Now that I’ve been reading experiences on the living in joy site for a bit more than a year I think it’s my turn to share my adventures with Amma Bhagavan.

I did the 21 day process this year in August together with the American group and a whole bunch of South Americans, Italians and a few other nationalities (there was even one guy from Turkey).

Being able to participate in this course was like a dream coming true. I had been to Golden City last summer where I did a 10 day process. The people I met then , the things I witnessed and the circumstances which had led me to this place in the first place, caused an incredibly deep desire to come back next summer ( I work as a teacher so I can only come in the summer months).
Before I flew to India I had spent four days in Copenhagen where I attended a preparatory course. It was a very good preparation and quite intense .Many people had to laugh really hard after Oneness Blessings but I had very good samskarashuddi experiences. In fact I had to scream so hard that one lady told me later that it had made her think of primal scream therapy.
From the moment on I stepped onto the Lufthansa plane , Amma Bhagavan took over.
They had seated me next to a beautiful Indian woman from Chennai. We had a very nice conversation. It turned out that she was Muslim and that she had attended a workshop on non-violent communication in France. She was also a trained psychologist but unsatisfied with the old-fashioned and non-progressive classes taught at Indian unis.
She also told me that she runs an orphanage for boys from the age of 4-15.
I immediately had the idea to visit her after the course and give Oneness Blessing to the kids (I’d like to thank people who had done similar things and who had posted on livinginjoy. I think Alexis gave Oneness Blessings to blind kids. If they wouldn’t have done that, I might not have had the same idea.)She gave me her address in Chennai and I promised to visit her after the course.

As for the process. I spent my time on the campus on automatic.
That’s to say I woke up , went to the meditation hall, invoked the presence and got blown away by the divine energies. Right from the beginning I had very intense bodily reactions.
They were in fact so intense that one participant asked me whether I was epileptic.
I also had to moan a lot and an outsider would most certainly have thought that I was suffering a lot. In fact I was enjoying it very much. It was like being obsessed by benevolent forces. Almost every night we went to meditate in front of the cosmic beings.
I think in the Jewish tradition there is this saying that staring at God with your eyes open would make you go blind because he is so much light that your eyes couldn’t handle it.
Meditating in front of the cosmic beings comes close to staring at the divine source.

It could happen that it was impossible for me to walk at a normal pace after we meditated with them. I could only walk extremely slow. After one or two steps I was totally exhausted and I had to stop. I also experienced laughing attacks
We had the chance to attend three darshans with Sri Bhagavan and one with Amma ( on her birthday).
The atmosphere and vibes during the lawn darshans with Bhagavan are incredible.
I like electronic dance music and a good deejay can raise the energy of the dancing crowd by working towards a peak when the bass drops in. Bhagavan created a similar experience by being in total silence. He pumped up the silence like a deejay does with his beats so that people went crazy and ecstatic. Amma’s blessings during her birthday darshan were equally powerful.
I had a very strong experience during the third darshan with Bhagavan . When he was leaving his house and heading for his chair I started to have very heavy bodily reactions. I couldn’t control my body and I slumped down. I automatically bowed and went into a praying position. I couldn’t do anything, I was praying on automatic.
At the end of darshan an Indian youngster talked to me and said that he was totally impressed by my way of praying. He said I must be full of grace and he asked me about personal miracles and what I was seeing. I couldn’t really explain to him that I wasn’t doing or seeing anything. Everything happened automatically.

Besides these heavy bodily reactions( which were kind of proof that the divine,AmmaBhagavan were working on me) I didn’t have the impression that I was gaining many insights or spiritual realizations during the first couple of days of the retreat.
Actually I was quite worried about my capabilities to understand so called “ higher spiritual truths”. When people discussed spiritual ideas , I used to feel slightly inferior because I couldn’t really participate in their discussions.

But as Amma Bhagavan say : if there are six billion people there are six billion different forms of enlightenment and I too gradually entered the flow of spiritual knowledge.
When I broke my mouna at the end of the course I felt truly happy.
Like the year before the divine had let me to meet and befriend incredible human beings and the experiences I had, made absolute sense at the end of the course.

