There we all sat, and he was in the next room, Panditji massaging his body.
I sat there full of wonder. Where was the mind? For minutes—or was it much longer, for I had no sense of time—there was practically no mind left. There was, of course, the thought of the Master, the feeling of Love, the sense of being, but apart from that there was nothing…. Let’s see where is this mind, I tried to think, but the thoughts were lazy; they came unwillingly. I had to make an effort to think. The question of good and evil, which worried me only a short while ago, did not arise at all; it was without importance, for somehow I saw both sides of the problem. My worries about the future and the finances were insignificant indeed. The only thing which mattered was His Will—this only was of utmost importance. I was sinking somewhere, but it was not a frightening experience. Not at all. It really amounted to resting in Him, in Infinite Love… a state of non-being, and this non-being was perfect freedom. I was astonished… never knew that not to be is to be free… but here I was: I was free, so wonderfully, so completely, because I WAS NOT: not as I, but as Him.
Before going to his Father’s Samadhi last week, one evening I experienced a similar state sitting near him, and I remember thinking that it was the nearest state to non-being I had cognition of in all my life. This time it was even more marked, and I was wondering if that would mean the state of Dhyana after all. I noticed several times that he was watching me and looked quickly away as soon as I looked in his direction or opened my eyes. I was very much intrigued; in all the Yoga Systems one has to make an effort to still the mind, and what an effort it is! But here it represented an effortless state, and I had not only not to bother to try to still the mind, but had to search to find it!
Well, well!!
When he came in from his bath, he walked silently into the room and went to the large mirror to comb his hair.
“Well, I had better be going,” I said.
“Yes, yes,” he answered, combing vigorously.
“Where is the mind?” I asked. “No answer, Guru Maharaj?
Where is this Shaitan (Devil) of the mind? It is quite an effortless state, just no mind, and I am resting in Him in infinite Love.
Namaskar” (“I greet you” in Bengali), I added, walking away.
“Namaskar, namaskar,” I heard him say, and from the tone of his voice I knew that he was laughing. God knows from how many human beings and how often he had heard this question: Where is the Mind, Guru Maharaj? Please do not cause a separation anymore—I cannot bear it! It becomes more and more difficult as the time goes on….
DREAM: I was wearing a kind of petticoat like a sari petticoat, long, to my ankles, but from my waist the upper part of my body was bare.
In a large room with low Indian beds many people were sitting around. He was explaining to me how the forces are taken to the Brahmarandhra in the case of Brahmacharins (those who practice control over the senses), in the case of non-Brahmacharins, and in the case of women.
“Now I will demonstrate it to you,” he was saying; he lifted his hand and I felt a sharp pain on the top of my head, such an acute pain, and asked him if the pain will remain.
“No, I am only showing it to you,” he said. I was thrilled, for I understood every word if his explanation. He was dressed in a white garment like a priest.
Woke up still feeling the pressure on the top of my head.
16th April
I ASKED Mr. Chowdrie, and he explained it to me: this stillness of the mind is the fifth state of the mind, as described in the Yogic treatises, and the outcome of it would be Samadhi.
“You are in the higher state,” he said.
So, he proceeds to take me to his God after all. It is not frightening at all; it is very peaceful. All the time sitting near him I was resting in Him, in God, and was so ideally happy. Told him that all the worries about the money matters and all else were useless, non-existent. The only thing which mattered was His Will and His Will only. He smiled: “A very nice state, very nice indeed.”
Then I told him that this state of separation becomes a problem; my eyes are red and sore from continuous crying for someone who is so far away. If it is His Will, nothing can be done about it, but if it is my fault, could it be corrected?
“It is not your fault,” he said softly, “not at all.” His face was full of tenderness. “It will be like this for several years.”
“For years? How will I survive if it is so bad already now?”
“You will,” he smiled.
Told him that L. was never separated from Him, but he said that was not correct… for the first few years she was. This is the System, and nothing can be done about it.
But I think that it is so hard already, and the greater the love will be, the more the suffering… naturally so.
I was too happy; it was too good to be true, obviously, because it all was spoiled soon: a horrible man came and began a shouting conversation, lecturing for hours with the voice of a drunken Rakshasa (demon). I listened for half an hour or so, then could not bear it any longer and went into the street, to wait until he finished.
Guruji joined me soon, and so we walked up and down together for a while. When we came in, the man was still there shouting as before, so I left in disgust.
17th April
“IF FOR INSTANCE I SAY: this is my chair, how do I know that I am not proud of possessing it? If I don’t care about it, if I am not attached to it, then I am not proud of it. Can the pride hide itself? Certainly not, it always will put itself in evidence. If you don’t care about possessions, then it does not matter even if you have them. Inwardly we are free from them…. You must forget everything.”
“It will take time,” I answered doubtfully.
“You are at a turning point; at any moment it can happen now, the Dhyana. The mind must take a dip before it can go to a higher state.”
