Writing…painting…life, happens. Claiming them as our own is the root of all suffering.
We were asked by my teacher while a number of us were participating in painting signs for his birthday celebration, “How many painters?” As I thought to raise my
hand, he smiled and said, “Only One painter”. He wasn’t referring to us of course,
but to that which is beyond the reach of the brush, the holder of the brush, the paint and the canvas. When who we think we are dissolves, all that’s left is painting.
JRD © 2011, Jacquelyn Raye Davis
A Journey from there to here
by
INTRODUCTION
There have been many books written about the teacher Sri Sathya Sai Baba, which focus on the life and miracles of this extraordinary being. Most if not all are lovingly dedicated to him, and examine the incredible impact he has had on the authors, as well as hosts of others whose stories the authors may recount. The stories are often told in a tone of reverence because the focus is the teacher who is the most cherished of beings, and who has introduced such meaning and joy to the lives of the authors that it is difficult for them to ‘speak’ otherwise.
I too, owe more to Sai Baba than can be imagined, and cherish him to the depths of my being. But in being true to the woman I am, this story is not about the unfathomable Sri Sathya Sai Baba; it is about the young woman I used to be, seen through the eyes of one with numerous flaws, ego, and irreverence, (“warts and all” as they say), as she moves through time in the presence of the one she calls her “beloved teacher, Sayee”. The irreverence of which I speak is not aimed at the teacher, but is the voice of the personality encountering itself as revealed in the mirror of a “perfected” being...whose existence resists nothing, judges nothing, and accepts all. Those who see judgment, and rejection in him, I believe, are not seeing him at all, but what they judge and reject in themselves projected onto the screen of the world.
This is the story of the girl in the Krishna blue sari, whose life unravels, contracts and expands as she walks on holy ground in her own unholy way.
And so it is with humility and gratitude that I dedicate this work to the One who is the closest of close, the friend of all friends, who is not affected by praise or blame, and who accepts us all as we are, because he sees into the heart and sees only himself…and this is his greatest lesson.
PREFACE
One day Sai Baba surrounded by a group of Russians and Italians, ordered me from across a room to “Translate!” “Swami, I don’t speak Russian”, I heard myself say.” Again looking deeply into my eyes he commanded, “Translate!” I knew absolutely that he was fully aware I didn’t speak Russian or Italian, and was confused by his insistence. Later a few people who witnessed the event approached to inform me that Swami meant for me to put into practice his teachings, and/or to write about my experiences. “Yes” I answered, knowing that the advice did not quite capture the entirety of what I felt was meant by the command.
One day after returning to the states and after much contemplation on the “translate” directive, I opened the huge yellow volume of the Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary that belonged to my scholarly husband. I was a bit surprised to find that the first definition was “to move a thing from one place to another”; but was quite astounded when my eyes fell on the second definition: “to translate - by faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and he was not found, because God translated him, because it was said that he was pleasing to God”.
In the Vedas it’s said that it is necessary for spiritual aspirants to “die” before they die in order to fulfill their true destiny. In fact, this dying before death is claimed to BE that destiny itself. Living this experience, the Jivanmukta, (the individual free from attachment to the conditioned mind and the resulting world) realizes the true nature of the Self and abides therein, while continuing to inhabit the physical form. This above all was my heart’s desire. It felt to me that this was the best possible service a being could render to humanity. Without the death of the ego (attachment to body/mind), how could there be such a thing as selfless service?
However, earlier on the day Sai insisted I “Translate!” when he’d asked me what I wanted, I closed my eyes and whispered “I want what you came to give”.
After the long hours of deep contemplation that had followed the encounter with ‘my’ Sayee, I began to understand the true meaning of that command. His promise of translation is what he came to give that girl, who, (as far as she knew), wanted nothing more.
This story is true, as taken from the journals I wrote during those early years with my beloved teacher Sri Sathya Sai Baba, but the conversations (other than those with Sai Baba or those directly related to him) are from memory, and though true in content are not exact. I write in present tense throughout, as memories erupt and catapult me into the living experience as these fingers hit the keys. It’s as my Swami said it would be, a meditation on a rare and exquisite time, that exists not only there in the past...but Here and Now.
JRD
Chapter 1
YOGA AND COWGIRL BOOTS
Just live your life as it comes, but alertly, watchfully, allowing everything to happen as it happens doing the natural things the natural way, suffering, rejoicing –as life brings. This also is a way.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
Somewhere between Tucson and Grand Forks, the new ’73 Caddy slams to a halt in front of a one pump desert gas station. “Five minutes” my father commands as he leaps from behind the wheel to check the oil and wash the windows. My mother and I, dizzy from trying not to focus on the blurred scenery for the last two hundred miles, pile out of the car and head to the bathroom. While I wait for her, I browse the rusty bookrack for something to distract me for the rest of the trip to attend my younger brother’s wedding, a day away. “Yoga, Youth, and Reincarnation, hmm…seems a strange selection for a gas station reading rack out in the middle of nowhere.”
Little do I know as the car peels away from the ‘Last gas for 60 miles’ station that I am speeding headlong into an incredible adventure that is to span the next 38 years of my life.
While not on the road trip from hell I am working my way through Art and Nursing school as a tender footed, cowboy booted, waitress. To pay my way I work in the evenings at an historic stage stop restaurant in the Tucson Mountains where daily I encounter a mix of customers that includes dude ranch cowboys, drug dealers, movie stars, sports figures, locals, tourists, and CIA agents who land their helicopters in the parking lot.
Back from the whirlwind journey to witness my brother tie the knot with his second girlfriend, and strongly influenced by the Jess Stern book on Yoga, etc., I enroll in the only yoga class being offered in Tucson.
The beginning class in Hatha Yoga is taught by Virginia Hill. She is a wonderful lithe woman in her mid fifties, who wears an impish grin, formfitting leotards, and radiates an energy that captivates and inspires me. The class is an eclectic group of housewives, students, bartenders, night shift workers, and a few elderly men and women. It’s quite a drive from my desert hideaway to the hall where the small yoga classes are held, but I am immediately hooked.
School, work, and relationships aside, I am at home in my desert cottage surrounded by 200 acres of Sonoran cacti and sagebrush. The stillness of the desert at twilight always brings me back to serenity, regardless of what my day has offered. When the weather is good, sometimes I’ll ride my horse to work so she can watch from the coziness of the corral the changing scenery of restaurant patrons coming and going while I haul platters of steaks and beans to crowded tables.
Early morning yoga sessions on a mat on the dirt outside my desert cottage leave me looking from various curious angles at the Dr. Seuss like saguaros and cholla cacti, frozen in mid leap after a night of carousing about the desert when all of us humans were tucked away in our beds. The sunrise plays off the rock formations and stretches shadows across my body as I shift from position to position, focusing on my breathing and the intricate dance of muscles as they tighten and release. It is utter joy.
