From Holocaust Victim to Immanent Messiah – II

In the Spiritual School of the Soul – I

After my great personal drama – losing my beloved brother Anri – and reading the inspiring book The Great Initiates by Édouard Schuré, I underwent as I decided the ‘spiritual death’ of my personality, and started my spiritual journey. In October 1971, in Moscow, with two close colleagues, I attended a course for autogenetic training, which was a cover for a hidden Yoga group. In great appreciation of the spiritual traditions, I read many books: the Bible, Bhagavat Gita, Foundations of the Tibetan Mysticism (by Lama Anagarika Govinda), the Sufi poets Rumi, Hafiz, Omar Haiam,  Rudolf Steiner (‘Knowledge of the Higher Worlds: How is it Achieved’, ‘Occult Science: An Outline’, ‘Theosophy‘), Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (The Fourth Way, In Search of the Miraculous), and others.

One of the first books which I read, was The Life of Ramakrishna by Romain Rolland. As I mentioned in the previous Post, I looked not so much for the religious tradition or the established culture. My main focus was to link with the Initiates themselves who came from G-d.  I was so deeply impressed by the story of Ramakrishna that I lived with this story for weeks and months. According to Romain Rolland, Ramakrishna, born into the nineteenth century, embodied the Divine qualities of both Rama and Krishna and became ‘Ramakrishna’. After attaining the highest state of consciousness of a Hindu yogi (Nirbikalpa Samadhi), he turned to other spiritual traditions. Because of his complete self-realisation in Yoga, he was able to experience the highest spiritual states in other traditions as well. For instance, practising the Buddhist path for a while, he experienced the state of nirvana. At another time, he took up the practice of the Islamic tradition and experienced the great spiritual beauty and treasures of this path through direct contact with Muhammad. Later, he was deeply touched by the mystery of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, and experienced this mystery by merging with Christ. The mission of Ramakrishna was to confirm that all spiritual traditions come from one and the same Divine Source and all lead back to this Source. In a sense, he emphasised their monotheistic origin. At the same time, Ramakrishna was ecstatically devoted to the Divine Mother:

In various ways Sri Ramakrishna tasted the bliss of communion with God – sometimes merging himself totally in the Absolute, sometimes as a child of the Divine Mother maintaining an appearance of duality. (Thus Spake Sri Ramakrishna, Sri Ramakrishna Math, Madras, p. x-xi.)

At that time, I embraced with all my heart the task of  integration of all religions as monotheistic (i.e., coming from the only one Divine source) and, of course, Ramakrishna was the perfect example for me. I also became very inspired by the mystery of the Divine Mother. In other words, Ramakrishna was a wonderful embodiment of my most cherished spiritual goals. He was my first spiritual love, a love which still remains in my heart.

Inspired by the Divine Guru Ramakrishna and other great Hindu Masters, such as his great disciple Vivekananda, the Divine Avatar, Babaji, .Sri Yogananda, Sri Yukteswar, Sri Aurobindo Ghosh, Sai Baba, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and others,  I started the process of opening my spiritual centres (chakras). I remember that in one of the ’autogenetic sessions’ the leader of the group told me: I think you could be able to raise your Kundalini energy. For this purpose, concentrate on the bottom of the spine, invoke a heat wave and imagine that the Kundalini energy begins to rise through the Sushumna channel in your spine.

So, I did it.  As soon as I started this practice, I felt the heat at the bottom of the spine and the Kundalini energy began rising like a tiny column, resembling Mercury in a thermometer, through the Sushumna channel on my spine. I concentrated on this process of rising and little by little the Kundalini energy began to open one chakra after another (although, at the beginning, only partly). The feeling was that this ‘tiny column’ was getting stronger and hotter all the time. The opening of one or another chakra evoked some specific sounds associated with them: for instance, passing through the heart chakra, I heard very clearly the sound of bells. When Kundalini reached the top of the head, I felt that going further was dangerous and I gradually relaxed myself and came out of the consecration.

Day after day I activated the Kundalini energy and experienced the tracing of its various ‘channels’ in the body and the opening of the main spiritual centres (the chakras). Thus, little by little, I began to clear and develop my etheric body. I understood very well the intensive work of the yogis on their physical-etheric bodies with some purification procedures, with special diets and fasting, with many exercises and pranayama, aiming at opening their chakras and taking control of the subtle energies in their etheric bodies. Then they were able to work with these subtle energies, building their spiritual bodies, ascending to the Higher Worlds and finally achieving the state of samadhi.

The effects of raising Kundalini were very interesting and powerful: at the beginning I felt as if my entire spine was on fire; for weeks I was sleeping only about three hours per night, but still felt full of energy; waves of love and inspiration were coming and going through me; when working on my PhD thesis, I realised that my thoughts were penetrating deeper and deeper into the subject. One morning I woke to the sound of wonderful church bells and asked my hostess: Why did you not tell me that there is a church in the area? She looked at me with puzzlement and said: What church? There is no church around at all. In fact, I heard the sounds of my opened heart chakra.

At another time, as I was doing my Kundalini practice, I ‘left’ the physical body and started mentally ‘approaching’ the Moon. The Moon became bigger and bigger, almost filling a quarter of the sky. Then suddenly, I changed the direction of my ‘mental flight’ and found myself in the midst of the spiritual cosmos. I entered into a most beautiful state of cosmic consciousness where I heard the wonderful sounds of the harmony in the celestial spheres. Perhaps this was some kind of samadhi.

Developing further my Kundalini practice, I started using the method of B. Sakharov for opening the ‘third eye’. I concentrated on the third eye and evoked spiritual colours – from violet to golden white. When the meditation was successful, I saw very bright pulsating spiritual colours which filled the whole space; At some stage, by practicing this method and going deeper into meditation, I was able to see the whole of Creation as Divine Spirit in one or another colour,  with the open third eye. Of cause, in order to merge with this Divine Spirit, I had to open my seventh, Sahasrara, chakra.

Ramakrishna used to tell his disciples that when he raised Kundalini, the Kundalini energy was first as a tiny stream in his spinal cord, then it filled the whole spine, after this – the whole body began to vibrate as a column of Kundalini energy. Deepening his meditation Ramakrishna felt that his body, as a column of energy, was becoming bigger and bigger and finally dissolved into the Universal Kundalini cosmic energy. After reaching this ultimate state, the Divine Guru Ramakrishna slowly came back, in reverse order,  first reducing the universal energy to the shape of the body, then to the spinal cord, then to the tiny stream of energy in it, until finally it disappeared. Ramakrishna  used also to say that in the state of Samadhi he saw the whole of Creation as a Temple, full of dazzling light, with brightly lit chandeliers.

Following the spiritual contact with Ramakrishna, I became fully aware of my etheric body – the body of prana energy, Kundalini, of Light energy, which determines our ability to see and to penetrate into the spiritual worlds. If the etheric body is blocked, the consciousness is in the material, corporeal, dark state. If it is transparent and vibrating, it is like an ‘etheric fire’ which penetrates our whole daily ‘material’ life and allows us to see into the Higher Worlds.

In retrospect, I could say that Ramakrishna helped me not only to purify and develop my etheric body – he directly influenced my entire spiritual journey and my Mission. In a similar way as Ramakrishna, I gradually experienced some of the highest states of consciousness in the world religions such as Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrism, Christianity, Islam, and others. Moreover, I developed great love and devotion to the Divine Mother and in my book The Second Coming I introduced some kind of a Gospel of the Divine Mother. Even now my mystical connection with Ramakrishna continues and gives me, every now and again, unexpected spiritual visions and fruits. Of course, it is not by chance, because he was my first spiritual love and remains always with me.