NEVER TO RETURN:
A MODERN QUEST FOR ETERNAL TRUTH
A Multimedia Spiritual Adventure Memoir
by Sharon Janis
Divine guidance often comes when the horizon is the blackest.
– MOHANDAS GANDHI
Chapter Nine
WHEN THE STUDENT IS READY
DURING MY SECOND YEAR OF COLLEGE, I was disappointed to find that the physics course I’d enrolled in was only scheduled to cover the most boring aspects of physics, with all the more interesting topics coming only in subsequent classes. I don’t know why educators would elect to teach in this way, since it probably keeps many from embracing these fields of study, thinking they are uninteresting. For example, one of my college friends signed up for what sounded like a good, solid introductory course in drawing, and the first few months were spent on drawing straight lines for hours on end. This approach seemed like one that could actually stifle the natural artistic or philosophical process, and so I decided to opt out of the introductory physics course and looked for a new, more interesting class as a replacement.
You never know what seemingly incidental circumstances and decisions will lead to massive life transformations. While browsing the “Still Looking?” board at the University of Michigan registration building, I found and enrolled in a class called "Consciousness." With my strong interest in the unconscious, hypnosis and Freudian theory, I thought it might be a class I'd enjoy. But, as it turned out, the consciousness in this course title referred to something quite different from the word consciousness as used in psychology. It had more to do with metaphysical, higher consciousness, spiritual issues – ideas that were mostly unfamiliar to me.
This course brought many new thoughts to my mind’s door. Every week, we’d be given another bizarre reading assignment. First, we studied Carlos Casteneda's journeys with mescaline and his ruthless teacher, Don Juan. Then we delved into new areas of science, where quantum physics begins to merge with ancient spiritual teachings. We studied all kinds of parapsychology experiments, and even replicated some of them ourselves. Most of the students in this course were graduate students, so it was a much more laid back atmosphere than most of my traditional sophomore classes.
However, I became even more laid back than that, and starting skipping some of my classes, usually to work on a small film project that was taking up most of my focus. One week, I didn't buy the book for the following Consciousness class, since I was planning to skip it anyway. But after missing this class, I was overcome with a rare experience of guilt that made me ask what I was doing with my life? What did it say about me that I couldn't even make it to classes I enjoyed? This wasn't high school anymore. I was racking up a hefty student-loan debt. Shouldn't I at least attend my classes?
The next week, our professor handed me a photocopy of the handout from the class I had missed. The book for that week was called Play of Consciousness, written by an Indian swami named Muktananda. I felt better about having skipped the class. This was not a book I would have wanted to read anyway. New-Age physics was one thing, religious dogma quite another.
I considered religion to be a crutch for those too intellectually weak to face the brutal reality that ultimately we will never understand what is really going on here. To me, God was a pacifier, a parental substitute for adults. One little psychoactive chemical in my brain could annihilate everything I have ever known. My own unconscious mind could instantly transform the entire universe as I knew it. What deity could be more powerful than that?
I looked at the handout from my professor, and read a few lines. It wasn't at all what I would have expected to find in a religious writing. The Indian swami described some of his inner experiences from decades of meditation, specifically when his third-eye energy center opened. His eyes had rolled upward and he saw various colored lights, along with a tiny, shimmering blue pearl, and various other "hallucinogenic" experiences. This kind of stuff was interesting to me. I decided to ease my guilt and made up for the missed class by writing a scientific discussion of the Swami’s experiences.
This paper basically analyzed his visions from a neurophysiology viewpoint: The melatonin in his brain might have catalyzed into melanin, through the adjustment of just one atom of the molecule. This could possibly give the internal perception of a color such as blue. Also, his rolled-up eyes may have accessed dream-like functions in the occipital lobe, creating these internal visual phenomena. I had a whole list of theories, including the possibility that the swami had simply suffered a petit-mal epileptic seizure.
It turns out that our professor was a follower of this swami, and soon afterwards, our whole Consciousness class took a field trip to the Ann Arbor Meditation Center – a residential, ashram-style community based on the swami's teachings. I was a little uneasy about going to a Hindu commune. One woman in our class told me that she had gone there once and received several calls inviting her to return. I decided not to give anyone my address or phone number. I was not interested in getting involved with some strange religious group.
As we walked into the meditation hall, there were pictures of Hindu swamis and strange-looking people, some half-naked, all around the walls. An American woman wearing a white Indian sari talked to us for a few minutes, and then we started to chant. I couldn't figure out what word went where, or what the tempo was supposed to be. Still, this place was intriguing and certainly different from anything I had ever experienced. The dim lighting, candle flames, and incense smells created an exotic, occult-like atmosphere.
