This is the essence, the core of every religion, of every philosophy as far as I read and understand. Reduce yourself to nil, to nothing, and you will realize the Truth.” I asked him if he can notice any difference in the outward appearance of Bhai Sahib. “The Transformation of the Guru is one of the Mystical Experiences. It is mentioned in the Yogic Treatises. It is the developing capacity of the Disciple to recognize the Divinity of the Guru.”
I glanced at Bhai Sahib. His face was quite expressionless; he did not seem to listen… his eyes were closed.
Speaking of the Path, I said it was depressing that all the odds were against me; I have to fight against my character as an elderly woman already crystallized in a certain pattern of behavior…. “And,” he interrupted me, “the 3000 years of European civilization as your heredity, your education with the emphasis on competition, on assertion of the individual with all its ramifications, i.e.: freedom of expression, emphasis on self-respect, etc.”
“Yes,” I said, “and also the fact that we are conditioned to consider your civilization somewhat inferior to ours; and also the Guru’s ideas are sometimes oldfashioned and out-of-date; furthermore, he deliberately puts all the appearances against himself; sum it up together, and you will see that I am at a disadvantage: have to overcome many more obstacles than anybody else in this circle; all seems to conspire against me!”
Prof. Batnagar was of the opinion that Sufism was Islamic Buddhism, but there are no historic evidences of such a thing, as far as it is known.
Bhai Sahib was very much against this idea; he said that Sufism is very much older than Islam and even Buddhism. True, it took on the terminology of Islam, but this was due to the customs and religion of the country where it was allowed to flourish, that is in Arabia and later in Persia.
Lord Mohammed was asked once to which religion did he belong, and it is said that Christ was asked the same question. The fact is that all Saints, all Prophets, belong to the same Religion: the Religion of the Lovers of God.
18th June
USUALLY THE MIND is out of order in the morning, so I assume that either in the night or in the morning before I go to him, something is done to it. But in the evenings it works fairly well. Yesterday he was singing and Jaga Nathji translated: “Every night is wedding night.”
Of course it is a well-known fact that every night the Guru unites the Souls of his followers with his, and as he is one with God, every night is a wedding night: the Union with God.
The loneliness and depression are terrible. The heat is slowly grinding my body down. All is dry. The rains are late this year, and every evening when I go home I smell this sweet and tired fragrance of flowering shrubs, too thirsty and longing for moisture. Even so, the earth is sweet, but the nights are a nightmare—the body seems to shrink with perspiration. I drink over a gallon of water per day.
Two large gallon jars of water stand always full in the shade of my veranda. Still, all the water goes through the skin, and the kidneys hardly work at all… have to change my dresses at least three times per day, so wet they become, smelling sour and stale only after a few hours.
The day before he was sitting on his tachat; the nuisance of a woman who wants a male child was there again, trying to talk to him.
He was sitting cross-legged with an absent expression, not listening.
Suddenly, he assumed a wonderful expression; I just looked and looked… it was glorious. The dynamism, the smile, the expression of the eyes—it could be called Devic. The woman fell silent and looked in wonderment.
“I know of whom you were thinking just now,” I said, with a smile as soon as he seemed to be back on this earth.
“Of whom?”
“Of your Rev. Guru Maharaj!”
He shook his head slowly. “I was in Absolute Truth,” he said. I was astonished, and asked him the next day about it, but people came, and I got no answer.
I thought that the Saint has to be in deep Samadhi to be able to be with God, but he was in full waking consciousness, very obviously, and not even in Dhyana; it must be a very high state to be able to do so. He smiled kindly.
“At the beginning one has to be in deep Samadhi, but later one gets used to it, and one can do it at any moment.”
I was very impressed.
Last night, just as I was waking up, I felt such a wave of love, it shook me like a sharp unbearable pain, and the first conscious thought which flashed into my mind was: Good heavens, one moment more of it and I will die! It is impossible to bear! Then I woke up completely and was lying there thinking. So this is the feeling of love somewhere; on a plane where the mind cannot reach.
