the experience of ultimate truth your staff they comfort me. you prepare a table before me in the...

The Experience of Ultimate Truth

From Guru to God - the experience of ultimate truth Taken with author's permission from the "From Guru to God - TheExperience of Ultimate Truth" by Michael Graham.

At around the age of sixteen, my brain woke up, and I started to reflect on life. All myfriends seemed to know what they wanted to do when they left high school…go back onthe farm, become a doctor, go into their dad’s business or whatever, but I didn’t haveclue what my interests were or what career I wanted to follow.

Stuck with this limitation I began to read. My father was a doctor, a psychoanalyst andsomething of a philosopher. Two books on the Eastern spiritual tradition, from the shelves of hisbig library grabbed my attention; one on an Indian philosophy (Vedanta) and yoga, and theother on Buddhism. They promised a life free of suffering, personal transformation and anexperience of the highest truth--Enlightenment. That was enough for me. Where do I sign?

After studying Yoga and trying to learn how to meditate in Melbourne Australia for three years, Iset off for India, the home of the mysteries of the East, the guru and every other marvelousthing. I set out on a mission to find the truth and to be transformed.

So at age twenty-two, after motorcycling throughout Sri Lanka and India and taking a hugeround through Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran and on through Europe to London, I returned toIndia for the original purpose of my going there. I had come to spend time in the ashram orabode, of Swami Muktananda Paramahansa. He was a guru, later to become famous in theWest. He’d come to me on strong recommendation as one whose mere touch or presencecould transform a person’s life. As it turned out I was his first Australian devotee.

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Swami Muktananda Paramahansa (Michael far right)

Muktananda in regal get up on a special celebration day, 1969

Melbourne Airport, Nov 1970 Muktananda & Michael arriving

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Within a couple of days of my arrival at the ashram I had a private audience with him. He wascharismatic indeed, but only knew a few words of English. Through a translator I told him that Ihad come to have my meditation fixed. All attempts to meditate successfully in Australia hadfailed. Instead of settling down into a quiet state, I’d become positively knotted up. He simplysaid, “Don’t worry, everything will be fine.”

A week passed, and I was meditating all alone in the meditation room, on a real tiger’s skin. Allof a sudden I was startled. Muktananda was standing over me. He stroked both cheeks, passedhis palm over my forehead, turned on his heels and left. It took all of five seconds. Well, Ithought that was wonderful. The guru had touched me and I knew that was supposed to beauspicious. Nothing happened at first, but a week later I wasn’t to be disappointed.

This one afternoon, while meditating all alone, a strange phenomenon began. Suddenly whilesitting, my body began to revolve in a circular motion. I thought to myself, How interesting. I’dstop it, and off it would go again. Up till this point whenever my body moved, it was I that movedit. With each minute that passed this movement grew stronger and stronger. I was delighted. Iknew that I had received the ‘awakening’ that Muktananda was distinguished for being able toactivate—the awakening of kundalini or the divine power within. All the while I was in a coolstate of mind, watching with fascination. No hypnosis, suggestion or hysteria was involved.

This was the awakening of the Kundalini Shakti, (Sanskrit language), known as the SerpentPower in the Eastern spiritual tradition and given a supremely positive spin. It was said to be theintelligent aspect of the life force itself, which lay “asleep” or dormant in potential until awakenedthrough the guru’s grace. It was to be surrendered to or given over to, since it was thespontaneous ‘grace-driven’ means to Self-realization—a most attractive concept. In the fullnessof time one would be cleansed of all impurities that veiled the recognition of one’s true identityas being identical to the Supreme Reality—Brahman or God.

Some days later a Canadian chap turned up. We decided to go and meditate together. As wesat, he began to recite the famous Twenty-Third Psalm from the Bible: “The Lord is myShepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures: He leads me beside thestill waters. He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His names sake.Even though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rodand your staff they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.You anoint my head with oil; my cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me allthe days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever

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.” I remembered that from the light Christian enculturation during my schoolboy days. My beingdeeply moved by its beauty, that second, the ‘awakening’ that had begun a few days before,exploded into ten times its power. I was flung to the floor and started crawling my way along,growling like a lion, with the strength of ten men coursing through me. It was not as any hamactor could do; it was devastatingly real. I was agog, watching it happen with amazement. I wasnot afraid. And I didn’t resist it, since that wouldn’t have been the idea. The poor Canadianchap, as he told me later, had never seen anything like it. He commented that the nearest thinghe’d seen to it was an LSDdrug freak-out; but this was something else! He was scared out of his wits and was trying tosettle down the situation by repeating the mantra, Guru Om, Guru Om, over and over out loud.

