Part Two

I think I can divide my spiritual journey into two parts as before coming to Canada and after

coming to Canada. First I thought of dividing it like before I became a Sai devotee and after I

became one. But I've already written about how I became a Sai devotee. So I changed my

mind. But I became a Sai devotee before coming to Canada. That is also his grace (We have

a saying in Tamil that even to pray to God we need God's grace. Otherwise we can't do it). I

used to think that Baba thought of making me a Sai devotee before I came to Canada or else

I would be suffering or something. When I studied Early Childhood Education in a college in

Montreal I had a course named 'Interpersonal Skills'. In that course we studied about the

Individualistic societies and Collectivist societies. Individualistic societies are those that prioritize

the needs of an individual over the needs of the group they belong to whereas collectivist

societies prioritize the needs of the groups over the needs of the individuals of those groups. The

US, Western Europe and Australia are examples of individualistic societies. Countries such as

Portugal, Mexico and Turkey are examples of collectivist societies. Of course the Indian and

Srilankan cultures are collectivistic cultures. Everyone's thoughts have an effect on the vibrations

surrounding those societies and create a combined effect. Those vibrations can affect people's

mind living in that society. The vibrations in the Eastern countries like Sri Lanka or India are not

the same as the vibrations in the Western countries. Maybe it's because of the thoughts of the

people in those countries I don't know. I felt it in my experience. When I lived in India I had the

same problems as I had in Canada in the later years. But somehow I had the mental strength to

tolerate the difficulties when I was in India than I was in Canada. I also have other experiences with

the vibrations. Once I remember going into a school building to give my daughter her lunch bag

during lunch hour. All the children were in the dining room. When I returned from the school buildingI felt something like academic vibrations in me. I don't know how to explain it. Once me and my

husband went to the Sai Baba bhajan center in Montreal. It was within a few months of me and my

daughter coming to Canada. I was homesick and depressed. It was like mental agony. Once we

entered the building we went to the basement to leave our shoes and jackets. There was a picture of

Baba with a smiling face hanging on the wall. I was praying to him in my mind while I was passing it.

After we left the shoes and came to the bajan hall my mind was cleared and I felt peace in my mind.

Actually the spiritual vibrations in that building and Baba's grace cleared my mind. There's some truth

about the vibrations. If a society is individualistic rather than collectivistic then the vibrations in that

society can affect in a negative way a person coming from a collectivistic society I think. I often think

this is why Baba made me a Sai devotee before I came to Canada so that I have something to hold on

to whenever I have difficulties. Even though I heard about Baba in the seventies I started to

believe in his divinity only in the early nineties. That was just one year before coming to Canada. If

I had believed in his divinity when we were living in India I would have dragged my husband with

me to see Baba. Even though we lived in the sacred land for three years I didn't see my Lord.

Even though I became a Sai devotee before coming to Canada I think I didn't accept him fully. Once, my favorite singer from India (P. Susheela) came to Canada. We went to her concert. They were selling audio cassettes of Baba bhajans sung by her there. I bought a cassette and got her signed. Next day I was listening to those bajans in the Walkman my husband had gifted me and was folding the clothes. As is customary the bajans had started with lord Ganesha. Then lord Shiva, lord Muruga and lord Krishna's songs went on. All those songs had ended with Baba's name in the last verse. But one particular song started like 'prashanthi nilaya sunthara...'. That means 'The charming person who resides in the Prashanthi Nilayam'. Baba's residence in his hometown is called the Prashanthi Nilayam (prashanthi means highest peace and nilayam means house. So the meaning of his residence is 'home for highest peace'). The songs which had Baba's name at the end were acceptable for me but not the full song about him alone. Also the cassette wasn't full. Only three fourths of the tape had songs on it. That also reduced my interest in it. So, I put it on the top shelf and forgot about it. After that a lot of miracles happened in my life because of his grace (I had written a letter to Baba about my problems and it got solved in a most unexpected way). One day after that I happened to listen to that cassette and when I heard the same song (Prashanthi nilaya sunthara...) I broke into tears thinking 'Oh my God, one half of myself is over there. What am I going to do?'. I sat on the floor and was crying and crying. The same song that I didn't want to listen to before made me cry at that moment. I think after his miracles happened in my life only I was ready to accept him fully.

