Finding Oneself - From the absolute Not-knowing to the absolute Knowledge.

FINDING ONESELF
"When by Grace of Guru I have Awoken, the only thing I have got wasMyself!"
Dedicated to My Guru
By Sergey Rubtsov
Contents
Preface.
Introduction.
Chapter 1. Atman.
Destination
Enlightenment.
Guru.
Guru’ Grace.
Oneness.
The Way.
Practices (techniques).

Part 2
Chapter 1
Experience
“God’s Voice”
The Route
Other Languages Prayer Halt of the world’s motion “The earth’s push”
“Samadhi”
1st fasting
2nd fasting (26 days)
Sahaja Samadhi
3rd Fasting (27 days) Savikalpa Samadhi
Two final fastings
Double-ganger
Four-step meditation
Concentration
Tai Chi
Solidification of the Astral Body
Double touch

Chapter 2
It Happened!
Crisis before the Awakening
Realization – Enlightenment – Awakening Notes
Sri Halilal V.L. Poonja (Papaji)
After the Realization (processes in the organism) Ramana Maharshi
Draft

Preface.
This book is about Awakening of the sleeping man, about his Way from the absolute Not-knowing to the absolute Knowledge.
51 year, 7 months and 29 days of ordinary living... In the evening in the end of the January 2006 I was sitting and reading a book of Papaji and suddenly something happened! Absolutely unexpected! Without any efforts on my part! This something lasted for a moment, but this moment was the last one in my life.

Introduction.
Ultimate Reality (Atman) and a person, who realised Atman.
"Diverse thinkers, mystics, and sages - not only of India but from around the world - have given us a plethora of images or explanations of the ultimate Reality and its relation to the manifest universe. All, however, are in agreement that God, or the Self, transcends both language and the mind. With few exceptions, they are also unanimous in making three related claims, namely that the Ultimate:

1. is single - that is, an undivided Whole complete in itself, outside which nothing else exists;
2. is of a higher degree of reality than the world of multiplicity reflected to us through our senses; and
3. is our highest good, that is, the most desirable of all possible values.
Additionally, many mystics claim that the ultimate Reality is utterly blissful. This bliss is not merely the absence of pain or discomfort, nor is it a brain-dependent state. It is beyond pain and pleasure, which are states of the nervous system. This goes hand in hand with the insistence of mystics that their realization of the transcendental Identity is not an experience, as ordinarily understood. Such adepts simply are that Reality".

"Encyclopedia of Yoga" Georg Feuerstein
Chapter 1. Atman.
There is something or the Basis of All. It never changes, but at the same time It is Always new. It comprises Everything, not affecting anything. Without It nothing is there, but It doesn't create or destruct. All dualities, "getting" into It lose there sense and physical construction. This Basis isAtman.

Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950) - one of the greatest spiritual Teachers. In 1907 he became known as Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi - Blessed Lord Ramana, the great Sage.

Question: What is Reality?
Sri Ramana Maharshi : Reality must be always real. It is not with forms and names. That which underlies these is the Reality. It underlies limitations, being itself limitless. It is not bound. It underlies unrealities, itself being real. Reality is that which is. It is as it is. It transcends speech. It is beyond the expressions 'existence, nonexistence', etc.

The reality which is the mere consciousness that remains when ignorance is destroyed along with knowledge of objects, alone is the Self (Atman). In that Brahma-swarupa (real form of Brahman), which is abundant Self-awareness, there is not the least ignorance.

There are no degrees of Reality. There are degrees of individual's experience, but not of Reality. Whatever experiences are, the one who experiences is always the same.

No doubt, the Self is in direct experience of everyone, but It's not like It is imagined. It is just what It is.
The Self is ever present. Each one wants to know the Self. What kind of help does one require to know oneself? People want to see the Self as something new. But it is eternal and remains the same all along. They desire to see it as a blazing light etc. How can it be so? It is not light, not darkness. It is only as it is. It cannot be defined. The best definition is 'I am that I am'.

Atman is Existence, but it's different from the real and the unreal. It is Consciousness, but different from the sentient and the insentient. How can it be defined at all? It is just Existence.

Destination
Question: "What is the highest goal of spiritual experience for man?"
Sri Ramana: "Self-realisation."
Self-realisation.
"As the Self, Atman, of the one, trying to get Self-realisation, is not different from himself, and as there is nothing equal or higher than this achievement, so Self-realisation is just recognition of one's true nature" Sri Ramana Maharshi

Enlightenment.
Enlightenment - is the Grace of Guru.
Enlightenment takes a moment and lasts forever. Nobody is needed toconfirm it.
Enlightenment is a realisation of the possibility, built into every human being by Nature.
Enlightenment for the human organism is a transition to another psycophysiological mode of Existence.
Some notes.
Enlightenment is absolutely different from what I was thinking about.
Enlightenment can not be reached with personal efforts.
Enlightenment can not be reached.
Guru.
Guru is That, without Which Enlightenment is impossible!
Guru’ Grace.
Guru’s Grace - is My Enlightenment!
Oneness.
Atman, Guru, Grace of Guru... Ignorance, Awakening... Self, World these are one and the same!
Searching for Guru.
"Seeker, who has necessary qualities, and is longing to undertake Selfenquiry, must search for Satguru, prostrate himself in front of Him in humility, awe and respect and serve Him in different ways. Only Satguru is able to destroy residual chains. He is the ocean of the invariable Wisdom. His knowledge is all-embracing. He is crystal clear. He has won desires. He is the greatest expert of Brahman. He rests peacefully in Brahman, like fire which burnt his fuel. He is the infinite reservoir ofGrace. There is no explanation of his mercy; it's his own nature. He supports all sadhu, who are his true followers."

Shankara
The Way.
The Way - is everything that happens to the person, going towards Enlightenment: ordinary living, searching for something different from ordinary living, the experience of body-mind organism
transformation,meeting Guru, Awakening.

There is only one Way to Enlightenment - it's the Way to Enlightenment.
The Way is outlined by God, but I am the one who walks it.
Practices (techniques).
"For realising bliss of Liberation personal individual efforts are the basic factor".
Shankara
Practice is a specific technical action, which helps to launch (turn on) function or program, built into a human being by Nature. This prepares human organism for Awakening.