From that day on, whenever I gave over to the ‘awakening’, there was continuous spontaneousactivity. There were powerful breathing rhythms (pranayama), movement into classic danceformations, vigorously executed yoga-like postures, utterances like the sound of different birdsso real sounding, speaking in an unknown language, weeping bitterly in one second thenlaughing loudly in the next with nothing to weep or laugh about, cross-legged hopping acrossthe ground like a frog, juddering of the body, classical hand gestures (mudras), the seeing of inner lights, journeys out of the body and innumerable other experiences. Itwasn’t as though I was tuning in to some impulse to move in a certain way and going with it, asin psychodrama. It just grabbed me in a powerful non-volitional or spontaneous manner andmoved me about. And there were moments of ‘dynamic’ stillness. The predominantly physicalmanifestations were called kriyasin the Sanskrit language. They were said to have a purifying effect, but as to why some of themore bizarre manifestations took the form that they did only theories could be given.

All this was set into a typical Eastern framework of thinking. Muktananda would say, “Goddwells within you as you—the inner Self or Brahman or God were identical. Spiritual practiceconsisted of faith in the guru as the Self-Realized master. It required surrender to his personand to his instructions, singing chants in the ancient Sanskrit language to the guru’s glory, anddevotional service. Its purpose was spiritual purification leading to the experience of one’s owndivinity, called Self-realization or Enlightenment.

This particular path was called Siddha Yoga; the word Siddha meaning ‘perfected being’, and yogameaning, ‘yoked to God’ or the Supreme Reality. So this was the union with God that was totake place through the grace of the perfected Master.

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It sounded like an appealing truth. It was promising. It had an engine that moved things.

So I stayed on in the ashram for five and a half months, participating in the rigorous dailyroutine. We’d arise at four in the morning for ninety minutes of meditation. If you were fortunateenough to receive the ‘awakening”, you’d surrender to its workings as a dispassionate witness.If it had yet to stir in you, you’d sit in formal meditation repeating the Guru’s mantra, Sohammeaning, “He I am” or “I am God”, in the hope that it would happen soon. That was theunderstanding in those days. However, instructions changed over the years. Then we took acup of chai; sweet spicy Indian tea. This was followed by ninety minutes of chanting the mostfamous Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita. Then we were off into the beautiful gardens ormarble courtyard to do a couple of hours work, a form of devotional service to the Guru,followed by thirty minutes of chanting the mantra, Om Namah shivaya (meaning: I bow toShiva—one of their names for the supreme God), before lunch. I called it ‘Hindu armychow’—simple and delicious. Then there was a one-hour voluntary chant, followed by anothertwo hours of work, then a time called dharshan, when the guru would come out into a beautifulmarble court yard to be gazed upon or greeted, and then forty-five minutes of meditation beforedinner. Finally, a sixty-minute chant was sung before we collapsed into bed at nine at night.Phew! Not a routine for the faint hearted. This went seven days a week, three-hundred andsixty-five days a year. It was like something you might find in an eleventh century Benedictinemonastery.

This path of spirituality became my core spiritual practice for the next sixteen years. I returnedto India many times. I spent a total of four years in the country. But despite all the amazingspiritual experiences, signs and wonders (many more of which are described in the book Iwrote, (called ‘From Guru to God’), including ‘Nirvana’ (a complete but temporary annihilation ofidentity and sense of ‘self’ and the ‘Hindu’ state of enlightenment called ‘Turiya’) my deepesthopes for inner fulfillment remained unmet. The dynamism and apparent intelligence of the‘awakening’ particularly, described above, drew me in and kept me hopeful for futuretransformation. At the same time, I had been casting around for supplementary means to add tothis Eastern practice that might have opened a crack to the light I had been looking for.

