The following is the description by Kurt Friedrichs who had the Satori experience while watching the sea. It is a glimpse of the Universal Consciousness. The full text of his presentation can be found in the book "What Vedanta Means to Me" edited by John Yale.
“My youth among the red rocks on the island [Helgoland, Northsea] was made up of books and solitude and permitted a mysterious imaginative capacity to grow up within me, which made me completely independent of my environment and people. As there was nobody in my shut off world with whom I could have shared my strange experiences - let alone a teacher with a trained intellect or a spiritual leader - the relationships and connections with my own self remained hidden to me for many years, although the experiences themselves were none the less intense and impressive. They had only the important difference that they did not arise as a result of my own power and volition but rather rushed at me without control, and always left an indescribable happiness behind them.
“One afternoon at low tide on the west coast of the island, as I was climbing over the seaweed-covered rocks in order to have a rest beneath an overhanging cliff, washed out by the surf of many centuries, a spiritual ecstasy suddenly took possession of me. The waves breaking at my feet and the endless surface of water stretching away to the vanishing point all of a sudden threw me into another sphere of consciousness. I myself was surf, sea and infinity. Time, space, body-consciousness - everything was blotted out, drawn up into an absolute consciousness of light and bliss.
“I have no idea of how long this condition lasted, but I felt the elation long afterwards until it slowly made room again for the fear that this experience, as an arbitrary condition brought about by chance, would never recur, and my state of mind might be worse than before in its insatiable longing for complete unity with the whole world.
“And yet
beneath the same cliff wall, in the rhythm of breaking waves and in the swinging
harmony of the endless sky and sea, I was again and again thrown out of my
rational and bodily limitations. But however much my normal consciousness
searched and rationalized, it could not explain this condition of
transformation, and I sought yearningly for descriptions of similar experiences
in the writings of the great humanity who bear witness to the tireless struggle
for knowledge and truth.”
The following file contains a single-slide Power Point Show. The animations in the slide proceed on your clicking. Click and watch each animation before you proceed further. The slide describes symbolically the movement of the Center of Awareness in us between the Mind and the Consciousness. The green area represents the Consciousness and the red area the Mind. During our waking hours, the Center is situated in the Mind. When we go to sleep, it moves into the Consciousness - during the deep, dreamless part of the sleep. When we wake up, the process is reversed. You see a blue region in the figure. That represents a short period in our awareness when we just wake up and the Center is not yet grabbed by the Mind. At that point one can understand something about the awareness untouched by the Mind. Being there even for a few seconds can help us sense the beauty of Consciousness unclouded by the Mind. It can have significant impact on our daily life towards becoming calm and collected in our responses to life's challenges. The same state of peaceful Consciousness happens, in the reverse movement of the Center - that is, just before entering sleep from the wakeful state.
To open the following files, right click on the link. and choose 'Open in new tab'. Check for the file in 'Downloads' also.
![]() |
Center of Awareness.pps Size : 120.5 Kb Type : pps |
![]() |
The Universe.pps Size : 739.5 Kb Type : pps |