Merging with  Maharishikaa

Merging with  Maharishikaa

Blessed indeed are they who  find themselves at the feet  of their guru, and so am I,  having embarked on the  epic journey of realising the self, dragged by  Maharishikaa Preeti Maiyaa, with my ego in tow. 

I knew Maharishikaa Preeti Maiyaa since our  school days, and since we were family friends,  I often visited her house. It’s not easy to accept  someone whom you have once attended school  with, as your guru. 

I had not been in touch with Maiyaa for a  long time till the day I received an invitation  to the first Presence day in Mumbai, over a  decade ago. In a gathering of about 60 or  70 seekers, various far-ranging questions  were raised, and I was amazed to see Maiyaa  giving precise answers to all of them, be  it relationships, money, sex, or existential  queries about the purpose of life, and the  after-life.  

After the session, each of us had the opportunity  to take Maiyaa’s darshan, which involved sitting  in front of Maiyaa and gazing into her eyes. This  was one of the most powerful experiences that  I’d ever had. As I knelt before her and looked  into her eyes, it seemed like an eternity before  she broke the gaze. I’ve had many opportunities  to take Maiyaa’s darshan in the past decade,  but that experience is particularly etched in  my mind. I believe I underwent a change at  that time as I never missed a single Presence  meeting for a very long time, till the time I took  an introspective break (as Maiyaa puts it).  

My friend and guru-bandhu, Ramesh, who  had invited me to my first Presence day often  visited our office and sometimes offered us (me  and my partners) advice related to effectuating  certain changes in our office or operating in  a specific way. His casual manner of putting  forth the suggestions, never once gave away  that they were not his own.   

For example, he told us how  objects lying unused over long  periods attracted negative  energy and convinced us  that clearing our office of  the junk that lay gathering  dust over the years, in our  loft, would pave the way for  clear thinking and prosperity.  Interestingly, soon after we  had disposed of all the old  and un-utilised articles (old  computers, spares, empty  cartons, etc.), we felt a  transformation in the energy  of the office. 

Maiyaa’s benevolence

A vaastu expert once advised  us to embed some copper  wires in the floor of the office  and in my flat. These copper  wires were ‘prayed upon’ or  ‘energised’ (as he put it) to  usher in prosperity and well being. When Ramesh learnt  about this, he dissuaded us  and also explained why it was  not a good idea. He explained  that the process involved  disembodied beings (spirits),  and it wasn’t advisable to get  involved with something we  had little or no knowledge about. He said that one would not know what price one would have to pay for getting involved with spirits or the consequences thereafter.  

Good sense prevailed, and we decided against the installation of the copper wires.  The journey towards self-realisation entails embracing the truth  and surrendering the ego to the guru. It was much later that I learned it was none other than Maiyaa sending these  ‘suggestions’ through Ramesh to me. I kept attending Presence and found the sessions fascinating. Maiyaa had manifested  a body of knowledge that covered practically every aspect of life and living. Her answers were cutting edge, scientific, practical, and filled with beauty that satiated  the intellect each time she gave an insight. With passing time, I learnt that Presence  was not simply about understanding things conceptually. It was fundamentally  about transformation—transforming those aspects about myself that obstructed  my own prosperity, my self-realisation. 

Ego’s enemy 

The most fundamental transformation was my acceptance that there was someone  who knew more than what I did. Having thus been made aware, it was only logical  that I accept Maiyaa as my guru and, having done that, I had to give of myself and remain in surrender to her. 

In the early stages, every time I received an invitation to a Presence, I would feel  my heart sink because each time I attended it, the experience was heavy, in the  literal sense of the word. The gross nature of my body was like dragging a piece of  lead. While on the one hand, everything that Maiyaa said resonated with me and her answers set me free, on the other hand, I felt a certain heaviness lugging at me. I  often wondered why… It was, of course, the ego crying for survival (which Maiyaa  told me later). The ego knew that this is where it would be hacked. 

Maiyaa showed me—and it was an incredible realisation—that it was the society  that shaped our ego so that we could serve it. I lived largely as per the rule book,  the norms and protocols,  mores, and ethical code  of conduct that my society  had created for itself. This  ensured that I adhered to  the straight and narrow  path and served the society  by desiring and acquiring  goodies like everyone. A fine  way of keeping the truth of  our existence hidden. This  perhaps was the story of the  whole of humanity. 

The master sculptor The master sculptor that  Maharishikaa Maiyaa is,  she sculpts away at the ego  to unveil the truth hidden  within a being. My ego, which  wanted to survive at all costs, reared its head time and  again and continues to do it  ever so often. It did so in the  most cunning and baffling  of ways—manipulating,  pretending, and obfuscating.  Yet, Maiyaa recognised  the subtlest play of my ego  and removed it swiftly and  incisively. Casting aside  layers and layers of falsehood  with surgical precision, she  chiselled away the foul stuff  which had weakened me, till  a fragrant and strong self  began to emerge. 

