Can you share the entire summary of your spiritual life?
07.06.2025 09:53
Then, in March 2011, through friends and my girlfriend at the time I was introduced to the local branch of the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids, and began to more deeply explore Celtic Pagan spirituality. I also engaged in far more of a study and practice of ritual magic, expanding from the foundation my mom had taught me. All this was in addition to my continued “Indic Hindu” practices, never replacing them.
In 2012 I moved to Minneapolis for three years for college. From September 2012 through to February of 2013, I underwent a rather intensive period of many hours of Sadhana almost every day for nearly six months, mostly dedicated to Krishna, often forgetting to eat and so on. I made an extensive study of Krishna’s life from the Shastras, poring over and correlating many rare books from the Asian Collection of the University of Minnesota’s library (which I found overwhelmingly more insightful than actually taking classes there), and also learned and memorized the Damodarashtakam during this time. Damodarashtakam is my single favorite chant; I love the rich energy of it, like dark honey. I still chant it often.
So that was why I went to her and asked her if she would be my Guru and accept me as her disciple, and she said yes. Then, the following night, I took formal initiation under her and gained Mantra Diksha from her in a Tantrik Krishna Mantra.
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In 2017 I visited the Black Sun Lodge of the Ordo Templi Orientis for several days, staying as a guest in the home of the High Priestess, participated in the Gnostic Mass and other events with them and taught a workshop for them on correspondences of Hindu Dharma and Thelema, as well as leading group worship applying Hindu worship methodology to Thelemic deities.
On October 10, 2009 I wrote down the observation that it was common for me to feel that the present day was the best day of my life so far. A week later, on Dipavali Lakshmi Puja day, I wrote: “My life is improving so quickly that every few days, I surpass any experience of consciousness that I’ve ever had before. Today has been such a day. I’ve been so happy all day today!” That was my general state of mind at the time.
And vitally, this ever-present association was a positive one, because my parents showered me with love and care, never once screamed at me or physically hurt me (they did spank me occasionally when I misbehaved, but not hard enough to leave a mark), and made sure that this home, this shining temple-like atmosphere in which I dwelt, was a safe, loving environment in which I felt comfortable and happy. That right there inextricably tied Sanatana Dharma to a feeling of comfort and happiness in my psyche.
Importantly, my mom did not in any way force me to take Krishna specifically as my Ishta-Devata. She would’ve fully accepted many other choices. I simply knew within my heart that Krishna was the one for me. He was the beautiful blackness I saw behind my eyes when I closed them to sleep. He was the invisible light that hung everywhere in the air, living and watching and secretly smiling. He was the soft, warm, gentle, loving presence patiently waiting for every quiet moment when the tumble of my mind would still, and in those sudden little gaps in the rush of the world I would remember Him, and look and meet His sparkling gaze, and we would grin at each other in recognition. He never let me forget for too long that behind the world there lies an infinite ocean of beauty and joy. I learned the glint of His beauty, the smooth thirst-quenching note of His flute-song, the whiff of Tulasi. He is the very core of Home to my soul. He reached out and took my hand and led me to His path. There was never any doubt or question in my mind about this. I have always known that Shri Krishna is my Ishta Devata. My relationship with Krishna always felt like He was my best friend, and specifically older than me but only by a little, something like a big brother.
My mom kept thirty-six holy images enshrined on altars at home, and daily worshiped each of them with home Puja and Aarti. Additional paintings of the Devatas adorned the walls of every room in the house except bathrooms. I knew Their faces before I knew the faces of any humans except my parents; the faces of Ganapati, Shiva, Parvati, Nandi, Venkateshwara Balaji, Surya, Hanuman, Krishna, Gayatri Mata, Vishwaviratswarupam, and also, very prominently, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and Brahmananda Saraswati. I knew their faces before I knew their names; they felt like my uncles and aunties to me. Krishna! Krishna was my favorite, right from the start. He felt closer to me than all the others.
While remaining heavily active at my hometown’s Hindu temple, I also became involved with a second temple. This temple’s very existence is secret and I am not at liberty to share a lot of details about it. I can say that it is a temple to a certain aspect of Lord Shiva. From my eighteenth birthday until I was twenty (less often before and after that period) I spent several hours in deep meditation there every Sunday, and also participated in various other rituals like Rudrabhishekam and others. Here is where I really got to know the still, silent, meditative side of Shiva; I would sink deep into a profound quiet there, meditating in the dark near the Shiva Linga. Also, I became significantly involved in the ritualistic management of the temple through channeling messages from the deity, to the point that it actually got complicated through coming into power struggles with much older men involved in temple management while I was still quite young but seen by several adults (not counting my own relatives) as a valid mouthpiece of the deity, and I ended up backing somewhat out of the whole thing because it got a little messy.
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I graduated that spring and returned to my hometown.
I grew up reading at hundreds of volumes of Amar Chitra Katha and similar comics, like many millions of young Hindus today. My mom also read me Cradle Tales of Hinduism by Sister Nivedita. As I got older, I read the Shastras themselves, and a lot of other books about various aspects of Sanatana Dharma. No one told me I had to read them; they were just made readily available (as in lying out on tables around the house, not just on a shelf), I saw the adults around me reading them almost every day, and I was curious. We would read them and then discuss them over meals every day; I was always excited to share what I’d read, my insights, etc.
The next summer, in 2004 when I was thirteen, I went with them back to the Grand Tetons. There, on a hike, I sensed a spiritual energy radiating from a source within the mountains. It was so powerful there was never a single moment there when this sacred presence was not foremost in my thoughts. I was drawn to the energy as if it beckoned me, and I followed it on foot. The energy overwhelmed all other thoughts in my awareness. I don’t know where I walked, for how many hours, or on what trails that led through the trees and boulders, but at last I reached a secluded, pristine lake. The energy drew me to a large rock on the shore. I climbed onto the rock and sat on its comfortable, smooth, unshadowed surface, which had soaked up the sun’s welcome warmth. There, I slipped naturally into a transcendental state.
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I meditated on the Mother’s beautiful form now radiating a golden hue, with a face beaming with joy, large eyes soft and elongated like lotus petals, sitting in a lotus flower, dressed in yellow silk and resplendent with ornaments, playing with a golden lotus in Her hand, perfect in every limb, worshipped by bowing devotees and giving refuge. I meditated on Her as the embodiment of the sacred knowledge of Sri Vidya, the embodiment of peace, the object of worship by all the Devas, bestowing all riches upon us all.
Then come the Thousand Names. Once I was really able to recite them, I could feel that they were surging with power. They would cool me in heat, or warm me like a fire in cold. It felt like a song far older and more primordial than me was being sung through me, using my body and even my mind as an instrument in the hands of a higher power. I have often likened my experience of reciting Lalita Sahasranama, and especially how I feel after reciting it, to polishing a mirror - my mind feels clearer, sharper, keener, purified, cleansed of negativity. Years later, when I first went to Bharat and bathed in the Ganga, the experience reminded me of subtle qualities of how I feel reciting Lalita Sahasranama. It gives rise to a total and encompassing inner tranquility of my mind - I say “gives rise” because it really feels like a lake or ocean of tranquil energy that rises up from the mantras to envelop me. I feel at peace, yet thrilling with power; a power that is not my own, but Lalitambika Mata’s; yet feels more reassuring even than my own, because it is so wise and absolutely controlled and benevolent. This tranquility lasts for a long time after chanting the Sahasranama. I find that my intellect becomes bright and clear and sharp. My ability to listen to and understand what others are saying seems polished. My mind feels calm and steady under any circumstances. An inner equipoise is established that lets me easily withdraw my senses from external objects if and when I want, without feeling “caught” on them or tempted against my will to engage with things.
