The Guru’s Voice
After
trying for a full year to reach Baskaran, the man who, twenty-seven years ago, opened my third eye, that is, conferred Shaktipat, I was about to hear
his voice. On 5 July 2013, Mohini, who, for the last two decades, has helped Baskaran,
popularly known as Dr. Pillai, to carry out his mission, emailed me this
message: “I have good news—Dr.
Pillai is welcoming you to call him. He has just arrived in India, so let me
find out what time is good for him….” The next day, she again emailed me: “Baba said you can call him anytime your Sat morning—it will
be late afternoon to early evening for him. He may be in a meeting, as his
schedule is impromptu. However, if he is busy, he will ask you to call him
back.”
So, on Saturday morning, around 11:30, while
sitting in my sister’s backyard in Greenville, Pennsylvania, I called Baskaran,
and he answered! We spoke of our time together at the University of Pittsburgh,
about Dr. Juan Vasquez, the professor who first introduced us, and we discussed
the Jewish mystical work Sefer Yetzirah /
The Book of Creation, which he is in the midst of studying. In the course
of our conversation, he said, “God is light,” and he told me it was not an
accident that we were together again (as he immersed himself in a comparative study
of sacred sound technologies in Judaism and Hinduism).
Eventually, our exchange grew more personal,
and at one point I said to him, “Please don’t let go of me in this life,” and
he answered, “No, no, I won’t.” When he asked, “What are your plans?” I
responded, “I want to dissolve the illusion of the self, to merge the illusion
of my individual consciousness with the Divine universal consciousness; I want
to return the Ocean of Light.” He said in turn, “This can be done; this is the
goal of the mystic.” And then I asked him if he had any instruction or guidance
for me, and he said, “Continue to chant Arut
Perum Jyoti, which is the mantra of mantras, study Kabbalah, and the
congregation [the synagogue] will emerge.”
The next week, on Sunday, 14 July, I participated
as a guest panelist in his Google hangout Magic
of Ancient Power Sounds.