Although I continued to recall this visit to the meditation center, I didn't seriously consider going back until several months later, after a Monday morning meeting with the "Consciousness" professor to discuss a parapsychology experiment I had agreed to coordinate for the class. We’d received a grant to replicate a “remote-viewing” experiment that had recently been conducted by some parapsychologists at Stanford University.
In our experiment, an “outbound subject” would use a random number generator to choose one of fifty folders. Within each folder were papers directing him or her to one of fifty locations in the Ann Arbor area. The outbound subject would go to the chosen location, and would take pictures and speak about their impressions into a portable tape recorder. Simultaneously, another participant designated as the inbound subject would sit alone in a room, trying to gather intuitive insights about where the outbound experimenter might be – drawing pictures and verbally describing their impressions into a tape recorder.
We also used different variables to expand the study, including placing the inbound subject in a hypnogogic trance state by running a fan to create white noise and placing halves of ping pong balls over their eyes in front of a light source – this setup is called the Ganzfeld technique, and it is intended to limit the subject’s sensory input by creating a static visual field. This hypnogogic state is considered to be the same state of consciousness we pass through every night, as our awareness moves from wakefulness to sleep. We included these variables because some recent studies had shown this hypnogogic state to be conducive to the perception of extra-sensory information.
Eventually, all the transcribed tapes and other information were given to a panel of judges, who used various methods to determine which data matched most closely. The purpose of this experiment was to either prove or disprove the existence of telepathic perception using traditional scientific methods. In the end, we had several impressive correlations, but the fact that some were subtle or subjective made it clear to me that certain phenomena cannot really be captured statistically.
At the beginning of our work on phase two of this project, I arrived at the professor’s office for an early Monday morning meeting. As Professor Mann walked into the room for our meeting, I looked up and saw that he was glowing! I don't think I had ever seen anyone glow like that before. He looked like a beautiful angel archetype of himself, with a blissed-out, benign smile on his face. I had to ask what happened. He explained that he'd just returned from a weekend retreat at an ashram, an Indian ashram in upstate New York with that swami who had written about the third-eye energy center in our assigned reading. Well, seeing this professor glow like that definitely piqued my interest in the whole swami thing. I started to think about maybe going back to that meditation center in Ann Arbor. It took quite some time for me to get up the nerve.
I was too shy to ask anyone about going to this place. What if they thought I was interested in joining a cult? After several weeks, I finally got up the courage to ask someone in our class for information about the meditation center. She told me the main programs were on Tuesday nights at 8 pm and gave me directions to the building. The following Tuesday, I got in my car early so I wouldn't be late.
I got totally lost.
Deciphering driving directions has never been my strong point, and this meditation center was in an area of Ann Arbor that I was unfamiliar with, with some strange angled streets that left me totally confused. While driving around and around, I was getting increasingly nervous about the whole thing. I kept looking at my watch: 7:45, 7:49, 7:54.... I didn't want to be late. Maybe they had some big rule about being punctual. I certainly did not want to get in trouble in such a bizarre place!
It was becoming clear that I probably wasn't going to find the center in time. I made a decision that if I didn't get there by 8:00 sharp, I would turn around, go home, and try again the following week. This was disappointing because I had really been looking forward to getting back to this place after being too shy to ask. But that was my firm decision.
My watch said 7:58, and then 7:59. I turned around to go home, thinking I would have to get more specific directions before the next week. Then, just moments after I had looked at the watch display that showed 7:59, I looked down at it again, just to confirm the closure of this deal I had made about the 8:00 deadline.
The watch was dead. It said: 00:00. No time. No 8:00, only 00:00. Shocked by this timely coincidence, I turned a corner and rushed back to the address block of the center. This time I found it right away and went inside.
The evening was awesome. I laughed, I cried, I was emotionally moved and intellectually stimulated. As we started to chant, a strong sentiment built up inside of me. I didn't know if it was related to the stopped-watch incident or because I was in such a strange environment, but I found myself weeping through most of the chant. This was unlike me. I rarely cried, certainly not without good reason, and I was feeling perfectly fine.
After the chant, there was a reading from one of the swami's books. His words were brilliant and wise. They echoed my own deepest insights and answered questions I had long pondered. There was a quality about this exotic place that made me feel at home.
I looked up at the big picture of the swami in front of the hall. It was an extremely striking photo of him, with deep, intense eyes. I silently thanked him, and was sure I saw him wink.
A tree as big around as you can reach
starts with a small seed;
a journey of a thousand miles begins
with a single step.
— LAO-TZU
On to
Chapter Ten
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