The winter of 1968 proved to be a watershed in Guru Siyag’s life. His humdrum life was suddenly upset when he was seized by an inexplicable fear of death though he wasn’t down with any illness. A local soothsayer told Gurudev that he was under Mārkesh Dashā — a constellation of planets casting a spell of death. The only way to escape imminent death, some local Hindu clerics told him, was to invoke the blessings of Goddess Gāyatri through a special ritual. Gāyatri, the Goddess of cosmic light, alone could rescue him from the clutches of death, he was told. He was advised to perform a Havan — a sacred purifying ritual that involves a fire ceremony — and to chant the Gāyatri Mantra during the process. For the invocation to be complete and divine protection to be received, he was told, he would have to conduct the ritual every day until he had finished chanting the mantra 125,000 times.

In the October of 1968, Gurudev began the ritual in earnest during Navratri, a 9-day festival dedicated to the feminine divine, Shakti. He would wake up in the early hours of morning every day and chant the sacred Gāyatri Mantra over Havan. The pressure of illogical panic that had seized him was so intense that he performed the daily ritual with utmost sincerity and concentration. It took him three months to complete the ritual. Recalling those days, Gurudev was to comment later that it was as if a divine force had propelled him into an artificial state of fear only to change the mundane life that he had led until then and to goad him onto the spiritual path. The day he finished the ritual, Gurudev went to bed that night thinking he would wake up during the normal morning hour the next day now that he was through with the arduous Gāyatri worship. However, having got used to rising early, he woke up early the next morning. Just as he opened his eyes and sat up in bed, he felt the inside of his body light up with an immensely bright white light. It was a kind of bright light that he couldn’t compare with any other — not even with sunlight. He noticed that the light illuminated his body from within. The light was neither warm nor cold; it just brought a wave of soothing peace. He was soon immersed completely in a state of joy and bliss that he had never known to exist. The light gave him an inner vision. Gurudev saw that despite the clear bright light that illuminated his body from the inside, he couldn’t detect the presence of his organs, as if his body were a mere empty shell!

Having worked occasionally as a helper in the railway hospital’s morgue, Gurudev knew the placement of internal organs, muscles and bones in a human body. And yet he could see none of it inside his own body!

He soon became aware of a buzzing sound like that of a swarm of bumblebees. When he focused on the sound, he realized it was emanating from the center of his navel. As he concentrated, he noticed to his astonishment that the buzzing was nothing but the Gāyatri mantra being repeated at an amazingly high speed, making it sound like the drone of bumblebees! He was to learn much later that the Gāyatri Mantra that he’d previously chanted through willful efforts had now become established as a non-stop, self-run process, linking him permanently to the divine force. The divine light brought another discovery for Gurudev. He realized that behind the façade of his identity and existence in the material world, he was a very different entity altogether. He was neither bound by his physical limitations nor was his personal awareness restricted to the physical world that he inhabited. He felt as if his personal being had expanded so vastly that he could embrace the whole universe. In fact, he felt he was the universe and he could feel the vibrations of all the animate and inanimate beings as if they were his own. He realized too through this unique experience that he had was indeed what the ancient Vedic seers had called Brahma, the absolute, all pervading, changeless and amorphous divine force.

Just as Gurudev was marveling at this extraordinary experience and was afloat on waves of joy, peace and love; the fantastic vision broke off as suddenly as it had occurred. The gurgling sound of water suddenly gushing out of an open tap in the bathroom had disturbed the trance-like state he was in.

When he consulted some pundits (wise men) well-versed in the holy scriptures about this particular experience, he was told that he had indeed been blessed by the Goddess Gāyatri with a Siddhi — special divine power.