I would like to tell you a very interesting true story narrated to me
by my Guru Kisonlal Tejpal.

There were two ladies, in relation who were daughter in law and
mother-in-law. Both were widows and were living in a small village
named Tulsishyam. In Gujarat State. They were of a very helping
nature. They had announced in the village that anybody suffering from
any disease may take from them enchanted divine water to drink as
medicine and get well. All the village folk, young and old, were very
much benefited by the divine water and the word spread to adjoining
villages. The number of patients increased enormously and both the
poor ladies were worried because the source of divine water was very
much limited. The secret was that those obliging ladies were
distributing their own urine mixed with drinking water. One day they
disclosed this secret to all patients and told them to drink their
own urine instead. All the people were very angry on hearing this and
were bent upon beating the poor ladies, but were calmed down when
they were made to realise that drinking the urine benefited them.

One more interesting incident comes to my mind. A friend of mine
named Mr. A.B. (not his real name), who is serving in a very high
Govt. post, got inspiration from me and started drinking and applying
his own urine, without disclosing this adventure to his wife. After
only a few months of practice his wife commented that he was becoming
younger day by day and his hair were turning black. Still he had no
guts to disclose the secret to his wife. I advised him to invite my
family for lunch or dinner to their house and we would disclose the
secret of his youthfulness to his wife, and accordingly on hearing my
talk on the subject she had also become a staunch follower and
propagator of this therapy.

I came across a great soul by the name Ashok Gaonkar, who is an
enthusiastic propagator of uropathy. He gave me a Xerox copy of a
newspaper cutting with a caption "Sea of a girl who defied death".
Which had appeared in Mid-day Bombay. The mysterious recovery story
of the girl named Bharti Katbamna is so thrilling and hair-raising
that I am tempted to give the gist of the same in this paper.

The girl aged 23; her doctor told a student of speech therapy at Nail
Hospital, Bombay, on finding a huge blood clot on her tongue that she
was suffering from a disease known as idiopathic thrombocytopenic
purpura. In this disease platelet count drops dangerously low
preventing blood clotting. It results in bleeding from all orifices
of the body (including eyes and brain resulting in blindness and
death.) There is no known cause or cure for the disease except
surviving on steroids. She tried Homoeopathy also with no results.
Later on her disease was diagnosed as systemic lupus erythematosus
and the purpura was only a symptom of it. There is no known cause or
cure for S.L.E. In the meantime she was operated and her spleen was
cut off and removed. She lost her hair and her face had become
swollen (moon face) due to the use of harmful drugs like steroids and
antibiotics etc. and she was placed in a hopeless and precarious
condition when miraculously a book, The water of life, came to her
hands. On reading it, she courageously tried uropathy and within a
week she felt better and completely recovered in six months and she
regained radiant health.

At present Dr. Bharti is working as a professor of audio logy at
Cleveland University of Ohio state in U.S.A. with no sign. of the
disease. She says, "Not any test in America has been able to prove
that I had this incurable disease and further confirms, "I must be
the only person in the world with this disease living flintily
without the aid of steroids". She is not aware that by drinking her
urine she was getting steroids in its most natural form. Recently she
had bout of Australian hepatitis, which she herself cured by uropathy.

My friend Mr. Gaonkar has cured a number of similar cases and most of
them he met after four years are perfectly healthy. Now he has joined
my mission wholeheartedly 1.o serve the ailing humanity.

ven though this paper is becoming bulky. I can't resist the
temptation of narrating to you a very thrilling recovery story of a
patient who suffered from kidney failure. His name was Mr. B.C.
Desai, aged about 45 years, staying in Kandivli, a distant suburb of
Bombay. He was hailing from a middle class family. About 10 years ago
he had a kidney trouble and on investigation it was detected that God
had forgotten to give him the second kidney. His one kidney had
failed and he was kept on dialysis for some time and was told to
arrange for a kidney donor and huge amount of funds for the operation
and hospitalization charges. He had no means to undergo kidney
transplant, hence he opted for U.T. very easily. I am purposely using
the word easily because his wife was drinking urine since more than
25 years for keeping herself healthy and fit. So he already knew the
medicinal values of urine and started U.T. in right earnest under the
guidance of a urine therapist. When his urine was examined after the
treatment of one month the report was absolutely normal. His
physicians who had advised him kidney transplant couldn't believe-
their eyes when they saw that their patient was surviving without
dialysis and without transplant. (He has recently died. He had
survived for seven years against the doctors' prognosis of few
months.)

