Thomas has been a Heartfulness practitioner for over 50 years. He is one of the first Europeans to have traveled to Shahjahanpur to visit Babuji, and he wrote two books about his experiences, In the light of His light and Dreams Awakening. He also filmed conversations with Babuji that were published in the book Babuji in Shahjahanpur. Thomas continues to write and also to translate the literature of the Heartfulness Masters into Danish. 



ThomasMogenson.jpg

Thomas Mogensen

<h4
 id="h-by-the-end-of-the-1960s-westerners-were-traveling-to-visit-the-spiritual-teacher-babuji-in-india-among-the-first-were-the-danes-who-all-fell-in-love-with-babuji-and-were-instrumental-in-bringing-the-spiritual-practices-of-heartfulness-to-the-west-one-of-these-pioneers-was-thomas-mogensen-who-first-visited-shahjahanpur-in-1971-with-his-wife-and-some-friends-they-filmed-their-conversations-with-babuji-took-many-photos-and-thomas-later-wrote-two-books-about-these-precious-experiences-here-is-a-small-vignette-from-one-of-his-books-written-with-his-signature-humor-joy-and-tenderness">
 By the
 end of the 1960s, Westerners were traveling to visit the spiritual teacher,
 Babuji, in India. Among the first were the Danes, who all fell in love with
 Babuji and were instrumental in bringing the spiritual practices of
 Heartfulness to the West. One of these pioneers was
 THOMAS MOGENSEN, who first visited Shahjahanpur in 1971
 with his wife and some friends.
 They filmed their conversations with Babuji, took many photos, and Thomas
 later wrote two books about these precious experiences. Here is a small
 vignette from one of his books, written with his signature humor, joy, and
 tenderness.
</h4>

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 A large wooden table and some upright chairs occupy our dining room, situated
 and set aside solely for us in one of the buildings enclosing an inner kitchen
 courtyard in Babuji’s Shahjahanpur home. The very first time we eat our lunch
 there, he himself suddenly shows up.



 As expected from a good and polite host, he takes his seat at the end of the
 table. With a few words that food should be nourishing and simple he sinks
 into silence, looking down in front of himself in the humblest way you can
 imagine. As we dine, the situation gets more and more unsettling for our
 Danish sister, Vibe. She looks distressed from one to the other, then turns to
 Babuji gently saying, “It’s all right, Babuji, you don’t need to sit here with
 us.” Without further notice he says, “Thank you,” as polite as ever, gets up
 and leaves.



 Babuji takes his food squatting in solitude in a corner of the kitchen
 courtyard. His meals are served on a large stainless steel plate. Though the
 amount of food is not much, he often shares most of it with the cat, the only
 one sure to join him. Once in a while, someone, usually his granddaughter,
 Nini, drops by to see if he is all right. She instructs him to eat more, as
 she knows better than anyone else how a loss of appetite, if allowed to
 continue, can end up in the danger zone of his ulcer breaking out causing some
 real bad trouble. All such things are normally kept away from us, but after
 one of our lunches, Nini approaches us. Explaining how Babuji has not eaten
 anything for days, she asks us to please return to the veranda and speak among
 ourselves about food – any food, our favorite dishes. “You need not speak
 English,” she says, “and don’t speak to him. Just speak in your own language.”


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 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/Babuji1_78b34add14.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-07T07:21:39.225Z" />
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 Returning to the veranda, we find Babuji as we left him, far gone and curled
 up in his easy chair. We launch straight into some nice Danish talk about
 food, practically serving him a dish of the summer’s first new and absolutely
 delicious cooked potatoes with some nice cool Danish butter, a bit of salt,
 and a good lot of freshly chopped parsley, when his withdrawn painful
 condition lifts off. Surprised, he looks from one to the other as if wondering
 why he is suddenly taking part in such an odd conversation. Then he gets up
 and disappears into the kitchen courtyard. Probably the cat is already waiting
 there for him and his appetite to return.



 We ask him once about this ulcer of his, “Why don’t you just cure it yourself?
 You can easily do that.” He smiles and answers, “I don’t like to part
 with it. We have become good friends, me and my ulcer.” What’s hidden in
 this rather intriguing ulcer-thing, you, dear readers, are welcome to ponder
 over as much as he leaves us to do. Anyway, everyone eats the same simple food
 here. The same identical dishes day in and day out and, yes, it becomes a bit
 boring. Babuji senses it. “The food I serve you,” he says from his easy
 chair, making sure that no one from the kitchen happens to turn up, “I call
 ‘slaughtered vegetables.’”