I am married to a bartending potter I’d met years earlier at a slot machine in Lake Tahoe. We’d become good friends. Several years before, my heart had been ‘lost’ to a handsome young man in California who’d eventually given me an ultimatum to marry him or break up. I couldn’t marry someone who’d offered me such a choice when I was only 19. He got married three months later.
After this pot throwing fellow followed me from California to Arizona, moved in, and continued to insist that ‘marriage to a good friend was a wise investment’, I gave in and decided to go for it. I’d been highly resistant to the idea of marriage after the earlier incident, so it took a lot of persistent persuasion. I take full responsibility for going through with it.
Recently in a fit of near desperation, I made my way up the Picture Rocks Mountain behind my cottage and began to sob. I sobbed for three days straight, not quite knowing why. What I realized after the catharsis was that somewhere along the line, I had lost myself. The marriage was something he had wanted, and I’d let happen. Although he might dispute it to this day, neither one of us was happy.
So, after ten months of marriage, I pack my bags and say goodbye to my husband, my beloved desert hideaway, my sweet red horse and dogs, and move into an artist colony with the help of a folksy voiced guitar player who encourages me in my independence. Up to this point a few other men had encouraged me in my independence, only to later want me to then commit to them. Little did they know I wasn’t a trainee in that department.
DON’T SCARE ME TO DEATH!
The unexpected and unpredictable is real
Nisargadatta Maharaj
Two blurry years later when I find myself boarding a flight to San Diego on my way to the Tecate Mexico hermitage of Mataji Indra Devi, I feel my life beginning to come into focus. As I sit in my seat ready for takeoff, I open a book presented to me earlier that week by Virginia, my friend and yoga teacher who had previously given me only the briefest sketch of the place I am about to visit She said as she handed it to me with a twinkle in her eye, that she hated to send me off to Indra Devi’s “unprepared”. While she was grinning impishly, she pressed a copy of Howard Murphet’s “Man Of Miracles” into my unsuspecting hands.
In my hurry to pack I paid little attention to the funny looking man on the book cover, but sitting in my seat on the plane and looking at the strange image I feel a spark of energy stir in my gut. Somewhere between the first two chapters and San Diego I have the strangest sensation that my life is about to change dramatically. It’s as if the plane is a giant hand sweeping me out of the world I’ve known into some foreign yet eerily familiar reality.
I’m greeted at the airport by two handsome young men and loaded into a van with a few others also bound for Tecate. The men are kind enough, but it’s their identical white pajama-like pants and shirts that give me pause. I cross my fingers and hope I’ve not wandered into some kind of cult recruitment camp.
Indra Devi is a slight spry white haired sari draped women in her late seventies give or take a decade. She still speaks with a Russian accent, and seems genuinely happy to greet the newcomers. I’m shown to a room on the first floor in the main house and given the daily schedule and a map of the grounds and eating areas to familiarize myself with the layout before we’re to gather for dinner in the student quarters across the compound. Our days are to begin with early morning meditative sits and singing followed by hours of yoga postures peppered with breaks for wonderful vegetarian meals.
After several weeks of the month long stay, and into the 10th day of a liquid fast I decide to do to cleanse my body of the toxins that had no doubt accumulated through my unhealthy habits, I am noticing something strange happening in my cell of a room.
Every evening before I return to the room after a full day of yoga postures, lectures, and early morning meditations, the other students and I sit in the candle lit living room listening to the yoga teacher’s exploits in her beloved India. Most of the stories revolve around the funny looking character that is the subject of Murphet’s book. It seems that sometime around the early 1960s Indra Devi had met this teacher whom she described as a great Master in the south of India.
Of course my interest is aroused, though I myself am not a stranger to unusual happenings. She tells numerous stories about the Master, one of which has him appearing at the ranch just in time to blow on a raging fire that was a few feet from engulfing the house. The force of his breath had apparently blown the fire away from the house, and all were saved.
The stories continue late into the evening, until I finally drag myself, exhausted from hours of yoga postures and people, back to the strange happenings of my private cell-like room. More and more often, as I get ready for bed I have the experience of an eerie stillness that throws my body into shivers and causes the hair on the back of my neck and on my forearms to stand on end.
It’s as if someone I can’t see is watching me. I close the curtains, look in the Armoire and under the bed, and say out loud as I dive under the covers, “I don’t know what’s happening, but if there is someone here, please don’t scare me to death”.
Now, I know what psychosis is. I know what dissociation and hallucinations are. My mind is crystal clear. There is no sign of anxiety, nor stress of any kind. I’m not withdrawing from drugs or alcohol and there is no history of mental illness in my family, (though I do remember my mother telling me the story of some great uncle who couldn’t get his boots on so he chopped off his toes with an ax). I’m experiencing what I sense is a healthy balance of skepticism and open mindedness to the stories and philosophies that have been presented throughout my stay at this Mexican yoga ranch. I’ve asked a lot of questions of people, especially of those who’ve spent some time in India with the man who is the focus of Indra Devi’s stories.
“Why do you think you need a guru?” I inquire to whoever has the misfortune of ending up on the other side of the table at lunch. One beautiful young Italian man says that he’d never known unconditional love until he met, stayed with, and observed the “funny looking, fire defeating, “little guru character” (My depiction of the guru, not his.) Perhaps the role of the guru is to get our attention, demonstrate some alternatives regarding life, and then turn us inside out until not a shred of life as we had known it is left. Then he leaves us to go on living our lives as though nothing of significance had happened, but I’m getting ahead of myself. This is closer to my future experience of the role of a guru. Now I’m satisfied with the unconditional love answer given by Giovanni.
I’ve not come to the Tecate yoga retreat to find a guru. I’d not been particularly interested in Eastern philosophy until reading the book on the plane. Yes, I am a child of the 60s and have read “Be Here Now”. I’ve experienced an artificially induced psychedelic hallucination a time or two, and burned incense while writing poetry and listening to the intricate rhythms of the tabla accompany Ravi Shankar on sitar, but that’s as far as it goes. Prior to my trip to Indra Devi’s retreat in Mexico, I’d been experiencing without the aid of any of the aforementioned accouterments, a number of ‘accidental’ meditative states. But what’s brought me here to Tecate is my desire to learn more about yoga asanas, and about what’s been going on within me as a result of my practice, not some spiritual philosophy.
I rebelled against my birth religion in high school when in my junior religion class Sister Maria Goretti would not tolerate my questions about what seemed to me to be apparent inconsistencies in the church dogma. I was an inquisitive kid, and I truly wanted to know things like why ‘only baptized Catholics were allowed into heaven’. What about all of the other good guys? And by the way, what was heaven? How could we separate heaven and hell from life? Off to the principal’s office I would go. I never got in too much trouble. Most of the nuns liked me, and I believe were going through the process of reexamining their own commitments to the old school ideology. This was during the time of the Viet Nam War and Vatican II, and by the time I graduated from high school, most of the nuns who had taught me were leaving the convent.