“Communication with the celestial Beings is on this level of intensive outpouring of love. I think the history of every religion records such outpourings of love in the praise of God all over the world throughout the ages. There have been devotees who have stood and danced and fell in ecstasies in reciting the praise of God, singing the Glory of God. And this prayer is always very very useful. It just fills the being with something so rich that one can only enjoy it. It’s very enriching. It’s enriching to the whole life. Such a conception of prayer is something that is very, very valuable. But this becomes the condition of the heart only when the heart is expanded. In its unbounded extension the heart becomes unmanageable and when it becomes unmanageable it just pours out in such devotional outbursts.
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I was around age sixteen when I began noticing a real inner blooming/ripening of my spiritual practices. I discovered an unconditional happiness and fulfillment within myself that depended on nothing outside. At some point I realized I couldn’t easily remember the last time something interrupted this internal state of bliss consciousness, even for just a minute. It certainly lasted without even a slight break from the spring of 2007 through 2010. I wrote in the spring of 2010 that I didn’t think anything could interrupt it. That proved to be a little overconfident. My establishment of unconditional bliss has not weathered the challenges of adult life – heartbreak, unemployment struggles, etc. – quite that flawlessly, but honestly, really pretty well. It’s an inner buoyancy. Even when acutely stressful circumstances disrupt or ruffle me, it’s like trying to push a floating beach ball underwater; it’s hard to do, it keeps trying to slip away from you and spring to the surface, and as soon as the intense pressure lets up, my natural state of buoyant joy, which was always there just under the surface, pops back up of its own accord.
Furthermore, the example of her own life is the most inspiring thing I’ve ever seen any human being do. She taught me my values of compassion and what it means to truly respect other living beings, what really matters in the world. Her spiritual insights all ring so true to me. She seems to me to be everything that I think a true spiritual Guru should be.
While in Minneapolis, while I did visit the local Hindu temple, it was far away and I did not end up joining that community. Rather, for three years I plunged much more into the Minneapolis Western Pagan community, diving fairly deep into home spiritual practices involving the Goddess Morrigan and Faerie spirits, and regularly meeting with fellow practitioners of magic and Paganism, mostly in two fascinating metaphysical shops, Magus Books and Herbs and Eye of Horus, as well as meetups in various nearby parks. The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul are actually a major center of Paganism (humorously nicknamed Paganistan), with quite a large community, with fascinating characters ranging from an Australian shaman to all manner of witches, practitioners of Norse Paganism, Greek Paganism, and predominantly Wicca and Celtic traditions, including the familiar Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids. I participated in many events with the Covenant of the Goddess, specifically the Northern Dawn Council. I also participated in additional Wiccan group rituals and attended meetings with various Covens. I also began keeping a dream journal, which I continue to this day.
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Around when I was twelve years old, a huge number of very important new things came into my spiritual life all around the same time (roughly speaking). My mom began introducing me to Gurus. We travelled all over, visiting this Guru and that; she did research to find such opportunities. I met the one who I took as personal Guru, also another significant Guru, and a whole temple community, and I also began exploring some extensive new areas of spiritual practices with my family. Looking back, it’s kind of amazing it all came into my life about the same time, though it all felt quite natural at the time. I’ll go through them all sequentially, though they actually happened simultaneously/overlapping.
And yet another major development came in my spiritual life around the same time. Actually this one started a little earlier. I think I was eleven when my mom began training me in Manojavaha Siddhi, now popularly called “astral projection” though we didn’t call it that. We developed a ritualized framework that worked well for us, and held a dedicated practice session every Wednesday evening, for about eight years (minus when I was away traveling during school vacations). My stepdad participated most of that time as well, though he didn’t have the gift for it, but he recorded all our sessions on audio and transcribed them, and I actually have hundreds of printed pages of those transcripts somewhere. Obviously it's overwhelmingly more material than I can cover in detail here (and a lot of it – actually most of it I would be unwilling to share publicly anyway).
The early bedtime songs of Krishna changed. They became Stotrams and Ashtakams, like Maha Lakshmi Ashtakam. I heard my mother sing them night after night, and gradually I learned them and sang them with her. Soon enough I could sing and chant many such devotional compositions in Sanskrit from memory - and it never felt like a chore, like studying or school, it was just loving time spent with my mom. During the day, often we would sit together and chant Maha Ganesha Pancharatnam and the 108 names of Ganesha. Once while chanting the 108 names of Ganesha I saw a vision of Ganesha sitting before me on a golden throne, seeming to smile with pleased amusement (not with his mouth, but with his gleaming eyes and lively twitching movements of his trunk) as he listened to us and occasionally snacking on a laddu. I saw his rat snatch one of his laddus.
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In addition to my personal Krishna Mantra, on my Guru’s recommendation I also learned to chant the Lalita Sahasranama. From all the various mantras of Sanatana Dharma, she has chosen Lalita Sahasranama to recommend as a practice for relief from the perils in life and for spiritual progress, due to the great power of this hymn. She says that it produces quicker results than most hymns, mantras, and devotional songs available. While Sahasranamas giving material wellbeing and salvation are prescribed for all castes and in all stages of life, Lalita Sahasranama is especially suitable for householders, according to her.
That early brush with death left a mark on the whole rest of my spiritual life. I have never feared death. I feared pain, sure, but not death. Part of me actually wanted to go with the Yamaduta, and the fact that I get to die one day feels appealing. In fact, the inevitability of my death is profoundly comforting to me. I look forward to dying. I’m in no hurry but I feel quite positively toward Death.
The spiritual education that my mom gave me was not exclusively Hindu. She taught me about elves and fairies, explicitly teaching me that these were real, truly existing beings and that it was important I treat them with respect; she openly mocked people who didn’t believe in them as arrogant fools. She practiced eclectic forms of ceremonial magic and taught this art to me. She was a huge fan of the spiritual use of crystals; our house was full of crystals and she was always telling me about this or that crystal and its spiritual properties. I read a few books on certain Catholic saints like Joseph of Copertino.
So I began to practice Transcendental Meditation. But I actually only practiced it for about two and a half years, before I learned a different meditation technique that I liked better.
When I was four, my dad divorced my mom, and he left.
For many years, every Friday night devotees would gather in the temple and recite Lalita Sahasranama together. Often it was just a group of deeply devoted motherly older Indian women, and me, the one white kid in there chanting with them. It was hard to keep up; they chanted it in rapid Stotram style, not the slower Namavali of my Guru’s Swamis, reciting the whole Sahasranama in under 30 minutes. For someone with fluent Sanskrit reading and pronunciation skills this is quite doable - so that’s what I had to develop.
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In 2009, from January 12 to March 1 I engaged in a full-time study of the Ramayana, doing little else during that time.
I know that not everyone has this experience with her. Some people connect well to her; others don’t. No Guru is for everyone. It’s not as though I think everyone should follow my personal Guru. I think there are many other true and valid Gurus in the world. But for me, she is the one. I just knew it at first sight; it clicked. It didn’t feel like, Oh, I think I want her to be my Guru. It felt like, Oh, she already is my Guru, I just didn’t know it until now.
My house stood at the edge of a farmer’s crop field, and on the other side of that field were some thick woods. My mom and I walked in those woods often. When I was eight years old my parents allowed me to go in the woods by myself (or rather, I did it without permission, had a great time, made it home all right, and so they said fine, I guess you’re old enough). And in those woods I met two spirits, and made friends with them.
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I would sit with Pandit Sharma during breaks between Homas late in the night of Maha Shivaratri, and he would have me chant certain Mantras to him, stop me and give me detailed pointers, often so subtle I could barely hear the differences in how he chanted it, and would need repetition after repetition before I could discern the nuances he was imparting.
