Part 19: The Implications Of Omniscience

X1 also explained how being a Swami was not exactly the fun thing it might appear to be from the outside. The Swamis, according to him, were held to far tighter standards than the rest. Amma, in ways variously subtle and gross, was constantly holding their feet to the fire, notwithstanding the external glitter associated with their senior positions in the hierarchy. In this sense, the prime qualification for being a Swami was perhaps the ability to operate a much higher threshold of pain than the average.

Our conversation chugged on. I had some questions for X1. I wanted to know how an ordinary seeker like myself could find the vast bandwidth that seemed to be necessary to bring my Guru upto date with all the minutiae in my life. At one level, I subscribed to the idea that Amma represented the Universal and that as God, Guru and the Self, She knew all that there was to know. However, this belief was more cerebral than visceral and at another level, I felt an ongoing need to figure out what I was going to say to Her in person and how I was going to say it. The second level may have been lower, conceptually speaking, but it was where I lived most of the time.

In his reply, X1 conveyed the same understanding that I had gleaned earlier from talks with some other ashramites. The idea that Amma was aware of every single thought and action, no matter how trivial, appeared to be a bedrock assumption with all and sundry. For me personally, the omniscience of the Satguru (the ultimate Guru, teacher of truth) was a logical deduction, arrived at through a conscious process of intellectual reasoning. In my thinking, worship was meaningless unless the object of worship was the Infinite. I figured that Amma as Satguru had to be a seamless window into the Infinite, otherwise what was the point of going to Her or any other Guru figure?

Being aware that my intellect was a weak one, I did not usually rely heavily on the conclusions it generated, and tended to place my trust more in intuition, a faculty that, despite its mysterious black-box nature, seems to be strong in me. It was intuition that brought me to Amma and it is intuition, even now, which makes me clutch Her and feel afraid to let go. Grace may possibly be a better term for what I have referred to as intuition, but I don't have a way of describing it; all I know is that it exists and rules my life. Reason is an ornamental artefact, generated by a secondary hunger for explanation; it does not seem to be the primary driver of action in my case.

What I am trying to say here, in my usual roundabout way, is that the conviction that Amma knows everything and that I do not have to say much, was only weakly grasped in my mind, because it was chiefly intellectual in nature. For the residents of Amritapuri that I encountered, however, it seemed that Amma's universal knowledge was at once, a reality experienced daily at the mundane level and also an article of deep faith. At the time, I found it hard to digest this view. In the course of our talk, I shifted my weight from my right leg to my left leg and wondered if Amma had noticed that inconsequential move from Her position, beyond visual range and capacity, inside the walls of the temple where She was settling down to give darshan. At that early point on my spiritual learning curve, I was not very sure of the answer but today, after a couple of years of sadhana (spiritual practice) and cogitation, I increasingly operate as if She does indeed attend every moment of my life, no matter how trivial.

X1 pointed out my great and good fortune in having met Amma. "Now that She has claimed you, just relax and stop worrying", he said. He underlined the idea that Amma was in total and absolute control of Her children's lives, among a zillion other things, by pointing to a stray dog that was roaming the ashram compound, ten feet away from where we stood. "Not even a dog can enter this compound without Her approval, and no one leaves here without Her blessing. Even the postman who comes to deliver letters to the ashram must have earned a lot of good karma, or been associated with Amma in some capacity, in his past lives", X1 said.

In answer to my questions about how I should convey my concerns to Amma, X1 suggested that I just approach Amma with a prayerful attitude, keeping the most pressing problems in my mind, as I stood in the line. To recast this strategy a little, in the light of my subsequent insights into the sadhana process, one should let go of all that one can drop and let stay those thoughts that will not release their grip on one's mind, for that is all that one can do. I cavilled in a small way, about not having enough time with Amma, to convey whatever I considered to be necessary. X1 responded that even the ashram residents did not get personal darshans (audiences) with Amma more than a couple of times a year. By that token, as a visiting devotee I would be receiving more darshans in a week than he probably would get in a couple of years. When I looked at it that way, my grouse gently faded into admiration for the ashram residents who had renounced all manner of physical comforts for the sake of those two darshans per year. I marvelled at the intensity of their love for Amma, that they could be satisfied with a scant couple of personal audiences with Amma per year, and spend the rest of the year just being in Her general vicinity, or when She was on tour, just go about their duties, working and worshipping, and waiting for Her return.

My mind was struggling to make sense of all the new imagery. It was as though I was a visitor from another planet, trying to understand the Earthly way of life. Life here had a completely different foundation from what I had ever known. Renunciation, service, love and devotion - I had encountered these values before, but not in such awe-inspiring quantities. Bhakti towards Amma, I was beginning to understand, was the key. She was the pivot around which everything revolved.

