Part 26: Ganesha Leads The Way To Devi

I don’t have a clear idea on where I’d like to take this narrative. Do I fast-forward or rewind? Mere play seems so ordinary. Disc/Video jockeys don’t do that anymore, opting instead to crash, cut, scratch and spin. Our canvas today is hip-hop framed in heavy metal, street-side babble bounded by noise. Do I dare strike an orthogonal note? Certainly not. You have to rumble in order to register. So welcome, rapt readers, to the spinning of this 26th disc with the full complement of modern jarring sounds.

My Nordic friend reclines on a six foot long meditation mat with his feet pointing to the stage where our Divine Mother conducts her earthly play – the Devi Bhava. As his pro-tem friend, philosopher and guide, I am a little chagrined by his ignorant failure to observe the proper decorum before our revered Satguru. However I am vastly more disturbed by the numerous censorious, even baleful glares directed at my protégé by my desi (native) brothers. At that point, I had a searing insight into the meaning of that old zen koan – caught between a rock and a hard place. I will elaborate.

Of course there wasn’t much I could do to nudge events in a less stressful direction. I judged that an explanation of the situation and intervention on my part would tax my tongue and his brain too much. Even if, against the odds, I managed to get through to him, it was likely that his emotional equilibrium would be upset. Athithi Devo Bhava (The Guest is God!) after all. You have to coddle him even if he is like a black hole in the center of the galaxy.

On the other hand, I was of course too much of a wimp to even think about tackling the hostile native crowd. Even if I had the guts, there was nothing more concrete to deal with than some loose looks. Faced with a difficult situation, I responded by pulling a rabbit out of a hat. I deployed a telepathic anti-ballistic missile system around the Scandinavian embassy in Amritapuri. Though previously untested, my system seemed to work. The glares continued but flickered out like flares without detonations.

We will let my friend relax in the security of my magic missile shield while we explore new territory. Recall my warning in the first paragraph: we’re in hip-hop mode now. It is time to cross over from Copenhagen to Coimbatore, the origin of my next set of characters. Standing in the mantram initiation line, I found myself behind a father-son team. They looked so much alike that I guessed their relationship even before we got introduced.

Allow me to flesh their portraits out a little. I need only describe the father (G Sr.) and then, as the technology is now available, clone him in order to provide a description of the son (G Jr.). This nomenclature marks a departure from my past convention based on the X series but I hope that it will be understood in the light of my newly proclaimed taste for the staccato rhythms of rap. Y does not have to follow X anymore, as it has done for thousands of years of chromosomal evolution. We can now cap X with any alphabet and what better choice than G for Ganesha, the little Lord of new beginnings, to mark a decisive break with the past? I may seem to be engaged in a trivial pursuit here with my little alphabet game but this is really like a mystical version of Scrabble. Deeper significance will be discovered, I trust, as my story progresses.

G Sr. was dressed in a white mundu with a thin kasavu (gold border). His torso was bare except for a neatly folded angavastram. A long gold chain dangled from his neck. A gold watch gleamed on his right wrist. From these little signs, I guessed that he was probably in the top decile of Indian per capita income. It does not take much to get you there of course, given that 54% of the population or around 540 million people live on less than a dollar a day (Ref here). He was short, dark and hairy. Father and son made a cute pair, I thought, like Papa Bear and his cub.

Small talk was exchanged. I learnt that G Sr. was a businessman from Coimbatore. He was gushing with devotion, or so it seemed. His certainty helped set my compass which was directionally challenged, then as now. A brahmachari who was assisting with the mantram line came around to help us select our sacred chants. My new friends from Coimbatore [and Guru-bhais (brothers) to be] were asked to name the deity of their choice. They seemed to have come prepared and picked Ganesha without any hesitation.

Then it was my turn. I had this exotic idea that Amma would pick a deity and mantram for me. I wanted to give Her the maximum degrees of freedom in picking my cosmic license plate. I know that analogy is not perfect. I was about to compare it to a 1-800 number but that does not fit very well either. After more than 5 million calls, I know that there is no response at the end of this line, not even a voice menu that drones, “Press 1 for health, 2 for wealth, 3 for wisdom…225 for nirvana and so on”.

It didn’t work out the way I had intended. The brahmachari was insistent that I had to name a deity and then choose a mantram from a box of written mantrams based on that deity. Never a rebel, I knelt before authority without further ado and did as instructed. I chose Shiva, a legacy probably inherited from my wife. My family (parents et al) was generally big on Vishnu, Krishna and Guruvayoorappan and to a lesser degree, Ganesha. Fresh from reading Arthur Osborne’s book on Ramana Maharshi, I had a mild case of renunciation fever at that time and found Shiva’s ascetic aspect appealing. Incidentally Shiva was my wife’s top choice for a rather different reason; she believed that Shiva was an easy dispenser of boons, a soft touch. Later on when I explained my choice to a relative who valued prosperity above all else, he gave me the other side of the Shiva story. While deeply respectful of Shiva, he was a little concerned that His devotees tended to be destitute, in material terms.

Incidentally, my material condition has slipped in the years since then. While far from destitute in absolute terms, I have fallen on hard times relative to my more opulent past. I can’t really pin my financial downturn onto Shiva because I never really focused on Him. Although my mantram was dedicated to Shiva, my deity worship has tended to center on the person of Amma and aspects of Devi. My most recent fixation is with the Saraswati aspect of Devi. I like to think that I have not abandoned Shiva but am merely approaching Him indirectly via Devi who stands on His prone form. A roundabout route, to be sure, but that is the nature of the spiritual involute.

Om Amriteshwaryai Namah

Part 25: Massage Seeker Wants A Mantra

To continue the story, we got to conversing for a bit – the air traffic controller and I. He shared his impressions of the ashram with me. To his gaze, most people there appeared to be stoned. He seemed pretty sure of his thesis that the average Joe there was high. I tried to present the view that most folks were solidly anchored to the ground, and that the few who seemed to have attained altitude, were probably flying on little more than a broken wing and a prayer. The alternate hypothesis was a tough sell. After a brief struggle, I gave it up. I figured that he had probably been watching blips with altitude markers on radar screens for far too long to see anything else. I now know from the news reports on the recent Comair crash that ATCs have eyes only for planes in the sky; they’re not really supposed to track ground traffic.

Just when it seemed as though our conversation had reached a minor impasse and I gave up, it moved again. This was trivial in itself, but there may be a broader lesson for life here. Over the years, there have been innumerable instances when I pushed hard for a particular outcome, failed to make any headway, then pulled back in surrender. At that point, things start to happen. The Divine Mother's grace or happenstance? Take your pick.

