This is a true story, whether you believe it or not. I understand if you don’t, I couldn’t believe it either. I continued to doubt it, confabulating excuses. I was a fool. Now it’s obvious to me.

This is my favorite story because it’s the first steps on my Hero’s Journey

When I tell this story some people say, “Oh sure, it happened for YOU.” I am not special. We all feel The Force. We all have a Hero’s Journey. This story is not a brag from me, it’s a call to you. “If you seek, you will find.”

One might call this a minor miracle, I don’t see it that way at all. It’s no more miraculous than magnetism. There is a explanation in physics that we haven’t figured out yet. It’s just vibration. Really strong vibrations.

It was 1987. I was 19 years old and I had just changed colleges and majors. I left computer science - writing assembler code was so boring. I was reading Freud and Jung but felt a lot of it was bunk. I wanted to understand the nature of the mind in a scientific way. So I changed colleges to the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. I majored in Psychology with a concentration in Neuroscience. It was mostly a hard science curriculum. Despite this story, I’m not woo-woo.

The summer before the move I was at my girlfriend’s house when she said, “Are you going to see the No-minds?” That was the name of my high school click - cool to make the nerds sounds dumb. Her mother chimed in, “No-minds, are you Buddhist?” I didn’t know much about Buddhism so she gave me an introductory book. I read the book and was immediately drawn to it. I was raised a Roman Catholic and looked into the historical Jesus and realized that maybe the Church and the Bible missed some of the true essence of Jesus because the books were written hundreds of years after Jesus’ death. I could see the parallels between Buddha silencing the mind in deep meditation to Jesus telling us to “But when you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret… The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light.” I didn’t know at the time how close these instructions would be to the Yoga instructions I would soon be given.

After reading the book, I wondered if I could learn meditation at college. Little did I realize I was going to The Happy Valley - the area around the 5 colleges near Amherst, Massachusetts. It is a haven for Eastern thought and practice. There still is a huge Buddhist Pagoda and a number of Yoga Ashrams. One ashram taught a Yoga class as part of the UMass gym curriculum.

My first day there I saw a paper sign taped to a column

“Free Meditation Class. Wed 4PM. Campus Center Room 304”.^*

Come Wednesday, I left my chemistry lab at 3:15 and made the short walk to the Campus Center. I was alone. It was a warm September day. As was typical from the time I was 12, I was carrying a newspaper, The Boston Globe. I had delivered the Worcester Telegram and The Evening Gazzette since I was 12 (later a future billionaire took over one of my routes). I read the newspaper everyday while walking and delivering them. I wish I still could. It was a golden age of newspapers. Journalism was serious and respectable. The Boston Globe had a series of writers that entered the Halls of Fame for their respective sports - Peter Gammons (baseball), Bob Ryan (basketball), Will McDonough (football) and Bud Collins (tennis). I may have been devouring Red Sox news though I seem to remember I was reading economics or politics as I was walking.

I was almost 45 minutes early for the class so I figured I would just sit and read until it started. I got out of the elevator and arrived at the room. I could see the back of the room through the doorway. There were a couple of rows of empty chairs. I was so early that I assumed the room was empty. I started to walk through the threshold of the room when suddenly I felt something I experienced as a chill, but it was not cold. Suddenly I went from walking forward to taking a full step backwards like I had just walked into something.

I stopped. Whenever your mind is presented with something it can’t understand, you “confabulate”, in neuropsychological terms. Another term for confabulation is rationalization. Rationalizations are very important. Ask Jeff Goldblum.

I’ll write more about neuroscience of confabulation. In AI terms, you hallucinate. But you don’t hallucinate (usually), LLMs confabulate. You’ve seen LLM’s presented with something it doesn’t understand and just invent an explanation, a wrong one. True intelligence would stop and say, “I’m not sure” or “I don’t know.”

I wasn’t so smart at the time, so I just said to myself, “I must have gotten the chills.” It wasn’t cold at all, however, it was a warm September afternoon. “The chills” is a common feeling that’s expressed by people when they encounter The Force. Perhaps it’s the spirit-mind contacting the body. Or a bubble popping when hitting a big wave.

As I turned the corner, I saw an Indian man in an orange robe and turban meditating cross-legged on top of a table at the front of the room. He had a thick, mostly black beard with many grey hairs. He looked to be in his 40s.