We used to go to a bajan center conducted by a French family every Sunday. My sister-in-law got married then. Her groom came from France. He was also a Sai devotee. Actually he was a staunch Sai Devotee. After the wedding celebrations finished he had started a bajan center in his house for the Tamil people. It was the first Tamil bajan center in Montreal. Apparently he had started two bajan centers for Tamils in France. Actually I didn't know anything about the Sai bajans as I was new to the Sai worship. He gave me a set of old torn papers on which Baba's 108 namavali (prayers on god reciting his various names) were written and asked me to write them down on a new set of papers so that we can recite them at the beginning of the bajan. 108 is considered a sacred number in Hinduism. I wrote them down. Until then I didn't know about namavali. I also didn't know any bhajan songs then. He gave me bajan cassette pieces to listen to and encouraged me to sing bhajan songs. Little by little I also became a professional bajan singer.        

Every Sunday we had bhajans at his house (sister-in-law's house). Relatives, friends and others who wanted to join in the bajans came. Then they (sister-in-law and husband) moved to Toronto. The bajan also moved to another person's house. They wanted to have bajans at their house. People wanted to run bajans in their houses to elevate the sacred vibrations of their houses. Their house was a little farther than my sister-in-law's house. Since we didn't have cars back then, we had to take the bus and the underground train called Metro to go to the bajan. The continuous bajans made me more spiritual and I gave up meat and became a vegetarian again. Actually I was a vegetarian before marriage and started to eat meat after marriage. I continued to be a vegetarian for some time. Since my husband liked to eat meat and our daughter's food is not the same as ours it was very hard to keep my vegetarianism. So my husband changed my mind and I started to eat meat again.

I was pregnant with my second child. I took a bus to go to the bajan every Sunday. Sometimes my husband joined me but sometimes I went alone. Everyone in the bajan center said my child is a blessed one because it can hear the bajans even in mother's womb.

The people whose house where the bajans happened had some problems and they were not able to continue bhajans. So we started to have the bajans at our house at this juncture. Since I didn't want the bajan to stop its continuity I told everyone 'let's have the bajan at our house'. But our house wasn't that big to accommodate everyone coming to the bajan. I was a little concerned about it. I left it to Baba to do whatever he wanted to do. Only a few people came to our bajan. Actually a lot of people came to the previous bajans. That too the grace of God I believe.

We had the bajans at our house for two Sundays. A man who came to the bajans before, came to our house bajans the second Sunday and told us there's a place where we can conduct bhajans freely. We agreed to it. It was in front of the Parc metro station in Montreal. The Tamil association called 'Thamilar Oli' had a hall in that big building. They used to give that hall for other public purposes too. So we started to conduct the bajans there. Since it's not happening in people's houses anymore we needed to form a committee. The person who helped us get the hall became the president of the committee and my husband became the vice president.

The bajans were happening well. We used to make prasadams (eatables we offer in front of god's idols and eat them after our praying session is finished) and bring them to the bajans. There was also another woman who was pregnant, who came to the bajan. She said she couldn't decide what name to give the baby. She knew it was a baby boy from the ultrasound. So she asked Baba to guide her in her mind. Baba came to her in her dreams and told her to give the baby lord Muruga's name. So she named the baby boy after lord Muruga. I got inspired by her and I asked Baba to select a name for my baby boy too. We recite the 108 names (namavali) of Bagavan in the beginning of each bajan session. The first before the last line in that namavali was Sulaba prasannaaya namaha. That means he who appears to a devotee as soon as the devotee asks. One day when I was reciting that verse there was an inner voice said to me to name my child Prasanna. So I named him Prasanna. When I was pregnant with him we found out it's a boy during an ultrasound. I was thinking about his name. Since Baba's childhood name was Sathya I thought of giving him that name also. I also believed in numerology. According to numerology each letter has a different character and it can affect our mind too. The people whose names start with the letter 'S' it says have a tendency of being ambivalent. So I didn't choose that name. But Baba gave him his name as his nickname through someone. 

Bajan sessions were going on very well. I was pregnant with my third child. After some time there were problems conducting the bajans. Sister-in-law and her husband had moved back to Montreal again. They renewed the bajan and conducted it again. So the bajan was happening peacefully thereafter for some time. 

