The Promise
Our second child, William Arun, arrived a few days ago.
The first time I heard that I would have a son named Arun happened over 30 years ago. I had just graduated the university and went to study Tantra Yoga in India. I inadvertently got trapped inside of some absurd revolution in West Bengal. I was a political prisoner but was released under house arrest until our case was ready for the Indian Supreme Court. I was allowed to go to the river and meditate and so I spent my time meditating and studying philosophy. There was always the threat of violence around me but I just kept meditating.
I began to go into very deep meditation where I would almost stop breathing. An old yogi told me that he would only take two breaths a minute when in deep meditation. I had never measured it before and it was hard to remember such a little factual detail when one is lost in the ideation of the infinite. However, I realized that I had stopped breathing for a long time. I counted 60 seconds in my mind and I was so still and had not the slightest desire to breath, and so I just forgot about this distraction and continued to enjoy deep meditation. As I studied the tantra yoga texts I learned that the breathless state in meditation is called samadhi. One gets so concentrated in the mind that the body goes into a deep relaxation and physiological stasis. One´s consciousness sees spiritual reality independent of the body with its senses and intellect.
One night I had just finished meditating before going to sleep. I lied down on my back and fell asleep briefly. I felt the kundalini begin to surge up my spine and I woke up but could not see anything because there was only light in my mind´s eye and this strong inner sound of Om engulfing my entire sensory mind. I left my body and found myself in an empty space with what I perceived as the form of Anandamurti. With him he began to show me the future of this incarnation. I was to have a very good life spiritually but a total hell of existence related to my social world. First, I saw the total destruction of the monastic society that he created. He himself was destroying it like the god Shiva, the destroyer. It was taking the wrong course and so he was getting rid of it. It was terrifying and painful to see.
Later, I saw my own private life. There was inner peace but pure chaos all around me for so many years. All of the places and circumstances in which I saw myself in this experience are places where I indeed actually did come to live, along with the difficult experiences I had there. I saw that I was living in Mexico for the worst of the circumstances, right in the middle of a dark, political conflict. The vision did not show me it was the narco war, just that I was living through terror in Mexico.
The difficult situations were not necessarily linked to my personal life but for some reason I had to find myself in the middle of violent political dramas like the one I was presently involved with in India. It had nothing to do with me, but I was right in the middle of it all. It was if the chaos from the failed revolution and the Arms Drop continued to follow me for decades later. And it actually did. It was to be my lot in live to see the highest bliss alongside the greatest of terrors. I asked Anandamurti how I was to make it through this terrible time and he told me "see the world as a photo frameless and wander through the night."
At the end of the vision of my future I saw things were getting a little better. In the vision I was uncertain how much time had passed and how long all of these experiences would actually take to live in the realm of human time. From this timeless perspective in the Halls Of Immortality, it just seemed like a short but meaningful story. The story´s happier ending was significant because the stories I saw myself involved in had much to do with the future of the planet. Everything seemed so dark and pessimistic but Anandamurti said that we had to pass through it all with a heightened spiritual awareness. Somehow, humanity would make it into a new era. Anandamurti told me I would eventually have a son named Arun. In my various visions of Anandamurti he would often use Sanskirt terms that I was not familiar with. I would later discover that Arun is Sanskrit for the new dawn, or "crimson dawn." After passing through so many horrific experiences things were to settle down, so much that it were possible for me to have a family and life would go on. It was a promise that all would be well.
Of course, any rational human being living on the planet in these times has too many good reasons to be skeptical of a bright future. I certainly have my moments of doubt but I always recall that experience. The events were all seen in advance and unfolded as a meaningful and truthful story in human time on a human planet. Arun gives me hope