Fortunately I had read enough about Hinduism and yoga so I could understand what was happening to me. I was in a high state of ecstasy but I could still drive a car and study and carry on a conversation with people. For example I had entered the "ananda kosha" or sheath which covers God in the Unmanifest form which is without vibration, so it is called the Peace.(Ananda is a Hindu word for Bliss or Joy.) Most yogis get their by meditating deeply and leaving their body. Thus feed from the encumbrance of the physical, the yogi is then able to expand into the astral, or feeling, body. You can expand even further into the causal body where pure thought is a joy. But in my case I was blessed to experience these things while in the physical body and even while driving a car or studying my homework or carrying on a normal conversation with people. I had heard before that when this experience comes upon you that you should not go into your room and do nothing, but to continue going to work and eating and sleeping and perform all the normal duties of your life just as you did before the ecstasy. As Sri Yukteswar told Yogananda right after his first experience, "Now go sweep the floor. Spiritual experiences are not incapacitating."--Autobiography of a Yogi.
So I experimented with myself for three days and nights. My body lay on the bed asleep but my mind was awake. I lay on my back although I don't usually sleep that way, but I heard it is better if you wish to enter higher states of consciousness. It was at this time that I thought, "If God is Omniscient, and if I am in contact with God then I ought to be able to ask any question I want and find out the answer! So I did. I asked God all the chestnut questions philosophers have kicked around for years. I wish I could remember all of them but the truth is I found out how to answer all questions in the future. I found out that the answer to any question is hidden within the question itself.
I am sorry to have to compare cosmic consciousness with drugs but it is the experience with many truth seekers that they sooner or later come across the path of psychedelic drugs. My path started with LSD and that was the highest experience of my life and in fact sent me on the pilgrimage to see if anyone had discovered a way to make this state permanent. A friend gave me the book Autobiography of a Yogi
When the ecstasy hit me after 18 months of practicing yoga exercises and meditating, the mind tries to find some comparison and all I could think of was drugs. But Cosmic Consciousness felt 1,000 times greater. I could say 10,000. Or 100,000 times. Linear numbers fail me because I was in another dimension.
I must admit too that I had sex as an experiment to compare it to Cosmic Consciousness. An orgasm was like a drop in the ocean of Bliss I was in. Another way to say it is that C.C. was greater than every cell of my body having 10,000 orgasms. It is true what the sages and saints say about it when they say no words can describe it. Even overblown hyperboles fall short of the actual phenomena
I soon found from telling all my friends that someone cannot really understand this experience without having it themselves. Which brings me to the point of writing this experience for others to read. To those who would say I have an ego and am just bragging, I would say that is why I have waited 25 years to tell this story. I changed y mind about ego and believe it is important now for people to share their experiences so that when others go through it they will have a road map. I know I would have been lost without a body of teachings/database in my mind learned from "explorers" who went there and came back to tell us about it.
The final test of C.C. was when I asked it "How do I know this is the highest state of consciousness, It replied,'Notice the Joy. It is always getting better. What could be better than always getting better?'" It is truly the "ever new Joy" spoken of by Yogananda in his Autobiography of a Yogi.
I could not close without mentioning that when you have this experience, and I believe many thousands of people are going through it right now due to the new energies flowing onto the earth, you will know it is so great and overpowering that you could not have earned it no matter how hard you tried to meditate or pray or give money to charity. That is why is written, "Not by works alone lest any man should boast, but by the grace of God."
Submitted by Voltron/Jon Locke
E-mail address: Voltron@voyageronline.net
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