As I was wending my way through the labyrinthine lanes behind the ghats (this city is thousands of years old, once a center along with Babylon and Ninevah), navigating through the piles and plops of shit, I was suddenly enveloped by two overwhelming smells: the perfume of jasmine and the stench of urine. And I thought: that’s Varanasi. The two extremes of the sublime and the wretched are so radical that they meet in a common netherworld that is neither entirely and yet both.
James and I were grateful to have come to Varanasi, but we got to a point of being ready to leave. The smell of burning got caught in my throat, and I just had enough of it.
Tiruvannamalai: Climbing the Mountain
India chose her places of pilgrimages on the top of hills and mountains, by the side of the holy rivers, in the heart of forests and by the shores of the ocean, which along with the sky, is our nearest visible symbol of the vast, the boundless, the ‘I.’
~ Rabindranath Tagore
At the bedrock of Hindu Vedantic philosophy are the concepts of Brahman and atman. Brahman is... well, here I begin fishing for red herrings, which any sage will tell you simply roils the waters, since Brahman is indefinable. But to continue the fishing expedition: Brahman is absolute being, absolute consciousness, the Uncaused Cause, the All that Is, Suchness, or the Godhead that is formless, boundless, and unmanifest. Atman, on the other hand, is the immortal soul, the way in which Brahman manifests into the world(s) of form. You could say Brahman is Self, and atman is the self. When atman recognizes its true nature as Brahman, then it is, in fact, Brahman.
India has produced numerous saints, sages, rishis (seers), and gurus, and probably the greatest one of the 20th century was Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950). When just a teenager, he had a spiritual awakening akin to death and rebirth, which propelled him to leave his family and travel to Mt. Arunachala, a mountain in South India consecrated to Shiva. Upon his arrival, he entered into ecstatic trance sitting in meditation in the temple. Enraptured by the holy mountain, he then moved into Virupaksha cave (1899-1916), followed by Skandasramam Cave (1916-1922), where he was so deep in meditation that he completely lost awareness of his body. Emaciated from lack of food and his skin eaten by insects, he was occasionally pried off of the cave floor to be spoon fed and cleaned. So powerful was his state of ecstasy that it attracted people who were uplifted or transformed simply by sitting in his presence. Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi had self-realized and found himself to be Brahman.
An ashram had sprung up at the base of the mountain to accommodate the growing crowds of pilgrims. In 1922, Ramana left the cave to give darshan in the ashram temple – generally silent audiences but, as more and more people addressed him with questions, he would speak, gauging his answers according to people’s abilities to understand. His favorite response to their continuous questions was “Who’s asking?,” encouraging his devotees to cultivate a practice of self-inquiry, to get them past identification with the body, and then atman, until finally realizing their Buddhahood, or existence as Brahman. Attaining this awareness, Ramana assured visitors with humble elation, was pure sat-chit-ananda: being-consciousness-bliss.
Here is an exchange between a pilgrim and Ramana:
Seeker: Do Vishnu, Shiva, and other gods exist?
Ramana: Individual human souls are not the only beings known.
Seeker: And their sacred regions... are they real?
Ramana: As real as you are in this body.
Seeker: Do they possess a phenomenal existence... Where do they exist?
Ramana: In you.
Seeker: Then it is only an idea which I can create and control?
Ramana: Everything is like that… As long as you respond to a name, what objection could there be to your worshipping a God with name or form? Worship God with or without form till you know who you are. 141
James had underlined this exchange in the book, Be As You Are – The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi, by David Godman, and it gave a fair description of how we conceptualized all the mythological characters in Venus and Her Lover – not to mention all deities everywhere: an entertaining way to spend our time until we know who we truly are.
Arunachala – a World Mountain. After our relationships with Maxwaluna in Taos, Mauna Kea in Hawai’i, and the apus of the Andes, we were ready to meet this mountain. James was especially looking forward to Arunachala, as Sri Ramana Maharshi was the first guru to get James’ attention, years back when he was living in Spain. While studying him then, he began dreaming of Puerto Rico and remembering me, which led eventually to our partnership.