While writing this paper my thought goes to one more great soul
staying in U.S.A.; his name was Amarchibhai Kharecha, who was a
writer and poet, and wrote under the pen name "Anabhigna". He was a
great propagator and exponent of uropathy and a bosom friend of mine.
I would like to narrate to you the incident by which he got attracted
to this therapy, the same being very interesting and inspiring.

He used to get influenza every three months regularly and would
become weaker and weaker after each attack. In spite of thorough and
intensive investigation, checkup and medication as per latest
inventions in U.S.A., doctors could neither stop the recurrence of
his fever nor could they find the cause of the same.

He accidentally stumbled upon this divine therapy and got rid of his
persisting malady forever. As a beneficial side effect he got rid of
his ear .eye and teeth trouble; at the age of 72 his teeth were so
strong and healthy that he could devour one full sugarcane with his
bare teeth. Since the time he recovered from his mysterious sickness
it had become his mission of life to spread and propagate the message
of this divine therapy.

When he came to know that Mr. Ronald Reagan was suffering from cancer
he had written a letter to him informing him about the fabulous
medicinal values of urine and had sent him the book "Shivambu Kalp"
written by Dr. Arthur Lincoln Pauls.

I am extremely sorry to inform the readers that my bosom friend Shri
Amarshibhai has passed away in Aug. 94. His death has caused
irreparable personal loss to me as well as to shivambu campaign as he
was a mighty supporter of it. Because of our common mission we had
come very close to each other. Our foundation had been established
with his generous donation of Rs.25000/-. He used to spend lacs of
rupees every year for the propagation of U.T. as well as for other
projects of public utility. He has made a generous donation of Rs.10
lacs to Rashtriya Shala of Rajkot for the construction of shivambu
hospital, which has started functioning recently, its address is:
Shivambu Chikitsa Bhavan
Rashtriya Shala Compound No. 2.
Chhelbhai Dave Marg,
Rajkot 360002
Phone - 46076

SOMA IS URINE

Subject: THE SATAPATHA BRAHMANA OF THE RIG VEDA
The Rig Veda contains one passage in which urine and soma are
mentioned together. Wasson seized upon this to support his
hypothesis:
Acting in concert, those charged with the office, richly gifted, do
full homage to Soma. The swollen men piss the flowing (soma).
[O'Flaherty, p. 123]
The Satapatha Brahmana, being a very ancient commentary on the
Rig Veda, the oldest of all Hindu scriptures, is found in the
series, The Sacred Books of the East, edited by E. Max Mueller and
published by India's foremost publisher of scriptures, Motilal
Banarsidas, Delhi. Somewhere in the Satapatha Brahmana, it
states: "Soma is seed. Soma is urine." Literally, Soma means Moon, a
similitude for the woman's monthly cycle. See "Rig Veda" in our
earlier messages. - Sw. Tantrasangha

SHAKTI PAT

To be a savior and win disciples rather than perpetrators is founded
upon the reality of mutual participation. Sanskrit has a word for the
mutual influence which elevates: shaktipat. Shakti-pata
means "descent of power" and refers to the "transmission of
psychospiritual energy (shakti) from the adept to the disciple"
(Feuerstein, 1990). Shaktipat may be conferred by a touch, the
bestowal of an article of clothing, a word, a glance, or even a
thought. Often it is used in the phrase shaktipat diksha, "initiation
(diksha) by the descent of power." Yeshe initiated the seven rapists
through the act of intercourse they believed they were forcing upon
her when the energy of her raised kundalini elevated their lust and
opened their higher chakras through the inductive force of shaktipat.

