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In September 2005, I had visited the hermitage (ashram) of the Spiritual Science Research Foundation (SSRF) in India.
There, I had the privilege of meeting His Holiness Dr. Athavale. After the conversation His Holiness Dr. Athavale gave me a chocolate candy and also had one Himself. Understanding the principle that there is transfer of Divine consciousness (Chaitanya) when a Saint touches any object, I saved the wrapper of the candy as H.H. Dr. Athavale had touched it. I loosely folded the wrapper and kept it in my pocket. H.H. Dr. Athavale rolled up His chocolate wrapper into a small ball and I offered to take it. I kept both wrappers safely in a ziplock bag knowing fully well the potency of each wrapper.
Later in October 2005, I came back to Australia where I currently live. I kept the ziplock bag in the altar room. On the 26th of December, three SSRF seekers had come over to my place to assist with the development of the SSRF website as their service unto God (satsēvā).
Ashram is a place where seekers of God stay or work together as service unto God, as part of their spiritual practice. Thereby they try to overcome their personality defects, ego and inculcate divine qualities so as to put into practice the various aspects of functioning in a divine kingdom.
After working on the website the whole day we were relaxing in the living room discussing the day’s events. I had a thought that they could perform a subtle experiment to test their sixth sense with the candy wrappers by checking whether they could perceive the Divine consciousness. I fetched the ziplock bag from the altar room and as soon as I opened it a strong fragrance emanated from the ziplock bag. All the seekers present perceived this divine fragrance of Sandalwood and Jasmine as it was quite intense.
– Sean Clarke, Melbourne, Australia
The Spiritual science behind this spiritual experience
From where did the fragrance originate?
Whenever a Saint or spiritually evolved person touches any object there is transfer of Divine consciousness (chaitanya) from the Saint unto the object. The subtle fragrance was emanating from the wrappers due to the Divine consciousness transferred to them from H.H. Dr. Athavale.
How is this subtle fragrance perceived?
This divine consciousness can be perceived by seekers with a developed and activated sixth sense through any of their subtle sense organs, subtle-mind or subtle-intellect. In the course of development of the sixth sense, the subtle sense organs, being the grossest, are the earliest to be developed. Among the subtle sense organs the sense of smell is the grossest and, hence, develops first.