“So in a way coming here is coming full circle,” James said.
“I guess so, in a circle within circles kind of way…” I said.
Now that we were in Tamil Nadu, South India (and gratefully out of the cold, foggy winter of North India), it was only proper that James should come to the temple town of Tiruvannamalai and pay homage to his first guru. This meant walking the stone path up the mountain – not an easy feat for him.
Knowing full well how challenging it might be, I argued with him. “You’re still recovering from knee surgery, James. I see how you wince when you climb the temples, and how wiped out you are after a morning of walking. Are you sure you’re up to it?”
“I’m climbing that mountain!” James declared. The die had been cast. The warrior had spoken.
So we went slowly. Sometimes he leaned on me, but mostly he did it alone, steadying himself with his cane (which he called his “power staff”). Step by step. Along the rocky, brushy slope, we worked our way up, with some passages beneath the branches of ficus, satinwood, and palm trees. I left my shoes behind, wanting to feel the earth underneath my feet.
The day was somewhat overcast, gentle in its light. We had agreed to make it a silent pilgrimage, so we did not talk. As a writer, I am literarily overflowing with words, which accompanied me, incessantly, on our climb. We passed families of monkeys; they foraged through the bushes, chased one another, and swung from tree branch to tree branch, very much like my thoughts. Stilling the mind is an enormous challenge, especially in a walking meditation!
Up and up went the path, my feet treading upon stones smoothed by countless pilgrims on their holy missions. The path of Ascent, I mused. So many have tried to climb their way up to God. Jews, Christians, Muslims, and many Hindus launched their prayers heavenward, while Buddhists spurned this world as pure illusion and everything in it as mere shadows of the Real. We must withdraw our attachments from the temporary to attain the wisdom of the timeless, the formless, the eternal All... Brahman. We must dissolve the illusion of separation and return to Source. The Many to the One.
Aristotle aimed his philosophy at discovering supreme essences, Augustine decried physical desires (temptations to sin) that inhibited the spiritual take-off, and Jesus ascended into Heaven because his kingdom was “not of this world.”142 As I climbed the mountain, I reflected on Ascent.
Sri Ramana Maharshi had recognized the importance of Ascent in a famous three-part declaration. The first two lines go like this:
The world is illusory
Brahman alone is Real
As we ascended Mt. Arunachala, I felt myself leaving worldly attachments behind, aspiring toward the summit of wisdom. Could I, with each step, release my self-identity, and then maintain the realization that I was one with Brahman?
James spotted some yellow flowers growing just off the path, and indicated that he would like me to pick them for him, so he could make them as an offering. I winced. Being barefoot, I was wary to tread into the brush, but I certainly did not want him to step onto unsteady ground, for which reason I picked my way to the laburnum bush, silently flogged by my internal growling. Just as I, glaring at him with the eyes of a martyr, handed him the sprig of flowers, I stepped on a thorn. Shedding my blood on Mt. Arunachala, I had to laugh at how adept it was at instant karma. Obviously, I was not rememberin
g myself as Brahman yet!
By and by, we reached Skandasramam Cave, where we joined people inside to sit quietly. The cave floor was paved with timeworn stones, and at a simple shrine, ghee candles illuminated a photograph of Ramana Maharshi. My mind kept up the monkey circus, so I decided to do the talking: I prayed there that James be able to transcend the pain of his body. I prayed that I could transcend my mind.
Hiking on, James went ahead of me, propelled by some new surge of energy. Gingerly striding out of sight, he carried his cane in his hand. How could that be? When I made it to Virupaksha Cave, I found James standing there staring at the entrance marker. Upon entering, he found a stepped wall where he could recline on his side. Inside I could make out the flower-draped shrine in the light of many flickering ghee candles. Settling in, I closed my eyes, and finally my mind allowed me to drop down, under the radar of my constant internal chatter. In the quiet, what arose in me was a flame. Naturally! I had read that, according to Hindu mythology, it was here that Shiva appeared on Earth as a column of fire, and the World Mountain Arunachala was his blazing sthavara lingam. During the holy festival of Karthigai Deepam, in December, a huge lamp is lit at the top of the mountain (using 2000 liters of ghee and a 30-meter long cloth wick), so that Shiva’s light burns for all to see.
