Seeking right back today, my path to "A Program in Miracles" probably all started in 1969 when I acknowledged Jesus my own Lord and Savior, under the influence of the College Crusade for Christ.
Nevertheless, after joining a Christian brotherhood of ambitious monks, where I was daily quizzed on how many Bible passages I had memorized and could repeat unchanged, I was completely confused by it all.
Their edition of reality only didn't remain effectively with me. I felt just like a parrot of Bible sentiments, that I didn't even start to comprehend, or town crier that nobody wanted to hear. Jesus might display me more, much more.
As divine synchronicity might have it, I absorbed a hallucinogen that triggered a near demise knowledge your day after Xmas, 1970. When I was in the dark void, with just the mind that "I Am", George Harrison's music My Sweet Master started playing.
That was my voice singing to Lord, not George's! Soon an excellent bright gentle started showing out from the darkness, as my soul sang "I really want to help you Lord" ;.Then someone started to emerge from the light.
This Holy One oscillated between strong and feminine. As I'n been hoping to Jesus, I thought it may be him, but with no beard. I began sobbing from the depths of my soul, since the Sacred One conveyed telepathically into my heart.
I realized this Being to be just genuine love. Then it was over. I was picture back into my body, hearing the language to a fresh song telling me "it's been quite a while coming, it's planning to be quite a while gone." How correct that has been.
A year later, I saw the cover of Autobiography of a Yogi. It absolutely was Paramahansa Yogananda who'd come in my experience! Next got meeting Baba Ram Dass, who confirmed that I wasn't crazy and mentioned that Yogananda had appeared to many young religious seekers on drugs.
He also autographed my copy of Be Here Now. My next decade was spent being an aspiring yogi and practicing Yogananda's Self-Realization Fellowship lessons and exercises, chanting, meditating and receiving initiation in to Kriya yoga.
Yogananda's way and linage of gurus brought the much needed understanding for me to comprehend Jesus and Christianity better. Yogananda also revealed me the primary truth behind the oneness of all religions.
And he brought me to Babaji, the Mahavatar who delivered him to America back in the 1920s. Since I seen the name Babaji, I knew I knew Him. He and Jesus come together, behind the views, in the cosmic scheme of things.
And Babaji was to be the next step in my own continuing spiritual evolution. Nevertheless, I did not know at this time that He had allegedly manifested a human body again and was residing in the tiny town of Haidakhan, in northern India. That could come later, combined with puzzle and myth with this current manifestation.
After reading Bhagavan Das sing, I ordered a dotara and started chanting mantras to Lord daily. That easy, historical two- stringed instrument is straightforward to perform and lets one follow the drone sound into silence.
At this time, I ordered my own personal invest the woods and met a man who'n lived with Babaji. He conducted a Vedic fireplace ceremony that Babaji had shown him to begin my new abode.
I asked and grilled him over and over, wondering if this new Babaji was exactly the same entity Yogananda wrote about. Yes, one and the same but lenders egos however problem His correct identity.
Babaji's new Kriya yoga was the path of acim , simplicity and love while performing karma yoga- work - and keeping one's brain on God, through replication of the ancient mantra Om Namaha Shivaya.
Babaji said that this mantra alone was more powerful than a lot of nuclear bombs and His 1-800 number. I started at this time really performing japa, or the duplication of the mantra on 108 rudraksha beads, to obtain this shake into my subscription consciousness.
I also realized many methods to chant it on my dotara. With this going on, I acquired "A Course in Miracles" and began the day-to-day lessons immediately. I attempted to create sense of the Text but got nowhere;
each word bogged me down and had to be re-read around a lot of situations to assimilate. I was just too small, I told myself. I was thirty-three. I'n deal with this particular Text later, sometime, maybe.