Master’s Testing During Swami’s Yoga Samadhi

Nityanandaji:

This is my experience during my first trip to India, in May of that year (1998), Swami invited a group of people, for a yoga samadhi, an experience of him leaving his body and soul traveling, and all the blessings that comes around that. It’s a yoga.

We were all beginners in the reality knowledge we are studying, even though the spectrum of people including amazing 30-year meditators. And there were people brand new to meditation, like me.

Swami invited me especially because I’m a medical doctor. He said, “You need to take care of my body. You need to protect my body.” He had done his first yoga samadhi earlier with a group of Indian devotees in a house in Penukonda. The strictness of the dikshas is to protect his body while he was gone, but this was not fully appreciated by the devotees. During that first yoga, the village learned that Swami had taken a yoga samadhi. But they misunderstood.

He was just a teenager and already revered by thousands of people. If he went out in the village he’d be surrounded by the whole village in the amount of time it takes for them to come from wherever they are, to him. Many of us have seen him surrounded by thousands of people who wanted to touch him, who would do anything to touch his body. He just comes and sits and jokes with us. We should appreciate that.

They had learned his yoga samadhi was happening and a huge crowd came and surrounded the house. The police came and said, “If there is a dead body it needs to get burned.”

The people taking care said, “Please, please, please, don’t go in, don’t go in. He’s coming back, he’s coming back!” It’s so much like that story of Baba, isn’t it? The officials wanted to bury Baba when he was in yoga samadhi; they mistook him for dead. It’s in the SRI SAI SATCHARITRA. There is a Datta energy thread here.

Ultimately the police waited, but the devotees got in. In their devotion they poured kilos and kilos of flowers on his body. They buried his body in a mountain of flowers. In doing so, his neck moved a little bit to one side, and when he came back to his body, he had nerve damage in one arm and couldn’t use that arm. He had to spend several months in the supernatural channels to regenerate his body. We are not focusing on the body, but you have to take care of the body. He shared with me that he was going to do another yoga samadhi and asked if I could come and take care of his body and protect his body. I said, “Of course.” He said, “You can examine me every few hours if you like,” because I had a very skeptical mind. I was operating at the level of, ‘What have you shown me lately?’, wondering what I could prove for myself based on my existing belief system and expectations. He was happy to accommodate my thoughts. He was leading me down a beautiful path.

He said people around him would have the most amazing meditation experiences. “Some of them will soul travel with me to the Divine Court. Some of them will have incredible experiences. They will all receive incredible blessings that will take many years to digest and understand. You have to take care of them too, because some of them might go out too far.” I said, “Ok.” By now I was starting to wonder what was in this for me. It sounded like a pretty good experience. I had been in India for a couple of months with him and was just beginning to understand the reality of meditation energy and the bliss of that trance. I was a little addicted to it.

He said, “No worries, no worries. I promise you, in return for your service, there’ll be an amazing power object growing in my body during these experiences. It’s a special kind of a lingam, and it’s a great high healing object.”

That was my whole ambition! The reason why I had come to meet Swami in the first place was to master healing. He said, “I’ll give you that, and you can take it to your clinic, it’ll do wonders.” I said, “That sounds great.”

So, the yoga samadhi happened just as he had explained. One of my dikshas (rules) was not to sleep the entire time. He took samadhi several times. matajI wrote about thIs In her book beautIfullY. The people that were meditating, it was remarkable to see them in trance and to feel the energy. I mean, this place was transported to another vibrational realm. Everything he said about the blessings that would flow were exactly as he described.

I did get to experience, examine, and verify the ‘deadness’ of his body. The reality is that he can command on life and death. He can take his soul from his body, do something, then come back into that body. I can verify that. That was a miracle that took me many years to appreciate the blessing of. It was quite a miracle. When he came back, when he walked out of this door unexpectedly, I almost fell over. I knew he’d said he was going to come back, but the doctor part of me had all these questions, and I was planning my exit strategy. It was a dead body! For twenty-eight hours! Then he proceeded to give incredible teachings and transmissions for days on end. Whenever I’d catch his eyes, he would say, a little bit under his breath, “Oh, your power object is coming!”

My expectation was growing, my happiness - my pseudo-happiness that is. Then one night, the next night, he talked for almost 18 straight hours. That next night he sat at his dhuni with a group of two-dozen people and taught about the illusion circles. Amazing knowledge. He’d gotten permission during this samadhi to release the Shakti Channels (access God’s pure Cosmic Energy) to the students. And he did. He hasn’t stopped since! Finally, at about 3:00 in the morning, he sent everybody into the Baba temple to sit and wait, while he sat outside with one student. He gave me a kind of a clue, like, “Okay, your power object is coming.” It meant that he was ready to give birth to the Ganesh lingam. The only people who knew that this story was unfolding, were Swami, me, and Mataji. I had shared the story with her while he was in yoga samadhi.