So, in the seventies, eighties and nineties I did a number of the leading edge personaldevelopment programs of the day: Landmark Education (once called EST, then Forum), a sortof no nonsense pragmatic spiritual boot camp; and Silva Mind Control, aget-down-into-low-brain-wave-process, heal people, throw open some doors of psychicperception, and reprogram yourself for success, type of program. Then there was The HoffmanQuadrinity Process, an expensive turbo-expunging of impeding parent-induced pastpsychological impressions. And then I studied and practiced A Course in Miracles (a book) a

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very well developed argument for spiritual transcendence, which I buried into for a year withgreat discipline. I was intrigued by the observation; that though I understood and believed theCourse’s content, I would continue to think, feel, act and perform as though I’d never heard of it.My friends on this Course had the same experience. I was starting to discover that the merelymental or cognitive approach to transformation is impotent to do anything much.

I saw a gain here and there from a number of these courses. Whenever I was exposed to a newperspective, information, data or technique, there would be a slight shift, just enough to lead toan increase of interest. Then there would be a plateau, a falling off and then a “what’s next?”Within days there was always a leak-back to the old familiar self. This stuff wasn’t delivering onits promise. I wasn’t a dilettante. I usually drilled down close to the bottom of these things,enough to see whether I was dealing with iron pyrites (fool’s gold) or something moresubstantial. My basic Siddha Yoga practice kept on as the mainstay.

In 1982 Swami Muktananda died. Shortly afterwards I became one of the ashram managers inIndia and for one tour following this, I fell into the role as one of the international tour managersof one of his two successors, the young Swami Nityananda. Months after I left this work a ‘coup’took place. Gurumayi, his sister and co-successor ousted him for behavior unbecoming to aguru. The whole affair unfolded like a palace intrigue—something like Shakespeare could havewritten about.

At this time I was in New York and got a call from an Australian friend who’d just landed a hugeCorporate Cultural Change contract with Australia’s second largest company, TelecomAustralia. He asked me Down Under, and together with a team of five others we put together abroad range of personal and organizational development strategies designed to set Telecom upfor success in an emerging competitive telecommunications market place. It consisted offacilitating the creation of a corporate Vision Statement, establishing Core Values, definingCompany Objectives and delivering a range of personal and organizational developmentstrategies, including Customer Service Orientation, Communication Skills, Negotiation Skills,Possibility Thinking, Goal Setting, Belief Engineering and so on. We believe it was the biggestcorporate program of its type undertaken in the Southern Hemisphere.

By now I’d had a broad and deep experience of the Eastern ‘Old Age’ movement out of India,the pragmatic world of corporate consulting and the ‘New Age’ personal development trainings.

Further, in 1988 and still a dedicated spiritual practitioner, I spotted this program called Avatar®,

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created by a fellow called Harry Palmer. It was a belief management program, not dissimilar intheory to what we’d taught corporately. But this guy claimed that he had the techniques thatcould really make the difference. Up till then I had found that core beliefs were not amenable tochange. This was a ‘create your preferred reality’ program—beliefs are real forces; theydetermine the way you think, feel, behave and perform; change your beliefs and thereby changeyour life!

So I jumped on a plane for Los Angeles and found myself in the home of Marilyn Ferguson,author of the million-copy best seller book The Aquarian Conspiracy. She was a participantalong with me and nine others. It was an expensive course at two thousand dollars. It includedtea and biscuits but no meals or accommodation. It went for four or five days. How interesting;one of the facilitators was Ingo Swann; a man I’d heard had the most accurate strike rateamong psychics tested by Stanford University under controlled conditions. He’d been theirresearch subject for sixteen years and later worked twelve years for the United States CentralIntelligence Agency (CIA) experimenting with Remote Viewing (visual perception beyond therange of bodily senses) procedures. I got to know Ingo well and stayed with him in New YorkCity. He was teaching this course quite independently of his psychic abilities. He’s no longerassociated with Avatar.

The course was more powerful than most. I was sufficiently impressed to fly to New York, spendanother three thousand dollars for nine days of training so I could deliver the program underlicense.

I became one of the more successful teachers of Avatar around the world, delivering theprogram in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, USA and Canada. Further to this, Idelivered my own program, the Decision Principle Training® in France as well. It proposesdecision as the first principle of existence.

Palmer’s top Avatar course was called Wizards®. Held over nine days and at seventy-fivehundred dollars, it promised the dominion of the gods. It didn’t deliver.

But again, with all these courses, the substance wasn’t to the level required. Howeverthroughout all these years I kept meditating.

