{"id":100515,"date":"2021-08-07T11:27:38","date_gmt":"2021-08-07T15:27:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/omtimes.com\/?p=100515"},"modified":"2021-08-07T19:29:45","modified_gmt":"2021-08-07T23:29:45","slug":"ashram-hollywood-to-the-himalayas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/omtimes.com\/2021\/08\/ashram-hollywood-to-the-himalayas\/","title":{"rendered":"Arriving at the Ashram – Hollywood to the Himalayas"},"content":{"rendered":"

One day, as I walked through the ashram, I heard a clear, stable voice, a man\u2019s voice, saying, \u201cYou must stay here.\u201d I looked around to see who had spoken, but the pathway was empty. I looked up, and there was no one on the balconies above. If the voice had come from the central gardens, it would have had to be a shout, not the gentle voice I\u2019d just heard. No one had spoken.<\/p>\n

An Excerpt from Hollywood to the Himalayas: A Journey of Healing and Transformation<\/h2>\n

Written by Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati<\/strong><\/p>\n

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If no one was around, there couldn\u2019t have been a voice, I reasoned. I must have imagined it. So I kept walking. Thirty seconds later, I heard it again\u2014a soft, calm male voice, as though spoken by a gentleman in the seat next to me on a plane or a train. \u201cYou must stay here.\u201d Again, I looked, and the pathway and balcony were still empty.<\/p>\n

Meditative though I had become, I was sure I hadn\u2019t lost my common sense. Clearly, if there was a voice, there had to be a speaker. If there was no speaker, there was no voice. The only people who heard voices were schizophrenics and Joan of Arc. My experiences since I had first laid eyes on Ganga had been expansive and whole, not the fragmentation of schizophrenia. I was not delusional. Yet, if I wasn\u2019t delusional and I wasn\u2019t Joan of Arc, who had spoken? No one was there, so no one had spoken. I could not have heard a voice.<\/p>\n

Then I heard another voice, recognizably my own. It said, speaking in the authoritative, commanding second person to which I was accustomed, You are about to ignore a very strong sign. You are about to pretend that you didn\u2019t hear a voice, just because it doesn\u2019t make sense. You\u2019re free to do that. But it is a violation of your vow to keep your heart open. You promised you would keep your heart open to any signs of why you came to India. You promised that if you couldn\u2019t keep your heart open, you would leave. The internal reproach continued: So, if you are going to pretend that you didn\u2019t hear a voice, you must go back to Delhi and get on a flight home to San Francisco. You cannot break your own vow.<\/p>\n