I had loved the Catholic Latin rituals as a child. I could sit for hours in the darkened cathedral before the first period school bell, in front of the candle lit life size statue of Jesus exposing his wounded flaming heart, feeling totally safe and at peace.
I loved the smell of the burning frankincense and the mystical sounds of chanting during special holiday processions. But, I had a difficult time reconciling this beauty and mystery with the harsh exclusionary rules that seemed bent on separating Catholics from the rest of ‘god’s children’. No one could help me, either. It seemed that everyone I questioned would become defensive and tell me that I just had to take it all on faith. As a younger child I didn’t press them much after that. So the last thing I find myself interested in at the yoga retreat is adopting a new religious dogma wherein to reach ‘god’ I’d need the mediation and interpretations of a guru instead of a church and its priests.
Night after night the hair-raising experience continues. The presence is so strong that I think, “if there were a mirror in this room, I’m sure it would be two-way with someone on the other side watching”.
Slowly becoming conscious of myself sprawled in a tangle of blankets on the hard twin mattress in my ‘haunted’ cell of a room, I roll over to see my travel-clock glowing ‘4:00 A.M.’ in the pre-dawn darkness. Sliding out of bed, I pull on my robe, grab my towel and head out my door and down the hall to the communal bathroom to use the toilet. The hall is pitch black, but the light under the closed-door signals someone’s beat me to the bathroom, and appears to be taking a shower. There are only three bedrooms downstairs, which are occupied by single women who all share this bathroom. We’d made an agreement at the beginning of our stay, that early morning pre-meditation toilet routines would be simple and quick to avoid long frustrating waits for the others.
Really having to ‘go’ and hoping to be the next in line to use the ‘can’ I rush to sit down in the darkened hallway just outside the bathroom to wait my turn. The other two bedroom doors are closed and no lights are on anywhere, except in the bathroom. Sitting on the cold floor trying to control my bladder, I find myself becoming rather irritated with what sounds like a soprano rehearsing some aria from Rigoletto, or maybe a Beach Boys tune in the shower. It’s obvious that whoever’s in there seems truly lost in the moment and not at all concerned about how long they’ve been in there ‘hogging’ the facilities. My irritation seems to be growing exponentially as the minutes tick away, until hardly able to hold myself back from pounding on the door and waking up the whole house, I search for an alternate solution.
Sitting here in the dark I decide to simply observe the situation. “Interesting. It seems the more irritated I become, the more I have ‘go’. Okay then, maybe if I try some psychological ‘self talk’ it will help me with this impatience and reduce the tension which no doubt is exacerbating this increasing urge to explode.” My effort to search for something positive to think brings up the memory of my conversation with Giovanni and the idea of unconditional love he attributed to the teacher in orange. “Fine then. I’ll just pretend there’s someone I love unconditionally lollygagging in the shower and then maybe I can relax”. The first person coming to mind is mother. “Yes, I do love her, but if she’s the one in the shower, I am still going to be pounding on that door.”
As I scroll down the list of people I love I realize that with them all I’d have the same reaction. “Great! Maybe I should imagine I’m in India, sitting in the hall outside the bathroom of this magical Master character I’ve been hearing so much about lately. Strange. What’s happening? I feel a wave as tangible as if I’m moving through a warm shifting cloud that seems to completely engulf my body. Every cell is beginning to vibrate with such a calm soothing energy that I feel like I’m melting into the ether. What the heck?”
I’ve been sitting on the floor with my knees drawn up to my chest, and my arms crossed, hugging them tightly to me. In this position, resting in the amazing calm, I glance down to the floor on my right and see a startling sight. There on the floor is a miniature figure dressed in a full-length orange robe, curly black hair, and dark skin, wagging his head from side to side.
“Oh, right!” I say out loud slapping my palm against my forehead as if to smack some sense into myself. “I’ve been here way too long. After all the stories about this guy, the yoga exercises and fasting, I think I see a miniature holy man beside me. If I look away, then back again, he’ll be gone. All of this is surely a product of my heightened imagination and yoga teacher brainwashing.”
Looking back, the figure is still there next to me on the floor, smiling broadly. “Hmm, maybe there’s a holographic projector somewhere in the hallway.” Surveying the hall, I get up on my hands and knees and look for light reflecting from under doorways or any other physical explanation for the phenomenon before my eyes. I look from my new position into the little face and realize startlingly, that this is no faked phenomenon.
Sitting back down against the wall flabbergasted, I continue to observe. Quietly, but very clearly, as the figure continues to smile and bob his head, it speaks; “Aren’t you glad I didn’t scare you to death?”
Chapter 3
What Do You Want?
“I came to give you what you want so you will learn to want what I came to give”
Sri Sathya Sai Baba
A few days before my month in Tecate is to come to an end, Indra Devi invites me in to talk privately. We discuss my life, my goals and expectations. She asks what I want, and not quite understanding the depth of her question, I answer that I want to work with elderly people in some capacity. She hands me a rosary that had been “manifested” by her guru and ushers me to the meditation tower where I sit for a while in the stillness of the late afternoon.
After bidding a fond farewell to Rancho Cuchuma, Indra Devi, and her adopted daughter Rosita, I’m driven to the airport by the two boys who’d picked me up a month earlier. I see that I’m looking at them a bit differently, more gently I suppose. After racing through traffic and dropping off the others, we discover I’m going to be late for my flight to Tucson.
The ticket agent regretfully tells me I’ve arrived too late for my check-in bag to make the plane. She says that the baggage crew has already closed the hold and that my duffel will arrive on the next flight two hours later, but that I can make the plane if I run. I feel a little wobbly legged after a month in the serene shadows of Mount Cuchuma, and wonder at this, my first obstacle back in the rat race. I’m overwhelmed by the stimuli of the airport, but somehow make it to the aircraft as the stewardess is closing the door. Moving through the cabin toward my row, I’m greeted by the angry glare of passengers whose flight has been delayed on behalf of this last, bumbling straggler. I’m hardly in my seat before the plane begins to move onto the tarmac. How I wonder as I fasten my seat belt, will it be possible for me to maintain the incredible serenity I’d been experiencing in the quiet of the yoga ranch, while moving through the bombardment of sensory stimuli of the everyday world?
Approaching the arrival area in the small Tucson airport, and seeing my silver-tongued, guitar-playing friend looking disturbed at the sight of me, I feel completely out of place. He’d been somewhat disgusted with the whole idea of my going away to a yoga retreat, and is commenting bitingly about how awful I look as we walk together toward baggage claim. I’ve lost about ten pounds, and am feeling a little disoriented amidst the noise and airport crowd. “I need to go to the office in baggage claim to ask if my bag can be held until tomorrow. I don’t have the energy to wait around for two hours for it to arrive on the next plane.” He’s still scowling as if my very presence is the height of inconvenience, but begrudgingly trudges along beside me.