One of the greatest blessings was definitely the grace of spending a few seconds in the divine presence of Sri Anandagiriji. During my ten day course last year I had met an Indian guy called Sunil who is now working in the U.S. He became a very dear friend of mine.
When Anandagiriji used to travel to the U.S. for workshop reasons he flew to Chicago where my friend Sunil lived at the time. Anandagiriji slept at Sunil’s place and they spent some time together. Since I spent almost my whole time with Sunil last summer I was lucky to be with him when Anandagiriji came to our campus to welcome the coordinators of the South American group (Christobal and Olga and a couple of other people) Sunil introduced me to him and I was able to join this intimate meeting of friends.
When Sunil said good-bye to Anandagiriji this evening he did something very important.
He bowed and touched Anandagirijis feet.
I was really impressed back then and I learned that in the Hindu tradition there’s this belief that if you touch the feet of a saint, you will receive his blessings. ( hence the importance of the really powerful padukas)
This summer I met Anandagiriji twice out of the two lectures he gave during the course . The first time was when he was standing on the lawn of our campus. I guess he wouldn’t have minded ( like the other dasas) if I had given him a hug but when I stood before him I was totally in awe. I would never have dared to hug him.
I stood some three metres away from him and I still felt an urge to step back . Such is his aura.(Sunil told me after my return from India that Anandagiriji’s name means “ mountain of bliss”.)I could only say a few words and then I did the same thing as Sunil. I fell to my knees and touched Anandagiriji’s feet. I immediately started to cry and he spoke the words “Shanti, Shanti, Shanti” to me. It was truly a moment of grace which I’ll never forget.
The other time I met him was very short. I met him in the hallway where he greeted me very heartily.

As I said already at the end of the retreat I was a very happy young men . However the last day in India, the day of my departure was a very special day. It was like the “icing on the spiritual cake.”
I left Golden City for Chennai together with three other people at 08.00 in the morning.
We spent some time doing shopping in Chennai and then I told the others about that lady which I had met on the plane. I invited them to come with me to the orphanage and put into practice our newly divine gift of transferring Oneness Blessing.
It took some time before we found Shahzenan’s office but we finally made it.
She greeted me very heartily and when I told her that I had brought some friends it was like “ Your friends are my friends”. She took us for lunch in a very stylish and delicious Chinese restaurant ( probably the best Chinese food I’ve ever had in my life).
This lady was very strongly rooted in her religion, Islam, and she was naturally in the “ presence”. We spoke about Islam and she explained some things to us.
I’ve always felt a strong connection to the Muslim world and to its beautiful religious culture. How wonderful is it to structure one’s day around God( which is what they do through their prayer times)
After lunch we went to see a Hindu temple before we finally headed for the orphanage.

Unfortunately we have no pictures of our first Oneness Blessing course but it was truly a heart rendering experience.There were approximately forty-five kids from the age of four to fifteen.Almost all of them came for Oneness Blessing and healing. Not all of them had lost their parents( some of them live in remote villages and they spend their term in the city) but I could feel the different degrees of suffering these little creatures had already experienced in their lives when I touched their heads. I simply had to hug some of them after I had given Oneness Blessing. Waves of compassion flooded my body and at the end I had to cry.
Later we were shown the orphanage and we had a chai with the staff.
This incredible day which was totally “planned” by the divine( we didn’t have to do anything, beautiful things were constantly happening ) ended with a dinner invitation at Shahzena’s house (somewhere in the Beverly hills of Chennai).

We met her sons and shortly before we left for the airport we gave a powerful Oneness Blessing to the family.

There couldn’t have been a more beautiful end to this summer of grace. All of us four people will never forget this day.

I’d like to thank all the people at onenessuniversity for their inspiring work and the inspiration and love they’ve given me .

I’d like to finish with a story I just received from a close friend a few days ago .

Namasté to all of you .( also to the people in Kopenhagen with whom I did the prep course.
I guess you are counting the days . It will be even better than you can imagine now.)
May divine grace fill every moment of your life.
Amma Bhagavan Jay !!!!!!!!!!!!

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A story from India
(written down from a taped talk by Rick Jarow’s “Practise of abundance”

in which a very determined yogi meditated for thousands of years in order to have the vision of Vishnu, the all pervading presence of God.

And through his meditation he encountered his scarcity and he breathed it through. He worked through impatience, he worked through the need to have things turn out the way he wanted them to turn out. He let go of the need to control the outcome, another symptom of abundance. And he had the courage to persist and the commitment to go on through the rain, through the wind, through the heat, for abundance does not mean addiction to pleasurable circumstances, but abundance is the power to sustain your vision through any and all circumstance because it is coming from a deep, deep source.

And finally after eons had passed Vishnu the God himself appeared to this yogi and said: “What can I do for you? You have earned a boon.” And the yogi replied: “When I began my meditation, I wanted many things. But now I find that I no longer desire anything, being here, seeing you is boon enough. For I was looking for pieces of glass and I have found a beautiful diamond; I do not want anything.” The lord Vishnu said: “I really appreciate that, but I have to give you something, for it is the cosmic law. What can I give you?”

So ultimately the yogi settled for the boon that wherever he went in life, where he walked, the grass would spring up, the flowers would emerge from the trees and smiles would come to the hearts of people. But this would always happen behind him, he would never see it, he would just keep walking.

Walking down the road that the poet Walt Whitman walked upon when he said:

“Hence force I seek not good fortune, for I am good fortune.”

P.S. The name and address of the excellent Chinese restaurant in Chennai is

Mainland China
3rd floor Hotel Tulip Aruna Complex, 144, Sterling road,
Nungambakkam, Chennai