Had a night full of currents of love. Last evening, sitting near him, the body was full of an unusually peaceful feeling, a kind of indifference to the surroundings, and when he did send me home, I thought it was only half past seven, but when at home I saw that it was after nine. The time went so quickly…. So that is Dhyana… very peaceful… but not much consciousness. Some kind of state of being. Currents of love??
19th April
“IN THE WHOLE OF THE UNIVERSE there are only Two: the Lover and the Beloved. God loves his Creation, and the Soul loves God. In order to be able to create, the One Being had to become two, and logically there had to be a difference between the two. The creation was only possible because of the two opposites; everything in creation responds either to positive or to negative forces, or vibrations. There is the Sound and the Echo, the Call and the response to it, Light and Darkness; without the opposing forces, how could the world exist?
“Even in the Angelic Kingdom there are Angels of Power and Angels of Beauty. As soon as the Creative Ray of God touches the plane of Manifestation, those two forces come into play inevitably.
On the physical plane those two forces will manifest either as masculine or feminine, as male or female.
“Both forces are inherent in everything, and either one or the other will predominate. Upon the predominance of the one or the other, sex is determined. Even some plants are either male or female. Every living thing had this procreative, or sexual energy, in its very make-up, for it is the Creative Energy of God manifesting on the dense, physical plane of creation.”
Slept little. The currents in my body did not leave me in peace. I watch them for hours, their progress and circulation inside my body, and it seems to me that they have some kind of perception or understanding, some kind of purpose in them which is beyond my understanding. The physical suffering is great. The whole body is suffused with bluish light and is built around the most delicate web, or net, which seems to be its framework, its structure. Looking at it like that, it appears that the bones are not the framework upon which all the tissues, flesh, muscles, the vessels are built… but this fragile web,
composed of the thinnest, hair-like threads, becoming more solid where they converge into thicker strands. The human body is built around a luminous web and not the other way round. At first I could not understand how that could be. Then it dawned on me that it is the nervous system, the millions of nerves, large and small, reaching from the end of the fingertips to the toes, which is upholding the body. It is they who channel the life-force (prana), and THE BODY IS BUILT UPON PRANA. I know it seems a strange statement, but it looks like that to me.
The currents of Prana are running along the nerves making them glow, like electric wires when the current passes through them. Only the electric wires glow red, but the light of the Prana is bluish-white.
The web of the light of Prana in the body is like the web of the Universe, which is Prana too! Truly a confirmation of an age-old truism: a living experience of the fact that man is a microcosm within the macrocosm! As above, so below! It is really wonderful, and it looks lovely! The body feels full of fire even in the morning; no tiredness, though there is hardly any sleep at all. But I get thinner and thinner, and the vomiting condition does not help. Cannot eat much.
22 Casting out of a Spirit
THIS MORNING I WITNESSED something unusually interesting: Bhai Sahib has driven an evil spirit out of a young man.
I arrived early. That means about 7 a.m., for it was very hot.
Everybody had already left, except for Happy Babu who was in deep Dhyana. He asked us inside the room, where it was cooler under the fan. It was very quiet. He was making entries into his diary. Both doors, the one leading to the front of the garden and the side door, were open, but the “chiks” were down. A “chik” is a kind of a curtain, or a blind, made of thin bamboo sticks or thick stalks of some kind of grass, loosely joined together with thick cotton twine; they move constantly with the slightest current of air, preventing the flies from coming in the room, and encouraging the circulation of air at the same time being a protection from the glare outside.
It must have been around eleven when I saw two men coming through the gate. One was old, the other very young; they were dressed poorly… Muslim villagers, I thought. Satendra, who was outside, went to meet them, then came into the room and gave a slip of paper to his father. Bhai Sahib read it and said to tell them to return on Tuesday and continued to write. A conversation followed between Satendra and the men standing outside. Then the boy came back and said that they came from a far-off village and could not come back. Bhai Sahib put down his writing material, got up, went to the door, and I was a bit surprised to see him standing inside the room behind the chik talking to the men who were outside. It was unusual, because he always asks everybody to come inside the room when he was in. The young man sat down on the step before the door, and the Guru, holding one corner of the chik slightly raised with his left hand, just stood there looking at him. Nobody spoke.
The young man clad in a chequered cotton dhotie had a rather simple and primitive look about him. Suddenly he uttered a loud cry and then began to howl like an animal with his mouth wide open, his eyes glassy and spent like the eyes of a dead man; the expression on his face was terrible to see; it was like a contorted mask. “What goes on?” I asked Happy Babu, for I couldn’t see clearly what was going on, Guru’s back nearly filling the frame of the door and the chik partly hiding the scene from me.
“I don’t know,” murmured Happy Babu. So I ran quickly into the next room and through the inner courtyard into the front garden.
When I approached, the Guru gave me a quick warning glance. I stopped. Bhai Sahib was still standing in the room behind the raised chik, the young man was now lying on the ground having convulsions, froth streaming from his mouth, his face contorted and terrible. (Later I asked his eldest son why his father was standing behind the chik, invisible from the street. It was because the father did not want to create a sensation. Seeing a young man having a fit in a garden, no passer-by would bother in India, but if a tall white-robed figure pointing a finger at the boy was seen, a crowd of onlookers was sure to assemble.)
“Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, I will destroy you!” he was shouting; the voice had nothing human in it; it was like a desperate wailing.
Bhai Sahib continued to look steadily at this unfortunate creature; he was in deep Samadhi, his eyes like bottomless pits of still, dark water, unseeing, veiled….
The young man was shouting louder and louder; his convulsions increased to a paroxysm. His father was squatting near the wall of the bungalow, trembling like a leaf with fear.
Then with a pointed finger, very slowly, as if describing a circle around this body torn by convulsions: “Go away!” He ordered sternly, and repeated it twice. And the voice which came out of the young man’s throat and which had nothing human in it, shouted three times: “I am going; leave me, leave me, leave me!”
“Go!” said the Guru, making a stabbing movement at him with his raised forefinger.
All of a sudden there was silence. The tormented, frenzied body became motionless, like emptied, devoid of any spark of life. He is dead! I thought; how dreadful! But I knew it couldn’t be….
Bhai Sahib let the chik drop, still standing behind it. A few long moments passed. A small bird whistled in the treetop somewhere; a car passed by. Slowly, the young man sat up shakily. His nice, simple face had a perfectly human expression again, and with a most lovely smile, lifting one corner of the chik, he touched silently the feet of the Guru. And so did his father, who until now was crouching in the shade near the wall.
“Go, my son,” said Bhai Sahib gently, “Go both of you in peace!”
They went, dazed. Not a word was spoken anymore.
He let the chik fall, went into the room, and I followed him. He stood in the middle, motionless; he was still in Samadhi.
“Well,” I said, “this was something! Never saw such a thing in the whole of my life! In the time of Jesus it must have been like this, driving the evil spirits away!” He fixed me with his eyes which see other worlds.
“IF HE COMES BACK, I will burn him,” he said darkly. “Sometimes they are rogues, and then they come back. Then I will burn him and all his relations!”
So I went home most impressed, and I confess rather shaken….
When I came after 5 p.m., he was sitting outside in the garden, a few people were already there; he was laughing and obviously was telling them what had happened this morning.
“Mrs. Tweedie!” he called, as soon as I was entering the gate: “Tell them what had happened!”
I did. He was dangling his mala and was laughing. Then I asked him, what did he mean when he said: “If he comes back, I will burn him and all his relations?”
“Oh, this,” he said, “it is quite simple: those kinds of spirits are rather powerful elementals. If they want an experience on the physical level, then they attach themselves to a human being. In other words they obsess him. They are really most horrible things, most ugly to look at. More often they attach themselves to women.
In Rajastan I had to do some of this work,” he added thoughtfully.
“Why women?” I asked.
“It is because a woman is weaker and easier to obsess. (The personality of woman, having been subdued for millenia, is more likely to be influenced than man’s.) We all have good and evil spirits in us, i.e., the good and the evil in us, and who wins, is the master.”
“I thought it is the mind,” I said.
“Yes, the mind also, but spirits too. And is the mind not an elemental as well? Everything in Nature is the bitter enemy of the human being. Why? Because he is the King. Everybody hates those who command. The human being is the Master of the Creation, the Ruler. And also if I say: I will burn him… it is not so easily done; one does not destroy so easily. They also have the right to live; they are a parallel evolution to man. They have no notion of good or evil.
If they have a desire, they fulfill it. But I have to protect my race, the human being, so I will help him and get the spirit out. If
he should come back, I will drive him out again and give him a stiff warning. If he still comes back, I will destroy him then, and with him all his relations. Shaitans (devils) are many, the whole race of them, usually. But when the Saint is powerful, they are afraid to come back. With me, never, not one came back!” And he laughed his ringing laughter which made him look so young and so free.
Prof. Batnagar came and much talk was going on about Masters and the training. So very few people come for the sake of spiritual life; mostly they come for worldly matters; they waste the Teacher’s time. They come for a bit of Dhyana or bliss, or they want children, or some other blessing. But few, very few, come because they want the Truth.
Then he asked all of us to come inside and was massaged by Panditji. I began to cry… was suddenly so full of sorrow, such dreadful loneliness….
20th April
THIS MORNING WHEN I CAME, twice my eyes met his, and it was like a silent greeting. Of course, he knows that it is my birthday, and the loneliness is so deep, verging on despair….
He translated a Persian song:
“Who is with me all the time, says the Guru, Who is with me all the time day and night, Who does nothing without me, nor eating, nor sleeping, Whose thoughts are on me all the time;
I come and live in their hearts.
Who give up everything for my sake, I take them into my heart;
And even then, I think that it is not giving them enough credit ….
those who have nothing to pawn and go and pawn me in the market place,
I let myself be pawned by them, for never, never, Can I refuse them anything anymore!”
Daughter of Fire Page 22