Perhaps a glimpse of the Atmic plane? Such a condensed feeling of love—no wonder one is not allowed to remember it… the mind, the heart, would burst….
There was only one star in the sky, and I was thinking: as fair as a star, when there is only one in the sky, He is—and such was love that it did hurt….
27 Those who are Dead do not Remember
21st June, 1962
“YOU USED HARSH WORDS last time when I said to you that for me the Guru and God are one and the same thing.”
“I use words which seem hard to you because this is sometimes the only way to make the Shishya think. We teach according to the stages. There is nothing wrong, nothing right. When the child is in the cradle, he will think that the cradle is the whole world. Later, he will think the room is the whole world. Later still, the veranda, the garden, and so on. To think that the Guru is God is a very preliminary stage.”
Kabir said: “When two stand in front of me, the Guru and God: who is the greater? Surely the Guru, because he will take me to God.”
I quoted. “And if it is good enough for Kabir, should it not be good enough for me?”
“Who is going to listen to Kabir? Kabir was only a poet! If somebody is saying that stealing is a good thing and should be done, am I going to listen to him, only because he said so?”
From this morning’s conversation, Jagan Nathji told me that Bhai Sahib could make me see my dead husband in a moment if I wanted to and would ask him. Then he left. We remained alone. I said that I would not be at all interested to see Charles, as much as I used to love him. What for? What is the good of it? He nodded.
“He will not recognize you,” he said. “Saints do recognize, ordinary people do not. But they are made to recognize: of course, it can be done. But by themselves they will not recognize. How could they? The mind is not there; everything is changed; you are a thing of long ago for him. If he sees you and will be made to remember, he would say: ‘Oh, yes, she was my wife; oh, yes, I remember,’ and that would be all. In your Christian faith there is no belief in Reincarnation?”
I said, no, it does not form part of Christian belief.
“In this case there are no Samskaras of this kind and people do not come back to this earth because there is no desire of this kind.”
“But where do they go?” I inquired. “I thought until now that whether one believes in Reincarnation or not is of no importance: one will reincarnate anyhow.”
“They go to other Lokas,” he said. “Drunkards and gamblers go to a Loka where they drink and gamble. This world is not the worst one. Here you can make Karma. There you are helpless.”
“But how can one get out of those places?”
He shook his head. “Very difficult to get out of them. People do not get out; they are taken out.”
“Do you mean to say that there are souls appointed to do this work, to take out and help those who are in such places?”
“Yes,” he said.
25th June
GREAT STILLNESS. A kind of inner security. Until now the mind was in the most restless, insecure state. I wonder how long this Stillness will last….
30th June
THE MONSOON IS STILL NOT HERE. Long, hot days… very often with no ventilation, not even in the mornings or evenings, and the nights are as wind—still and as hot as in Madras. I am steaming with pe
rspiration. The body begins to give way and gives me trouble… giddiness, headache, general weakness in the morning, so that I can hardly get up… an unusual thing with me; in the morning I am always on top of the world. Writing this entry into my diary, for instance, I stream with perspiration; to keep still is painful. One is inclined to fidget constantly in the vain hope of a little relief… some coolness reaching the skin. Cannot even see properly… the sweat running into my eyes from the forehead keeps blinding me.
My eyes are red and inflamed all the time… must look like a St. Bernard. Most uncomfortable, and the mind works badly. Cannot see the whole aspect or idea—only a small part of it—and if I try to grasp the other side of it, I have already forgotten the first part of it.
Keep forgetting the most simple elementary things, or do them twice, for I don’t remember that they were done already. And my life is very dull. The other evening Jagan Nathji translated a couplet: “The pangs of separation were too much for her, she could not bear them.
She decided to take her life. And in her anxiety to kill herself She was running after the moon, the lotus flower, and the fragrant air.”
