He asked L. in which shape she would prefer the devil, and she said in the shape of a camel. He laughed.
“Good memory: camel, animal of the desert,” he said.
I still did not understand and said so.
“If you want to steal, why not steal? Learn to steal well, to deceive well.”
“If you order me to do it, I will obey,” I said.
“Why should I ask you to be a thief or a deceiver?” he asked. “The devil is the Manas in you; why say: I will not do such or such a thing because I have a strong character. Why not say: I am nothing!”
I still did not know what he meant and he said: “It will be for the next time!” and changed the subject.
26th February, 1962
“You CANNOT SAY to your Beloved: I love you, but only so much and not further. If you love, you have to give a blank check. Even BEFORE you know that you will get anything… a blank check of everything you possess, but above all of yourself, in utter, complete surrender…. “
We were standing under the trees out of the earshot of L. and Filibert who were sitting in deep conversation near the fence under the mango tree at the other end of the garden. He was in his dark brown overcoat—for it was a chilly afternoon—standing with his feet slightly apart, hands crossed behind his back.
“Of course,” he continued, speaking very slowly, narrowing his eyes to a slit, as if looking into distances of which the mind knows nothing. “Of course, there will be a blank check from the Master’s part also. It is like a bond, and it is NEVER broken, CAN NEVER BE broken.”
He fell silent. I never saw such an expression on his face; it was new, a personification of destiny itself, if such a thing is possible…. Again, I had this feeling of being on a crossroad; was it a milestone, a turning point? I just looked and looked… this expression… so infinitely mysterious. It evoked an echo in me somewhere, and I was profoundly disturbed. As if answering a dimly formulated question in my mind, he said softly in a low voice: “There is only one Teacher, only one Spiritual Guide in the whole world, for each of us. For only he alone is allowed to subject a free human being to sufferings and conditions—only he and nobody else. And now,” he said aloud, rather abruptly turning away, “I have to speak to Filibert, for he will he leaving soon.”
He went and sat down on a chair beside them. I stood alone under the trees. His face… my heart was heavy with premonition….
The sky in the direction he was looking a moment before was of an unbelievable azure-pure, greeny, the color of Infinity, I thought… a window into Eternity. Oh, this blue, so clear, so transparent.
And his face…. To fly into all this blue, to be free forever. But deep in me was fear; deep in me were conflicting emotions, half-formulated, just on the edge of my consciousness. Verily, I said to myself: from life to life—it is once and forever, and there is no divorce.
I actually did ask him to come with me under the trees away from the others. I wanted to tell him my troubles, wanted to ask for help.
My nights are dreadful on and off; last night I was watching the flow of fire in my body and the dreadful shapes whirling their obscene dance in close embrace. Once more the fear of going insane was haunting me. But clearly he does not want me to speak about my troubles. I have to cope with them as well as I can. But can I? And for how long? The body is burning, the pain is intense, the tension unbearable. Where to get help? Nowhere, seemingly….
They were discussing important matters now, to judge by the attention they both paid to the words of the Guru. What a life, I thought; felt so lonely, forlorn, frightened and full of some dark, dreadful forebodings. Went to the bungalow and sat on a chair with my back to the wall. Two hearts were beating, and the vibration I dreaded so much was hissing at the base of the spine.
1st March
FILIBERT LEFT YESTERDAY. He was quite dazed and had tears in his eyes.
He said that the Guru was wringing all his insides out, as he put it. I knew what he meant. The vibrations he experienced in his presence were beyond imagination. Well, I believe him; I also know something about it.
He was telling us how one must trust God and never think of tomorrow. We are not allowed to make plans for the future. If we make plans, it means we lack faith. We obey orders. We lead guided lives. And this is the meaning to live in the ETERNAL NOW. We do not think of yesterday; we do not think of tomorrow; we listen within and act accordingly. The result is that we can only live in the present.
“I do not save money for the future; with one hand I get, with the other I spend.”
There are four kinds of people:
1. PAMER: he is like an animal; he wanders here and there and he gets.
2. VISHAR: beggar, debauchee; with great difficulty he gets.
3. GIAGGIASA: whenever he demands, he gets.
4. MOKT-PURUSH: remains sitting, not engaged anywhere; he gets from people serving him.
Only the love of the Guru and Shishya is not Moha (attachment): every other love is Moha. The Shishya can never know if he is progressing; only the Teacher knows.
6th March
TREMENDOUS VIBRATIONS in the whole of the body. Very little sleep in the night. Watching the currents of light. Can still manage to control the body; but only just.
He does not speak to me at all. Speaks only in Hindi with others. I come and go unnoticed. He ignores my greeting.
L. is back from Delhi where she went with Filibert. He snubbed me because I plucked a small wildflower to show its beauty to L. Later he was kind again, talked to us, and explained that the group-soul theory is false. “Animals can never become men, nor can the Devas.
But it is true that the Soul passes through the Devic plane before it manifests on the physical.