Practice doesn't lead to Awakening , because practice is a personal action, effort. Awakening is a Grace of Guru and doesn't require any efforts from the person.

There are two kinds or types of functions, built into a human being by Nature.
1.Biological (animal). They are launched by themselves, turned on by "inner" Force.
2. Human. They can only be launched in social (human) environment, turned on by "outer" Force.
(Of course, both of them are in the same "package", human body, organism and are "interconnected").
About practices or techniques.
All practices are inside "mind limits". No practices allow to come out "from mind limits" and become enlightened, because mind - is all, that surrounds us - visible and invisible - and we ourselves.

The sense of a technique is that it should be performed!
The task of the technique is to lead a person to a certain psycophysiological state and turn it on.
The result of techniques for all people is the same, programmed. When program (function) is turned on a person experiences different states hallucinations: auditory, visual; samadhi; vibrations, gustatory senses, changes of body limits and so on.
There is direct connection between specific actions, practices and psycophysiological states in human organism arising from these actions. These practices as well as arising states were discovered during thousands of years.

Part 2
Chapter 1.
Experience
“It is indeed very difficult to obtain a human body. Even
though one does, it is very difficult to become a brahmin.
Even if one becomes one, it is still more difficult to walk in the path of vaidika dharma in which the Vedas are chanted. Still more difficult is it to become a perfect scholar, and more difficult again to undertake enquiry into the Self and the
non-Self. Yet more difficult than all this is to obtain wisdom born of experience of the Self”
Shankara

“God’s Voice”
I’ve been studying at the Bible school at that moment. The studies were rather intense: lots of topics, lots of questions. Some question was posed, and I’ve been trying to clear it up for a rather long time. In vain. Once I closed my eyes before going to bed.. As a rule, one can see the black space for some time after closing the eyes. However, this time the space was white, almost ivory (lacteous). I fall asleep, but it was a strangedormant state: I was sleeping but simultaneously saw this inner ivory space. Suddenly I heard a voice in this dream. I realized that I was asleep, however, I saw that flat white colour and heard a voice. It was a gruff male voice, speaking very loudly (that’s why I woke up immediately). It told me something like that: ”The answer to your question’s in such and such verse of the Bible”. “It’s God’s voice!” –I thought immediately (I don’t remember neither the problem itself nor that verse now. Neither it is important). I got up swiftly, ran to the school, took the Bible, opened the verse I needed and read it. That verse contained a comprehensive answer to my question! That fact impressed me greatly then!

The Route
We walked the whole night. There and back again. I had a goal: to walk 45 kilometers. I can’t tell you definitely if I walked hem or not. It’s not the case. The main thing is that I’ve been walking stubbornly: my clothes were wet, I didn’t have a dry thread on/ I was like a drowned rat. It was February, and it was snowing dreadfully that night. I walked there and back again along the route two or three times, I couldn’t go on.. creeping to the lodge, falling without unrobing and lying..without any sinews to get up…so much less to walk. No, I can’t. But I got up and went on. I walked 45 kilometers. Everyone walked 30. What is it for? I tell that I don’t know myself why but it’s a must. Someday we’ll face the route and it’ll be of vital importance to walk it…and we’ll do it! Surely, I said it mainly for myself.

Actually, it wasn’t something like training of will or physical endurance or of something else. I read in Gurdjieff’s books: astral body or will are crystallized through a very simple technique: if you had walked 40 miles, don’t sit down, make 3 miles more! You’ve done your work – so do in excess of that. The body’s not able to go raise – but you stand out and go on! It is the perking (не знаю)of the body that trains the will! It doesn’t matter if you want or not – we were taught to idle, so we do. But you must stand up and go! – it’s the only way the decoupling may occur: the body’s acting and I observe the action… It’s the state of trance, the other mode of the organism’s being. It will be hard but it will be accumulating anyway.

Other Languages Prayer
The core of the technique is to substitute the inner reasoned discoursefor a senseless talking, for a jabber.

It was the last technique I practiced “before the Enlightenment”. I practiced without a break, then everything calmed down and I did nothing for a few days. Afterwards an intense work followed. I tried to transfer the talking inwards, to talk on the back of my mind, without any voice…and I succeeded! Nevertheless, I went on working, talked

through days and nights and suddenly the nada sound switched on. I’ve never heard the nada sound before yet I knew about this phenomenon and even read on nada yoga. Gradually the nada sound turned into vibrations which directed right into the center, in the thought root or nucleus. I could literally see the nucleus, saw it as some shapeless sphere the thoughts emerged from. Vibrations headed to this sphere and in some time (I do not remember exactly how many days passed) the enlightenment happened.

Another thing had happened to me two and a half years before the awakening. We lived in a tent on a stead near Moscow, I didn’t have to work and I practiced the jabber all the time, talked,talked… even while reading a newspaper or eating! The last five days I tried to talk at nights (хрень получается ) either. I passed the bridge across the river, it was entirely iron, the bridge. And me on this bridge..PLONK! Such a flung up!.. the jabber started going on (switched on) by itself, and I detached from the body as an observer! I’m looking at my body, and it’s gabbling by itself - such a bliss. I’d never seen such an effect.. it lasted for about 30 minutes and I couldn’t help it: neither stop it, nor enhance, nor extend. Facial muscles are working by on their own, talking, gustily, without my participation! And it’s very pleasant, super blissout. After a while everything bounced back to the norm.

Halt of the world’s motion
The two and a half months before the awakening such a jetting had happened to me. I thought over these moments afterwards trying to explain why it went wrong: all these conflicts, both inner and outer, difficulties, both psychological and physical, permanent irritation and so on and so forth. But for about a month or more before it I had suddenly recalled the prayer practice and I started doing it. Almost all the time long: blah-blah-blah-blah-blah…(???) – day and night till falling asleep The jabber switched on by itself, in the morning, just after getting up, before the thinking process started up. And suddenly it turned out that some days before the Event – “the world view halt”! Bang! No thoughts, no words, there’s just an image or some living photo, it’s real and natural but it doesn’t move! Everything stopped in tracks. No sounds. As if the stop-button was pushed. It happened twice. I thought it to be the world’s stop described by Castaneda, but he described it differently, but the word itself is right. It’s like a photo. Bounce! – it’s living and real but it doesn’t move! There’s no inner talk, everything’s mute; it’s silence, but I’m aware of everything and I’m observing it (the picture)…as if I were there, but I’m not stiffened. Afterwards, the prayer switched on by itself, once I started thinking; it wasn’t the jabber actually, just a sound, some drone, roaring inside my head and I was able to see the inner space. It’s very difficult to describe it in words. Then the following happened (the extract to be continued!)

