… And I just kept looking at him, laughing, talking, full of the Grace of God, kindness, and sense of humor….
20th July
IT WAS A WONDERFULLY COOL NIGHT, and no mosquitos because of the breeze from the southeast. Slept without mosquito net. And prayed much, looking up to the shimmering stars. And so great was the Nearness…. During the night I was very restless. I had many dreams charged with agitated images which I don’t remember. Before falling asleep an unusual heart activity began, very different from any I had before in all those years. And waking up at four a.m., there was a very great vibration in the heart which lasts until this moment. I feel light. Full of strange excitement. Impossible to describe. Something big is being prepared. I had better be careful, recollected… such a heart activity is quite unusual. I am used to all kinds of vibrations by now, but this is something quite different. It feels as if it came from a different direction. And love and Nearness are great… Heaven knows to what it will lead…. Oh, what a feeling of lightness and deep, deep happiness… and the heart races and races on and on, like a restless bird in a cage…. God help me… Rev. Guru Maharaj, help me… please….
Lately he always sits opposite me on the divan under the fan, and I at the head of his tachat. I sit bent in two. Impossible to sit erect; the body is like broken in the middle, impossible to look at him. We sit in silence. When I happen to raise my head, I never meet his eyes. But I feel his eyes on me when I am bent down. The idea came into my mind that something is given, that it is a “sitting” because nobody ever seems to disturb or come in. And the peace? There are no words for it ….
On the 15th, in the afternoon, I tried to tell him the result of my conclusions that it is going to be the Dark Night of the Soul, a troublesome state each Soul has to go through again and again, encountering it as on an ascending spiral when one is after the Absolute Truth.
He listened to me (or did he?) wrapped in one of his icy silences and half in Samadhi, so I don’t know if my assumption is correct or not….
On the 17th in the morning he came out in white kurta and topi, a stick in his hand, and I saw the wife dressed up, so I thought that they were going out. A car came driven by one of his disciples, and I understood that they were going to Samadhi. It suddenly passed through my mind that I will be going too… and if not, I will do my shopping, will go home early to write my letters. He got up.
“You can also come in the car if you like,” he said indifferently.
“You are taking me with you?” I asked delightedly, “thank you!”
He did not answer. We all piled into the car. There was only his wife, the youngest daughter-in-law, Poonam, Ravindra’s two children, the driver-disciple and myself. The ride was lovely; once more I had the feeling that he went there because of me. It was a windy day with chasing clouds; it was still cool at seven in the morning. The atmosphere was wonderful. And I prayed to his parents, whose graves were in the mausoleum, that I may be taken soon into his Path.
We remained less than fifteen minutes; he had to leave because of a giddiness which overcame him. We were home at his place before nine. And later he sat in the chair, as if nothing had happened and seemed well again. The whole day I felt good because I love to go to Samadhi, and this time it was somehow special….
I am in a strange mood today; there is a restlessness—half irritation, half resignation, and the latter was complete and absolute, to my destiny. He looked hostile all the morning; the heart activity was strong from time to time. More and more it looks to me as if something is brewing….
Now at home, the longing is great, so much, so much, it hurts inside …. Dear God, help me! Guru Maharaj, help me!
The drunkard came about 9:30 and Bhai Sahib was reading to him from the newspaper… court cases, politics, weather conditions… God knows why he does it… seems such a waste of time. To read aloud and tire oneself…. I left in disgust to do some shopping. Praying to God. I leave him in Your Hand. If something happens to him, it is Your Will…. God, dear God, WHY does he do it?
83 Death
24th July, 1966
IT IS THE THIRD DAY since my Sheikh has left his physical body and I still cannot believe it….
When I am at his place, it seems that at any moment I will hear his swift step, his ringing voice, his laughter….
A few days ago, I was thinking that since he had his last heart attack, his voice has changed. I was thinking it in the morning, listening to his voice in the next room. But in the evening he was singing Persian songs to the old man, and his voice was clear and belllike as I always knew it…. And I looked at him hoping so much, so ardently, that he will translate something to me, but he did not…. It was the last time. Never again….
But I had better write down everything in chronological order. I came on the 20th in the afternoon, as usual. They played cards; it was very hot. One window was a little open in the front room, so it was not so dark, the fan was humming. About six it began to rain. And as it became cool I opened the two windows and the two doors to let the cool air in from the garden. In the room it was unbearably hot and I was wet with perspiration. While I was opening them, I hoped that it will be all right and he will not object to it nor tell me off. They finished playing shortly after six, he got up and went into the courtyard. Thinking it over, clearly now, I can see that until the last moment he did the usual, ordinary things. Nobody at this time had even the smallest hint of what was going to happen…. Soon he came back from the courtyard, talking to the wife who was closely behind him. He went directly to the front door and stood in the cool breeze, still talking to the wife. I stood at the other door looking at the lime tree, so fresh and fragrant after the shower. I stood there for a while. When I turned and entered the room he was not there; the wife alone stood in the doorway. The rain stopped completely. It was very cool and pleasant. When he came back into the room, I was thinking what a profile he had… so young. He wore his devic face.
