Posts Tagged ‘Shri Dhyanyogi Madhusudandas’
Transcending Transcendence?
~ Ron’s Memoirs
“The goal is not to lose oneself in the Divine Consciousness.
The goal is to let the Divine Consciousness
penetrate into Matter and transform it.”
~ Sri Aurobindo – The Mother 15: p.191
“Cosmic consciousness is
infinite evolutionary impetus in each of us.”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
“As we experience our universality,
we transform our reality.”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
Maitreya Bodhisattva
Transcending Transcendence
My miraculous “sight seeing” trip with Dhyanyogi, and subsequent experiences, inspired ever increasing faith in his saintly good will and yogic powers. But questions arose for me about his Hindu path.
In writings introducing his path to Americans, Guruji said that Kundalini Maha Yoga was not a religion but a spiritual practice bringing “lasting inner peace and happiness to individuals of any belief or religious affiliation.” But his prescribed spiritual practices mostly included Sanskrit prayers and mantras associated with Hinduism, in addition to daily meditations.
At first I was uncomfortable reciting Sanskrit prayers and mantras which I didn’t understand, except for the Ram mantra with which I have always felt deep affinity. But intuitively I relied on Guruji’s extraordinary being and benevolence, and on his assurances that initiates would enjoy “a happy life”. So gradually I became more and more engaged in these practices, trusting that they would help me live a happy life.
Then, during a public meditation program, Guruji said these sanskrit practices would lead us to “the spiritual goal”. And I wondered: “what spiritual goal?” Amazingly, though I was still then an ‘uptight’ skeptical lawyer, I had taken an initiation from an unknown Hindu guru and was repeating his esoteric Sanskrit prayers and mantras not knowing what they meant or that their purpose was to achieve some “spiritual goal”.
So, after the meditation program, I asked others about this “spiritual goal”. I was told that the object of Hindu practices was to achieve “mukti” or “moksha” or “self-realization”; that the kundalini purification process, viz. the “evolutionary process taking place in [my] nervous system”, would some day in some lifetime lead to a state of Divine illumination where the Self, soul, or “Atman” would experience its Oneness with “Brahman” [Supreme Reality] – the pinnacle of human experience. Only then did I begin considering these ideas of “self realization”.
Though Guruji’s assurance of our finding lasting peace and happiness was appealing, I hadn’t consciously been drawn to him by this assurance but by a deep intuitive heartfelt connection. Before meeting Guruji I was not ‘goal oriented’. Instinctively hesitant to pursue materialistic societal goals, I was mostly inner – not outer – directed. But never before had I considered any inner ‘goals’.
In the late 1950’s I had been deeply influenced on reading “The Sane Society” by then prominent psychotherapist Erich Fromm, about the pathology of ‘normalcy’ in our materialistic society. Fromm suggested that Western society as a whole was lacking in sanity; that the inequities and disharmonies of the entire society were pathological, not just the mental illnesses of people therein. Fromm’s essay had confirmed and enhanced my instinctive reluctance to selfishly follow materialistic societal goals.
So, in becoming a lawyer and throughout my professional career, my main motivation was to help others; it was not to become rich or famous. Long before my spiritual awakening, I had a deep inner instinct to pursue social justice causes, with considerable sensitivity to the “insanity and iniquity of inequity in our society”.
But, with the Yosemite inner experience of “ten thousand suns” I realized that beyond my instinct for social justice was an extraordinarily intense longing for the Divine – to return from this crazy world back to God, back to Ram. However, not until hearing Dhyanyogi’s teachings about a spiritual “goal”, did I consider pro-actively seeking such an inner goal.
Though initially it seemed desirable to aspire to “self realization” or “enlightenment”, I was unable to relate experientially to those illumined states as ascribed to rare beings like Gautama Buddha. So, I was never clear about what to “seek” until, ultimately, I stopped seeking it, whatever it was.
After considerable reflection, I abandoned goal oriented spiritual seeking, and intuitively began with more and more heartfelt faith to surrender to the Infinite – “to let go, and go with the flow” – and to “leave it to the Lone Arranger.” * Perhaps, I transcended transcendence aspirations.
