Personal experience of enlightenment: A letter from Carol

By Carol Asher

Dear friend,

This is a long read but I hope you will enjoy it.

As some of you know, I have just come back from India, where I underwent an incredible and life transforming 21-day Enlightenment retreat.

Robert and I will be offering an Enlightenment Initiation Workshop on May 30 in Adelaide, sometime during the period of June 11-14 in Melbourne, and June 30 at La Val Dieu in France. Places in Australia to be announced.

We are now living in joy thanks to the blessing of two Mukti (Liberation) Avatars in India and we hope to share this blessing with you. Please read on!

Words will never be able to convey or describe all the miraculous events that took place during my process in India. However, I want to give you a short description of what I have experienced and how I am today, after the process.

It is impossible to explain and communicate to the mind what Enlightenment is. If you asked me what does the ‘enlightened state’ mean, or what does being ‘enlightened’ mean, I could not explain it – no words ever could. The state is definitely beyond human understanding and human concepts. Our physical brain is too limited! Besides that, every human being experiences the enlightened state differently. Buddha’s experience of enlightenment is not Jesus’ experience and it is not my experience or the many other Westerners’ experience who have gone through the process. It is said that if there are 6 billion people on the planet, that there will be 6 billion different states of enlightenment. So, to begin to understand the state of enlightenment, you will have to experience it for yourself.

However, one thing is common to all states, and that is the freedom from pain and suffering that happens as a result of becoming enlightened. Since I was a little girl, all I wanted was to be happy. To me that meant not feeling the emotional pain that I have felt ever since I can remember. This emotional pain seemed to accompany me wherever I went, and no matter what I did, no matter what therapy I undertook, the basic emotional pain was there. I could feel happy, peaceful, joyful and even blissed-out for a few minutes or for weeks or so, but inevitably the same old pain just kept on coming back. I came to realise that this pain was part of the human existence and that it collectively belonged to us all. I realised that to be born on this planet and to be human meant that pain and suffering was our lot.

As a result of this personal pain and the identification with humanity’s pain I developed all the healing modalities that you may know that I work with, including Sekhem Goddess Reiki, in an effort to help people feel better about themselves and to have a more joyous and wonderful life experience here on earth. My compassion and passion to help in this way has been the driving force in my life for over 20 years now.

This promise, that the enlightened state would give me the end to my suffering was the reason I went to India to do this process. I had no other real understanding beyond that, except for a few fantasies and concepts about enlightenment that I had from Robert and from a few others who went before me.

The process involved deep and very effective cleansing and purging of old traumas and emotions that had never been released before. Just that alone was a fabulous experience. My body feels lighter and there is not one spot or part of my body that feels stuck, or uncomfortable. I’ve lost a lot of ‘stuff’ held in my body and I know that it is gone for good. I now love my body! It feels wonderful!

During our enlightenment Dikshas (initiations) I had many fabulous experiences. The initiation awakens the Kundalini and it rises and rushes through all the chakras. As a result I experienced many mystical states. Looking back I am grateful for all the years of preparation that I have undertaken, with my focus on cleansing and healing my chakras and energy bodies. Yeah! For Essential Oil Bath Therapies! Yeah! For Reiki! Yeah! For Flower Essence Therapy! These mystical states served to show me many truths about reality, or another way of putting it is to say that, during these states I got to experience what reality really is, and is not.

I experienced that my mind is not MY mind. Meaning, that all the thoughts that go on all the time in my head are not actually MY thoughts, they are thoughts that are just passing through from the collective mind that belongs to all of humanity. I used to think that they were my thoughts, but whether they are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ they are actually just the same old thoughts that everyone has. Experiencing this and realising this has given me such freedom. I am no longer afraid of my mind or of my thoughts. I am completely unattached to whatever happens in my mind. Whatever thoughts are there, are just passing through, whether they are positive or negative. I am no longer trying to change these thoughts; I no longer battle with unpleasant thoughts, because I do not identify my thoughts with who I am. So, I can just let them be there. They no longer mean anything else besides the fact that they are ONLY THOUGHTS. Who I am is not my mind or my thoughts. What liberation! I no longer have any pain or suffering as a result of my thoughts.

I feel as if I am an empty vessel and thoughts and feelings are just passing through me and I no longer identify myself with them. They have no power over me. It’s great to feel happy and it’s great to feel sad. However, feeling sad and feeling happy are not who I am. So, whatever I feel, in a sense, means nothing beyond the experience of the feeling, whatever it is.

I was told at the ashram that this state is a state termed by Buddhism as being empty. This is why I am calling it so. I would describe it as basically feeling nothing and that feelings that do come are just passing through me and filling me temporarily.

I’ve also noticed that things that used to upset me and disturb me no longer have that effect on me. It’s not a matter of letting go – there is nothing to let go of in the first place, there is nothing in me.

Nothing from the past upsets me or worries me. It’s as if the past has turned to dust. The past has absolutely no hold on me. My past experiences could actually belong to someone else- I wouldn’t know the difference. Your experiences could be mine and mine could be yours. It’s all the same.

Another way of experiencing the freedom from the mind is that I no longer care if my reality is real or not. I no longer care if my ‘truths’ are real or not. I experience this as non- attachment to my reality. So, I no longer have to defend who I am, how I experience life, or my thoughts and feelings.

I had many wonderful mystical experiences during my heightened states.