Having noticed that the residents of the ashram work exceedingly hard, our friend asks me why they do so. I see an opening to talk about service, the love for Amma, the Hindu concept of Guru etc. I gave him quick spiritual round-up in soft focus – a sort of advertorial. As I did so, I wondered why I felt called upon to do the pro bono job of ashram public relations executive. Depending on the context and polarities invoked, sometimes I find myself playing the Pope and at other times I play Devil’s Advocate, much like our dear friend Nandu who loves to soak the gulab jamuns that others fry in sugar syrup. I’m a party spokesman with the newbies and sceptics but when I’m with the die-hard devotees, I voice my doubts.

My 20 minute primer on spirituality for dummies (never mind that I am one myself!) concluded with a mention of the reason I was there – to get mantra initiation. For one who was only in the vicinity by accident, I found him oddly interested. He even signed on to the program without any persuasion from my side. He decided to accompany me to the Devi Bhava and get initiated too, whatever that entailed.

So we assemble in our apartment after dinner and prepare to go down to catch the Devi Bhava. I have already warned my new friend and protégé that the night will be a long one, because those seeking mantra initiation have to wait until the last man, woman or child has experienced the gentle grip of the Goddess. I see that my friend has taken note of my caution and has equipped himself with a meditation mat, rolled up underarm. Once again, I am more than a little surprised by his desire to take part in what must seem like a really weird ritual from a totally alien culture. As for myself, despite wearing veteran garb and posing as a spiritual tour guide, I was unsure of what the evening held in store. How would it all unfold? Would there be miracles? Revelations? The Aha! experience I longed to have? We shall see.

Om Amriteshwaryai Namah

Part 24: Never Mind Nirvana, Try Panchakarma

I am going to skip ahead a couple of days in my itinerary, to when my solitary stay was terminated by the entry of a flat mate. I had been warned when I took the room, that I could have it to myself for the first three days, but that I would have to share it for the remaining couple of days of my stay. Notwithstanding my foreknowledge, I was still surprised when the appointed day rolled around and I heard a knock on my door in the morning. My guest had arrived.

I sized him up quickly. Thoughts of the unknown do inject some excitement into my imagination from time to time, but when it comes to sharing a room with some unknown character, I am a shade circumspect. I was a little leery of rooming with some weird wacko. Who knows what types there are out there? Anyway, he passed my instant visual examination and entered the room. He was tall and presentable with short blond hair, not at all scruffy looking. I learnt that he worked as an air traffic controller in a Scandinavian country. I am tempted to give him a glamorous name like Thor*, but my dear critics tell me that I play around too much with words and other literary tricks, so I shall stick to the insipid algebraic notation I have been using so far, and call him X4 instead.
(* The Vedic-Indian counterpart of the Norse Thor is probably Indra)

Well, that was interesting. My life must have passed through the airspace and hands of several air traffic controllers over the years, but I had never actually shared a room with one. I wondered what brought him to Amritapuri. I asked him and sat back, expecting to hear some story connecting him with Amma. It turned out he had not even heard of Amma - the Satguru, Saint and Mother to millions. By virtue of my self-declared status as sadhak and devotee, I fancied that I had a special spiritual connection with Amma, but this man’s connection with Amma, it transpired, was merely physical. He was there for Ayurvedic rejuvenation therapy, I was told. He had done his due diligence on the internet and discovered that the panchakarma clinic in the ashram at Amritapuri was the best value for money proposition available at that time. I mentally awarded myself 10 brownie points for being more evolved than he was. A not so Humble Worm after all!

There was only one bed in the room which I had already occupied. There was a spare mattress. Although I didn’t really want to take the trouble of transferring my bed linen to the mattress on the floor, I politely offered to swap places. He was nice enough not to take up my offer, so I stayed put while he unpacked around his mattress. Later on, when I learnt that he was many years my senior in age, I felt bad at my churlishness. Hindu tradition inculcates deep deference for age, and my self-indulgent behavior was clearly in flagrant violation. But the damaging deed was done and the bad karma already incurred, so I decided to move on. After a shower, he was ready to step out of the room to track down the panchakarma clinic on the ashram grounds. I had a rough idea where it was located and guided him according to my knowledge. So we stepped out together, then I went my way and he went his.

Late that evening, after dinner, we met up again in our room. We were both reclining on our mattresses, preparing to hunker down for the night. Some small talk was exchanged. I gathered that he was 50 years old and divorced. I commented that he did not look that old at all. At first glance, I had put him down at 30+ but even later, when to my mild surprise**, he stripped down to his underpants preparatory to sleep, the sight of ever so slightly sagging muscles did not cause me to raise my estimate of his age by more than 10 years, to around 40. Although I had intended it as a purely factual observation, he took my comment on his relatively youthful appearance as a compliment and seemed genuinely pleased. He was definitely very fit. There was no doubt about that. No flab and no tummy tumbling over the waist.
(** because I rarely, if ever, sleep in my underwear and definitely not when I am in company, unless it is with the wife, in which case, clothing is occasionally optional. But, I figured they probably did things differently in the West, or at least in Scandinavia.)

He told me about his panchakarma experience^. Apparently, they make you drink gallons of oil and clarified butter (ghee) and also pump oil through all your orifices. Then you have to evacuate all the oil you were made to take in, by throwing up and moving your bowels. You get to do this many times. Then when you’re totally pooped (oops, pun unintended), you get a vigorous massage in a tub of oil, I think. With the possible exception of the massage, the rest of the program didn’t sound like much fun to me, but my Nordic friend seemed to have relished the experience. It made him feel good, and his body was really toned up, he said. It was interesting, that I had a seemingly higher reluctance to undertake this kind of wet Ayurvedic treatment, despite being immersed in the tradition, relative to X4, who was clearly delighted to drown in a tub of oil, even if, traditionally in super cold Scandinavia, they probably don’t see a tub that often. On second thoughts, let us upgrade that from interesting to weird. It is like that other weird thing in my life: although I spent several years in Kerala, a scant few hours away from Amma, I never knew or cared about Her while I was there. I had to go several thousand miles away overseas, before I met Her and developed a longing for Her. Who can say why things happen the way they do? Every child asks such questions but few adults have answers.
(^ This is also described in a book titled Amma & Me written by an Amma devotee called Manoharan Chace who lives in Amritapuri.)

Om Amriteshwaryai Namah

Part 23: There's A Green Light In Your Head!

Did I suggest somewhere in the previous episode that X3 resembled a kondatum, a dried twig? Perhaps I ought to take back that characterization and replace it with milch cow, as my hapless protagonist can surely be milked for another story at least.