He often had it lately. Dynamically beautiful.
Some people came. He went out into the garden and stood there talking to them. The chairs were not put out yet; it began drizzling softly. I was walking up and down looking at him from the distance; he was standing there laughing and talking. The sun came out; it was still drizzling. There must be a rainbow under these conditions, I thought. I looked for it; and here it was seen between the trees, towards the southeast.
“Sheikh, Bhai Sahib, please look!” I shouted, “Look at the beautiful rainbow! Please, come here, from here you can see it!” He smiled and came to stand beside me. He looked at it with a smile, saying something in Hindi to others who all commented on it. The colors were very vivid.
“There are two rainbows,” Virendra said, “a double rainbow!”
“Let’s go on the roof, from there we can see it better,” I told him, and we—myself, Virendra and Poonam—ran quickly upstairs. It was lovely and fresh on the flat roof; a cool breeze was blowing; the cement was still wet from the rain. Right across the sky towards the southeast were two magnificent rainbows; they seemed to span from one side of the horizon to another. One very clear and bright, and the other above, paler, delicate, ethereal, but both complete, parallel to each other.
I did not notice anything unusual; it did not occur to me to look if all the colors were there, but Satendra next morning told me that his father went into the room for a moment and said to his wife: “See, the Great Painter, what wonderful colors he paints… but the yellow color is missing….”
And in the night when Satendra was massaging his feet, he suddenly sat up, his eyes blazing and said as if speaking to himself: “The yellow color was missing…. My color was gone….”
From the roof I called down to him as he talked to others standing under the mango tree:
“Bhai Sahib, please, look! Two magnificent rainbows!” He smiled, turned his head, glanced at them and continued to talk. We remained for a while on the roof, and I was telling Virendra that the rainbow is believed to be
very auspicious by the Russians, and I think it is so in every country. And two rainbows must be even more auspicious, though I really don’t believe completely in such things. And I told him that two weeks ago, when he told me that now my troubles are going away, right over Chowraha where I passed a moment ago was a magnificent rainbow. I was so happy to see it, thinking that it was a good omen ….
We went down. In the meantime the chairs were put out, and he sat serenely in his large chair under the mango tree. A talk about the Gurus was going on, and the new old man commented on it, and asked me how it was that I came to Bhai Sahib. I said that I have traveled much in India, met many Gurus especially in the Himalayan region, but not one of them made any impression on me. Even in my ignorance I knew that a Guru who is full of his own importance is full of the self; so I was not at all impressed by the big “I” in them. The only one who impressed me was Bhai Sahib because of his humility and his simplicity.
“Gurus are good, but the trouble is that they come on the platform to teach before they get rid of the self. One should not teach while there is still the desire to teach. This is the rule, but the Gurus are good. Who am I to judge anybody?…
“Before the self is gone, one is not complete; one is not perfect; one cannot make others perfect.”
The old man laughed and I said again that the only one who impressed me was he, so I stayed.
“Why don’t you say that your share was here, so you stayed here?
Don’t say the Gurus are not good; your share was not there… it was here…. “
He fell silent. The garden was still; there was no wind. I looked up at the sky and was speechless: curtains of gold, orange, crimson, covered it completely.
“Oh, look, look, please do look, how the Greatest Painter has painted the sky! No human being can reproduce these colors; one cannot paint them—they are dynamic light itself!”
“Yes,” he nodded, looking for a few seconds, then began again to speak to the old man. But I continued to watch the colors changing shape, flowing into one another. Once more it was one of those rare, exceptional sunsets, and it occurred to me for a moment that sunsets, sunrises and rainbows played an important symbolical role in my life. Then I noticed something rare, never seen at any time in all my life: small, perfectly circular clouds stood motionless right above the bungalow, seemingly very low, only a few hundreds of feet away, but I realized it must have been higher; it was an optical illusion. They seemed about three feet in diameter, of purest, most incredible tender amethyst, or mauve, surrounded by all this orange and pink.
“Please look, this is very rare! I am old and I never saw anything like it before! Look at these little clouds of mauve! How unusual and how lovely!” I exclaimed excitedly. He glanced at them, a fine smile slightly curled his lips, then continued to talk to the old man who was not even a little interested in all this glory.
Watching attentively, I noticed to my surprise that they were not clouds at all, but perfectly round openings in the surrounding clouds… like little windows through which the blue of the sky was visible. The film of vivid crimson reflected by the clouds made the blue background appear as infinite, purest mauve.
They gradually changed, became pale blue; one could see clearly that they were holes, openings, but not clouds themselves. And then all of a sudden the whole garden, nay, the whole world seemed to glow with an incredible golden-pink light. Sometimes we see in dreams such glory and, if we are lucky, in rare sunsets…. I got up and went further away, stood by the door to take an eyeful of the golden garden in this strange ominous light. Him sitting there, the white garment glowing, his skin, all this Oriental scene, the disciples seated around him. It was incredibly lovely. The white walls of the bungalow, reflected and emphasized, deepened the effect. It was so much India. He looked like a golden Deva. I sat down.
