History

Divine Visions

Dada Lekhraj had a very humble beginning as the son of a schoolmaster. Though born in a middle class family, he rose quickly in his profession by dint of hard effort, honesty combined with cleverness and focused intellect, to become one of the richest men in India. He was a very pious, humble, accurate, disciplined, noble, Godly, spiritual minded and devotee of highest order and he was trusted and respected by all people who knew him, including kings during that period. He was an ordinary person in the sense that he was neither a mass leader nor a politician; neither a saint nor a scientist. But he was a man with special qualities.

Dada was contemplating a life of retirement and spend the rest of his life in complete devotion as he was nearing sixty, but little did he realize that something out of the world would happen in his life. He was stunned and astonished by a series of divine visions that he had never imagined.

One day while Dada was sitting in the back hall of his bungalow with a group of fellow disciples of his guru, he began to get strange experience. He recognized these unique inner sensations as the onset of a spiritual encounter, but still he knew neither their cause nor purpose. Yet there was exquisite sense of heightened perception, a new clarity of mind and vision. A powerful intuitive grasp of reality was growing in him inexorably. He went to his own room to get away from the company of his visitors. As he sat alone, absorbed in the incomprehensible manifestations of a new level of being, he was filled with a divine intoxication. Waves of unutterable bliss surged on him, drenched him in ecstasy. He had gone beyond all conscious of his body, he was pure soul, pure light , afloat in an ocean of bliss. Then a revelation: a vision of the four-armed form deity of Vishnu.

Few days later, Dada received a double revelation: first a vision of Jyothirlingam Shiva Paramatma ( The Supreme Soul whose eternal form is a Point of Light ), and then , a terrifying vision of the destruction of the modern world.

The vision of Shiva (mening world benefactor) clinched his understanding of his own identity. The Supreme Soul is a Point of Light. His children, the souls are truly just such tiny forms, sparks of conscient light. Only we, the children, take bodies and play out our roles on the stage of the physical world, while Shiva remains in His eternal form. And by taking birth and rebirth, we forget ourselves, while He knows the entire cosmic play. He watches as, life after life, the souls decline, their energies decrease and they begin to act viciously toward one another. Then, before the end, He comes, to lift His children to perfection once again. But what kind of end is it, which is about to come, and what sort of new beginning?

Dada witnessed in his vision the destruction. He saw that very powerful bombs had been manufactured and were being fired. He saw guided missiles with warheads of such devastating potency that whole regions of earth were burnt up in a moment. Gigantic fireballs, cities in flame, unbearable storms of fire were raging everywhere. When he received his visions, America had not dropped the first atomic bombs.

Dada also saw how the death came slower through wars and civil wars, culminating in an awesome wave of natural catastrophes: floods and tidal waves, earthquakes of every kind wreaking havoc on the scarred face of the earth. Dada began to tremble uncontrollably upon witnessing the scenes of this great world wide destruction. Humans and animals were running wildly about, trying to save their lives, to escape from the jaws of death. But there was no escape. The wail of horror, the rivers of blood and pus, the panic and the desperation, and then, the final death. The silent aftermath. Dada, who had never shed a tear, was weeping now. “Oh, God, please stop this, please stop this!” he cried. “What a terrible destruction! Please, now show me your other side, your beautiful form.”

With these visions, everything was changed for Dada. He could not apply his mind to diamond business any more. It simply held no interest. He decided to wind up his affairs. He had owned his shop there for so many years, and yet it all looked so strange to him, so meaningless. He walked down the aisles of his jewelry ware-house, looking at the trays full of glittering diamonds, millions of dollars worth of gems, gleaming symbols of the greatest wealth, which men were known to kill and die for and he felt that they were simply stones, worthless hunks of mineral.

Later, Dada saw the moment of his uncle’s death. He saw the soul take leave of the body, exiting through the forehead. Life energy, rising like mercury in a thermometer, moved up from the toes and concentrated in the head. In an instant the soul departed. Thus Dada understood the process of death. Only the body died, he saw clearly. Not the soul.

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