The Seeker

by Karan Bajaj

  He was walking on air.

  More steps.

  Still nothing under his feet.

  Knowing he wouldn’t be able to hold his breath very long, he moved faster in space. He felt the dampness of water on the soles of his feet. He pulled his abdomen in and exhaled with force. Again, he walked a fraction of an inch above the water, on air.

  A few steps later, he ran out of breath. He choked and inhaled a rush of air. Immediately, he felt the weight on his feet, cold water touching the soles.

  He opened his eyes. He was less than five meters away from the bank. He could do it. Max brought his right foot forward but fell into the water. Quickly, he swam to the other end and pulled himself and his backpack out. He had done it. Almost. He had walked over more than forty-five meters of water—with his backpack.

  Max set his backpack down on the ice. He breathed normally and visualized the energy flowing like a river through his body once again. Millions of energy particles vibrated within his body, in the air below his feet, and the air around him. He exhaled and forced his prana up. He levitated two feet above the ground. He pulled his abdomen in sharply and pushed out the leftover air in his torso. He rose another foot. Max held his breath and stood suspended in air. Cold wind touched his bare wet feet, sending tingling sensations up and down his spine. He stood like that for a few minutes, staring at the soft, white half moon above, feeling its blue-white light alive within him. Inhaling with control and pulling his prana down, he landed softly on the snow. He was ready for the last phase of his journey.

  Max took off his wet clothes and squeezed the water out of them. Shivering and spent, he stood naked on the edge of the lake. The cold cut into his bones. The stars were so close he could pick them out of the sky. The paw marks of an animal, likely a Himalayan bear or snow leopard, formed an elegant ellipse on the ice below him. Soon, he would be one with the sky, the stars, the tall cliffs, the white snow below him, and the animals that danced on it. This was the final step. He wouldn’t leave the caves until he was enlightened, became the Tathagatha, the one who was gone, whose body remained in the world but whose mind had become the universal, complete.

  He walked over the sharp rocks in front of the caves, inspecting the area. All seven caves were blocked with ice. A fifteen-foot-tall boulder with a flat surface and sharp, serrated edges, stood in the middle of the row of caves. Max climbed on top of it and sat cross-legged on its wet surface. Almost immediately, he fell into a deep trance, sensing a shimmering, vibrating presence within him, around him. He understood now why the Himalayas had been the home of spiritual seekers for centuries. Every rock, every surface vibrated with the energy of the One.

  Max slid down the boulder. Putting on his T-shirt, pants, gloves and hiking boots, he began clearing the snow from the mouth of the first cave, the tallest in the row of seven. He broke the particularly hardened lumps with his boots. The noise resounded through the hundreds of miles of silence. He scraped and kicked for an hour, slowly opening up the mouth of the cave to an inch. This would take a long time, perhaps the whole night, and there could be no short cuts. If fresh snow fell on top of the packed ice, he could be buried alive inside.

  Two hours later, he had cleared the mouth sufficiently to peep into the cave. It smelled of wet earth but looked warm and spacious. A winged creature bumped against his face, screeching. A bat. The sound was picked up by other bats inside. The still air filled with shrieks. Max smiled. At least he would have company if he felt too lonesome. He liked his new home already.

  Max chipped away at the packed snow for another couple of hours. The hole was now wide enough to melt the remaining snow with fire without the risk of smoke filling up the cave.

  He retrieved the matchboxes and tree branches from the jacket inside his backpack. None of the matches would light. He set them aside and performed samyama on the tree branches, becoming one with them, visualizing a bright yellow flame coursing through him, the branch’s wooden bark, the tip of dried green leaf. A tiny spark burst out on the wood. But not enough to light the damp wood. He concentrated harder. Sweat formed on his eyebrows. This time, a huge spark flamed at the end of the branch. Still the wood wouldn’t light. Max wrapped the branches in his jacket and continued scraping the snow off the cave entrance with his bare hands.