“How beautiful you look in this golden-pink light; your skin seems to glow with it from within.” As one sees in a dream, I thought, but I did not speak it out.
He gave me a glance, but his face was serious, and he looked far away into the blinking light shimmering with the setting sun. His strange eyes had an expression which I could not interpret, were reflecting faithfully the clouds and the sky and the colors. I did not know at that moment that the Greatest Painter painted the sky in Glory and bathed the garden in Golden Light, because a great Soul of a Golden Sufi was leaving this world forever. It was his last sunset, the last greeting… he would never see another one. Next day it was cloudy, and he would never have another physical body; it was his last. So Nature greeted her Great Son for the last time.
I stood up to leave at my usual time.
“You want to go now?” he murmured.
“With your permission,” I said, and he nodded briefly. My heart became quite small…. There was something… as if… as if some kind of regret in his voice …. Why? I felt disturbed…. It was his last evening and I did not know it….
The night was cool. I slept fairly well. Woke up early; it was still dark. Felt such deep serenity, such bliss even physically, that I was thinking that perhaps this is the bliss they are talking about….
And walking to his place amongst the busy morning traffic of cars, children going to school, cows wandering aimlessly, rikshaws driving at greatest possible speed, fighting dogs… and the sky was covered with white clouds, serenely sailing along. I was reflecting that the feeling of Nothingness is now not only in his presence. It stays with me…. I feel like that before God, before life; it seems to become slowly my very being….
He was not out yet. I sat down and continued to think. The concept of ourselves and of our surroundings is of “l” and the not “l.” That is: myself and the environment surrounding me, and my relationship to it creates causes which are called Karma, or one can call it actions… it does not really matter. And it is those relationships which are moulding our future…. But to me it looks differently: I see it now—FROM THE NOUGHT TO THE SOMETHING. It looks different, seen from a different angle.
He came out. His torso was naked, and he began to walk up and down on the brick elevation; then he sat down. The wife came and discussed something; the newspaper was handed to him by the newspaper man who came running through the gate. I brought his glasses. He began to read. Lately he was reading the paper every morning.
As he was leaving it, he probably wanted to know what was going on in the world…. I just sat there looking at him. The face of a Deva. His torso naked, brown and slender. What a graceful, beautiful human being…. A Muslim barber entered the gate. His chair was put in the shade of the mango tree, and the ceremony of cutting the hair and the beard began. For it was quite a ceremony and I loved to watch it. Today it was especially particular.
“A little here, and here, and here,” he kept saying, pointing to the places he wanted to be cut or shaved either more or in a different way. I was amused. Poor barber, I thought… it lasts already over an hour. I wonder how much he intends to give him… I will pay for his haircut, I thought. I waited. It became hotter and hotter. The new tenant of the hut came and brought ten rupees. He told him to put it on the chair. When he left he said: “There on the chair are ten rupees. Keep an eye on them that they should not be blown away and get lost; they are not mine.” I said that I already was watching them. What did he mean: “not mine?”
Was not the money of his tenant his? Now I know what he had meant…. He was going away tonight… the money was not for him anymore to dispose of….
As soon as the barber finished, he came to the chair and sat down.
“How much is it? Please let me pay for it. It gave me such a pleasure to watch him doing it that I feel I should make a contribution.”
He smiled, “Put on the chair what you think he should get.” I did.
He smiled again, and turning to the barber who was still putting all his paraphernalia away into a box:
“Here is the money for you.” The barber left, thanking profusely.
“Oh, it is hot here
! Why didn’t you go inside?” He got up. I repeated that I enjoyed watching and was waiting till the barber finished to pay him, if he would permit it. He smiled.
“Oh, you forgot the black shoe polish I told you to bring the other day.”
“I gave it to Munshiji the same day. I never forget what you tell me,” I replied. We went into the room. He switched on the fan and went out but came back soon.
“I inquired about the shoe polish; those shoes are not comfortable if they are not polished properly. I really ought to get a new pair.”
I was astonished. Why did he feel the necessity to check? It was unusual. After all it was such an unimportant matter….
Soon I left. At home I was disturbed. But did not know why.
Quarrelled with the landlord because he decided to paint my veranda, and the two men who were supposed to do it were looking into my window watching me and commenting on everything they saw in the room, including me, I suppose, instead of painting. And they made such a noise and laughed so much that it was impossible to rest; it was very hot. I was really angry, went to the landlord who was resting, got him up and he came with me, made a row, and the men began to paint at last. But the noise was even worse; I was really quite on edge. The room was full of dust; it was very uncomfortable….
When I arrived about four p.m., he was reclining on the tachat talking animatedly, telling a story to his wife, sons and brother all sitting in the front room. I noticed nothing unusual. I remember I only thought he talks too much; it will do him harm…. At one moment we were asked to go out. Closing the door behind me I inquired from his brother if Bhai Sahib was not quite well. No, he said; somehow he does not feel too well. I thought that it might be an attack of diarrhea which he used to get sometimes in the rainy period. I was not really worried. After a few minutes the door was opened. I waited a little, then went to the door. He was squatting on the edge of the tachat holding his head with both hands.
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