Excerpt from: ‘Expecting To Fly: In Search Of the Spirit’ by Patrick Sheridan.
A book charting a personal spiritual quest and detailed experience in Sahaja Yoga from its earliest days in the West.
Chapter 22: Fledgling flight. Page 227
"Several more years passed before the cycles of change and transformation brought me up out of the maya* again. This was a really powerful experience and one that made me quite certain that events were gaining momentum. The scale of the vision was awesome, revealing the entire history of humanity to be but a precursor to a glorious, transcendent future, and confirming that the real story of our existence has yet to begin.
‘The feeling grows over several days, a sense that something is rising from deep within me. It comes to a head suddenly, without warning. There is a great wrench in my heart and I am instantly separated from ‘myself’ in an extraordinary way. To my astonishment, I am looking at a kind of caricature of myself, a sort of robot running a ridiculous program of fixed attitudes and repetitive routines. I experience a real feeling of shock. This horrendous bundle of madness cannot be me! No, it is not me; but then who, or what, am I?
Floating Free
The next moment I realise I am floating free, a limitless, formless being of pure joy. It is my ego I am looking at, or rather the ego of the limited being I had thought myself to be. Almost immediately, in a way impossible to explain, I recognise that I am looking at the inner surface of a kind of shell that surrounds me. A piece of the shell has broken away, allowing me to become aware of limitless space beyond. It is like a piece of the outer pod of a beautiful divine seed or of a wondrous cosmic egg. I have broken out of my old existence into something new and wonderful.
For hours I remain in an ego-less state. [I do not have a very clear recollection of where I was or what I was doing during this period, only of some of the things I was feeling. Yet I seem to have done the things I needed to do, such as driving a car or speaking to people.] At some point I experience myself flowing throughout a building, apparently as electricity moving through the electrical wiring system. I also have the exhilarating experience of existing as a small, individual point of consciousness that is free to move anywhere and everywhere. It is like becoming a single pixel in a living 3D kaleidoscope of dancing images that make up the appearance of reality, moving joyously around the room in a sort of carefree conga dance to become randomly a part of everyone and everything.
I see Ganesha** existing everywhere, formless yet imbued with form, a multi-dimensional being manifesting in three-dimensional space in a way that looks right and yet defies any attempt I make to grasp it. Life is absolutely simple, pure and intense, and everyone has a huge, joyous heart dancing deep within. The initial intensity of the experience gradually dies down a little, but continues to flow in the days that follow. I feel powerful emotions. My feelings have come back to life in a way that I have not felt since my youth. They are so intense that at times I find it hard to believe that friends I have not seen for twenty or thirty years are not about to walk in the door.
Internal Machinery
I feel that this is the real manifestation of Sahaja Yoga, the full potential that Shri Mataji has always talked about. The kundalini and the chakras have gone into action like a dynamic, well-lubricated
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| The Author, standing next to Shri Mataji on her left, 1976 |
machine, and vibratory awareness has suddenly become amazing. I can feel everything in my own and other people’s chakras with what seems like digital precision. At work I find it hard to concentrate on what people are saying to me because I am so fascinated by the things I am feeling from them.
Mantras work like magic, the primordial cadence of the Sanskrit language at one with the energy of the subtle system. I can hear the power resonating in my voice as I speak; the sound echoing back from the walls of the room as the words rip through time and space and penetrate deeper realities beyond. I need only utter a single mantra to release a flood of vibrations that propel me deep into mediation for hours. It is as if I have been trying to drive a car through slippery mud for years and have suddenly struck firm, dry tarmac. I have only to put my foot down to accelerate with all the power I could wish for.
Deeply profound experiences occur without warning. I sit in front of Shri Mataji’s photograph and the bottom half of my body becomes instantly cool. A moment later the top half is completely cool. Then I realise this is just a prelude to the main body of the kundalini rising, and it ascends like a broad, majestic, royal golden cobra. As it touches the top of my head, I touch eternity, and a wall of thoughtless awareness descends. The state of meditation is rock-solid, the detachment absolute, as if the whole world is suspended in glass. It is absolutely awesome.
Carrying Paradise
I walk around a DIY store, and it is as if a portal into a higher world has materialised in the air above me. It is a dimension of blissful existence straight out of the Saundarya Lahari (‘the flood of beauty’, an ancient Sanskrit work describing the qualities of the Goddess). I feel an immaculate, soft, golden-white purity within me I perceive my subtle system as a ladder I need to climb up to this paradise, my body a temporary necessity to be left behind when I reach it. I feel a sort of luminous, blissful umbrella open over the top of my head, golden and lustrous with vibrant colour, as though infused with living gems. A slow, broad river of vibrations is flowing up my spine, and the Sahasrara chakra at the top of my head suddenly opens out so wide it seems to turn itself inside out in the most unbelievable way.
I smile a greeting as a visitor comes into the room. I am feeling rather like a half-hatched bird of paradise, an enjoyable confusion of vibrations, feathers and petals. To my surprise, a golden ray travels out from my heart and into the person I am greeting. I somehow expect a reciprocal ray to return but instead back comes a whole bundle of information about this person’s chakras, complete with attached physical, mental and emotional sensations. I feel like a cartoon character that has inadvertently swallowed something too big for its body. I gulp and my smile becomes a little fixed for a moment, but then I feel my chakras start to work on the problems and I feel happy about that. Within an hour or two everything has worked out and I feel back to normal.
I am walking along the pavement near my house and I feel an intoxicating joy begin to permeate my being. It is as if the whole world is saturated with bliss and it is seeping into me through all of the pores of my skin. I feel totally ecstatic just to exist, and the everyday scene of the street where I live is transformed into the most beautiful place on earth. As I place the key in the lock of my front door, I feel I am a character in a magical fairy tale, living a perfect, utterly fulfilled existence. Deep in sleep, I dream of a great mountain of bliss. It is a great, eternal flame, luminous, blissful; incandescent with cool, white fire. It is the absolute promise of immortality. I cry out and run to place my hands at the foot of the mountain. The light is pure, divine love, and my hands become fused to its surface. A miraculous power flows into my arms, transforming the molecules of my being into a blissful, divine substance. I am instantly wide awake and sit bolt upright in bed, yelling in excitement.
Thoughtless Awareness
Thoughtless awareness is a constant and comforting companion, a profound sense of oneness that envelops and binds me to my surroundings in a great cushion of love. I see that ordinary people sense this oneness and are drawn to it, its presence awakening the innate goodness and simplicity in them. They forget their everyday distractions and begin spontaneously to talk of deeper things. I feel myself entering further and further into the ocean of consciousness that surrounds me, and the less concrete the objects of the everyday world become, the more solid the foundation of reality seems to be.
The constant play of maya halts abruptly, as if I have put my feet down through shifting waters onto solid rock. Here, at the centre of everything, exists the almighty sacred mother, the foundation of reality itself, and in the hub of her being is a golden peace where all is utterly pure and blissful. Here the miraculous seems commonplace, and I see that atomic structures can be manipulated with the attention. It makes modern technology and medical science look sadly primitive, but I note it with only passing interest, because I am awakening into an eternal divine reality of such fabulous wonder and beauty that words for it simply do not exist.’
* Maya - The illusion of reality created by the mind through projection
** Ganesha - The innate innocence within everyone, personified as an eternal child.
‘Expecting To Fly: In Search Of The Spirit’
Available on Amazon at https://amzn.eu/d/csQuWCP
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