[In shaktipat diksha] the master directly transmits his energy to the
student to remove the final obstacle, awakening the sleeping serpent
and leading her upward. One who is functioning on a higher level may
sometimes unconsciously influence those around him in the same way
that a magnet influences metal objects in its proximity. . . . As a
magnet influences a particular metal, such a teacher influences those
who are prepared. . . . In shaktipat the influence is conscious and
extremely intense. Through a look, touch, or thought the master
transmits his own power to the aspirant, who is suddenly transported
into a realm of blissful divine consciousness (Rama, 1990: 39).

Generally the transmission of shaktipat is understood to take place
through the heart chakra of master and disciple, for the anahata is
above all the locus of sublime unity between individuals. The
transmission inspires expansion, love, and the sense that one stands
above "the surface of the earth." It is a "spiritual" transferal, but
it takes place "from body to body" (Silburn, 1987: 87).
It "enhallows" (Feuerstein, 1989: 27) the disciple along the three
dimensions of mystical experience we have emphasized: physiology,
emotion, and imagination. Sometimes the recipient enters directly
into dhyana or samadhi and remains there for an extended period of
time. "After shaktipat, meditation becomes natural, and takes place
without strain or striving" (Desai, 1990: 75). It is often described
as a "divine" transmission, for it is based in the guru's capacity
for becoming one with the cosmos, "the infinite realm of
illumination" (Silburn, 1987: 87). The disciple experiences the
master "as a spiritual reality rather than as a human personality"
(Feuerstein, 1989: 26).

As might be expected, Vimalananda has a number of provocative things
to say about shaktipat, and many of them suggest a reciprocity
between master and disciple not emphasized elsewhere. Indeed, he
implies that shaktipat is but a spiritual and elevating form of the
mutual influence which obtains between all individuals, even in
profane consciousness. True shaktipat requires genuine connection
with and solid experience of impersonal, divine realities. Because
the guru will be an expert in this field, the burden of converting
mutual influence into an elevating transmutation of the disciple lies
with the master. For example: "A guru always wants to make his
disciple into his own guru. The Self, the Absolute Reality, is the
true guru" (Svoboda, 1994: 279). This implies not only that the guru
has to be able to see beyond appearances and is not fooled by the
disciple's personal and neurotic limitations. The disciple, too, is
an embodiment of the divine -- analogous, perhaps, to the saying of
Jesus, "As you did it to the least of my brethren, you did it to me"
(Mt 25:40). Elsewhere Vimalananda suggests that the mutual influence
which elevates the disciple can also diminish the saint's spiritual
power. This claim, too, is reminiscent of words ascribed to Jesus
when a woman afflicted with a hemorrhage was healed upon touching the
hem of his garment: "And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had
gone forth from him, immediately turned about in the crowd, and said,
`Who touched my garments?'" (Mk 5: 30). Vimalananda's statement is
more sobering:

A true saint is the embodiment of his deity and the energy emanating
from him is the energy of that deity. By touching a saint's feet you
collect a little of that energy, which purifies your own
consciousness and makes it more subtle. The saint loses some of his
own peace of mind by this which is uncomfortable for the saint; this
is how many saints go bad (Svoboda, 1997: 262).

Because mutual influence works both ways, the one who is elevated may
diminish the more spiritually advanced. On a more ordinary level, I
have encountered this phenomenon in some of my patients who
are "energy healers" and massage therapists. They often find
themselves depleted or made ill by patients who seem to leave their
offices in an improved state of bodily and mental health. I have also
found that the level of my own consciousness can be lowered and my
habitual sense of having a coherent self temporarily fragmented by an
interaction with a poorly integrated patient who clearly seems to
have benefited from our exchange.

Finally, Vimalananda suggests that if we pay attention to how the
presence of another person subtly changes our consciousness, we can
arrive at an assessment of the other person's spiritual state. This
is particularly helpful when we find ourselves before a naked Sadhu
who has all the trappings of spirituality but may be a charlatan:

Sit quietly and don't say much; listen, and try to keep your mind
blank. If when you sit near him you find yourself forgetting the
things of the world and becoming more peaceful, then he is a good
saint; his halo is quieting your mind. If not, run away! (Svoboda,
1994: 267).

