It all began with reading a book called Awakening into Oneness by Arjuna Ardagh which gave me a new hope for humanity’s transformation and at the same time created a profound state of inner peace inside of me. It also gave me clarity that I had to seize the opportunity and attend the Level 1 Process in India explained in the book.
Arriving in India was a massive culture shock for me and within 24 hours I became ill with a fever and stomach pain. The Oneness University doctor gave me 6 different tablets to take and I lay on the bed, suffering, scared and wanting to go home. Soon my Oneness Guide arrived with a big smile and gave me a Diksha- Oneness Blessing Energy Transmission.
The next morning I was up bright and early and feeling like a new man, but by lunch I began to feel very fuzzy again and suddenly collapsed. The amazing thing about being in that level of physical crisis is that you have to eventually give in and I did surrender completely.
As I lay there, I thought of my father in his nursing home with bedsores and a catheter bag and I felt an overwhelming depth of compassion for him. I lay there and felt the Divine whisper, “I love you” and thought, “Oh yeah, I know” and again the voice came “I love you more than you will ever know”.
We were taught that the process is not about enlightenment experiences as they will always come and go. It was about healing relationships and living a more loving existence when we get home with those all around us.
During a guided visualization meditation we were invited to enter into a truly personal, intimate relationship with the Divine as a constant presence in our life. I have personally enjoyed a deep relationship with the Divine for over 20 years, in the figure of Jesus. I suddenly realized that my experience of the Divine’s absence in my life was reflected in the real absence of my biological father throughout my life. I wept as the implication of this sunk in and felt a disloyalty to Jesus, as if I was abandoning him for someone bigger or better. As I wrestled with these thoughts, Jesus took me by the hand and led me to his father, to my father – it was an amazingly blissful experience.
The following day we learned about “suffering”. This gap between who we actually are and who we want or think that we should be creates a huge problem. We become what we think the world wants us to be in order to be loved.
The Oneness Guides explained that enormous energy is lost when we are struggling with the difference of who we really are compared with who we think that we should. Then we learned: “The truth of ‘who we really are’ doesn’t matter.” The only thing, which matters, is that we can see and accept the truth about ourselves, whatever that is.
Eventually a discharge of pain and suffering came in the evening session by way of a guided visualization. It is always healing to go into the center of the pain and experience catharsis. However, what really made an impact on me from this day was the intense level of control, judgment and critical analysis going on within me all the time. Then there was the constant degree of comparison – being superior to others or inferior to others, but rarely equal.
It was explained to us that Oneness Guides were in the highest possible state of consciousness for human beings. They are effectively merged with everything else – there is no “I”. The teaching was dominated by stories. My favorite story about suffering is as follows: Suffering is like constantly running away from a tiger, which is pursuing us. It is always there; ready to pounce and we cannot afford to stop running. Eventually we fall into a deep pit and feel an immediate sense of relief that the tiger can no longer reach us. However, this is short lived as we suddenly realize that living in the pit is a hungry crocodile. We see some tree roots up the side of the pit and leap and climb to safety just out of reach of the crocodile. As we hang there from the roots, we look up to see a large rat gnawing through the root from which we cling.
The moral of the story is I guess that the only way out is through. We need to stop running, face and experience the suffering and guess what – we survive.
On the third day, we were informed that we would be receiving the Oneness experience. The Oneness Being standing in front of me was clearly somewhere else. As his hands firmly held my head, he started to shake and moan and cry out in pain. I started to cry but felt uncomfortable and kind of “guilty” that this person in front of me was experiencing my pain. Suddenly, I surrendered into it and was swept up in a roller coaster of emotion, which left me feeling completely drained, but peaceful.
The teaching continued with the Guides explaining that there were basically only 2 categories of people: Those who complain and those who move beyond this, live life and grow. It was explained that we need to stop complaining; stop blaming others (for the way our life is) and learn how to live happy lives.
It was explained that every living being has a survival instinct. In the same way the mind (ego) is designed with this survival instinct – that’s just the way it is. The mind itself is not bad – in fact it is a very useful, essential tool. It is like a donkey. The problem is that we are carrying the donkey on our shoulders, which is exhausting.
The Oneness approach is based upon 4 stages of human development, as follows:
1) Conception – Stillness 2) In Utero – Struggle/Desperation 3) Birth – Hope v No Hope 4) 7 Hours after Birth – This is the blueprint for life These stages are described as 4 baskets and we need to discover where we are stuck.
| ONE | TWO | THREE | FOUR |
| STILLNESS | STRUGGLE / DESPERATE | HOPE & NO HOPE | UPWARD MOVEMENT |
| LAZY DEMOTIVATION NO THRUST | HARD WORK PUTTING IN EFFORT | NARROWLY MISSING THE TARGET | NO CONTENTMENT / SATISFACTION |
| CONTENT SATISFIED | FOCUSED APPLICATION | EVENTUALLY GETTING IT | SUCCESS |
We continue to move through these developmental stages all of our lives but frequently one of them dominates. Each day we received Oneness experience from the Guides.
We seemed to move effortlessly from this model of human development to “love” which was defined as “self-acceptance” – to love ourselves exactly as we are. This creates an end to all comparison/judgment/being right.
