Daughter of Fire

by Irina Tweedie

  He was talking to the Pandit, not taking the slightest notice of me and probably completely unaware of my presence.

  “Don’t come in the afternoon, will see you tomorrow morning,” and he quickly went out of the car and, followed by the Pandit, disappeared into his room.

  I had no intention of coming. I wanted to see the party, and it was a lovely one! Mrs. Sharma is a wonderful hostess. A large podium was made of eight tachats covered with mattresses and white sheets.

  When I came, many men in white dhoties and beautifully embroidered kurtas were already sitting there. A few ladies came afterwards with their husbands. The poet in whose honor the party was given was Dinkar, reputed to be the best contemporary Hindi poet alive. Later the men queued for refreshments at the buffet, and the ladies and all the others who were invited for supper conversed in the large sitting room. Later, about ten, the supper was served in the dining room, and it was excellent… lovely Indian food; everybody helped themselves at the central table. Then somebody called me to be introduced to the poet.

  “You are studying Yoga?” he asked. He was a large, burly man with wonderful eyes. “What is your Teacher teaching you?”

  ” Nothing.”

  ” Nothing?” He echoed thoughtfully, looking at me closely.

  “I sat for years before a closed door,” I said. He pondered for a while.

  “Great Teachers of India never taught anything. There is a tree and under the tree is sitting a little boy—he is the Teacher of a Teaching which is not imparted,” he quoted.

  I would have liked to know from where the quotation was taken.

  Was it his own? But I seemed to remember dimly that it is from some Hindu scripture. (Actually I wrote to him a few days later asking him to tell me from where the quotation was, enclosing a stamped selfaddressed envelope. But I have never received a reply.) Next morning I was telling him about the party. And then asked: “Where does the mind go when one is in Dhyana?” .

  “Aha, you want to know where the mind goes? Where can it go?”

  “Is it being absorbed into the Greater Mind?” I said tentatively.

  “Yes!” and he laughed, young and gay. “Yes, the mind is absorbed in it, the mind which belongs to the world of Maya. One day you will come to know who you are and then you will give your self away.

  “Hypnosis or self-hypnosis is something entirely different.

  Hypnosis is imprisonment, limitation, is subjecting the human being to a stronger will. Dhyana is a liberating practice. It will lead to freedom…. “

  This morning I could not look at him. Even his garment was shining with blinding light. He was like a dream image of days gone by… frail, elegant, with sparkling eyes, a being not belonging to this world….

  Could not stay long in the afternoon. Had trouble with my bladder, needed to go to the toilet every quarter of an hour. It was tiresome. Went home early, it was dreadfully hot. Rested. Had my food, went to bed with hot water bottle on my kidneys. Under the mosquito net outside, it was a hot moonlit night, but it was not too bad. Hot water bottle helped, fell asleep. Then I heard a voice: “Mrs. Tweedie, Mrs. Tweedie, are you asleep?” At first could not make out from where the voice was coming, but then looking through the mosquito net I saw Mrs. Sharma standing on the roof, her slender, elegant, silhouette outlined against the sky. I still thought that I was dreaming; fancy dreaming about Mrs. Sharma standing on the roof… but then I realized that something must have happened. Came out from under my net and, while putting on the dressing gown, I learned that the son of the chief medical officer (the one who is treating me) is dying of tetanus in the hospital, and Mrs. Sharma came to ask if we should go to Guruji. I looked at my watch; it was ten p.m.

  “Definitely… if somebody can help, Guruji can!” I said. We went by rikshaw. The small side-gate was still open; Satendra was standing with two young men in the street. He went inside to tell the father. He came out immediately.

  “I was expecting you,” he said to Mrs. Sharma who told him about the case.

  “Oh, noo,” he drawled. His face became very serious and he asked the name of the boy. I could not help looking at him all the time, standing in full moonlight against the dark garden. Munshiji and all the others were already sleeping on their charpoys in a row under the trees. And when he walked with us to the gate, he stood there as the rikshaw was pulling away, slender, erect, his face dimly lit by the light of the street lamp. It all looked like a painting—a luminous being against a dark background—and Mrs. Sharma said: “He looked like Christ, standing there.” And I thought that she was right….

