77 Traveling India 2

So many on the path to awakening are curious about traveling to India. Many would like to go but are not sure how or what to do once there. This four-part series is designed to give you a starting place. We describe a bit of the spirit and culture of India. William has been 14 times averaging 12 weeks per visit. He has also explored spirituality in Thailand, Bhutan and Brazil. A general description of travel in India in parts 1 - 3 and practical tips for travel in India, part 4.

Transcript

Hello,

This is William Cooper.

Welcome to Awakening Together,

Relaxing into Happiness.

I trust your week was good.

In the last podcast we started talking about India,

But it's such an enormous subject that after 40 minutes I just stopped and now we're picking up where we left off.

Where we left off is I said that in India there are radiant,

Animate and inanimate objects.

It's so powerful.

If somebody chants,

If for maybe hundreds of years over an object or let's say a million people come to visit and they chant or they pray or they meditate and energy seems to build up and it becomes very strong and it resonates with that high energy and if you're nearby you start resonating with that energy too.

So let me give you a story.

I'll tell you some stories about India.

So that first trip I went to India.

My roommate at the ashram was from Holland and I asked and he'd been to India a bit and I asked him where should I go visit in India if I have a little time after this program.

He said go down to Pondicherry which is in the south and there's an ashram for Sri Aurobindo.

Sri Aurobindo was a freedom fighter against the British and then he became enlightened and gave up politics and just became a very powerful guru.

And again India is loaded with these people when you know where to look and who to ask.

So I went to his ashram in Pondicherry and Pondicherry is very beautiful and his ashram is very beautiful.

It's a French building because it was a French protectorate all of Pondicherry.

So I went to this ashram because he said that Sri Aurobindo's ashram was the most powerful or one of the most powerful places in India that he had been.

Now at first I was reluctant to go because how can I was straight from the United States and I didn't believe it.

How can going to a tomb be that powerful?

The guy's dead.

But as happens in India,

A turn of events,

I was with a group of people,

They ended up going to Pondicherry.

I was kind of in the midst of them so as long as I was there I went over to Sri Aurobindo's ashram.

I got near his tomb and I touched it and it was like lightning went through my arm.

I almost fainted.

I'm not saying I fainted but I got.

.

.

It took the wind out of me,

Let's say that,

And I just sat down for hours and every so often when it would die down just a bit I would just touch the tomb and I would get another burst of lightning and really I stayed there for hours and hours and hours just soaking it up and expanding and letting my nervous system be healed by it and soak it up and open and open and open and open and letting stuff go that had been blocking me,

Blocking me,

Blocking me,

Just in the presence of this tomb.

Now his associate was the mother,

Called the mother.

She was actually a French lady and after he passed away she founded Auroville which is a separate community that actually has its own visa and it's very near Ponticherry.

They specialize in permaculture and a lot of things,

Environmental things as well as deep spirituality.

Anyway the mother was also very powerful.

So as I sat by the tomb I saw occasionally somebody going down a little path and I thought I'll just go down this little path.

So I came up to a gate and it had a sign,

Do not enter.

So as you often do in India and I'm not condoning it but it's just the way it is,

You just ignore the sign and go in.

So I went in and I just followed the path and I came to a sofa and it was where the mother used to be and oh my goodness,

So powerful.

You know it was like the universe was strobing in and out and in and out and so profound.

So India's like that.

These are inanimate objects that just are radiating presence.

Later,

Fast forward,

My brother-in-law and sister and nephew came to India with me after our trip to Bhutan.

I was showing him around India and I was going down south,

My favorite place called Taravanamalai.

We'll talk about that later.

But we went out to the next village over called Adi Anomalai and there was a Ganesh,

That's the quote unquote God that looks like an elephant,

An elephant head and he removes obstacles.

Well there was a giant rock that looked kind of like an elephant head and it had been turned into a temple,

An outside temple.

It was just a platform with this big rock on it with this roof over it but open and you could just walk up there and sit next to Ganesh and nobody was there much but India is loaded with these kind of temples.

There are probably billions of them literally.

So this was one of my favorite little temples and we went over there and this was his first trip there,

My sister's,

My whole family's first trip.

So I showed them just sightseeing and we went by the temple,

That little rock and we stopped for a few minutes.