Sanatana Dharma was simply my native atmosphere. To this day, because of how I grew up in my formative years I feel like my brain is permanently full of soft rosy-golden light, the aroma of Nag Champa incense, flower offerings, and the drone of a sitar (which my mom played, even in concerts). Sanatana Dharma was in every breath I took in our home; it was the color that tinted all my thoughts.
“The individual is a loving child of God. We don’t say he’s God because that would be too elevant on our part. Always we submit to the Light of God. We enjoy the Light of God, but always in terms of submission. We surrender to the Light of God, surrender to the Feet of God. We are absolutely open. So soft, so divine, so enjoyable, so delicate. Real devotion, real Yoga, real Vedanta is surrender to the Feet of God. That is the whole thing.”
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I sat and meditatively visualized Mother Ambika’s resplendent, vermillion-red body with three eyes, wearing a sparkling crown of rubies studded with the crescent moon, Her face smiling sweetly, with Her large breasts brimming with motherly love, one hand holding a jeweled cup brimming with mead, and the other twirling a red lotus which was encircled by bees, and with Her crimson feet resting on a golden jar filled with jewels.
On my tenth birthday, my mom called me to attend her daily Puja to Brahmananda Saraswati. Somehow I forgot that this was probably related to teaching me TM, since she does the full Puja every day anyway. It was unusual for her to specifically tell me to attend; normally I either did or didn’t as I felt to, but I didn’t think much of it, I just went “Okay” and attended her Puja. I vividly remember the moment of her whispering my new Mantra in my ear as we bowed down to the floor at the end of the Puja, because I totally didn’t see it coming and it caught me by surprise. In a couple seconds I realized what it was and what had just happened. All the actual teachings came afterward.
Around this same time, a largely Indian Hindu community was really taking shape in my hometown. There was a demand for a public Hindu temple, and so one was founded, the Sri Devi Mandir. A top-quality priest was hired from India, Pandit Parthasarathi Vempati from near Hyderabad, a Sri Vidya Upasaka. He moved to my hometown together with his wife and kids, and established a thriving temple, which I attended several times a month for many years, participating in many kinds of Pujas and Homas with him, plus large community celebrations of the major (and some minor) Hindu holidays. Pandit Sarathi, as we call often call him, became a profoundly beneficial Acharya to me in my spiritual life, particularly in the deep satisfaction I find in ritualistic Bhakti. I love the intricate and meticulous dynamics of Hindu rituals, and find that they lend a rich and enjoyable framework to the unfolding experience of my inner relationship with the Divine.
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Since I trained my mind in such steadiness, my Mantra has been my constant companion everywhere I’ve gone. When I lie down to go to sleep, I let the Mantra flow through me and carry you into sleep, and its subtle quality continues through the night, like dye tinting my mind. I find it rising up as I walk. It even happens while I am at work, any time I have even a short break from actively concentrating on some other mental task.
The second Guru I met and studied with (though to be clear, Mata Amritanandamayi alone is my personal Satguru, but she very much encourages us to learn from other teachers as well) is Sri Karunamayi. If Mata Amritanandamayi is like Maa Kali in her energy, Karunamayi is like Sarasvati – she is constantly the very personification of Sattva Guna, the gentlest human being I’ve ever met, sweet, delicate, and a meticulous and brilliant scholar of the fine points of Mantra Shastra. She is an exquisitely pristine chanter of Mantras. I got to spend a lot of time very close to Karunamayi – indeed she even lived in my house for a while – and she taught me a lot of intricate details of the science of Mantras and Shakti Bija syllables, and really fine-tuned the nuances of my chanting various Mantras, such as certain mantras to Saraswati and Brihaspati for clarity of the intellect, the powerful Mrityunjaya Mantra, and many others. She also taught me the Shri Chakra Puja of Shri Vidya Tantra.
I knew that on my tenth birthday I was going to be initiated in the full adult version of Transcendental Meditation. I was so excited leading up to it. I couldn’t wait, so I tried to figure it out myself; I developed my own meditation technique and practiced it.
Returning from India the first time, I no longer felt any social inhibition to comfortably and openly identifying as Hindu and publicly embracing the camaraderie and solidarity of Hinduism as a worldwide community.
My mom and I also watched Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayana TV series together once per year (she has the whole thing on VHS tapes); I think we’ve watched the whole series through twenty times. We also watched parts of the Chopra Mahabharata, and later on other such devotional shows and films. I lived and breathed these stories; I knew them like I knew my own family. Did I believe in them? Of course I did. My mom did; she was constantly talking about them and how important and sacred they were, in tones of true reverence. I gave them my rapt attention and respect, as she unfailingly modeled for me. She and I also took Sanskrit lessons together from a home tutor.
There were two especially big daily Pujas. One was to Ram and Sita, our household’s main central deities. That one I would attend every day, summoned by the bell, and bow down to the floor for a long, heartfelt moment, even on days when I skipped all the others. The other was my mother’s Guru Puja to Brahmananda Saraswati, more solemn and formal than all the rest.
In 2022, Pandit Sarathi initiated me in Siddha Kunjika Stotram. Also that year I returned to India for another pilgrimage, and also visited Kathmandu for ten days.
I often walked (or ran) through those woods, and I always stopped by the leprechauns’ glade to pay homage to them. I climbed onto the grandson’s watch post in the tree a few times, and found it a highly spiritually energized spot. I even ran errands for the spirits a few times. I made a watercolor painting of them once.
I felt connected to Krishna more than ever before. After some years of practice, my Mantra came to function as reliably as turning on a tap: I put my consciousness on it, repeat it even just a single time, and Nectar flows into my mind, nectar of tingling joy and liquid bliss and Krishna’s presence, like a shining golden trickle. My Mantra has become like a wellspring of liquid joy in my mind, like a bubbling spring of Divine bliss, a palpable crack where my small, limited mind breaks through its limits and connects directly with the infinite supermind of Krishna. I had practiced other mantras before the one that Amma gave me, like my TM Mantra. They were faint, fuzzy, cloudy things compared to the crystal clarity and potency of my Guru-Mantra. The Guru-Shakti is real, it is powerful, it is profound. That has been my very clear experience.
But the Yamaduta did not take me. Instead he spoke to me. He told me that my Karma was such that two options existed. I could die right now if I so chose, he would take me to Svarga and I would later take rebirth. Or the Karma could be arranged another way, and I would live much longer in this body. My mother was involved in the negotiation too, in a complex way that I will not fully explain publicly. I chose to live longer. The Yamaduta metaphorically nodded (I say this because he had no head and made no motion, but I felt a psychic “nod” from him so to speak) and departed (by simply fading away, rather quickly). The whole thing was very businesslike; my impression was that he didn’t care about me at all, one way or another. I actually liked the Yamaduta and felt an instinctive fondness for him, which I do not feel he reciprocated. And I medically pulled through and recovered.
The biggest one was that I met my Guru, Mata Amritanandamayi. Before then I had been missing what I consider a vital element of spirituality: the immeasurably profound treasure of a living Guru. I met her in a big tent (like a circus-style tent, fitting hundreds of people) outside Santa Fe, New Mexico. I went as a skeptic. I was interested in meeting this Guru, but I was very open to the possibility that she might not be the real deal. I was curious.
When I was in my mother’s womb, she sang Mantras and devotional songs of the Devatas to me every day, and I feel that these sacred sounds were woven into the very fabric of my body in its formation, they feel so deeply, primally familiar to me.