  Could not fall asleep, so much love was in my heart and so much compassion for the boy and his parents…. Heard a clock striking somewhere… midnight. Practiced, and the practice was easy….

  All was love, He was near, and the mind was not…. Woke up feeling much better.

  Practicing and practicing, suddenly since yesterday there is a feeling of great urgency. Do not miss a moment .. . every time I say His Name I am a step nearer to Him… something is whispering in me. I seem to rest in Him, in His very Heart, where is eternal peace, non-ending love. It is the answer to all the problems, fears, ills. For the first time I have something in hand, where by my own effort of exertion I can get somewhere. Until now I had to submit, to tolerate; only recently I realized that I am able to act. And the more I do it the more I want to do it. For I know now that this is the way.

  71 Dhyana?

  5th April, 1966

  I AM FORGETIING MYSELF somewhere in deepest peace. He did not tell me how to do it; it came by itself….

  “My Rev. Guru Maharaj and my Rev. Father were so well equipped that they could transfer perfectly and they never failed.

  To transfer the Power is difficult, but they did it in a most perfect way.”

  “According to my understanding, spiritual life is a question of speed. The disciple is “quickened” by being in the presence of the Master: Satsang. And the quicker he becomes, the nearer he is to the Master. It seems to be an automatic process. Why, then, is a transference necessary?”

  Answer: “Yes, it is an automatic process, but also the transference is done. Those two things go on parallel. Both are necessary.”

  7th April

  “GO ON DOING THE PRACTICE.”

  8th April

  “Why should I say that I am your Guru? If you consider me one, then I am; if you don’t, then I am not.”

  DREAM: A wrestler was pressing my shoulders hard on a black and white chessboard. Guruji who was standing beside me said: “Throw him off!” I could not, however hard I tried; he was too heavy. I simply could not lift an inch; he was pressing my shoulders down and I felt the hardness of the board hurting my chest.

  “I cannot now,” I said, “I know I will later, but now I can’t do it.”

  VISION ON WAKING UP: I saw him from profile; he had the hard cruel expression seated in teaching asana. He looked like a horrible wild cruel animal. The face was not human. Toh! I thought. I believed him to be so beautiful, but he is not—he is so ugly! And long after waking up completely, I remembered this terrible face and wondered, and there was fear….

  9th April

  AND SO HE TOLD ME that he is not my Guru. Mind gave me trouble. He kept attacking me. I was contradicting him, telling him that there is no greatness in being so harsh and I cannot speak to him—the usual story of rebellion when the mind gives trouble….

  At last he had enough, took up his towel, went out and closed the door. I left… and at home I cried. What a difficult path! Treated with harshness, cannot speak to him when I want, and he is not my Guru….

  Then I remembered a quotation from some Buddhist scriptures (I have forgotten from which one):

  “I have no home, I have no father, I have no mother, I have no Guru, I am not a disciple; all is taken away from me…. “

  Nothing will remain at the end…. It is Easter… I had forgotten it… and in the night under the stars calling to Him in loneli
ness and longing …. The neem tree nearby was so fragrant… strong, sweet smell which came with the whiffs of the breeze….

  10th April

  “OUR RELATIONSHIP TO GOD is something entirely different from what we usually imagine it to be. We think that the relationship of God and man is of duality. There is God and there is the man who will pray to God asking for something, or who will worship, or love, or praise God. There are always two. But it is not so. I have found that our relationship to God is something quite different. It is a merging, without words, without thought even… into something.

  Something so tremendous, so endless, merging in infinite love… physical body and all, disappearing in it. And the physical body is under suffering; it is taut like a string in this process of annihilation.

  This is our experience of God and it cannot be otherwise.

  “What you have said,” he nodded gravely, “is absolutely correct.”

  He is not well.

  11th April

  CALLING, CALLING ON HIM… all the time….