“The earth’s push”
The trainings’ schedule was the following: at the beginning one should sit for an hour without any moving and talking, sitting in seiza, folding legs underneath the thighs. Then followed just an hour of walking round the hall (while walking we sometimes practised some Tai Chi elements and very intense pushes alternated with relaxation). After that the workin pairs followed.

During one of the trainings the second crucial experience was obtained
–the earth’s push. I was walking round the hall like others (after an hour long sitting) and all of a sudden I was just flung up! Everything started moving. The floor was waving, I touched the wall – it’s also in move…the world around me was alive! The solid world turned into soft and living one! It was incredible, but it was true! And so is it till now..After that episode I asked the guys : “ Has something alike ever happened to you?!” But nothing like that had happened to them.

(I knew the expression “the earth’s push” from C. Castaneda’s books, from descriptions of master Ueshiba’s awakening, from descriptions of Zen masters’ awakening. But I couldn’t pretend that it was so real!)

“Samadhi”
“Samadhi” – is a temporary state of the human organism. It’s not analtered state of consciousness but an altered perception of the world as the Consciousness doesn’t alter or change –it’s beyond the change.

Samadhi is an essential stage of physical and psychological experience and changes of a human organism. The Awakening
is impossiblewithout them. All the Awakened obligatory experienced Samadhi before the Awakening.

I “experienced” two types of Samadhi: Savikalpa and Sahaja Samadhi. Savikalpa Samadhi is permanent bliss orĀnanda. Sahaja Samadhi comprises the whole set: silence – peace – bliss (в тексте: тишина – покой - блаженство) or Satchidānanda.

Samadhi is a temporary state, i.e.it has its beginning and its and its end. This fact represents the principal difference between “Samadhi” and Enlightenment, Enlightenment is permanent.

Note: “Sahaja Nirvikalpa Samadhi” may be used as a term defining theAwakened.
1st fasting
For some reason I decided to starve for 30 days – a very long period, I hadn’t had such an idea before. Along with fasting I’ve been working for the first 19 days. The body weight has rapidly decreased. In two days after finishing the practice I started another 5-day long one. I wasn’t aware that should have rather not done it (as it’s an obstacle for Samadhi experience).

After the hunger practice I got known what the tongue is. I pressed any spot on my body and got an immediate response reaction on my tongue (in a certain spot): another spot on the body – another one on the tongue. Furthermore, I touched the paper felt its taste (!) and so on. This effect lasts till now.

I drank nothing for the first five days, on the sixth the body started burning. After 20 days the physical state has gravily worsened and I couldn’t get up during next days, lying or sitting crooked, with my head on the chest all the time. Everything was OK afterwards. (plus the collapse-effect).

2nd fasting (26 days)
Sahaja Samadhi
Had a wish to make a 40-day practice. It was then when I became
aware of the hunger abd Samadhi mechanisms. While doing the
practice I got a thought that there were no thoughts (there are no
thoughts during the hunger practice)! On 22-24 days came a strong desire to be alone alfresco. So I did. It was a self-sufficient state, I was perfectly well alone. I tried to do practices but it was impossible.

Ramana: Mind – is a thinner part of the food.
It was a turning point – I couldn’t do the practice any longer! An incredibly hard psychological stress occurred. I gave up! Went to eat...It was a strained psychological state: I’m feeble, I gave up and so on. But the dilemma was – Should the body live or die? I chose the life..and gave up.. I recalled don Juan afterwards: you can lose the battle, you’ll have lots of them in future, the main thing is not to give up! And I realized later that I lost just a battle! (but actually it happened that through losing a 40-day long battle with hunger I won a miracle – Samadhi!). Blaming myself without break. One night passed…survived the next day somehow. The body demanded food! I ate and ate, ate a lot!

The next night it started!!! I woke up for some reason, went to the seashore (our “tent” was in 15-20 step long distance from it). It was night. Silence. Now I can say that it was unnaturally still. All of a sudden I heard a voice: “Do you want to see yourself?” (nearly so). Very unexpectedly! The voice flowed from above. Female, clear voice. The moon was strange, of some green hue. I saw a stone resembling a man ablazed with light, it was hooped as if it had a fin. I understood that it was a stone. Voice:”It’s you, d’you want to see other people?”. It was the same stone, however, it was flat as a log. Everything was silence. There was no fear! I answered: “I do”.

Then I went by the sea, sat down. Two voices:” We’re the welcomers” (two male voices). The woman again: “So you wanted it, didn’t you?”. “I did”. The body started aching. She said: “We’re preparing your body, you want to present you to our hierarchy” My body was aching but it was pleasant like after an intense training, when the body’s aching but it is pleasant. They:”We’ll teach you to sit in lotus position in one day”. My whole body started “flowing”. The talks went on for about six hours. All of Them including those having talked to me and “the others” are alike, are in the state but they had a formal hierarchy too. I posed plenty of questions. The voices were ethereal, pure.

Then I had a talk with someone, it concerned some common subjects: weather, nature, food and on. He said to me:”Plant a forest, it’s your task!”. I took it literally then, I even wanted to enter some relevant school.

I had complete blissout all the time then. In the morning I came back to the tent to sleep. During our talk by the sea there wasn’t any single soul, not any sound – neither cars, nor dogs, nor trains! Though there were many tents, and trains passed constantly over there producing awful noise and drone. Came back to the tent, lied down… I got known what it meant not to sleep: a state when the body’s sleeping and the self is not! The following happened in the dream: some meeting, I’m telling something to some woman, however, along with that understanding that I’m observing both myself and the situation from some point! Another incident the same night: as if there was a minitheatre by me. But I realized that these had been the real-life episodes (from different epochs), I realized that I could enter and start living there. Then the scenes started alternating rapidly. I understood that I didn’t possess the speed needed for observing the alteration, that there were millions of images, that I could somehow enter each of them and start living inside it.

