Daughter of Fire

by Irina Tweedie

  “Write in your diary your own experiences only; other people are not your concern, nor what I do with them.”

  “You told me in the past that you had said to Mr. Chowdrie that he could sit in any position he liked, when for the first time he was put in Dhyana. It is many years ago now; but this young man was sitting in Siddhasana; why so?”

  “I did not tell him to sit in any particular asana, he did it himself.”

  He spoke, got up, and went to lie on the tachat. I felt deeply frustrated. Here we are, I thought with bitterness. There seems to be two laws; one for me and one for others ….

  Others can ask the most stupid questions, anything at all, but mine are not answered; and I have questions sometimes which torture me for months. But they are considered “vague,” and he can even get quite rough and annoyed when I ask.

  “Please,” I said, I was so upset. “Tell me one thing: is he completely surrendered?”

  “How do I know if he will surrender completely?” mumbled the Guru, visibly irritated. I was surprised.

  “But I understood that one gets Dhyana only when one is completely surrendered! I thought that Dhyana is the last stage!”

  “Dhyana is the FIRST stage, the first thing according to our System… the first step. Before you have reached this stage, you haven’t even begun.” Now he was really vexed. “I told you so often, why don’t you listen properly! One begins with Dhyana, and then goes on from there!”

  “But why in my case is it not like this?” I was even more puzzled now. “Does it mean that I cannot go on?”

  “You said and repeated so often that you don’t want Dhyana! You will get an experience of Dhyana, but it is not your Path. You are trained in a different way; your way is the other way… in full consciousness.”

  “But according to your System, Dhyana comes first… you told me… you never answer my questions clearly, or they are dismissed as vague and stupid; how can they be if they torture my mind for so long? They are important!”

  “They are vague, and you don’t know how to ask the right kind of questions and how to listen properly. Don’t you see how confused you are? Look at yourself! Your mind turns round and round!” He turned to the wall.

  I sat there profoundly puzzled. What on earth does he mean by the right kind of questions? When he turned in my direction after a while I said: “As far as I understood, I am supposed to be on the Path of Love… which apparently is not your System then? In this case, which System is it? It is all so confusing! L. got the Dhyana in the first fortnight, so she is trained according to the System, is she not?” He was lying there on his back, hands crossed behind his head, looking more forbidding than ever. “Please, say if I understood well!” His face hardened. I began to cry… and couldn’t stop. His wife came in. The servant. The children. Could not care less. It was all no use. I have to take everything. He is burning me. And when somebody is jealous of me, as I have learned that some of his disciples are, just tell them what you do to me, how you burn me; and if they want it, they are welcome to it too… I thought bitterly, and went home. At home I did not cry. Was like numb. And the heart was aching and aching… endlessly….

  27th August

  LITTLE BY LITTLE. Painfully. Laboriously. Bits and pieces of knowledge are fitted together. Not even this is effortless on his “effortless”

  Path… with the mind not working properly, with thousands of interruptions, with the heart playing havoc with my circulation, fire burning my inside. The sun is not shining, and the grass is not green for me; and wherever I look, I see confusion….

  Had a bad vomiting condition this morning… and the mind was very troublesome. Lately, each time I am going to him, I feel like someone condemned to death going to my execution. What will he do today? What pain is awaiting me, what torture? I walked along resigned… expecting anything….

  This morning the mind was so well switched off that I could hardly walk in the street. Remembered that he said the day before: “The physical surrender is not asked from everyone. The surrender is absolute. Final. And not for this life only.”

  Speaking of the young man whom he put in Dhyana, he said that he did not feel much. In the beginning one does not understand; one does not feel. Too many are the sheaths covering the Soul.

  28th August

  IT SEEMS TO ME that the love will go away soon; there are small signs pointing to it. Only the Longing will remain. The dryness. And the Pain. Oh, God, what a life I have! Oh, Bhai Sahib, my revered Guru Maharaj, make it that such feelings of criticism should not remain; and if they have to remain for some reason: Love should be greater!!

