Searching for the Swami Whose Name is Shyamendra

I grew up fascinated with the beauty of nature that was poured around me. I loved discovering why the trees are green and flowers multicoloured. Why the sky is blue? What makes the wind blow and cloud rumbles and rains ? Why the gold shines and iron rusts? How do plants and vines know when to bloom? How do the aeroplanes fly?

At the mid teen-age I was entranced understanding the paradoxical world of quantum physics and Albert Einstein.

I pondered the mysteries of space and time. With a mighty passion for knowing, with an insatiable curiosity, marvelling at the laws and principles that governed the world. This is how I moved on in my life.

Soon I realised not everything could be explained by the physical sciences. This realisation stopped my steps turning into a hard core orthodox scientist. I became liberal in my search. I went on a trip around the world. I started from Machu Pichu, and then Mt.Andies, Egypt, Thailand, China, Japan and at last India. I had a growing interest in the miraculous and healing powers of Jesus Christ, overflowing compassion of St. Francis, and the amazing potential of the human mind displayed by the timeless yogis of India. I learned TM, practised DM, listened to Osho and met the Dalai Lama. I skimmed dozens of issues of Hinduism Today – the magazine of Hawaii based commercial Hindu organisation of the Americans. I was intrigued by inconceivably relaxed, independent and free life in the world of wise men.

I dabbled in out - of - body experiences and astral travelling. I experimented with the altered states of consciousness.

It was often produced by hyperventilating or entrancing the brain’s alpha rhythms with pulsating lights.

I developed my own kind of meditations. Nevertheless, my main interest was still in the physical sciences and mathematics.

I returned back to my University. Surrounded by genuinely inspired minds. My professors loved me for what I was. I loved Stephen Hawking and his wonderful books.

All was well and great yet something strange was stirring deep within me. My studies explained how the material universe evolved from the simplest of elements – hydrogen. But the most fascinating question was how had hydrogen’s single electron orbiting a single proton evolved into a system that could be aware of itself? How had the Universe become conscious?

I thought deep. Studied harder. But my favourite subject – the material science would not answer my question.
After much hard searching I changed my course of study. I preferred experimental psychology. To me then that was the closest academic approach to understanding the consciousness.

I understand the basic functioning of the human brain. Of course my studies in neurophysiology, biochemistry, memory, behaviour and perception entertained my curious mind a lot, yet I was no closer to understanding the nature of consciousness itself.

Then I began to study Transcendentalism, Jaspers, Heidegger, Sartre, Nietze, The Buddha, The Upanishads, The Sufi masters, the Zen masters, Lao Tzu and other mystics.

Then I became puzzled and flew to India. I travelled all places I had been through before and new ones visiting about 500 wisemen, holymen, yogis and professors at Universities of Delhi and Varanasi. I visited Gaya, Allahabad, Lucknow, Jaipur, Puskar, Kathamandu, Chennai, Pandicheri, Raman Ashram, Mumbai, Kolkata and Kamakhya. Then I came to the foothills of the Himalayas in Rishikesh. There in the bank of holy Ganga river, in a small cottage I met my spiritual master, Swami Shyamendra Paramhansa Maharaja.

As I walked along the footpath from Ramajhula to Laxmanjhula I saw a big sign board written “Shyamendra Enlightenment”. I turned towards the Ganga and descended down some rough stairs and looked for someone. There was an empty cottage and a few chairs lying outside. I peeped in but nobody was there. I said – “ hullow…..”.

Suddenly a laughter echoed from the river. A youthful, brilliant Swami was swimming and floating in the transparent sparkling bluish waters of the Ganga. He was jubilant and humorous. “ Hi Mr. Quantum, would you like to perceive the consciousness? Come here. I am floating upon the waves of consciousness. Join me.”

I wondered how did he know my background and what I was searching for. It was such a good English. I hadn’t heard since too long in India. To this nobody-looking swami our language is like his mother tongue. I looked and looked.

He came up in wet clothes and sat on his meditation seat. He pointed me to sit down on the nearby grass mat. As I sat he sprinkled some water on me from his water pot. Then he closed his eyes and was absorbed in deep meditation.

Right then so much calm and serenity came upon me that I felt like closing my eyes. As I closed my eyes my mind was drawn inward. I sank deep into the subconscious states of my mind and saw all my suppressed desires stored and awaiting their turn to surface. Some superpower pushed me deeper and I encountered my past life. Many of them. Too many. I saw my actions, both good and bad, and enjoying and suffering both. Some force pushed me deeper and I saw my old passions, obsessions, opinions and various identities in seed form. So tightened, stuck and packed rock hard. It may take many lives to unwind them and clean them. Some power took me still deeper as if sinking into atlantic depths of consciousness.

In the light of consciousness I saw my astral body and inside the spine through a tube passage I was moving from plexus to plexus which are illuminating as seven soothing divine lights. My ascension on the 7th surrounds me with a flood of light in which I see various faces of bliss and love embodiment of transcendental beings. Then an explosion of vast light of bliss, wisdom and power encompasses me. I am dissolved as an individual being but at the same time expanded in and through all forms of life and the beyond. There is nothing outside me which is not me. I enjoyed my Cosmic form for a long time. Hours passed.

