by Sarah Newell

Time in the Casa, and in Abadiana in general, seems to move at a different pace.

View of the Casa on the hillside, surrounded by green hills

Removed from major cities, with the highway just a faint soundtrack in the distance, the entire neighborhood feels plucked out of another era. The first week in the Casa challenged our perceptions of time. With 7:00am arrivals and 6:00pm departures, the eleven-hour days felt like running a marathon. This exhaustion contradicted the fact that we’d done nothing but sit in silence for the vast majority of those hours. The Casa’s Great Hall and meditation rooms have no clocks, and cell phone use is strictly prohibited. This makes it difficult to know what time it is while sitting in the Great Hall for hours, waiting for your specific line to be called.

When you’re “in current”, there is no sense of time whatsoever. John of God requires meditators to keep their eyes closed at all times, and facilitators are constantly walking around to make sure everyone is following proper procedures. On the first day, we sat in the hot room for four and a half hours. With my eyes closed, it could have easily been seven, or even two. Each session ends at a different time, depending on how many people come to see him in the afternoon – if special guests come to visit, the current could continue long into the evening. Not knowing what time it is, or how long you’ll be in there, makes sitting in current a bleak, frustrating experience unless you’re fully immersed in your meditation (a difficult feat over such a long period of time).

The ultimate release of control over time is during the 24 hour sleep mandatory after spiritual intervention. Post “surgery”, patients are encouraged to rest for a full day, without using electronics, reading, writing or speaking to others. If you are without a group, pousadas in the area will even assist by bringing food and sacred soup to your room. Being horizontal and in the dark for that long is completely disorienting; time seems to crawl at its own pace, and often I opened my eyes and couldn’t have remotely guessed at the time. Even when the period was up, I felt completely removed from reality around me.

A walk beyond the Casa

At best guess, this warped sense of time serves to make the John of God experience even more “magical”. The Casa becomes an island, utterly removed from the rest of the world around, which lends credibility to the idea that beyond-normal healings can take place here. As a participant, you feel completely disconnected from everyone else who is not sharing this same space and experience. The fostering of a strong community here, while alienating others who are not on your journey, helps to discredit and distract from potential naysayers.