I happened to quiz X3 on his sadhana (spiritual practices) and he told me that he had been practicing kriya yoga (a breathing technique used in meditation, see 1 & 2 for more information) for very many years. He said that in the years when he had been laid low by unspecified afflictions, kriya was the thing that kept him going and eventually returned his health to a semblance of normality. I filed this information away under Health Science in my brain, after briefly toying with and rejecting the idea of filing it under Humour. The takeaway lesson seemed to be: No matter how bad it gets, don’t stop breathing! Obviously, the irony and hilarity of this moral was not lost on me.

I enquired whether his longstanding sadhana had resulted in any unusual states of consciousness. I asked him with a wink whether he had come across Nirvikalpa Samadhi yet, or perhaps that other puppy Savikalpa Samadhi. He took my ribbing in good humour and said that he was far away from such exalted states. However, he claimed that he did have one unusual ability. My curiosity piqued, I asked him what it was. He told me that he could see a green light in the area of the Ajna Chakra (a spiritual energy center roughly correlated with the center of the forehead). I told him that was really cool and tried to find out more about the nature of this green light. Was it bright like a halogen lamp or was it like an LED (light emitting diode)? I asked him if he could see my green light as we spoke. He clarified that the vision only appeared after he entered a state of deep meditation, about 20 minutes into his routine. Furthermore, he could not see anyone else’s green light, he sheepishly explained; he could only see the one in his own forehead and that too when he had his eyes closed.

What a bummer! I would have been really tickled to obtain third-party verification of my third eye. I suppose it was not to be. There was no real reason to expect that encounter to be very different from the general run of my life which had been anything but a smooth drive through green lights. The reality was red lights and traffic violations with the odd DUI thrown in. For the most part, my life’s journey has felt like riding the wrong way through a one-way street. I just sit behind the wheel in terror, not knowing when I am going to be blown up by oncoming traffic.

The most recent example of a red light is the removal of the one constant in my post-Amma life. Under severe work pressure, I have been forced to discontinue my meticulous practice of japam (chanting of a mantra). I used to do over 40 malas (rosaries) per day and had just crossed what seemed to be a landmark: 5 million in cumulative japams but Amma appears to have had enough of my counting games. With a grumble, I now move to a new regime where I will perform japam on an ad hoc basis, whenever time permits. No more counting. No longer will I need to update the cute little spreadsheet, complete with bells and whistles in the form of graphs and diagnostic statistics, that I used to maintain to track my score. Yesterday, I closed the account with a red line at the bottom and a note saying “Account terminated”. I feel like a child whose favourite toy has just been snatched away.

I am unsure whether the loss of this prop represents an advance or a decline. All I can do now, I suppose, is to stop counting and start chanting in every free moment. May ad hoc turn into ad infinitum by Her grace.

Om Amriteshwaryai Namah

Part 22: Lalitambika Knocks A Lady Of The Night

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

Part 21: The Urge To Mate Doth Dominate

After much rest and reflection, an itinerant devotee returns to the trail. In the intervening months, Mother has written a few more words in this loiterer’s book of life. Her words do not yet sum up to a full sentence; not even a subordinate clause, barely enough for a phrase perhaps. Despite Her terseness, a hint of intent is now apparent to this actor, an insignificant extra in Her cosmic production. If one believes that the merest doodles of Mother’s Mont Blanc (metaphorical pen) represent entire epics in the lives of Her animations, my attempt to decode the Divine hieroglyph may not be totally unfounded. The task would be a lot easier though, if Her script were less scarce. Did I just wish for a sentence? How dumb can this devotee get? Isn’t life sentence enough?!

I’m done waffling. This fool may not be able to approach, even asymptotically, the succinct speech of Sakshal Saraswati (verily the Goddess of Learning) but he will try not to drool.

Continuing in the surreal vein of the previous episode, this one and the next will record a somewhat magical meeting with another ashramite, a gentleman - let us call him X3. In the course of my talk with X3, I grumbled about the lack of any direct demonstrations of Mother’s omniscience or other extra-sensory powers in my life. X3 responded by sharing a snippet from his story that spoke to my concern. Our gentleman friend had been living in the ashram with his wife for close to a decade. Both in their late sixties, husband and wife were wedded as much to seva (service) as to each other. Their advanced age and the Amritapuri force field (only half tongue-in-cheek here) probably accounted for the bulk of their dedication to service, but the fact that they were childless may also have had something to do with it. While barrenness was no issue (pardon the evil pun), X3 did have another problem, and the story he proceeded to narrate revolved around this.

His tale began with a dose of personal history. He told me that he had led a dissolute life as a young man. He said that he was too ashamed to talk about his many vices, but that chronic womanizing and drinking had cast dark shadows over his life, in early adulthood. In middle age, the excesses of his youth caught up with him and he was laid low by serious health problems. He declined to spell out the nature of his ailments (my guess: some horrible STDs), but indicated that they were severe enough to force a change in his lifestyle. The spirit was still willing but the flesh was too weak, apparently.

He trudged on for another twenty years, fighting illness and recidivism. The battle was stiff and results were mixed, however, until he finally landed in the A-Zone (A=Amma) at the age of 60 or so. From that point onwards, the force field took over and the tide turned. Over the next five years, as he buried himself in work, he found his noxious old vasanas (tendencies) being slowly extinguished. Despite the glacial rate of change, the transformation was near total. In his words: “You cannot imagine what kind of a man I used to be (depraved) and I could not have imagined the kind of man I have now become (reformed).” He put it all down to Mother’s grace and in response to my expressions of doubt, he went on to illustrate the palpable nature of this grace, underlining the idea that it was not wispy, wishful thinking.

After around five years of the reformed life, in accord with the guidelines for householder devotees including celibacy on campus, X3 fell victim to an unexpected revival of his most vicious vasana – the urge for illicit intercourse. It began as a mildly mischievous thought, a mere ripple on the surface of the ocean, but quickly turned into an unstoppable tsunami of desire. The pain was so poignant in the description of his predicament, that I could not but sympathize with the miserable fellow. After all, I know from my own experience that the powerful L force (lust) is one of the fundamental forces of nature, ranking right up there with the other four forces (strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetic and gravitational forces for those fond of physics) in the Unified Field theory. And while I subscribe, in a general way, to the theory of ojas – the idea that sexuality and spirituality are antithetical to each other, and have made definite, if slow^* progress in my tussle with testosterone, I can surely empathize with the plight of millions who may presumably be moving in the opposite direction. (^*At the rate of scant inches per year, doubtless I will be able to eradicate the erotic from my consciousness in a zillion lifetimes.)