I got to experience the ‘matrix’ that all of humanity and the earth is plugged into – that of fear and doubt. We are all plugged into fear and doubt, which we try to escape through the mind. Fear and doubt hurt. Feeling them is a physically painful experience. However, it is the reality of human existence; we are all born into it. The mind tries to distract us from feeling this and acknowledging this, by all its chatter, i.e. it’s observations of life, it’s judgements, likes and dislikes, it’s great ideas that propel us to do this and do that, to make us feel temporary pleasure from certain activities and achievements, etc, etc. We fill in time and occupy ourselves with all sorts of activities in order to not feel our fear, our doubt, our disconnection and lack of trust in life and god. We even get caught up in the dramas of our life, of other people’s dramas, and that gives us a temporary sense of self, of value, and of feeling good or bad about ourselves, which is justified by the mind and keeps us constantly occupied and ‘caught up’.

Having this intense experience of the ‘matrix’, I now have an even greater understanding of the human condition and a greater passion to help us all to get out of it. I was told by the monk that was assisting me that this experience was given to me so that I would have more compassion for humanity.

On the other hand I had a wonderful experience of laughing non-stop for 4 hours for no reason. Part of that experience was being in the fairy tale land that I so loved connecting into during my childhood, and just opening my heart again to all the fabulous ‘imaginary’ characters that I so loved. I got to experience that they are not fiction, that they are actually real. They reside in another dimension, and the writers of children’s’ stories and their illustrators are actually tapping into a real world and bringing it into our world. I saw how important it is to keep our childrens’ imaginations alive and to keep their hearts open to these worlds. It keeps their hearts and minds open to miracles and wonderful events.

Another great experience that I had was the realisation that all waters on the planet are the body of Amma, the Great Mother/Mother Goddess. Water makes up 80% of our physical bodies – all of us are naturally so connected to the Mother, we are physically made up of her body. In reality there is no separation between us, only the mind separates us. Feeling that my body is the body of the Goddess has given me an even deeper feeling of love and respect for my physical body as it is. This has nothing to do with the size or the shape of my body; it has to do with matter itself.

I also had the experience of being able to access anything anywhere in the universe in my body. I realised that my physical body contained the whole world in it, I am not disconnected from anything, and all is within me. I now cherish this body!

I got to experience smelling essential oils during one of my heightened states. I experienced that just one sniff of essential oil has such a profound and immediate effect on our bodies. I was able to follow the essential oil molecules up my nose and into the brain, down my oesophagus and into my lungs and experience the many changes that happened instantly to my chakras. Now I know that we should never underestimate the power of essential oils! They hold incredible power! Just one whiff is power packed with incredible healing powers!

I had the experience of becoming one with the earth, one with living and so called ‘non-living’ things. I experienced that everything is alive and has consciousness and that the way to relate and connect with all things is through love and gratitude. The way to experience the ‘Oneness’ state is through love and gratitude.

Every Initiation gave me more wonderful experiences and I am so grateful for all these gifts that were given to me.

Becoming enlightened is definitely the end of a journey. It is the end of thousands of lifetimes of pain and suffering, whilst trying to get closer to god. It is a state where one gets off the wheel of Karma for good. It is also a beginning, the beginning of experiencing one’s true spiritual life. It is so clear to me, more that ever before, that my purpose on earth is to serve god and to help humanity get off the wheel of karma and become liberated.

This whole incredible experience was given to me and made possible by Sri Kalki and his wife Amma. Robert and I had met Sri Kalki last August when we went to India to teach at the Oneness Festival. This was the first time that we had heard about him. This is when he told us directly that his sole purpose on earth is to give humanity enlightenment. We believed him and waited for the first retreats to be opened up to Westerners. As far as I am concerned he is a great Avatar and a human incarnation of God. However, he has no investment in anyone believing anything about him, he has no interest in becoming anyone’s Guru, and he insists on enlightening people regardless of their religion, race, gender etc. He offers enlightenment to everyone and anyone who wants it. You can have the experience of any form of God giving you the enlightenment, and if you are an atheist, you can still become enlightened without a belief in God!

At the end of our retreat, after our own enlightenment process was ‘successful’, we were all given the gift of being channels to pass on this enlightenment initiation to other people.

This is the purpose of this email – to invite you to receive the initiation and become enlightened as well!!!

As I said, Robert and I will be starting this process on May 30th, 2004.

All you need in order to receive the Diksha (initiation) is to be aware of your suffering and to want to end it, and to want to be enlightened! We will do the rest! It does not matter how ‘advanced’ you are on the spiritual path, or what your personal belief system is. All are welcome.

We will be giving a 1-day Enlightenment workshop that will be repeated monthly. Since this is a new frequency that is just being introduced to the planet, at first between 5%-10% of the people attending will have instant enlightenment as a result of the first Diksha. For the others, they will have enlightenment experiences, peak experiences, as a result of the Kundalini being activated. Therefore we will be offering these processes on a monthly basis so that those who have started the process can come back again and again until they are fully and permanently enlightened. As more and more people will become enlightened all over the world it will be easier and quicker to become enlightened immediately. Sri Kalki and Amma are initiating people on a daily basis. In India bus loads of 300-500 people are coming and becoming enlightened daily. It is very, very exciting.

The initiation is actually more powerful the larger the group is. More energy is released in larger groups of people. So, as more people join in with those who are coming back for more, the greater the whole experience will be for everybody involved. It is in everybody’s interest that the group be large. ‘The more, the merrier’. So, those of you that really want this, please let your friends and family know, so that they can join in.

Let us know if you want to be part of this exciting process starting May 30th. My email is carol@oneheartbe.com , or you can call us on +61 8-8379 1331. We have a flyer with registration form we can post or email to you at your request.

You can also read about Robert’s enlightenment experiences on the News page of his website www.bhagavandarma.org.

If you are inspired by this email to go to India and do the 21-day process the web address is www.trueawakening.org. This website also has more information about other people’s enlightenment experiences that are very inspirational.

I hope to see you soon and to be of service to you,

Many Blessings,

Carol Asher