  12th April

  HE IS NOT WELL. He ignores me completely. When he sat in the garden before others came, I asked him how he was feeling. I saw that he was breathless and gloomy. He said that he was not well.

  “No wonder, you can never be well. You talk too much. Every doctor will tell you that a heart patient must not speak much. And you talk for hours. And for what? And to whom? To people who are here only for discussion.” He did not answer but turned away. He looked disgusted.

  Sweet are the nights of the waning moon full of strong fragrance. I am calling on Him day and night ….

  14th April

  SOME GLIMPSES OF TODAY’S CONVERSATION (of nearly two hours).

  “Between you and what you are doing, your practice, there is a veil, a barrier caused by the flood of ideas which bring confusion into your mind. The flood comes, the flood will go… but you cannot wait…. To turn against the Guide is to cut off the link…. The wiring is there, the bulbs are there, but there is no current….

  “When you eat a sweet, for instance, what happens? When you swallow it, the taste is gone, but the memory of it remains. So it is with the desires of the mind and of the body. Even if the desire is not here anymore, the memory is still there, and the mind can give trouble. Every human being is full of desires, of the body, of the mind. The training I am giving you is of such a kind that in this life you will be away completely from your body and your mind…. “

  Actually I began the conversation by telling him how troublesome it is for others when some people don’t wash. They don’t wash their dhoties, their bodies; they smell. A man had just left—he was so dirty I think he never changed his clothes….

  “Yes, this is true, it is very troublesome. But there are people who are dressed nicely and clean, and they are full of inner dirt. Greed, vanity, sex, and other things too…. They come here and sit, and what shall I say who am the sweeper of everybody…. “

  I felt small….

  “Yes,” he repeated kindly, “you have only that the physical smells—and I know it is very disagreeable. But myself, what shall I say? And I will not hate anybody, because if I hate him, how can I help him to better himself? I cannot stand cigarette smoke, also the smell of drink, but if I hate them, will they give it up? No, never.”

  “He is a nice man,” I said when Mr. Vippin had left.

  “Every human being is nice, provided he is a human being and not an animal in human shape.”

  “In some the light is so hidden that it hardly shows.”

  “Every human being is nice,” he repeated softly, looking very far with his strangely shimmering eyes.

  “I ask God that I may die. Owing to our relationship, I won’t be able to live when you are gone.” He smiled a tender, mysterious smile.

  “When I am not here, you will have me through the System. This body will go, but I will be always with you. Do you think that I am not with my Rev. Father, my Rev. Guru Maharaj, always? If I train you for a certain work, you will remain…. We go, the System remains….

  “The other day you asked me if I am your Spiritual Guide and I told you that I will not answer such an absurd question. It is up to you to know if I am your Spiritual Guide or not…. If you think that I am, then I am your Spiritual Guide. If you think I am not, then I am not. If a lady comes and asks me if I love her, what shall I say?”

  “Just a moment,” I said, “you here in India make a great distinction between men and women; if a lady should come, I know what you will answer, but if a man should come in and ask you this question, what will you say?”

  “I will say, no, and I will throw him out,” he said. “The only distinction we make in our line is because ladies are of the other sex; we will say it guardedly; with men we will say it directly. If somebody would have dared to ask such a question of my Rev. Guru Maharaj or my Rev. Father, whether he was their Spiritual Guide, they would have him thrown out.

  “My training which I am giving you, I told you, is the one that in this life you will not be in your physical body nor in your mind. And now, if I am trying to get you there, you yourself interrupt. Be not concerned about your kidney condition; it is troublesome, no doubt, and will remain so for a while, but not at all fatal in your case.

  I was trying to do something, but perhaps I was doing it without the order; there was no Will of God; it did not succeed. When the pain increases and becomes unbearable, it goes forever. This is the law.

  But you yourself have interrupted. So it was not to be…. “

  When I was about to leave yesterday, he was alone in the room.

