Extraordinary Evidence > Other Entities and Realms > A Cosmic Journey

A Cosmic Journey

Connie Mantas

Connie Mantas has been a devotee of Adi Da since the early 1970's. She is a registered nurse who at the time of this story, was working with the dying.

This story was taken from Chapter 8 of The Promised God-Man Is Here, by Carolyn Lee.

Connie was taken through a remarkable experience by Avatar Adi Da. Adi Da walked over to her during a gathering at His House at The Mountain Of Attention, and asked her to lie down on the floor next to Him. He lay flat on His back next to her and closed His eyes, saying "Now do exactly as I do." Then, through silent Instruction, He guided her through the patterns of conditional existence that are experienced in the death transition.

First there was an explosion of inner sounds. Then I felt the layers of the body-mind release and fall away. "I" was separating out from the physical body and seemed to fly upwards, whirling through dark space at an incredible speed. I was moving toward an overwhelming, brilliant light. At one point, I recall slipping through a kind of "grid" as a speck of consciousness.

For an instant, I did seem to lose all self-awareness, but throughout the rest of the experience I was aware of the most remarkable clarity. I found that I felt more familiar and at ease traveling without the body than when I was dragging it along, anchored to it by my usual physical-body identification. I felt myself to be alive as Consciousness, at ease as the witness of mind and attention.

At different moments in this Cosmic journey, I felt the deep urges of the body-mind drawing me back towards embodiment, and I sensed the frustration of having no physical body through which to enact or fulfill desires. This made a stunning impression on me, and I remember feeling how foolish it would be to waste the opportunity of a human lifetime to do the [spiritual practice] that could help free me of the binding attachments I had now seen so clearly.

Then I became aware of a loud buzzing or humming sound as I slowly came back into [identification with] the body-mind, taking on each layer [or sheath], starting with the most subtle. The inner sounds quieted until once again I was aware of lying on the floor.

When I opened my eyes, the face of Beloved Adi Da was right next to mine, and He was grinning at me with a gigantic smile. He opened His mouth and started to laugh. It was more than a laugh — it was a victorious and triumphant Shout, glorious to hear. Instead of being awestruck by this remarkable journey I had just taken with Him, I felt sheer marvel at Who He Is. I felt, "Yes! There is this great scheme of conditional existence, of which human embodiment is a part. But first, and most importantly, HE IS THE MASTER OF IT ALL! And I have a relationship with That One!"

Without exchanging a word with me, Beloved Adi Da got up, walked to His Chair and began a discourse on death and the "grid" through which we pass at death. This was one of the first occasions at which Beloved Adi Da spoke of the total pattern of phenomena, or the Cosmic Mandala, as He would later describe it. As always, He had one primary message — no experience, high or low, is the answer to our suffering. No "one" survives in the Great Plastic of forms. Only Consciousness Itself persists, the Eternal "I", the Self-Existing and Self-Radiant Condition of all, Beyond the grid of appearances.

This story appears in the following sections:
Blessings, Miracles, and Extraordinary Evidence and Easy Death