Then my wife (all that time she slept in the tent and didn’t wake up) told me:”While sleeping I felt that you went nowhere, you’d been by me all the time”.

In the morning my state had changed, there had been no voices anymore but the following feelings appeared: the Himalayan silence, inner peace, bliss, plus a bliss from each touch to something, even from the thought about the body. I’d never felt the like in my life.

The day we headed off to the town with my wife. On the way a number ofexperiences occurred:
1. “The enlightened watch through eyes”. (Osho)
It was as if I watched through some tube. Something black separated me from my my eyes. Later I read in Lahiri Mahasaja’s book about a black man inside him.

2. My body stopped sweating and feeling the heat. It was +43° C in shadow! (there was an announcement at the market, meat-selling was banned).

3. On the way back – Plong! – something was missing…What? The bliss’s gone, didn’t feel it any more. Why? ‘cause I didn’t feel the body! And I went on watching through the tube. A very unusual state.

4. I walked with my wife, I was talking to her, thinking of something, thinking that I was thinking along with thinking to do something else (to test the abilities of this state): so I started counting the steps and didn’t mat even once! At the same time I was observing all this processes. The thoughts were connected to a special action through a sort of web, it was invisible, rather I could feel it. And I observed it. I was like a machine operator who is controlling and observing everything, such a small operator sitting inside my head like in transformer cartoons!
Juan told Castaneda that this world is very fluid, that it’s changing rapidly, he said: “ You don’t possess the speed needed to catch this world changing at a high pace…” While in Sahaja Samadhi the speed of data handling is rocketing,
in million times!
When I quitted this state, encountered with one of Buddha’s sayings. He said that in a one-blink time billion thoughts pass by, and I was observing all of them. Such a high information handling speed. But all this happened within this world – it was not theenlightenment, not an exit beyond (the mind).

5. The world became very bright and colorful like in my childhood. Advaita or the world’s non-duality. It’s a physical state of a man in Samadhi. It’s a clear sense of the world’s non-duality or physical oneness of everything. It’s difficult to describe it. I didn’t know neither the word “advaita” neither its sense then.

6. There were no emotions. Absolute absence of any fear. But I switched on a certain emotion and switched it off at my own wish. The emotions didn’t fade away gradually (as it happens in a usual state), all occurred at once.

7. Why did I consider my knowledge to be absolute then? ‘cause I had no doubts in this state! But then, when it ended, the doubts emerged again.

8. Neither past nor future existed for me. Everything was now! A very handsome feeling.
9. There was absolutely clear (exact) awareness, that I’m not the body, I’m a Spirit
10. Identity with the world. If I enter the fire, I’ll become it, it won’t destroy me. Didn’t manage to test it.
11. Intention. What’s it? In Samadhi it’s only now. I’m thinking and it comes true or happens. Action=thought. Neither managed to examine it completely.
12. This state absorbs completely. There was no interest to outer world.

In the evening the environment took its toll, and if could now that beforehand I would have leave the society in this state, I would have stay in it, dwell for longer time. Bums started drinking, holiday-makers came..And all of a sudden this state ended! There was a feeling that after residing in a colorful bright world I was set down in a dirty puddle! Everything around me became grey and somber..My wife told me that time: “You became very angry”. That state ended, not all at once, it “leaked away” gradually. My eyes didn’t change (according to Osho, the enlightened’s eyes change).

In the morning we decided to leave that place, so we did it. I ended the fasting on the 9th of August, it started in a day and a half after that and lasted for a day.

For about in a year I got to know what had happened to me, read it in books of different authors. I discovered that “my” silence-peace-bliss wasSatchidānanda, in other words, existence – consciousness – bliss. The only regret was that I couldn’t stay in such a state. I realize now that one shouldn’t dwell in it as it’s not the ultimate destination. However, one has no ability to predetermine somehow any states – they are not dependent neither from one’s will, nor from one’s wish. The analysis of the experience had lasted some years. I described the state itself as Sahaji Samadhi without any difficulties: it contained all “components”: sat – chit – ānanda. Though ānanda fades away in a time. Voices and dialogues considered as pre-Samadhi.

(Savikalpa Samadhi doesn’t contain neither sat, nor chit, there’s onlyānanda, and one should strain for bliss to stay, one has to recall it).

My own experience has shown that transformations having happened in the human organism through Samadhi, stay forever).

The next 6 years I considered this experience, Sahaji Samadhi to be the greatest and built upon it all my talks and appetence. I thought that sahaji-nirvikalpa-samadhi of absolute awakening is
the same thing justlasting forever. Even after having experienced both trance and Savikalpa Samadhi afterwards I kept thinking so. I even couldn’t pretend howsadly mistaken I was!

3rd Fasting (27 days)
Savikalpa Samadhi
A year later we went South again. I wanted to repeat the experience. And I succeeded!

…we were on the rove, had no place to live…We headed off to the countryside, came back, it became cold. Went to our friend’s place. Lives there for 4 months…lot of people there, including me and my wife…, I’ve been thinking over what had happened to me? I found in books, something in Osho’s but mostly in Ramana’s. Roughly speaking, I tried to identify it and realized that it was Sahaja Samadhi. I wrote about this experience, we printed it.

The winter was over. We passed through it through it by a finger’s breadth. We had nowhere to live, and in April, in its very end (I don’t remember exactly how I earned money) we went South – to have the experience repeated. And it did! It wasn’t Sahaja, but another sort of Samadhi – Savikalpa. We were taken in a too severe environment. It was raining heavily in May, every day: it was raining, raining without break. We lived at the seashore. We had no tent, just overwrap and sleeping-bags. We lied in puddles for two, three days and nights. The most hateful was to purl from one side to another: everything’s slopping, it’s hard to get warm…far and by, on the 23th of May we broke down and stopped fasting. I’ve fasted for 27 days. We decided to depart, bought tickets but we had to wait the train for some days. We spent the daytime by the sea, we had a place there, dry and sunny. We had rest there and at nights we were by the railway station. The last night we spent in the station, slept on the benches. There hall was overcrowded, the processes started but none of the outsiders could see it!

