The A of E technique I learned in 1975 Part One

This is what I learned to do: After TM/before ‘sidhi’

At the top of the head think/feel OM
At the eyebrow level, between the eyes think/feel Bhur
At the throat level, think/feel Bhuvah
At the heart level think/feel svah
At the solar plexus level think/feel tat savitur

-> We were to do this moving our attention/awareness down the spine. (More detailed, exacting instruction I did not, unfortunately, record in my notes; not do I recall ever asking or being given any kind of explanation what this was for, what it was supposed to do/accomplish.)

I was told to go to one of the skin boys for checking. He had to tell me over and over what the “mantras” were. I had at the time a vague notion that this was something familiar.

It turned out to be the beginning of the Gayatri Mantra.

I do not remember how many times this was to be done before progressing to the ‘sidhi’ program. Since I learned this on an ATR (Advanced Teaching and Rounding, I think), I left for home almost immediately thereafter. I had been doing the ‘sidhi’ program for some time and felt increasingly exhausted and dull from morning meditation to evening meditation. I wanted to sleep all the time and could barely function without a lot of effort, very difficult effort.

The addition of the “A of E” increased the dullness of the ‘sidhi’ program and added something I still find difficult to describe despite the sparce notes from this time in my journals. I simply felt awful. Dutifully, month after month I wrote my A of E experience evaluation and sent it off to wherever we were to send these things. I am unable to find the list of questions we were to answer and apparently did not keep copies of the pleading letters I sent. I felt so bad I was pleading month after month for some kind of help, any kind of assistance. Needless to say, there was no response.

I now recall a Sufi teaching lession I learned some years later: I have sent you a thousand letters and you have not answered one; but that too is an answer.

After about 6-months of this (apparently if you are dull, exhausted, feel wretched and afraid that you will be cut off like the errant son of some stuffy and heartless aristocrat), you keep doing the same thing again and again expecting better results.

The Gayatri:

Om Bhur Bhuvah Svah
Tat
Savitur Varenyam
Bhargo Devasya Dhimahi
Dhiyo Yonah:
Prachodayat

English translation:

Throughout all realms of experience
‘That’
essential nature illuminating existence
is the adorable
One.
May all beings perceive through
subtle and meditative intellect
the magnificent brilliance
of enlightened awareness.

http://www.xs4all.nl/~dham/gayatri_mantra.html

(More Blog input on the matter of the A of E later.)