Some Personal
Experiences
Email:
anilrajvanshi@gmail.com
I do hope you have enjoyed reading the
book and it has given you ample
food for thought. I would now like to share with
you some of my personal
spiritual experiences, which have shaped my life
and led to this book.
I was born and raised in
On my thirteenth birthday in 1963 I was
given a present of a Hindi
translation of Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography.
Reading this book completely
changed my life. I became obsessed with it and
read it continuously - in the
process neglecting my studies and other
activities. Gandhi's early years simply
caught hold of my imagination and there arose a
great desire to know about the religions
of the world. How this leap took place I don’t
remember but it must have been
triggered by reading Bhagwat
Gita
since this was Gandhiji’s favorite book. I
therefore embarked on the journey of
reading all the religious books that I could get
from the local library - Gita,
Koran, Bible, Rigveda,
Upanishads, Patanjali Yoga, Vivekchudamani, etc. As
can be imagined, how much can you absorb at the
age of 13 or 14, but the desire
to read all these books was intense.
Nevertheless reading of Patanjali Yoga Darshan
created a tremendous impression on my teenage
mind since it showed that one
could gain superhuman powers by practicing Yoga!
Together with the reading came the
desire to practice some of the
things that Gandhiji did. Thus I became totally
vegetarian, started eating
mostly boiled food and also started meditating.
Meditation was done as
described in Shri Ramkrishna's
biography. The
meditation, which sometimes lasted for one to
two hours, produced wonderful
feelings and dreams. I remember starting an
experiment of meditating on my
heart and visualizing that it contained a small
earthen lamp. This resulted in
a tremendous feeling of love and good feelings
for everybody. If I remember
correctly this must have lasted for a month or
so but I got frightened by the
experience and hence stopped the heart
meditation. I tried repeating the same
meditation many years later but was never able
to duplicate the experience of
love.
I also remember that during this time
(especially during school
holidays) I went for long
walks of eight to nine kms.
Most of my thinking has been done during long
solitary walks and this habit has
continued till today.
After schooling in
I believe at the age of 19-20 years the
brain is at its prime and so
can absorb huge amounts of input information.
Despite my intense literary
readings I could still do reasonably well in my
engineering and got good
grades. However I felt that the best part of my
IIT education was the study of
humanities subjects and my ability to write this
book is a direct outcome of
that education. There is a general tendency
among students of professional
courses to give a step-motherly treatment to
humanities but I believe study of
such subjects gives one a well-rounded
education. Hence I feel that humanities subjects
should form a compulsory part of curriculum in
all professional colleges.
The meditation and intense reading
produced wonderful and remarkable
dreams. Some of the vivid ones I can remember
were:
1. I am running in the courtyard of our
house in our village and a bright
beam of light descends from the sky and hits my
right side. My face and
shoulder are totally engulfed by it. There was
no fear - just a feeling of well
being.
2. In another dream I saw a firebreathing dragon
which would have killed me. I immediately
recited the name of Lord Shiva. He
appeared and gave me a bow and arrow with which
I killed the dragon. I am sure
both these dreams may have been influenced by
some of the movies on holy people
that I saw as a child.
3. One dream was really strange. I saw my
younger brother and myself all
alone in a desert. The skies suddenly opened up
and a beam of bright white
light bathed us both. But besides the light I
also heard wonderful western
classical music. Since at the age of 13 or 14, I
had no access to western
classical music, this dream was something very
strange.
4. One dream was of an out of body
experience where I am in the
battlefront and "killed". However the "I"
remained and it
could go anywhere and pass through walls and
obstacles.
5. Another dream showed that I am travelling in
a spaceship and witness the formation of
galaxies in an egg-shaped envelope.
This was really fantastic and psychedelic and
could have come out of almost any
science fiction movie.
6. In one dream I saw myself levitating by
climbing on invisible steps.
This dream came at the time when I was thinking
deeply about gravity. A thought
therefore came that probably gravity is
quantized.
These types of dreams continued even
later and there was a time
(sometime in early 1970's) when I continuously
had dreams of having discussions
about the future of India with leaders like Mao,
Trotsky, Lenin and above all
with Gandhiji. There were many dreams of Gandhi.
In one strange dream he even
merged into my body!
The whole idea behind writing this is to
tell the readers that these
events did remain at the back of my mind and did
help in preparing it for the
work outlined in the present book. In fact it
goes to show that once the mind
gets prepared then it can tune into the relevant
dimensional space and can
start receiving knowledge.
Such knowledge did come out of the blue
one day. I was doing my
research
for Ph.D. at
In 1981 I came back to
Thus what I have presented in this book
is a distillation of all such
experiences that I have had in my life till now.
©Anil
K
Rajvanshi. 2004