  In the evening a new lady was sitting with him.

  “She said to me that for the last twenty years she did an Abhyasa (practice), and I explained to her that she should not take a Guru until she is quite sure. And I told her what the signs of a good Guru are.”

  “And what are the signs?” I asked, hoping to hear more.

  “I told it to you often before.”

  “No, Bhai Sahib, perhaps you said it in Hindi, to somebody else, surely not to me.”

  “I did; I remember well,” he answered with irritation. “You never know what I say to you.”

  “I will not contradict you, but really you didn’t tell me,” I said, getting confused.

  “This is your attitude… always like that,” he said annoyed. “A very wrong attitude it is!” Tears came into my eyes. The way he said it was hurting deeply. Strange, how I overreact to what he says to me; the slightest thing hurts so deeply. I was annoyed with myself for this lack of control. If the feelings are hurt, then the feelings are stronger than love. If Love is the strongest, nothing should hurt. He continued to talk in Hindi. I just sat there.

  Later he was singing: “If I knew how troublesome it is, I would have proclaimed by the beat of drums: don’t come near to the Lane of Love! It is not a thoroughfare! You cannot sleep; you cannot eat; you don’t enjoy the world anymore! Don’t even look into the direction of the Lane of Love! What can I do? Helpless I am.”

  Here he goes again, I thought. I had better prepare myself. I understand; look out, old girl; something is brewing.

  29th August

  YES, THE WAVE OF LOVE is slowly ebbing away. He will be friendlier today… he always is, when I am in trouble.

  As soon as I came in, he told me that he is feeling better. We were talking about the Gurus and the Ashrams, and that there is not much spirituality to be found in most of them. Told him that I did not really believe in Gurus, but went to see some for the sake of curiosity. As soon as I saw those Swamis, each time I thought: this is not much of a Yogi or a Saint. About you, I could not think like this .. . it was something very different. He smiled slowly.

  “It must be said,” he began, and suddenly I knew that he is about to make an important statement.

  “It must be said, that we human beings… we sometimes have links with each other from the past… from other Lokas, from where we came. My Rev. Guru Maharaj told my uncle and my Rev. Father that we have connections with each other from another Loka where we were together. And the connection is improved this time.

  My uncle said in the presence of my Rev. Guru Maharaj that his duty was fulfilled because he brought us, my brother and myself, to the System. But my Rev. Guru did not train us for the first years.”

  “Perhaps he did,” I said, “but you knew nothing about it.”

  He gave me a quick look with a hidden smile in his beard. “And he treated my Rev. Father and my uncle until his last years in the same way, roughly, as he treated us, my brother and myself.”

  I understood. It was a “Hint” for me.

  “Trainings are different,” he said after a while. “Some are trained according to the System, and it is a long way. Some are trained according to their liking. Some are trained according to the will of the Guru.” He fell silent. Then he got up from the big chair and sat himself cross-legged on the tachat and began his correspondence.

&nbs
p; “You really feel better,” I laughed, “when you begin to answer your letters; this is a good sign!” He just smiled broadly without answering. ”I would like to ask you something. I am not expecting an answer, for I suspect that you will not answer this one. I’ll just take a chance. When I cannot sleep in the night, do you put me to sleep on some occasions? There are many nights when I hardly sleep at all…

  just watch the stars and think and think…. But very often—and it always happens between two and four a.m.—all of a sudden there is like an inner call, a great peace, a sweetness, and a deep longing. The body relaxes… it is a lovely feeling of surrender to this peace, and I go off like a candle which has been blown out. I keep wondering: is it you, or is it something else perhaps in me, which puts me to sleep?

  Who knows?… As I said, I don’t expect an answer: I put it before you and leave it with you.”

  His smile was delightful to watch. His head was lowered, and he obviously did his best that I should not see it. For a while he continued to write. Some sparrows were quarrelling on the windowsill outside. With a great rattle, a lorry passed by. All was still in the room. Then:

  “Tell me everything,” he said, slowly raising his head. “I am not supposed to give an answer to everything. Tell me your troubles, everyone of them.”