There was some nice shade trees over it and he went up there and this was all very new to him and he touched it and he just stared and was taking it in and something was happening and later he told me in amazement,

He said I never thought I could feel that but that rock brought me to God.

That rock.

He had never had that experience before and their Buddhist,

Relatively new Buddhist at the time,

I mean maybe five years or something and they have a powerful master and all that but he had not been around an inanimate object like that that was that powerful.

That's India.

Lots of that.

In fact,

You're kind of like a little Geiger counter and there's so many temples you just go to different ones and the way I do it is if I feel something I feel something and I trust it.

Some ones you feel a little something,

Some you feel nothing and some it just blows you apart in a good way.

So for me I know where those are and I often like to go and just sit in their presence.

So powerful.

This place that I go to,

Tiruvannamalai,

I'll tell you I guess in the next podcast how to get there and just some travel tips for India in general.

We'll see how all this goes but in Tiruvannamalai there's the Ramana Ashram.

Ramana was the silent saint and when you go there's deep peace and you can stay there.

Well down the street probably a 10 minute,

15 minute walk you go to a guest house and there's this woman that comes out completely unrelated to Ramana but a woman who comes out for 15 minutes a day in the mornings and there'll be about a hundred people sitting in this open area and she'll come out and she'll look at each person for about 10 seconds maybe.

Maybe not even that long.

Let's say five seconds.

Not long.

And she just looks up and down and she releases any blockages in you but through that look she's a little tiny woman maybe four foot five maybe.

Shiva Shakti is her name.

You can google her and you just feel stuff opening and melting inside and generally I will sit there for an hour or two afterwards.

It's that powerful and just let it work all through my system and she used to come out twice a day and you imagine that time I was there six months seeing her for twice a day for six months and having been there 13 different times even when it's only been the morning which is just more recently that's a lot I've seen her thousands of times probably very powerful and I talked to her son they used to live in a cave she lived in a cave on a mountain just like you read about just like Ramana did and he,