Inspired by the Buddhist Bodhisattva ideal of altruistically helping all beings end their sufferings, I stopped trying to be beyond this world, but rather to be in it in a way which might help all life everywhere. And I ceased regarding “enlightenment” as a “goal” but rather as an endless evolutionary process.
Experientially, I had realized that ‘the Kingdom of Heaven’, Buddha nature, and Love, were the Essence of everything in our phenomenal “reality”. And my core spiritual motivation became and remains:
“Infuse us, enthuse us, and use us, to bless all Life as LOVE.”
But paradoxically I have learned from experience that we cannot change others, only ourselves; that by furthering our own evolution we help elevate humanity’s common consciousness and thereby subtly help others. So, I consider it my responsibility to aspire to be the change I wish to see in the world, with the intention and dedication of so helping everyone everywhere.
And in this process, as Guruji promised, with unspeakable gratitude I am now enjoying “a happy life” beyond anything that I could have imagined when I received a shaktipat initiation in 1978.
*Footnote
Many ideas about “enlightenment” are in articles posted elsewhere on SillySutras.com. E.g. see https://sillysutras.com/?p=2925 and https://sillysutras.com/?p=1180
“Kundalini – Psychosis or Transcendence?” ~ Ron’s Memoirs
“Kundalini is the cosmic power in individual bodies.
It is not a material force like electricity, magnetism, centripetal or centrifugal force.
It is a spiritual potential, Shakti, or cosmic power.
In reality it has no form.”
~ Sri Swami Sivananda
Shri Dhyanyogi Madhusudandas
“Kundalini – Psychosis or Transcendence?”
While gradually becoming interested in Eastern spiritual ideas, I persisted in trying to understand scientifically my continuing unexplained metaphysical experiences.
So I subscribed to Psychic Magazine and looked for other possibly relevant writings. Then, synchronistically, I found and read with tremendous interest and fascination a medical case study book by Lee Sannella, MD, entitled: “Kundalini-Psychosis or Transcendence” about an esoteric psychophysiological transformation process long known to Indian yogis and adepts but not to Western medicine; a process initiated by awakening of dormant ‘kundalini’ life force energy at the base of the spine.
The book defined the kundalini process as an “evolutionary process taking place in the human nervous system”. As I read therein medical case studies of fifteen different people undergoing the kundalini process, I realized that I too had been experiencing that process since my April 1976 spontaneous rebirth episode; and, that the kundalini process might explain some of my ‘weird’ new experiences.
Some of the many extraordinary psychic phenomena which I was then experiencing, I associated with India. Perhaps the most surprising and memorable of these experiences happened one night while I was fast asleep in my studio apartment.
In the middle of the night, I was suddenly awakened and sat up in bed with open eyes in the completely dark room. Before me, I beheld in startled amazement the clear image of a woman’s face and upper torso, wearing a head scarve common to Hindu women. But instead of appearing in life-like colors the woman’s image was all luminous gold. Next, the golden female image was replaced by another amazing image; in its stead, I beheld my own clear image also in luminous gold, as if the Indian woman’s golden image had morphed into mine, or as if my image had emanated from that of the Indian woman.
It was especially startling for me to be viewing in front of my physical body, my own luminous image. Since beholding those extraordinary golden images, I have wondered why they appeared and their significance, if any.
I can not yet say why I so beheld my own image. But ensuing events seemed to resolve the puzzle of why I had seen an image of an Indian woman when I then knew no Indian woman and hardly anything about Indian culture.
I later learned of the importance in Hinduism of the Divine Mother conception and of various deity forms representing it. Foremost of those deities was Shakti – believed to manifest through female embodiment and fertility – while also existing in males as unmanifest infinite potentiality. In ensuing years, I met various well known adept Indian female spiritual teachers considered embodiments of Divine Mother. And I learned that Vedic scriptures declare Shiva and Shakti to be inextricably associated with each other in this phenomenal world, as the male and female aspects of the Divine.