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By now, I had many years of experience, thousands of hours of meditation, charismaticphenomena, study, and the company of spiritual luminaries. So I do believe my walk wascharacterized by a considerable degree of discipline and application and all this wasn’t toomuch to cover over twenty eight years span.

By providence, I had arrived at the doorsteps of famous spiritual luminaries before most peoplein the West had heard of them. To name only a few: Swami Muktananda, my guru, who laterbecame guru to famous singer John Denver; there was Osho, the famous or infamous Indianguru, owner of ninety-three Rolls Royce motor cars, and founder of the ‘Orange People’ whomade world news for themselves in Oregon. And Sathya Sai Baba, the guru with the largestfollowing in the world, who does mini miracles, is now confined to a wheel chair, is embroiled incontroversy and who claims to be an incarnation of God and the one who sent Jesus Christ toearth two thousand years ago. Yes! Then there were the works and the company of theChristian and Islamic and Buddhist mystics such as the Tibetan Buddhist Chogyam Trungpa,and so on.

Over the years I observed that people had different motives for following a guru or gettinginvolved in such groups. Some sought personal development or victory over personallimitations. I was partially motivated by this. Some sought community; for others it was a lifestyle choice. Some wanted position and power. Others wanted to be loved. Yet others werespiritual hedonists thirsting for the next experiential high. Being looked after was a priority forsome. And the search for meaning may have been high among the reasons. In most people,motives were probably mixed, and not thoroughly reflected upon. Very few, I believe, wentlooking for wheat that it might be divided from the chaff. What was of interest to me, was whatactually could make the difference, and more, what was actually true or false amidst all this?

The Buddha repudiated the teachings of the Hindu scriptures. Famous Hindu masters,repudiated the Buddha’s teaching, putting a dent in Buddhism on the Indian subcontinent fromwhich it never recovered. Without going into detail here, contradictions between teachingsabounded.

I noticed that many of my friends tended to swallow all they were told, hook, line and sinker,without much reflective assessment. Often superstition had taken over. Truth mattered when itcame to balancing a checkbook, but in matters of spirituality, well, anything went.

With all this under my belt; exposure to luminaries, the spiritual experiences, and understanding

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I’d developed, I still believed that breaking through the Gates of Heaven in a sustainable waywas possible. I took what I had been given in personal revelation and the best of what I hadbeen exposed to: the Muktananda ‘awakening’ described earlier, (which, by some mystery, Iwas able to powerfully transmit to others) and more. I put it all together calling it The RealityTraining, fully believing that this amalgam of practices would build the momentum forbreakthrough. My life had really become a serious experiment, with encounters and spiritualexperiences spurring me on. Perhaps I was like a bloodhound following a scent.

At this point I was beginning my day in Melbourne Australia, at four-thirty in the morning doingsixty minutes of meditation, followed by thirty-minutes of contemplation, then forty minutes ofchanting the Guru Gita—a Sanskrit language text referring to the guru’s teaching and gloriousvirtues. I’d end with forty-five minutes of surrendering to the spontaneous workings of the‘awakening’. From time to time, friends would knock on my door and join me for thisearly-morning vigil.

As though this weren’t enough, I decided to go into isolation. Since my late teens, I had thoughtof this as an interesting experiment and had never had the chance to do it. Now was the time.At the back of my home was a tiny apartment. I asked an accommodating friend to fashionwooden panels to cover the windows and a trap door through which food could be passed. Iwas sealed up in this way, and spent ten days in there. Great; I came out on a Monday and itwas as though, through new eyes, that the world sparkled. By Tuesday the old familiarperception had returned.

Seeing some potential here, I repeated the experiment some time later. On the second day aremarkable event took place.

I was just settling myself onto a couch. I was in a completely ordinary state of mind—nomeditation; nothing like that, and suddenly this happened: The image of Jesus Christ formed upwithin my chest cavity. With this image came the conviction of who it was. One secondfollowing, there was an experience beyond all words can tell. If I were to step it down into thepoverty of language; there was an openness and love coming from Jesus to me of cosmicproportions and an invitation and a welcome, as if to say, “Give me your life and breath and I’lltake care of you.” Well, I was staggered, amazed, delighted all at once. The feature of this lovewas that it was communicated to me to an ultimate degree. It was utterly real and personal, but Ididn’t know how to respond. I was so committed and familiar with the Eastern orientedunderstanding and practice that I kept doing precisely that. This encounter, however, I couldnever forget.