  “I try. Only I wish my mind would remember more of the help you are giving me,” I said regretfully. His face was expressionless once more. I sat in silence and left at 11:30.

  “Even on the worldly platform, love is a painful thing. But sometimes there are spells of great happiness. But it does not seem to be the case with spiritual love. My love is one-sided. There is no happiness in it. And by now I am quite sure that it is not love for you .. . not directly, at least. Difficult, practically impossible, to define.

  It is AS IF I WOULD LOVE YOU; but when I look at it closer, I see that I love something BEYOND you. Strange, isn’t it?”

  “Love in the world is not love. It is Moha (attachment) and Moha only. The only real love in this world is between Guru and Shishya, and it is once and forever, and there is no divorce….

  “The love for the Guru takes time to stick firmly. When it does, then the greatest happiness will be felt. People in this world love this and that. There is the deepest purpose that it should be so. But when the Real Love comes along, everything else loses its value; one cannot love or be interested in anything else …. “

  Speaking of Andree: “God is so kind to people; if they decide to take the short-cut, incredible things are done for them… for He is so kind to them …. “

  I was complaining about the strong vibrations. It is wearing my body out. “Just see how thin and dried up I am. It causes vomiting condition; I cannot eat; fire flows through my veins, as if the outer temperature would not be enough by itself.” So I was talking for a while, telling him that he will ruin my body permanently; the conditions here in the Indian plains are difficult enough, even without this additional suffering.

  He sat up slowly from the lying position; he bore a hard, cutting expression. “You have no brain to understand,” he began ominously. “Why do you say that I am putting you into this condition?

  You are a believer in Karma; why not say: it is your Karma which makes you suffer? If you believe in Karma, you will suffer from it.

  Don’t you think that all the wrong done in the past must be payed up to the last farthing with suffering? And on the other hand, if you don’t believe in Karmas, where are the Karmas? But you believe in them, so you must suffer….”

  “But didn’t you yourself say once that this earthly plane is not the worst Loka, because here we can make Karmas? So, is there such a thing as Karma, or is there not?” I asked, very much puzzled.

  “Do not repeat what I have said,” he remarked severely. “I say that I myself don’t have faith in such a thing as Karma; it is all nonsense.

  You don’t follow me, if you have beliefs contrary to mine!” He continued in this tone for a while, breaking down one by one my remonstrations and objections. Like a public prosecutor with clever advocate tactics, he began to corner me, to twist and turn my answers; he proceeded to break down all the barriers of my logic, all the beliefs to which I clung, for they seemed to me so necessary, so reasonable, and they explained all the injustices of this world….

  His angry, hard, ironic way made me cry. So, I sat there and cried. His wife came, and they talked in Hindi endlessly, and I cried silently for two hours.

  When at home I was thinking and thinking…. I saw that he was right: until I give up all beliefs, there can be no humility. If I believed in Karmas, I was making Samskaras; any belief will make Samskaras as a corresponding result. Of course, I AM CREATING them and nobody else for me. But if I could switch over somehow, believe in his God (if he has one), that would be an act of humility. Then I will be nothing… have no beliefs of my own… accepting Grace or suffering as it comes, in humility… like Job, sitting on the heap of his lost possessions….

  32 The Last Belief Must Go

  IN ESSENCE IT BOILS DOWN TO: “Thy Will be done and not mine.”

  Where are Karmas then? If one is not the doer anymore?…

  To give up the belief of Karma .. . I realized that it was the last belief I was still clinging to. It seemed so logical; it seemed to explain so well the order and the justice in the Universe. And supposing the created Universe is beyond justice, beyond order, as we know it?

  What then? This thought filled me with such terror that I began to cry. Became completely confused. All my beliefs he takes away from me! I seem to have nothing left! This was the best, the last, the most logical belief; all the others I have lost somewhere on the way. Did not even know in what kind of God he does believe… and if at all.

