Up until a couple of years ago I use to live a “normal” north American life. I went to university, studied physical therapy, and practiced professionally for two years. After a while, I started feeling like something was missing. So I quit, packed a bag and left for Asia, looking for something, but no idea what. I traveled to Nepal and walked through the snowy Himalayas for 3 weeks. Then I flew to Thailand and went to the islands. As any Canadian man in his twenties, the only thing I did there was partying. Full moons, lots of alcohol and so on. For Christmas 2019, I found myself in the middle of the night, in a hostel bathroom, drunk and sick. Definitely not the most glorious moment of my life. I did not know it at that time, but now I can say it: it was the last time I allowed that to happen.
Only four days later I was sitting in the yoga hall of Amrita Integral Yoga Center (Mahasiddha Yoga’s retreat center), ready to enter into mauna (the practice of silence) for the next ten days. For the record, I have never practiced yoga before and my experience with meditation was an occasional 5 minutes with an app on my phone and a Buddhist meditation which I learnt from a small book I bought in Pokhara, Nepal. Just before entering mauna, we were invited to say a few words to ourselves, our last spoken words for the next 10 days. I told myself: “you are exactly where you are supposed to be, I love you”. I remember I started crying immediately. It was the first time I had such a conscious dialogue with myself. This was the beginning of an incredible journey.
The following ten days were filled with an unimaginable amount of grace, love, happiness and peace, like I have never experienced before. I started to hear the voice of my heart, I connected with the ultimate source of the Universe, God, I started to see myself reflected in all living beings around me, etc. Spiritual experiences of ecstasy, bliss and incredible happiness were frequent. But sometimes my ego would bring me back to some tremendous moment of intense anxiety. In one such occasion I decided to communicate with one of the teacher, Radu. I wrote to him, as we were still in silence. His words had the effect of a soft and warm embrace upon my heart. He explained to me what was happening, and he suggested that I go back to my room and cry, not coming out for as long as I still have tears to cry. This is exactly what I did and, miraculously, the state of peace and extreme happiness reappeared once that river of emotions came out of my being.
Another experience that completely overwhelmed me was during a spiral meditation which we did over the moment of New Year 2020. One of the teachers, Blandine, was guiding us through the meditation. At one point, she told us all to go into our soul and make a wish for the new year to come. I remind you here that the week before I was almost unconscious, sick and drunk in a toilet. Needless to say that I had no idea how to reach to my soul. Nevertheless, I tried to uplift myself intuitively with the images of the snowy mountains of Nepal. I started feeling very energized. My entire being was buzzing. I reached a point where it seemed like I had only two options: either faint on the ground or open my eyes, sit down and interrupt my meditation. I did neither, because a tremendous force started pulling me higher and higher in consciousness. I felt like I had nothing to lose and I was very curious were this would lead me. At one point, a man appeared in front of my inner gaze. Very peaceful, white hair, white beard, divine kindness in his eyes. I never saw him before. He was standing in front of a door. The door was slightly opened and what I could see was pure light coming from the other side of the door. He told me : “Come, I will show you your soul.” I did not know what to say or do. I simply surrendered to the experience and I followed him. Immediately after crossing that door, I could see nothing but light. Everything was light. An ocean of bliss, pure happiness. I bathed in that state until the end of the meditation. I was mesmerized. I had absolutely no idea what just happened to me. Back to my room, I could not sleep. I was vibrating with a tremendous joy that I was not able to explain. I simply could not stop smiling. Everything was perfect.
With such experiences, I felt I needed to stay longer than the initial ten days in silence, in order to crystalize my state. With kindness and understanding, Uriel, Blandine and Radu accepted my request and allowed me to stay longer in Amrita, which also gave me the possibility to attend Tantra Immersions 1 and 2. I had never heard the word Tantra before so I was curious. Many experiences and revelations occurred in those immersions.
At the end of my stay, 21 days later, I was completely new, reborn and in love with Shakti. I felt like a child coming back into the world with purified eyes, enlightened heart and tremendous desire to explore life and consciousness. I immediately started the weekly Yoga and Tantra courses with Mahasiddha. There’s an extraordinary grace that flows through the three teachers and through the entire school. Everything is perfectly aligned. As a student with aspiration, you receive exactly what you need to receive in the moment when you need to receive it, and this happens week after week. There were so many times when I was struggling with something in life. In those precise moments, during the weekly class, the teacher would say: “today, we will learn a yoga posture that helps with this or that”, and it would be exactly what I was struggling with just before the class.
After two more years of wondering, I returned to Thailand, and I decided to live in the very place where, almost exactly 2 years ago, my entire world shifted upside down, for the better. I am now a Karma Yogi. Living everyday among people with immense aspiration to perfect themselves and to reach God is a blessing.
This was a very short version of the story of how Mahasiddha Yoga, through the Grace of God, has completely transformed me and my life and keeps supporting my growth and transformation in order to get closer and closer to the Absolute. And in the end, to give a testimony of this transformation, here are two pictures of me: the first from 2 years ago, before I discovered Mahasiddha, and one from now, when I’ve been practicing for two years, being a regular student in the Intensive Tantra and Esoteric Yoga courses.
With lots of Love your way,
Pierre