Muktananda emphasizes the sexual foundation of shaktipat when it
dawns on him that the reason he had to struggle with a bewildering
and humiliating manifestation of overwhelming sexual desire was to
turn him into an urdhvareta, [4] one in whom the "sexual fluid" rises
and becomes "the source of the power to give Shaktipat" (Muktananda,
1978: 32, 99). Sexual arousal, transmuted on the subtle plane to
kundalini, makes one an initiate by transforming his own being and
giving him the power to transform "other beings, indeed, the entire
universe, through his limitless powers" (D. G. White, 1996: 272). D.
G. White summarizes the Tantric doctrine of shaktipat as it appears
in scriptures written between the tenth and fourteenth centuries.
Here we encounter a magical flavor, even a literal physicality, which
many later sources eschew.

The guru, having entered the body of his disciple (whose kundalini
has been awakened) unites with that kundalini within the disciple's
body and subsequently raises it from the disciple's lower abdomen up
to his cranial vault. The form the guru takes as he courses through
his disciple's body may be that of a drop (bindu) of seed or speech.
In many descriptions of this operation, the guru is said to exit the
disciple's body through the mouth and thus return back into his own
body through his own mouth (Ibid., 312).

White makes it clear that this is fundamentally a sexual process,
albeit with gender "polarities reversed": "given that it is a
feminine kundalini which awakens, stiffens, rises, even rushes
upwards towards the cranial vault, the cavity that is the place of
the passive male Siva" (Ibid., 320).

Although the Hindu doctrine of shaktipat is distinguished by the
fullness of its descriptions, the reality of mutual influence is also
well known in Sufism, where elevating influence is often described
as "perfecting" an "imperfection" in the disciple. Probably the most
common practice is that the shaikh who recognizes such an opportunity
for elevating a disciple invests himself with a special article of
clothing, the mantel (khirqa), and by meditation places himself in
the mystical state of consciousness he wishes to induce in his
disciple. Then he ceremoniously removes the khirqa from his own body
and places it on the body of the disciple, transferring the desired
state at the same time (Wilson, 1993: 144). In her biography of Ibn
al-`Arabi, Claude Addas cites several references from "The Greatest
Shaikh" attesting to the "immediate transformation" that is produced
in the disciple by means of the khirqa (Addas, 1993: 145). A passage
from Ibn al-`Arabi's Revelations at Mecca [5] is very explicit:

So it is when the masters of spiritual states perceive some
imperfection in one of their companions and wish to perfect that
person's state, they resort to the custom of meeting with the person
alone. The master then takes the piece of clothing he is wearing in
the spiritual state he is in at that particular moment, removes it
and puts it on the man whom he wishes to guide to perfection. He then
holds the man closely to him -- and the master's state spreads to his
disciple, who thereby attains to the desired perfection (Addas, 1993:
146).

Jalaluddin Rumi's practice of baring his breast when in an ecstatic
state of divine love and pressing it against the chest of a disciple
(Schimmel, 1978: 217) not only dispenses with the article of clothing
as a necessary element but also seems implicitly to acknowledge the
Hindu doctrine that mutual influence is in some sense a bodily
transfer with sexual implications and that the bodily locus of mutual
influence is associated with the heart chakra. Rumi speaks of the
saint who knows with the heart and leads the disciple with his heart:

[The gnosis of the heart [6]], is one of the distinguishing features
of the mystical leader. He is a lion, and the thoughts of others are
like a forest which he can easily enter. . . . [H]e discovers in the
unpolished stone the wonderful figures which people see in the
polished mirror. That is why he can show the novice the path which
leads him best towards self-realization and approximation to God,
calling the figures out of the stone "heart" (Ibid., 315-6).

