My brief Interlude with Spiritualism

I believe the greatest gift my mother gave me was to teach me full blown Hindi when I was just about 4-5 years old; so at an age when kids in my class grappled with learning to read and write Hindi alphabets in school I could rattle off difficult sanskrit rich pure Hindi not only in reading and writing form but could accurately understand it too.


I was just 7 years old when I first read Ramayan, the unabridged Tulsi Ramayan with translation, then went on to read quite a lot of Upnishads, Puranas, Mahabharat, Gita and several other religious texts. By the time I was out of my primary school I had fairly well understood some serious questions like what is life, why are we here,what is cycle of birth and death, what happens when we die etc etc. At age 9 I recieved Guru Diksha from a renowned spiritual person who had also given guru diksha to both my parents.

I was in class XI.
There was a police guard comprising of 2 police contables posted by the Police Department at our house for our security. One day I just bumped into friendship ( aquaintanceship) with one of the constables and I discovered he was a great spiritual sage sort of person. (I will refer to him as B here.) Apart from being very spiritual, selfless and religious, he also knew palmistry though followd a strange method of reading the lines which was neither the commonly known Hast Samudrik nor English palmistry. By looking at the lines he could tell exact map of one's house complete with number of rooms and stories and make some future prophesies which in my own experience have come true although I doubted them at that time.

Very soon we ( my elder sister and I ) grew very close to him. We would get up early in the morning finish our domestic chores and go to him to spend the whole day with him. He lived in a little tin shed at the farthest end of our house. He had a very sweet voice in which he sang various hymns and bhajans and shlokas and I loved to hear him sing.
Only a week had gone by.

We were in the habit of discussing spiritual or religious topics. He asked me if I knew about traveling through "sukshma sharir". ( I don't know how to write that in English but I'll try. In Indian spiritual science humans are supposed to have 2 bodies, "the Sthula" ( or fat or visible ) which we see and the "Sukshma" (or the minute) which we cannot see. The Sukshma body however has immense powers unlike the Sthula and is capable of doing anything, even tasks like flying, going into space, passing through solid objects, traveling long distance etc.) and I replied yes. He asked me to try. We both closed our eyes, concentrated on the object ( our house ) and soon found we both could see similar things. We both saw a woman in a dirty white saree wandering on our land and she rather furtively hid her face on my approaching and sped away. She who was perhaps ( because I am not sure )the hapless landowner who was a childless widow from whom papa had purchased the land. She had died after selling the land and was rumoured to be very sad.

The next morning when he was singing his routine bhajans I randomly concentrated and was amazed to see a hazy Lord Krishna present nearby,and actually faintly dancing by tapping His feet. I told him so but he could not see him.

2 days passed.

Girnar
It was a cold December night and we all sat in a group around a wood fire. My sister, brother and mummy were also present. He suggested we both take a long distance travel now. He instructed me to stay close behind him, not to look at any other object which might pass me by, not to be frightend if I saw something scary shaped and remembemy my Guru first.
" Say you are going to Girnar", he said.," and begin concentrating." He had picked up on Girnar just randomly and because he said he knew there were some rishies or sages there. I had heard this name for the first time in life.
In one quarter of a minute we both were on the house top and then in open air...!
"Don't look here or there, come straight on behind me.'
A little while later maybe just about 2 minutes we reached inside a dark and rocky mountain cave. We both were still together. Suddenly I saw a sage in orange robes quietly busy in tapasya.
"Who is that?" I asked.
"Who?"
" That yogi?"
"I cannot see any yogi"
"There's a yogi in orange clothes doing tapasya."
"I cannot see him. He must be a great rishi. Just bow to him in respect and don't disturb him"

I bowed to him and moved away. But as I did so I found there was another rishi in another cave and then many more rishis in other caves all doing tapasya in profound concentration; one I remember had very big ears almost hanging on his shoulders like clothes and one looked very angry and had opened his eyes to see me but as he saw me he broke into a smile and closed his eyes again.

I also discovered that they were visible only to me and not to him. And then there came a cave in which he could not enter. he told me to go alone while he was waiting outside.

And there I saw my God R...!!!