Then, a big entity made of darkness approached me, looming over me where I lay on the hospital bed. He – somehow I felt sure it was a ‘he’ – looked like a cloud of amorphous blackness, only very vaguely humanoid shaped if really at all (and actually, quite round – if humanoid-shaped then it would be morbidly obese). There was no face, or head, but from near the top shone two eyes, just white points of light within the black cloud, cold and with a certain quality like a cloudy day, but I felt sure they were eyes, fixed on me, unblinking, unmoving. At the time I thought he was Yamaraja. In retrospect I think he was not Yamaraja himself, but a lesser Yamaduta (I didn’t know about Yamadutas at the time). He loomed over me, almost as tall as the ceiling (which I don’t think was a very high ceiling), and I thought he was going to take me away into Death; however I did not feel afraid of him. My general sense of him (again from a four-year-old’s perspective, not in these exact terms but this was the feeling) was that he like a professional businessman, not a smiling or friendly sort, but not mean either; he was here on duty and would get on with it in a matter-of-fact way, and if I went along with him then it would all go smoothly enough. I felt I was in capable and proper hands, so to speak.
In the summer of 2003, my newlywed mom and stepdad went on their honeymoon to the Grand Teton mountains. I didn’t go with them. But when they returned, they told me that they had been contacted there by Ascended Masters, primarily Mahavatar Babaji, who said he had known all three of us in past lives and had now chosen to enter our lives again.
The Mantra that she gave me yielded immediate life-improving benefits. It almost immediately conquered recurring nightmares that I’d suffered about every week of my life since age three. For all those years, at least every week I would have a terror-filled night of desperately fleeing from a deadly menace in my dreams, and would wake in fear. I also had a lot of fear as a child in my waking life. I’d been violently bullied at school, had nearly died of a ruptured appendix, almost lost the ability to walk, and was generally a social misfit, shy and unable to fit in well with other kids, with few friends. Literally as soon as I began chanting the mantra I received from my Guru, I gained the inner strength to conquered my nightmare, and it never returned. I’d had a lot of fear as a child before this point. The vast majority of it melted away, vanished like darkness when the Sun rises. It really profoundly transformed my whole inner emotional state and my sense of interacting with the world and with other people. It took the harmonious, blissful nectar of my spiritual life and spread it greatly through most of the rest of my life, which was an integration I’d previously struggled with. I also started thriving much more in life, even physically. I suddenly went from being an embarrassingly non-athletic kid to being one of the fastest sprinters around, without any effort or training on my part; my legs in particular became very strong. Most of all I would say that chanting my mantra wiped out my fear.
In 2019 I returned to India for a month, mostly staying in my Guru’s Ashram studying intensively and practicing Sadhana all day, though I did also visit a few nearby major temples. I participated in the Navaratri festival there. On Mahanavami night with my Guru I had my peak experience of my entire spiritual life thus far, though I don’t feel to go into details about it.
I attended a couple of private events with a self-styled Sufi Master from Istanbul. He went on a condescending tirade about how anyone who thinks they’ve had experiences of Hindu Gods has been deluded by Shaitan. But he also gave me some excellent tea and biscuits, as well as a rather hilariously pretentious business card that literally said “Sufi Master” on it, after his name. That was the extent of my foray into Sufism.
Every day my parents would leave me for a full hour each morning, and another full hour each evening, to practice Pranayama and meditation. In the morning I was often at school, or could entertain myself for an hour; in the evening there was often a babysitter. But this very firmly modeled to me that long, serious meditation was an inherent part of adulthood. It was part of my sense of routine - adults wake up, they do morning Puja, they meditate, they eat, they do daily activities, they meditate again, they have dinner, they do evening activities, they go to bed. That was my model of life.
All of this was before my fifth birthday, and honestly, those first five years were probably the most important part in shaping my spiritual life. The fire was lit in my heart. Even if my mom hadn’t taught me more after that, I would’ve sought it out myself.
After some time, a being appeared to me. It took the form of a youthful adult Indian man; healthy, fit, and handsome; with medium brown skin; and long, straight, thick black hair pulled back and tucked behind his ears. He met my eyes, and his dark lips bore a subtle, knowing smile. I remember the first time he said to me, “I am Babaji.” Those words held such a deep reservoir of silence, love, power, and intimate familiarity. Babaji told me that he was a member of an order of beings, perfected Mukta Siddhas who had transcended the physical body and the bondage of rebirth, and that the Teton mountain range was one of the sanctuaries of this order, especially the Grand Teton mountain, which contained hidden caves that they inhabited. Babaji told me that his order of beings had merged back into the Divine totality of life while simultaneously retaining their individuality and personality. He told me there were an infinite number of such beings in existence, some from Earth, some from other planets, and some from realms beyond the physical.
I thought of Her form with the beauty of the hibiscus flower, wearing a red garland and sparkling ornaments, with red saffron smeared all over Her body, shining with a mark of musk on Her forehead whose fragrance was attracting the bees, holding in Her hands a bow and arrow, a noose and a hooked goad, and smiling gently, throwing sweet glances around and beguiling everyone.
By this time I had narrowed the focus of my worship, to increase quality and depth over quantity and breadth, and mostly worshipped Krishna, Lakshmi, Shiva, Ganesha, and Saraswati.
It also seemed to me that some of these mental qualities carried over into the rest of my life. I felt more naturally eloquent just in my everyday speech, and in writing.
That summer there were some big events in my spiritual life, culminating during a total solar eclipse, that I don’t think I want to discuss publicly. But I practiced some rituals of natural magic using reagents like stones, holly leaves, thistle flowers, feathers, sticks, and such, working together with nature spirits, and sympathetic magic and woods-witchcraft. Indeed my mother had long taught me the basic principles of these arts of witchcraft, taught to her by her mother. But I put them to far more application that summer.
As an infant, I learned my mom’s face, my dad’s face, and my mom showed me faces and images of Ganapati, Krishna, and other Devatas.
My mom constantly told me stories about them; that was a big part of how I learned language. I grew up witnessing, and often participating in Ganapati Puja every morning, brimming with lively devotion; in Pujas and Aratis to Kartikeya, Shiva, Parvati, Vishnu, Lakshmi, Saraswati, Durga, Hanuman, Krishna, Ganga. My mom taught me Mantras to all these Devatas and I memorized them and often chanted them with her. It was a deeply happy experience for me. Thinking back on it fills me with feelings of home and comfort. The Devatas were, and are, my beloved family. I ate the Prasad of the offerings every breakfast. A Murti of Annapurna, Goddess of Food, overlooked our kitchen and we would chant Her Mantra before meals.
The Sri Devi Mandir taught everyone a chanting syllabus of various beginning verses in Sanskrit to Ganesha, Saraswati, our Guru (Gurur Brahma Gurur Vishnu… etc.), and the Navagrahas (Adityaya Cha Somaya… etc.), Ganesha Ashtakam, Lingashtakam, Mahalakshmi Ashtakam, Devi Suktam, Bhagavad Gita chapter twelve in Sanskrit, Sri Lalita Sahasranama Stotram, Devi Khadgalama Stotram, Sri Vishnu Sahasranama Stotram, Nama Ramayana, Hanuman Chalisa, Durga Chalisa, and Shiva Chalisa. Furthermore, it was from listening to Pandit Sarathi year after year that I learned to chant the Ganapati Atharvashirsha, Medha Suktam, Shri Suktam, and many shorter Mantras. He taught me in the traditional method: simple verbal call-and-response, with no reading at all. It can be a hard way for westerners to learn, but it really helps ensure precise pronunciation. Week after week over many years I attended hundreds of homas and pujas that he performed (probably about eight hundred homas over the years), and learned to chant many of the mantras along with him. I met many new Devatas this way, and got to know others better. Learning and chanting all the new mantras filled me with a wonderful sense of discovery. As I repeated the mantras after him and made the prescribed offerings into the blazing homa fire, I would feel an upwelling of adoration - for what exactly, I didn’t yet completely know. Yet I felt there was something wonderful about these mantras and what they were evoking in the fire and in my consciousness, and I had a deep interest to know more about it. I felt a sense of connectivity to those unknown forces, a thread I could follow by continued practice and chanting. Learning these nuances of the Sanatana Dharma felt like a journey in itself. From my own Guru as well as from Karunamayi and Pandit Sarathi I learned a lot of detailed knowledge of Mantra Shastra, the meticulous yet subtle science behind mantras and how they work. I studied the various Bijakshara seed-syllables and was initiated in their usage; they are profound keys to the secrets of Mantra Shastra. On much of this inner detail I was sworn to secrecy except when it comes to fellow initiates, as the Bijaksharas can be dangerous if used wrongly, so potent and deep-cutting are they.