The goal of the kundalini yoga transformative process is ascent of activated Shakti life force energy from the base of the spine to the highest energy vortex (or chakra) atop the cranium where – in the pinnacle of human experience – Siva and Shakti merge in Divine illumination.
Renowned 19th century mystic saint Ramakrishna Paramahamsa – with whom I later felt great affinity – legendarily worshiped Divine Mother as Kali, who revealed Herself to him as a “a limitless, infinite, effulgent Ocean of Consciousness” only after he threatened suicide if She did not appear. Thereafter, Ramakrishna taught that God is both formed and formless and can appear to the devotee either way.
Apart from these unforgettable golden image visions, also suggestive of India had been my spontaneous and continuous recitation in Hawaii of “Rama”, an Indian name of God, and the unexpected appearances of Mahatma Gandhi as my first spirit guide.
Later I had repeated inner appearances of an elderly man with a beard who didn’t look like a modern Westerner, but like an Indian. I had not yet begun any meditation practice. But, before retiring I would often close my eyes in quiet contemplation and sometimes see ‘inner pictures’. One of those inner pictures which kept recurring was the somewhat blurred form of the same elderly bearded Indian man.
To satisfy my curiosity about why I was having these inner experiences, and about the esoteric kundalini process, I wanted to meet Dr. Sannella, who practiced in the Bay Area as both a psychiatrist and ophthalmologist. So, on learning that he was a principal officer of the California Society For Psychical Study, I joined the society and began attending its bi-monthly meetings, where I met him.
One evening in early April 1978, I attended a regular meeting of the San Francisco Psychic Society. As I entered the room, I saw a poster announcing a forthcoming series of meditation programs at the University Christian Church in Berkeley. The poster featured a prominent picture of an elderly man with a gray beard. (See photo below.) As the meeting progressed, I irresistibly kept looking at the poster. Something about the picture of the old man fascinated me.
After the formal meeting concluded, I asked Dr. Lee Sannella about the the pictured meditation teacher and announced meditation programs. He told me that this would be a very rare opportunity for “darshan” of an Indian master yogi, Shri Dhyanyogi Madhusudandas, with power to activate and guide the Kundalini transformation process. I took a printed flyer with details of the schedule and decided to attend the first of the announced meditation programs.
A crucially pivotal new life phase was about to begin. I was about to evolve spiritually from being a secular Hebrew, to becoming a “born-again Hindu”.
Alex Grey painting
At Mid-Life: A Spiritual Mystery Story Begins ~ Ron’s Memoirs
“In this ever-changing space/time world,
nothing is immutable, but much is inscrutable.”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
At Mid-Life: A Spiritual Mystery Story Begins
Both inner and outer life changed radically for me after my self-realization rebirth experience, and upon living alone after divorce. From living a ‘normal’ middle class life style, I began living outwardly like a Western ascetic, and inwardly with formerly unknown rich spiritual experiences.
I now realize retrospectively that my unforeseen new life unfolded and evolved perfectly, as if a Divine novelist was writing my life story’s script; and, that I have been and am now continually guided in my new life by increasingly frequent ‘miraculous’ synchronicities – meaningful or noteworthy ‘coincidences’ and premonitions – which Western science can’t yet explain.
Long-time worldly habits changed. Though I had always walked to my financial district law office, now almost every morning before walking to work I jogged alone for about an hour to the Golden Gate bridge.
Intuitively, and not because of anything I’d then heard or read, I gradually evolved from a common Western flesh food diet to a largely raw food vegetarian diet. Upon experiencing ‘withdrawal symptoms’ when I forgot my morning coffee one day, I realized that I’d become addicted to caffeine. So I stopped drinking coffee, and drank peppermint tea instead. As a vegetarian I became gradually unable to metabolize alcohol. So I stopped drinking beer and wine and all other alcoholic beverages (which I’d enjoyed since adulthood).
Instead of sleeping on a raised bed, I began sleeping on a futon on the floor. Instead of living in rooms filled with furniture and furnishings, I preferred a simple ‘Zen-like’ austere residential environment.