Sufism also speaks of the intense concentration of master and
disciple upon one another [tawajjuh] that brings about "spiritual
unity, faith healing, and many other phenomena" (Schimmel, 1975:
366). By tawajjuh, the master "enters the door of the disciple's
heart"; and through his "knowledge of things that exist potentially
in God's eternal knowledge, he is able to realize certain of these
possibilities on the worldly plane" (Ibid., 237). From the side of
the disciple, it is said that he "passes away" or that his ego-
personality has been "annihilated" in the master (fana' fi'sh-
shaikh), who, in his turn has already been annihilated in the Prophet
Muhammad. By this means, the shaikh "becomes the Perfect Man and thus
leads his disciples with a guidance granted directly by God" (Ibid.,
237). This doctrine of the passing away (fana') of one's ego so as to
discover one's greater self (baqa') through the relationship with
one's shaikh, directly parallels the Hindu notion of shaktipat,
whereby ego gives way to atman through the transforming influence of
the guru. [7]

The Recipient Of Shaktipat

Ibn al-`Arabi gives us a hint as to how such an elevating influence
feels to the disciple when he is transformed. In the following
passage, he describes what happened to him early in his mystical
career while he sat face-to-face in tawajjuh with Abu Ya`qub al-Kumi.
He reports two effects, a conscious experience of trembling and a
revelation from his dream that the shaikh's power emanated from the
brightness of his heart chakra:

I saw him in a dream on one occasion and his breast seemed to be
cleft asunder and a light like that of the sun shone out from
it. . . . When I would sit before him or before others of my Shaikhs,
I would tremble like a leaf in the wind, my voice would become weak
and my limbs would shake (Ibn al-`Arabi, 1971: 70).

The American initiate of Tibetan Buddhism, Tsultrim Allione,
describes even more vividly the effect upon herself when, in her
first interview with Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, they sat face-to-face
in silence for forty-five minutes. At first she waited in puzzlement
for him to speak. Then it began to dawn on her that something of
quite a different order was occurring. It was only much later that
she grasped what it was:

Now I realize that what happened was some kind of mind-to-mind
transmission, but at the time I only knew that I had experienced
something that was completely beyond words and form. . . . It was an
experience of space [8] that extended outward without any reference
back. This space was luminous and bliss-provoking, a release, similar
to, but beyond, sexual orgasm (Allione: 1986: xvii-xviii).

The German initiate of Tibetan Buddhism, Lama Govinda Anagarika,
describes his own experience of receiving shaktipat through a light
touch from the hand of his guru. Govinda perceived "a stream of
bliss" traversing his whole being which he felt vividly in his
body, "so that all that one had intended to say or ask, vanished from
one's mind like smoke into blue air" (Govinda, 1988: 33). Some years
later he experienced an analogous elevating influence from the Great
Hermit at Gomchen, who had refused to meet him. He was told to wait
overnight at some distance from the hermitage in a "horribly cold and
draughty wooden rest-house":

But before I could fall asleep a strange thing happened. I had the
sensation that somebody took possession of my consciousness, my will-
power, and my body -- that I no more had control over my thoughts,
but that somebody else was thinking them -- and that slowly, but
surely, I was losing my own identity. And then I realized that it
could be none other than the hermit . . . due to the power of his
concentration and my own lack of resistance in the moment when I was
hovering between the waking and the sleeping state (Ibid., 101).

The eighteen-year-old Narendra, who became Ramakrishna's favorite
disciple, was frightened and repelled at his first meeting with the
forty-five year-old saint. Ramakrishna raved and wept in "anxious
desire" and claimed that Narendra was the reincarnation of the
ancient sage Narayana. Narendra concluded that Ramakrishna was
a "monomaniac." In his second meeting, however, Narendra received
shaktipat:

As I was thinking [Ramakrishna was about to create another
embarrassing scene], he quickly approached me and placed his own
right foot on my body, and immediately I had an unprecedented
experience at his touch. As I looked, I began to see that all the
things in the room, with the walls themselves, were spinning wildly
and dissolving into somewhere. . . .terrible fear . . .this itself
was at the threshold of death. . . . [Finally Ramakrishna relented]
and said, "Then enough now, the work doesn't have to be done all at
once. It will come about in good time" (Kripal, 1995: 211).