In 2021 I visited a lot of ancient Pagan sacred sites in Corfu, Rome, and France.
In 2014 I attended an Islamic prayer service at a mosque because I wanted at least one experience of what it was like, and I talked with two Muslim men there about Islam. I also actually wept a little at the beauty of Sunday morning Mass at the Cathedral of Saint Paul. But neither of these turned into more than a single visit.
I have met and studied a little with some other Gurus as well – Sai Maa, Mother Meera, Swami Ram Kripalu, Pujya Swami Chidanand Saraswati – but not enough to have really informed or changed my spiritual life, so I will not discuss them further here. I also did a sweat lodge and tobacco charm-making workshop with a Lakota spiritual elder.
In late June through July of 2017 I went on a month-long Pagan spiritual pilgrimage to Ireland.
Even after all this, not until I was a college freshman (starting that fall) did I become openly Hindu among people who did not share the tradition of Sanatana Dharma. Before that I was very private about my religion with strangers and even branches of my own family, perhaps because it was such a deeply important part of my personality and one that those people did not share. I definitely felt like a cultural minority living in a region of America that was predominantly monoculturally western.
For years, a family of Kerala Tamils (not Malayalis) in my town invited me (and much of our core Hindu community) to their private basement temple under their house for all ten days of Navaratri each fall, and we always recited Lalita Sahasranama together, among many other Shakta rituals. So often many of us would chant it at least twice on each day of Navaratri, once there and once at the public temple. It was interesting to notice how different the experience was. In the Tamil family’s basement, the recitation was dedicated to the black stone Murti of their family Kuladevi, whose very name was kept secret; they only referred to Her as Amma (“Mother”). But the whole thing had something of an “edgier” vibe. The worship we did there also entailed all ten of the Dasha Mahavidyas, with strange Bija mantras using weirdly contorted vowel sounds that aren’t part of standard Sanskrit, from obscure and occult Tantrik traditions of rural Kerala. Even the familiar Lalita Sahasranama felt different in the presence of this unusual and mysterious Tantrik Goddess.
In the spring of 2010 I met a powerful female storm spirit named Rakasena – and by “met” I mean, went ecstatically dancing out in the rain in her intense thunderstorm.
I imagined that I was one with the glorious red form of the Great Goddess, rosy like the dawn, surrounded by the golden rays from the eight Divine Siddhi powers, holding the noose, the goad, the sugarcane bow and the flower-arrows, with eyes surging with waves of compassion.
“Vedic life is a matter of knowing the fullness of life and living it spontaneously. We don’t need an external source of this knowledge. Just water the root to enjoy the flower. The purpose of all knowledge is to lead to fulfillment. The wholeness of all knowledge is common sense – one’s own experience. The nature of life is never stationary.”
“And that’s the prayer which has its infinite value. And this kind of prayer is just an outburst of the swelling of the heart in love for Him. Supreme. And this prayer has infinite value, I said, infinite value. Because it is this outpouring of the heart, emotion, towards the Almighty that cultures the heart. And through the feeling of love it becomes possible to communicate to God… or to the celestial Beings.
I graduated high school a year early (in three years instead of four), and I took a gap year to pursue spiritual evolution, write, train in martial arts, travel, and generally enjoy life. That year (2008-09), my mom, stepdad, and I went on a three-week camping trip in the Colorado Rocky Mountains (though we called those mountains by a different name taught to us by spiritual beings). On that trip, we met one of the more major and powerful spirits I have encountered “in the wild” so to speak.
In 2020 I returned to the Colorado Rockies and visited Chief Boiler again. I also participated in a weeklong spiritual training intensive with a Native American-trained teacher (primarily Lipan Apache in background).
“The subtlest strata of our existence, that state of glow that we experience, is the field of God. And from there comes to us the direct communion with those celestial Gods. And this is what Christ said, ‘the Kingdom of heaven is within you’. Certainly it is somewhere in the universe, the life where there is no suffering, no sin, all happiness and bliss – in its pure state that celestial life of heaven exists somewhere in the universe, but apart from that and in addition to that, it exists within ourselves also. The more we get tuned to it, the more we become like it, more celestial, more powerful. This through your practice, you know by your own experience. And those who have not experienced that glow, don’t try to experience it. Trying it won’t come! We don’t have to try to get on to that. The most natural way is just start on the Mantra and take it as it comes, then go and come and go and come. Naturally you become used to what is there in all these fields. And naturally you begin to feel that which we call that field of akasha tattva or the field of the glow and then the Ananda that lies at the basis of it.”
I learned the proper Lalita Sahasranama Archana Vidhi as taught by my Guru. I would take a shower, go to my Puja room in the morning, and first worship the Goddess Lalita in the Sri Chakra with leaves of Tulasi, jasmine, and other scented flowers. I followed the instructions in the Dhyana Shlokas (and also memorized them in Sanskrit):
Later that year I went on one of several visits to Vancouver Island, but this one was particularly significant in that I met up with a First Nations man living there, spent some time with him discussing the local indigenous spiritual traditions, and he even took me to several sacred sites of the Coast Salish people on Vancouver Island and a smaller neighboring island and we engaged in communing with these places while he explained their significance, old stories, and spiritual nature to me. It really turned into quite a fascinating pilgrimage and I learned a lot of intriguing insights into this branch of Canadian First Nations spirituality.
I was always a very vivid dreamer. I’ve had fairly frequent lucid dreams from before I was six years old, peaking around the age of twenty when, for a while, I lucid dreamed almost every night.
Over the period of December 2014 through May 2015, I so firmly tied my Smarana Mantra to my breath that anytime I breathed, my mind automatically chanted the Mantra unless I consciously stopped it from doing so to focus it on something else. What really finalized this achievement was actually somewhat contrary to the ideal teachings of Sanatana Dharma, which encourage keeping the company of fellow Bhaktas, avoiding impure environments, etc. And yes, of course that’s great advice when you are able to do it. But here’s what really allowed me to experience a breakthrough in my own Smarana Mantra Sadhana: Working at a stressful and very unpleasant pizza place, with semi-abusive coworkers in foul moods often shouting at me and sometimes shoving me, my hands covered in meat, bits of old beef stuck under my fingernails, for long hours. It solved the problem of worldly distractions by going to the other extreme - my external surroundings were so unpleasant, so knee-jerk repulsive to my mind and my senses, that all of me - even my monkey-mind, my greedy senses, my curious thoughts - wanted nothing more than to turn within and dwell on the Mantra, which was so much more pleasant! While stressful, the job didn’t require much thinking, and so there I stood, body doing its required tasks, mind dwelling one-pointedly on my Mantra - for twelve hours straight, often through the night. When I held my mind in the pattern of the Mantra for that many hours without a break - especially when keeping a night vigil, getting somewhat sleep-deprived, slipping into a more and more trance-like altered state - it really trained my consciousness into new grooves. Repeated several times a week, month after month - well, I found that after about six months of this, it had become the default mode of my mind, always, under any circumstances. Many years later, it still holds steady. If I relax my mind, immediately returns to the Mantra; or rather, it feels more like the Mantra spontaneously wells up, like a geyser that I stop blocking, and fills my consciousness with Krishna’s subtle presence.
