories and cleaning the toilets with another girl.

                                                        Cramped dormitory with bunk beds
We were so efficient in our work that we could finish fast and get the bathroom for taking a good bath. Otherwise from the moment you enter for bath, there are people waiting outside and they will keep on knocking for you to come out.

All the participants were called ‘masters’ and ‘enlightened beings’ and it was shocking for me to see how the enlightened ladies were behaving. There would be dried shit on the toilet bowl, which they could have easily washed off immediately with the health faucet. They would tear off a long piece of toilet tissue, use just the center portion and throw it on the floor or into the toilet bowl, in spite of the repeated instructions to throw them into the waste basket kept inside the toilet.

Then I would find sanitary napkins inside the small bowl in the bathroom (to keep tooth brush and paste). It was much beyond my imagination. On the 7^th day, there was demand for toilet cleaning shramadan, so I was in the kitchen wiping the dinner plates dry. When I came back to the dormitory, to my horror, I saw see three male participants cleaning the toilets. Imagine men emptying the toilet baskets with used sanitary napkins! Our masters were teaching that ‘All are One!’ The men took too much time to finish the work, so we had to start bathing while they were still cleaning the bathrooms.

A group of 70 participants removed all the stones (to make the land cultivable, they had to remove the stones) in two days, which couldn’t be completed in five years. 20 truckloads of stones were cleared.

                                                               Cleaning the Goshala

Psychokinesis

We were told that we will bend spoons through psychokinesis during second semester. A genuine doubt came to my mind why these enlightened masters cannot remove stones from the land through psychokinesis. 

HUGGING spirituality

It was very amusing to see people hugging all the time. During many exercises that our masters guided us, we were asked to hug. We told the other five in our group that we are not comfortable hugging and would just do ‘Namaste”. One girl understood, who told, ‘For whatever reasons you choose to do that, we respect that.’ But I could see the shock and slight anger on another girl’s face. And the hugs were not just casual hugs. The front portions of the bodies are totally in contact, both hands tightly holding the other’s body and they would stand like that for at least a minute.

Next day in the class the master told, ‘Some people think hugging should not be done. But when you are high in spirituality, you will embrace every one.’ I was glad that I was not ‘high in spirituality’. One day our master told that the person who was doing the organizing job was carrying out such an efficient work that everyone should  (total 133 participants) hug him before going off for shramadan.

In the whole campus there were no idols (this is supposed to be ‘Navya Takshashila'), no lighting of lamps, or even candles, and chanting of mantras.

Numbing your brains

Lack of sleep and nutritious food, along with continuous exposure to loud sound would numb the participants' brains and make them highly suggestible. Continuously interesting information was being fed. Like it was a Divine land, we were fortunate to be associated with them. Galactic stations are established around the area and the information that was being emanated would be transmitted across the galaxies.

Lord Hanuman considers the main Guru his ‘buddy’ and puts hand on his shoulder. Narada maharshi appears in physical form in front of him. Krishna and other celestial bodies roam around in the campus. So we should take part in building up this huge campus. One of the organizers was walking around, collecting the golden ear rings, bangles, written out checks and other things in her outstretched pallu of sari! She told anything can be donated. This was supposed to be a free training. There were different groups, each with a leader. The leaders told the group members that apart from the things that were donated, each one should contribute Rs. 1000/- each.

Ready made masters

Many of the masters taking classes had just finished the course (20 days course and they are ‘masters’) and they would copy information from different books and read it out from the screen. This was 12^th SCTP program and it was surprising to see they could not make professional power point presentations. The letters were too small, the contrast was horrible and since we couldn’t see, they had to just read them out.

There were no feedback forms for us to fill.

When questions were asked, they were fumbling to respond. One person would just go and sit on his chair with clasped hands, looking down. Then he would come up with some flimsy response.

Lesson for me?

I believe that every incident in life has a hidden lesson in it. The day our master told, ‘Whatever you think of me is none of my business,’  there lit a thousand watt bulb in my brain. It was so liberating! Throughout my life I have been a gentle and obedient person, but this brought out a different aspect in me for the remaining period of the stay.

Secondly, the master told, ‘You should be courageous and speak out when you see injustice.’ And that is why I am writing this.