I Remembered, I Had Already Been There Before That which doesn’t exist.
16th April 2004, I, Niyati, must admit that my life had changed completely and later on I undertook a reality check. It was my 13th birthday, and my parents, along with my family, planned a nice little party for me and I had the opportunity to invite a few close friends and some relatives. We had great times together, moments spent with much happiness and unbearable laughter and by that time we gathered enough incredible memories to cherish for years.
After the party ended and everyone left, my parents gifted me. At that time I would call it ‘‘The Worst gift Ever’’– courses at a random yoga class. I kept wondering and questioning the very core of myself ‘‘what kind of parents will ever give their child yoga classes on the day of her birthday? Well, that definitely would be my parents of course or who else? I was convinced that I would never enter that class or else what would happen, I would be doing oldies and vintage things and what if my friends laughed at me? I am an active person. I will not be able to sit and stay calm or by any chance be like a corpse. I need to do as many tasks as I can. It was a total rejection from my side. However, somehow with her motherly love and instinct, my mother was able to convince me to at least attend one class and later to see whether it made a difference or not. That day I just went to class without any resentment, expectations or whatever else a human being can have thoughts about or feel any sort of emotions. Maybe I just went as life itself, just by being alive and nothing more or less.
From what I still remember, my first yoga class happened on a Thursday. I arrived there with my mother, greeted everybody, met and had a chat with the teacher and soon we were already meditating and in some kind of entangling posture where I could barely have the sensation of breathing properly or being alive but it was part of the process so I had to go through it. Nevertheless, I didn’t realise when but the class happened to end and everyone went back home. Literally, something might have happened to the very core of myself but it was just the first session, I thought maybe that’s just my mind playing some kind of games with me. The next few weeks, with the same way of being, just being alive, I attended the sessions without questioning. It was just as if I was going to learn a new concept where I would not understand where I am breathing normally or what was really going on with this body. Few weeks of practising since that time, I started to see and feel some adequate changes both physically and mentally. Unfortunately by that time covid-19 was at its peak and everyone had to be confined so as I barely had something to do at home, I started practising a few breathing exercises and yoga postures on my own and later on thankfully we started having online classes. But practising daily had become a must in my daily routine and I started loving it.
However, after everything went back to normal, practising daily was a bit difficult but I made sure of never missing any of the classes as I was now so enthusiastic to learn more at every session I was grasping something new and very much interesting. I went through some life shocking and terrifying events in my experience where it was difficult for me to handle mentally as a teenager but I noticed that through Yoga, life became more simple, my practice helped me in handling various aspects of discomfort when life happened to me, maybe as a test for me to grow and heal, a little sense of admiration for the Mahadeva came to the surface. Later, I had to face a few turning points in life which finally led me to the spiritual path, it was a blessing in disguise. It happened that during those times I questioned everything in my life to the extent of questioning the religions and the very source of existence itself. I doubted the spiritual path and for a while, I stopped practising as nothing was seeming to fall into the right place at the right moment, then started back just for the sake of doing something, but out of nowhere a deep sense of a sort of connection with Shiva happened without me knowing or willing. It just happened but it felt as if it had been there since eternity.
Little by little, I started to open up to the core of my being. From waking up to sleeping to listening to music, everything led to ‘that which is not, that which doesn’t exist,’ that which is pure bliss when the pain of ignorance hit me to the very core of my soul and led me back to Shiva. I felt as if ‘‘that which is not’’ just invaded my whole being, an experience that cannot be expressed through words but only by simply being and letting ‘‘that which does not exist’’ take possession of you. Miraculously, Sadhana helped me connect and understand more the concept of my art as a Bharatanatyam dancer.
Merrily, I gradually started my yoga practices and the best parts happened to be the meditation time where this extraordinary connection with ‘‘that which doesn’t exist’’ continued to deepen, I Niyati, was in complete joy while connecting with that nothingness which is everything which is so intricate and complex as well as fully complete at the same time. Each day, yoga seemed to be more an enriching phase than just learning or doing some kind of physical activity to be fit. It was destroying me in such a way to the extent of nourishing my soul to its fullest possibilities. Meditation was gradually becoming a quality that I was acquiring with time and during few of my meditation sessions, I would experience involuntary and spontaneous movement whereby the body would swing back and forth, east and west and at time a little rotation as well as the body going forward make a kind or half rotation and the body would just pull back by itself and my hands in dhyana mudra would just come up with the body fast and consciously I may say I would place it back and experience more of the bliss. As a Bharatanatyam dancer, my sadhana miraculously helped me to connect and understand in depth the source of my art and this helped in delivering better performances.