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A year passed and I’d gone to Berkeley, California, to conduct introductory programs for TheReality Training I’d created. Here a second significant event took place. What happened wasthis: Over a three-day period, as if pressed into me from outside myself, came the convictionthat everything I had done, the thousands of hours of meditation, the realizations and spiritualexperiences, had all added up to a huge fat zero. It was a though a twenty-eight yearinvestment had tipped over. It felt as though I’d been trying to draw water from an empty well.Wow! I was sobered. “Well,” I thought, “I’ll just run plum ordinary now, become a regularmeat-and-potatoes guy, and live out my span and do what I can. Simple.”

However, at the time I was doing a twenty-five minute drive in the car to Marin County near SanFrancisco, each day. I kept catching these Evangelical preachers on the radio teaching thehistoric faith from the Bible. They were good speakers. It was a bit interesting and besides I wasinterested in the five Great Traditions (unlike the cults), that had stood the test oftime—Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism and Christianity. So, here was Christianity beingexplained better than I’d heard it before, at least the biblically oriented form of it. At first I wasnoticing the similarities between elements of the Eastern and Christian teaching andworldviews; then it became the differences that got my attention. Listening to the broadcaststhemselves, plus sending away for the tapes advertised on the radio over the next few months, Imust have put about one hundred and fifty hours of Christ-centric biblical information throughme.

With still no contact with followers of Christ I was now being educated to the first principles ofChristianity. I noted the claims Christ made for Himself; his claim to Diety, His purpose forcoming, what He accomplished by His resurrection from the dead, following His death on thecross, where He took upon Himself all our sins that have eternally separated us from God. Itwas His promises that drew me in first, however. Then there were the letters of Paul and Jesus’other disciples. All of this really got my attention. Thus, remembering my personal encounterwith Him, having been reduced to nothing, and therefore having nothing to lose, I resolved toacknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Yikes! Those words seemed uncomfortablyreligious to me at the time. Too bad, I was going ahead anyway.

This was going to be the most important decision I’d ever made. I knew about decision: itspower, place and importance. I’d taught my Decision Principle® Training around the world. Icould have made the decision in my living room, but I wanted to make a marker of this one.

I still wasn’t fully with Christ. Then I saw a billboard promoting Billy Graham coming to town. I’d

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heard of him—the twentieth Century’s most famous evangelist. I thought he was dead. “What aperfect opportunity to make a decision in front of thousands of witnesses,” I thought to myself.

This was September 1997. So with considerable anticipation I awaited the day of his arrival. Atthe appointed hour I was one the first ones at the stadium and mounted the stands. He talked.When he invited people down to make that decision for Christ, down I went and was so close tothe podium that I could have reached up and almost polished his shoes. When the momentcame to decide, I made that decision, surely, definitely, no turning back.

It was from that moment, I was never the same again. It happened silently, un-dramatically. Iknew what it meant to be born again, that strange phrase. Something new began in me thatmoment. A peace came over me that was back of feelings and experiences. With it, came newmeaning and purpose and above all there came a substantive change of heart and mind, whichhad eluded me throughout all those years of experience, meditation practice and charismaticphenomena. And this had come as a pure gift of the Grace of Christ independent of all myefforts, disciplines or practice.

What do I mean by a change of heart and mind? Well, my temperament or disposition started tosoften and change, among other characteristics. I noticed it; my son noticed it. That was goodenough for me. The seeker had died. I’d come to rest. Perhaps I could have used terms like thatin the past, but no, this was new coin. And the old Michael Graham would have said, “Yes, Iknow what you mean,” and I would have had to reply, politely of course, “No, you don’t.” Yousee, I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

So, here I was having found my sufficiency in Christ—no supplementation required. “In Him arehidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,” as the Bible states.

And my attitude toward the concept of God significantly changed, was renewed and madeproper. And further, referring to Christ, the biblical text from the letter Paul wrote to theChristians in Colosse struck me hard: He is the image of the invisible God, the first born over allcreation. For by Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, things invisible andvisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and forhim. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

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Ironically, it made sense to know and from the biblical text, that I was not God or the supremeSelf, even in essence (Hindu, Advaita Vedanta); or ‘suchness’ devoid of self, self blown out asin ‘Nirvana’ (Buddhism), but a creature created by God in His image and likeness, built throughChrist for eternal relationship and union with Him. This seemed like a truth free of all vestiges ofcosmic narcissism.

