After that tragi-comic excursion into my unexpressed (to X3) thoughts, we return to the main story. We observed how, half a decade of construction notwithstanding, the man’s delicate defenses were swept away by the deluge of desire. He drew up a plan to have a romp, a sexcapade outside the ashram. I found his choice of Kurukshetra (specifically, the theater of war in the epic Mahabharata and, in broader terms, the allegorical battlefield where we all fight our inner demons) a tad intriguing. I could not conclude whether it was a surviving shred of principle (a reluctance to commit the ultimate sacrilege on hallowed ground) or mere pragmatism (the ashram, after all, is no nightclub) that drove his choice of locale.
The decision made, he waited for his chance. It was soon time for Amma and Her group to set off on another tour. X3 planned to take advantage of the lighter workload* at the ashram in Amma’s absence to push his plot forward. (*That was then. These days, there may be no lean season anymore with the exponential growth in ashram activity, including tsunami relief and other projects.) He was a little squeamish about revealing the finer details of his scheme. Not that I pried. His reticence was probably a good thing; it may have spared me a fight with another fit of laughter. Nevertheless, I guessed that a night on the town with a strumpet or something on those curvaceous lines was what he had in mind.
His unfolding tale made me ponder the link between desire and action. Desire, truly is the precursor to action. Action ingrained becomes habit. Habit hardens into drive. Drives accumulated over lifetimes turn into vasanas. What a tangled ball of string!
A quotation from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad IV.4.5 seems apposite:
You are what your deep, driving desire is.
As your desire is, so is your will.
As your will is, so is your deed.
As your deed is, so is your destiny.
Here was our hero – a man with an idea. There was, of course, a twist to the tale. Unlike Archimedes, who discovered the physical principle of buoyancy, our protagonist was poised, paradoxically, to illustrate the law of spiritual submergence.
What force can stop an idea whose time has come? An Act of God? We shall see...
On the day before Amma’s scheduled departure, She met with all the permanent residents of the ashram on an individual basis. This was the cherished moment of the year for most residents, their personal darshans with Amma being normally limited to a maximum of one or two per year. Our man with a mission was also looking forward to the encounter, but for a different reason. He wanted to see the beloved Avatar (incarnation) off double quick, presumably in order to launch his own incarnation, in the red light quarter of some neighboring town. I should stress that his planned departure from the ashram mores, was less a case of disrespect or rebellion, and more a matter of temporary insanity. The blinding effect of untrammeled desire must have given rise to a kind of tunnel vision, focusing on the plan at hand to the exclusion of everything else.
Not that he loved our Lalitambika* less, but that he loved his other ladies** more!
[Notes: (1) *Appellation for the Divine Mother (2) **Of the night]
Amma was receiving Her children one by one. When his turn arrived, X3 strode nonchalantly forward, little imagining that this was to be an audience like no other. Instead of the gentle banter that had been the staple of his previous meetings, he was battered by the biggest shock of his life. Amma gripped his skinny arm above the elbow and shook him like a leaf. X3 enacted it for my benefit, by trying to shake me the same way, but he only ended up shaking himself. I am quite scrawny as well, but next to the slightly built X3, I loom like Muhammad Ali, which may explain why the shaking recoiled.
Amma impaled him with a piercing glare and said, in Malayalam:
Eda e ashramam makkalude choreyum verpum kondu indakide anu
Ethine nashpikyan sammadikilya
Nende manas neyandrikyan pattilyengil ivude vittu pogam
Translation:
This ashram was built with the blood and sweat of my children
I will not allow you to destroy it
If you cannot control your mind, you may leave
It was like being struck by lightning. A billion volt bolt burning your brain. I imagined it must have felt like that. Even listening to his story second hand, I felt a current move up my spine. Needless to mention, our friend was stunned witless. As he walked out of the darshan room, he realized that he had just been operated on by a cosmic neurosurgeon. There was nothing to say. More important, there was no longer anything to do. His carefully fleshed out plan was reduced to a heap of ash on the pyre that Kali* lit. But, wonder of wonders, he actually felt good about it! (*Another name for the Divine Mother)
As a sadhak (spiritual aspirant) struggling to gain control over a clutch of unruly vasanas, I have generally believed that it is necessary to undergo the pain of renunciation, in order to win the big prize of nirvana. In the light of this story, I had the insight that it is not the giving up but the constant grasping that hurts. Of course, it was only a momentary flash of wisdom that would not last. For the most part the sensory express chugs smugly along, but once in a while it takes a curve too quickly and gets thrown off the rails. At such moments, the heaven of the senses is revealed to be hell.
Here then was the story I had longed to hear. X3 had provided me with direct testimony of Amma’s omniscience. Given the clandestine nature of his enterprise, he had not breathed a word of it to anyone. There was no way for anyone to know what he was up to, without tapping into his thoughts. If true, his story rocked for sure. When the early euphoria from listening to his remarkable account subsided, I felt the need for a philosophical excavation. In subsequent episodes, if appetite exists, I may examine the meaning I have mined in the years since then.
Om Amriteshwaryai Namah