  He tried lighting the branches again after a few hours. The wood was still too wet. Max broke the branches into smaller pieces. No more sparks. He felt dizzy. His muscles ached. He had wasted too much energy testing his new skills. He needed to rest and restore his prana. Max looked up at the sky. Could he trust it not to snow for a couple of hours, just until he squeezed into the warm cave and took a nap? A snowflake fell on his shoulder, then another. The universe gave him his answer. He began scraping the snow once again.

  He heard a slight sound on his right.

  A Himalayan bear?

  Max whipped around.

  A man stood on top of the boulder.

  Max rubbed his eyes.

  Yes, it was a man. Fiery black eyes shining in the moonlight, gray hair falling to his hips, and a thin yellow-orange cloth wrapped tight around his lean, hard body. A yogi. He was staring at Max.

  Max walked to the boulder and folded his hands.

  The man jumped down, scowling at Max, his eyes glinting. He pulled his gray hair behind his head.

  Max concentrated on the Ajna Chakra in the center of his forehead, the seat of all memory of all lifetimes, accessed the reservoir of language, and spoke in Hindi.

  “Mera naam Max hai. Main is gufa mein rehna chahata hoon,” he said.

  The man didn’t react.

  Max repeated in English. “I’m Max. I want to live in this cave.”

  The man raised his right hand and touched his thumb with his bony index finger again and again.

  Max didn’t understand.

  The man repeated the gesture with both hands.

  “No, no, no photograph,” said Max in Hindi. The man had likely confused him for a tourist because of his T-shirt and khakis. “Not tourist. I want to be a yogi.”

  The man’s gaunt face softened. He turned around and went into a cave on the other end, easily pushing away the snow that blocked its mouth. Unlike Max’s cave, his cave was covered by fresh snowfall, not packed ice. Reassured by the presence of another yogi nearby, no matter how taciturn, Max cleared his cave with renewed vigor.

  The man appeared next to him again. He gave Max a piece of paper. Max looked at it in the moonlight. It had one sentence written in many different languages:

  ‘I have taken a twelve-year vow of silence. Baba Ramdas.’

  Max touched his heart to convey that he would respect his wishes.

  Baba Ramdas gave Max a fifteen-inch-tall black stick. Max sniffed magnesium. Yes, this would work better than the matchsticks. Max held it vertical and struck his knife against it.

  Baba Ramdas nodded.

  Max struck again and again until he got the angle right. He was rewarded with a crackling flame. Max thrust it against the wood. It still wouldn’t light.

  Baba Ramdas went back to his cave and brought four pieces of dry tree bark and a handful of pine needles.

  Max followed his direction and made a platform with the tree bark. He placed the branches on it so that the ice wouldn’t wet them. Once the branches were stable, he scattered pine needles on them and ignited a spark with the magnesium stick. The wood caught fire immediately. Max threw more pine needles in and the fire rose higher. The snow melted quickly.

  Max folded his hands and thanked Baba Ramdas. He tried to return the magnesium stick but Baba Ramdas wouldn’t take it. Max thanked him again.

  Max stooped into the musty cave using a burning branch for light. The bats screeched their welcome. The cave was fifteen feet wide, eight feet deep, just tall enough enough for him to stand comfortably upright in. He was pleasantly surprised by how warm it was inside. Rocks jutted from the floor at odd angles but he found a flat stretch at the back. A scorpion scuttled away
when he spread his sheet on the packed wet mud. His bed. His home. Max doused the burning stick and lay down on the sheet. He tried to meditate but his weary eyes closed.

  28

  In the days that followed, Max adapted slowly to the silent, inhospitable Himalayan terrain. Observing Baba Ramdas quietly from a distance, he learnt to walk over the frozen stream without falling in by pausing every few meters and exhaling sharply the air that inevitably collected in his torso. On the opposite bank, he would strip bark and needles from the pine tree and pull out from the ground the mushroom-like root he’d seen on the first day. Back in his cave, he melted large quantities of fresh snow in his stove to collect just a small trickle of water, barely enough for cooking the roots and beans. With time, he observed that the intricately shaped snowflakes trapped air in them, making snow a good insulator. Piling too much caused just the bottom of the pan to burn without melting the snow so he added just an inch at a time. He began to get more water sooner. Even so, it would be mid-day by the time he ate his first meal.