Interpretation: A Lover loves the moon, the lotus and the fragrant air, and so the same things which gave her joy will give her death. He told me it is the same idea as in homeopathy: if the disease gives you the same symptoms, as for instance poisoning with arsenic, only arsenic can cure it.
An anecdote from the life of the Father of Bhai Sahib: he was a great Saint and had many disciples. One day a drunkard came to him and sat near him on the dharry (a heavy cotton carpet). He asked: “Should a man fear sin?” The Saint replied: “If the man fears sin, he will be drowned in an ocean of sin.” The man left, and soon everybody had left too. “But I remained,” said the doctor who was relating the anecdote, and asked: “How is it to be understood?
Should we sin?”
Then the Saint told him a story: There was a Saint, and a man used to come to him, and he was pestering him with the request to give him a Mantra to become very rich. But the Saint kept delaying it and was telling the man each time, he will give it to him some day…
later… not just now. After a few years, the man was still there, still pestering him, and one day the Saint said: “Get up very early in the morning before sunrise. Recite the Mantra of Ram 12,000 times every day, and after three months you will be the richest man in the province. There is only one condition attached to it: Never, not even once, must you think of Hanuman” (the Monkey God who helped Rama to recover his wife abducted by the demon of Ravana).
“You see,” said the Father of Bhai Sahib, “with sins it is just like that; if you fear them, and try to suppress them, they will drown you.
Try to do good, forget the sins, live righteously, and you will reach the Truth.”
A Persian couplet:
“Go to the door of the Tavern
where the Wine of Love is distributed.
Go and sit there as a beggar would.
Even if nothing remains For you,
but just the film on the bottom of the bottle, even then
It will be enough to take you right to God.”
1st July
“THERE WERE TWO LOVERS and two beloved. Both got letters from their lovers. The first one worshipped the letter. She pressed it against her forehead and her heart; she took it out and read it, put it back, took it out again, and finally put it under her pillow to sleep on it.
”The second one took the letter, looked at it and said: the pangs of separation are so terrible, what can this letter do to me? And she burned it.
“Now this would seem to you a complete contradiction, is it not?
But it is all depending on the stages. The second one was on a far higher stage than the first, though from the worldly point of view it would not seem so. So, the Guru explains everything according to the stages. Keep it in mind.” And Jagan Nathji laughed, saluted the Guru, and left.
Lord Buddha was talking to his disciples; suddenly he stopped; the sun was setting and he said: Let’s disperse and do what we ought to do. He got up and went inside the house. The disciples of his, who were thieves, thought: Guru Maharaj said we should go and do what we ought to, so let’s go and do some stealing. Those who were weak and had desire for women went to prostitutes, thinking that they are justified to do so; those who were religious went to do the Pooja (worship), and so on. Everyone interpreted his words according to the working of their minds. And the Buddha did not mean anything of the sort; he simply said that it was late, and everybody should disperse.
“I was so proud of my learning,
but when I stand in front of Thee
Oh my Guru,
my mind is blank;
I have forgotten everything,”
goes the text of one of the Persian couplets. Well, it could be my case.
I was thinking only this morning that I seldom remember anything of my past—never think of it. Thinking has become a laborious job, at any rate.
Where are my qualifications? Travels I have done, knowledge which I have accumulated during so many years? Gone! Seems to never have existed! Thinking is an effort.
Only, I find that there is still much resentment in me. He treats me so badly. Idiot, stupid, he calls me in front of everybody, at the slightest provocation. I complained. I protested. He hissed at me because I said that his wife asks sometimes pretty unintelligent questions; what about that? If you say that people are at liberty to criticize me, am I not at liberty to criticize others? Wife or no wife, if she asks a silly question, I will say so. He himself said that he is not a God; if so, then he is not infallible. It follows that I am at liberty to find faults with him too. You can make mistakes, and if I notice it, why can’t I say so? Why is this distinction? One law for others and another one for me? Is it not a free country? Are we not free citizens?
But he glared at me, called me ignorant and impertinent, and I don’t know how to respect a Teacher and his family, and so forth….