As a young child, my mother showered me with spirituality. She was a full-time mom with no other job (for my entire childhood), and no other children, and she very much acted as if her primary life purpose was to inculcate Sanatani spirituality in me to the fullest extent possible.
My mother, stepfather, and I talked together with Babaji many times over the course of about seven years. We went rather deeply into the Ascended Master teachings. We met and communicated with thousands of these and similar beings. For years it felt like I lived in a separate world from that of most humans. These beings were shapeshifters, but most of them had a true form, often the form of their last incarnation. Babaji remained the one I knew best. He was sometimes serene and quiet, but other times he was playfully comical, even clownish and irreverent. He taught me various spiritual techniques, like Pranayama methods, Chakra enlivening processes, greatly improving my abilities of Manojavaha Siddhi to travel through etheric planes, and others. He led me and my mother to Otherworldly domains, cities, temples in the sky, caves hidden in the hearts of sacred mountains. There was one temple we would most often visit.
On my first trip to India I obtained the main Krishna Murti I have worshipped ever since. Upon coming home and installing it, I began each morning with my own private Krishna Murti Puja, eating the previous day’s Prasad raisins as part of my breakfast. It was the first time I myself really took charge of the care and spiritual cultivation of a Murti, rather than just participating where my mother, father, or a temple priest was in charge. I found I deeply loved practicing Bhakti through my own personal Murti Upasana. Also at this time I began slowly reading Prabhupada’s translation and commentary of the Bhagavata Purana, start to finish, taking my time and studying in depth. I also read another translation of Skandha Ten in particular, and Swami Ambikananda Saraswati’s translation of Uddhava Gita. In December 2010 I more deeply studied the poetry of Mirabai, one of my favorite spiritual inspirations in all my life. All of this really represented a great deepening of my focus and devotional relationship with Shri Krishna.
In 2021 I accepted an invitation from a group of Vaishnava devotees to read the entire Shrimad Bhagavatam aloud to them in English (Gita Press translation) and provide commentary as we went. This was really a meticulous deep dive into the exquisite beauty and spirituality of the Bhagavatam. I didn’t just read it, but practiced many of the various Sadhanas in it as we came to them, following the Bhagavatam’s detailed instructions as a manual. They next requested the Vishnu Purana and Devi Bhagavata Purana, so this is an ongoing thing.
“Innocence comes by itself. You are left to enjoy. Don’t try to be innocent. Innocence is already in the nature of life. To be natural is to be innocent. Innocence does not mean lack of awareness or lack of intelligence. Be naturally vigilant, naturally intelligent. Innocence just means natural. Take it as it comes. It is the natural tendency of the mind. Enjoyable, charming, appealing, beautiful, natural – absorption is automatic. That’s it.”
In 2018 I went on a month-long spiritual pilgrimage in Sri Lanka. I wrote some about it here:
Also around this same time, I also joined a group of Yajamanas and students of another priest, a Kashmiri Pandit, Dhruv Narain Sharma, a deeply experienced, venerable old Tantrika. He was formerly the private priest of Indira Gandhi whom she employed to do rituals for her. It was he who introduced me to the power of Maha Shivaratri. I think I first observed Maha Shivaratri when I was thirteen years old, with Pandit Sharma, and I have observed it every year since (not always with him but sometimes with Pandit Sarathi, or some years I’ve been out of town and observed it at home; this year I spent Maha Shivaratri at Portland Balaji Temple in Oregon). I wrote about some of my experiences on Maha Shivaratri here:
About this time, my mom remarried. My stepdad, also a devout Hindu (far more so than my dad, actually) had lived in Bharat for seven years and was also a big influence on my spiritual life.
In January 2011, Karen Aoki, Assistant Professor of Maharishi Vedic Science, taught me a beautiful way to sing Ganesha Stavaha, which I learned by heart. I remember it repeating itself in my head as I lay in bed falling asleep. Also at this time I studied the Shiva Manasa Puja, and it was really around this time that I fully learned Ganapati Atharvashirsha and Medha Suktam from Pandit Sarathi.
When my Guru visited the US each year, now I was able to recite the whole Lalita Sahasranama along with her Swamis - indeed, with ease. Where before I hadn’t been able to keep up, now it felt leisurely, allowing me to focus on the unique devotional spirit of each name as we recited it.
At age nineteen, as a college student, after Krishna as my Ishta-Devata, my primarily other loving Divine relationships were with Shiva, Parvati, Vishnu, Durga, Surya, Ganesha, Lakshmi, Saraswati, and Kali. Those were the deities I mainly worshipped. At that time I still considered that after the Hindu Gods, my next most important spiritual guides were Babaji, Saint Germain, Jesus (though not in anything like a Christian sense), Lanto, and a mysterious Hebrew deity. But unbeknownst to myself at that time, I was almost done working with those particular non-Hindu beings; my spiritual life was about to undergo a transformation.
Some of the main teachings from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi that my mom passed on to me, and that resonated with me, included:
Around this time I began participating in various courses, a week or two at a time, of spending all day every day practicing Yoga asanas, pranayama, and meditation, and attending a lot of lectures on Vedic philosophy.
All this singing and dancing in the praise of God, in the memory of God, is just a very, very natural thing. It is natural to that unboundedness of the heart when the unbounded Being gets more and more saturated in life. Consciousness grows toward Cosmic Consciousness. So, the individual heart has that unboundedness of the eternal Being. This outpouring of love is also said to be a prayer. And this prayer is something most desirable, most enjoyable, most effective.”
On my fifth birthday (I think; actually, it may have been my fourth birthday) my mother gave me my first formal initiation in a very basic Mantra Sadhana, the children’s version of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation. It felt familiar and powerful, like an awaited step down my life’s path. I was proud and excited to try it out; it felt like a rite of passage, a real step toward growing up, in a good way. Already my worldview had been shaped to conceive of my life as a spiritual journey toward the high and holy goal of Enlightenment or Union with my beloved Krishna. I felt I was making progress, slowly but surely.
At first, each day when I was with my Guru (often twice each day, morning and night, but always at least once), one of her Swamis would recite Lalita Sahasranama in Namavali format (each name individually, rather than all together as a Stotram), and I would follow along reading the English meaning of each name (in her approved translation), chanting “Aum Parashaktyai Namaha” and making an offering Mudra. Just reading the English meanings in this way was an amazing and inspiring experience, they are so beautiful, rich, and give a good overall sense of the nature of Lalita Tripurasundari and Her spiritual essence. Once I felt familiar with the meanings, I wanted to learn to recite the Sahasranama in Sanskrit, so I began practicing.
I wrote here about the teachings of Sri Karunamayi and Pandit Sharma to me about the Mrityunjaya Mantra specifically:
On my twentieth birthday I set out on my first pilgrimage to Bharat, with my mom and stepdad. My travels in Bharat have been some of the brightest highlights of my spiritual life. I’ve written extensively about them here:
In addition to sitting, eyes-closed meditation, I also began to silently chant my Mantra all the time throughout the day, following the Ishvara Smarana Bhakti Mantra Dhyanam method of classical Bhakti Yoga, as per my Guru’s instruction. I tied the mantra to my breath.
I remember one day when I was twelve, running alone through my yard, sandals thumping in the grass, just crying “Kanhaiyaaaa!” into the wind over and over in wild surges of ecstasy, I just loved Krishna so eagerly.
