Sabrimalai Trip - My Inner Journey - October 2010

Meeting Up with the Lord

In August 2010, I had these visions. Dreams we don’t remember so much, but visions are driven by a higher consciousness.

I’m in a very crowded place and I see these three priests giving thirtham. One of them tells me,“Koushik, make your way up to the front.” (I didn’t recognize him then, but later I knew him as Sri Bhairavan.) I get to the front and get two drops of water on my palm. I take a sip and give the rest to my wife, Radhika. There is an older gentleman nearby and he says could I have the grace of touching your palm. He cups my hand in his two. It is only when I come down and see a tap to wash my hands and feet that I realize I am in India.

In the vision I also see Satya Sai Baba. I go and fall at his feet. He bends down and he holds my shoulders and tells someone, “Take him and put him on one side, but hold him, he will go into a trance.” One of his devotees says, of all the thousands of people here, why did you choose Koushik? He says, “He is sugar and I am water.”

I had a plan to go to India. I go to the Rajaganapati Temple in New Jersey every Friday and the gurukal there, Shivaguru Dikshitar, said that as soon as Ganesa chaturti was over we could go to India. But I could not go with him. We made the plan to come to India in October for family reasons and it happened that on the days we had planned to be in Kerala, the Sabarimala temple was going to be open.

My father-in-law suggested that I needed to go with someone. I was told about the austerities (the food restrictions, sleeping on the bare floor, bathing in cold water), about the pujas and the singing of bhajans. Radhika had reservations about how I was going to do all that, but later it was she who kept me on track. Shivaguru Dikshitar said that before he went to India he wouldperform an Ayyappa puja at the Rajaganapati Temple so that Radhika, who would not be able to come to Sabarimala, could witness the puja. The energy in the temple was high.

A girl named Sruti came up to me afterwards. She said that when she was eight she had travelled with her grandfather and they stood in line for hours before darshan. I replied that I would get darshan and would not stand in line at all. I don’t know why I said that. Dikshitar had given me several veshtis of kaavi colour to wear for the trip. In my mind I thought, everyone else is wearing black, and it would be nice to wear black too, but I didn’t tell anyone this. The following week we went to a friend’s place as we regularly do for Sai bhajan. A man came up to me and said, “My father had been going to Sabarimala for 28 years and he is now passed away. We still have his veshti and other things he wore for his pilgrimage and we want to pass them on to you.”He asked his mother’s permission and at the next week’s bhajan she brought the package to me. She said it would be an honour for them to have me take these things on my pilgrimage.

My wife’s cousin in India looked for a guru swami  for me. He found someone through the Ayyappa Seva Sangam, which is run by volunteers. The guru swami was named Sri Bhairavan. I knew that Swami had chosen this person for me and that there was some connection. Sri Bhairavan was an elderly man and had other constraints, and he had never flown in an airplane before, but he agreed to fly with me from Chennai to Cochin and take me to Sabarimala from there.

As soon as we landed in Chennai I phoned him and he advised that we should do a puja in the house, I should wear the mala and we should sing bhajans. As soon as I met him I could feel the vibration and my body was trembling. I saw that this guru had come out of his way to help me. We did the puja and he put the tulasi mala on me. As he put vibhuti on me, I fell to the ground. I felt the energy on me. Sri Bhairavan told me I had to get my energies together for this journey, that it would be a hard one.

We reached Cochin and started for Sabarimala. I had heard about the crowds and the lack of cleanliness. I had made up my mind not to eat or drink anything on the way, and though Radhika packed food for our drive we never ate. When we got to Erumeli (the starting point of the pilgrimage) it was raining heavily. Normally that is the place where pilgrims stop at a temple and get the irumudi, the offering to Ayyappa, entrusted to them. We couldn’t get the irumudiassembled there, so we went on to Pamba, the town along the river at the base of Sabarimala.

When I saw the rain and the way, I said to myself, “What did I get myself into and is this something I can do?”