As beautiful like nothing on this Earth and clad in full warrior dress all gold and yellow just minus his bow and arrow... Instead of bowing down to him in respect as I should have done, I went and clung to his legs like a baby. In return he smiled affectionately and patted my back. He was very tall, my  head could only reach his knees. Light was emnating from every part of his body.
B was right there outside but he could neither see anything nor enter. I was crying in ecstacy. he told me to come but I said I could not leave him. And when I tried leaving Him I would again clutch His legs with greater grip than before. finally I just tore myself from him crying really badly. Before final seperation He just said lovingly'Sab kuch bhog ke mere aana' and he disappeared leaving me truly like a fish out of water. I frantically started searching for him there in the cave but He was now nowhere.

B could sense my condition. He gently told me to follow him back. I was completely distraught with grief and almost out of control of my emotions, yet mad with delight that I had actually met Him. I followed him back and in less than 2 minutes we were both back in our house.

I was in no condition to talk - I was too overwhelmed. I spent the whole night in sobbing. I could not think of any other thing than the fact that I had met Him.

Kailash
The next night he suggested we try going to kailash.
As usual, we remembered our gurus, closed our eyes, concentrated and found ourselves in open air speedily moving with everything deep below us. Then we reached kailash. Just befor reaching kailash, B again experienced inability to move forward and had to stay behind.

I landed on kailash. On reaching there I was immidietly aware of a faint chill in air. There appeared to be off white hard snow like the appearance of unpolished crystal or like white sea salt every where from which very faint different colours glinted as they caught light. I went a few steps further and saw a lake, frozen or not, I cannot tell but it was very white and had different and faintly coloured lotuses blooming in it. I took a few steps away and then saw a huge huge tree with dull green leaves, and some leaves even strewn on ground below. Under the tree sat huge huge lord Shiva. He was also off white almost unpolished crystal like coloured and was engaged in tapasya. I didn't look at Him very closely. There was profound silence everywhere. I quietly went up near Him, bowed down to Him without saying anything to Him and returned back almost instantly.

Previous Birth

The fourth day.
He appeared quite impressed that I had certain poweres lying dormant inside me of which even I was not aware and which were more powerful than usually found in people who spend a life time and God knows how much hard efforts and tapasya in achieving them.

''You must have been something great in your previous life. Ok, lets find out who you were in your previous birth.''
He closed his eyes and concentrated. He exclaimed...a bit shocked...!
" You appear to be a queen in Jhansi... Very sacred and very religious...."
He instruceted me to concentarte on this subject and see if I saw something.

I did so and found a broken wall of a fort in Jhansi on a slightly uneven terrain as if hilly area from which wild grass appeared to be growing now; the next sight I saw, was of a Shivalaya somewhere close by.
I could not understand the images. but he confirmed that it was Jhansi and a fort which had been my abode in my last birth.

That was probably my last ramble in thought or spirit form. The realisation that I had some superior spiritual powers made me very humble and anxious not to misuse them. I remember having read that these powers are often gifted to distarct a human being from reaching God so I just stopped doing it and have never done so again since that day. I don't even know if those powers are still with me or not.

We continued spending our major time with him discussing religious books, places and spiritualism, and hear him sing. I loved him like a real father and he too was very fatherly in love. Unfortunately his posting was changed and he had to leave. For another 2-3 months he continued coming to visit us 3-4 times and then stopped altogether. One night I just dremt him saying goodbye to me and since then I have never met him again. Although I had his address too but I never tried to contact him again.

I have accpted him as my second guru.

Several years later, I visted the famous Jhansi fort and could see nothing familiar as I had hoped I would. However I did see a Shivalya ( and I had forgotten litrally everything about seeing a Shivalaya in my spiritual ramble ) there earlier where the queen used to worship.

The Strange Urdu Dictionary...!!!

I have experienced many strange occarances in my life but the episode of the strange Urdu dictionary is a singular one as it is not only weird but also extremely bizzare and crazily unbelieveble.