In my meditation, I did perceive the fire element, but not as I had in Hawai’i – the molten churning and erupting of Earth Goddess Pele – here it was a candle flame: constant, consuming, yet continually renewing... The kundalini serpent? The auto-luminescence of atman? An undulating tongue of Aether? I felt the tenacious, penetrating, fervent, burning light of Shiva. The flame lapped up the center of my body, making me the connection between Earth and Sky. It occurred to me that we humans were uniquely equipped to make such a connection. For other mammals, their spines ran parallel to the ground, but we, somewhere along evolution’s course, decided to stand and to sit up. In fact, I saw that all humans forged that vertical circuit with our internal light, allowing energy to flow between the worlds. We were the bridge, and at the same time, the river. I envisioned all of us as human candles, a glowing aura around the Earth, and its light bathed me in love. It was an eternal love, an energy very familiar to me; I knew not only that I came from this energy, but I was this energy. In fact, there was nothing else but this energy of love! At first, my conception of myself as body or Becca dissolved; I was only the flame... steady, clear, timeless. And then, I was also the flame burning in a very Becca style. I rested in the bliss of a simultaneous nondual and dual awareness.
When I opened my eyes, I had to take several breaths to place myself in my body again. Several people sat cross-legged in silence, and James had gone out. I found him outside the cave, and he offered me a banana. Since he had been giving out fruit to beggars and saddhus all along the way, I was surprised he had any left. He peeled one and gave me the big half. How nourishing that banana tasted! We chewed mindfully.
Because the way down the mountain was steeper and a different trail than the way up, James and I focused on placing each step securely. Words, thankfully, dozed on in mute slumber.
The Descent. After the exhilaration of “I have been to the mountaintop!,” there is the return to the world. The trail down this side of Mt. Arunachala revealed broad views of the white stair-step temples in town, the streets of Tiruvannamalai jammed with people, cows, cars, scooters, and carts, and a hazy green horizon. Still below us, the din of honking horns hovered just above the town. We passed a saddhu crouched against a boulder. He stank of smoky sweat and soured laundry. With a dirty orange cloth wrapped around his black dreadlocks, he looked thin and frail. James offered him a banana. The saddhu, who I could now see was a young man, received the banana reverently, a broad smile of uneven white teeth shining through his unkempt black beard. As we bowed in “Namaste,” I looked him in the eyes, and suddenly I was overcome with his dignified beauty. A voice in my head shattered the quiet, intoning, “Brahman!” The commanding voice rooted me to the spot.
Pulling myself away to follow James, who was already ahead of me, I blinked at the realization: I had just looked into the eyes of the Divine! I had indeed just bowed to God peeking at me through the saddhu. In fact, as the feeling dilated and rolled out from me like a shock wave, the trees shimmered as green as empty beer bottles, the bees buzzed lustily, and warm air hit my nostrils with a dusty allure. Brahman... the All that Is... rushed joyously into each precious soul, each insect, each photosynthesizing green leaf, each solid grey rock. The One to the Many! No wonder pagans worshipped the immanence of Spirit in this great Creation, and scientists studied and marveled at the diversity of Nature. As varied as this world was, it would be easy to think it was all there is, as anyone driven by scientific materialism, consumerism, hedonism, greed, political ambition, or eco-philosophy can tell you. How very engaging is the material plane... but even more so when seen as expressions of Spirit!