And the Bible as a text came alive to me with a quality and a texture unlike other written worksof an intellectual or spiritual nature. It became to me like sweet milk and meat to the soul. Thisdidn’t mean that I had to like everything it said. Nevertheless I believed it. The adjustment hadto be mine. I was no longer on the throne as arbiter of all truth. I had submitted myself to Christand the living Word. This was quite a leap, and as I came to observe later, becomes a mark ofsomeone who has enjoyed a genuine turnaround in Christ or conversion.

So here I was, reading the Bible with new eyes, spending time in prayer, listening to excellentexpository or explanatory preaching and enjoying church fellowship. What a change. This was aU-turn that I would have never believed possible.

It was a radical turnaround—a turnaround at the root and a most surprising one at that. Nothingelse but the Holy Spirit, not the spirit of the kundalini (earlier described), or the spirit of the guru,could penetrate to the core of my ruin; a ruin that I believe everyone shares. What was the fruitof Christ’s Grace? Rest—a rest pertaining to my existence, most assuredly superior to passingminutes of stillness or peace I may have experienced in meditation.

I came to appreciate, that this new life found through the person of Christ, was what Jesuswanted for everyone, irrespective of race or religion. And it was far more than being limited to a‘how nice for me,’ or a ‘how nice for you,’ story. It was a unique andeternal boon available to everyone who turns to and genuinely puts personal confidence inJesus Christ.

So, today I walk on in gratitude. With a thorough basis for comparison I cannot but hold to thepreeminence and supremacy of Jesus Christ, His Grace and the super-abundant sense of lifeHe imparted to me, beginning when I emphatically turned to Him that day, in lasting trust.

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And yes, His promises and declarations had captivated me: He said, “…apart from me you cando nothing” and that hadbecome very clear to me, and “Come tome all those who are weary and heavily laden and I will give you rest.” And then, “I am the Way, Truth and the Life;” “I am the light of the world”, and “I have come that you may have life and have it abundantly.”And more, “Whoever drinks the water I shall give him, willbecome in him a fountain of water springing up to Eternal Life.” He also declared, “I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.” Further, he said, “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if anyman hears my voice, and opens the door, I will come in to him, and will eat with him, and hewith me.”

His invitation beckoned me. Perhaps it did to you. The general ‘God’ word was big in thosedays, as it is today, yet Jesus Christ pointed to Himself as having a special saving relationshipto the world. It became clear to me, as I had combed these notions thoroughly before, that Hewasn’t speaking as the popular ‘New Age’ concept of the ‘Christ Consciousness’ or as the‘Christ Michael’ or any other contemporary, fashionable or mystic phantom. Rather, he revealedhimself to me as the once historic and now ever present eternal figure of Jesus Christ, who is “the same yesterday, today and forever.”

I’ve been around. I’ve seen a lot. Finally I received this marvelous free gift of Grace by turning tohim, who, on the cross at Jerusalem, consumed in one cosmic act of sacrifice, every breakingthing—sin and the ‘karmas’I vaguely believed in, that separated me from God, both here and in Eternity?

This journey was not a light and fluffy one. It warranted my deep reflection. Its significanceextended to life, the mystery of death and beyond. So I wrote the book, titled, “From Guru to

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God—an Experience of the Ultimate Truth” in appreciation of and in gratitude to Jesus Christand His saving grace, hoping that others may be similarly inspired.

None of what I have described has put me into a Pollyanna world free of normal responsibilitiesand concerns. But a value has been added to my life through His amazing grace, beyond what Icould have ever imagined. For since that day of decision, for which God gets all the credit, theyears that have followed, have taken me on a ride beyond the veil into the depths of “The peacethat passes allunderstanding,”and the “Truth that set me free.”

Clearly, it is beyond the scope of this short account to trace out all the reasons for placing mytrust in Jesus Christ. But it is the story of how one man did so and thereby found inner peace.

Find the full story - Find the book on Amazon!

Related Articles:

>Story of the Buddhist Monk Named Jampel , by Michael Graham

> Encountering the Eternal Guru - The Story of a Young Sadhu, by SadhuNityananda.

