Guru’s grace lifted off the intense sadness of my heart

I call my Guru Ji as Maharaj Ji. It’s just more endearing for me. However, most devotees call him Baba Ji.

It was sometime around 2002-2004. I suddenly got a phone call from Maharaj Ji saying that he was in Canada and asked me to visit Toronto for the three-day weekend.

It was the first time I had received a phone call from Maharaj Ji asking me to visit him. I had never received a call directly from him. A few times that I did talk to him was always due to a message he’d send through someone else to tell me to call Maharaj Ji.

I was amazed and thrilled to have the chance to have his darshan. I had no idea that he’d been visiting Canada. It’s only a three-hour flight from where I live. I also had no idea that he had been regularly visiting Canada for many years too. I was so surprised as to why he never invited me before and how come I never knew that he had been visiting Canada?

Nonetheless, I had only two days to buy the plane ticket. Usually, it would have been almost impossible for me to take off to even a local place for even one day, and that too considering the cost of a plane ticket at two-day notice! But I was amazed at how miraculously all travel plans worked out without a hitch, and I got to fly to Canada for the first time.

Maharaj Ji was staying at one of his long-time devotees in Toronto, Canada, and that’s where I got to stay too.  

I heard the next day’s plan was for everyone to accompany Maharaj Ji to one of the temples around 9 a.m. However, Maharaj Ji told me that I should take a bath the following morning and sit for meditation in the open Living Room/Entrance room at 5:30 a.m.  Was, perhaps, I the only one asked to sit for meditation because there was no other devotee there?

There was a silent activity of all other house members and guests in the background downstairs and upstairs in plain view. Regardless I was thrilled beyond measure to have the invitation from my Guru to sit for meditation. It would be the first time for me to sit by myself in front of my Guru. I expected the session to last maybe an hour.  

By 5:15 a.m., when I entered the open living room, Maharaj Ji was already sitting cross-legged on a chair. I sat on the floor, too, facing him about seven feet away. I closed my eyes for meditation.

I sat up straight and cross-legged on the floor with hands folded in my lap, which was my usual way of sitting for meditation.

I lost track of time and had some of the most amazing experiences during meditation, but the one I particularly want to mention is the following:

After some time of sitting there, I suddenly noticed something dissolving just where the heart chakra is. It was dissolving like a mountain of sand would dissolve and disappear in the ocean so smoothly and quickly. Suddenly after that, I felt my heart chakra felt utterly weightless, as if floating in the air. I felt as if a ton of weight, like an 18 wheeler truck, was sitting on my heart, and it just ‘whoosh’ lifted away and dissolved away.

The most interesting fact for me even today is how I never realized the ton of weight I had been carrying until after it dissolved away. It’s the weightlessness, the lightness that made me realize the weight I had been carrying.   I had tears of Joy and Love pouring out in streams down my face.

For a while, internally, I was floating and diving in the ocean of pure Love when suddenly and spontaneously on its own, my whole body, hips up, just bent down forward like a weightless, boneless body. My forehead touched the floor and rested there for a few minutes.  It was like my whole Being was prostrating before the Guru. I was still sitting cross-legged and hands folded, resting in my lap.

I can say it’s an impossibility if I try to bend over forward to touch my forehead to the floor! So this is a pose I cannot do willingly; my body has not been flexible enough to do it.  And yet that time, the Divine Cosmic Force that runs through us, the Kundalini Shakti, was able to do the impossible with my body in a grateful, humble bow to the Enlightened Guru. (Awakened Kundalini Shakti can perform impossible feats with the body- e.g., the forms of Mudras and Kriyas).

The meditation session continued with other experiences until I heard Maharaj Ji tell me that I could open my eyes.

I opened my eyes, still in a body and the Self disconnected haze, to see the whole Living Room+Dining room filled with a crowd of devotees standing around and watching. It’s was already past 9 a.m. Everyone was late for the event at the Temple, so many had waited and then come over to the house to see what the delay was.

I have many stories to tell of that and few other subsequent visits until 2012, but this one is one of the most important ones to relate to explain that Guru’s infinite loving grace turned out to be like a heart transplant.

You see, before that blessed day, I used to fall into causeless deep sadness in my heart suddenly.

I’d be alone and happy, or even ecstatic, sometimes literally dancing with joy to some devotional songs, or simply feeling abundant energy, and then at some unexpected moments, I’d feel some deep depression. It was very puzzling.

I was painfully confused. I’d wonder about it because I could see no reason for me to feel that sadness, at least no immediate, compelling reason. Spiritually I felt ecstatic, and mentally I knew there was no logical reason to feel sudden intense sadness, but emotionally I did feel so.

It made absolutely no sense. I had tried and tried every usual method – Self Reflection, Self Inquiry, meditation, Positive affirmations, and few others.

(Now I understand the reasons why I felt that discord within and why others feel it too. Since I went through it, I can relate to, empathize with, and have been able to help many seeking help).

But since that fateful blessed day, I have been permanently absolved of the causeless sadness!  I have not felt it since that day. I have watched myself closely to see any traces, but never did it appear again. I have only felt extreme peace or bubbles of joy and lightness. If ever there is heaviness or sadness, it is short-lived and for a solid explainable immediate reason.

Even when someone has a heart transplant, I’m sure they always remember their donor. I can never forget the new heart my Guru just gave to me. No surgery, no discussions, no fee.