  Seated crosslegged on the tachat, he was writing letters. Vippin had left; others were sitting outside. When I got up and saluted him, he looked up with a smile:

  “DO NOT CARE ABOUT ANYTHING EVER: THE GRACE OF GOD IS IN EVERY SHAPE AROUND.” It was like a greeting, like an admonition for the future. Perhaps it was intended as one, who knows?… I kept thinking of these words walking home and long, long afterwards….

  In the night a sudden wind sprang up. A few large drops of rain woke me up, and the wind was tearing at my mosquito net. I thought it would die down. But sitting up I saw great clouds of dust approaching. I had scarcely time to rescue my mosquito net when the storm began to shake the bungalow. I closed all the windows and bolted the doors. It was quarter past eleven and the storm lasted not more than a quarter of an hour; it was soon over. But I did not go out, thinking that it would come back. So, I spent the night in the room, as hot as an oven in nightmare dreams, the fan humming uselessly above my head. When I woke up in a bath of perspiration from the restless sleep, it was very still outside. The time was 4:30. I went out.

  It was a lovely warm night. I took my bed and put up the mosquito net to have at least a few hours coolness. Mrs. Sharma must have left already. She was supposed to leave for Delhi at three a.m.

  15th April

  NOBODY WAS ABOUT when I came down at seven. No servants. No hope to get a cup of tea. So I had half a glass of water and went to Guruji.

  Soon he came out and walked up and down for a while, and then sat down to write letters. His wife was reading letters to him which he answered there and then. I felt tired and depressed after a hot night.

  He spoke to me about one hour in the semi-dark room waiting for his wife to get ready. They wanted to go to town and she was having her bath. He talked on all kinds of topics: Indian politics, the Muslim rule of the past and how it influenced the Indian culture and the laws of the country. Then he came out with a saying which was a jewel: “Before, there was no divorce in this country. A woman could never divorce her husband. Now even a woman can get a divorce.

  But still, there are men who are reluctant to marry a woman who belonged to another. Why? Because they say that she is impure. But the woman is like Gold, she is like the Earth, she is never impure…. Gold, even if it falls into the latrine and is taken out and is cleaned, it is the same, and its value is not less. The Earth p
urifies everything the changing seasons… the Earth is always pure… and the woman after every menstruation is pure. So, they say, the Gold is pure, the Earth is pure, but the woman is impure… how ignorant they are….”

  When it became quite dark, mosquitoes began to bite. I got up, came to his chair and said jokingly alluding to a remark he made two weeks back: “Every mosquito has four wives and all of them are biting me!” He laughed his young, sonorous laughter, obviously amused.

  “Make them your friends, then they will not bite!”

  “To make friends with the devil as you told me three years ago?” I smiled at him.

  “The devil,” he said suddenly becoming serious, “the devil is much greater than the Devas.”

  “Does the devil exist?”

  “Yes.”

  People came; salutations began; he immediately began to speak in Hindi. Always, always, at the most interesting moment, interruptions begin…. I would have loved to know more. Something in his voice when he said “Yes” made me prick my ears… and I was thinking about it in the night, wondering….

  The fragrant nights of the waning moon… and thousands of swallows at dawn competing with bats in chasing the insects who have their last meal before retiring to sleep… the sky tenderly pink with a few soft, streaky clouds. The dawns and the dusks of India heaven knows, how much I will miss them when I am away…. But let this time be far, far off….

  16th April

  “MANY THINGS YOU WILL UNDERSTAND only when I have gone. I myself understood so many things only when my Rev. Guru Maharaj was not alive anymore. As for a child the cradle is the whole world, then the room, when it begins to crawl, then the veranda and the garden, and so on… so for the disciple also, the understanding comes gradually.”

  “When you are not alive anymore, I would like to go too… I cannot remain here; it would be unbearable.”

  “Somebody has to remain; the System must go on. The training I give you is to continue my work….” Clearer than that, I thought, the hint cannot be given….

  “One should always remain in prayer; one should always remember His Name. And in the time which remains, one must serve. Serve human beings, animals, trees, all living things. But human beings come first. They are most precious to the Almighty….