I gave birth to my third child (second son). When I was pregnant with him I felt it's a boy even before they were doing an ultrasound. He was born on Krishna Jayanthi day. Krishna Jayanthi means the birthday of Lord Krishna. We named him one of Lord Krishna's names. 

Sometimes I get spiritual experiences through dreams also. 

My husband was doing the evening shift then. His work hours were 3 to 11 pm. Back then I used to sleep early with my newborn and the two year old on either side of me. Before going to bed I served my husband's food. If I was awake whenever my husband came from work I used to get up or else he ate and went to bed. One particular night while I was sleeping I had a dream: There was a round balcony in the midair and I was falling from it. There was someone on the balcony and I asked for help. That person was telling me I have a lot of ego and he can't help me. Then a mantra (one of lord Shiva's names) came in my mind and when I utter that mantra I went up. Then again I fell. Again when I say that mantra I went very high in the sky. In the continuation of the dream we were in front of the house where we grew up and I was above the roof and still doing the same. I was going up and down using the mantra. My daughter was laughing whenever I went up and down. I woke up from the dream saying that mantra. I was semiconscious. In my mind I was saying that mantra continuously. While I was continuously saying the mantra in my mind I felt something was going from me upwards through my head. I felt a soothing feeling in my mind and a pleasant cold feeling in my body. There's no words to describe the feeling. That blissful feeling cannot be explained. In the Hindu scriptures there's a word called 'perinbam'. That means blissfulness. That is the feeling we get when we are near to God. Similar term in English can be ecstasy. So I thought "is it perinbam?" Since I'm an ardent devotee of lord Shiva, I thought that feeling can be received from the mount Kailash - the abode of lord Shiva. But now I'm thinking of it as a spiritual experience only. I was soaked in that blissful state for some time. Then I heard my husband opening the door. I didn't want to lose that blissful feeling so I didn't get up. Next day I told my husband about the experience. When I was thinking about it the next day only I remembered the previous day my mind was in a very purified state. I think I was ready for that spiritual experience. I heard some people say these kinds of spiritual experiences have to be kept secret and not to be shared. I can't agree with it. Also at that time I didn't know that Baba gave some people spiritual initiation through dreams. Then only I heard about it.

When I was small there was an initiation ceremony for kids in our temple. We planned to go for it. That time our aunt's family was visiting from Jaffna. My aunt has seven children and two girls are bigger than my biggest sister. They like picking on small kids like me. When we were planning to go to the initiation ceremony my two cousins and my two big sisters were making fun of that ceremony saying "the priest would say the mantra secretly into your ears and what the priest was going to say". They were all laughing. I got scared. So I said "I'm not going to the initiation ceremony". I remember studying in the religion class that one saint got initiated by lord Shiva when he was staying at a pilgrimage place without him knowing. While he was sleeping at night one person was sleeping on the side of his head and his feet were touching the saint's head repeatedly. Each time when he told that person to take off his feet, he took his feet off and again he touched his head. It happened so many times and finally that saint got annoyed and got up and scolded that person. Then that person disappeared and lord Shiva appeared in his place and told that saint "You requested me to give you initiation. That's why I came". The saint prostrated before lord Shiva. I said I'm going to get an initiation like that. After I had that dream I thought about that incident too. I thought maybe lord Shiva gave me initiation in my dream. God was pulling me little by little on the spiritual path upwards. Since that mantra came in my dream I understood it was my mantra. Sai devotees already have 'Sairam' as a mantra. So I have two mantras now.

Sai bajan was going well. My daughter also started to sing the bhajan songs. Both my sons (3,1 years) used to run around in the bajan center. The Bala Vikas classes had been started for the small children. I was appointed as a Bala Vikas teacher.

Our relative who was doing the bajans used to give me spiritual books to read. Some of the books were in Tamil and some were in English. One particular book was different. It's called 'Conversations with God'. The author's name was Neale Donald Walsch. He had a habit of writing his difficulties on a notepad. Once, he had problems with his wife and children. Not only that, he also had issues in his work and he had health problems too. Overloaded with problems instead of just writing he thought of writing a letter to God. So he started to write an angry letter to God. After writing he tried to put the pencil away but couldn't. The pencil was as if it was going to write something. So he let the pencil write. He was just holding the pencil and it wrote "Do you really want an answer to all these questions or are you just venting?" He was amazed. He then wrote 'I was actually venting but if I can get answers for the questions it will be amazing'. Hence started the dialog. Walsch felt answers to his questions filling his mind and decided to write them down. The ensuing dialogue became the Conversations with God books. After he finished writing his question and kept the pen or pencil just, then his hand would move without his effort. Until he finished writing he didn't know what was going to be written. It's commonly called 'automatic writing'. Lots of books were being written in this way. 'Patience Worth Series Received by a Midwestern Housewife' and 'The Fascinating New Testament Stories Dictated through Geraldine Cummins' were examples of those kinds of books.

