REMINISCENCES, Part 1:

 
When the five Perfect Masters bring me down they draw a veil over me. Although Babajan was in the form of a woman, she was one of them (the five Perfect masters) and she unveiled me in my present form. With just a kiss on the forehead, between the eyebrows, Babajan made me experience (May, 1913) thrills of indescribable bliss which continued for about nine months. Then one night (January, 1914) she made me realize in a flash the infinite bliss of self-realization (God-realization).

At the time Babajan gave me the nirvikalp (inconceptual) experience of my own reality, the illusory physical, subtle and mental bodies — mind, worlds, and one and all created things — ceased to exist for me even as illusion. Then I began to see that only I, and nothing else, existed.

The infinite bliss of my self-realization was, is and will remain continuous. At the moment I experience both infinite bliss as well as infinite suffering. Once I drop the body, only bliss will remain.

But after I became self-conscious I could not have said all this. Nor could I say it even now if it had not been for the indescribable spiritual agonies which I passed through for another period of nine months (until October, 1914) in returning to normal consciousness of the suffering of others. During those nine months I remained in a state which no one else could have tolerated for even nine days.

After physical death an ordinary man is usually dead to the world and the world is dead to him. Yet he continues to live his discarnate life beyond the sphere of gross existence. During the first three days of my superconscious state (January, 1914) I was truly dead to everybody and everything other than my own infinite reality, although my physical body continued to function more or less normally. Actually dead, though really living, I was consequently considered by others to be seriously ill. I was allowed to remain in bed, lying with wide open, vacant eyes which saw nothing....

In my case, I did not drop the body on the fourth day, nor did I become established in the gross sphere as a Majzoob, nor did I begin to regain the normal consciousness of a Perfect Master. Only such a Perfect One is capable to knowing the state in which I had to remain for nine months.

On the fourth day and after I was slightly conscious of my body and began to move about without any consciousness of my surroundings. I received no promptings from my mind as would an ordinary man. I had no knowledge of the things I did or did not do. I did not sleep and had no appetite. No one had any idea throughout this period that I sat, talked, walked, lay down and did everything by instinct, more like an automaton than an ordinary human being.

My sleepless, staring, vacant eyes worried my mother most. She believed and told others that I had gone mad. In her anguish she could not refrain from going once to Babajan and demanding to know what she had done to me. Shirinmai did this because she knew that I used to go and sit near Babajan for awhile each night during the previous nine months (May, 1913-January, 1914). Babajan indicated to my mother that I was intended to shake the world into wakefulness, but that meant nothing to Shirinmai in her distress.