Despite my sincere efforts to commiserate mentally with X3’s difficult situation, I came close to convulsing with laughter when I tried to visualize our friendly sexagenarian as a sexpot. I thought, in Malayalam:
Aal kanda kondatum bole irikyum
Pakshe kalikyan takkali venam
Malayalees, I trust, will get my drift though my metaphors are unconventional. A rough translation for non-Malayalees is as follows:
The man looks like a dried twig
But wants to play with a juicy tomato

Although my sides were about to split, I realized that laughter would have been cruel at that juncture. With superhuman effort, I managed to avert an explosion of mirth. I forced myself to remember that while the body ages, desire does not.
A verse from Bhartrihari’s Vairagya Shatakam makes the point:
Balirbhimukhamakrantam palitenankita shiraha
Gatrani shithilayante trishnaika tarunyayate
Translation: There are wrinkles on my face because of old age. All the hair on my head has turned white and my hands and legs have turned loose and feeble. But my hope is like a young and beautiful damsel. Everything else may cease and get destroyed but hope and desire rage eternally young.

And in his Shringara Shatakam, Bhartrihari cuts, through rotting flesh, to the very bone with:
Krishah kaanah khanjah shravanrahitah
Puchchviklo prani puyaklinnah krimikulashtairaavrittanuh
Kshudhaa kshaamo jeernah pitharakkapaalaarpigatah
Shunimanveti shvaa hatmapi nihantyev madanah
Translation: Truly, Kamadeva (God of lust) does not spare even the dead. Even an old dog which is weak, one-eyed, lame, single-eared, bereft of a tail and afflicted with wounds full of pus and infecting worms, cannot contain its carnal desires and stalks a bitch throughout the day.

Om Amriteshwaryai Namah

Part 20: Time Travel Can Be Painful

After a gap of almost a year, I return to continue my story. There is an element in my personality that craves structure and order. I hate to leave a job unfinished. It may be a pointless project, devoid of meaning but having once embarked on the mission of my own accord, I feel compelled to see it through.

There is this story in the Puranas, where the Devas and the Asuras, in a rare collaborative venture, churn the ocean to extract Amrit (nectar that confers immortality). The serpent Vasuki volunteers service as the rope and the mountain Mandaramalai is used as the ladle around which Vasuki is wound. After much churning, Vasuki tires and starts to spew poison. Lord Shiva swallows the poison so as to save the world from its deleterious effects. His consort, Goddess Parvati rushes to help and holds His throat to prevent the poison from spreading to the rest of His body. This story can be read at a deep, allegorical level but I will not stop to explore the hidden meaning. Other brothers or sisters who are well versed in Puranic lore and commentary may step in to fill the breach, if they so desire.

It is sufficient and salutary for me to reflect on the Divine glory of Neelakandan's (another appellation for Lord Shiva; neela - blue colour from poison, kandam - throat) supreme sacrifice in taking on the burden of the world, as I proceed, in my infinitesimal way, to do the opposite. Unlike the gracious Lord, I cannot hold it in; I must save myself by spitting it out. And so, devotees, I seek your continued indulgence, as I purge my system of the virus of verbosity and prattle on...

The next character in this narrative is an elderly man – a householder and long-time ashram resident. This senior, let me call him X2, lived in Amritapuri with his wife and son. Their lives, swirling around seva (service) and sadhana (spiritual practice), were structured on the same broad lines as those of other householder residents, with one interesting twist from my perspective – their son, twenty-something years old, was mentally retarded. (In the past, I have been reluctant to use the ‘R’ word because it is too stark and also strikes too close to home. However, of late I find euphemisms such as ‘developmentally challenged’, ‘alternately enabled’ or other clever coinage unequal to the task of covering up the grim realities of life.)

We started off with some generalities, but pretty soon our conversation circled in on a shared concern – the disabilities of our respective children. The conditions, though medically different, were similar in impact. Both children had significantly impaired development, but his son was stable, requiring no treatment while my daughter was unstable and needed medication. Speaking to him seemed surreal, almost like being in a time machine. My past and future were both mirrored in his present; the past, in miniature, and perhaps a shade superficially, but the future in a fuller sense.

He was stranded several rungs below me on the socio-economic ladder, and in that sense he reflected my past, the economic mediocrity I had migrated out of, not by dint of effort or any special talent of my own, but mere chance. I took in this little image in my rear-view mirror, savoring my great escape from the serpentine coils of lower middle-class toil into the talons of upper middle-class obscurity. For the moment, I was a mouse, saved by an eagle, from being swallowed by a snake. I felt relief and exhilaration, as I soared through the sky, securely transported in the eagle's talons. My euphoria peaked in a palace in the sky - the eagle's nest where I was deposited, which I took to be home!

My flight from the past had landed in the present. Time passed quickly and the wonder faded. A decade in mouse-years was a single night in eagle-time. I found that my lofty new perch was not so comfortable after all. I was destined to be breakfast. I let out a silent scream in pain, as the eagle's sharp beak ripped my tender flesh and ego to shreds. At the present time, breakfast is still being served, and I am still screaming.

Then my attention drifted away from the smallish rear-view image, and vaulted over the excruciating pain of the present, to the bigger picture of the future that bore down through the front windscreen. X2's son, in the present was my daughter in the future, with some adjustments for health and mental capacity. And although I did not think so at the time, being more optimistic then than I am now, about the outlook for my daughter, it is increasingly clear that the adjustments referred to above will push my daughter below his son, on the health-and-ability axis. To my mind, the subtle symmetry between our situations was quite striking. Excess wealth on my side is balanced by better health on his side. He was my holographic negative, exposed on the tousled tissue of time.

Om Amriteshwaryai Namah

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

Part 15: Meeting A Brahmachari

Many months ago in Part 14, I announced with needless flourish that I would return to the chronological flow in my narration. Life intervened, and I found myself unable to maintain the posting routine that I had set for myself. I now return to post with your kind indulgence. However, I feel the need to deviate from my stated intent to stick to the time-line of events. In any case there is no gripping story to tell; all I have to offer is a jumbled collection of impressions. There may not even be any audience; it may all be in my head, but that is another matter. For the present, I shall hang on to the soothing fiction that there is a readership out there. So no matter how we proceed, chronologically or thematically, be warned that tedium is likely to be your companion as you hack your way through my thicket of words.

In the next few episodes, I plan to profile some of the individuals I came across during my stay at Amritapuri. Although my interviews were impromptu and weak in direction, some subjects ended up leaving indelible impressions on my mind. On the whole, I came away with a deep respect for and serious appreciation of the ashram life. My objective in this exercise is going to be nothing more than simple portraiture. In meetings that were totally unscripted, I came across a number of individuals, some of whom I found to be remarkable. In fleshing out these impressions I plan, in the main, to place before you the same basic views that I experienced first hand. Expect occasional light commentary but no other garnish with this offering. Elements in these portraits that grate may be ascribed to the impurities in my lens ie. my own biases and judgments.