Arriving at baggage claim and duly explaining the situation to the baggage clerk behind the desk, he asks me to describe my bag and give him the claim number, so as to identify it for storage when it arrives. Still feeling a little foggy of mind at my re-entry to the ‘normal’ world, I begin looking about the office at some pieces of luggage lying around to help me gain a frame of reference for a description. “Well, it’s a brownish leather looking duffel...it looks a little like that one over there. Hey...wait...that one...that one IS mine!” “That’s strange. The baggage from your San Diego flight hasn’t hit the carousel yet” the clerk remarks as he double checks his information. “Nope. Not here yet. Sure don’t know what that one’s doing here. But it matches your claim number, so it must be yours.”
My surly friend is even more disturbed now. He’s sure I’ve somehow made some kind of mistake. You know, the kind of mistake you make when you’re late for a plane…you schedule your baggage on a flight that leaves before you do. Well, the clerk and I sharing a moment know something very weird has just happened. Looking at each other in wonder, I suddenly feel a strange glow of reassurance about my recent experiences, and the possibility of maintaining serenity in a world of apparent chaos.
After the initial discombobulation of being back in Tucson, I begin to make some life changing decisions that lead to quitting my job and Nursing school without a clear plan as to what to do next. I just know I don’t want to do either of those things anymore. From the moment I walk out of the hospital after conveying the news to my nursing supervisor a synchronistic sequence of events begins to unfold.
I come home (I’ve moved temporarily in with my parents) elated and terrified, lost and euphoric and not looking forward to conveying the news of school to my mother. As I sit contemplating how to approach her, the phone rings. “Oh, hi Virginia. Yes, I had a wonderful time in Tecate. Thanks so much for the book and the encouragement. What? Sure I’d love to take over one of your classes. I have a pen right here. Yes...yes; Pima Community College...yes... ‘Senior Citizens Extension Program’; Great! Thanks a lot for everything. I’ll do my best. Bye.”
I think it rather curious that what I’d told Indra Devi I wanted less than a week earlier has come to pass. I’m to be working with the ‘elderly’ doing my favorite thing...Yoga! Within six months I find myself teaching eleven classes. Five for local and regional colleges, and the rest are private classes given to the students who’ve taken the first level through the college programs.
And it is at this, my first teaching job, that I’m chased to the parking lot by a rascally Rasputin look-a-like, who is soon to become my nearly constant companion and confidant.
WHO WAS THAT GUY?
Lee is a cocky Stanford graduate working on his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Arizona and teaching Philosophy East and West at the same Senior Citizen College Extension program for which I’ve just become the new Yoga teacher.
He’s a strange bird who approaches me on my way to the parking lot just after the first faculty meeting, walking at a fast clip, inquiring nervously about my being the yoga instructor. The first words out of his mouth; “So, you’re the yoga teacher…has your Kundalini risen?” I’m startled and quite taken aback by his abruptness and flash to a recent memory of my new Russian yogini friend who’d warned me of strangers whose years of incorrect use of ancient yogic breathing techniques cause their eyes to nervously scan and flit about uncontrollably with a very distinguishable intensity. Well, here he is, my first mystical misfit in the flesh. It feels like this ‘mad monk’ has just asked about my sex life. Confused by the blunt intensity, lack of social
aplomb, and the whole flashing eye thing, I back into my Land Cruiser and speed away without a word.
A few weeks having quickly passed since I fled the scene of the encounter in the parking lot with the strange intense fellow, I see him again, though I find myself avoiding eye contact as his head turns in my direction.
On this particularly beautiful winter day as I move to leave the yoga room, a wonderful elegant looking student approaches. Virginia is in her late sixties, and easily noticeable in the class for the Za-Zen kneeling position she assumes whenever the rest of the class sits cross-legged on the floor. She confesses to being a fledgling Buddhist and extends an invitation to tea to exchange ideas regarding an Eastern discipline she’s studying with her “teacher”. She tells me she’ll be calling me soon with the day and time of our appointment. When she finally phones several weeks later she informs me that, if it’s all right with me, her Buddhist teacher will meet with us as well.
As I hang up the phone a tangible wave of predestination washes over me, and I have the eeriest feeling that when I present myself at her home at the appointed hour, someone I’ve known all of my life (my father being the biggest possible surprise as he is the least likely) will pop out from behind some closet door and shout “Surprise! I’ve been a Buddhist lama in hiding all of these years and now it’s finally time to let you in on the secret”. My father would be the least likely because he is a retired Air Force Colonel who embodies all of the typical stereotypes given to one of his standing, so though my mind is open, that possibility seems highly unlikely. It’s strange though, how I can’t shake the gut gnawing feeling of a silly pre-déjà-vu.
Well, as you might guess, a little after my arrival at her meticulously decorated Oriental designed home, ‘Rasputin The Sequel’ arrives with a smidgen more tact than proffered at our last encounter. I’m sorry to say that I’m a bit disappointed. I’d really been rooting for dad to jump out and initiate me into the hidden mysteries of combining Buddhist lama-ness with the intricacies of The Strategic Air Command.
…AND THOSE GUYS?
After chatting about Buddhism and other Eastern philosophies with Lee and Virginia in the austere setting of her monastery-like drawing room, she invites us upstairs to meditate. We sit facing each other forming a triangle of sorts, with Virginia and I looking in the direction of Lee the Buddhist Rasputin, and he gazing softly towards me. I focus on my breathing while keeping my eyes gently fixed on his face, as he suggested.
After some time of absorption in the deep stillness that usually accompanies my ‘sitting’, I begin to notice a strange phenomenon playing across the lines and contours of Lee’s face. Remaining detached from the dance of light and shadow, I begin to observe that his entire appearance starts to morph from one clear and distinct face to another. His hair is black, shoulder length and very Einstein-esque, in style. He has a dark sculptured, yet somewhat bushy beard, milky white skin and deep-set hazel eyes. But what I begin to notice as we sit is that at times his beard disappears and his hair changes to a shorter, fuller more wiry style. Accompanying this change is a much more youthful face with less deep set, dark brown eyes, a broader nose and darker skin. I don’t allow my mind to analyze the situation; I merely watch and stay connected to the deep experience of stillness.
We sit for what I guess is about an hour. In that time, I witness his face changing periodically into five very distinctly different faces, with different hairstyles and color. One head, clearly bald, crowns a delicate, serenely, Oriental face. Though I remain detached throughout the experience, one face, the most compassionate I’ve ever seen, stirs my heart with such a familiar intensity that I can feel my eyes filling with tears.
Each face appears a number of times, as if to assure me that what I’m seeing is not just the play of light and shadow in the ever-dimming twilight of Virginia’s meditation loft. At one point I notice what seems to be a blue white haze surrounding Lee’s body. The haze is outlined with a distinctive thin pink hue.
