Chapter 5
My friend Michelle is a petite woman with pearled skin and long dark hair in her mid-thirties. She is from New Jersey and works as a copywriter for denim brands, while also attending graduate school to be an art therapist. It was around 8 in the morning. A spiritual festival would begin later that day and the village was preparing for it by erecting a series of gorgeous pink silks into the air. Needless to say, the moment had to be captured. As the shutter of my camera clicked, I heard a scream—an unending, piercing scream of pure panic, of terror, of sadness. I turned to see the scream coming from Michelle’s mouth, who was stumbling out of the temple with her boyfriend by her side. I took a quick scan of the environment and besides Michelle, nothing seemed to be amiss. Her screaming continued as the locals began to take notice. The young Indian boys were amused, giggling, excited about something so out of the ordinary as a young white woman shrieking in their temple. Instantly, the group came together. We circled around her to keep out the prying eyes. And the older mother figure in the group scolded the young boys for their gawking. It must have lasted only thirty seconds, but it was one of those moments that stood still, stretching out endlessly.
Through my Western psychology lens, my first thought was a panic attack. Albeit, this was the most intense panic attack I had ever witnessed and I’ve had a fair share of my own. As we walked home, I expressed my thoughts. David, our teacher, said “Shaktipat,” explaining that Shaktipat is an immense amount of spiritual energy—like a spiritual version of a defibrillator to the heart. It awakens you. I had to know more because there was no doubt in my mind that something viscerally occurred within my new friend.
It was only later that I spoke to Michelle about her direct experience, which I’ll share in the first person to articulate her experience.
“It began when I was meditating in the temple. It was almost as if I fell into a trance. Everything became slow, slower than slow. I felt as if gravity times a million was pushing me to the ground and I felt deeper in meditation than I had ever been before in my life. What I noticed most was pulsating energy. There was energy emanating from my heart that felt as if it was physically pushing my body backward with each beat. That energy then traveled through my heart and out of my head. As cliché as it sounds, it was very clear to me that it spread outwards in the shape of a lotus. It was then I heard a very clear voice that said to me, ‘You are about to be reborn.’
I was sitting next to Matt when David said we needed to leave. I didn’t want to. I felt that if it wasn’t for the energy of the group, I wouldn’t have been able to go, but somehow it propelled me. As we were walking through Nivrutti’s final resting place, David mentioned that the pillar beside us was a part of the original temple. That’s when I heard the voice again. A voice inside of my head said, ‘Touch it.’ I did as requested. As my fingers grazed the wooden etchings, I was almost thrown back by shockwaves of energy. I can’t explain it, but it was almost as if every cell in my body was exploding. I turned to Matt to say something. Something like, ‘Wow,’ but all that came out of my mouth was a laugh that I could not control. That’s when the fear overcame me. My uncontrollable laugh turned into an uncontrollable scream. A small self-conscious part of me knew I shouldn’t be screaming in a temple. I have never liked the attention to be on me and I certainly didn’t want it now. I knew I had to run, so I did. The scream kept coming. It was as something had to get out. It was as though something had to leave me. I fell out into the morning air and I felt the group circling to hide me from the outside world. And then, it vanished: the scream, the imploding energy. There was nothing left to spill out of me.
As I came to, I saw a cow moving beside us. She was limping. In that moment I felt if I could just reach out to touch her, I could heal her. But the group was ushering me to a quiet place, and I fell into them, leaving the cow behind.”
After this event, Michelle was quieter, more introspective. She told me that the more she tried to explain or rationalize what happened to her, the farther away it seemed. So she doesn’t speak about the experience with others. How could they understand? I could understand that. If I hadn’t been there to witness it, if I hadn’t known Michelle before that moment, I would have remained a skeptic myself. But I couldn’t. Something happened to her that was undeniably real. And not just to her.
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