"De Darshan Ma, Devi Ma
Ambe Ma, Bhavani Ma"

I am listening to this bhajan (hymn) as I type. The invocation seems appropriate. I hope She will guide me through this post. I don't even know if I should be here. From pillar to post, that is the story of my life.

I was introduced to a brahmachari (male renunciate disciple). Let me call him X1. The ostensible reason for my being introduced to X1 was a degree of commonality in our countries of origin/domicile. He hailed from country A and was now settling down in India, while I had migrated out of India and was now domiciled in his erstwhile country.

X1 had been with Amma for nearly nine years at the time of my encounter with him. His age was about the same as mine in biological terms, but reckoned in Amma years, he was clearly my senior. On my probing, he told me the story of how he came to be with Amma. When he was 25ish in his original country, he was a regular young fellow. Whatever ‘regular’ is usually taken to mean. He had not been particularly inclined towards spirituality although his parents were old-line religious, Hindu traditionalists. He himself had led the ‘good’ life with girlfriends, alcohol, sports and other ‘fun’ things being the order of the day. There seemed to be no overt intellectual component to his personality either in his rendition of the past, or in the present where I stood absorbing his account. I envied his lack of intellectual baggage. For much of my life, I have forced myself to carry a ton of stuff - impressions, analysis, doubts, theories and what not. It is only recently that I have come to savour the virtues of travelling light, like a business passenger. Carry no check-in luggage, only a handbag with the bare essentials - that is the new paradigm, but I am still working towards it.

One fateful day, in the 25th year of his otherwise average and prototypical (of the average middle-class young adult in any country) life, X1 happened to accompany his family to Amma's darshan program in his city. X1 and his brother dropped their mother and sister off at the darshan venue, while they waited outside by their car. They were 'cool dudes' then and were not about to go in and hug any 'Guru' character. They barely even knew what was going on inside the program and did not really care. All they knew was, "Not our scene, man!", and that was enough.

The mother and sister had gone into the hall and there seemed no sign that they were about to come out any time soon. Smoking and fidgeting with his car-keys, X1 had been waiting for them to come out, so he could get on with his life. Growing more impatient, he put his cigarette out and walked towards the entrance of the hall, to try and locate his family and discover what was holding them up. At the precise moment that he entered the hall, he saw a diminutive woman dressed in a white sari enter with him. They were both poised to enter the hall at nearly the same instant. She looked at him and he looked at Her and that was it. She was Amma and he was zapped! He told me that in that very instant he knew that he just had to be with Her, that it was his destiny to follow Her. I marveled at how such solid certainty could descend unceremoniously on the shoulders of this young man, who had shown no signs up to that point of being a fit or even likely receptacle for such Divine Grace. This was a real-life example of life turning on a dime, an expression that I knew previously only in a hackneyed, proverbial sense.

The contrast between X1 and my own life could not be starker. There were similarities too, but we shall look at those later. Here I was, frittering my forces in efforts to understand the world, applying my puny intellect to squeeze a layman's understanding out of Bell's Theorem, how the quantum world decoheres into the classical world and such other arcana, and what did I have to show for all my intellectual exertions? Not a thing! And here on the other hand was X1, presenting a study in contrast. He might not care for Schrodinger's Cat or tingle at the thought that mind might not just reside in the brain but also be found in the body ('Molecules of Emotion' by Dr. Candace Pert. Psst, I don't want to preen here, I confess I have not read the book either) but he knew which end was up! I prostrated to X1, in my mind.

Om Amriteshwaryai Namah

Part 14: The Identity Project

The digression continues. Last time, I wrote mostly about the social effects of the spiritual identity question. I made the point that the identity project is suffused with some social tension, even if it is undertaken for the highest spiritual reasons. And when the reasons are less sublime, it goes without saying that the results may even turn out to be harmful. Some of my writing betrayed the bias I entertained in my mind, that identity redefinition as commonly encountered, revolves around base social reasons rather than exalted spiritual ones. I want to acknowledge once again that I have been guilty of over-generalization.

In this regard, I have found Sister Premarupa’s account (among others) to be truly sincere and eye opening; it has shown me that many, here and elsewhere, are actuated by the noblest motives in these matters. I see now, that the tendency to spot and comment on the negative aspects of the world outside, has an analogue, a precursor within myself. There is negativity in my heart that I must examine and eliminate. So this discussion has given rise to a little homework assignment for me, a lesson for which I owe thanks. Negativity lurks like an iceberg waiting for the Titanic, a tenth exposed to view in the form of speech or action and nine-tenths hidden from view in the form of thought and intention.

Now for an examination of some of the spiritual ramifications. As I said before, I view the adoption of a spiritual name as one element in the identity project. In essence, I see it as serving the function of ritual ie. to represent the infinite in terms that are finite and accessible. In common with other rituals therefore, its value is a function of what the practitioner invests and what God/Guru/Amma adds out of Grace. The more one invests, the greater the principal, and larger the quantum of Guru's Grace that is invoked. Therefore it is not right to judge the worth of a ritual merely on the basis of appearance; what appears vapid externally could be packed with power internally, or conversely it could be puffed up to look a lot more impressive than it is actually worth.

It seems to me that what matters is not the particular practice one adopts or chooses not to adopt, but the investment one makes in the default practice For there is always a default practice, a default representation as long as one is bound by Maya (Cosmic Illusion). True Jnanis (savants, people who have attained self-realization) may operate from a default state of non-representation but the rest of us are prisoners of paradigm. I might mention, in passing, that my own propensity to take up new forms has historically been low, although it has probably gone up a notch in recent times. While it may be OK for me to derive comfort from my own inertia in this context, I would be in error if I were to look askance at the cross-cultural and/or ritual-intensive impulses of others.

Coming back to the identity project, in its deepest sense, it must necessarily be about identifying with the Divine. The ego is the main obstruction to a total identification with the Divine and there are only two ways to get around this. It is possible to merge with the Divine by either shrinking one's ego to nothingness or by expanding it to infinity. The former is the easier approach, suitable for most people, but a few spiritual giants have been known to do it the latter way.

Sri Girish Ghosh, a devotee of Sri Ramakrishna once described these contrasting styles, with reference to two other devotees. As Sri Girish Ghosh explains it, when Mahamaya (The Empress of Illusion) ensnared all beings in Her net of worldly existence, two beings managed to escape. One, Sri Nag Mahashay (a great householder devotee of Sri Ramakrishna) managed to make himself so small that he was able to swim out through the gaps in the net like a minnow. The other, the illustrious Swami Vivekananda, expanded himself so much that he broke through the net and swam free like a great whale.