My ascetic new eating, drinking, sleeping and exercise habits have continued for over thirty years, though after suffering leg injuries in a 1988 car accident, I stopped jogging but kept walking usually for at least an hour a day.
Why did I turn to asceticism? Was it because of ascetic past lives? These remain yet unanswered but recurring questions.
Aside from changed worldly habits, my inner life became – and continues to be – like a spiritual detective novel, with ever new questions arising from new experiences and new realizations.
For many years, beginning with my three month period of extraordinarily high energy, I had numerous amazing mystical and psychic experiences, which repeatedly substantiated my post-out of body realization that the universe didn’t work the way I’d been taught or thought and sparked an intense quest for a new “reality” paradigm.
All these new incidents seemed quite “real”. They could not be readily rationalized away as “unnatural hallucinations” as they were not prompted by ingestion of any biological or chemical psychedelic or drug (which I didn’t use). Nor did I appear to have ‘gone crazy’, since I continued to function effectively as a litigation lawyer despite my new secret life.
After the unforgettable inner experience of seeing each of my thoughts manifest as a separate kaleidoscopic thought-form outside my body or brain, I intuited that thought was the genesis of all phenomenal reality. But I had no idea of how that could happen, and wondered about any such process. So with great curiousity I sought a new paradigm or world-view encompassing my new experiences of “reality”.
Ask and it shall be given, seek and ye shall find. Gradually, I was given synchronistic answers to my questions.
This process was accompanied by an ever increasing sense of awe and gratitude for our marvelous, miraculous and mysterious universe. Intense longing with ever growing gratitude gradually transformed a secular lawyer into a deeply devotional seeker of Truth – of answers to ultimately unanswerable questions of perennial philosophy.
And never again since the long-locked floodgate of tears was opened during the self-realization rebirth experience have tears failed to flow regularly. For many years, I cried so often and so profusely with deep longing for the Divine, that I was puzzled about what was happening to me.
But gradually, through synchronicity, I came to realize that I was experiencing a great transformative blessing known in the Catholic tradition of St. Francis of Assisi and St. Ignatius of Loyola as “the gift of tears”; a blessing similarly recognized in various other devotional and mystical spiritual traditions, including the ecstatic Sufism of Rumi, Hafiz and numerous others, and the Hindu tradition of bhakti yoga, which I followed for many years after synchronistically meeting my venerable Hindu guru, Sri Dhyanyogi Madhusudandas (Guruji).
Though never a frequent flyer, for many years I became – and remain – a very frequent crier. Tears have helped purify my body and nervous system permitting ‘peek experiences’ of higher states of consciousness. And I regularly experienced numerous other spontaneous and unpremeditated activities, feelings and sensations which helped further my spiritual evolution. For example, when not crying I often had what I now call ‘alternative LSD experiences’ of spontaneous (and sometimes ecstatic) Laughing, Singing, and Dancing.
Many years have passed since Guruji told me to write and publish my spiritual memoirs, so the memoirs have gradually shortened as they have been ‘edited’ and abridged by time. But the most valuable experiences were unforgettable. Hereafter, I will share with you some of them, with theories of what they might mean.
Introduction to Ron’s Memoirs
Shri Dhyanyogi Madhusudandas
“Follow your heart – even if it contradicts my words”
“If there is love in your heart, you don’t have to worry about rules.”
~ Shri Dhyanyogi Madhusudandas
During a traumatic divorce and “mid-life crisis” in 1975, I experienced what Hindus call a spontaneous awakening of the kundalini energy with sudden realization that I was much more than my physical body, its story and thoughts with which until then I had always self-identified.
That realization triggered an extraordinary and unforgettable “rebirth” experience, accompanied and followed by many amazing mystical experiences, which forever changed my life and impelled me to begin questioning whether the universe worked the way I’d thought or been taught; and to soulfully seek answers to ultimate questions and a new paradigm guiding the remainder of my life time. So, paradoxically, a broken heart opened me to a wonderful new way of experiencing life.