At just this point, while I was musing internally about faith, X1 drew my attention to a figure standing on a mid-floor on one of the residential buildings outside the temple compound but within the ashram complex. A short, dark Indian man wearing a mundu (broad white sheet) and white shirt stood there, with a child alongside. "Do you see that man?", X1 asked me. I nodded in the affirmative. X1 told me that this person, a long-time devotee of Amma, used to live in Gujarat. In the great earthquake, earlier that year or before, he had lost his wife and son. His wife had been trapped under a beam in the kitchen when the quake struck. His son went back to try and save her and was trapped as well. Both of them sadly died, leaving this unfortunate man and his daughter behind to pick up the pieces of their lives. He decided to wind up his affairs in Gujarat and come down to Amritapuri. His daughter was now pursuing her studies at the local school. X1 said to me, "That man has real faith. No matter what happens and how unpleasant it is, he retains his faith in the Guru."

I made a mental note that this was the kind of example that was worthy of emulation. This was the kind of mettle that would be required on the spiritual path. If I was to go the Bhakti route, and I had already so decided, this was the kind of steel I had to weld into my heart. It would take a lot of doing of course, and generous dollops of the Divine Mother's grace but there was now a goal in sight. I might never get there but at least I had a putative destination, and that was preferable to the weakly directional random walk that had marked my spiritual quest before.

Om Amriteshwaryai Namah

Part 18: Of Dust And Diamonds

X1's reply indicated that the desire to be something, anything (in the organizational context) had been completely scrubbed from his mind, if indeed it had ever existed. When asked if he would be a Swami (monk) someday, he just looked upwards and said that whatever Amma wished would happen. He did not say it wistfully or with longing but in respectful surrender to Her Divine will. He seemed to be truly free of predilection in this matter. I could see that his gentle, implicit disavowal of desire was the genuine article. I contrasted that with my own occasional explicit declamations, usually before a captive family audience, disclaiming the desire for this or that. I had mostly given up things because God/Amma had denied them to me.

So it was, that I would say to those around me, "I am just a dog in my office. I don't have the wish or the wherewithal to be anything more. If I am asked to sit, I sit; if told to stand, I stand, usually on all fours. When asked to fetch, I run for the ball but sometimes I stop to irrigate the lamppost (vasanas!)" But even as I made these mock statements of purpose, to be free of the desire for respect in the world of business, I usually knew that my touted virtue was whitewashed necessity. Amma had placed the grapes beyond the grasp of my paws, so I had to declare they were sour and I could quote Adi Sankara in support! I noted the quality of X1's renunciation and resolved to improve the quality of my own.

X1 went on to disabuse me of the notion that I may have entertained, perhaps lightly, that the Swamis had 'made it', that after suffering years of obscurity battling the waves, they had finally surfed into the big-time on their saffron boards (robes). X1 asked me if I had noticed how much in awe of Amma, the Swamis were. He explained the Swamis were a charismatic bunch that could sing, speak and generally hold their own with diverse constituencies but that they knew, to a man, that they were nothing without Amma. If I may misappropriate one of Amma's own similes for the benign purpose of proclaiming Her glory, the Swamis were like empty light bulbs without Amma's electricity flowing through them.

I saw what X1 was getting at and had to agree, based on my own observations. I had been very impressed earlier, during the evening bhajan (devotional music) sessions, by the reverential way in which the Swamis behaved with Amma. At the conclusion of each evening's bhajan session, Amma would exit the stage and a couple of the Swamis would offer closing prayers to Her in Her (physical) absence. I used to find the mood particularly electric at those moments, every evening without fail. The bhajan sessions were charged affairs in entirety to be sure, but these moments were like lightning to me. The air at those times used to be surcharged with poignant longing for the Divine Mother of the Universe who walks the earth in Her unassuming mortal frame as Ammachi.

The takeaway lesson for me, from this exchange with X1, was the understanding that the Swamis were less like big rock stars than like little rocks, pebbles that would be pulverized by the power and grace of the Guru's gait. They would be deprived of their dimensions, lose their rough edges and their very shapes under the weight of the Guru's step. These finite losses, however, would be more than offset by an influx of infinity; as dust they would become Divine and cling to Her feet.

Dust be diamonds
Water be wine
Amma commands
And All is fine

(Plagiarized and modified without permission, not sure of the original source though!)

Om Amriteshwaryai Namah

Part 17: A Miracle Of Human Transformation

X1 spoke to me of Amma with profound reverence. His veneration of Her, while unostentatious, was clearly very deep. When he spoke of Amma, his eyes would look into the distance and he would take a deep breath. At the risk of a little exaggeration, it may be said that I almost sensed the exhalation of incense from his nostrils; his homage to Amma was that vivid. He seemed to have virtually integrated Amma into his breathing. This was pranayama (yogic breath control) in practice, as far as I was concerned.

We made some small talk. He told me about his conditions of life as a brahmachari (renunciate) in the ashram. Life was obviously very, very hard. I asked if the food available to the inmates was the same as that available to the general public. I learnt that the Spartan fare that I had condescended to eat, in the spirit of 'slumming' while at the ashram, had been his staple for the last nine years. I was impressed by the austerity that implied. Clearly, the tyranny of taste had been overthrown in this territory. I told him about my own feeble (by comparison) attempts to introduce some austerity into my eating habits by turning vegetarian.

