Soma (group)

Soma was a group in Pune One. Maneesha writes about it, in the Darshan Diary, 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.

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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