When I opened my eyes I was weightless, as if made of a cotton ball. I looked up and there he was, Swami Shyamendra. A big smile across his face sparkled as he greeted me. I was overwhelmed with an unknown joy. For the first time a feeling of devotion wetted my heart. Tears came to my eyes and folding my palms together in reverence I touched his feet with my head.
After a month of my happiest days I said --
“Holy Sire, I feel the purpose of my life is fulfilled. May I now walk upstream of the Ganga and enter deep into the esoteric mysterious parts of the Himalayas? The world no longer has anything for me anymore worth desiring?”

“Nope, go back into the world to offer them what they are missing. The world has nourished you, raised you, feasted you. Now go for a dignified debt pay.”

“But Sire, not everybody wants this in the world.”

“That is where your duty lies. You have to present consciousness in a way in which everybody will realise that what they are all working so hard for is attained just by striving to attain the proper understanding of the consciousness. Just package it properly and nicely according to the time and place.”

“But I am a westerner Holy Sire, there is no single atom of selflessness in our DNA. In our genes we are patterned with entrepreneurial endeavours. Where there is nothing to gain or no profit, there is no interest for us. So what to do? I must go to the Himalayas.”

Look baby, how many million hours of hard work will it take to make Bush, Tony, Bill Gates, PM of India or UNO people to understand the consciousness? How many thousand hours of Herculean work will it require to make someone experience consciousness who has intellectually known the role of consciousness? For a person like you who has already understood and experienced the consciousness there is still a need for much hard work lying ahead. First you will have to go through those strange circumstances which you encountered in your sub unconsciousness in seed forms. They have to come on to a conscious level and you have to respond to them with awareness and complete un-involvement. Live in the world as water on the lotus leaf. Then what will you gain?

The super light of consciousness will shine effulgently. What you got is a gift. Now by your own labour you must make it your own. Then so much joy will be at your disposal that even the toughest the mountainous misery of the world will seem to be like a tossable foot ball.

“Yasmin sthito no dukhena gurunapi vichalyate” [gita]
And he began singing a song ----
Since then ----- whenever I sat in Shyamendra meditation I found as if my body, mind, and ego all evaporated away. As fast I dissolved so fast the physical reality also dissolved and only the translucent serene consciousness remained permeating all and encompassing all.

After studying and meditating under the guidance of my beloved gurudev I gained a brand new perspective.

As I listened his Srimad Bhagavatam discourses of 120 golden hours of journey into the magical universe of spiritual awakening I explored more deeply the relationship of brain and mind as well as marvellous topics on the nature of reality. I understood that all we call reality is a construction in the mind. All what we even truly know as God, Nirvana, Moksa, Enlightenment are thoughts, images and feelings arising and subsiding in our consciousness to which no God knowledge, no nirvana topic talking person ever know at all.

Not only not know but the modern western brand education system, the modern world view and even the philosophies have no clue, no acceptance that consciousness is one of the fundamental components of the reality as space, time and matter.

When we accept consciousness as one of the fundamental components of reality as space, time and matter as it is done in Swamji’s ‘’wisdom chronicles” discourses then everything changes yet everything remains the same. Nothing is lost, nothing changes at all. What changes is our understanding of our self. We begin to understand what the enlightened ones have been telling us since thousands of years about the nature of mind.

Great sagas of “wisdom chronicles” have repeatedly discovered a deep inner union with the Divine, some said “Thou art That”, Another one said “Consciousness is that”, or “All this is that” or “I am the Universe”.

Even recently the 14th century Christian priest and mystic Meister Eckhart preached that “God and I are one”. He was summoned to the Pope John XXII and reprimanded. The 10th century Sufi mystic Al-Hillaj was crucified for claiming identity with God. But in the East, Lao Tze, Buddha, Shankara, and Krishna all had this wonder experience and they were honoured for that. They guided the destiny of a marvellous culture, civilisation, and a way of life. Their messages still illuminate our path on our search for the Truth not only in India but all over the world.

In the 21st century science has looked deep into space, across the horizon, and to the edge of the universe. Science has looked back in deep time to the beginning of creation. And it has looked down into the deep structure of the cosmos and to the fundamental constituents of matter. In each case, it has found neither evidence for God nor any necessity of God.

The universe is working perfectly well without the help of God therefore everyone talking of oneness with God is complete nonsense.

It sounds ridiculous only because the scientist and people take a naïve and old-fashioned interpretation of God.
Mystics have always referred their God experience as personal experience not something in the physical realm. This experience is sought for into the realm of deep mind - into consciousness --- a realm the science has yet to explore.

“dhyanavasthita tadgaten manasa
pasyanti yam yogino………….” [gita]

World views of science and religion have not always been as far apart as they are today. 5000 years ago in the Mahabharat Age the science was very advanced. In that age “wisdom chronicles” talk about science was highly advanced and had complete harmony with the spirit of truth searching.

Even in the time of Plato and Aristotle physics and meta physics were together. Even 500 years ago science existed within the established world view of the Vatican Church .Due to much injustices and persecution of the scientists by the Church, with Copernicus, Descartes and Newton the western science broke away with its own atheistic world view. And the result is large-scale mental unrest, terrorism and looming world war, but now there is a meeting point --- that is consciousness. When science views consciousness as fundamental to reality, and when religions understand God as the light of consciousness shining within us all, the two world views will find common ground to unite. And the world will be at peace.

Shifting to a world view where consciousness is fundamental takes the integration much further and faster. It will leave no consistency for terrorism, which is the biggest threat to humanity today, which is germinated by conflicting religious views and ‘’convert or kill’’ kind of misunderstandings.

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