The Oneness journey (Mark Gleave)

The journey with Oneness started with an amazing combination of events that got me invited to Fiji for the very first Oneness event at the beginning of 2007, 4 years ago. Amma Bhagavan were in attendance, with Krishna Ji and the other guides. We had a Darshan with both Amma and Bhagavan together, which was very powerful. We also received hands on Deeksha everyday from the Divine Beings, (called Cosmic Beings at the time) Narsimhar Kumar, and Mathew (renamed Uttama), and at the end we received our Deeksha Initiation as a hands on Deeksha from Krishna Ji, Bhagavans son. This knocked me out for many hours. When I awoke, something had already started to change.
	Whilst there, Sri Bhagavan said that we needed “freedom from the mind”. At the time the mind became quite upset about this statement (it actually used some pretty colorful Australian language in protest), as I had spent a great deal of time, energy and effort, working to have a good, competent, inteligent mind. Although at the same time I somehow knew that what was being said was somehow very profound. I spent nine days there and then came straight to India to do the 21 day course. As I said earlier, the sequence of events just flowed and created an amazing journey.
	When I arrived in India at the Oneness University, I was put straight into the deepening course instead, as the course I had just attended was the first seven day course to replace the 21 day course, and was very powerful, so I was apparently ready for the deepening. 
I continually pestered the guides for the answer to the question “what is freedom from the mind?” It became a burning quest to ‘get it’. However after many days of searching and the mind trying to fit everything into what it already knew, it reached a point where it finally just said “that’s it, I don’t have the answer, I can’t find the answer, I don’t know where to look for the answer, and I have no conscious idea of what it really is”. I let go and surrendered. The answer was just not available in any way the mind could comprehend. It was not an “I’ll give up today and try again tomorrow”, it was a real experience of surrender through the true recognition of being helpless to find the answer.
	I experienced some peace over it for the first time since the quest began, and as they had given me accommodation in Campus 3, I went to give Deeksha to the Indians on Campus 2, just over the back. On the way something happened that changed the experience of reality, and life, forever! 
	Out of the blue I suddenly had a vision of the mind separating from my head and showing itself to me. It was as real as looking at the hand on this body. I suddenly saw that we have more than one mind, or at least that there are several different parts of the mind. The vision dissipated as they returned inside. However now I was somehow outside of these minds and looking in. I was observing the minds working and interacting but ‘I’ was no longer in there as part of this process anymore (and what I would have called ‘I’ before had changed).
All this could have taken a split second, or minutes, I had no awareness of the amount of time. I got an amazing rush of energy, joy and bliss as well as tears of absolute joy. I ran up and down the road in absolute rapture and bliss. Something profound had just happened (although I did not realize how profound at the time) and I was suddenly experiencing very differently. Everything looked, sounded, smelt, felt different, and my surroundings became an intense experience of sound and light etc.
‘I’ was now watching what I once called ‘me’, and the thinking. I now know looking back that I had awakened from the dream state of thinking and imagining based on a conceptual version of a self. It was like waking from a very lucid dream, knowing that it was very real whilst I was in it, but knowing I could never go to sleep and experience it like that again. Realizing it was all a dream was very unexpected. That life, or the perception of it, was just an illusion, and that I had actually completely believed it, and my self, was real. I had believed fully that I was that mind and all it’s perceived concepts, problems, challenges, dysfunctions, opinions rules, commentaries etc. I had never even heard of anything like this before, so I just took it as another insight and realization (which I had become accustomed to through many years on the journey of personal development).
I could only describe it as awareness/consciousness, thinking and imagining, had now separated. Somehow allowing the observation of all of it at work, fully conscious, yet with no measurement or judgment of the processes. Just the experience.
	I then realized I had been given the answer to my question. We only need freedom from one of these minds, not the whole mind. At the time I saw this challenged mind as the functional mind. The mind that is really a biological computer that is used to make the choices and decisions required to help us interact and function at a higher level than just survival in the physical world. The Conceptual mind that has to create a concept about everything so it can label, measure and judge it to succeed in its job of keeping us safe. 
	I saw how the mind had become completely involved with imagination, and created a foggy dream state, and how this had consistently taken me out of the true experience of the moment, and helped give the experience of a false, past-self based, illusional, and occasionally dillusional, version of reality.
	I somehow knew that although I was in this body, I was not of this body. Watching through this body but not being this body. The best way I can describe it (as words are so inadequate), is that I am the life force in the body, but I am not the body, nor the mind. It is just a vehicle for me as consciousness, to experience this external world through. I can look at and touch the hands for example, and they are just not mine. This body and mind are part of this physical world, but ‘I’ am not, yet at the same time, knowing I am ‘everything’ including this body. After 4 years 'I' still experience witnessing this external body interacting with the external world. It’s like being in a car and experiencing the journey looking out from inside of the car.

	Once I settled down a bit from that initial experience (I have no idea how long that was) and stopped running around, I went and gave Deeksha to the Indians in a very blissful and hightened state. I was told afterwards that I had given almost 100 Deekshas, yet I had no idea of that or any association to time at all. From that day, any attachment, association or connection to time, including any past (even a few minutes ago), or the ability to estimate time, has gone. 

	At that time, I actually had no idea of what had just happened, as in those days there was no talk about what awakening was, or what it was like, and I was not even looking for it anyway, so I had no conscious idea what had happened at all. It actually took almost two and a half years to realize what had truly happened that day. Perhaps that ignorance helped a lot because there were no concepts in place to block the process, and I was not looking, or trying to experience anything like that.

	I went to the guide the next day and said “I have it”. He smiled and said “tell me Mark”. I said “we have more than one mind, and we only need freedom from one of them, not the whole mind”. He laughed and smiled and just said “yes Mark”. We had some conversation about what this meant and that was all that was discussed about that. There was no discussion about what else had happened.