“There is nothing but ONE BEING experiencing through everything created. His Light is in everything. Why should animals become men? Has this tree an Atman? Surely not. But man has an Atman. Man is the King of Creation. But His light is not only in men but in every atom of His Universe.”
We went for a walk in the evening, not in the park this time, but much further, to the water reservoirs. It was a beautiful evening… a sunset of fire and crimson and the most luminous gold. I said how I loved the deep, red sky, the dramatic sunsets of India, the graceful silhouette of the temple, the palm trees against the glowing sky.
“How many things do you love?” he asked. We sat down for a short while on a bench near the edge of the reservoir, the colors of the sky reflected in the water.
“Oh, so many,” I replied. “The song of the birds at dawn, the flowers, mountains and sky, India, England, the forests burning with the colors of autumn, and people and… ! “
“Your heart is like a hotel,” he interrupted darkly. “One can love only One. You cannot love two masters; either you love the world, or you love its Creator.”
“Oh, Bhai Sahib,” I sighed. I did not know what to say to that.
How the red roses glowed in this light, as if the glow came out from the petals in an aura of red light. How they glowed… and the water so still. A complete, perfect reflection of the happenings in the sky.
Like a hotel… YOUR hotel, I thought. And it was all so lovely, even if he says that the only lovely thing in the world is the human being.
Roses in the dusk in the large beds near the bench on which we were sitting were so fragrant, the red and orange ones still seemingly burning with inner light in the dying red of the sky. Hotel? You too belong to my hotel… and we went home.
When I mentioned in conversation that pride is considered to be a great impurity, he said: “Yes, but also a great thing; it is like the two opposite ends of the same stick: the pride of the personality and the pride of the Atman. The Garment of God is Pride, says a Persian poet. Sometimes somebody would say to my Rev. Guru Maharaj: ‘It cannot be done!’ And he would say: ‘Oh? It cannot be done? It can? I will do it!’ And it was done. He had the right to speak like that. He worked from the Atmic level. Certain people, when they ha
ve reached a high state, cannot be measured by our measure, nor can they be judged. They are beyond it. The pride of the personality and the pride of the Atman are the two ends of the same stick.”
8th March
DREAM: I was in a large building with many stories which belonged to an institution… could be a convent or a hospital. An unknown woman was telling me (it clearly gave her pleasure to give me the bad news), “In one hour’s time, at six o’clock, the police will call with a van and take you to prison.” “But why?” I asked. “It is for thef tyou have stolen something.” “For how long?” I asked. “For three months,” I was told.
I was full of fear and sorrow, thinking what Indian prisons are; the food will be impossible, and I will be ill when I come out. “Who did send me to prison?” I asked. “The best person here did it, ” was the answer, and I knew it was my superior, who was a woman—she did it. So, I began to pack hurriedly; there was no time to lose. First I will pack, then I will phone Guru Maharaj; he knows the law; he will help me, I was thinking, packing the necessary things in a small suitcase for the prison; and the rest I will pack away. “You don’t need the winter things, leave them here; it will be hot in those three months,” the woman was saying. I did not answer, but continued to pack everything, for I was not coming back to this place. Books, big and small, in a lovely red leather binding, came into my hands. I will throw them away. A friend asked me to keep them for her but they are too heavy. I will lie to her; she will never know. Plates, cups, glasses—they all went, were too heavy, dresses too… even things which I needed and was sorry to get rid of; and bundles of greasy paper, full of clarified butter used for cooking, dahl, and stale food together in a heap, which grew bigger and bigger. My heart was so full of fear and deep sorrow, so much so that when I woke up finally, I was glad that it was only a dream. Interpretation? None.
“It has a meaning, of course, but it is not necessary to give it just now.”
I left him early, first because I thought that L. might want to be alone with him for a while, and second, it seemed that he wanted me to think over all he said to us yesterday. It is beautiful and touching that, when he speaks of his Rev. Guru Maharaj, his voice changes, and the expression of his face becomes tender, full of deep love.
9th March
“FIRST ONE LEARNS how to catch the hint of the Guru, and afterwards, when one is well merged, the Divine Hint, which is faster than lightning. The Guru will hint first; if the Hint is not understood, then he orders. An order is easy to understand, but the Guru trains the disciple to catch the Divine Hint rather. The Guru can give orders again and again if the disciple does not understand; but God does not do it, and the Hint is lost, and one may wait for a long time to get it again. To grasp it, one must be deeply merged, so merged that one even looks for a place to stand upon, for there seems to be none….
“To grasp a Hint is to act accordingly, and not even to try to understand it. Acting accordingly is necessary, rather than understanding.
The Grace of God cannot be seized: it descends. The actions of the Guru are nothing in themselves; they are to be seen in connection with the disciple. They are only for the good of the disciple. First one is loved by the Guru; afterwards the disciple loves the Guru, but this situation is rare. It does not happen often.
Usually it happens that the disciple loves the Guru first and is loved afterwards by him. One must not even think: I love you,’ because the ‘I’ remains, but: ‘I want you to love me’—he wants only the Master and not what the Master possesses. Here lies the difference between the Bhakta (devotee) and the disciple. The disciple is after knowledge, but if you ask the devotee what he wants, he will answer: nothing!