 Now, if no one in the kitchen hears this masterly coined joke, an angel surely
 does, for one fine morning a local abhyasi1 appears on the
 scene. Round in shape and dressed all in white, we nickname him “the Baker.”
 He always observes the politest conduct and humbly presents his errand in
 quietly spoken Urdu, making Babuji lean forward, fully attentive. After a
 while of listening, he takes a good deep puff of the hookah, seems contented
 with what he is hearing, and turns to us saying, “He has invited you to take
 food in his house.”



 The very next day, the Baker returns for further instructions. Every detail of
 such a daring excursion must be in place, and with Babuji’s blessing the
 chosen evening finally arrives. In the dark streets of Shahjahanpur, our good
 Baker’s glowing white moon illuminated shape leads the way. Meanwhile the
 thought of something local, a bit of home cooked curry with some pickle on the
 side, grows on us. And soon we are seated at a dining table much like the one
 we are used to.



 Eagerly watching us, the Baker’s family glue to the walls around us, five
 foreigners alone at the table. They are so keen and polite that they hardly
 dare speak a word to us. And now, eager hands place the food on the table in
 front of us. Down to the smallest detail they are the exact same dishes we
 have been eating for months now! Yes, sir! This is so absurdly funny that only
 one person can be behind this pleasant surprise – Babuji himself. This is why
 he took so much time and care to instruct our loving Baker. He wanted to be
 dead sure that nothing unusual would happen to us, maybe even down to the
 dining table itself. Boy, he could serve God on a stainless steel plate, but
 this is what makes you love him. As soon as we complete our meal, the Baker is
 ready to take us back home for him to present Babuji with a detailed verbal
 report of the evening’s events.



 By the way, Babuji’s favorite dish was mushroom soup. On their travels to the
 West, his successor, Chariji, lured him with that when he lost his appetite.
 “Come on, I think they have mushroom soup for us today.”


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 1 Meditation practitioner

Lunch, dinner, and a loving baker dressed in white

<h4>
 By the end of the 1960s, Westerners were traveling to India
 to visit Babuji. Among the first were the Danes, who all fell in love with Babuji and were instrumental in
 bringing the spiritual practices of Heartfulness to the West. One of these pioneers was THOMAS
 MOGENSEN, who first visited
 Shahjahanpur in 1971 with his wife and some friends. Here he shares the value of 50 years of
 Heartfulness.
</h4>



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In my Guide and Guru, Ram Chandra, Babuji as we called him, I found the help I needed – mentally, physically and
 spiritually. I also found a person who, in all his silent simplicity, became my friend and the very breath of my
 life, as is the current Guide, Daaji today.



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<figure><img decoding="async" width="700" height="525" alt="" class="lazyload has-img-center"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/50yrs_breathing1_700x525_82b9e6ffa0.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-11T06:31:44.092Z">
</figure>




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Back then, they called our system of meditation Sahaj Marg – the Natural Way. And what is more natural than
 breathing? We all breathe. Without it we are dead. Without a beating heart and a breath there is no flow of
 anything.



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 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/50yrs_breathing3_ff2384c9da.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-11T06:34:57.565Z">
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That was the condition in which my Guide found me, not I him, 50 years ago. He was and still is “the finder.” He
 finds us and leads us on to find our true natural way of life. He breathes it into our hearts. Hidden to us, it is
 something we already are every second of the day, and the night as well. We sleep and we breathe. We breathe and we
 live. So, why yoga and meditation if that breath of life is not there?



Who wants to struggle with a lifeless yoga? Who cares to meditate for hours, breathe in certain odd ways, recite
 endless mantras, or fall to their knees with non-stop praying? The only thing we really need is to forget ourselves.
 Forget who we are. Forget who we think we should be, so that we can become what we have always been, a breath of
 life.



Such a method sounds so easy. And it is easy. You don’t need to sit with a straight back and legs crossed for hours
 and hours suppressing yourself into some sort of mindset. That is what practitioners of yoga have sadly often done,
 and some of us still do, because we still live in the past.



In my Guide and Guru, I am daily found. By someone who doesn’t live in the past. He is not hanging onto anything. He
 doesn’t expect anything, not from you and not from me. He doesn’t remember yesterday and before, cling to it, or get
 stuck in it. He is always here, now, urging us to forget and become. A new way of breathing. A new way of moving
 through life. That is meditation in a nutshell. That was what I needed back then, still now, and tomorrow as well.




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<figure><img decoding="async" width="700" height="525" alt="" class="lazyload has-img-center"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/50yrs_breathing2_700x525_2435440d1d.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-11T06:36:25.027Z">
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So, dear sisters and brothers, whoever reads this, I wish you peace, tranquility, and prosperity. We all worry about
 our lives, children, grandchildren, pandemics, and wars. 



Apart from the methods themselves, what have 50 years of Heartfulness Meditation given me to tackle all these worries
 and my own inner turmoil? In the most simple terms, the Guide gave me a friend. One who doesn’t want to teach me
 anything except to breathe in the most common natural way. In such a breath of life, a mere possibility to move on,
 we can all be, and become unknown to ourselves. We can know the Unknown. For that I am forever thankful. For that I
 am forever on the road.



