Blue Lotus Feet

• Kriyacharya Bill McDonald—
USA Coordinator for Hamsa Yoga Sangh

I knew I was totally privileged to be in the company of a true God-realized master while staying at The Siddhanath Forest Ashram. I had been hearing some truly Biblical kind of stories of how Yogiraj Gurunath Siddhanath could walk through walls, be in two bodies, create stormy weather, heal people, spend 47 days in constant meditation, read minds, use energy to move people and objects, go into a breathlessness and a host of other unworldly feats. However, I got my own taste of what they were talking about one quiet unassuming night.

There were just four of us in Gurunath’s front room at the ashram in India that night—Tanvi, Brad, Ponti and me. We were all listening to him expound on subject matters that were well above my earthly ears and brain. His words were full of serious spiritual wisdom, but he was just as likely at times to turn the moment into a stand-up routine that had you rolling with laughter. He had a way of mixing the very sacred and the lighthearted. He was totally spontaneous and could talk deeply about any subject matter in the universe or the cosmos.

On this particular night, an Indian women devotee named Tanvi, insisted on washing her guru’s feet. This is a huge honor in India and much is said about the energy that can be transferred from the guru to his devotee through this act of total devotion. He kept resisting her desire to do this service for him. Finally, Gurunath consented to allow his feet to be washed and cleaned. He went on talking while she was on the floor in front of him humbly washing his feet. We were all sitting around him intently listening as he continued delivering some deep spiritual principles, most of which were well beyond my full understanding. It seemed that the longer I spent with Gurunath the less I realized that I actually knew. After a few weeks with him, I found that I knew less than nothing!

At some point, Gurunath asked her to allow another devotee to finish up the task. She resisted but finally stepped back and allowed Ponti to come forward to massage and rub his feet. In a few minutes I could see that something was happening to Ponti. He was about to fall over with JOY. His whole face was almost illuminated from it. I also noticed that the hairs on his arms and on his head was standing up like when someone is experiencing some static electricity. Finally, he pulled himself back and then gently leaned over on his elbows to rest. You could see that something had happened. His smile was plastered from ear to ear; his heart truly was radiating love.

He looked up at Gurunath and said, “Should I tell them?” Gurunath said that it would be fine to share his experience with those present in the room. So, Ponti told us all what had happened to him while touching his guru’s feet. He said that millions of blue lotus flowers came out of the feet and penetrated him. He said they looked tiny when they came out and got bigger and bigger as they came towards his heart.

We all sat in awe and wonder. The old Indian tradition always talks about “the blue lotus feet of the Guru”. It is has been talked about in literature and songs for thousands of years. On this particular night, we saw that it was not just a poetic expression but a reality.

I was watching the reactions of those of us who shared this experience. I could tell that Tanvi felt some disappointment in that this did not happen to her when she was washing Gurunath’s feet. Brad was silently absorbed in his own world of thoughts and had a simple smile on his face. However, inside my own head, I was thinking, “Hey, where is my ‘blue foot’ experience?”

We left his front room shortly after this experience to finish up the task of painting the smaller temple’s walls. Tanvi had a wonderful art project going on that she needed some help to finish up. It was already very late at night. In this jungle valley of India it could get very cold in the winter months. This night it was chilly. We were all working barefoot in the temple on cold marble flooring. I was handing a paintbrush to one of the men, while holding the lid of the paint can in the other hand, under the brush to ensure that no paint dripped from the brush onto the marble flooring.

I was walking past the top of a marble stairwell that goes down to Gurunath’s private underground meditation chamber. My left foot suddenly became snared in an electrical wire that was strung across the top of the stairs. The wires became wrapped around my toes. I immediately fell forward and head first down the stairs. My head was on a quick collision path with the bottom of the stairs.

However, because of the super-quick reactions of Ponti, I was caught before falling too far down the stairs. The fall could have severely injured or even killed me due to some very serious spinal cord issues in my neck; which I had just told Ponti about a couple of days prior, so he fully understood what could have happened if I hit my head and injured my neck.

It was like everything happened in slow motion. My fall seemed to take minutes, instead of tenths of seconds. As my body slowly fell downward. Ponti’s hands somehow managed to grab my body. My head was just an inch from hitting the marble stairs when I was stopped in midair and pulled back.

Ponti told me he could hear the loud cracking sounds of bones snapping or breaking. It’ sounded like someone stepping on a bag of potato chips and smashing them all. I felt tremendous pain shooting through me. My left foot felt like I had broken every single bone in my toes and foot. It was an awful pain. I looked down and saw how the electrical wire was wrapped around my toes cutting the skin. There was blood on the marble flooring. The funny thing was that I was still holding onto the paint can lid and the wet paint brush. I did not want to have the marble floors stained and ruined from the paint. So, when I was falling, I never put out my hands to stop my fall. I continued to tightly hold the brush and the lid up so that they would not mess up the floor. When Ponti tried to help me get upright all I was concerned about was making sure that he got the paintbrush and the lid out of my hands without dropping any paint on the floors.

I was unable to stand up or walk. The pain was just too great. I pulled myself along on the floor by my hands and slid my body to the entrance of the temple. I pulled my feet in front me and sat on the marble steps to look at them. They were a mess. It looked really bad.

One of the men went and got Gurunath. He came out of his room and walked over to where my foot laid on the cold marble steps. He looked down at what was now a huge “blue foot” that was very twisted and swollen. It was also extremely painful. It looked like I would need some emergency medical attention that very night. We figured that there were at least several toes and some bones in the foot that were broken. It looked seriously damaged. We all just knew that it needed to be fixed by a doctor at some hospital.

Gurunath looked very casually down at my big blue foot; while I was doing everything I could not to cry out and yell in pain. He simply said, “There is nothing wrong with your foot, it will be ok in the morning!”

I looked up at him and realized that this is the same man who zapped my brain and stopped my brain seizures. So, if he said nothing was wrong with my foot, then who was I not to believe that as a fact! I totally accepted what he said in my heart and my mind.

When Gurumata (His wife) came over a couple of minutes later with her motherly concerns for me, I told her that Gurunath had said that nothing was wrong with me—so I am ok. Upon saying that, I stood up and put my shoes on. Then I walked around. The pain instantly stopped, as did the bleeding. The blue color totally disappeared and my badly twisted foot was now straight. I could move my foot and my toes again. Everyone just stood there silently in awe over what was happening. Just moments before they were all concerned about getting me to the hospital for treatment, but now I was walking away.

The next morning I saw Gurunath walking around the ashram grounds. I approached him and touched the ground near his feet. I told him I was grateful for his healing my foot. Then he looked me in the eye and said,” I did not heal your foot; it was your belief in my words that healed you.”

I had totally accepted and believed in the words of Gurunath. I knew that he could never lie and had to tell the truth - so I knew I was healed. I also laughed privately, because I knew a part of me had wanted my own “blue foot experience” with the guru. I just did not expect it to come the way it did. But I took it as a blessing, as well as another lesson on watching my thoughts. But the biggest lesson for me and for those that were there, was to fully trust and listen to the words of Gurunath as TRUTH.

 

Gurunath will be on tour in the USA the summer of 2010. He will be making appearances in California at following locations: San Francisco, Berkeley, San Diego, Encinitas, Los Angeles and Irvine. He will also be doing weekend retreats in Santa Cruz at Mount Madonna, in Los Angeles and Vernonia, Oregon.

His organizational Web site is www.hamsa-yoga.org. The full schedule of his world tour and dates along with other information can be found there including his award winning book, Wings to Freedom.