While Tamil Nadu, the southern state in India where Datta has held trips for people, is very rich in powerful temples with amazing vortexes of consciousness, India can also provide transformational moments in unexpected places.

In the USA, Datta had spoken to us many times about Tamil Nadu; he explained  how that area of India still retained some purity and many of the people there still held a genuine faith. I was interested to see what that would feel like.

In 2004, I attended Datta’s Birthday Trip in India. During part of the trip, we stayed in a lovely seaside resort where Datta had a priest do homas (special fire ceremonies) in the morning on the beach. Datta also gave seminars in the resort meeting rooms. We visited many temples in the area. On His birthday Datta waded a short ways into the ocean and allowed us to pour small amounts of ocean water over Him from a child’s beach pail as a “living Abishekem”. These were all very special moments.

However, on that trip, one of my cherished memories is something that happened in a Tamil Nadu tailor’s shop. During my free time, I walked into a nearby village with some of the other ladies on the trip. Because Datta’s birthday was coming up, we were thinking of getting some new clothes specially made for that occasion. We found a tailor’s shop with some gorgeous materials. Many of the fabrics had gold or silver threaded designs in addition to rich colors of material.

I quickly scanned the bolts of cloth, picked out two different materials for two new outfits, had the tailor’s assistant measure me and placed my order. The tailor promised to deliver right to the resort and had me put some deposit down and I would pay the balance upon receipt of the clothes. Done deal.

I looked around and realized the other ladies were just beginning their shopping experience. They wanted to see each bolt of cloth in detail, holding up the colors to different ladies’s faces to see what went best with each woman, and the tailor was happy to allow them to completely mess up his organized materials as he could see many upcoming sales in his immediate future. He seemed as joyful to show off the wares as they were to see them.

I realized I was going to have quite a wait as the other finished their shopping experience, and I could choose to be either frustrated or patient. I decided to go for patience. I began to walk around the tailor’s shop. I noticed he had some religious objects near the cash register and went over to see them in more detail. I felt I was seeing some of the purity and faith of Tamil Nadu that Datta had spoken to us about.

I saw a Yantra on the wall behind one counter, and I walked over to see it more closely. I became very excited as I “knew” that yantra. I recognized it as a nine planet Yantra, something I had learned about studying with Datta. As I moved into it more closely, the yantra flashed a light as intense as any darshan I had experienced on that trip in the temples. It was breath-taking.

I was stunned to be receiving such an experience in a simple tailor shop. I looked around; the other ladies were laughing and enjoying shopping. Apparently I was the only one seeing the light show from the Yantra.

Later on that trip, I saw Jyoti in the resort lobby sitting comfortably on a sofa listening to a cassette player. I asked what she was listening to. She said a cassette talk from an astrology course. I was surprised to learn someone could learn astrology from cassette tapes, and I thought that sounded like something that might fit into my schedule more easily than live classes with a teacher.

When I returned home, I went online and found out it was even possible to take some astrology courses via teleconference call. I thought this was great as it would give live interaction with a teacher and zero commute time.

I signed up for a beginning course and enjoyed it and continued to take more.

It was only years later, when I was doing very simple astrology readings for a time for some people in one of Datta’s programs, that I realized that moment with the nine planet yantra in the tailor shop had miraculously shifted my future as nothing in my Nadis or anything else had mentioned that I would do any work with astrology. India and Datta had slipped some “magic” in on that trip!