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gives a beautiful shape in your consciousness. It is like going to a beach where you see beautiful stones and pebbles. How smooth, round, shining stones they are. Who gave them these smooth, round shapes? With the company of water constantly rolling, the rough stones become pleasant pebbles. Satsangha is not only a human contact or a guru contact but also anything that takes you into yourself, that tunes you to the nature and to the beautiful thing inside, the serene state of consciousness and freedom from hate and being in a state of love. Only a person who has appreciation and compassion is able to experience the nectar of love. That is why we don't hold onto hate, revenge and mad negative feelings, and we avoid fighting and finding faults.
In April of 1970, I was in Geneva to attend The Second Spiritual Summit Conference. It was a unique, unforgettable, pleasant experience. Then I received an invitation from The University in France. My stay was in a hotel on the Riviera. I had a lecture in a family's home with several of their friends.
That was very pleasant. The family sent a limousine to drop me off at the hotel. It was about 11 o'clock at night and outside it was beautiful and the weather was good so I decided to go out walking on the Riviera; it was such a peaceful state of mind and health and environment: no noise, no people, no vehicles, only the rhythm of the water and a pleasant moon with a vast starstudded sky. It was a calm and clean atmosphere. Sitting on shore, and without any effort, naturally I glided into deep meditation. I experienced something I cannot describe in words. There are no words to describe it because to describe it you need language and sentences but when you glide into that state, there is no mind, just peace. It was a unique experience and when I consulted my watch, it was 1:30. For two and a half hours there was no eating, no party, no music, nothing. Yet I felt such an ecstasy and a soothing sensation in myself. I did not have such an experience even in a holy place. Such things happen maybe two or three times in one's life but if you try to repeat it, it cannot be repeated. It is a state of love, peace and freedom from any conditional boundaries, nation, cast, creed, man, woman, mine, yours. You go above these walls. One of my friends named Swami Ranganathan, who is 95 years old now, the head of Ram Krishna Mission, was also one of the speakers at the Conference. We met again in Munich. I could relate my feelings with him because he was a man of experience. He asked me if there was anything new. I told him that I experienced this joy and peace that I cannot describe. He said that if you can explain what you experienced it becomes the realm of the mind, while your experience was not in that category. The ecstasy you cannot
14 - Journey to Enlightenment - Volume Two