I was ready, sitting with my towels in my hand. He had taught that an atma lingam would come with a lot of blood and I had to catch it with my own hands. I was on pins and needles. Swami walked in and moved directly onto the Baba stage. The stage at that time was simple, a bare aside from the Baba statue, and a big bright orange ‘Om’ behind him.

Swami walked up on the stage, then started drinking water. At the time, I didn’t know what was happening. Since then, I’ve seen many atma lingams born and know he drinks water right before giving the birth. Boom! Suddenly Swami gave birth to a Ganesh lingam, and the other student on the stage with him caught it! Then Swami announced how lucky that guy was to catch it, it was given to him. Then Swami left the temple, and that was that.

What was going on? I never ever felt a punch like that before in my life. The only word that came to my mind was “liar.” I’m telling the truth! I had high expectations there. I felt it was quite unfair and I was very hurt. As a human being, I was very hurt. That was one of the worst nights in my life. I mean, it wasn’t much of a night. There wasn’t anywhere to go for privacy in the ashram. The Baba temple was the only place anyone could spend time. Behind Baba were Swami’s private quarters. There was nothing above (Jesus temple had not been built yet). There was nothing outside other than cobras, weeds, and scorpions. No lawns, no gardens, no Dwarkamai. There was only the hut next to Hanuman and Swami’s swing. We were all sleeping in the Baba temple. I cried myself to sleep. It was a terrible cry. It wasn’t really crying; it was more just torment of raw heart pain.

I don’t know when I finally went to sleep, but I woke up to the wind blowing a door open and slamming it shut over and over next to my head. Constantly, slamming, boom, boom, boom, boom. It was very poetic. It kept rhythm with the pounding in my head.

The rest of that day felt like the creation was reflecting my inner pain to me to make sure I got the lesson. Everything that happened, everywhere I turned, it seemed I was an outcast! There was a student-led satang going on, it had already started before I woke up. I came out, but no one would make any room for me to sit down. It was like I didn’t even exist! No one but Mataji knew of my little private drama. So, I just sat down on a big pile of rice bags in the corner while everybody ignored me. I wasn’t welcomed to participate if I’d tried. But I didn’t try. When Swami got up that morning, he had immediately jumped in a car and left the ashram! There was no chance for me to talk to him. I was ready to do what I thought was the “right thing,” and that is to stand up for myself. I didn’t know how; I had no idea. Thank God, Swami didn’t give me the chance. I endured the day as an outcast. I wasn’t allowed to join this discussion, I wasn’t allowed to sit there. Swami didn’t come back until the next day. During that time, if there would have been a taxi service, if there would have been a bus, if there would have been a phone, I would have gone out, left the ashram. But there was no way to leave. I’m not kidding. There was literally no way to get help from the outside world!

Swami came back late afternoon the next day. I was still spinning. I’ve experienced miracles, I’ve seen people receiving blessings, I’ve seen him leave his body, I’ve seen him giving birth to an atma lingam. Those are all divinely made things. I’d also been inside that energy. I’d seen everybody on the greatest high when they came out of that night. It seemed to me that verybody was so happy, except me.

When he came back, he immediately asked if everybody had eaten dinner. Nobody had eaten, so we had food ordered from a local hotel, and everybody sat on the ground, eating. I didn’t have an appetite. He went and sat by himself in his swing. He said to the whole group, “Come over when you’re done eating”. I waited a few minutes, then went over and sat down in front of him. He was just swinging and watching me intently, pure eye contact. I was looking back at him, feeling my confused state inside. Before I could say anything, he said, “Are you happy?” That seemed to be the most unexpected comment he could’ve made! It shocked me. Then he said again, “Are you happy?” Then I got it. I got it! I realized something new.

What I realized was, I actually was happy! I was happy to be sitting in his presence. I was happy! I realized I was happy without being attached to any physical ‘thing’. I didn’t need some object to be happy. I didn’t say anything. It was a blessing like an arrow hitting me. Sai Kaleshwar always says, the greatness of the master is their use of sankalpam to heal a soul, to create something great, like sculpting a raw diamond into a priceless gem. That was a stroke like that.

Then the rest of the group came over, and he gave a beautiful talk. To this day, I have no idea what he talked about that evening after the others joined. I was in bliss. After the talk, as we were walking back to the Baba mandir, he put his arm around me as we walked together. He said, “What do you want?” I said, “Only what you want to give me.” From this experience I learned a priceless lesson in spiritual morality. We all know it is important to tell the truth. But from the spiritual point of view, what matters more is helping the soul, lifting the soul whatever it takes to do that. Swami had given me something of much greater value than any object could ever be. He demonstrated to me what is truly valuable and what’s not. I am so grateful for this experience.