Thereby one day, whilst meditating, something extraordinary happened, I felt transcended to another world when there was actually another dimension of existence. That’s when I must have awakened that coiled serpent found at the base of our spines-The Kundalini energy, a form of the divine feminine. I found myself travelling supposedly in time till I reached a place where a little girl could be seen joyfully roaming around near the Ganges river in Varanasi. I was perplexed visualising this scene, but the moment the little girl turned and smiled, in such a blink of an eye, I realised that I have been there before. That little girl was me Niyati, in my previous life who was born in Varanasi, India, which is known to be the spiritual capital of India, whereby long ago in each street an enlightened being could be found as well as where funeral rites are performed at the Manikarnika Ghat- the holiest cremation ground along the sacred riverfronts. I was then named Geetanjali which means one who sings spiritual songs as a submission to god. I as the little girl would just love each and every second of her life. She would wake up early around 4 a.m and rush to the temple where her Guru(teacher) would start the morning prayer with sacred chants and devotional songs praising all the virtues of Lord Shiva. Geetanjali would just be fond of that and give all of herself to devotion. As I was just a 7-year-old little girl in the life of Geetanjali, she would just spend her time near the Ganges and the ghat, listening to the sacred hymns by the priests, she would run through the streets greeting sadhus, having little chats with them and at last she would just go and sit in front of the shiva lingam, observing every inch of it and feeling completely dissolved in it.
Moreover, this was the daily routine of Geetanjali’s life. Then one day as she was not fully educated about religion, spirituality, cultures and tradition, she was quite confused from the chats she had with the sadhus in relation to the learning she got from the Gurukul (residential monasteries). Geetanjali was helplessly trying to understand which one of them was making more sense to her or where both learnings meet each other but unfortunately, the 7-year-old found herself entangled with her intellect, between beliefs, religious and spiritual practices as well as cultures and tradition So, one day she stopped going to the Gurukul and went sitting in front of the Shiva Lingam singing devotional songs during the first half of the day and the other half she would just be there without any thoughts or emotions, she would just sit as a living being would, still, get dissolved in devotion while looking at the shiva lingam. This continued for seven consecutive days where she would barely eat anything apart from fruit. Then on the seventh day, Geetanjali got up and went to an Aghori baba, she just bowed down to him and the Aghori baba blessed her and Geetanjali went back to the Shiva Lingam. She sat down in padmasana, bowed down to the lingam, closed her eyes and placed her left hand on the Shiva lingam and tears were rolling down her eyes. She herself had no clue of what was going on but all she knew is this deep connection with the complex yet complete Shiva, that dimension which does not exist, which is the basis of existence, that nothingness with is everything whereby everything is that nothingness. That connection had a very profound meaning which she couldn’t understand but she had full faith in that which is not and she knew that at the right time that nothingness beyond all physicalities, will manifest it. Till then, as Geetanjali, I went back to the cycle of life and death, waiting for the unmanifest to manifest itself .
From where I am speaking to you now, coming back to me as Niyati sitting in meditation and at the same time tears of ecstasy, rolling down my face, no words could describe that blissful moment, no one could ever understand that feeling of being one with that which does not exist that being beyond all physicalities, that name which is nameless, that form which formless, that sound which has form and that form which has a sound, the shoonya from which every source of energy generates that energy, which exists in each and everyone one of us. From where I am speaking to you, I bow down to the existence. That need for self-realisation had happened and finally I have been able to understand through the vision of my past birth that I had to take birth again on earth as a human being in order to break through the bondage of the cyclical nature of life and death (samsara) so that I can attain liberation (Moksha) to unite with that which does not exist. As Geetanjali was a devotional singer, Niyati was a Bharatnatyam dancer where in both lives she devoted herself to the source of life through her arts whereby creation happened with a sound which we refer to as AUM/OM and as per ancient scriptures, Lord shiva created the Rudra Veena the very source where music began and Shiva is also referred to as Nataraja the cosmic dancer and Bharatanatyam is depicted from Shiva’s Tandav as the cosmic dance where creation, maintenance and dissolution happen through this process of dance. ‘‘From where I am speaking to you now’’, I now know and see it clearly that life is a dance as creation itself is a dance as the divine creator is a dancer himself and everything which is nothing and nothing which is everything comes out of that emptiness and will be redirected back to that emptiness, no matter the amount of time it takes but nature has its own tactics to make it happen.
From where I am speaking to you, I now understand the meaning also of both my names as Geetanjali and as Niyati. Geetanjali was the one who would sing devotional songs as a submission to existence. She made a certain path and reached a certain point where her faith made her go through the cycle of life again for her to continue her spiritual journey, while taking birth as Niyati, which means destiny she would just surrender completely to that divine energy, that intelligence which is everywhere and letting destiny find its course, whereby the transition from Geetanjali to Niyati, the in-between work that occurred led her soul meet with her Niyati. And “From where I am speaking to you now,” I left through Mahasamadhi, coimpletely one with “That which doesn’t exist” On this note, I can ask: Who knows what destiny has in store for us?
(1)
From where I am speaking to you now, coming back to me as Niyati sitting in meditation and at the same time tears of ecstasy, rolling down my face, no words could describe that blissful moment, no one could ever understand that feeling of being one with that which does not exist that being beyond all physicalities, that name which is nameless, that form which formless, that sound which has form and that form which has a sound, the shoonya from which every source of energy generates that energy, which exists in each and everyone one of us. From where I am speaking to you, I bow down to the existence.
(2)
Then on the seventh day, Geetanjali got up and went to an Aghori baba, she just bowed down to him and the Aghori baba blessed her and Geetanjali went back to the Shiva Lingam. She sat down in padmasana, bowed down to the lingam, closed her eyes and placed her left hand on the Shiva lingam and tears were rolling down her eyes.