The hard table looked very uncomfortable. There was a faint sweet smell, maybe of jasmine. As I went to sit down near the front, I thought that maybe I could feel something from him. His eyes closed, almost not moving but not strictly not moving. If I knew better, I would have sat silently with him. Being a spiritual idiot, I went back to reading my newspaper. More people came to attend and the class began.

I would soon learn it was Dada Brahmananda, Advahuta of Ananda Marga. “Dada” means brother, in this case, like a monk. He is an Acharya, or “spiritual guide” of Ananda Marga. Ananda Marga means “The Blissful Path”. Beyond being an Acharya, Dada Brahmananda was an Advahuta - or maybe still is even after death. An Advahuta is “one who gives his insight to others and teaches them about his realisation of the true nature of the ultimate reality (Brahman) and self (Ātman) and takes the role of a Guru to show the path of moksha to others.” (Wikipedia)

The Acharya of Ananda Marga live strict lives. In Western terms, they take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. That is, they have no possessions except their own clothes and personal items like oils. Beyond that, a vow of poverty is also a vow of charity - they work to make sure other’s needs are met while they consume minimally. They are chaste in sense that they don’t have sexual relations, moreover, they sublimate their energies toward their goal, the Ananda Marga motto: “Self-realization and service to others.” They also must obey orders, like a soldier in a spiritual army.

There are sisters too, “Didis”. Dadas and Didis live separately and have their own projects and programs. They all get together when it’s time to practice as a group. Although I have learned much from Didis, when it comes to personal instruction, the Dadas teach the men and the Didis teach the women. Many people like this aspect of Ananda Marga. Women have a natural inner flow. Men have a natural outer flow. This makes communicating between themselves easier and more accurate.

These are not the same folks you normally meet at your local yoga studio. The Acharya spend many hours a day in various spiritual practices. The rest of the time they devote to serving others. They often serve in schools, do disaster relief, work on women’s welfare, conduct feeding programs, build farmer coops and much more. Their minds are also very sharp.

Let’s say I put you in a room and introduced you to 25 people. Then a few minutes later, I asked you to recall their names. How many would you get? I’d be lucky to get 5. (If you think you get 20-25, I recommend you check your ego against facts by trying it.) When we started the class we moved the chairs, sat on the floor in a circle and everyone introduced themselves. Dada Brahamanda also asked them to name their favorite animal while introducing. Then as Dada was introducing Yoga to everyone, during questions he would call the questioner by name and then confirm their favorite animal. It was very humble, he would pretend not to know or be guessing but he never missed one. He then would ask questions to anyone didn’t ask, eventually naming everyone’s name and animal.

The most remarkable characteristic of Dada was apparent even when he isn’t speaking. It’s the vibe. Not in the sense of “he’s cool”. I mean he fills the room with his presence. It’s what knocked me backwards. You can feel it. Most everyone who meets any Acharya can feel it. I seek out the Acharyas while I travel just to meditate with them even once. For weeks afterward, I am flying on air. My meditations are deeper and more focused. I feel like I was dipped in a deep river. They have silenced their minds and amplified their spirit so deeply, the vibe can knock you backwards.

This is available to you too. It’s not just the Acharya. I remember a few years ago meeting old friends who were regular married Margiis (one who is on the Path). One had knee surgery just a few weeks before and was able to stand up, no problem. I was shocked and the doctors said they had never seen such a quick recovery. I didn’t even meditate with them. We just talked. Still, for weeks later, I took their vibe with me on my deeper than usual meditations.

Crazy? Seems so to most, I assume but not to me. I’m always ready to apply Occam’s Razor - what’s the simplest explantion for the phenomenon? Well the phenomenon is so regular, I can’t deny it, I can only say that we can’t explain it yet.

I have a near lifelong commitment to the truth. If you doubt, just remember I have nothing to sell you. They have nothing to sell you. Donations for their work for others are always welcome, of course.

Still scoffing? You can’t deny until you try. It’d be like Christopher Columbus saying, “I just came back from American and there’s gold! Look - here’s my map, it’s there!” And you saying, “No way it exists, I didn’t see it.” I recommend you take the journey for yourself. Start your own Hero’s Journey

Here is an excellent video introducing Ananda Marga and it’s worldwide service programs.

^*Note: I don’t remember the actual room number. It could have been 304, probably something else.