This article describes my girlfriend Julia’s experience a few years ago with a technique taught by a spiritual teacher and author named Aadi who previously called himself Anadi and Aziz Kristof.<\/p>\n
Julia has read this article, made changes, and given me permission to publish it.<\/p>\n
The story also involves the use of a siddhi.<\/p>\n
Caveat: I find Aadi’s writings interesting but I don’t endorse him as a teacher. <\/p>\n
Some background about Julia: <\/p>\n
Ever since she was a child Julia has felt that she is located in her heart. This began when she was a little girl frightened by adults arguing in her house and she lay on her bed staring at a picture on the wall of Jesus surrounded by children, until she found Jesus in her heart and took refuge there. I note in passing that this is an example of something Godly resulting from something painful, something that at the time seemed bad but later turned out to bring a gift.<\/p>\n
Love and God are with her in her heart. Her inner world is usually peaceful and love-filled and relatively free of thought. When I feel what she feels through transmission or empathy or some sense that has no name in English, I become aware of a cloudy white field in her chest. When I enter into that field, which I can do somehow, I find the infinitely soothing love a mother would give if that mother were God. It’s a realm where everything is good and nothing is bad, where everything is about love and giving to others. This is Julia’s characteristic state of consciousness, the place to which she automatically returns. <\/p>\n
As Julia grew and aged, her life reflected this. She was a hospice nurse for twenty years, caring for dying people, and always felt that her work was a gift that God gave to her rather than a gift she gave to her patients. This is a kind of yoga but she didn’t think of it that way. She just simply chose to do that work because she loved it.<\/p>\n
That’s the background. Here’s the story:<\/p>\n
A couple of years ago I mentioned to Julia that Aadi had written that there are three main places in the body where the sense of me can abide and develop: head, heart and belly. (His ideas have become more complicated since then.) We thought this was interesting in light of the fact that she is in her heart and her spiritual experiences involve mainly love, and I was located in my head and my spiritual experiences involved not only love but also consciousness.<\/p>\n
Aadi urged seekers to move their sense of me through a “portal” in the back of the skull to a place behind the head where, he said, the “me” should surrender and merge with something he called “universal I am”. If I understood him correctly (I may not have) the universal I am is what everyone else calls God or more exactly is the consciousness-aspect of God. I imagine Aadi took the term “I am” from the story in the Bible in which Moses asks God his name and God answers, in effect, “I am that which I am and will be, but you can call me ‘I am’ for short.”<\/p>\n
Julia was intrigued by the idea of moving from her heart to a place behind her head and decided to try it. For about a week from time to time she deliberately felt herself in that place and then suddenly one night — I’ll let her describe what happened:<\/p>\n
A trapdoor opened in the back of my skull. I fell backward. God was waiting there for me. God caught me. [She cupped her hands together as she told me this.] There was a feeling of safety and connection to God. Probably the closest I ever felt to God.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
For a day or two God remained with her behind her head. She was very happy. She told me this was the most powerful spiritual experience she had ever had.<\/p>\n
But then:<\/p>\n
The feeling of being close to God behind my head ended up being temporary. After two days at most God was no longer there. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
God left but she remained. Not only was she still there, she was stuck there. She couldn’t get back to her heart. Over the next week:<\/p>\n
I thought I had lost my heart center. I couldn’t feel it. I felt uncomfortable being behind my head. It felt like something was missing from me. I wasn’t where I needed to be. It became an empty feeling. When I am in my heart there is a feeling of completeness, warmth, and safety. Behind my head, after God left, there was only emptiness.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Not only that:<\/p>\n
I felt like I lost my “me”. I no longer had a “me”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n