Since then my life has unfolded in ways I couldn’t previously have imagined, like a spiritual mystery story. For example, after starting life as a non-observant Jew – a secular Hebrew, I was initiated into a Hindu tradition by a venerable Hindu guru, and for many years thereafter regarded myself as a “born-again Hindu”. Though I no longer consider myself a “born-again Hindu”, but an “uncertain Undo”, I write today because of what my guru told me eighteen years ago.
It was February, 1992. I had just retired after thirty four years of practicing as a San Francisco litigation attorney, and had come to Ahmedabad, India, to pay my respects to my then 114 year old venerable Hindu guru, Shri Dhyanyogi Madhasudandas (Guruji). Guruji was living in the apartment of a local doctor. His mental, intuitive and prescient powers were amazingly acute – as ever, but his 114 year old body was weak, and he was obliged to spend his days mostly in bed. On one of those days, I was granted an audience together with a small group of Guruji’s closest Indian devotees, including his female successor Shri Anandi Ma, her parents and her husband, Dileepji. Except for me, all present were Indians with whom Guruji conversed in Gujarati, while I knelt facing an altar at the foot of his bed.
After a while, Shri Anandi Ma’s father, Pravin Jani, a Vedic astrologer and pundit, spoke in English to me: “Guruji wants to know if you have any questions.” Having just retired, I was thinking of starting a daily diary of spiritual experiences as a way of promoting my spiritual progress – my “sadhana”. So I asked if this would be OK, and received an answer which astounded me, and which I’ve been considering until now.
Guruji said: “Rasik should write and publish his spiritual memoirs. They will inspire many people”. Rasik – meaning “one engrossed in devotion” – was the spiritual name he had given me upon my initiation in 1978. I listened in astonishment and bewilderment, thinking: “Publish my personal memoirs? Shouldn’t they be kept private? How could the experiences of an ordinary person like Ron Rattner inspire many people?.”
Eighteen years have passed since that day in India. Since then, I lived for many years in introspective semi-seclusion, without a TV, computer, newspaper, or radio news of the “real world”, meditating, praying, seeking answers to ultimate questions, and “enlightenment”. Since then I’ve made many mistakes and have had many experiences and insights from which I think I’ve learned and benefited a lot. Though I haven’t stopped making mistakes and learning, I’ve now lived long enough to realize the prescience of Guruji’s instructions to me, and wish to honor them and you by sharing with you some of my spiritual stories, and their significance and lessons for me.
I feel that Humankind is now processing an extraordinary evolutionary leap in our common consciousness; that we are evolving from millennia of hierarchical dominance and constraints to an epoch of egalitarian and democratic sharing and openness; that we are democratizing and merging the spiritual and secular aspects of our lives. So, though I began my mid-life spiritual journey with an hierarchical Guru-disciple relationship, which I eternally honor, I now consider Life to be my spiritual teacher. But I am guided by Dhyanyogi’s highest teachings: “Follow your heart – even if it contradicts my words”; and, “If there is love in your heart, you don’t have to worry about rules.”
Many meaningful and noteworthy experiences have revealed to me the deep and essential commonality, connection and interdependence of all life on Earth, so that everything we think, do or say changes this world in some way.
This life has become like an amazing spiritual mystery story. Without yet – and perhaps never – solving the Mystery, more and more I’ve learned to honor it, with gratitude and awe. And I now gratefully experience my life as synchronistically magical and miraculous – feeling happier than ever before. So in sharing with you what I’ve learned from these spiritual experiences, I do not and can not write as a Guru, but as just another participating ‘fellow traveler’ on the spiritual path to an ever mysterious shared destiny.
My deepest aspiration is that everyone everywhere – all life forms – flourish and be happy; that all humankind be empowered to use their unique gifts to fulfill their highest potentialities, and thereby harmoniously to benefit all life on our precious planet – and beyond.
So in now sharing with you some of my experiences and perspectives my intention and dedication is to contribute to that vision and goal. As a ‘senior citizen’ and member of ‘Generation Exit’, I especially wish to be of help to younger people to whom we bequeath our future, as they inherit the mistakes and learning experiences of their forebears in an ever changing world.