Guru Swami doing Puja

Guru Swami singing for the lord 

Trance after getting tulasi mala from Guru Swami

Ernakulam Airport, Kerala

Guru Swami's First Flight

Getting Off The Flight

My guruswamy told me to take a bath in the Pamba. We were to do sraddam for our respective fathers. I took a dip in the water and sat on a rock as he instructed. Sri Bhairavan did the rites for his father and then he guided me through the rites for my father. He said we would climb to the top that same evening.

There were four or five priests from the Devasthanam. They usually assemble the irumudi in two to three minutes for each devotee. With us they took their time. We got our irumudi put on our heads. We had poured two cups of ghee in each coconut to be offered. We carried all that on our heads, hung a bag on our shoulders, with my passport and other things, and we started climbing the wet, slippery path. To keep the irumudi dry, we draped plastic sheets over it.

We climbed. Sri Bhairavan was 70 and handicapped and he was climbing. I had doubts then. “How am I going to finish this?” I thought. The path is steep and rocky, a tough climb. I saw the natural beauty around me and learned to let go and leave it to the lord. A few times I stopped for breath. It was getting dark and it still rained. At midpoint I sat and put my bag down next to me. I may have dozed for a second, and when I opened my eyes the bag was gone. But an elderly man near me said, “Your bag has fallen on the other side of the wall.” Luckily nothing had fallen out.

As we resumed climbing I kept asking, like a kid, “Are we there yet?” Finally I could see the lights from the temple. We had made it to the top. But the line of devotees seemed to stretch for miles. I said to guruswamy that it would take hours for us to get darshan. He said no. Sri Bhairavan walked, with me following behind, to the front of the line. Each time he reached a checkpoint the policeman on duty told us to go to the back and join the line, but each time he went forward.

When we reached the 18 golden steps, which were roped off, five policemen with lathis stood in front. Sri Bhairavan put his hands out and said, “Swami Ayyappa.” All five men moved aside and opened the rope for us. We broke the coconut on the first step and we climbed with no one in front and no one behind us. We climbed up without hindrance.

At the top, of course, there was again a huge crowd, but we got pulled to the side, towards the sannidhi, and within five feet of the deity I got a full, fulfilling darshan of his glory.

After darshan we asked the melsanthi or head priest to let us witness the nei abhishekam with the ghee we had brought with us. He said that was not possible, that devotees were no longer allowed to do that singly. Sri Bhairavan came out dejected but he didn’t take no for an answer. We looked for a place to sleep. It was raining, and all the shelters were full. We went to the kitchen and found some space on the floor to lie down, near where the dishes are washed and on the route to the bathrooms. I lay awake on the floor, listening to the jungle calls and the sound of the rain on the thatch.

At 4 a.m., I bathed and then I woke up Sri Bhairavan. We went to break our coconuts and transfer the ghee to a vessel. The ghee came out almost as a solid cylinder. Sri Bhairavan told me, “When I broke your coconut I knew what you had put into it. You have done the austerities correctly. You have the grace of the Lord.” The second and third coconuts came out the same. The ghee from another pilgrim’s coconut came out liquid. Sri Bhairavan said that when the vows are not correctly fulfilled, the ghee will not solidify. If that man had been part of a group, he said, he would have compromised everyone’s pilgrimage.

We tried again to offer our ghee for the abhishekam. This time, next to the melsanthi there was another priest who recognized Sri Bhairavan. He happened to be a former student of Sri Bhairavan. The melsanthi considered our case again and agreed to perform the abhishekam with our ghee offering in front of us. He said he would give some of the ghee as prasadam to us by the time we returned from our pradakshinam.

Going down the hill was as difficult as the climb up. We had a very short time to struggle down the path, find our car, and drive back to Cochin so that my guruswamy could catch his flight. He told me that the pilgrimage was not considered completed until I returned to the starting point, in this case the house in which we had performed the puja and I had first worn the tulasi mala. Until then, the austerities continue.

Sri Bhairavan’s return to the airport was more stressful than the entire pilgrimage, but throughout we felt the rare energy that came from him. We escorted him past the check-in counter and up to the security check before boarding. Each time we asked someone to assist him, people went out of their way to help. Once he went through the security gate, the rest of us were told to get behind the barriers again. We realized then that his presence was the number in front of the zeroes. I know the pilgrimage would not have been possible without him.