Every year from 2003 through 2019 Mata Amritanandamayi visited the US, usually twice, in summer and again in autumn, and I saw her at least one time and often both, spending several days with her at a time, often taking retreats with her. My times with her deepened and illumined my spiritual life more than almost anything else; I find every minute in her presence to be profoundly valuable. Besides my mother, my Guru and the community of her other shishyas have been by far the greatest influence on my spiritual life. In addition to her direct, specific intellectual teachings, a lot of the most powerful impact on my spiritual life has come through her Bhajans. I think the genuine spiritual power and importance of Bhajans is often underestimated by those who take them as “just songs”, a shallower and peripheral element alongside the “real” spiritual practices. On the contrary, Bhajans with true Bhakti can be some of the main and most potent practices of Bhakti Yoga, specifically at invoking the visceral anubhava of Devatas.
Nor did my mom let it be an aesthetic thing alone. From the moment I learned language, she talked with me about various spiritual teachings every single day. I say she talked with me, not to me. She constantly encouraged me to ask questions (and answered them all), solicited my feedback, probed my understanding, found the points that caught my interest and expanded on those. She made Sanatana Dharma intellectually fascinating and engaging to me. Some of my fondest memories of my very early childhood are of thinking about basic Dharmik philosophy (well before I knew words like “philosophy”) to try to come up with insights so I could tell them to my mom and impress her. She told me that I wasn’t my body; I was everything and everything was part of me. She told me that what’s inside us is what really matters, not what’s outside. She told me that everything is One - everything is Krishna, everything is Ram, everything is Shiva, everything is Devi, and I understood that these were all different ways of saying the same thing. The Truth is One, the Truth is bliss. I was thoroughly taught all this before I was two years old.
By around this time, after about fifteen years of daily practice of my Guru-Mantra, if I remember my Mantra and chant it even one time, even in the midst of an argument, it instantly restores my mental equipoise and calms me. It pours deep joy and contentment into my consciousness as immediately and reliably as turning on a tap. This is the sign of what’s known as attaining the Siddhi of a Mantra. It took me about fifteen years of daily practice to achieve, and very much required my Guru’s grace and her Shakti charging the Mantra, but literally nothing could be more worthwhile.
Well… no I can’t, because it’s too long for Quora. But here is an abridged version of some of it.
We also celebrated major Hindu holy days together. For example, my mom always performed many Sanskrit chants, songs, and special Pujas on the days of Dipavali, Ram Navami, and others.
This is when my spiritual life really began to blend into a social life with my peers. For the first time, I was talking about my spiritual life with fellow students, people in my same age range. Honestly I did so very clumsily. I had barely been socialized before this age; I was an extremely secluded child, far more native to and familiar with the spiritual Otherworld than with this world of humans, and I had a huge amount of catching up to do before I could learn how to interact with others in a way that might pass as even remotely “normal”. But people gathered around me with shared spiritual interests, and I made a few of my first truly close friendships. For the first time I was telling people – anyone other than my mom and stepdad – about some of the spirits I saw: grey spirits in the winter wind following along roads, and many others.
Throughout my childhood, many times when I was scared I mentally called on Krishna. The example that comes most to mind is in the dentist’s chair. I was quite prone to dental issues as a kid, and also no one had yet understood that I was highly resistant to the painkillers they used, so it always felt like literal torture, extremely painful. They might double dose me, but eventually they would say something like “You must be numb now”, and I just assumed this was as numb as people got and it was supposed to still hurt. So I closed my eyes, terrified, often crying, and called on Krishna, and He was there, flashing His golden smile even as the pain stabbed me in the face, and His smile was so much more real than the pain. I clung to Him, and He held me as long as I needed Him.
My mom has the Vishnu Sahasranama memorized and she observes a vow to chant it every day, so I learned it from her when I was growing up. We chanted it together sometimes.
They were an old grandfather and his youthful grandson. They were the resident spirits of a special tree, commanding its own small glade, and that glade was a sacred place to me. The tree’s trunk, perhaps two feet in diameter, grew straight up out of the earth up to about my head’s height, then split into three equally thick trunks that curved outward, almost horizontally at first, and finally curled up and twisted around like curious fingers that snaked their way into the canopy. The tree was hale and hearty, with handsome light-colored bark and surprising sturdiness in its winding limbs. The spirits, by the Sanskrit taxonomy, were most certainly yakshas. However, as a child, based on their appearance and my familiarity with Western fairy tale books, I called them leprechauns. I saw them vividly. The grandfather would sit nearby the tree, curtained by tall, pale grass, and read old books (not in any language I recognized). His grandson would often perch, birdlike, in the tree on the flat point where the three trunks diverged, keeping watch with sharp alertness.
Sadly, around 2006 or so, the County Trails Council made a trail right through that area of the formerly trackless woods, and they severed a limb of the spirits’ tree and destroyed their secret home. The spirits took their possessions and departed for other lands.
As for the daily Pujas and other rituals that were going on, I was always invited to participate in them, but never required - at most, gently encouraged. Nothing makes a kid not want to do something as much as telling them that they have to. But if it’s going on nearby, and no one told them to go be part of it… well, I got curious. I wanted to go be part of it. That was how I learned all the rituals. And my mom never let them be empty rituals without understanding. She explained to me each step of what she was doing, and why. They were full of meaning to me; I wasn’t just going through the motions with a vague sense of what was going on. And a further important point: She gave me the traditional, ancient explanations, not pseudoscience or slapping on modern interpretations that very clearly aren’t original, which I have seen some Hindus try to do. She always presented traditional Sanatana Dharma to me on its own merits, proudly and reverently, not apologizing for it by trying to explain it as a convoluted symbology for something else. I felt blessed, awestruck, and profoundly grateful to be receiving such a sacred and ancient body of knowledge passed down to me over vast ages, and I thirsted to learn more and more.
I told myself to wait, to be sure first. I had been raised to consider taking a Guru to be one of the most important steps in one’s life, not to be made lightly or hastily. I had already read the Guru Gita and took it seriously. I saw it as on par with getting married - more important in some ways. So I waited a week. I know that still seems like an absurdly short time, at the age of twelve. It seemed that way to my intellectual mind at the time too. But every moment of that week, my heart was so sure, unwavering. I spent a lot of time around her, watching her, observing. What I saw in her was such clear and true and deep devotion and love for the Divine, for Krishna and for Devi, that resonated so well with my own, I just felt a constant Yes! Yes! Yes! This is it, this what I want! I felt something in my heart leaping and welling up in response to her proximity, a sprouting little tree of bhakti that knew the presence of a true Mahabhakta, a true Saint of the devotional path. All my intuition told me that was what she was.
Also when I was four, I very nearly died and had an intense spiritual experience. My appendix ruptured, I was in the hospital with severe blood poisoning and at one point, they thought I wasn’t going to make it. My mom told me that I was about to die, probably later that day. She taught me to repeat the Name of Rama over and over, and to let that Name become everything to me, so that I thought of as little else as I could. I did this for hours. I sank into the cloud of the Name. I understood what it meant to die, basically as well as I do as an adult, and I was not afraid of it. I understood that what I had to do was (not in such big words, but in concept) to essentially dissolve myself into the Name of Rama, to cease to be anything but That, and I would be embraced by Divine Bliss and everything would be okay, even if my body fell away forever.