A cousin of mine used to write ghazals. His language and spellings not being correct most of the times, he often got them corrected by me. This, in turn inspired me to try my own hand at writing ghazals. One day I went to Universal Book Depot which is a renowned book dealers chain in the city and bought a brand new Urdu to English/Hindi pocket dictionary to learn new words which I could use in my ghazals. Often my elder sister would also consult it but for the majority of time it used to be with me only. I would keep consulting the dictionary for looking up various meanings, write a few verses and when sleepy, I would just slide the dictionary, the diary and the pen under my pillow and go to sleep. I would like to mention here that I napped twice a day apart from sleeping at night as well and as an old habit always went to sleep with any book I was reading under my pillow.

For the first three days everything was perfectly normal.

From precisely the 3rd day, I started getting recurrent dreams and visions. I saw a huge off whitish arched gateway set in green stoney grounds fresh after the recent rains - the type we have in rainy season in India - and just a few seconds later a small army of soldiers with harping spears in their hands and atop on horseback (around 30- 40 or maybe less men ) would come thundering in with a deafening noise and a mad rush. the army always appeared to be going to accomplish some vital feat and in great excitement and fury. Most of the soldiers held the reins of their horse in one hand while in the other they brandished the deadly looking spear.

After getting this dream I always woke up in some sort of tension and facination. I wanted to know what happened after the army went by but my dreams always began and stopped at precisely this point only.

It continued for 2 days; then the frequency of this dream suddenly reached an alrming pitch. I began seeing the same scene even without sleeping. I would merely close my eyes and see the thundering soldiers on horse back coming from the arched gate. In addition I also started seeing an elderly muslim poet wearing a brownish /whitish full length robe. His face was never clear to me but perhasps he had a long greyish beard too. He always appeared to be very sad.
Then another scene joined the list of visions; walls, white walls, yellowish white walls, high walls and all of them covered with huge urdu verses or words written boldly as we often see slogans written during election campaigns in India.

 And then a dream in which I saw a storm blowing away so hard that it uncoveres a grave. The grave has a groaning moaning man still alive even though several years have passed since he was buried there; he now starts rising from the grave and is calling out my name.
I was truely perplexed now and was sure that something was wrong. I told my mother and to my astonishment she told me she too had been dreaming again and again about an old muslim man.
We still didn't think the dictionary had anything to do with this.

That night I could not sleep. At midnight suddenly the dogs in the street just outside my house started barking madly, really, really madly...! For some reason I was very scared and uneasy. As I got up to to switch on the lights I saw a hazy figure of an old man - perhaps the same whom I had been seeing in the dreams and the visions- in the room. I screamed and he vanished.
We all were really shaken now.

I randomly, gave the dictionary to my cousin and surprisingly that night he too saw a hazy old man figure in his room and dogs barking madly outside his house.

However odd and stupid it might seem, we concluded there was something wrong with the dictionary. We didn't want to throw it away for fear of insulting whoever the old man was, so my cousin went and sold the dictionary to a junk seller and with that money he bought an insence stick and burnt it offering our appologies to however had been offended.
Since that day all those dreams and visions stopped abruptly.

All possible explanations for this incident seem downright crazy. How can a brand new book, a dictionary at that, can be infested with spirit or ghosts? I do know of stories and films featuring ghostly incidents related with books but you will agree those books are old or have some sort of bloody or tragic history. This surely. cannot apply on this dictionary as it was brand new; I had bought it myself and the book store is pretty reputed one that doesn't sell old or second hand books. In any case, the dictionary even looked like brand new therefore I am quite sure it did not come to me after being used by somebody.
Someone offered an explanation that Urdu is such a language that certain alphabets even if written differently can conjoin to give a different meaning, means, I may have, by mistake, written a word or something which could have invoked a spirit; this definitely, cannot be true because I do not know urdu; I can neither read it nor write it. My usage of the dictionary remained firmly limited to flicking pages randomely, glimpsing a familiar word in Hindi then discovering its meaning in English. Maybe whoever wrote the dictionary put it under a spell .......!
And why those particular images and visions? Who was the old man? Did the images mean something specific or were they trying to tell me something?

I believe I will never know.

My Previous Birth....!!!

Like every Indian child I too had studied about Rani of Jhansi in my school History books but had never given the topic any more second thoughts until one day I met a sage like person who told me that in my previous birth I was a queen in Jhansi ( note: a queen in jhansi not THE queen in Jhansi so it may and may not be Rani Laxmibai). He even made me have a peep in the past and I saw a fallen ruined fort in Jhansi ( almost all forts look alike... so it may and may not be the Jhansi fort.) and a Shivalya where the Rani worshipped. Please note that at that time I had never been to Jhansi or seen any fort and for next nearly 10 years or more I had no access to internet.
As is natural, I became totaly devoured by curiousity to know more and more about this subject but at a complete loss to know how to do it.