  Nonsense: he speaks like that because of the training. Every Hindu believes in Karma… MUST believe in Karma. But here apparently lies my mistake; he said that he does not believe in Karma, even if he is Hindu by birth. I also know that if you ask a Sadhu about the working of Karma, he will answer you: “Karma will be for you, but it is not for me.”

  A great fear seized me: what will remain when all beliefs are gone?

  Love alone will remain. This Love which is drying up my body and my brain… the Terrible Thing in my heart—in which direction is it leading me, I know not. Whom or what do I love? The Guru? Yes, in a way, but not quite! Him, or rather IT, the ONE? But who is the One to be loved? And didn’t he say, some time ago, that even Love will have to go one day? What then? But I knew that one thing will remain: this terrible Longing. So full of terror did this thought fill me that I wept and wept helplessly… sobbing like a child… and could not stop….

  When I arrived at five (for Virendra now had to have his lesson, but the boy disappeared), he, the Guru, sat in the courtyard on the tachat. He did not play cards as usual, but he seemed to be waiting for me. I went straight to him: could not wait to tell him as quickly as possible, for I was desperate.

  “Why?” he smiled, as if nothing had happened.

  “The human being MUST believe in something! I burst out, crying to my great annoyance, for I firmly resolved not to do so. Could not control it… so deeply was it burning inside me.

  “You take all my beliefs away from me!”

  “I try!” He laughed gaily, “I am trying, but until now I was not successful. So strong is this belief that you stuck to it until now, in spite of everything. It will take time. By and by this too will go.”

  “But you take a belief away, and you don’t give another one?” I exclaimed exasperated. “You don’t take even the trouble to explain anything!” He got up from the tachat and stood leaning leisurely against the column.

  “If you let the belief go, then after a while you will discover something very different,” he said quietly, looking afar with half closed eyes; he stood very still, and again this feeling of MEANING came over me, so strong, so powerful, like a touch of the finger of destiny.

  I cried openly .. . his famil
y sitting all around us on tachats, discussing and looking at me with curiosity, and the rascal Virendra was also there, standing near the door, to disappear conveniently in case the situation should arise that he must have his lesson after all.

  Then I went out and sat on the tachat in the gardenI was alone.

  They all played cards now, the whole family.

  A yellow sunset dramatically lit the sky; everything around was glowing with gold. Sunsets in the tropics… they must be seen to be believed…. The daily drama of darkness conquering the light, and the latter, in the last supreme effort displaying itself in all its glory, the splendid colors like a message of hope: tomorrow… tomorrow again I will be back. Always they are different; I have never seen two sunsets alike. Never. And nowhere in the world.

  Tonight it was an orgy of purest gold.

  I lifted my face into it; oh, to merge in all this wonderful gold, the color of joy! Disappear in it forever, to forget, not to think, not to doubt, not to suffer anymore! In the west… the liquid azure and aquamarine between the delicate feathers of shining gold, deepening golden light all around me, shimmering through the foliage, a feeling of magic as in dimly remembered, half-forgotten dreams of long ago.

  Why should I believe in his God? I thought, full of resentment.

  The theory of Karma is so philosophically right, so logical, so satisfying. Why should I give it up?

  The air was so pure, the earth so fragrant. All the objects aroundthe trees, the leaves, the stones, the whole town seemed to breathe, to radiate the golden glow from within. I took a deep breath and lifted my face into the radiance, felt the glow permeate my skin, shine into the depth of my being….

  Oh, you, whoever you are, give me a sign!!

  Everything in me cried out in despair, confusion and loneliness, while my face seemed to become part of the light in the sky… melting into it….

  And then something happened. It felt like a click, a snap, and then stillness. Quite abruptly. Just stillness, where a second ago was such a storm of contrasting emotions. I listened; it was like a call… a call from very far away, coming from a long distance, a stillness, a peace.