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From An Eagle’s Flight: “A Revelation of Life.”
An Excerpt from An Eagle’s Flight: A Yogi’s Spiritual Autobiography by Swami Nirmalananda Giri (Abbot George Burke)
Chapter Seven—A Revelation Of Life
The Passing of Grandmother Burge
The next turn in my road was utterly different from the preceding ones–and so was its advent and aftermath, since it centered around someone other than myself: my maternal grandmother, Docia Margaret Burge.
As I have already said, my grandmother Burge lived and moved in dimensions far beyond the mundane tides of daily life. What the world saw of her was but the tip of the iceberg. She lived in continual communication with realms invisible to earthly eyes. And that was her real life, of which her external life was only a cover. Her extreme childlikeness caused most people to look upon her as simple-minded when in truth she possessed an intellectual brilliance which she concealed as assiduously as she did her intuitional perceptions, confiding them only to me. Clairvoyant and clairaudient, she wielded seemingly limitless healing powers.
Like many great healers, Grandmother Burge herself was in poor health and rarely ventured beyond her yard–in which she grew large beds of flowers of great beauty–except to go to church. Yet she was the spiritual heart of the town, and her silent influence had shaped the destinies of all its residents to some degree. Silently she had lived, silently she had bestowed her benefits, and silently she departed. I alone knew the loss, for my love for Grandmother Burge had been the strongest force in my life. For some time when I was seven or eight years old I experienced deep concern over the degree of my love for her, fearing that I might perhaps love her even more than God.
A Year of Grief
Grief shadowed the days after my grandmother’s departure, grief so intense that at least once in each day I would weep over my great loss, and every night I would dream of her. Yet, such is the inconsistency of the human mind, that on one level I did not really comprehend that she was no longer on the earth. I found it impossible to accept that if I went to her house, whose atmosphere had unfailingly given me inner healing each time I entered, I would not find her there.
Every viable–i.e., working–religion cares for those who have passed out of this earth plane just as much as it cares for those still in physical embodiment. Reaching beyond the barrier of death into the worlds to which “the living” are blinded by their material consciousness, all the valid religions of the world continue to assist their departed adherents along the evolutionary path. They are also aware that the psychic tides which facilitate this process of outreach manifest in relation to the time at which the death took place. Especially potent is the yearly anniversary of the death. At that time it is not uncommon for sensitive persons to see or receive some type of communication from the departed–especially on the first anniversary.
A little after dawn exactly one year after Grandmother Burge’s departure (I was unaware of this at the time), my daily dream about her was especially vivid. Upon awakening I was, for the first time, thoroughly aware that she was truly no longer on earth. The emotion that arose within me at this realization was so powerful I wondered if I could physically survive it. I experienced a burning sensation deep within that seemed both physical and metaphysical. Luckily, a vestige of my mind remained objective, and that fragment said: “You can’t just lie here with your tears running into your ears like the country music song. Get up and move!” So I did, for, like Alice in Wonderland, I had for years been giving myself advice.
The Moment of Illumination
Still in the grip of my misery, I arose and went out of my bedroom. When I had advanced about six feet into the living room two things occurred simultaneously. First, in an eye-wink, every bit of my grief over my grandmother’s death vanished, leaving me perfectly at peace. Second, a door swung open within my conscious mind that within a true “split second in eternity” revealed like a vast panorama the full knowledge regarding human birth and evolution–especially its necessary consequence: reincarnation.
Four Basic Truths
I also perceived the inevitable passage of the human being into higher dimensions of existence for the purpose of evolution far beyond the human status. The soul would continue to incarnate in countless forms of ever-increasing perfection until the final Great Passage could be made. Then it would return back into the Infinite from which it had originally come forth into the great drama of Life. This did not unwind before me or arise within my mind in a continual stream. Rather, it was fully impressed into my consciousness at one lightning flash of insight that revealed four basic truths: reincarnation, karma, evolution of consciousness and a vast series of worlds through which the individual progresses as his scope of consciousness expands.
I walked over to the sofa and sat down without missing a step. There I sat and took several hours to assimilate all I had seen in that moment of illumination. If I had begun to write what I at last knew, I could have written an entire book without stopping, including how by observing his earlier life someone could see the evidences of his prior incarnations.
Four Basic Truths
The longer I sat, the greater grew the wonder and the delight. This was not theological theory from an external force–this was direct knowledge from within. My soul knew it, and now my poor brain was trying to grasp it all so no precious fragment would be lost. What I had forgotten upon coming into this incarnation was once again mine. Delivered from the hell of ignorance regarding the fundamental nature of myself and my life, I feasted on the paradisical fruit of eternal remembrance.
But there came an intruder into my paradise: what about my religion? Christianity did not teach any of the truths in which I was reveling–especially that of reincarnation. Yet I knew it was true. I might doubt the reality of the earth and the sky, but not the reality of rebirth. Well, then, the answer was simple: I was no longer a Christian.
What, then, was I? I would have to search and find out.
Currently it is considered quite clever and chic to shun religious definition or religious identity or religious commitment. “Organized religion” is anathema, a terrible bugaboo, replacing the past bugaboos of Tyranny, Poverty, and Popery. “Create your own religion” is the current coffee table cliché meaning: “Be your own God.”And of course the inane boast of being “spiritual” rather than religious.
But according to my new insight God was Someone considerably greater than I–and Someone far more worth seeking and loving than my limited egoic self. My understanding that God was in a sense my true Self only delineated this more sharply. Of this I was assured: whatever religion I might eventually follow, I was now and had always been a seeker for His face, a quester for the vision in which seer and Seen become one, though eternally distinct.
An Eagle’s Flight: A Yogi’s Spiritual Autobiography by Swami Nirmalananda Giri is available as paperback or ebook at Amazon.com
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An Eagle’s Flight: A Yogi’s Spiritual Autobiography
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