I’ve never seen an ‘aura’ in my life, and am not quite sure I’m seeing one now when Lee breaks the silence with questions to Virginia and me about our experience. I’m still a little peeved at him for not being my dad the lama-pilot, and for what I consider a certain air of superiority he exudes, so I defer my comments and wait for Virginia to speak.
She begins by saying that she’s seen the usual pink lined bluish white aura, and a few of the usual faces. Even though I know what I’ve seen, it’s still quite astonishing to hear Virginia corroborate it.
Lee’s gaze then turns toward me and fixes itself on my hesitant face. All right, as much as I want to remain silent and go quietly home to think, I figure I might as well admit it now and feed his ego with my corroborating experience of the faces and aura.
He is, of course, delighted by my report. His interest in me immediately seems to increase from a detached level of mild curiosity to an excited invitation to his home for a psychological-astrological reading.
IS THAT IN MY CHART?
Not long after the ‘faces’ incident in the meditation loft at Virginia’s, I decide to take Lee up on his offer for an astrological reading cum psychological profile and perhaps get his take on what had happened during our ‘sit’.
I hadn’t been at his dark, paper strewn cockroach inundated pad for ten minutes when this refugee from an early Russian novel, after ruffling through some papers and plopping down on the couch across from me, announces rather matter-of-factly, that he only wants to be friends. He says, as he casually surveys the contents of my chart, that he’s not interested in a romantic relationship. What a strange reaction I have to this declaration. On the one hand, I’m not interested in romance at all, especially since Rasputin Jr. isn’t even my type. On the other hand, “what’s wrong with me that I’m so easily dismissed as a candidate for romance?”
I’ve been having an on again off again relationship of sorts with my guitar playing ‘friend’ for a couple of years now, and at the moment it’s in one of its ‘off ‘ phases. We’re not really friends, as he pretty much treats me like I’m intellectually inferior, (probably am), and I put up with it because he’s smart and funny, and sings a mean folk song.
He’s a nihilist/conservative and contemptuous of any interest or idea that seems to be my own, especially if it doesn’t agree with his own world-view (which it never does). In a strange sort of way, the knee jerk reaction of contempt he has for me, and my ideas has the hidden benefit of challenging me to become less passive and more determined to create a voice for myself. And eventually as I come into a voice of my own, I will leave him behind.
I’ve actually been feeling quite good, being free of the entanglements of a ‘romantic’ relationship, and am not even on the look out for new prospects. It’s clear to me that I’m not particularly good at them anyway, at least up to now, so...who does he think he is, this...this Rasputin, Einstein, rejecting me when I haven’t even ‘applied for the position! ’
Gawd, I feel manipulated. I’ve never met anyone like Lee before. His inability to pull any punches and lack of concern for social decorum frequently leaves me reeling in confusion. I often think it strange that because I am so conditioned to less than frank conversation with people speaking in more of an emotional code, that I’m a bit caught off guard and confused by his blunt honesty, and find it not only disarming but brashly harsh.
I’m in the midst of experiencing an emotional conundrum. I’d hardly have given a romantic relationship with Lee a second thought until he mentioned it was out of the question. Now what is aroused in me, existing side by side with repulsion towards the very idea of being romantically involved, is a desire to conquer. From what primal pre- frontal lobe development phase does this urge ooze? This makes no sense to me at all unless it can be explained in some biological evolution theory. It just feels programmed in, a part of the package, something I have no choice or control over. All I can do is sit and watch it birth itself into my life like a pimple popping out in glaring sight on the tip of my nose.
THE INVITATION
“Be empty of all mental content of all imagination and effort, and the very absence of obstacles will cause reality to rush in.”
Nisargadatta Maharaj
The following five months with Lee as my constant companion, minus the romance of course, has been like a crash course in self-exploration, via philosophy, psychology, mysticism, sociology, and intense Platonic relationship. We can’t go to a movie without him giving me a pop quiz at the end. What are the themes, the metaphors, the undertones? Who do I identify with and why? He’ll question my choices of ice cream flavors, or menu selections when we go out to eat. He leaves no stone unturned, especially at meals when he finishes eating long before I do, and hunts my plate for what my fork is not fast enough to skewer. He never pays for my meals or a movie; after all we aren’t dating. He sees himself as my mentor. I see him as weird, bluntly honest, brilliant, eccentric, arrogant, naive, wise, and shy...and all to an extreme degree. Nothing half-baked in the way he approaches life. I admire his energy, and stay days at a time with him. We talk long into the night or meditate ourselves into the wee hours of the morning. And when I become exhausted by it all, I go home.
I tell him about some ‘mystical’ experiences I had as a child and of the most recent miniature holy man appearance in Tecate. He’s heard of that Master, but has no personal experience, only second hand information and what he has read in some articles somewhere. He’s usually very skeptical and even harshly critical of current Indian gurus, and most of the “get enlightened quick” groups that have been forming in the U.S. But for some reason he’s very gentle and open in his approach to my curiosity about this newfound foreign friend. This is quite surprising to me.
We talk about what it might take in terms of time, money, visas, etc., for me to go to India. I have no commitments that can’t be gotten out of for a month or two, especially if I were to go in the summer when I could easily stop teaching until fall. Lee seems persistent in his urging me to go.
In Tecate, I’d heard stories about the guru and his ways enough to think that if indeed I were to go to India, I might get some sign of reassurance from him personally. After all, he’d already gone to the trouble of appearing in miniature to me, which seems a little out of the ordinary. Why not expect a personal invitation of some kind…something specific and detailed enough that I wouldn’t have to guess or interpret the meaning from a string of vague generalities.
Early one morning, I awaken in what I can only describe as half in and half out of a dynamically clear and energized dream state. I experience a heightened awareness of myself lying in bed, while simultaneously moving through dream scenes. The first scene unfolds with me arriving at a baseball diamond and finding a seat in the stands. I look at the scene and think, “this is a dream, I know, because I’m lying here in bed watching it.” I find a place next to my parents who are sitting in the bleachers behind home plate. I have the sense that my brother is about ready to step into the batter’s box. At that moment a huge, shiny black Cadillac limousine pulls up alongside the stands. An elegant well-dressed man emerges and walks over to me with what looks like a handmade envelope trimmed in gold. He bows politely as he hands it to me, and is gone before I look up again. I open the delicate folds and pull out a card, also lined in gold. On it, written in a lovely longhand script are the words: “Here is the invitation you have requested. You may come as soon as you like. Sai Baba” “All Right,” I say to myself as I sit up in bed, “not quite as dramatic as his first appearance, but it’ll do.”
The main obstacle is a lack of funds. I have a little saved but not nearly enough for a round trip ticket and a one to two month stay. I figure for everything, I’ll need about $2000. Lee suggests that if I were to just reserve my flight, proceed with the passport and visa application process and other necessary preparations, the money situation will fall into place, or not. What do I have to lose?