It was cold and muggy at nights, we slept in two sleeping-bags on benches in the alley. The first two nights after the fasting I didn’t sleep at all. The second night (it’s evidently easier at nights) I felt that through the channels (the two channels located along the spine) a kind of liquid started its motion vz-z-z-z-z-z …right into the mouth, it was sweetish like honeydew and I realized that it has begun! I’ve been waiting for this moment, I knew that it would come! And it started…17 days without break: both in the train and on arrival…When in train, I had a standing wish to shift away from everyone: once I down sat on the bottom shelf – that’s it, absolute ānanda, absolute! There was no me, there’s just bliss. The wife: “Come on. Eat something”. I say: “ I’m full well without it, complete blissout”.

I’ve been waiting, I knew that this state will come, I didn’t know the time exactly but I knew it’ll come. May be not in the way I imagined but something would definitely happen! That state was of another sort and lasted much longer than I presumed.

On arrival we had stayed at our friends’ cottage for three days, I started fasting again. My wife “ran away” a day later (the cottage strained the nerves, it was inclement, damp and somber), I stayed two days longer. Afterwards she came and took me with her, by that moment I stopped fasting. I’ve seen such things during those 2 days! I wrote everything down in a notebook and retold to everyone. For example, my head became as huge as a ball, holed, some bright light beamed through them as at the disco. Then I’ve seen myself from inside, “travelled” there. Everything was fading away, I started seeing things. I don’t remember exactly, lots of things. Lots of glitches of a peculiar sort and I was aware of that, I made no efforts, it just went on and on by itself.. I don’t remember everything, my notebook was half-full of notes. By that time I had Ramana’s book with me and a book “Miracle of Love” about Neem Karoli Baba, Maharaji.

I perceived it as…as nothing. A Miracle? Well, it was astonishing, wow, cool, seeing things, but I was aware that these were glitches…just even not realized, it was somewhere beyond understanding: it just happened and that’s all. I’ve traveled inside my body…wo-o-o-ow, challenging! I’ve seen jaws, head and all the other things from inside. Like on a X-ray picture, but it wasn’t still. I just lied down on the second floor, and wo-oo-o-o all that stuff began, spreading of me, of space, it was impossible to hold it down! It was more intense at nights and languished at daytime because of the sun, visual images, the eyes were opened. There was no fear, I didn’t feel the outside worldas if it didn’t exist at all. Silence all the time. Nothing disturbed me. I was aware if everything. But then I became tired of it, I was hungry, had nothing to eat – not a jot. There was strawberry on the stead and I started chewing it, it wasn’t ripe yet.

Two final fastings
We went at the seaside two times more, fasted, but I didn’t have such impressing experiences any more. I fasted for 18 days, had no might for longer period. I was just tired…

In a year we had a 21-day long fasting. I was very strained at the end, at least the body was sprawling, aching, as if some hedgehogs werescrambling from inside of me, outside through the skin. Such a stuff.

We learned to live almost without means of support, tapped out, we gathered cabbage leaves, boiled them and ate. We bought a pound of flour, cooked dumplings, boiled and ate them. Then cherries and apples ripened..so we picked them and ate.

After the fasting the organism needs the food badly, the body wants to eat! But the heat has come and we had to leave. St Petersburg, Moscow, the seaside again. We wanted to stay by the sea in winter, it was a little warmer there. But then we acquainted with some guys from St Petersburg. They invited us to stay at their place. Such a “lead up” for the Awakening I had, but I even didn’t think of it then. But the preparation is needed because the Awakening is an enormous stress for the human organism, Very heavy! It lasts for ears, that’s why the seeker should bestrong which includes physical strength too! All together I had five long fastings and lots of short ones, from 3 to 7 days.

Double-ganger
While in Savikalpa Samadhi (it lasted for 17 days) I had lots of glitches of many sorts. One of those nights (I lived in my friends’ halfconstructed cottage then) something went out of me, of my body..a Double-ganger, a fetcher. It comes out of me and went up. It seemed that it stands on my head. Its head looks back (double-ganger’s head is beneath – its body on high, it’s watching backwards against my sight). And I can feel and see it. It got out of me, I tried to stuff it back, without any success! It ascends and stands on my head…it was so sapid! It has no weight. I visited my friend later and asked him about double-gangers, he showedit to me in a book – a picture of it. It was alike.

This world is enweaved with energies: atoms, molecules, electrons, force structures. Yet, people possess consciousness, a supra-structural thing, they can affect the energy: atoms, molecules, electrons – everything: they can change the world at their own discretion, build it. It’s not just changing for oneself, they see it this way and other people in touch with them can see events happening to them too!

Four-step meditation
4 stages:
1. The logical apparatus calms down. The inner talk or thought process stops (for a man)
2. Visual stage: the jabber may either stop or go on, however, the images surely emerge – colored pictured. One can see them tangibly, even when the eyes are opened.
3. Emotional stage: one can weep, jump, laugh – anything. The pictures may either leave or stay
4. Uncontrolled stage: black collapse. It may come about or not. I got to know later that the black collapse is a penetration into the space of mind. It is of black color with a graphite hint, a color of a pencil. There’s no thought process during this stage and evidently that’s why the body restores rapidly.

The black collapse switches off all the logical apparatus (thought process, all one thinks with) completely, at this moment the body recovers, gets rid of sores of any sort and obtains superpowers… This technique gives an ability to get out of (or in) the mind’s space, plunge into oneself, stay there and see or watch from there. How long does it last? Just seconds. During it there’s no human consciousness butthere’s an observer. It never disappears as it’s beyond the mind.

If one learned to pass through first three stages even without striking into the black collapse, one can do phenomenal things, herewith one’s body does is not wrecked.

Concentration
Everything’s changing each moment of time: the world one observed the previous moment doesn’t exist any longer! It means that things I’m concentrated on don’t exist the next moment! That’s why I think there’snothing to concentrate on.

What’s happening? May be, it’s me who is building my body, the world around me? But what is this world that is apart from me? And who am I, separated from the world? After the awakening there exists neither the world nor the world existing apart from me.

Tai Chi
Tai Chi master once said : “Dissolve as fume”.
Tai Chi is Yin’s and Yang’s mother. It’s not neither Yin nor Yang, it’s Yin’s and Yang’s mother. As soon as a wish or an intention comes into being – neither action nor thought yet – Tai Chi dies, Yin and Yang are born.