He responded to that by telling me that I should take care of my health and not neglect it. He described how he had been laid low by a recurring series of alimentary ailments, and how, over the years, he moved from a state of excess body weight to a state of near emaciation. His concern for me seemed to extend beyond mere politeness. He spoke to me like a brother. I don't know whether his compassionate attitude was a generalized phenomenon, or whether it was the result of some adventitious affection for me. Either way, I was touched by his solicitude.

His impressive spiritual credentials were trickling into my consciousness. I had a dim perception of some of his qualities - compassion, humility, focus, intensity and above all, Bhakti (devotion). Much later, on reflection, I would wonder at the miracle that Amma had wrought in this instance, transforming a man of the world into a man of God. Nevertheless, at that early stage, the realization was not fully embedded in my awareness, and I repaid the kindness of this spiritual brother with a coarse and insensitive question. I asked him: "You have been in this spiritual business for so many years now, you must be on Swami (monk) track, no?"

The moment the words slid out of my mouth, I realized that I had just been an incredible lout. Shame seeped out of all the pores in my body and fell to the ground in torrents but brother X1 did not seem to notice. The crassness of my query could not have been lost on him, but there was a deeper irony behind it that he could not have grasped, without some intimate knowledge of my situation. Here I was, a loser par excellence (to coin an oxymoron), a pot calling the kettle black. Actually, it was worse than that. I was a sooty pot all right but X1 was no kettle, more like a shining diamond in his context. I was guilty of applying a worldly model of success and advancement, a model that I have never mastered, to the spiritual arena. In my professional life, I had raised stagnation to the status of high art, having passed 10 years without securing a single promotion.

In his response, X1 magnanimously bypassed my insensitivity. Or perhaps, he was so far removed from the worldly paradigm, that my slip did not even register on his thinking. I found X1's reply to be illuminating on several levels.

Om Amriteshwaryai Namah

Part 16: Impressed By Intensity

As I stood outside the souvenir shop, conversing with X1, I was struck by his intensity. Upto that point, I had not come across any other ashramite with the kind of intensity that was evident in his mien. I don't remember exactly how it came up, but at some point in our conversation, we touched on the subject of death. X1 said to me with considerable feeling, "Death is a joke. If anyone dies here, we have more than enough people to take the body out to the beach and cremate it, after performing the last rites." In his telling, death was not even a comma, much less the full stop that most people take it to be. I did not find his view or sentiment particularly jarring as the subject of death had come up in my own ruminations, over the years. The status of death, in my view, has evolved from an early glorification of its false potential as an antidote to the misery of life, to something bordering on irrelevance. X1 seemed to be on the same page as I was.

Later, on my return from India, I happened to mention X1 in a meeting with some local acquaintances (members of the Amma satsang). I was giving them a brief account of my visit to Amritapuri and told them that I met up with so and so from their country. Thereupon, I was treated to the view that X1 was a somewhat crazy fellow. "Do you know, he has even asked Amma for death?!" That was the clincher, in their view. Anyone who was not absolutely brimming over with the sheer delight of living must be a total lunatic. Edgar Allan Poe would never have penetrated their stony hearts with his famous lines:

Thank Heaven! The crisis,
The danger, is past,
And the lingering illness
Is over at last -
And the fever called "Living"
Is conquered at last.

With some effort, I managed to repress my contempt for their view and even feigned an expression of mild incredulousness. I asked, "Did he really do that?" But in my mind, I was not surprised at all. There was so much suffering in the world and a modicum of that was reflected in my own life. It was not hard for me to visualize that people might be driven to despair by their circumstances, even to the point of desiring death. I found myself at odds with their rating of X1 as inferior to some of the other characters (not yet discussed) who were seen to be more conventional and also 'cool'. Those other characters, like my acquaintances in the present instance, appeared to be practitioners of a brand of spirituality that involved bhajans (devotional singing), 'hanging out' and other soft options, with near zero effort aimed at integrating Amma's teachings into their daily lives. In my deeply felt but diplomatically unarticulated view, this kind of superficial subscription to spirituality was only marginally better than being hooked to MTV.

I decided immediately that X1 had to be a good guy, my kind of fellow, if these folks did not like him. I also guessed that the converse was likely to hold good ie. it might be a good idea for me to give their favorites a wide berth. I had nothing but the deepest respect for people such as X1, who engaged deeply with the questions of life and death, who experimented with their own lives out of scientific curiosity, with utter nonchalance and for whom spirituality was not a fad. On the other hand, my regard for 'devotees', who jetted from Japan to Switzerland to sing with Amma's choir but exhibited only pettiness in their daily lives was not very high, to put it mildly.

I realize I am being totally judgmental here but I have never claimed unity with Brahman (the superset of everything). However, I would like to qualify my judgments by pointing to the possibility of error. There is a possibility, however remote, that my reading of these people is totally wrong and they are really Jnanis/Bhaktas (those who have attained self-realization through intelligence/devotion) of a high order, who have just done an exceptionally good job of camouflaging themselves. If that is the case, I am guilty of gross ignorance and misrepresentation.

Om Amriteshwaryai Namah