One of the biggest challenges facing me in the case of Anamika was that she was not from the Jain community and was only attached to the Kendra as an instructor of meditational practice. Her only duty was to learn and teach meditation. Hence, it was unclear to me whether in such an intensive practice, where she was faced with such strange challenges, I should assist her, motivate her, or ask her to regress and stop.

Several functionaries associated with the Kendra, upon learning of Anamika’s practice, had told me in no uncertain terms to make her stop her meditation and ask her to leave. Their misgivings stemmed from the concern that were anything untoward were to happen, it would not only damage the reputation of the Kendra but of the entire Terapanth sect of the Jains. Hence, no such experiment must be conducted without taking the entire community into confidence.

At one level, their concerns were logical and in the interest of the community, but given how personally invested I was in the case, I could not bring myself to bring Anamika to stop. It was my belief that Adhyatm Sadhna Kendra was the foundation for meditational practice and such experiments concerning meditation must be undertaken here. If any challenges arose in such experiments, we must accept them. The only trouble was that we were not equipped to handle such challenges and neither did we have any knowledge of the same.

One day, it came to me that it would perhaps be better if I could engage some more people with the experiment and make them aware of the development. I wanted to be sure that what I was seeing was not merely a figment of my imagination, as some others also seemed to believe. I did not wish to be caught in this quagmire without any due cause.

Thus, first I discussed the matter with my brother Sushil Jain, who had previously been associated with Adhyatm Sadhna Kendra as a Trustee, and who had little faith in the existence of divine or evil forces and any actions by them. In other words, he believed that I was far too gullible to believe all these things, which was not right. Hence, I thought that if my experiences could also be shared by him, some serious deliberations could be held, which might result in a solution to the problem at hand.

Sushil then accompanied me to the Kendra one evening and he too witnessed the same things which I had been seeing for the past several days. He too came to form the opinion that this was not anyone’s imagination or theatrics. But he too failed to provide any clear solution to the problem.

The one good thing that came out of my discussion with Sushil was that on his suggestion, we began to chant the “Upsarg haran strotra,” a famous canonical epithet of Jain tradition, after which it seemed for a time as if the dark forces had quietened down. Once again, the hope arose that perhaps, a solution had been found this time.

But alas, this was not to be.