Solidification of the Astral Body
When one feels a pillow or embedment on the body, on arms; at first it’s not clear yet later it becomes real. And when one pushes me, one doesn’t touch me – one just tries to beat down that pillow, however it’s not possible: it’s like a crystal, like iron, like steel. ..I feel it for real, it’s droning. That’s the sense of Tui Shou. However one should go on further – to dissolve the pillow, to band body and mind. After this one can see the space of mind opened (it’s huge, almost endless but still has its borders). And when one is pushed in such a state, it is aught that is pushed; it’s not subject to any physical pressure or destruction. One can have such an experience.

I had it the following way: I pushed my wife slightly, and my arms disappeared. She told me: “You became a concrete wall: it’s impossible neither to beat down nor to heave away”. And I felt that I had thin pins instead of arms, and the arms themselves were as if frozen with novocaine.
It’s the matter of pressure receptors, we have them half dead, and exercises revive them. All in all, Tai Chi Chuan originated from people who worked with silk threads, those weaving silk. In some Tai Chi manuals one can read how to untwine threads, arms are depicted. Untwining of the silkworms: to the right – then to the left. These are exercises or motions to practice, but that’s trifle. That matter is not how to turn the palm of the hand, because physics doesn’t matter at all! I managed to learn the reason, got to know what those who understood felt. I had it this way: I’ve been working with the thread, and became some kind of rope. Just a simple sewing- thread. “Strike me pink! What an effect of tumefaction!”– I thought. Afterwards I watched a tvprogram about silk-weaver workers. A girl (she worked on untwining silkworm’s threads) explained: pods are put into very hot water to have them soaked; afterwards she takes one thread and attaches it to another one which is on the loom. That is actually all her work. She showed her hands: “Look at my hands, they are red, swollen”! This girl felt the thread to be as huge as a rope, that is, she can feel anyone, anything in this way because her pressure receptors have been revived. When I told hereinabove about being flung up and when Ueshiba told about being shaken – that’s all about how the pressure receptors switched on. The result is simple: we’ve been sitting for an hour in seiza, legs fold underneath the thighs and then got up. Got up and fell sometimes as the legs became numb. But when numbness ended, receptors resuscitated. I was walking barefoot round the hall and had such a flung up! And from then onwards I feel the that floor’s moving, everything’s moving, that is, the world became alive. One should have such an experience.

Double touch
The problem is that one cannot keep one’s attention on one “spot” or on one action longer than a moment.

I had it this way: I just wanted to switch the light on and stretched my arm towards the switch and felt clearly: the thought moved from my head to my arm, my arm raised, my fingers glued to the switch! My attention was in the spot of contact – fingers-switch – and it shifted nowhere! It was an unusual state! Since then my attention’s always in the spot of contact, body-object, as long as I wish. But it’s much more complicated. It’s me who is lining up both the contact and my feelings as long as I wish… (The technique is described elsewhere).

Chapter 2
It Happened!
In the end of January, 2006 I’ve been sitting in the armchair and reading Papaji’s book. My daughter has been playing, my wife has been on the floor and doing something. I remember my wife taking my daughter who was creeping in the floor and pooling her towards herself (I noticed it through periphery?? vision, It seemed strange to me because she looked trying to protect her from something although there was no visible threat). At that moment I was reading how Papaji explained something to a man who has been seeking for many years, visited many ashrams but without any result.

And suddenly something happened! All at once, unexpectedly. Before that moment everything became silent, as if became still?? But I paid no attention to it, it didn’t play any role to me. I don’t remember the moment itself, just its consequences when I saw both inside and outside myself a soundless “nuclear explosion”. It looked like a nuclear mushroom as in a documentary on nuclear tests. The space has been waving. I really felt and saw it(both inside and outside myself) and I was … split! into body-mind and I. All at once I
got understanding-knowledge (just so, one word!): it doesn’t matter what the body’s doing I knew WHO I AM. It doesn’t matter what the mind’s thinking of, I knowWHO I AM! I understood everything, I understood all at once, I understood what happened, what took place!.. I understood in just within a split second (the understanding was beyond words, logic and everything but I knew that this was the Enlightenment). I’ve been laughing and screaming : “What a fool I’ve been! Why couldn’t I understand that before, the Enlightenment, it’s so easy! It’s so easy! So easy…” Afterwards I’ve been laughing without break. One’s laughing and or crying when understanding how easy the Enlightenment is, how stupid one has been!

I marked the place in Papaji’s book I’ve been reading at the moment it happened with a pencil.
Before that I was sure that one is able to describe whatever one wants. But after that “event” I know definitely: it’s impossible to describe it! Everything I am writing about here is very approximate, moreover, I can’t recall the moment of Enlightenment itself at all, it “slipped away” from me . And emotions?!! Miracle, joy,liberation, it happened!” I can’t express it through thousands of exclamation marks what I felt then…

The Enlightenment – it’s very easy ! The masters say: Guru, Guru, Guru’s grace! Yes! Yes! Guru, only Guru! I didn’t make any effort. It happened BY ITSELF! Everything happened totally unexpectedly for me!However, I couldn’t have done anything…

Crisis before the Awakening
My crisis started at the end of 2005, it began nearly in November. Some meetings, video from Papaji’s satsang . One asked me: “Is Papaji awakened or not?” My answer was:”I just know what Samadhi is. I don’t know if he is the Enlightened. Why should it plat any role for you? One should work hard!” I did the other languages practice all the time long (without break), day and night, when I wasn’t asleep. I got up, the thoughts haven’t started flowing yet and something in my head started:”blah-blah-blah…” (This moment, “the crisis before the Awakening” or “non-path” as I called it, is very important and I will describe later in detail).

Realization – Enlightenment – Awakening
I, the seeker, have always been completely unaware of whatI’ve been seeking. The Enlightenment? Yes! But what was it? The aim has been marked mediatedly for me, either through those who achieved it or those seeking themselves, citing the words of the others while talking about the Enlightenment. But there is no half-knowledge: either I am Atman and I’m aware of that or total Ignorance.

Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950), one of the greatest spiritual Masters – was born on December, 30, 1879, in a settlement Tiruchuli in the South-Indian state Tamil Nadu. When he was 16, he had a death experience which led him to awareness that he is not the body but a deathless Spirit. This changed him completely. He left his home for the sacred mount of Arunachala considered to be the avatar of the Absolute where he stayed till his death on April. 14, 1950. It is God Arunachala, the avatar of the Absolute became the inner Master, the inner Guru of the Tamil boy Venkataramana, who in 1907 became known as Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi – the blessed God Ramana, the great Sage.

“It is false to speak of realisation. What is there to realise? The real is as it is always. We are not creating anything new or achieving something which we did not have before. The illustration given in books is this. We dig a well and create a huge pit. The space in the pit or well has not been created by us. We have just removed the earth which was filling the space there. The space was there then and is also there now. Similarly we have simply to throw out all the age-long samskaras (innate tendencies) which are inside us. When all of them have been given up, the Self will shine alone".

Question: When a man realises the Self, what will he see?
Bhagavan: There is no seeing, seeing is only being. The state of Selfrealisation, as we call it, is not attaining something new or reaching some goal which is far away, but simply being that which you always are and which you always have been. All that is needed is that you give up your realisation of the not-true as true. All of us are realising, i.e., regarding as real that which is not real. We have only to give up this practice on our part. Then we shall realise the Self as the Self. In other words, 'Be the Self'. At one stage one would laugh at oneself that one tried to discover the Self which is so self-evident.

Notes
The Enlightenment turned out to be not the thing I imagined. After the Awakening I’ve been thinking about its value. I asked what I obtained (one always wants to get something). The answer was “Nothing!” But it’sNO-THING in capital letters! The Awakening is some other thing… it’s beyond all values, human, social. It doesn’t have any relation to the world known to us! Actually it doesn’t have any relation to anything…

Samadhi and trance states can be “achieved “ through doing practices. For the Awakening Guru is essential.
Atman is always present (all the time without changing and one can experience it without any effort but Atman does not depend on my experience or feelings.

When the Awakening occurs, comes an end to inner and outer, the huskis destroyed, there is no “in” or ”out” any more.
The Enlightened is an almsman who possesses everything as no worldly benefits, no material values taken together can’t substitute even a millionth the Enlightened possesses. It’s beyond understanding, beyond mind.

There is no separate body or mind, society, people or world for me. But it is impossible to describe it in words. Ramana says that the Enlightened or a sage sees nothing but Atman in everything. I read his sayings for many times before the awakening and couldn’t understand them. Now everything’s clear and plain to me. And it’s so easy!

The enlightenment is a final action. After it the small existenceconsciousness of a common man with its psychic reactions, psychological estimation of the world and self-concepts are brokenforever and it’s so cool!

The state beyond the body-mind, that is the True Knowledge is available for any man because it is always here. It’s “I”, “we” come and go away – the Knowledge is always present.

After the Awakening all that is rest from the social personality is but a husk, i.e. I am a law-obedient man. But everything is of equal value for my present Knowledge.

Two more things : the Knowledge of the Self, Atman, and the life of the body. The former is unchangeable: I always see the same. The latter are constant physiological changes in the organism. But both this and that are the same. This unsolvable paradox fades away after the realization. The Enlightenment is very easy because I became an impartial observer in this event-action.

Realization is possible only through Guru’s grace. Ramana says that his Grace is always flowing. Papaji adds that the Enlightenment is possible inGuru’s presenceand it’s definite.

There are misconceptions on the thought process, mind, the inner talk. For example, Osho, zen, yoga tell us:”Dissolve, kill or calm down the mind, stop the thoughts – or even better – go beyond the Mind!” If one could do this then everyone who wanted it would have become The Enlightened! But one cannot do it himself. The mind is everything that exists, so am I as a thinking man! World is Mind. World is Thought. I am thought! I c-a-n-n-o-t go beyond myself by my own wish.

When the Awakening happened I realized at once that one shouldn’t fight with mind! The Enlightenment is beyond everything, beyond themind too! That is, all at once I found myself beyond the world that I knew a second ago as the unity of me and it. Then this unity – identity of me and my body and, therefore, of me and the world created by the mind didn’t exist anymore.

Sri Halilal V.L. Poonja (Papaji)
Papaji was born on October,13, 1910 (in September 1990 he left his body) in Penjab in a family of one of the respected Indian saint’s (Swami Para Titra) sister. At the age of he got his first experience. After his meeting with the Teacher, Sri Ramana Maharshi, when Poonja was 34, he realized hid True Self.

- Papaji, what the Enlightenment is?
- When you’re back to your True Self, that is called for Awakening, liberation, freedom. If you know your own True Self, you know everything. During this Awakening you discover that the whole universe is inside you. All the universes are within you and you are the universe yourself. It’s a final understanding. If you know that you know everything. If you don’t know that, you know nothing despite all the information you stored.

You’re ignorant without that knowledge. Possessing the knowledge of absolute, you’re everything: without beginning, middle, end, without birth and death. All the fears end here.

- What is the Enlightenment?
- I don’t make use of this word.
- Realization?

- Nothing. You don’t become somebody. Even the Enlightenment means to become somebody. Just be who you are. Don’t stick labels on yourselves. Don’t assign yourselves to some species. Species are needed for classifying animals. What specie can the True Self having no name, no shape be referred to?

What is origin of the word “the Enlightenment”? It’s also a word, isn’t it? But before it became a word, what had been the source of its origin?

- The True Self?
- The True Self is who you are. You are that. Unconcievable thing where all the experiences and concepts emerge. The True Self is a moment that doesn’t come and go away.

It’s Heart, Atman, Emptyness.
It’s shining for Itself, by itself and in Itself.
Freedom, liberation, and the Enlightenment.

It’s its own superior Self
It’s the existence, it’s not even “I am Being”
It’s just being.
Question: What the Enlightenment is?

The Enlightenment is the basis of all states. Self-realization is a firm conviction: That is Here, It’s always here.
Your apprentices say about you as of the a self-realized man Are you one?

I don’t say it about myself, neither have I a table with a note saying : “Here the Enlightened is”. I see no difference between you and me. I never say that I’m a realized being.

After the Realization (processes in the organism)
I’ve always been interested in the process happening to an Enlightened man. I wanted to know what happened to Osho, Ramana, Buddha, Ananda Maya Ma and others (I couldn’t perceive who is enlightened and who is not).

