It was tribal knowledge among the few of us who lived around Mark Griffin in the early years, that it was on a Good Friday–sometime after Baba Muktananda’s death in 1982–that Mark first entered the state of Nirvikalpa Samadhi. On many an occasion, I have tried to piece together the timeline of Mark’s major spiritual milestones, but time and the unrelenting Shakti play tricks on one’s memory. I know that it was Baba Muktananda’s Mahasamadhi that propelled Mark into ever deepening meditative states which had already begun to emerge while Muktananda will still alive. But, I didn’t track the details of the “stages and states” that Mark encountered through the years well enough, and therefore I haven’t been able to definitively state what year it was when he first experienced the extremely advanced mystical condition of Nirvikalpa Samadhi.
However, as Lee and I recently continued digging through boxes and files of Hard Light archives, we came across a large envelope that contained a typewritten manuscript. The markings on the document indicated that I had been the person who transcribed this content, though I have absolutely no memory of having done so. I have only read the opening chapter, of 14 chapters, and was immediately stunned by its contents. I quote from that manuscript here:
“It’s the first day after Easter, 1987. The first day of a new cycle. It was on Good Friday of this Easter that I managed to produce the most perfected example of mahamudra I have yet pulled off to date. Ultra hot. Now we’re getting somewhere. The Avatar shakti is very kind to me. Its blessings are great. I was given gifts on that day. I was given the opportunity and ability to enter that sphere of consciousness for as much and as long as I could stand it, and I was granted power of blessing. A true gift. Something to be wielded with great kindness and compassion. In career parlance, it’s a step up; an opportunity to take a shot at handling some Kundalini. Probation.”
So, regardless of what may or may not have transpired on Good Friday in 1983, 84, 85, and 86, we have it from the Guru’s own words that he had a watershed spiritual experience on Good Friday, 1987.
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