I decide to shoot for sometime in June and prepare for possibility that it might actually happen. I have little concern about traveling alone. In fact that possibility enhances the sense of predestination that seems to be enveloping me more and more with each passing day.
By the second week of May I’m prepared to leave, reservations, passport and visa in hand, but still not enough money for the ticket, when I receive a call from the travel agent requesting payment. I had gradually grown excited about the possibility of the journey and felt quite disappointed that the money needed had not somehow magically appeared out of nowhere. Well, I’ve done my very best to prepare; evidently it just isn’t meant to be. Reluctantly I decide to give up and call the agent to cancel on Monday, the last possible deadline to purchase the ticket.
As I thumb through the Saturday mail I notice an envelope addressed to me from one of the colleges for which I’m working. Enclosed I find a letter stating that they had failed to figure into my salary the most recent raise for teachers in my category, and were giving me the money that had been omitted from each paycheck since the beginning of the year. The check is for exactly $2000! I call the travel agent immediately, who is able to delay purchase of the ticket until my check arrives at her office the next week. On June 18th I’m on my way to India.
CHAPTER 8
NEXT STOP BANGALORE
This is my first trip abroad, and I am alone. I’m exhilarated, taking in all of the sights, sounds, smells, and textures, as if using my senses for the first time. I hardly sleep on the flights and arrive exhausted and wide-awake in Bombay at three in the morning.
The flight to Bangalore is not until eight. I spend the five hour layover sitting wide eyed, watching the incredible sight of Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, and Buddhist, men and women float by in their brightly colored flowing fabrics. My mind races at the sounds of the languages, and I’m overwhelmed at the plethora of unfamiliar sights and smells. For an hour or so the airport is teeming with hot steamy bodies, but after the crowd disperses and people are on to their next destination, almost all activity ceases.
I’m on a wait list for the flight to Bangalore, so I feel the need to stay at the airport until the ticket window opens. As with each previous leg of my journey, I’m approached by helpful Indians, giving advice and leading me through the next phase of the unfolding journey.
A helpful airport employee walks me through the wait list/ticket procedure, telling the ticket agent that I’m a student and therefore should pay the lesser, student discount fare. I tell him that I’m 27 and currently on summer break from teaching yoga, to which he replies, “Yes madam, but you are now a student of India.” I’m immediately moved from the wait list, and ticketed for the flight that will take me deeper into the unconscious processes of my unsuspecting mind.
Standing alone among the throngs of coolies and arrivees in Bangalore, giddy and overwhelmed, I’m approached by a young Indian man who volunteers to escort me to the hotel I had picked from my India travel book. Coincidentally he had chosen to stay at the same one. Together we pile our luggage and ourselves into a three-wheeled motorized auto rickshaw and head off on the twenty-minute death-defying ride to the Bangalore Hotel.
Exhilarated as I am, I’m not quite prepared for the sight of the hotel. It caters mostly to locals, is extremely low priced and looks it I’d imagine, even for India.
My exhaustion, combined with my youthful enthusiasm for adventure overshadows my disappointment at the dreariness of the hotel when I’m shown a room with the only things that concern me for the moment, running water, a toilet and a bed. I graciously bid good morning to my rescuing friend, and am asleep before my head hits the pillow. It was actually about 11 a.m. when we arrived, and the next time I open my eyes is in the middle of the night. I’m awake only long enough to remember where I am before easily falling back into a deep drug-like sleep.
CHAPTER 9
STRUCK BY WONDER AND MADMEN
It’s a drizzly morning when I awake, dress, and leave the hotel for a walk around the city. I’m up before the rush, walking through the empty streets and alleyways that surround my lodgings. Ladies dressed in saris tied in knots at the waist are bending low with short crudely made brooms in their hands, creating swirling clouds of dust and debris outside the doors of the sleepy merchant shops. An old man in a colored towel-like cloth tosses a bucket of water down the walkway and darts back into a side alley door.
A young girl hurries by on a rickety old bicycle loaded down with stainless steel containers stacked and held together by the handles. In the distance I hear the Muslim morning call to prayer being sung over a crackly loud speaker from a city Mosque tower. A yawning taxi driver stretches and adjusts his clothing rumpled from a night sleeping in his cab, and gestures to me that he’s available should I need a ride. I smile and decline.
I walk for hours, watching the sleepy city awaken to the new day until magically I find myself back at the hotel just in time for my first authentic Indian breakfast. I order, at the advice of the friendly waiter/cook, two idlis and a masala dosa, having no idea what I’m in for. While waiting for the food, he brings me a small metal cup of steaming chai (milk tea with cinnamon, cardamom and lots of sugar).
The idlis are wonderful little white pillow shaped lentil/rice cakes, which arrive accompanied by a dish of coconut chutney and a bowl of thick brown sombar. Though the accompaniments are laced with hot green chilies, the white pillow cakes buffer the burn enough for me to savor the delicious new exotic tastes. The dosa is a flat crepe-like pancake folded and filled with curried and spiced potatoes and onions. I eat to my hearts content for 3 rupees. (About forty-five cents give or take a penny or two)
With the taste of masala still on my tongue, I head back into the city to look for a sari or two, to wear at the ashram. The shops have opened transforming the early sleepy streets and alleyways into a bustling hive of noise and activity. The once empty thoroughfares are teaming now, with motor scooters, auto rickshaws, people on bicycles, people walking, cars, buses, bullock carts, trucks, stray cows, and gangs of fearless gray monkeys darting out of the trees and into the molten flow of humanity. The air is filled with clouds of diesel smoke, and a cacophony of horns blare from the various conveyances as they jockey for space on the limited asphalt.
Focusing on the task at hand, and determined to complete it quickly, I walk to the Vijayalakshmi Sari Shop across the street from my hotel. I find at first glance that I’m immediately smitten with a beautiful gold and brown silk batik print sari in the window. So with steady determination I enter the small fabric stuffed shop, and ask to see it. Before I finish my request, fabric is flying off the shelves and tossed on the counter in front of me with such haste and abandon that I find myself reeling and dizzy. Gone is my focused determination, as every possible color and pattern of silk batik congeal into a steady continuous fluid blur before my eyes.
After what seems like hours of flying fabric, I emerge dazed, with the sari from the window, and another, batiked with blue dancing Krishnas.
A stop at the tailor shop delays my departure for Brindavan, the summer residence of the ‘miniature’ mystery master, until later in the afternoon. My slips and cholis (the under garments of the saris) will be finished “just in time”, I’m told by a taxi man, for afternoon ‘darshan’ (the seeing of a holy person).
