The Story of Grace meeting Bhagavan-by Kiara

Meeting Bhagavan

In early 2002 I met a woman who later became my wife. Her name was Grace. Shortly after we met she had a vision where an ancient being appeared to her in the guise of an Indian woman draped completely in plain white cotton. She revealed herself to be ‘Mother India’, and showed her a vast landscape that lay dry and barren under a waterless sky, with deep cracks in the ground several inches wide. Only a few people wandered in the distance.

“My children are dying”, she said. “They need food, they need water, they need people who care. People must begin to care”. Grace remained in that waking vision for an entire day, deeply feeling the pain, parched with heat and thirst, and throwing up repeatedly. She became vast. She was Mother India, and felt her body had become the land. She felt like she was vomiting up earthquakes for India so they wouldn’t have to be experienced by the land physically.

Inexplicably, after 22 years of having lived in the US, I too began feeling a strong urge to return to the land of my birth, India. As I spoke about this with a trusted friend, Barry, he had the premonition that I would meet somebody who could guide me into the highest states of enlightenment, something we had both been seeking for a long time. I deeply resonated with his statement, and felt the truth of it as a deep upwelling of joy throughout my body.

Neither of us knew why or where, but both Grace and I knew we had to go. The call was becoming too strong to ignore. We packed up our bags, put everything into storage, and were on a plane to India by late September.

We traveled through many ashrams, met many yogis and gurus. We became attracted to the works of Sri Aurobindo, a freedom fighter, mystic, and highly accomplished yogi who had lived much of his life in deep contemplation in Pondicherry, India. Joined in this work later by a Frenchwoman, Mirra Alfassa, who eventually came to be known as the Mother, his great task was to anchor into the collective consciousness of humanity what he referred to as the ‘supramental force’, a force that he claimed would most surely awaken humanity into her true evolutionary destiny as a supramental species, as far beyond the current human species as humanity is beyond those who have preceded us.

Grace and I spent much time in Auroville, the city of human unity founded by the Mother after the death of Sri Aurobindo. We connected deeply with the spirit of these two visionaries, and had some powerful glimpses of the supramental realms. We spent a lot of time meditating in the Matrimandir, a golden sphere in the center of Auroville, which represented a vehicle for the descent of this supramental force.

One day, as we were meditating in the early dawn, Grace had a visitation from a beautiful, tall, male being, smeared in ash, greenish-grey in color, bare-chested, hair up in a topknot, and then down in dreadlocks. He had garlands of beads around his neck.

There was an aura of powerful benevolence about him. He extended his hand to her, holding out what appeared to be a long, luminous oval swirling with a soft green and pink opalescence. She heard the words “cosmic egg”. He was so real she could touch him. She didn’t know who he was, but as she described him to me I realized that this was Shiva. The image remained in her consciousness for weeks, and seemed to be a guiding force as we journeyed along.

In August 2003, we were guided to meet an avatar named Bhagavan. I had been invited to speak at The Experience Festival, a bi-annual event co-sponsored by his Golden Age Foundation, and the Global Oneness Foundation, brainchild of two Swedes, Jonas Lindquist and Parlan Fritz. Towards the end of this weeklong event, Grace and I, along with the other teachers at the event, were invited to have a darshan with Bhagavan.

‘Bhagavan’ literally means ‘divine avatar’, or ‘bestower of blessings’, and is a commonly used title in India to refer to someone who is God-realized. In his case, it is not a title, but his legal name as entered in the government records. He had previously been known as Kalki, but is now firmly insisting that people not use that name anymore. It was creating too much controversy for too many people, since the term ‘Kalki’ also refers to the tenth incarnation of Vishnu, one who was promised in the Hindu scriptures to come at the end of the Kali Age to promote righteousness and heal the world.

In this context, Bhagavan acknowledges that if this is true for himself, it is also true for everybody else who feels that their mission is to bring healing and enlightenment to the planet. Just as the ‘Second Coming of Christ’ for many Christians refers not to a single person but to a collective force of unified consciousness, so is ‘Kalki’ a collective avataric presence. Anyone who is enlightened, and is working for the enlightenment of humanity, is a Kalki!

I also want to emphasize again here, especially for Western readers, that the ‘Bhagavan’ I speak about in this book is not synonymous with the well-known spiritual teacher, Osho, who was also referred to by the same title. In fact, ‘Bhagavan’ is a very common title used in India, except that in this case it is his legal name as well.

Bhagavan is an avatar, which can be defined as a descent of divine consciousness into humanity. Within the Hindu tradition an avatar manifests during a time when our spiritual development has stagnated, and when we need a form of divine intervention in order to move us forward.

There can be many kinds of avatars, and each avatar’s role is very specific. Jesus was an avatar of love; Einstein was an avatar of physics, Gandhi an avatar of non-violence. Bhagavan’s own special mission, along with that of his wife, Amma, is to be an avatar of enlightenment, a ‘mukti avatar’. They are often considered as a single avataric consciousness in two bodies.

Meeting him was an unforgettable experience. We experienced Bhagavan as a warm, wise, pragmatic, and very transparent human being. When asked about what he does, he claimed to be able to transmit states of enlightenment through a process known as the ‘deeksha’.

Enlightenment cannot be earned, he stated. If this were true, all the millions of spiritual seekers in every age should have been enlightened by now. It could be given, however. He referred to himself as a technician, and said it was possible to permanently enlighten the consciousness of the seeker by shifting the neurobiological structure of the brain. It was an astounding claim to make.

I watched my reactions to this statement. Having lived many years in the West, and always wary of being duped by yet another guru with something to sell, a red flag immediately went up in my mind. Isn’t enlightenment something you had to earn for yourself, I wondered? How could someone give it to you? And wasn’t it true, as I had come to rationalize after a lifetime of fruitless searching, that you are already enlightened, if only you pretend hard enough?

Still, we both felt a strong resonance with his words, and a deep excitement in our hearts. We happened to be at Amma’s birthday darshan in Nemam when the first public deekshas were given, and immediately afterwards enrolled in a weeklong ‘mukti’ program and received a couple more deekshas. I watched Grace go through an amazing process of transformation resulting a few days later in her enlightenment.

We had both been on a spiritual path for a long time, and had steadfastly practiced all kinds of meditation practices, psychotherapies, healing techniques, and metaphysical teachings, but neither of us had ever experienced anything close to what was happening here. We knew in our hearts that this was the reason we had been led to come to India.

We had an opportunity to talk with Bhagavan after her enlightenment, and during that time I asked him why it was that I hadn’t become enlightened as Grace had. He told me that he could give it to me immediately if I so chose, but that I could be of greater service to humanity if my process was somewhat slower. If it happened too quickly for me, I would not be able to observe it as deeply. Part of my soul’s purpose, he said, was to be able to teach this, and write about this.

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