Well, Teacher: O.K.—but why should I respect his family? What have they to do with me, or I with them?
Once, some time ago, he asked me if I think sometimes of my father or my sisters. With surprise I realized that I never do lately, but no wonder, for I hardly remember anything nowadays. I also told him that if I have to work out a problem, I am unable to see it as a whole as everyone else is able to do; in other words I cannot synthesize at all. I can only see one side of it, and when I try to grasp the other side, or aspect of it, I can do it, but in the meantime I have already forgotten the first part of it. Life becomes difficult and rather confusing in these circumstances…. Asked him the meaning of what was really happening.
“Sometimes your mind is made to work only, at 50% capacity, sometimes at 25%, and sometimes it stops working altogether.”
I wondered what happens if it does not work at all? Must be an unconscious state… perhaps a sort of sleep? But I have the feeling that it cannot be sleep, though the hours slide by unnoticed. Heaven knows where the mind goes… it just vanishes… emptiness.
Suddenly I notice that it is already afternoon, and I have to go to his place. Or I think that I went to bed in the evening, and I am still sitting on my tachat and it is late… strange. How relative time is.
2nd July
“THE THINKING FACULTY OF THE MIND which is called in the Yoga Sutras ‘the modifications of the mind,’ with its constant movement, prevents us from perceiving Reality. In order to help the disciple, the Teacher will ‘switch off’ the current of the Mind… will paralyze it temporarily so that the Buddhic quality can come through.
“The mind cannot transcend itself. Some help is needed.We live within our own mind. How can the mind get out of itself?”
“Do you mean to say that it is the Teacher who, by his Yogic Powers, puts the mind out of action?”
“It is done,” he said, ignoring the first part of my question. “And it is done very simply by activating the Heart Chakra. The more th
e Chakra is activated, the less the mind is able to work. It is quite a painless process.”
Oh, I know that all right; it does not hurt at all to be mindless: one cannot think—that’s all.
“Even on the worldly platform it works in a similar way. If one is much in love, the lover is forgetful of everything else except the object of his love. He is distraught; people call him mad. The law is the same on all levels of being. Only on the spiritual level the law is more powerful because there are no obstructions caused by the density of matter.” After a moment’s silence, he added with one of his flashing smiles: “We are called the fools, the idiots of God, by the Sufi poets.”
Tonight he left with Babu for Allahabad. I was there at 7 p.m. He came out looking very smart in his long Kurta and white trousers, white topi on his head, all freshly laundered. His skin was golden, full of light… sparkling eyes—he looked so young.
I know for sure now how old he is; the other day he was telling us that between him and his elder brother there was only two years difference, and his brother retired in 1951 at the age of 60. It does not need a great knowledge of mathematics to work out how old he is now.
He told me to do my duty and come as usual. I said that I always come when he is away, only I don’t stay so long. I will take advantage of Pushpa’s cooler.
“Do by all means,” he said. Could not avert my eyes from him. So full of inner light, looking so young, and nobody seems to see him as I do. If they would, they would be full of wonder just as I am. His wife, his brother, his children—they do not notice anything unusual.
But he certainly is quite different… the knowledge of it is like a sweet secret, my very own. It must be his grace that I am able to see it.
4th July
WAS AT PUSHPA’S PLACE nearly all the time. Today I am writing letters. The heat is unbelievable. I never imagined that one can suffer so much. The monsoon which promised to break out in the middle of June produced only a few very light rains and passed us by, went south, Agra way. This part of Uttar Pradesh is still without a drop of rain. The hot wind, the Loo, stopped. The humidity content of the atmosphere increased considerably because it is already raining heavily all around in the plains. The temperature is much lower than before, but it is sticky, as in Madras, and the perspiration does not dry off. Never thought it possible that the skin is capable of emitting so much fluid… the suffering is intense. While writing, I am sitting in the nude under the fan; the chair is wet under me; sweat keeps running into my eyes, making them smart, which is a great nuisance.
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