Another way to look at the change of name issue is to view it as a manifestation of bhakti or devotion. Bhakti may manifest itself secondarily in many hues but the primary colours are three: White for Sattva, Red for Rajas and Black for Tamas. In other words, the particular expression of bhakti manifested by an individual depends upon the mix of primary gunas (qualities) in that individual. Sattva is usually regarded as being superior to Rajas, which in turn is regarded as being superior to Tamas, in the conventional conception.

However, Sri Ramakrishna explains how even the so-called ‘bad’ gunas can be turned to advantage. He points to the existence of three brands of bhakti - Sattvic, Rajasic and Tamasic. The Sattvic bhakta (devotee) is like the quiet man who meditates at night under his mosquito net. His devotion is unostentatious and recessed. The Rajasic devotee, in contrast, wears his devotion on his sleeve. This is the kind of devotee who relishes public participation and wears silk robes and huge rudrakshas (beads) around his neck. The Tamasic devotee's bhakti is marked by the attributes of violence and destruction. The Tamasic devotee is capable of going to extremes of rage, anger, violence and other negative emotions, in a bid to 'out' the hidden God. He may threaten to harm himself if God does not appear to him, or alternatively, he may vent his fury on the object of his devotion. Such devotion, though Tamasic, and inherently negative, nevertheless has the potential of catapulting the seeker towards God. Thus Tamasic devotion can be very powerful.

The lesson I take away from the above is that it does not greatly matter what mix of gunas a seeker has. Whatever be one's predominant guna, all that is necessary is to turn that guna towards God. A strong guna, even if negative, can be profitably deployed in the spiritual enterprise by directing it to God. It does not matter whether a devotee is quiet or flamboyant or prone to negative emotion, so long as the fire of devotion rages in his heart. Or, as the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping said in a very different context, "It does not matter what colour the cat is, as long as it catches mice."

And now, I come to the end of this little intellectual (de)tour de farce (misspellings deliberate). In subsequent chapters I shall return to the comfort of chronology and linear narrative, though some might view that as the tyranny of time. To phrase it with less ellipsis and bombast, I shall tackle the question my daughter would ask me, if I were to tell her a story and she could comprehend enough to ask, "What happens next?" But it appears to be Amma's will that this child is a long, long way from ever being able to do that.

Om Amriteshwaryai Namah

Part 13: Damage Control And Sociology

After a hiatus of a few weeks, the pesky/friendly neighborhood insect (a glowworm, yours truly!) flits across your screen once again. The delay was a function of business (work and family chores) at some times and plain laziness at other times. I must also admit to being thrown off-track by Sister Premarupa’s request for clarification after my pot shot at the practice of Western devotees taking Indian spiritual names in Part 12. Left to my own devices, I would probably have done a hit-and-run but now that I have been called to account, I have to come up with something superior: Obfuscation? Explanation? Damage Control? I could not narrow down between these choices, so I decided to do a bit of everything. What follows is my pot pourri, aviyal for the Malayalees.

First, a few words on the generalization that I made, and those that I will make now in defence or elucidation of that first one. The reality is that people, myself included, tend to make generalizations - "Westerners are like this, Indians are like that" and other statements of that ilk. This is not necessarily something that brings Global Understanding & World Peace any closer but it is a human tendency. Stereotypes, where accurate, are usually constructed with a kernel of truth, surrounded by layers of extrapolation. A stereotype may provide a reasonably accurate description of a class of people in a limited context but individuals are almost never described 100% by a stereotype. In other words, stereotypes are good descriptors of the average and poor descriptors of individual data points. Confused? Well that means I have attained at least one of my objectives!

What I have just talked about - accuracy, is just part of the story. One third of the story, to be really precise. There is more to expressing a view than mere veracity. Let me explain. I remember a message from one of those feel-good, spiritual emails that someone forwarded to my mailbox a while ago. You know the kind? Powerpoint slideshows with nifty spiritual messages featuring soft-focus angels and pretty floral arrangements in the background. Well I remember one such slide that stuck in my head: Before you voice an opinion, ask yourself whether it is (a) true (b) necessary, and, (c) kind. A critical self-appraisal suggests to me that while I may have scored on (a), I probably erred with (b) and (c), when I made my sweeping statement. And therefore, I think an apology is in order. To Sister Premarupa and all other Western brothers and sisters who were injured by my broad, unnecessary and unkind barb, I offer heartfelt apology for any hurt I may have caused. On reading Sister Premarupa’s account of how she came to acquire her Indian spiritual name, I realized that the act was imbued with deep personal significance for her and also bound up with intense feelings, and that I had basically played the role of a bull in a china shop.

Whew! It is a relief to get that off my chest. I confess that I was a little oppressed by the thought that my playful poke in the Western ribs may have been insensitive. I guess that, more than anything else, is what really kept me away all these days from the list/group. I do not think that I am blessed with enough self-control to promise reliably that such sins will not recur; the best that can be hoped for is that the circle of my stupidities contracts, and that the group's forgiveness expands over time. I seek your continued indulgence, dear brothers and sisters!

Now, on to some of the social and spiritual implications of the process of acculturation I referred to in the previous episode. The social first. Name changing is but a subset of a larger project - the effort to adapt to or blend or identify with a different culture. The larger project of adaptation, which is something that many of us (especially those whose lives have a greater interface with foreign cultures) are engaged in, to varying degrees, is really rooted in the question of identity. People may undertake these transformations for material or spiritual reasons. Brother Keval provided a hilarious example of the former - "I am Devendra but you can call me Dave!" Since I aim to restrict my discussion to the spiritual, I do not intend to inquire too deeply into that particular category ie. the Westernization of Indians for social and material reasons. Rather I expect to take a look at the Indianization or Hinduization of Western devotees, since that has more salience from a spiritual standpoint. However, even for devotees, such shifts, irrespective of whether they are driven by material or spiritual reasons, have undeniable consequences in the social sphere that are worth examining. The practice of taking spiritual names is not very common among non-monastic Indian devotees, as far as I know, so I plan to leave that out of the discussion as well.