Around 3:30 off we speed in a streak of black and yellow, dodging the monkeys and bullocks, Vespas and pedestrians, towards a series of events that will change my life forever. I’ve been wrapped and pinned in the layers of fabric by the tailor’s daughter and christened with a dot of red powder called cum-cum in the center of my forehead in preparation for what was beginning to feel like a predestined meeting with someone unknown and yet eerily familiar.
To my great joy, the beautiful South Indian countryside dotted with rice paddies and grazing mammoth gray water buffalo, stretches out in front of us on the banyan tree lined road as we leave the smoggy chaos of the city behind. My heart is a flutter with excitement at the prospect of meeting the ‘little man’, who so coyly presented himself to me the year before in Tecate, though I really have no idea what to expect.
Finally, as we coast to a stop the driver points to a gate pillared on each side with pink, blue, and white concrete columns adorned with cherub-like creatures. The car gate is closed so he waves for me to enter the pedestrian gate. Perplexed at his resistance to accompany me I enter a large courtyard with a bright white building decorated with the same pink and blue chubby babies and other unfamiliar symbols.
In the center of the dirt covered yard stands an enormous old tree surrounded by a large circular concrete slab that looks like a good place to sit and read. It seems a bit odd that there is no sign of activity or hint of where to go or what to do. I hesitantly enter the building, looking for someone to take me to the teacher but find no one. It’s deserted, though doors are open and there are signs that people have been recently here.
I leave the building and walk towards a second iron gate, noticing that on the other side is a thick grove of trees and gardens filled with blooming flowers. Monkeys frolic and squeal in play, as I pass through the opened gate into the lush gardened compound. As I approach the pinkish building that appears to be the focal point of the grounds I catch a glimpse of what looks like an elephant darting as daintily as only a giant pachyderm can, beyond another set of buildings. Finally, at the beautifully carved wooden door I stand shyly, wondering, sensing a sacredness that I’ve not previously noticed, and knock lightly.
To my shock and utter horror the door swings open to the screeches of a ‘madman’. “What are you doing here? You don’t belong here! Are you crazy! Go away, GO AWAY, NOW!”
“But, but...”
“Go! GO NOW!”
Though I’m completely disoriented by this huge Indian man’s response to finding me at the door, I’m determined to speak. With all the force I can muster I squeak out, “Where is Sai Baba?” The man bellows incredulously, “He’s not here! He’s gone to Puttiparthi! Go away. GO AWAY NOW!
Horrified and confused I run banished from the garden to the waiting taxi. Is this why the driver wouldn’t accompany me? Did he know about this ‘madman’? If so why didn’t he warn me?
As I retreat to the safety of the back seat the driver comes to the door and casually says, “He has gone to Puttiparthi, Madam. Do you want to go there?” Apparently he’d gleaned the news from the chai shop across the street that a convoy of cars had left to follow the teacher just an hour before we arrived.
Well that is what I’d intended, so with great enthusiasm the driver hops in for our mad rush back to the city to pick up my belongings, and to tell his wife he’ll be home much later than expected.
He is in a hurry to cover the ninety-mile distance before it gets too late. Apparently there’s been some recent dacoit (bandit) activity on the more isolated stretches of road and he wants to “go and come” as quickly as possible.
Three hours later, worn, wind blown from open car windows, and ready to sleep, we pull into what appears to be at first glance, another deserted compound. Peeking out from under my sari covered head I notice by the dust covered clock on the barely lit dashboard that it’s past 10 p.m. Lights are out in all the surrounding buildings, and there is no sign of activity or hint as to what to do next.
The exhausted driver just wants me to get out of his cab and give him his money so he can race through the hills towards home to his waiting wife and seven children. Being at a loss, I sit as long as I can, not budging from the back seat determined not to move hoping he will suspend his trip and help me find a place to sleep.
After his efforts to persuade me out of the car have failed, he finally relents, gets out of the car and goes in search of help. As he walks away, I notice a figure emerging from the shadows of the street, moving quickly in the direction of the car. Before I know it the driver has returned to intercept, and becomes involved in what appears to be an excitedly animated discussion.
The driver rushes back ahead of the man who trails after him in haste, and starts to take my things out of the trunk, all the while speaking to me with such speed and accent that I have no idea what he’s saying. I firmly hold my position in the back seat until the man who followed the driver arrives and puts his head in through the open window to explain.
“This is a miracle,” he says in his perfect sing song English.. “I just received a telegram a few minutes ago informing me of an illness in my family and asking for me to return immediately to Bangalore. I am a doctor…I have no car here. The buses don’t run until morning and there are no other cars available. Would you mind terribly if I took this taxi back to the city?” Before I can answer that ‘the driver is hell bent on dumping me and my belongings right here in the street, and would probably jump at the chance to have the company of a paying passenger across the darkened bandit ridden hills’, the doctor directs him to put my things back in the trunk, and to drive the car around to his room. As he hops in he says, “You will be staying in my room. It is paid up for the next three days. I will be filling you in on the schedule of activities and show you around quickly before I am to leave, if this is all right with you, madam.” Of course it’s all right with me. All I want to do is wash my face and curl up in my sleeping bag.
After a quick tour accompanied by a description of events and a brief idea of what is expected of me as a foreign woman in the ashram, he hands me the key to the room. “Please tell the accommodation office workers that I had to leave, and wish you to stay in my room as long as you like. The fee for the room is 3 rupees a day and it has been paid for, as I said, for the next three days. Thank you again madam, it is Swami’s miracle that you arrived when you did.”
If you're interested in what happens when J finally meets the enigmatic Sri Sathya Sai Baba, and the innumerable tests, challenges and miraculous events that serve to break and soften her stony heart, the rest of the story is available at Amazon.com as an e-book for $2.99, and in paperback for $13.50. Click on the book cover on this blog's home page to purchase from Amazon. May all beings be well. May all beings be happy. May all beings be free from suffering. Om... Peace to all. JRD
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If you're interested in what happens when J finally meets the enigmatic Sri Sathya Sai Baba, and the innumerable tests, challenges and miraculous events that serve to break and soften her stony heart, the rest of the story is available at Amazon.com as an e-book for $2.99, and in paperback for $13.50. Click on the book cover on this blog's home page to purchase from Amazon. May all beings be well. May all beings be happy. May all beings be free from suffering. Om... Peace to all. JRD
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The following conversation between a devotee and Sai Baba took place in Prasanthi Nilayam many years ago and was first published in an early issue of the Sanathana Sarathi
Devotee: Swami! The world is very cruel to me.
Swami : That is its nature. The purpose of the world is frustration; it has to engender need. When the need is strong enough, the individual seeks fulfilment.
Devotee: And fails!
Swami : Only when he seeks fulfilment without! Within him, he can get it. The within is accessible always; it is ever responsible. There is pain only so long as attachment for outer forms remains. Ultimate relief from pain can come only with the loss of ego, the neutralisation of that which reacts to something as pain and something else as pleasure, whose memory, whose conditioning, helps to recognise the dualities of joy and grief.
