Upon expiration of my Brazilian work visa, I returned to Toronto refreshed and excited. I entered into a 10-week meditation class and learned basic techniques like breathing, grounding, and visualization. I also took a 1-day class in developing intuition. This class was a pivotal moment in my journey into the mystery of consciousness. The teacher paired all the participants, and we were told to practice mentally sending and receiving images of food between each other. The first image I ever received was a vague light green haze which I guessed to be a ‘pear,’ and my partner later revealed to be a close ‘apple.’ Afterwards, I received more defined images like a ‘sandwich,’ from a nearby member of another pair. It was a fascinating exercise in clairvoyance and I learned to observe my inner visual field for impressions. But it was what happened the day after that really awed me.
On the subway early the next morning, I sat down and closed my eyes to rest. Immediately, a bright and clearly defined 3D moving image played itself out like a holographic movie in my inner visual field – two shining gold birds flying in perfect synchrony to each other. The vision was extremely vivid, from the shimmering
sparkles on the birds to the audible swoosh that the birds made as they flew from right to left. I opened my eyes within a few seconds with the phrase ‘two golden birds’ hovering in my mind. Immediately I looked around me, wondering from whom this image could have come. There were only a couple people who were sitting far away in the other end of the car and somehow it didn’t feel like something that was sent by any person. When out of the subway, I googled the phrase on my phone and was led to a quote from the ancient Indian scriptures, the Upanishads, specifically from the Mundaka Upanishad, which speaks of the ‘Modes of Knowing’:
“Like two golden birds perched on the selfsame tree, intimate friends, the ego and the Self dwell in the same body. The former eats the sweet and sour fruits of the tree of life while the latter looks on in detachment. As long as we think we are the ego, we feel attached and fall into sorrow. But realize that you are the Self, the Lord of life, and you will be freed from sorrow. When you realize that you are the Self, Supreme source of light, supreme source of love, you transcend the duality of life and enter into the unitive state.” (Easwaran, 2012) It dawned on me that this wasn’t an impression that came from a specific person, as in telepathy, but some kind of a transcendental divine vision. The two birds represented the ego and the soul, the most basic tenet of
spirituality. The scripture itself came from Hinduism, one of the oldest spiritual traditions that developed the art of meditation, which I was just initiated into. It was all so mind-boggling!
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