Some correspondents have already touched upon some of the obvious limitations of these attempts to slip under the skin of an alternate culture. For instance, you cannot use your spiritual name as freely as you might like, outside the spiritual community to which you belong. At work, or even among family, the resort to alien nomenclature and custom might give rise to reactions ranging from benign wonder to active hostility. While I have not undertaken anything as radical as a change of name, I could cite one example in illustration. My use, in these fora, of "Dear Brothers/Sisters" as the preferred form of address represents something of an acquired culture. Prior to my spiritualization, I was not in the habit of using this kind of address. My use of this address is however limited to this setting; I would not dream of using it with my colleagues in the office, for instance. If I did, they would surely think I am totally nuts, even the Indians among them.

Even on this devotional list/group, my first applications of this cultural change felt stilted and contrived. As I persisted in the habit, however, I found, over time, that I became more comfortable with the usage. Oddly enough, there was more to it than just becoming comfortable with the usage; what began as an artificial device, ended up having a real effect in terms of influencing my feelings towards this community. I began to feel more brotherly love. That actually brings me to a point that I should be making, when the discussion moves from the social implications to the spiritual ramifications of attempts to redefine self-identity to meet the spiritual purpose: sometimes the tail can wag the dog. In my case, what started as an empty ritual, ended up changing my real-world perspective in a small way.

Coming back to the social implications, it must be stressed that identity formation or redefinition is an activity that requires the expenditure of energy. Even Indians, snugly ensconced in their own culture, need to expend a certain quantum of energy to maintain their identity, but those from Western or other cultures who seek to effect a crossover must necessarily expend a greater amount of energy, to break with old habits and acquire new ones. Whether it is worth the deal is a question that can only be answered by the individual seeker, in the light of his/her own situation.

As an objective matter, since discontent provides the impetus to change, it is often the case that Westerners who cross over to Indian culture are alienated from their source traditions, for reasons good or bad. I guess the same could be said, for Hindus who convert to Christianity or Islam. However, the reigning orthodoxy of the Semitic religions does impose a certain pressure for conformity upon the new arrivals, that is largely absent for outsiders making the transition towards Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism), since the architecture of the latter is based on a version of the open systems concept. In other words, the gradient is very gentle in the case of the Western-to-Eastern transition; it is possible for a Westerner to imbibe the Hindu ethos, in bite-sized nibbles at a pace that is convenient.

The point to take away in this context is that the identity project is charged with a certain amount of tension. In order to adopt the customs of an alternate culture one is required to repudiate, however mildly, the customs of the native culture. The process, therefore, may be described as exothermic (to borrow a term from chemistry) ie. heat-generating. When actuated by the lofty goal of spiritual transcendence, the project is well worth taking on as the seeker's ego sublimes in the heat of transformation. But when the project is guided purely or primarily by the social imperative, then there is a risk that one may be seared by the heat. In its extreme versions, the process can result not in transcendence, but in the substitution of the individual ego by the group or collective ego, with a net increase in egoism.

Om Amriteshwaryai Namah

Part 12: Western Devotees, Indian Names

My darshan done, I made my way off the dais where Amma was seated. I had to step gingerly over those still shuffling forward on their knees for their darshans. At this time, I noticed the usual throng of meditators seated around Amma. Apart from Her attendants, there were some devotees who sat cross-legged, for varying lengths of time in Her vicinity, hoping perhaps to benefit from physical proximity to the Master. I had never seriously meditated before, nor had I ever sat so close to Amma, for any length of time. I was tempted to give it a shot but decided to postpone the trial to another day. This was only my first day here after all. I was hungry, and a little abstracted with thoughts of the reunion with Amma I had just had, after an interval of four months. I needed to eat (food of the physical kind) and chew on my thoughts.

I exited from the temple and walked towards the Western canteen, which is situated near the front gate of the ashram. Just before I got there, I met the same Swamiji who had advised us to consult Amma, and seek Her blessings for our child. Perhaps due to the fact that we had met only days previously, he recognized me readily and smiled in greeting. I greeted him in turn with a breezy hello, before realizing that I had fouled up with protocol. The Swamiji, to his credit, did not convey the slightest hint about my slip. I should have touched my heart with my right hand and said "Namah Shivaya" (Salutations to Lord Shiva, whose embodiment I see in you) of course, but I forgot. I was still a relative newbie to this whole spiritual thing. The Swamiji asked me whether I had managed to meet Amma and convey my story. I replied in the affirmative and briefly narrated the exchange I had with Amma minutes before. He took note and then went on his way.

Presently I arrived in front of the Western canteen. It seemed little more than a converted cowshed. It was staffed by a couple of young Western girls. They had Indian names. My first encounter with the apparently common practice of adoption of Indian spiritual names by Western devotees, had taken place with my American travel companion (from the airport to the ashram). That brother had introduced himself to me using his Indian name. I found myself being mildly amused by this practice. Later, in my spare moments, I would muse more deeply about the social and spiritual implications of this process of acculturation, if that is the mot juste in this context. But for the nonce, I was content to order two vegetarian burgers and fries, while smiling inwardly (in the nicest way, without any mockery) at the sight of a white-sari clad, young, blonde Savitri in the kitchen shouting out to a 6-foot tall, middle-aged, Western man with shoulder-length brown hair, worn in a bun that had come half undone, "Mukunda, your toast is ready."

Om Amriteshwaryai Namah

Part 11: First Darshan In Amritapuri

At the end of my internal deliberations, I was left with a few operating principles or algorithms:
(1) Brevity was key. The length of my intervention could not be much more than the duration of Amma’s KISS (Keep It Short, Stupid?!)
(2) My agenda would have to reflect the most pressing concerns of my family and myself. While I had a healthy layman’s interest in world peace and quantum biology, I had to admit that there were other, more mundane questions that kept me awake at night.
(3) Within the area labeled family concerns there were some issues such as employment and sadhana that concerned me more than the other members, and other issues such as the health and welfare of our child that more actively engaged my wife. My wife argued, and I had to accept, that asking questions about my sadhana would have been too selfish, when we had a pressing child health issue to contend with.
(4) It was axiomatic with me that Amma already knew all there was to know about our situation. Therefore, I assumed that She would make the inevitable defects and deficits in my communication, respectively, good and whole.

The queue numbers rolled by. Pretty soon, it was time for me get up and join the queue. While waiting my turn, I tried to do the important things - focus on my speech and slip into a devotional mood, but my efforts were only partially successful. Periodically, I found my attention being drawn to a study of the surroundings. Just when it seemed most important for me to stay on beam and with the message, I found myself engaged by trivia such as, for instance, the way in which the person standing in front of me shifted his weight, or the snatches of conversation carried on by those nearby that wafted to my ears.