One feels stifled,  claustrophobic, nauseous,  feverish, and suffers all  types of psychosomatic  ailments while undergoing  this extreme ego whittling—a  long-drawn, relentless, and  painful process of intense  and microscopic observation  of each act committed and  every word uttered. Well, it’s  as long drawn and relentless  as the shishya would want  to make it. Sometimes, so  subtle is the play of the ego  that even the shishya doesn’t  know what they have done  to be subject to such intense  scrutiny. The guru battles the  ego till it’s reduced to just that  much which is required for  mundane living. The shishya is increasingly anchored  in the truth. This process,  Maiyaa tells me, will continue  till my last breath. And then, there is also the  intense relief—relief that I can transform and  live, guided by the truth. 

The easier way 

I’m amongst the many shishyas who have run  away from their guru’s ashram thinking that  they’d never return. Very few students survive  these battles; most don’t come back. 

The shishya can bypass this long  and painful process by taking an  ingenious shortcut on this yatra  to the self. There’s hardly any ego 

bashing and painful experiences,  and it is smooth sailing for most  of the part. This shortcut is called  surrender (samarpan) to the guru. An  unequivocal surrender, where you  do not entertain doubts. Actually, in a  classical guru-shishya relationship,  this is de rigueur. 

Maiyaa often spoke about surrender. Most  of us, coming from a westernised, urban,  English-educated upbringing, struggled with  this concept. For most of us, the word had  negative connotations. It meant to give up  control, to not have free will, to lose. Another  issue was acknowledging that the one sitting  on the aasana knew more. The ego didn’t want  to accept this. 

I had been attending Presence for a couple  of years and was struggling with the idea of  surrender. Try as I might, I simply could not  grasp it! 

The final act 

Then one day, I decided that the only way to  apprehend this was to experience it. Before  the close of the Presence meet, we had a  20-minute session called ‘strength’. During  ‘strength’, Maiyaa awakened shakti within  each seeker. We sat in quiet contemplation and  could take turns to go in front of Maiyaa to do  a sashtanga namaskar (full body prostration).  What a struggle it was!  

I felt like stone, unable to move from my chair.  Totally tense. Bowing down like this to another  was never an option. After a humongous  effort, I managed to stand up and make my  way to the front. I knelt before Maiyaa and  then, for the first time in my life, I lay prostrate,  in the ancient posture of total surrender, the  sashtanga namaskar!It seemed like an eternity  before I got up to take my seat. The first thing  I experienced was physical relief. The tension  in the body vanished instantly, and I felt light.  My head felt empty too, as though, along with  my body, I had also laid down at Maiyaa’s feet,  the heavy sack that I had been carrying in my  head all these years. A sack full of ideas about  myself and the world at large. A sack full of  nothing—fodder for the ego. Lying prostrate in  front of Maiyaa, I did not experience my ego  for even a millisecond. 

The sashtanga namaskar is an ingenious kriya (practice). The body is at its most vulnerable,  incapable of defending itself. A no-ego position. What a discovery! 

It’s a very simplistic and absurd interpretation that surrender to the guru is akin to giving up  one’s freedom. This is how the ego experiences surrender: That one doesn’t have any say in  one’s living, and that the guru is directing every move—and such absurd thoughts. And sadly, I  too had to battle these machinations of the ego. However, nothing of the sort happens. A shishya who has made it to that step, experiences surrender as exquisite freedom. 

The taste of freedom 

The guru only frees the shishya from the clutches of the ego and from the shackles of social  obligations, to make him hear the voice of truth from the antar-aatman, the ‘source’ within;  to become fearless, brave, and courageous; to remain anchored in the truth at all times. The  guru ensures that the shishya is steady on the path to knowing the Self and to empowering  and serving others. This automatically ensures prosperity and minimal pain of suffering for  the shishya. This is a freedom experienced by very few on the planet. I’m blessed to have  experienced true freedom in this life. 

Unless the shishya surrenders to the guru, things are bound to remain more or less the  same. At best, only a few cosmetic changes may occur because of the purely conceptual  understanding of what the guru is teaching. Students have been known to experience  anxiety as part of this ‘surrendering’ process. A very common feeling (and also quite scary)  is that one is dying! Many experience this as pain in the heart or in the solar plexus area.  Yet, others experience this as suffocation or as palpitations. Maiyaa says it’s the ego that  is dying and that the shishya must endure it till it passes. I’ve suffered too, throwing up bile  every morning for nearly ten months! And weeping incoherently. 

I see now that surrender could come easier than it did with me. It could begin with a simple  sashtanga namaskar. When the material body is put in a posture of surrender, the ego will  follow. It may take some time, but it will happen. I try to do the sashtanga namaskar kriya as  often as I can, even if I’m not in front of Maiyaa. For, eventually, as Maiyaa has so often said,  surrendering to the external guru is only the preparation for the final great surrender, which  is to the great guru within, when we transform into the unquestioning servants of the antar aatman—the source, the truth within us—and begin to follow its commands.