Velan,

He said he lived on a root on a tree he just used a little kid used to sleep on a root and he's quite awake himself very quiet quite awake but when I talked to Velan and his English isn't the best but you can make you can communicate when I talk to him he says that what she's doing is she picks up with you every day where she left off the day before and she sees what parts inside of you are closed down and she moves to open them help you open them and then send in good energy for your awakening just it's like a flower blooming is what he was saying just like little flowers and she more or less is watering each one of those chakras just helping the flowers open very powerful now in the end as I've said in other podcasts having been through all this thousands of times and having beings appear to me and all the things that have happened in the end you have to do your own work however this doesn't hurt but in the end you have to do your own work she can't do certain things I don't think and I've been there thousands of times there was another woman Oh mama and she would come to you and blast you with love or you would come to her but there would be a much smaller group maybe 20 people and she would blast you with love and she would throw flower petals at you in your face and laugh wildly again you might have to sit there for hours and hours and hours just to reorient yourself so powerful so this is in one town Tara of anomaly and I and also in Tara of anomaly I remember seeing a Sikh master because I couldn't release stuff it was caught in my stomach and I had big blocks and I couldn't release them and I heard he could do it so I went to see him and he didn't speak English at all and I told him what I wanted and somehow he got the message and he just had me sit next to him as he was the guru of a big community and people came from far and wide to talk to him other Sikhs or or James I'm a little confused but I think he was Jane actually and they would come to him and I would just sit on the floor next to him and that was good enough and he just said even though I didn't know what was going on that was actually a good thing and my mind didn't get in the way and he would just I would just be in his presence his energy field I mentioned to you in another podcast that miracles happen around awakened people when clear energy flows through you because awakened people are no different than you or me it's just that they've let a lot of their stuff go they're not captured by their thoughts and emotions they're no longer addicted to them like we are they've let them burn away and even if they do have them they've let go of the addiction so it's just simply they're having an emotion they're having a thought they don't get all wound up and lost in it for that reason the infinite flows through them very clearly and that pure energy makes things good things happen so when you're sitting around one of these people they don't even know how good things happen they just know they do happen and I don't think he knew how things happened he looked a little puzzled when I said what I wanted him to do I said heal my stomach and he just looked puzzled he was like in broken English almost like well how do you want me to do that I said well you can do it and he said okay just sit here and then after the people left he lay down on it on a cot and he had me sit lie down on a bamboo kind of mat next to him for quite some time and then they fed me dinner and he ate with me and this is how open-hearted India is there was no charge for this no asking for nothing I just went and knocked on the door hi are you Swami so and so I've heard you can heal me now what does he do with this Westerner you know so I sit there and I was related to that community they would invite me to different activities they gave me a high honor one time I didn't know it was a high honor because I'm a Westerner I had a motorbike and they said I could go help feed poor people and help buy food and I was you know I was suspicious you know am I being used they just want to use me for later years later I'm ashamed to say it's the highest honor you can have that's how messed up you know I was and sometimes am because my vantage point is completely different like yes don't you want to help people of course you do but in the West I'm more trained me me me you know people are gonna use me they're gonna take advantage of me India no I'll tell you another story with a Tibetan monk this wasn't in India this was actually in Austin but it it goes along with what we're talking about if you listen to the thing where I alluded to Archangel Michael stopped by and Jesus and well right before all that in between Archangel and Jesus there was a three-week gap well quote-unquote coincidentally a Buddhist monk from Tibet showed up and he needed a place to stay and there was a he was in a group and there just wasn't enough housing for all 30 of them or so so I said sure you can stay with me and he stayed in that meditation room that was being set up like Archangel Michael had told me to set it up the monk got in there and he sat up the temple and he altered and he tweaked things and he got it just perfect and he stayed there what a blessing anyway we were downstairs on one of the days he stayed with me and I didn't know he didn't speak English and I didn't speak Tibetan but I had that game Jenga where it's those blocks that you pile them on top of each other they start off in a high cube tall cube and there it's made of individual blocks and you pull one out somewhere near the bottom and you put it on top and you put the other one then pulls out another one and he puts it on the top and it keeps getting higher and higher yet the bottom gets Rick more and more rickety because you're pulling them out all through the main structure the main body of the cube and the goal is at least what I thought the goal was from a Western perspective is you keep going as high as you can go and you want to be the one the last one that put something on without it falling over and so you keep making it higher and higher and you try not to be the one that causes it to fall over so that's what I was doing and he was playing and he was very happy and I was happy and we were kind of smiling and talking languages that we didn't understand and it was going higher and higher and higher and higher and then got really tall and it fell but he was the one that put the last piece down and so I was laughing and happy and he was laughing and I thought it was wonderful and then he said to me we made it really tall together look how tall we made it together and oh my goodness I got it he did not have my Western mindset that I win and he loses so I'm the winner we were doing it together and he was looking to see how successful could we be together in building something oh my goodness I should knock the wind out of me I had a lot I had to consider India's like that constantly one way or the other it's constantly like that it turns you in side out just by being there I can't say it enough you don't even have to find one holy man you just go to India and you will be different by the time you come back it might be a tough trip because it's quite different culturally it's kind of a third world place in many regards other parts are quite modern but other parts are can be quite rural or just third-worldly but it's a beautiful place spiritually emotionally the people are so kind and beautiful let me just go into another podcast and I'll tell you some of the places I've been and what happened there and then the following podcast I'll talk about how to get there and travel tips and this is a work in progress so I hope that's what happens we'll see I'm gonna try try to wind it up on the next podcast as far as descriptions of India I do have some sad news though since I recorded this podcast I learned that Shiva Shakti has since passed away she really was a beautiful person guru and teacher I wish you could have met her I left her in this podcast because she represents what's going on in India when you go to the right places there are many many gurus none will ever be quite like her but there's so many that are very powerful in their own way in their own right and you can meet some of those Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Shiva Shakti Om Namah Shivaya Shiva Shakti okay I trust you'll have a good week and I look forward to talking to you next time take care

Reviews

Very enlightening, encouraging talk. But, did he heal your stomach? My stomach is hopefully curious. 🙏

A very interesting travel log told in a sincere, enthusiastic way. Thank you!

William,
Simply fantastic! Your passion for India is beautiful and the stories of the people and culture are captivating.
Looking forward to more.
Thank You 😊!
~ Jennifer Lea