Many years later, on my first journey by train from Lko to Pune, I happened to pass Jhansi district and felt the rushing by scenery to be vividly familiar. The uneven grounds, the scattered big and small boulders, the upshooting of trees here and there was almost as if I knew the place well; the only thing that did not match was the greenery. Something inside me firmly told me it was greener and more vegetated...!!

I undertook many journeys through the same passage and it had became a sort of interesting passtime to watch out of window and see sevaral miles of Jhansi outskirts ( I don't know what that particular region is called but it extends several Kms before and after the main Jhansi Junction.) and find it to be somewhat mysteriously familiar. For inexplicable reasons I always thought this was the place where I had taken a flight with a handful of army on horseback.
The scantiness of the greenery still bothered me though.

Once we had to change trains at the Jhansi Junction and the changing time was 2 hrs so we decided to pop into the city and have a quick look at the Jhansi Fort, the secret idea behind it was obviously to find out if this previous birth story had any truth in it.

We took an auto rickshaw who rode up thin winding lanes through a poor city scape which I found somewhat indignating and surprisingly disgusting ( like, this can't be Jhansi, the Jhansi which I have always thought of was not like this...!) with S at my elbow asking again and again" Do you recognise something?"


Well, we reached the fort, a massive yellowish stone structure but to my dismay I did not feel or recognised anything. Nothing looked familiar to me as I had hoped it might.
We didn't have much time at our disposal so we didn't go in to any museam or even enter the mahal or somehting; we just went up the tower where there is hung a notice board saying this is the place where Rani sitting on her horse, jumped down with her baby tied on her back to make escape. Now anyone who has been to this spot in the fort will know that this particular tower is about 20 ft or something high and seems so frightening to imagine that a lady on horseback with a baby tied at her back could have jumped successfully down it and even survived the jump. Quite contrary to this feeling which I supposed to have got I looked doubtfully at the ground below and in my heart almost readily disbelieved it to be true. While retracing our steps back we saw a Shivalya too. The Shivalaya is a little insignificant part in the fort. I swear I had forgotten everything about seeing a Shivalaya in the fort in my visions...!
The visit was over and we returned back the same way we had come and I was throughly disappointed that I had found nothing. Merely finding a Shivalaya did not prove anything.

2-3 years passed by. I had entirely given up the idea that I would ever find out anything about this topic, the vision and the feelings all being figments of my imagination. Two days ago, I, by chance stumbled on a detailed research report on Jhansi ki Rani which made me suddenly sit up in amazement. The report had detailed many issues about the Rani along with dates and photographs.

The report says it has been found out that the folklore which says the Rani jumped from the tower to escape is totaly untrue; actually she escaped from a gateway in the fort. the picture of the gate was similar to the one I had seen in my visions.

The picture which depicted the supposed place of the last battle ground where Rani fought was the same sort of place which I had seen from the train window and found to be vivdly familair.( and even felt it to be the place where I had taken flight with my little army on horse back)

The date of the Rani's death was given as 18 June; mid June is about the time the North India usually experiences monsoon showers, means at the time she passed through this region, the place may have got a few rains already which accounted for it being green and sort of rain fresh in my vision and also for my diasappointment for seeing it scanitly green in the current date. I managed to see a few more photoes related to the Rani but familiarity is limited to only the 3 points mentioned above.

I am still trying my best to find out if there is any truth in the visions I recieved. Merely a bit of familiarity does not prove or confirm anything. For all I know, it all may still be nothing more than my imagination. Even if the previous birth as Rani is correct it could also mean I may be a person named Rani and not the Rani herself or maybe I were just a soldier in her army or a humble servant at the fort.

Well, whatever the case, even though I want to believe the rather fantastic tale that I was Rani of Jhansi in my previous birth, I cannot believe and will not believe as there is too little evidence in support of this. So for the meantime, I am going to leave it in the hands of time to prove me right...or...wrong...!