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power of a goal. Although I did not get the final enlightenment experience that I had hoped for on the beach of the Ganges River, it marked a real beginning for me in attaining nirvakalpa samadhi or the highest state of consciousness. Afterwards, the energy of samadhi was awake, alive and flowing in me, and I had only to let it take full control of my physical, causal and spiritual bodies, to gain the knowledge that I was seeking.
There were many other things that I realized on the beach of the Ganges. First, this world is like a gross dream but the world of inner consciousness and its energy constitutes a much deeper, more subtle and higher sense of reality. Second, in the state of samadhi, you experience everything in this world just as it is, but you also have the sense of being beyond the physical, mental and emotional world of ordinary experience. It is like being in two worlds at the same time — the human world and a kind of superhuman world, where everything is perfect, divine and complete. In the superhuman world, you experience yourself as a God or absolute being, who exists as a perfectly free, all-knowing, allpowerful Self. Samadhi is unlike most everyday experiences.
But once you have the experience of feeling like a God-which comes from the awakening of kundalini energy-you are never the same person again. You feel that you know what everything means and you no longer have
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