stay at SAT temple

I went to Society of Abidance in Truth (SAT temple) for a week and a half. I had some interesting experiences. I went to 4 events with Nome (aka Nome). I dialogued with him 3 times. Some interesting points came from teh dialogue in relation to Self-inquiry. the main gist I got of a way to do self-inquiry that seems really effective for me is to disregard any non-eternal thing that appears as not only unreal, but not me. In some of the deep experiences I had through this, I did become aware of what perhaps was a substratum. The expereinces, perceptual, verbal thinking, person/place/thing, the body, body sensations are all thoughts. And those thoughts have a beginning and an end in consciousness. And so when they are disregarded as being non-real and non-self because they are non-eternal, the eternal substratum starts to become more obvious. My experience, on the train back yesterday, it was/is like the cinema screen analogy, because these different kinds of thoughts appear on the screen. And if I think about it, everything, including, the past and future are projections on this screen. So if I'm the screen, I only imagined that I was born, am going to die, and progress through time. That was kind of the gist of it. The Grace around Nome was much like what is documented around Maharshi. And some of the experiences around him reminded me of expereinces around Maharshi that are described. For one, I got a clear experience of not being the performer of action on the way to the temple. And it was interesting, because it wasn't how I imagined it, but was profound. My ego wasn't totally eliminated but it was very subdued and all the events transpired like a dream I was watching as opposed to I was walking places, or getting out of the car. It was mainly taht the woman taking me there (in her 50s) who runs the housing, she seemed like any normal woman in her 50s, but she had been with Nome for 25 years and there something eerie and statue-esque about her. Every time i was in Nome's presence, I felt like some strong electrical or magnetic force was going through my body, and my nervous system was being forced into a different configuration that I could feel physically throughout my body. At first it was almost physically unpleasent to be in his presence. In satsang the grace was so strong, that I would see dazzling white light radiating from him. When I mentioned anything like that in the dialogues he kept directing me, "that I want to always be aware of the perceiver no matter what strange thing,or normal thing happens" (paraphrasing) Sometimes before Satsang it was as if on some below conscious level I was aware that my ego was going to the chopping block, and so worries would be heightened, fear of death would be kind of intense. In hindsight I noticed it was before Nome events. Usually when I was curled up in the height of anxiety, in the Satsang hall, this balanced peace would start taking over, and the anxiety would completely go away, then about a minute later Nome would walk in. Because of the egolessness there, I would hallucenate relaly intensely with Nome that he had a beard, did not have a beard, a white radiant light around him. When I practiced Self-inquiry which was so easy that I think most people there were in a full awareness of this extremely illumined, non-individualized expansive consciousness. When I eliminated the non-eternal, I could see pretty clearly that there were no attributes to Nome that he was completely still in an egoless awareness even though he talked confidently with questioners.
Several of the people there had known Nome since he was in his teens. And they had said that he had been like this since then. He had evidently Reailized the Self in his teens. They said that since he treated everyone kindly, disreputable, and unkind people associated with him, and that kind of drove people away in the early days in the 70s and 80s.
Oh yeah, he would often in dialogues respond to my thoughts, and not what I had said, or make references to what I was thinking, or even look at me when I had thoughts like this is the perfect topic. some of it was an omnipresence. Other stuff seemed to happen around him in a relaly graceful way. I was on the phone with my mom and said I needed a light in the room. The roomate (who was not a Nome devotee) knocked on the door and said, "do you need a light?" and gave me a lamp right when I told my mom about it. I asked him several days later if he had heard me on the phone with my mom, he hadn't. The next day, Nome and his wife had stopped by to check on me. Nome seemed concerned about whether there was light to the room. I told him about the roomate giving me a light, and he seemed pleased, but he didn't seem to know anything about it, or be behind it. So the grace around there was operating these things. He joked that I had probably been seeing by divine sight. Nome was extremely confident in Satsang, but outside of Satsang he was really unassuming, shy, and charming and would look at me with the look as if I was a best friend he hadn't seen in a decade, the kind that made my heart really get very warm. Same in Satsang. When he looked at me (darshan), it was a very kind look. If people asked earnest questions he answered very well, and as an equal. If people asked pretentious questions, I noticed he tended to have a dry, sarcasm, and be a bit condescending. If I think about it, that was how Maharshi was in Talks with Ramana Maharshi. There was sometimes an almost dry wit with questioners that presented things in an intellectual fashion. Except like Maharshi, I noticed that Nome would answer any questioner very fully, so that there doubts were cleared and they knew how to proceed. One questioner said dryly that he was worried in the no-thought state he would be bored to death. Nome responded "Try it! No use speaking theoretically". And basically reiterated to that person that boredom is just a mode of mind, and that the real Self does not have such states of mind, and that the real Self is a "source of perpetual fascination".
Interestingly, Nome's right arm had Parkinson's symptoms. And when I came in his presence the first time, in his office, he was behind his desk, and he on some subtle level looked like his body was really uncomforatble and feeling the itense as I said almost electriacl feelings through my body. The mildly shaking arm made sense. But there was no "Jnani" behavior from him, he responded to me as if he was someone my age with a charming smile asking how long it took me to get there.
I also believe the Ribhu Gita (english translation) David Godman gave to Papaji would have to be the Ramamoorthy, Nome translation in the 90s but maybe I'm wrong. The copy of the book Papaji was holding in the picture had a similar cover. Nome also did a commentary I was reading on Self-inquiry by Maharshi that was very interesting to read.