An American student of yoga, D. R. Butler, describes his own first
experience of shaktipat, which took place in Upstate New York in 1973
when Butler was in his mid-twenties and had already been studying
yoga for five years. At a week-long yoga retreat, Yogi Amrit Desai,
who until that moment had been completely unknown to the group, led
them in a meditation.

The first thing I noticed was a wave of euphoria softly permeating my
being. I felt intensely happy. I didn't know the reason for the
wonderful feeling but I determined to relax and enjoy it.

Suddenly surges of energy -- like electrical charges -- streaked up
my spine. These gradually evolved into a steady current of hot energy
flowing from the tip of my spine to the top of my head. . . .

Brilliant colors swirled inside my head; I thought I would burst with
happiness. Nothing had ever felt so good! Suddenly a scream burst
from the back of the room, then another. In a few moments the place
was a madhouse (Butler, 1990: 185).

Only after an extended outbreak of pandemonium did Desai halt the
demonstration and explain to the uninitiated students that what they
had felt was shaktipat. Those who wished could leave the room. About
half did so. Then Desai resumed his transmission with even greater
intensity.

My body was filled with a brilliant white light and I allowed myself
to be absorbed in it. I felt that my life as I previously had known
it literally came to an end. My ego identity became meaningless;
there was no time; past and future did not exist. All that existed
was pure light and pure bliss. I was content to remain in this state
forever.

When I opened my eyes again I noticed that my body had bent forward;
my forehead was touching the floor (Ibid., 187).

Muktananda's reception of shaktipat from his guru, Nityananda, is
described in too much detail to be summarized (Muktananda, 1978: 64-
71). Suffice it to say that it included all the elements we have
seen, including the transferal of a cloak and pair of sandals from
the guru's own body. Muktananda describes with greater economy
several instances in which he conferred shaktipat on someone else.
There is an intriguingly inadvertent element in each of them. In one
case an airline officer begs to be allowed to clean Muktananda's
bathroom. His request having been granted, the officer had hardly
begun when he fell into a stillness and sat in meditation for four
hours. Subsequently, the officer reported, people who entered his own
meditation room would enter immediately into unexpectedly deep states
of meditation (Ibid., 144).

Nityananda intended to initiate Muktananda; Amrit Desai deliberately
created chaos among unprepared students; and Ramakrishna, despite his
tendency to spend extended periods of time completely out of his mind
in divyonmada, knew exactly what he was doing in conferring shaktipat
on the ambivalent young Narendra. Nevertheless, it is clear that not
a few instances of elevating influence occur autonomously, quite to
the surprise and amazement of the individual through whom the
conferral takes place. In the following example Swami Rama makes it
clear that, in his experience, a genuine shaktipat initiation
originates from an impersonal source over which he himself has no
control.

One day [my master] told me that a swami would come the next morning
and that I was to touch him on the forehead, thereby initiating him
in shaktipat diksha. I protested, saying that I had no such power to
arouse the kundalini in another person. But he said to me, "Don't you
know, it is not you acting. You are just the instrument of a higher
power. Let the power work through you."

. . . Suddenly I found my arm being raised. It was not at all under
my control. I touched the swami and he remained in samadhi for
several hours. . . . There may be someone to whom I wish to impart
this experience, but nevertheless I cannot. Yet with a few rare
individuals I feel such a strong impulse that I cannot resist (Rama,
1990: 41).

Guy Claxton, an English disciple of Irina Tweedie (whose spiritual
autobiography will be discussed shortly), inadvertently conferred
shaktipat on a neighbor who had been hounding him for instruction in
the techniques of meditation. Claxton refused him six times before
deciding the man was serious. However, he got no further than the
initial instructions for relaxing the body when:

I felt a rush of psychophysical energy seemingly enter my body from
beneath and explode out toward him. My speech became slurred and my
eyelids got heavy, but I kept my eyes focused on him. As the wave of
energy hit him, he visibly jerked back, looking at me fearfully. Then
a second wave passed through me, and again he startled. By the time a
third rush of energy reached him, he was in deep meditation. I felt a
force field connecting our bodies, and while I stayed in meditation,
he too remained meditating (Feuerstein, 1991: 133). [9]