THE SUMMER FEAST

June 28
Banglore AMC


I went to Banglore Ashram for a four day advanced meditation course. It was a Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, J & K special AMC but that’s really besides the point. The point is how much I enjoyed it. It was pure, concentrated bliss. Absolutely amazing!
As soon as I reached the Ashram the joy started running through me. We took a few pictures that day of the VM and all but nothing much. Now you come to the ashram and are tottering around, feeling at home and smiling away to glory and then- you see GURUJI in his car going past waving at you! Now that’s like joy raised to power infinity. After that you see him in the satsang- beautiful and divine. Of course, not forgetting accompanied with a dash of the most innocent sense of humour.

Next morning our course started. God save these Punjabis! It does not matter that I was one myself, but we are superb at making noise, distracting sincere participants, doing bhangra at all the wrong times and most importantly saying ‘Jo Bole So Nihaal- Sat Sri Akal’ for absolutely any or no reason. And the frequency of all these things only increased as the course proceeded. Well, to my most pleasant surprise our teachers were Bharat Bhaiya and Pankaj Bhaiya who kept smiling through the painful ordeal of making out of control Panjabis meditate! JJJ First day was great.

The same night we went into silence. (I have no pictures for that period as Dinesh Bhaiya said no photography once we start our silence.) The days in silence were the most beautiful days of my life. There was a nerve in my body which wasn’t relaxed. Each atom of me was smiling! Ah! The delightful sessions with Pankaj Bhaiya, Bharat Bhaiya and Akash Bhaiya. And the lovely meditations in Guruji’s honey voice. He even came personally to take one meditation session with us. Needless to say, it rocked my world.
I loved the satsangs every evening. I wholly followed Dinesh Bhaiya’s advice of only looking at Guruji during the satsang. The greatest darshan is when with your eyes open you see Guruji and as you close your eyes, you see Guruji inside them.
Before I knew silence was over. We had met him in our darshan lines once, and many more times before, during and after the satsang. I had barely any time to complete my long list of shopping I had prepared but managed to scrape through somehow without money and time.
Next morning as our flight took off for back home, the sun started rising. As soon as we we were in air I sat in Sahaj Samadhi. After 20 minutes when I opened my eyes, there was an endless expanse of white clouds, shimmering in the sun’s glow before me. Heaven is a place just a little above the earth.