This “acceptance” is not “resigning to life”. We are talking about the inside world not the outside world. The inner world requires non-action (passivity) whereas the outside world requires activity.
On day 4, we were to receive an embrace from our newfound friends, the Oneness Beings. As I stood in front of this man, I was aware of this sense of great “absence” and then as he reached out to hug me this sense of complete absence turned to an overwhelming (almost frightening) sense of intense presence. As he held me, he started to shake and cry uncontrollably. I melted into his arms and felt truly, unconditionally held in love. It was bliss.
According to the Oneness approach, we are all on a secret mission to change who we are. Can we change? Yes and No. We cannot change the basic structure According to the Guides, there is in fact only “one mind” but not only this; it is a very ancient mind. Wanting to change the mind is itself part of the mind. Any effort to change the mind is fruitless.
It is important to realize that “stopping to try to change my mind” can become the new goal… To seek to witness our mind is another goal. We cannot function without the mind. When we realize the impossibility of changing the mind, we are free.
Towards the end of the course, I was waiting for some personal time with my Guide. As the day went on, others kept telling me how they had experienced a good personal session with our Guide. I felt mildly irritated but was pleased with my ability to “let go” of this discontent. One other member of our group was yet to be seen and she was clearly greatly troubled by this. I felt nicely superior. In the afternoon, we traveled to another campus to see the Temple. It is a magnificent building, very beautiful and with an apparent aura of calm. When we moved on to the other campus, there was a closing ceremony in process for another group. We then settled down to a session with Ananda Giri, which was enchanting.
He told the story of the man who went to see Sri Amma Bhagavan and confessed that he was a liar and a cheat and lived a dreadful life. He pleaded, “Please Bhagavan, give me some words of wisdom or comfort to help me become a better man.” Bhagavan, calmly stated, “I can help you. You need to be bad. For so long as you try to change who you are, you will never be happy. If you can accept how bad you are, the lying, the cheating etc you will be happy and enjoy life.”
The essence of all the teaching really does seem to come down to “self-acceptance” and “self-love”. If we can truly accept ourselves as we are (including all the grotty bits) then we will be happy and live joyful lives. The greatest problem is that we all spend so much time trying to be “good” or “better people” i.e. someone different to who we are.
Returning from the Temple and other campus late at night I felt peaceful and satiated. As my head hit the pillow, I felt “attacked” by intense thoughts about my Guide. “Why had he not seen me” and “Why had he spent so much time with everyone else”. It continued, “It’s disgraceful given all the money I have paid not to be able to have even a brief session with the Guide allocated to me.” Within what seemed like minutes, I had built a very robust case for the.
It is interesting how at brief moments a more sane voice appeared and reminded me that I did not actually need to see my Guide for anything in particular. There was no pressing issue and no questions to ask. Maybe others, those who had been seen, had a more pressing need. But it is truly amazing how, at such times, my mind (ego) overrules all this sanity and insists that I am right and someone is going to pay for this! I caused myself an enormous amount of suffering that night.
My greatest fear was that I felt I was deliberately sabotaging my last day of the course. There was such a strong irresistible force within me, which was determined to ruin the last day and prove that the whole experience was worthless, the Guides completely dishonest and the teachings bogus. It was such a familiar pattern in my life. I genuinely could not believe the intensity and strength of this invasion (not external but from within).
My Guide announced that he would not see me until after lunch. I felt a strange kind of relief at this because it reinforced the “rightness” of my position. But the strange thing is that as I talked about each aspect of this tyranny, the words lost all their charge and I was simply left smiling. It is so weird when something with so much charge simply evaporates into thin air. I ended up smiling and laughing with this simple, beautiful man. We hugged and held each other and I felt fully accepted and accepting of myself.
During the afternoon, we entered into the final session. There was a beautiful guided visualization, which led to our initiation as “Blessing Givers”. We were handed a very simple necklace of beads, which the Guides explained symbolized that we had become part of a family of oneness facilitators.
I experienced this wonderfully warm and liberating feeling contemplating being part of a family which included Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Theists, Atheists, Agnostics, Humanitarians etc. – being part of a family, which was totally inclusive, and totally accepting. I reflected that during the entire course, I had not heard any Guide say anything critical about any other person, belief system, religion or ideology. It was a completely non-shaming process.
The final stage of the process was to give Oneness Blessings to each other. It was strange to begin with but quite quickly felt entirely natural and a great blessing to be standing within the Divine flow of energy. As part of this process, we all gave a remote blessing to our parents, wherever they may be. I also found this very moving; pouring out blessing and love for my Mum and Dad. They both felt precious to me and I also experienced this vague sense that my parents could not have been other than whom they were. The process had lasted for 7 days – it seemed like a month! It had begun with crisis and ended with calm and joy in my heart. I regularly reminded myself that it is not about “experiences” (positive or negative) although I had witnessed some amazing experiences along the way. As I write this I am mindful of two passages from T S Eliot’s “Four Quartets”, both from Little Gidding:
“What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.”
And…
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
As someone once said, “When we become disconnected from who we are, however it has happened, it is a long journey home.” Andrew Wallas, April 2008