Devotee: But the world, Swami?
Swami : The world is pain. Expect nothing from the world but that. I willed the totality of your conditioned existence to be pain, in order to draw you to me.
Devotee: Which I can, at best, only hope to attain.
Swami : God asks for neither hope nor despair. They are subject to relativity. Universal Being is beyond both hope and despair, both certainty and doubt. It knows no lingering in its conclusions. It is ever flowing, in all directions, and in none of them.
Devotee: What then shall be my direction?
Swami : Take what works today for today. What works tomorrow for tomorrow. One day at a time, each day for itself, each moment for itself, without a past, without memory, without conclusions.
Devotee: Conclusions?
Swami : Yes. Conclusions bind; they press on the mind. The newborn baby is not confined to conclusions. All conclusions enslave. Most men are slaves to the conclusions into which they have fallen.
Devotee: Does that mean I have to give up my practice of concentration?
Swami: The question that bothers you is one of fixity. You tried to fix your thought and attention on a word and later on a form, but you discovered that nothing lasts, that everything has to change. But I tell you; awareness can remain, even when form subsides, even when the word melts away..
Devotee: I find it difficult to hold my attention on form or word.
Swami : Because when you try to meditate, the very trial invites the success-failure conflict onto the scene. You say to yourself, it is good to meditate on this and not that, or to meditate on that is wrong or foolish.. Practise choicelessness; no objective, no intention. Be yourself. Choose no particular form, for all are equally His. Choose no particular word or sound, for all are His.
Devotee: I am often tossed between contradictory beliefs.
Swami : Contradictions are inevitable. It is the very nature of this world and of the mind. But you can choose, either to be buffeted endlessly by the apparent contradictions or to remain in the calm centre of the cyclone. This is the problem of all problems, the problem of peripheral or central being.
Devotee: The circumference or the centre, the rim or the hub of the wheel?
Swami : Yes. The hub is calm, steady, unmoved. But the mind will be drawn along the spokes, the objective desires, to revolve over mud and stone, sand and thorns. It will not believe that it can get bliss from the centre, rather than from the circumference, without undergoing a rough journey over turbulent terrain.
Devotee: Ultimately, it means the conquest of the mind?
Swami: Learn to let all the conflicts spawned by the mind play themselves out, and cancel each other out. Be the witness to the holocaust. The ultimate solution to the conflict is not decision or even choice, but passive being. Dare to remain inconclusive. See the endless quandaries of the mind as a divine leela, God's sport, as the natural function of the bundle of desires called mind. Do not believe in mind; do not rally to its assertions and appetites. Watch the mind from a distance; do not get involved in its tumblings and turnings. Then everything becomes insignificant. When everything recedes into meaninglessness, you are in the hub, in equanimity.
Devotee: Swami, you are the hub, the spokes and the rim.
Swami : Do not be concerned with who I am! Concern yourself with who you are and how you can be ever aware of that truth. Do not be a willing captive of the endless stratagems of the mind. Abstain from all that draws you into its web. I will lead you, if you rely on me. The alternatives of the world will not bring you happiness, for the mind, which revels in alternatives, is but a will-of-the-wisp, flitting before your vision. I do not judge you for what is never yours, really. Your imperfection is no obstacle for me.
Devotee: I confess that I have not always observed the rules of conduct of the Sathya Sai Organisation.
Swami : Your mind keeps asking for rules. But when you get the rules, you find you cannot keep them. Rules engender rigidity, they force. They do not bloom out of love or spread love. There is always a way of doing a thing without the strain of a rule. See how unperturbed I am with your restlessness! I live thus, so that I may afford a lesson for you to learn.
Devotee: I am restless, Swami, because I yearn for rest and do not get it.
Swami : It is your reaction to restlessness that is bad, not the restlessness itself. Restlessness is only the rise and fall of a wave on the ocean that you are. Nothing matters, so long as the depths are secure. Success is not important: failure does not matter. The river of eternity is flowing ever into the ocean of the Supreme Will.
Devotee: How long am I to be torn apart from that Supreme Will?
Swami : You are a fraction of that Supreme Will. That is why you are afflicted with the hunger to seek It and to merge in It and to find fulfilment and bliss thereby. Turning to the world for solace and sustenance to appease that hunger has been tried by countless generations, including your own, but the hunger is gnawing still.
Devotee: What then is the proper reaction to the attractions of the world?
Swami : Let go. Don't cling. Be still. Establish yourself in the homelessness of the mind; physical homelessness will not earn the victory. There are many spiritual aspirants still caught in the coils of greed, envy, pride and power seeking. They have not escaped from their homes. They have built prisons around themselves. I describe homelessness of the mind as mind abiding nowhere.
Devotee: And wandering everywhere?
Swami : Do not exclude anything. Be the witness of everything. The exclusive cannot endure. God is all. Your restlessness came from exclusion, the pressure exerted by the excluded into the area from which it was excluded. All is God; how can you push God out of His Domain? Your mind concludes that the cause for the restlessness is whatever concerns it at the time. The actual cause is not that. You limit God by your assumptions, hence the restlessness. For you too are divine, and your reality protests against that limitation.
Devotee: Swami! Sometimes I feel so sad that I am so strange, so different in habits from the rest of those that come to you for succour.
Swami : If your path contrasts entirely with those around you, believe that it is my will for you. Every way is my way and ways seemingly indirect may be the most direct for some spiritual seekers. For me there are no impossible cases, no incorrigible cases. Practise choicelessness as hitherto prescribed. Choicelessness is constant contentment.
Devotee: I have yet much to learn.
Swami : You wish to learn from me. Well, if you are preoccupied by the body's needs, by the arrangements for its travelling, its accommodation and the food it demands, time will fly. That student learns best and fastest who does not spend his time constantly shifting from one classroom to the next. You will learn everything worth knowing in my classroom. I will expose you to all states of being, so that you may learn to rest in me in all of them. There are no insurmountable obstacles to me; there are no pre-requisites for me. I am unconditional.
Devotee: But you are absent so often and away for so long at your headquarters.
Swami : Always, at every time, at every place, I am where you need me. All things without are subject to the limitation of time and space, to the material laws of Nature. My outer form is no exception! If you would perceive my physical form, it must come within the range of your gaze, so position yourself so that you can see it. And even then, it may not gaze at you.. But, I am omnipresent! The limitations of the body and the outer senses do not hold for the inner vision.
Therein, you can see me at any time and any place and receive darshan. The outer vision is purposely insufficient, instantaneous, transitory, casual, so that you may crave for and accomplish the inner darshan. If I have separated you from my physical image off and on, it was only to bring you to me and to establish my presence within you. That alone will replenish you and refresh you, I know. None of my absences was a rejection or rebuke. So far as you are concerned, I intended them all. And, always, I willed that you return to me.
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