One’s Enlightenment is happiness, joy, rescue, tears, laughter. Radical and irreversible changes occur to a man. Both man and environment are aware of it. The Enlightenment’s not limited, it’s beyond time, space and mind!

Radical organism’s reconstruction occurs. I didn’t understand what’s going on at all. I had no memory, especially during first 3 months; the body dissolved, broke down, aching…I could do nothing, the body was burning. I drank green tea with milk statedly, sometimes ate apples. I fell off 11 kg! There was a permanent wish to go away, to cloister.

What the Enlightenment is and who is the Enlightened? Are there any differences of ones from others? How to achieve the Enlightenment?

Ramana Maharshi
“It was about six weeks before I left Madura for good
that the great change in my life took place. It was quite
sudden. I was sitting alone in a room on the first floor of
my uncle’s house. I seldom had any sickness, and on that
day there was nothing wrong with my health, but a sudden violent fear of death overtook me. There was nothing in
my state of health to account for it, and I did not try to
account for it or to find out whether there was any reason for the fear. I just felt ‘I am going to die’ and began thinking what to do about it. It did not occur to me to consult a
doctor or my elders or friends; I felt that I had to solve the problem myself, there and then.
“The shock of the fear of death drove my mind
inwards and I said to myself mentally, without actually framing the words: ‘Now death has come; what does it mean? What is it that is dying? This body dies.’ And I at once dramatised the occurrence of death. I lay with my limbs stretched out stiff as though rigor mortis had set in and imitated a corpse so as to give greater reality to the enquiry. I held my breath and kept my lips tightly closed so that no sound could escape, so that neither the word ‘I’ nor any other word could be uttered. ‘Well then,’ I said to myself, ‘this body is dead. It will be carried stiff to the burning ground and there burnt and reduced to ashes. But with the death of this body am I dead? Is the body ‘I’? It is silent and inert but I feel the full force of my personality and even the voice of the ‘I’ within me, apart from it. So I am Spirit transcending the body. The body dies but the Spirit that transcends it cannot be touched by death. That means I am the deathless Spirit.’ All this was not dull thought; it flashed through me vividly as living truth which I perceived directly, almost without thought-process. ‘I’ was something very real, the only real thing about my present state, and all the conscious activity connected with my body was centred on that ‘I’.

From that moment onwards the ‘I’ or Self focused attention on itself by a powerful fascination. Fear of death had vanished once and for all. Absorption in the Self continued
unbroken from that time on. Other thoughts might come and go like the various notes of music, but the ‘I’
continued like the fundamental sruti note that underlies and blends with all the other notes.1 Whether the body was engaged in talking, reading or anything else, I was still centred on ‘I’. Previous to that crisis I had no clear
perception of my Self and was not consciously attracted to it. I felt no perceptible or direct interest in it, much
less any inclination to dwell permanently in it.”

The Enlightenment is a radical changein one’s life. Buddha said after the Awakening:”Former me died, now I’m the yonder”

Draft
The event that happened and its consequences have produced a significant effect on people around me, especially on my daughter. Shecaught the greatest hell… Everyone fussed around me like cockroaches. I tried to leave the house not to get them goat and not to irritate them. One part of my friends, the seekers stopped visiting me, the others ditched the relationship. After some time my linear memory started dissolving. I couldn’t recall the greatest part of my life, much as I tried… without any result. The husk has dissolved, so has the body: I lied like water in water. Psychophysics started changing: both inside me and outside. My eyes started dissolving…I commenced to watch from somewhere thence, through myself. Osho said:”The Enlightened doesn’t watch by eyes, he watches through the eyes”. I am watching not just through my eyes but through the body. Everything became transparent. The permanent bliss but not that of “Savikalpa Samadhi”, which is lingeri-i-ing, of another sort: as if everything has been a bliss(this state changed after a while, in some months there wasn’t a bliss as just a physical reaction).

The surrounding world started pressing, there was no place to hide in. The social environment became very tough: previously I didn’t notice some things, now I see them clearly – the partition wall between the “world” and “me” is broken. The visible world became very bright, vivid, colorful, very noisy, loud…

Afterwards I saw a colored 3d picture: Papaji, Ramana, after Ramana – Arunachala (the picture was as if made of water but it was colorful). I understood Who was the Guru whose Mercy has been manifested – Ramana. But first, I saw that my Guru was Papaji as I’ve been readinghis book at that moment.

After a while, a notable event happened my ” inner eyes ” dissolved! When it happened, I started watching from here (Sergey raised his hands at the level a little higher than his years). It’s very difficult to describe it.Something dissolved inside of me. When it happened, the skin around my eyes became black as if I had bruises under my eyes. It can be said that there was no eye muscle tension. That is: before it, my eyes could get tired. I felt the muscles – I don’t have such a feeling now, my eyes are always opened. Afterwards, something melted inside my body, there’semptiness now.

The is no life after the “happening” for me. There’s just that moment and I am living in it. There is no time, space in Atman, neither back nor forward. I’m always present in that moment. That is. Nothing changed, two years passed buteverything’s the same…

I couldn’t understand how the Enlightened lives, why he is eating, drinking…I read that Ramana nixed his coffee when he saw that a man didn’t get one. Coffee…what for? He’s the Enlightened! I don’t understand! Or this: “ Thoughts come and go away”, Ramana says. I didn’t understand!”What things”, I thought.”In Samadhi I felt absolute silence, no thoughts, peace, there were no thoughts. Silence-peace or Sat-Cit”. This all was my stupidity.

Do any changes in understanding of body-mind occur?
They do. But there is
no separate body, separate understanding, separatechanges, separate m e. The function and the functionary are the same, without any disjunction.

I call Atman for the lucid presencebut it’s absolutely by convention. Everything’s transparent in this lucid presence, and my body is not an exception.

There are some pieces on this subject: Osho’s, to my mind. When Alexander the Great was in India, he proposed some Sannyasin, carrier of esoteric Knowledge, to follow him to Greece, but sannyasin refused. “If you don’t follow me to Greece I’ll behead you”, Alexander told. “Cut it off and we’ll watch it rolling together”, the sannyasin replied. Something like that.