The 23rd summer of my life was a major transition period. Events made me aware of rare mystical rhythms that had remained hidden from me for a long time.
The wintry breath of lake Cayuga and the sub-zero wind-chill of the sun-deprived college campus at Ithaca, New York were very far away.
Distant impressions gathered from a far away land rapidly became hazy. Melting and evaporating in my overheated family situation and the blazing summer heat of New Delhi.
The family food and hotel business had done very well and the elders thought that going into some other field of enterprise would be a good idea. Soon after that, the family was in severe financial trouble.
The situation was worsened because start up of the new business was delayed due to the 1962 Indo-Chinese war. The business depended upon imported equipment and raw material–which was not forthcoming due to the government policies having changed.
Even more than a decade after that war, the governmental controls over business enterprises in general had increased, corruption in government was rampant. This contributed to creating restrictions, shortages and black markets. Political unrest was simmering, and Jai Prakash Narain was developing his Bihar movement of civil disobedience. Unknown to us, the next year would bring on the black ‘national emergency’ on 25th June 1975 that would suspend all civil liberties. The Congress party led government forces would terrorize the populace of the country for two years in an effort to crush political opposition and civil disobedience.
In this tumultuous atmosphere, the successful family business had been heroically and bravely financing the loss-making enterprise for years. There was no end to the financial troubles in sight and this put immense pressures on each of us daily.
We were already living in a constant state of ’emergency’ ahead of the country.
My portfolio of work included repairs and maintenance, the materials purchase function, financial jugglery of suppliers and their payments, and cutting out the rot of wasteful expenditure. A major effort was to get out of the vicious cycle of usurious rates charged by suppliers for extending months and years of credit. In addition, I also got to deal with dissatisfied staff and labor unions from time to time.
I learned on the job. Some thing I learned quickly, others not so much and not so well.
I had little patience with the snail-like working pace here compared to the business efficiencies of America. I was intolerant of time-wasting and resource-wastage and this brought me into regular confrontation with my seniors and staff. Of course, they frequently reminded me that things were different here and this was not ‘back home in the USA.’ But by this time nothing felt like home–neither here nor there
The summer season stretched out long and hot, overcast with the spine-chilling knowledge that my expertise gained at distant Cornell would not be enough to help bail out the family business.
This was specially scary considering that as a family we had a lot of experience and technical expertise. My father and uncle had founded the business in the 1940’s and had run it very successfully. My older cousin, Lalit, was my senior and a Cornell graduate working in the business. My younger brother Deepak also graduated from Cornell after me, but he was in America, managing a Thunderbird Inn in Washington, working hard while living the American dream.
Many of my successes involved re-vamping working styles and attitudes, and stopping waste. This was a surprisingly difficult thing to do. For instance it was a herculean task to get the kitchen staff to stop throwing things onto the floor instead of dustbins.
The twisted trunks of the acacia-keekar trees moved, the feathery leaves flexed and glowed. The yellow seed pods hanging off the branches radiated a golden aura I had never noticed before. As the pods moved in the breeze they gave off a soft rustling chiming sound. A part of me was caught up in this experience. A part of the mind asked disbelieving questions and then finally gave itself up to the child-like wonderment of the experience.
The low humming-thrumming expanded gently, filling my consciousness like a perfume. It was magnificent. A lovely sound of an otherworldly string instrument. A veena perhaps, overlaid with tones of a mellow cello vibrating incredible harmonics.
Sound of the Universe
I instantly understood that this was the voice of the living, life-sustaining universe. It was a primal and never-ending melody. This majestic sound was at once the source and the driver of this universe. I knew then that as the energies of the universal creation move, they create a sound that generates and maintains the universe.
* * *
The sound was me and I was the sound. I knew what it knew, and it knew what I did. It stayed with me for a long time, even when the monkey chatter of the mind resumed. I was left with the realization that I—my consciousness, would never cease to exist as long as my friend, the sound existed in the universe—for it was the universe and all living things in it as well.
Since then, Aauummah, Aauumm, Aum or Om has been that sound friend who has remained a constant guide in my continuing spiritual journey to help me discover, reveal and revel in the mystic. My friend also gave me the wonderful gift of freedom from fear—that fear which arises from living in the impermanent and unpredictable world. The eternally vibrating sounds of Aauumm gave me the gift of joy. It was a reminder from my past that I could reach the infinite and eternally joyous source of the sound itself.
Postscript:
Many years later Nalin sang a meditation based on this experience, and it is included in the ‘Joy of Reiki’ meditation audio recording, available from the Nirula Healing Center. (The audio sample above is from that recording–download link for the complete recording is below.)
You can download the full Sound of the Universe Meditation here. (Right click and save as…or left click to hear it in your browser) You can get the complete audio CD with 5 cleansing and healing meditations from the Healing Center.
Scientists think that the ‘God particle’ may sound like this…
Scientists theorize that the so-called ‘God particle’ or Higgs-Boson particle, is a physical particle that in itself has no mass or polarity or directional movement, and that it ‘gathers’ mass and polarity once it ‘appears’.
Essentially this particle has no material quality and in the presence of matter it gathers or organizes elemental matter around it.
This is also the precise mechanism observed by spiritual scientists about the nature of the non-material spiritual particle, the ‘atma’ or soul.
Click here to read more about the atma/soul or the “I-Consciousness” particle. (Article: ‘Physics of the I-Consciousness (I-Con) Universe’)