So the conversations started with Neale Donald Walsch went on for weeks and at one point it moved from his private matters to general matters. Everyday he sat with paper and pen at the same time and wrote the questions and then the answers to those questions popped up. Even he didn't know how this was going to end at that time. But at one point God has written to him that these conversations are going to come in three books. He didn't believe it then. But when the manuscript of book one was finished he was instructed to start the publishing works. He reluctantly started doing all the work for publishing, thinking if it's going to be accepted by the public.

The first book (Conversations with God, Book 1: An Uncommon Dialogue) was published in 1995 and became a publishing phenomena, staying on 'The New York Times Best Sellers List for more than two years. Book one was speaking about personal matters while the other two in the trilogy were speaking about global matters and universal matters. We read all three and were so amazed. The answers to those questions were not ordinary ones. So authentic. An ordinary human being can't give such answers. The person who's responsible for this whole creation only can give such answers. Especially that third book (which speaks about the secrets of the universe) was supposed to be in all the houses.

The relative who was conducting the bajans once gave a medium's book called ‘A World Beyond’. He used to give spiritual books but this book was about after death. I thought 'why should I read a book about after death? What spirituality I can get in a book like this'. But once I started to read it only I realized that until we knew about what happens after death we are only half way through in spirituality.

After reading that book I got interested in that subject and started to read those kinds of books. Also since the book 'A World Beyond' looked small, I thought of translating it into Tamil and giving it to those people who can't read English. Even though Hindu religion has everything explained because of the new way of thinking and the scientific revolution made people ignore those scriptures. I want them to know there's life after death. Already we were thinking of translating the CWG books. But since those books were big and the answers from God were a bit tricky to translate I was reluctant to do it. Since the book 'A World Beyond' looked small I thought of translating it but once I started to translate it only I found out how difficult it was. Even though it looked small, the sentences were very big. In the beginning I did the direct translation but it wasn't good language-wise. Then only I read those sentences and tried to write it in simple language. At that time I didn't know about blogging. So I tried to write it neatly so that I can give the manuscript to people who came to bajans. After I finished translating some pages I gave some people a chance to read it. At that time my translation also was not that good; And not many people are interested in what happens after we die. But I continued my translation. Then only I came to know about blogging through that relative. Even at that time I didn't know about transliteration. So I didn't write anything in that blog. The person who opened that blog for me once asked why I didn't do anything in that blog. So once I was researching that blog. Then only I found out that we can easily type in Tamil using the English keyboard by the transliteration method. After that I started to put my translations on that blog. The name of the blog is ananthageetham.blogspot.com. I also started another blog in English called solequest.blogspot.com. On that blog I put whatever verses or sentences that spiritually inspired me.

In Canada we lived in Montreal for eleven years, then moved to Cornwall. We lived there for eleven years and then moved to Toronto. While we were living in Cornwall some of my past lives were revealed to me through dreams. One morning I woke up to someone calling me 'Mumthaazi'. After I gained my consciousness only I realized that I was being called by the name Mumthaazi and I said 'yes' to the call. First I was a little confused. I thought maybe my daughter called me 'amma' and I had heard it wrong. Since my husband had gone for work and my two sons had gone to school at that time it was just me and my daughter who were the only people in the house. So I thought maybe she had called me. So I went to check on her in her room and she was sleeping. I woke her up and asked her whether she had called me. She said "no". So I wondered what happened. Also the name 'Mumthaazi' sounds strange to me. When we studied about one of the seven wonders of the world (Taj Mahal) we learned that Mughal emperor Shah Jahan built a mausoleum for his loving wife Mumtaj. So when I was being called by that name I was so confused. It was not Mumtaj but a weird name 'Mumthaazi'. So I checked the internet. Then only I found out her actual name was not Muntaj but Mumthaazi. I was so shocked. I wondered if it was me who was Mumthaazi in one of my past lives to whom the famous monument called Taj Mahal was being built. My intuition said 'yes'. After that incident when I was thinking about the emperor Shah Jahan's palace I felt that their palace was decorated with purple and gold colors. Also their community was a close community. Also I felt I as a queen helped a lot of people. Maybe those were my imaginations but I answered to someone calling me Mumthaazi. That really happened. I don't know how else to explain that.