Notwithstanding these minor failures, I am happy to report that not a single inappropriate thought crossed my mind in that time, or for that matter in the entire time I spent at Amritapuri. As I say this, I do realize that all thought is perhaps inappropriate in a Advaitic sense, but I refer here only to the more gross varieties such as sexual thoughts, for instance. The credit for this phenomenon (the temporary suspension of all libidinous impulses; it lasted over 30 days and more than spanned the duration of my stay at the ashram) properly belongs to Amma, since it has few parallels in the rest of my life.

Finally, on to the great denouement of the day, actually a bit of an anti-climax. I reached the head of the queue, and the minders had us edge forward the last meter or so, on our knees. Having taken darshan before, I was reasonably familiar with the routine and tried to be as co-operative as I could. The air around Amma smelt nice. I had noticed that fragrance on previous occasions as well, and I put it down to some kind of incense or perfume or cleaning agent, that Her attendants probably employed on a routine basis. By now, my whole attention was focused on the mission at hand and I had become less conscious of the people around me. Strangely enough, I cannot remember a single face from this darshan crowd, although a number of faces from previous and subsequent darshans are still etched in my memory.

At the penultimate position, an attendant asked me, as usual, what language I would understand. I answered, “Malayalam”. I was told how to approach Amma and how to rest my weight, so as not to hurt Her. Then I found myself in front of Amma, and She took a-hold of my head with Her right hand, while winding down a near-simultaneous darshan with a female devotee from the other queue on Her left side. Then she tucked my head under Her, so that Her lips were upon my right ear, and She said “Ammade kuttoo” (meaning “Amma’s dear son”, as nearly as I can translate) a number of times. It felt nice but I did not glimpse ‘Brahman’, feel the kundalini shakti (latent reservoir of spiritual power) surge or anything like that. I wanted to hug Her back warmly but did not do so for fear of hurting Her. Then She let me go, but instead of rapidly making way for the next devotee’s darshan as I normally do, I straightened my back so that my eyes were almost level with Hers, and sought permission to speak to Her for one minute.

She assented with a nod and I launched into my little talk. I told her that I had a child with a seemingly intractable medical condition, that I had previously seen Her in country X before, and that one of Her Swamis who had recently paid us a visit, had suggested that I bring a stick of sandalwood, for Her to bless. I then fished out the stick of sandalwood, from a pouch I wore around my waist, over my shirt. Amma heard me out and gave instructions for the sandal-paste to be applied on my child’s forehead every night before sleep. I did not say a word about anything else and She did not either.

I sensed that the darshan was over. I looked for Her feet, so I could touch them and then touch my forehead, to express my reverence in the customary manner. As usual, I failed to spot Her feet, since She sits cross-legged with Her feet tucked under Her, so I contented myself by lightly touching Her knee with the tip of my right ring finger and transferring the touch to my temple. Then I backed away and the next man closed in. I found some space and did a prostration. There was not enough room for a full-length prostration, so I did something like a three-quarters version, kneeling forward and touching my forehead to the ground but not extending my body full-length.

I was a little self-conscious as I did this, so I am afraid I did not do it very well. I was torn between doing it well and doing it quickly, as I was loathe to upset the progress of the queue, and take up the most valuable real estate in the world – at Amma’s feet. As a result, I ended up doing a rapid-fire prostration, that must have seemed odd to anyone who was watching. I imagined the unspoken censure of bystanders: “What does this idiot think he is doing? Is this a sashtanga pranamam (full-body prostration) or a caper by a circus clown?” Fortunately, I think it was only my imagination working overtime and that nobody noticed, or if they did, they did not really care too much.

Om Amriteshwaryai Namah

Part 10: Atmikam And/Or Laukikam?

In the last episode, I wrote about the thought I devoted to the form of the impending communication with Amma. I may have neglected to cover a parallel mental struggle to decide the content of my communication. Such games are constantly being played out, in infinite variations, one after another in the arena of my mind. In the present instance, it felt rather like simultaneous, multiple mud-wrestling matches going on, in different pits at the same venue.

There were, broadly speaking, two main areas of concern that I was bringing to Mother. One area, which I looked upon as being in the laukika (worldly) realm, pertained to the material situation of my family and myself. The other area, which I tended to classify as atmikam (spirituality), was related to my own spiritual progress. There were a number of focii of interest within each of these areas. The medical condition of my child, a perpetually unstable job situation and relationship issues (among members of my family) were some of the pigments on the laukika canvas. The atmika canvas was dominated by the brush strokes of faith and practice. More on faith, in a moment.

I have not yet narrated the story of my first meeting with Amma. At the present rate of centipedal crawl, it may take a few years yet before that particular tale gets told, if ever. My intention, in holding that back, is not born of a perverse desire to stoke the suspense. As a matter of fact there is no suspense at all; that tale is as plain as the rest of my life. It is only in the telling that colour sometimes creeps in. However, the point to be noted at this juncture is that my coming to Amma did not have any finality about it. In some ways, the drift towards spirituality in general, and Amma in particular seems to have been inexorable, even inevitable, if you study the events of my life, but there was no specific clincher that anchored my devotion. And that brings me to the issue of faith. I had come to Amritapuri, looking for something that would either shake my evolving faith in Amma as God and Guru, or solidify it beyond all doubt.

So that was one of the implicit items on my atmika agenda. I was looking for some evidence; my mind framed a proposition for Amma, a challenge in a way, that ran roughly like this: "If You are all that is purported, please give me some evidence. It does not have to be big or grand, or alter the conditions of my life in any appreciable way, but it must meet my standard of proof, a standard which I expect You (Amma), in Your omniscience to divine, not out of my arrogance, but as a matter of course." I fancied that I had a bit of a scientific temper, and a rational bent of sorts, and I expected that Amma would know exactly how to go about convincing me. I was prepared to settle for something considerably short of a published and peer-reviewed finding in Physical Review Letters (a leading journal of physics) for instance.

I also mused about the propriety and prioritization of these issues. Was atmikam to take precedence over laukikam or the other way around? Were my categories, a priori as they were, even approximately correct? What if what I considered to be spiritual was really worldly and vice versa? About a year ago (but well after my Amritapuri encounters), a senior Swami (monk) in the Ramakrishna order whom I consulted, told me that it was folly to draw a line in the sand to divide the spiritual from the material within my life, and that an integrated and holistic perspective was better. This basic idea, in spore form, had been present in my mind even before the RK Swami brought it to life by the addition of his teertham (literally holy water, used as a metaphor here, for his words of wisdom). If my atmika-laukika polarization dissolved in the face of such logic, how would I decide on what issues to prioritize? On the other hand, if I held on the categorization, how would I decide which issues within each class to take up? My mind was taken up with questions of this nature. I was a little vexed for a time, but eventually clarity descended, and I was able to approach Amma with the semblance of a plan.

Om Amriteshwaryai Namah