AFTER THOUGHTS

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http://www.amazon.com/experience-ultimate-truth-Michael-Graham/dp/0646397516

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encountering-the-eternal-guru-story-of-a-young-sadhu




By Michael Graham Till now the world’s five Great Spiritual Traditions; Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam Judaism andChristianity have had an enormous influence on the planetary culture and world thinking withinlarge and discrete geographical regions. As a general example: Christianity in Europe, Islam inthe Middle East, and Buddhism in much of South Asia and so on.

That’s changing. Today’s trends indicate that we are headed for one world—inevitably. Somesee it as an ominous sign, others think of it favorably. Increasingly, people travel or immigrateto far distant places, cross-cultural influences are growing and cultural boundaries are blurring.Consequently ‘all’ things are becoming available ‘everywhere’ and new spiritual choicesabound.

Each of the Five Great Traditions makes a claim for itself. And each claim is at odds with theclaim of the other. These sometimes-squabbles have been over Truth—who are we, wherehave we come from, why are we here, and where are we going and by what means can weknow the truth of it all? It’s the story of the ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘where’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ of existence—worldviews. The issue of what is true and what is false was of great significance tothe ancients—to prophets, to philosophers, to wise men and sages and so on, even up untilfairly modern times.

Then a funny thing happened, with the advent of a modern way of thinking called ‘postmodernism’(20).Up until this time people wrestled with the issues of what was true or accurate, false or flawed; for Truth was considered to be of vital importance in finding a way out of the misery of thehuman condition. These considerations had implications for both here and in Eternity.

That wrestling accounted for much of the conflict (21) between and within religions: forexample, between Islam and Christianity, and Hinduism and Buddhism, there being in the lattercase, a serious conflict between the teachings of Shankaracharya, the most famous andinfluential eighth-century Hindu guru, and the teachings of Gautama Buddha, such thatBuddhism was virtually wiped out of India over the next two centuries.

With the coming of postmodernism a curious split has entered people’s thinking. When it comesto checking the accuracy of our bank account, or whether or not Bill has cheated on his wife,Mary, it becomes a serious matter of true or false. In being real, truth matters, and people livetheir lives in the real, except when they begin to hyper-intellectualize.

Is it not strange then, that when it comes to matters of religious ‘truth’, people become highlyrelativistic. “All religious paths are valid and true depending on your preference;” “All roadslead to the Rome.” Does it not depend on what plane you get on? “What you and I believe isquite different, but we are both right.” Or as a caricature pointing to the popular ascent offeeling over reason, one may be heard saying or asking, “Two plus two equals four; how doyou feel about that?” Does it really matter how one feels about it?

Apart from some elements in the teachings of a couple of eighteenth-century and contemporaryIndian gurus, the last time this kind of ‘postmodern’ thinking was influential was in Socrates

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day, two thousand four hundred years ago. Socrates loved truth and dug deeply to find it. Atthe time he grappled philosophically with a group called ‘Sophists’ who took truth or its absenceas a convenience in order to manipulate for gain.

It is true, that in all these matters of thought, we should not be bound by the linear and logicalalone. Our reality can extend beyond that. But is it not odd, that by observing all thingsknowable in the universe that we can see, everything reacts and functions according to precisephysical laws and truths? Even in back of Quantum and Chaos theories, many scientistpostulate order and precision. Yet we dismiss the imperatives of this observation when it comes to matters of spiritual significance.

Therefore, who or what has persuaded us, that when it comes to things spiritual, differencesdon’t matter and virtually anything goes? This style of thought is common among contemporaryspiritual seekers. Rightly or wrongly, Gautama Buddha, Shankaracharya and Jesus Christdemonstrated that they would have had no time for such an understanding.

If one is educated in these matters, it is clear, that although all the Five Great Traditions sharemany teachings and truths in common, at the level of their core declarations, they are notmarginally but radically different, and four of them hold very different worldviews.

Though limited by brevity, the information in this booklet offers some information that may behelpful in thinking things through for oneself, and in deciding and acting in matters of spiritualsignificance.

Sincerely, with respect and with every blessing for your spiritual journey,

- Michael Graham.

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the experience of ultimate truth your staff they comfort me. you prepare a table before me in the...

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