Soma (group)

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Soma was a group in Pune One. Maneesha writes about it in several Darshan Diaries. The writings indicate evolution and experimentation, and are presented whole here. From them one may attempt a synthesis, or not:
Be Realistic: Plan for a Miracle (Mar 30 1976):

The Soma group, which has just come into being, was present at darshan. The leader, Divya, described the format of the ten-day residential course. . .
The idea behind it is to open up receptivity to Bhagwan, to allow him to work through us. A lot of the meditations will be based on him -- on feeling him, on saturating, absorbing, expanding to him, meditating on his form, his face, his voice, on his feeling.
It will be an awareness scanning, really feeling the body inside, outside, and merging with each other, with no personality work whatsoever but communicating with people. We may do some preparation for astral travelling, and going into sleep, into dreams, with awareness. In the morning we'll do the humming meditation, and in the evening, whirling. There will be about six hours of meditation a day.
Bhagwan asked Divya if she had any comment to make about the group.
Divya: "I forgot to mention when I wrote to you that I began to get the feeling of a community -- living together, eating -- and it is very beautiful".
Mm mm, that in itself can become a beautiful meditation. So tell people to be consciously together, to be alert about the community,.about the feeling of the whole group.
The individual has to learn how to be capable of merging into the group. In the West there is a very wrong notion that if you merge into the group you are no more an individual. Exactly the opposite is the case.
A real individual is always capable of losing himself, because he is so perfectly aware that he can bring himself together any moment. Only a person who is not really an individual is afraid of losing himself in a community, in a group. He's always defensive because he knows that once he is lost, he will be lost; he will not be able to come back to his centre again. That fear becomes defensiveness.
So real individuals are always communal. They can merge with the group absolutely. They are not afraid; they know their centre exists. And they know their centre so well that they can go to the opposite polarity without any fear. So help people to feel the community.

Beloved of My Heart (May 12 1976):

Soma is a ten-day residential course, the idea behind it being to open up to Bhagwan, to become more receptive to him and to allow him to work through us.
(From Divya, the therapist:) A lot of the meditations will be based on him -- on feeling him, on saturating, absorbing, and expanding to him; on his form, on his face, on his force, on his feeling. I'd like to try out some ancient hermetic and christian exercises. We will use the circulation of light which is to purify the gross body. It is the visualisation of light and it gets to the point where you can actually feel it.
There'll be lots of music and exercises in regressing mentally and letting go in a preparation for dying. We will read the Tibetan Book of the Dead and then there will be a rebirth and the day after that some sufi purification rites. We'll do some preparation for astral travelling and try going into sleep, into dreams, with awareness.

The Cypress in the Courtyard (Jun 7 1976):

The Soma group was present tonight. It is a fifteen-day course, residential, and for its duration members have no interaction with the outside world.
"It is an opening of sensitivity and receptivity to Bhagwan, allowing him to manifest through us in an atmosphere of trust and community spirit. We develop our own intuitive faculties in areas such as psychic massage, telepathy, astral projection, dreamstate awareness and associated areas of creativity under the protective aura of Bhagwan.
"Meditations include concentration and visualisation of light, chakra-opening and the experiencing of the different energies that make up our whole being, tratak, circulation of light and energy, death -- experiencing the after-life as instructed in The Tibetan Book of the Dead -- sufi rites, mantram, group healing, as well as Humming, Whirling, Latihan, Devavani, Kundalini, Dynamic, Prayer and the Mandala meditations, and anything else that crops up from the moment".

Dance Your Way to God (Aug 7 1976) features a very similar description to that of Cypress above except that the group is now of twenty days duration, and "the members of the group have minimal contact and interaction with the outside world, in an effort to preserve the group spirit and cultivate a feeling of a community".

According to the groups timeline chart in The Sound of Running Water, Soma was offered from Mar 1976 to Mar 1977, but it may also have made later appearances, as TSORW only covers up to Mar 1978.

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