Sri Ramana Maharshi had clinched it with line three:
The world is illusory
Brahman alone is Real
Brahman is the world
This is the Tantric insight. Even though the proponents of Ascent and the defenders of Descent had been battling each other through religious wars, persecutions, witch hunts, mandatory salvation through either religion or scientism, and their respective imperialistic campaigns – and committing atrocities in the name of the One True Way – all along, they were both right! Both right... and partial.
Tantra, the nondual path, has been trying to tell us this for 2000 years:
(1) First, you must ascend. Detach from the illusions of the world. The path of wisdom. Attain the Real: the transcendental enlightenment of the Godhead. Spirit as the One.
(2) This realization brings an exuberant impulse toward Creation, where everything is a perfect expression of Spirit. It is all so precious. The path of compassion. The embodiment of the Goddess-heart. Spirit as the Many.
This was why Tantra did not condemn the pleasures of the body nor the variety of experience in the descended world. The only way to keep it all in balance, however – and this is crucial – is to do the Ascent first, to realize our oneness with timeless, formless, boundless Brahman. Thus liberated from attachment, and having seen through the illusions of impermanence, we can enjoy the Descent into matter. It is the connecting of Ascent with Descent that completes the circuit – Shakti sits in Shiva’s lap circulating the energy of the Kosmos, and from their ecstatic lovemaking, everything arises.
Climbing down the mountain, I chuckled to myself. Once you taste the infinite expanse of the Formless, the realms of Form seem like one miracle after another. As much as I had stumbled along the Tantric path, with its nondual truths patiently obvious, they had to place themselves as metaphors here on Mt. Arunachala for me to find. If they had been a snake, they would have bit me, and if they had been a thorn, they would have jabbed me... drawn blood, even!
The trail led us into town, and we found ourselves back in the raucous streets of Tiruvannamalai. Breaking our silence, I asked James if he had had any realizations or experiences on our little mountain pilgrimage.
With a determined grin, he replied, “Before enlightenment, there are many bananas to carry. And after enlightenment, there are many bananas to carry.”
It was a cute quip, but as our wanderings through India progressed, I noticed that something was different after Arunachala. James did not limp like he used to, as if he carried less weight somehow, and this registered not just in how he walked but how much easier he seemed to feel in his skin. Months later we had a conversation about it.
James said, “When we made the pilgrimage to Arunachala, I was not there worshipping Ramana. I was worshipping myself, and as he might say, ‘who’s behind all that…’ Do you remember when we were at the Taj Mahal, what I said?”
“You mean that it may have been a Wonder of the World, but it was still only the second greatest love story, a
fter ours?” I asked.
James laughed. “No. When we were surrounded by those women covered head to toe in black. All you could see was their eyes peeking out of veils.”
I did remember, because I had wanted to shush him, just like when he started mooing inside the Vatican.
Before I could answer him, James spoke. “I said, ‘And I thought I was crippled!’”
“You said it loudly, right in front of them,” I reminded him.
James continued. “Yeah, well, then I started wondering why I would ever want to consider myself crippled. Am I my body? At Ramana’s mountain, I just felt like knocking down some internal barriers, transcending my own limitations. It was a perfect opportunity for me to affirm my strength.
“Later, it dawned on me that I was rewarded by climbing that mountain. I was rewarded with not only more strength, but with a broader definition of who I am. I don’t have to be bound by old ideas, especially if they’re my own!”
“A transformational man!” I exclaimed.
“A Mars warrior who’s laid down the sword but who’s still strong enough to fight the battle within, to be the best I can be... to be true to my essence,” he elaborated.
Perhaps James had identified with Ramana Maharshi because they had both, in their own ways, transcended the pain of their bodies. For me, Ramana – whose enlightenment was truly remarkable, no doubt about it – was, regardless, no paragon of spiritual evolution that I wanted to follow. I did not want to escape my body, nor leave the physical world behind before my time. I wanted to experience myself as Brahman here, now, in this body, and when possible, while in ecstatic union with my lover.
Foreknew Guru
I searched for God and found only myself.
I searched for myself and found only God.
~ Sufi Proverb
Venus and Her Lover Page 33