This is something I've carried with me for a long time. I'm not sure why tonight felt like the right time to call, but here I am. I went to India when I was eighteen years old. 1976. I had just dropped out of college, couldn't figure out what I wanted from life, and a friend of mine had been reading all these books about Eastern spirituality. He convinced me to go with him, but he backed out at the last minute. So I went alone. Spent my entire savings on the plane ticket. I ended up at an ashram near Rishikesh. Small place, maybe thirty residents at any given time. The head teacher, we called him Guruji, had been there since the 1950s. Old man, even then. White beard down to his chest, these eyes that seemed to look right through you. I know that sounds like something out of a movie, but it was true. I stayed. That's the short version. I stayed for forty years. Learned Sanskrit, learned the meditation practices, became a teacher myself eventually. That ashram became my whole world. I came back to the States three years ago when my mother got sick, but for four decades, that place was home. I want to tell you about something that happened about fifteen years in. 1991. The monsoon had just ended, and we were coming into the cooler months. Everyone at the ashram had gone down to the village for the Diwali celebrations. Guruji never went to those things. Said he preferred the silence. And I had twisted my ankle pretty badly the week before, couldn't walk the distance. So I stayed behind too. Just me and Guruji at the ashram that night.
I couldn't sleep. The ankle was throbbing, and I'd run out of the herbal paste the cook usually made for me. So I got up around two, maybe three in the morning, and walked out to the courtyard to get some air. Clear night, stars everywhere. You don't know what stars look like until you've been somewhere without light pollution. alone at an ashram sounds peaceful - Sarah' The courtyard was at the center of the ashram. Stone floor, worn smooth from decades of feet. A few neem trees along the edges. And in the middle, there was Guruji. He was sitting in lotus position, which wasn't unusual. But there was a light. Not a lamp, not a candle. This soft, blue-white glow coming from above him, from something above him. And around him, in a circle, there were figures. Five of them. Tall. Thin. Longer limbs than a person should have. Their skin, if you could call it that, had this quality to it, almost translucent. I could see the light passing through them in places. Their heads were elongated, smooth, and their eyes were large and dark, but not frightening. I know that sounds strange. But there was nothing threatening about them. They were sitting with him. Listening to him. I froze in the doorway. My heart was pounding so hard [ could feel it in my injured ankle. But I didn't run. I just stood there in the shadows and watched.
They were communicating with Guruji. No sound, no words that I could hear, but there was something passing between them. You could see it in the way they inclined toward him, the way the light shifted and pulsed with some kind of rhythm. I must have been standing there for twenty minutes, maybe longer. Time felt wrong. Then I felt a hand on my shoulder and I nearly fell over. Priya, one of the other students, she'd come up behind me without making a sound. She whispered not to be afraid, that they were friends. That they had been coming for years. She called them the Andromedans. That's what Guruji called them. From the Andromeda galaxy. They had been visiting him since before I arrived, since before most of us arrived. She said they came to receive teachings. I know that sounds impossible, but that's what she told me. Beings from another galaxy, crossing unimaginable distances, to sit at the feet of an old man in the foothills of the Himalayas. I wanted to ask her everything. How long had she known? Why hadn't anyone told me? But she just squeezed my shoulder and told me to watch. To witness.
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