Before that, I once had a dream of me being a white man in the 1600 or something. Just like we hire taxis now, those days we were able to hire carts pulled by horses. In that dream I hired a cart like that for my moving. While I was traveling on that cart the driver of the cart tricked me, made me unconscious and abducted me to put tattoos on my chest under my neck. After I woke up from my unconsciousness only I saw the tattoo on my chest. It looked like tulip flowers. Two flowers side by side. The tattoo was not fully done. Two lines were drawn that looked like garlands around my chest and the tulips were in between the lines. Only two tulips were on one side of my chest. I got upset and I was asking people how to erase the tattoo from my body. And then I woke up.

After that my daughter and I went to Kingston for sightseeing. We were walking to certain places with a group of people. At that time I had some leg issues called tendonitis. Since I brought a water bottle in my purse it was a little heavy. So my daughter was asking whether she can carry my purse while we were walking and I said "it's ok I'll carry". After the trip we came home. That night I had a dream: I was a man servant to a famous singer and my daughter was my son (a little boy around ten years). I had to bring some heavy wooden boards from a shed at the frontside of her house to somewhere else. My son felt bad for me and asked whether he can do the work instead of me and I told him "no dear it's my job". Then that singer came outside of the house to go somewhere else. And my dream had ended. Some people interpreted that dream something like: Since I like that singer I had that dream or something. But I didn't have any likes of her before that dream but after that dream I have a fatherly feeling towards her.

My previous births were revealed to me thus. Some people say reincarnation is a hoax. But a lot of Americans are doing research on it. Ian Stevenson was an American psychiatrist. He worked for the University of Virginia School of Medicine for fifty years, as chair of the department of psychiatry from 1957 to 1967, Carlson Professor of psychiatry from 1967 to 2001, and Research Professor of Psychiatry from 2002 until his death. Stevenson became known for his research of reincarnation. Over a period of forty years in international fieldwork, he investigated three thousand cases of children who claimed to remember past lives. He was the author of around three hundred papers and fourteen books on reincarnation, including European Cases of the Reincarnation Type. Another child psychiatrist called Jim Tucker from the same university continued Stevenson's research and wrote a book called Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children's Memories of Previous Lives. There's another woman called Carol Bowman who became interested in the 'past life' phenomenon by accident. On Independence Day, 1988, five-year-old Chase Bowman became inexplicably terrified by a fireworks display. Over the next few months, his fear of explosive noises intensified. For help, his mother Carol Bowman, turned to a friend who was a hypnotherapist. The hypnotherapist simply put Chase on his mother's lap and asked him to close his eyes and tell what he sees when he hears loud noises. Chase immediately began describing himself as a soldier—an adult soldier—carrying a gun. "I’m standing behind a rock. I’m carrying a long gun with a kind of sword at the end." Chase seemed to be transferred to a battlefield during the Civil War. He also saw a black soldier being shot. When asked about his ethnicity he said he's also black. In his vision, Chase was shot in the wrist and sent to a field hospital. After being bandaged, he was sent back to the front to man a cannon. He said he was then killed during the battle. It appeared that he had a past life during the Civil War. Carol was certain that he could not have known any of these things, as he had never watched or read anything about it. Later, he drew rough sketches of the field hospital and the cannon that he had seen. Civil War historians felt that the drawings were very accurate. Interestingly, he also had eczema on his wrist that went away soon after his hypnotic session. Carol became interested in past life experiences with children and later wrote a book about it called "Children's Past Lives".

My daughter's wedding was held in 2016. One of the two main reasons for our move from

Cornwall to Toronto is to perform our daughter's wedding. Other one is our sons’ studies. Even

though I'm inclined towards spirituality, as a mother and a housewife I try to do my duties well.