	‘I’ was now also able to observe several different versions of what I would had called ‘me’ before, the broken self, the illusion of a perfect self that I should be, the visible self that worked hard to be perceived externally by others like the perfect self it thought I should be, and several other versions. 
For some days ‘I’ continued to observe all the interactions and struggles between these different version of the self, the measurement and judgment of self and others by the mind, but from a very detached observational perspective. The judgment of others, and then the judgment of the self for judging others etc. It was amazing. I also realized that life is just a reflection of the perception perceiving it. Before I only ever saw my ‘self’ reflected back in others, and life, and I was projecting that ‘self’ onto others and seeing that, because that is all it was possible to see at the time. Now there is nothing to project. When there is no ‘person’, nothing can be personal either. What others say or do has no effect at all anymore. All of it is just experienced as happiness with no judgement.

	After perhaps a week, I got up one morning and suddenly realized that everything had gone quiet. There were no commentary, debates, struggles, conflicts or discussions between them at all, or about anything else. No measurement or judgment of the self AT ALL. There was just a silence and peace, and a consistent experience of happiness and joy. This has remained and there is still absolutely no internal conflict at all over anything. If anything is said or done, that is it. It is said or done and there is nothing that can be done about it, and no associated drive to do anything about it as before, no judgment for it or measurement of it, nothing. I just do what I do and have complete acceptance of that. In fact using the word acceptance is not correct. It is just what it is, no acceptance is required. Even words like forgiveness no longer hold true meaning as there is nothing to forgive at all.
	I also started experienced the thinking as someone sat next to me. I could interact with them or ignore them. Thinking and imagining are now things to be used, they no longer control the experience of life as they once did.

	Something else that happened was that there was now access to a level of insight and wisdom that did not come from the life experience of this physical bodies lifetime. Like something long lost within had been unlocked. By giving attention to a question etc would bring answers that were beyond the conceptual minds ability to answer in this way, or the knowledge this mind had accumulated. This still continues and in ways that could simply not be explained with words.

	I had businesses when I went to Fiji, but when I returned home to the UK 5 weeks later, I simply could no longer do them. I literally had no memory, or retention, or at least no attachment or association to memory. Only what had my attention was experienced and nothing else. If something had my attention and the attention moved to something else, what had my attention before simply vanished, and no longer existed in the experience of reality. What now had my attention was all that was experienced, and then that disappeared when the attention moved to something else. 
	Although this was (and is) wonderful, I was unable to run even one business, as there was a need to be able to hold many bits of information in the mind and have forethought etc, and now this was simply not possible anymore, as everything was forgotten almost immediately. However this did not matter at all. There was and is no longer any interest in money, self-importance, approval, position, power, control, or any of the other things that drove me before. The things I used to try to become acceptable and somehow be of value. I simply shut everything down and had true faith that creation would provide and everything would be fine. Which of course it has been.
	I am now a full time Oneness Teacher/Trainer and earn enough from teaching to pay all my bills etc, and am writing a book about these experiences and insights. All the clients just turned up and I have never advertised to get any. If I need extra money for anything, it just appears. Actually if anything is needed it turns up, often without even asking for it. There are far too many experiences to relate in this letter, but what would have once been called miracles, happen every day. 

	Something else of profound value that also happened was that before Fiji I had no interest in what could be called God. Although I now look back and see how the divine was present in every moment of my life, I then had many negative associations to religion and thought that God was something of a religious nature only. So I was not looking for anything Divine. Without realizing what it was, I had been having conversations with, and getting information from my inner Divine for most of my life, but had no actual idea what it was. Since the day of that experience however, I became intensely aware of this Divine presence within me, and could never even start to describe it. Since then I have never been alone. Although I have been regularly physically alone, I have never been alone, and have never once felt lonely. There is no longer a separation from that divine. When the guides say “invoke the presence” it is strange statement because there is nothing to invoke. No sense of it being outside or separate from ‘me’ in any way. It is what I already am and always have been.

	The past I experienced as this mind and body no longer feels real. It is like it belonged to someone else. I once suffered a lot over the past and now there is no suffering at all because there is no past. I have no attachment or association to memory, so as soon as something is over it is immediately forgotten, and perception is only an illusion, so I have absolutely no internal suffering. There is simply no experience of suffering at all any more, only peace, happiness and joy. 
	Yes there can be frustration, annoyance, bluntness, or directness etc, but they are short bursts, and as soon as the energy has dissipated, which is usually a very short time, they are completely forgotten and gone. No ‘carry on’ at all using imagination like there used to be, just over and gone forever. There is no energy driving them like before. They are more like leftover bits and pieces of perception and no longer real.

	The most noticeable physical effect is that the head has changed shape. For some three years I have often become aware of the sound of cracking in my ears, which continues, and my skull has apparently grown, and split ridges have appeared, as well as lumps and bumps that were not there before. Shaving my head is an adventure, and still the changes continue.
	I will not talk about mystical experiences because I wouldn't know how to describe these things anyway. However many of the things I experience daily I would have considered mystical many years ago. Things like some short and longer term precognition, and when connecting with others, the experience of their emotional and often their physical states, even over the phone. The experience could be described as they are me, and I am them, without judgment, or any association to the suffering. Nothing is triggered by experiencing their suffering, just insight into how to help.
	Within days of that event four years ago I also now knew that everything is just as it is in every moment, and everything is perfect. There are now no expectations about what may happen, as whatever happens is always absolutely perfect, and what is required and given by the Divine. Life happens naturally and arrives automatically, and the experience of life is always wonderful. I cannot thank Amma-Bhagavan, Tony & Sage, and the past and present guides at the Oneness University enough for the gifts that have been received.

Thank you my friends