The Gestalt

In 1983 when I was visiting India, a friend told me about a man who was reputed to be a powerful mystic. Soon after, an American couple who were friends of mine joined me. They were both medical doctors and very skeptical about mystical experiences. However, the wife decided to join me in the more than 100-mile drive to meet this mystic. 

When we arrived, the man asked me in my native language, “With what intent (bhavana) do you come?”

“Darshan,” I answered. This word had a double meaning. It could mean either “seeing a holy person,” or “seeing the whole picture of the puzzle of your life, the gestalt.” I meant the latter and felt that he understood. 

“Okay, if you want to experience darshan, go into that room,” he said, pointing to his assistant to show me the way. The assistant unlocked the door to the room. 

It was a big hall filled with statues of Hindu deities. As a native of India, I started to explain to my friend who the statues represented and what they symbolized. My hands were in my pockets as we carried on this intellectual conversation.

“This is not how you have a darshan.” The voice of the assistant surprised me. He had come into the room without our being aware. 

Before we could look behind us, he put one hand on the back of my head and another on my stomach and, instantly, I was flat on the floor on my nose. His touch was light, as if he had flipped me over with only two of his fingers. I had no idea what had happened. 

I then witnessed the molecules of my body gently floating in all directions, as if my body were disintegrating into thin air. The colors were soft and beautiful. There was a very soothing, beautiful sound. It was not music; it was something beyond that. I felt this may be what happens when one dies. However, I could not tell if I had already died, or if I were merely experiencing what death would be like. 

Gradually, I came back. I was disoriented. It took me several minutes before I could sit up. I looked at my friend. She, too, was lying flat on her face. It also took her some time before she could sit up. 

I looked at her as if to ask, what happened? She quietly shook her head, as if to say, I don’t know. We did not speak. I realized the futility of ever being able to put words to my experience. How could I ask her to put words to hers?

We came out of the room and the holy man had a big smile on his face. It was a mischievous grin, as if he knew what had happened to us inside the hall. “So, you had a darshan?” he said.

“Yes I did, Sir,” I answered. He then gave me a mantra to recite, which I accepted.

My American friend had a camera hanging around her neck. “You want to take pictures?” the mystic asked her. 

She pointed to a nearby sign that said, “No Photography.” Earlier we had seen a man try to quietly sneak a picture, and he was severely chastised by the assistant.

The mystic said, “No, you can take as many pictures as you want. No one will stop you.” My friend took perhaps ten slides of the mystic before we left. 

Soon after this visit, my American friends returned to the U.S. while I remained in India. Not long afterward, my friend called me. She said, “All the slides I took are beautiful! I will get copies made and send them to you upon your return.” She was still in the afterglow of her experience. But just a week later, she called me again. “I don’t know what happened!” she said. “All the slides of the holy man are now blank, while all the other pictures on the roll are intact! How can this be?” She repeated herself several times, obviously stunned. 

Over the next few days after our visit to the holy man, doubts started to creep into my mind about what we had experienced. 

“I don’t even know that guy,” I rationalized. “Maybe he hypnotized me. I’m not about to use a mantra from someone who might have conned me.” 

I went to see Sacha Baba to share my experience and ask him what the mantra given by the mystic meant. He closed his eyes and kept silent for what seemed like a long time. Then he opened his eyes and said, “The meaning of the mantra will be told to you in your dreams.”

 “When?” I asked. “How soon?”

“In a week or so,” he said with a gentle, knowing smile. Something in his smile made me aware of how much my ego had kicked in. I wanted to control even time itself!

During the next couple of weeks, I slept with a pen and notebook beside my bed. When no dreams came, I gave up. I determined that it was a hoax and that Sacha Baba didn’t know what the mantra meant, so he had covered-up by saying, “Wait for a dream.” I decided to stop keeping a pen and notebook beside my bed. I was not going to be part of this game any longer.

That night, I was awakened by a thunderous sound. It picked me up out of the bed and dropped me on the floor with a loud thud. It was a strong, commanding voice saying, You can experience me, but you cannot comprehend me! The voice sounded angry and irritated, almost scolding. It conveyed a sense of, You should know this kindergarten stuff already!

I sat up, my legs still stretched out in front of me on the floor. I looked at the bed and realized I had been lifted up at least two feet before I was thrown on the floor. This was not just a startling dream that had caused me to jump out of bed. It felt like levitation. 

I had heard of such events happening in mythology, but I never expected to experience such a thing. Laughing, I asked myself, “How do you get lifted up that high and thrown out of bed by a sound?” I shook my head in disbelief, saying aloud to myself repeatedly, “How would I ever tell this story to my children and grandchildren? They would never believe me!” I stayed there on the floor, right where the sound had dropped me, until finally dawn came and sunlight started to fill the room.

After that, I stopped trying to analyze any of my experiences. I also started repeating the mantra day in and day out. I wrote the mantra over and over, filling pages and pages of paper. I was learning to type, so I typed the mantra over and over again. Even in my sleep, I was repeating it, though I didn’t know what it meant. Ultimately, the words became a part of my being.Five years to the day after I was thrown out of bed, I felt a powerful presence enter the room and move toward me. Somehow, I knew that presence was the mantra. It was a palpable, almost physical sensation that I could never fully describe. Simultaneously, the meaning of those words I’d been repeating became clear: Thine, not mine, will be done.