“To say: ‘I love you’ is easy, but to realize it is difficult. Here is hidden the mystery of the Realization of God or Truth. Because you have to realize one fact: ‘You are in my heart; you are everything; I am nothing.’ If you begin to realize that, then you really love and your own self diminishes; the external things begin to lose all importance. The self, and everything else, remains with the Beloved from then on, and the Beloved remains with you permanently when there is no self anymore.
“The Guru will never put conditions, but the Shishya does; it is in the nature of things; it cannot be helped. When the whole life of the disciple is always according to the ideas or wishes of the Master, the training is terminated.”
In answer to L’s question: “To give a child to a childless woman by using a certain Mantra? No, I do nothing without a Hint. If a Hint is given, I do it; otherwise—nothing!
“Saints are like rivers; they flow where they are directed. A river never flows uphill. Small rivers join the large one, and they all flow to the ocean. Let’s flow; we do not need to carry the burden when we let it flow.
“If a Hint is there, I have to do it, and if I don’t, I am MADE to do it.
Divine Hint is an Order. Sometimes the saints have to do things the people will misjudge, and which from the worldly point of view could be condemned, because the world judges by appearances. One important quality required on the Path is never to judge by appearances. More often than not things look different from what they really are. There is no good or evil for the Creator. Only human society makes it so. A Saint is beyond good and evil, but Saints are people of the highest morality and will never give a bad example.”
In answer to L. ‘s question: “A man who is impotent can never be a Saint or a Yogi. Women too can be impotent. The Creative Energy of God which manifests itself in its lowest aspect as procreative instinct is the most powerful thing in human beings, men and women alike.”
L. said that according to some scriptures women reach the state of wholeness through the “innate capacity” which is inborn in their essence, but men must make voluntary sacrifice and undergo definite discipline. “It is correct. The training in both cases is different.”
10th March
POSSIBLE RELATIONSHIP between Guru and Shishyas: 1. Lover and Beloved (lovers in short). This is mostly practiced in Tantra Yoga; in our System such a relationship would be considered an obstacle.
2. Father and child.
3. Master and the obedient disciple.
4. Friends.
The relationship of Lover and the Beloved must be a very difficult one, commented L., and she was telling me that she thought that my relationship with the Guru is of a Teacher and of an obedient disciple, and she added that her own relationship is that of a father and daughter. “I never need to get up when he enters; I never touched his feet; I am treated like his children!”
“Only his children do touch his feet,” I thought. But this is probably of no importance, for he said once that he does not want his Western disciples to touch his feet, as Indians do. “Your culture is different,” he said.
DZIKR is the Constant Presence, the Constant Remembering…
and the next step, love and faith in the Master.
According to L. ‘s explanation, the Divine Hint is a subtle desire or a prompting; to put it differently: the Will of God which flashes into a still mind, a peaceful Soul. The Saint has no desires of his own, but the Will of God which he executes. It becomes a Hint when the human will is not quite merged, not completely at one with the Divine Will; otherwise the Hint would not be needed; it would be just and only the Will of God. Where there is a Hint, there some duality still remains.
The night was fairly peaceful; the two hearts are still there. Since the 22nd of February the nightmare situation persists every night, sometimes more, sometimes less. To control the body becomes more and more difficult. God help me… how long will it last?
Where is it going to lead?
VISION: between dream and waking: saw him standing tall, dressed in white. He had a long rod in his hand at the end of which was a sparkling star. It was like a magicians’s wand; he lightly touched my chest with it, and suddenly a tiny thing, like a spark, began to scintillate with a living light in my chest. It was an ignited star, sending out flashes o
f light.
12th March
WENT TO THE BANK to withdraw all the money from my account over 700 rupees; it should be enough for two ceiling fans. Went to see the fans, a very lovely table-fan for him and a ceiling fan for me.
Bought carbon paper, typewriter ribbon, and a calendar he wanted me to get for him with a picture of two Bengal tigers. Then I asked if I could speak to him alone. He nodded. L. had to go to the tax office, so we remained alone. Told him that I took out all the money from my account, for I understood that he wants me to give it away.
Showed him the catalogue and the price list of the fans. He said that he will consult his wife as to which one to choose. Does he want me to go away in summer as L. does? He said that if I want to stay, of course I can do so.
“I know other Europeans who do stay; I don’t know how they do it, because it is difficult even for us, though we are born here. If you are courageous enough, then you can do it; you would come early in the morning, go home before 11 a.m., and come here in the evening.”
I laughed and said that here is no question of courage: I have no choice…. Later I said that it is frightening that all my money should go; what will become of me?
“If you are afraid, keep it,” he shrugged. “I don’t want it for myself, at any rate.”
I wondered what he meant, and if after all I need not give it away.
But something told me that this is not so. It is all so frightening, and my mind is confused.
19 A Flaming Row
13th March, 1962
Daughter of Fire Page 18