I read the Gita Press, Gorakhpur translation of the Bhagavad Gita as well as Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Gita commentary, C. Rajagopalachari’s abridgment of the Mahabharata, Kamala Subramaniam’s abridgment of the Mahabharata, the Uddhava Gita, Vishnu Sahasranama, Saundarya Lahari, the Devi Mahatmyam, Devi Gita, Venkatesananda and Kamala Subramaniam’s abridgements of Srimad Bhagavata Purana and later the entire unabridged Bhagavata Purana (as well as Prabhupada’s Krishna: The Supreme Personality of Godhead), the Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Mandalas of the Rig Veda in Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s editions, Adhyatma Ramayana, the Shiva Sanhita, the Shiva Sutras, the entire Devi Bhagavata Purana and Vishnu Purana, a few random volumes of Shiva Purana and Linga Purana, Swami Gambhirananda’s translation and commentary of eight major Upanishads, Swami Madhavananda’s edition of the Major and Minor Upanishads, Shiva Mahimna Stotram, Sri Guru Gita, the Karma Mimansa Sutras of Jaimini, Sri Suktam, Bhuvaneshvari Gita, the entire unabridged Valmiki Ramayana, Yoga Vasishtha (first the abridged, later the unabridged version), Ramacharitamanasa of Tulasidasa, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Sri Shankara Vijayam, Shankaracharya’s Aparokshanubhiti, In Quest of God by Swami Ramdas, Ramana Arunachala and The Mind of Ramana Maharshi by Arthur Osborne, eight volumes of Lives of Ancient Indian Saints, all six of K. M. Munchi’s Krishnavatara books, Temples of India by Manoj Das, the Collected Myths, Legends & Chronicles of Balaji Sri Venkateswara, Women Saints East and West by Swami Ghanananda, Women of Power and Grace by Timothy Conway, Great Women of India, Daughters of the Goddess, Great Swan: Meetings with Ramakrishna, Ramakrishna As We Saw Him by Swami Chetanananda, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, various books about Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Love and God and The Science of Being and Art of Living by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahamsa Yogananda, Reflection of the Absolute from Raga Ragini Trust Mysore, Great Masters of the Himalayas by Rishi Singh Gherwal, the Madhava-Vidyaranya Sankara Digvijaya: Life of Sri Shankaracharya, Springs of Indian Wisdom, Dancing with Siva by Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, Hindu Marriage and Its Immortal Traditions, Saints of Maharashtra by Savitribai Khanolkar, The Secret of Bhaktiyoga by Shri Harih – this was my main childhood reading. For several years I was homeschooled and only part-time in conventional education, so I spent a lot of time on self-directed spiritual studies like this. All of the above and more are books I read over the course of my childhood.
When I went to school or almost anywhere else outside of home, it felt like stepping into an alien realm. No one else shared this pervasively spiritual world of loving, colorful deities, incense, and Mantras that filled my house. In my early childhood, Sanatana Dharma was a tradition of home, not community. My house felt like a sanctuary, a private heavenly temple with large, spacious, high-ceilinged rooms filled with soft, light colors, and gracefully arched doorways and windows that let natural light shine straight through the house from every side. My mom planted 160 trees around our house (we were wealthy and had a big property), so growing up, our whole yard was hidden in what felt like a miniature private forest, also with a secret fenced garden.
Honestly, it feels strange to talk about these experiences, even to this very guarded and restrained extent. At the time they were absolutely more real to me than anything else. But I’m well aware that to most humans, this stuff must sound so unbelievable, and I hesitate to go on and on about details because to many it would surely come across as just fanciful bragging about how special I am. What am I to do with these experiences? I remember them vividly. They are a huge part of what shaped who I am as a person, and what my inner life feels like. But how potentially socially complicated it is to say the true experience of my teenage years – that we met Jesus (or Yehoshua as I preferred to call him); his mother Mary; Saint Germain; Lord Lanto who was Dan, Duke Wen of Zhou in the early Zhou Dynasty of ancient China; Gautama Buddha; Guanyin; Hilarion; Adama; Serapis Bey; the angels Kryon and Metatron; Lady Nada; and thousands more beings whose names I don’t know, if they even all have names. My experiences are inevitably going to be controversial because they directly conflict with all of the mainstream Abrahamic religions, and also with Theravada Buddhism (clearly aligning more with Vajrayana). I met many beings from other planets. Am I to just say all this stuff openly? My own father seriously worried for my mental health the last time he heard me say such things, and honestly I can’t blame him. But, I really have had these experiences – and my mother and stepfather shared most of them with me. This was a huge part of my life. I don’t expect others to believe that this stuff was real. But it was more real to me than the physical world. Once we went together on an astral-projected tour, through an ancient portal in a certain mountain range in California, to an extraterrestrial star system with seventeen inhabited planets (all by the same primary race of beings), eight of which we visited in a guided tour. We even taught meditation techniques to a bunch of them. So… yeah, that’s the sort of thing I grew up doing together with my family. I think I had a pretty unique childhood.
When she walked in – a tiny, plump, motherly, barefoot Indian lady in simple white silks – a wave of love washed over me. That’s the best way I can put it. This was the first time I had ever experienced anything like this in my life. A wave of Divine love washed over me, emanating from her. It felt as palpable as a wave of water, and left me feeling as different as if I had just been soaked. I stood there truly awestruck.
Most summers during that period I went to Chicago to see my Guru, usually at her Ashram there, and whenever I was in the Chicago area I also visited local temples, primarily the Sri Venkateswara Swami Balaji Temple in Aurora, Illinois, where many times my mom and I both chanted the Vishnu Sahasranama together with the priests there for Sri Balaji in the main daily Puja.
At those old Friday evening sessions, my experience was that the Sahasranama felt like a fire. It felt like we were all gathering to sit together around a bonfire in the night - only the fire was the Lalita Sahasranama. It smoldered quietly as the aunties muttered the mantras with the kind of utterly non-ostentatious, matter-of-fact yet low-key incredibly heartfelt devotion that only older Indian women can effortlessly muster, without the least bit of self-consciousness. The Sahasranama glowed like a palpable presence in the night, and the chanting women were like quietly bubbling pots. I learned a lot about Bhakti from them without them ever saying a word about it. On the altar, the Sri Chakra glinted, poking out here and there from the mound of red kumkum powder in which She was buried.
Twice each year, fall and spring, for the nine nights of Navaratri the temple would burst into vibrant life, and each night for those nine nights we all recited Lalita Sahasranama together with the Pandit as well, not quietly but loudly, with clear and sharp articulation of every Sanskrit syllable. It felt like… Like catching a falling stream of diamonds in my cupped hands and carefully letting them slip through my fingers into a bowl. Sorry to be almost opaquely poetic, but I’m not sure how better to describe this experience. The sheer focus required was considerable, because the Panditji often told me (as in, me in particular, individually) to chant loudly, and then he would unpredictably stop chanting himself just to hear me and check if I was doing it right, so I often ended up effectively leading the chanting for a roomful of Indians, and I would throw everyone off if I missed a syllable, or messed up a line, or even mis-conjugated a sandhi or got a vowel length or something wrong. To chant ceaselessly for over half an hour like this (as in, with hardly a pause for so much as to swallow), I would get into a flow state, remaining hyper-conscious of every detail while my intellectual thinking mind would turn off pretty much entirely; there was no room for it. And it was joyous, the mantras were so beautiful, the whole thing felt exquisite in a way that’s hard to describe. I can really understand the sheer joy and rich satisfaction of a good-quality priest chanting the Vedas (or Puranas as the case may be) for long hours, and how it feels so rewarding to do so.
“Now, prayer can be of two different structures. One structure of prayer may be that of asking… we ask for something… in the prayer we ask. And the other type is no asking but enjoying the singing the Glory of God. And that is the prayer that we enjoy. Not ask but amuse ourselves … let ourselves be drowned in the enjoyment of singing the Glory of God. And that is devotional prayer. And that is the ocean of ecstasy in the memory of God… in the great waves of love for him.