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50 years of breathing

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<h4>
 By the end of the 1960s, Westerners were traveling to India to visit
 Babuji. Among the first were a group of young Danes, who fell in love
 with Babuji and who were instrumental in bringing the spiritual
 practices of Heartfulness to the West. One of these pioneers
 was&nbsp;THOMAS
 MOGENSEN,&nbsp;who first visited Shahjahanpur in 1971 with his wife and some
 friends. Here he shares some personal stories about how he found
 balance and equilibrium, with some wisdom from Babuji.
</h4>

<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 Nobody could teach me how to ride a two-wheeler bike. My father, my
 mother – they all had a go at it. As long as they ran beside me,
 supporting me with a firm grip on the broomstick mounted behind my
 saddle, I was all right. As soon as they loosened their grip I lost my
 balance. It happened over and over again. Letting go, they gave me a
 slight push into the freedom of biking on my own. I fell and they gave
 up. I must have been about seven years old.



 Then, on a warm sunny summers day, I succeeded in pestering an ice cream
 out of my mother. The ice cream parlor was not just a short walk away.
 You had to follow a dirt road, a mere wheel track, all the way through a
 plantation of pine trees surrounding our summer house to finally reach
 the small village. The first thing to catch my attention was Martha’s
 Ice Cream Parlor, a blue painted shack, soda pops, sausages, that sort
 of thing, and then the ice cream of course.



 Anyway, that particular day I jumped my bike, wheeled all the way to
 Martha’s, had my ice cream and wheeled back home again without fully
 realizing that I was actually biking.&nbsp;Now, had anybody kept
 pouncing on me, “You must do this … No, no, not like that,” it would
 have surely created dislike, resentment, sadness, inferiority feelings,
 and anger. To ever go near my bike again, I would have had to conquer a
 samskara as deep as any we toil to get rid of. My interest and
 curiosity, joy and energetic pedaling would have been blocked from
 carrying me into the art of mastering my bike. I would have ended up
 “school tiered,” as we say in Danish. For years!



 In school, no one could teach me how to read or write properly. Reading
 took time. My handwriting was a mess of small and capital letters
 jumping up and down. The teachers worried, and particularly my father.
 Seventh grade. Something wrong! Then, one fine afternoon, I returned
 from school, sat down and wrote my thesis for tomorrow in the orderly
 handwritten style I still have. A revelation! An angel’s gift right out
 of the blue. What a profound experience producing even more joyous
 pedaling into reading a ton of books.



 Some weeks before Lalaji’s centenary celebration in 1973, I sat alone on
 Babuji’s veranda with Lalaji’s book, Truth Eternal, struggling
 to understand what I was reading. On the verge of giving up, I realized
 that Babuji had appeared from inside his study, now standing there next
 to his easy chair watching me. I looked up. With something like disgust
 he looked at me, then at Lalaji’s book, saying, “This is a very old
 book. Now he has written some new ones. You should write your own book.”



 With the words, “Now he has written some new ones,” he referred not to
 Lalaji but to himself and his own books, while I dropped
 Truth Eternal into my lap, leaned back and relaxed just as he,
 absorbed in his Lalaji, did in his easy chair.



 Books are okay, a few inspiring pages on a rainy day, but who wants to
 become a quotation machine? You know, feed it a question, pull the
 handle, bing! Right answer, 10 points. Babuji didn’t return to his study
 to fetch a load of books and throw them into my lap on top of
 Truth Eternal. He didn’t say, “You must read all these books
 within half a year, otherwise you will not …” He didn’t say that. He
 said, “You should write your own book.” He could have said, “You should
 ride your own bike,” because that was in fact what he did for us
 youngsters hanging around him on the veranda outside his study in
 Shahjahanpur.



 He urged us to ride our own bikes deep into our own interest and
 curiosity, our joy and vital pedaling, by his grace turning us into what
 he still wants all of us to become, whether we are good with books or
 not. The track is clear, the road ready. “Experience will show,” he said
 while literally throwing me empty-handed into conducting my very first
 group meditation during Lalaji’s centenary celebration in Chennai 50
 years ago. What an easy and simple way to enjoy the ice creams
 constantly transmitted to us. “Experience will show.” Close your eyes
 and open that book. There is not a single word in it. Not even a capital
 letter. Find your own balance. “Do and feel.” That, to me, is the
 essence of riding bikes in a natural way.


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<h4 class="has-text-align-center">
 Find your own balance. “Do
 and feel.” That, to me, is the essence
 of riding bikes in a natural way.
</h4>

<hr />

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Thomas Mogensen

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