  In the afternoon, he practiced pranayama, now no longer a slow, meditative breathing exercise but a frenzied grab for the oxygen he had lost foraging and walking across the stream in the thin air. Evenings were spent in performing samyama on his navel to lower his metabolism so that his heart could supply blood to his body’s extremities. Next, he focused on the Anahata Chakra, his heart center, reducing his heart rate so it didn’t pump irregularly in the low air pressure. Too depleted to perform samyama again, he dealt with the ever-increasing supply of spiders and scorpions by sweeping them outside the cave with a broom he’d fashioned from the pine tree. Once done, he would sit to meditate but his body felt tough and rigid like a mass of steel from the day’s exertions and sleep overcame him immediately.

  Two months passed, then three. He no longer had a watch or a calendar, but somewhere in the back of his mind he always knew exactly what day it was. The winters didn’t ease. The stream remained frozen, the vegetation sparse. Max’s heart was silent like the mountains around him. He went through the day, foraging for food, making a fire, melting snow, collecting water, practicing pranayama, feeling a quiet detachment from his body and its needs yet expending effort all day to keep it fit and functioning.

  When it continued to snow in April, Max contemplated going back to the plains so he could spend more time in meditation. But Baba Ramdas’s silent, majestic form held him back. What will, what concentration, he must have built in thriving alone in the mountain for twelve years. His face betrayed no strain of effort, his eyes never asked for companionship; he was alone, complete, in silent communion with the divine, the goal Max sought but which seemed to be slipping away from his grasp.

  Late one night in May, Max opened his eyes after his meditation to find the cave plunged in darkness. No moonlight danced on the entrance, no cliffs shimmered in the distance. It must be later than he thought, way past midnight. His heart lifted. He had meditated through the night. Max hadn’t experienced such complete suspension of time in a while. Elated, he lay down to sleep when he smelled a strange odor—a mix of damp cloth and burning rubber. Max went to the front of the cave to investigate. His feet touched something soft, bristly, and wet. He tried to pick it up. A grunt broke the silence.

  A bear.

  Max froze.

  The six-foot-tall bear took several hulking steps away from the front of the cave. Moonlight flooded in. It wasn’t as late as he had thought. Max stepped back, his eyes fixed on the silhouette of the bear in the soft white light.

  The bear looked around with its black, beady eyes, shaking its head.

  Max stood still.

  The bear grunted again. Its eyes met Max’s. It came closer, thrusting its black nose, its confused face forward. Foul breath washed over Max.

  Max inched backward, maintaining eye contact. His back touched the cave wall. He slid down, groping for the magnesium stick. He couldn’t find it.

  The bear didn’t seem interested in Max. It crouched down and began retreating slowly when its back hit the small cave entrance. Yelping, it charged forward.

  “Stop,” yelled Max, standing up and raising his hand.

  The bear paused three inches away from Max. It shook its fur, spraying Max with ice flakes.

  Max’s heart thudded. He breathed slowly.

  The bear lifted its front legs.

  Max crouched down and thrashed around for the stick.

  The bear raised itself higher.

  Max’s hands shook. He upturned the stones frantically.

  The bear’s head collided with the top of the cave.

  A roar shattered the night.

  It bent down and charged Max.

  Max stopped looking for the stick. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the bear, the air between them, the consciousness connecting them both.

  Tat Twam Asi.

  I am That.

  One consciousness. One universal energy.

  A wisp of cool air enveloped him.

  Shuffling steps. A shower of ice.

  Max increased the intensity of his samyama, drowning out all sounds and sensations, just concentrating on an image of the furry face, wide eyes, and black nose in his mind.

  I am Him.

  We are one.

  An eternity passed. Or a minute. When he opened his eyes, the bear was crouching at the mouth of the cave.

  Max stood up, drowned in a wave of compassion for the scared, confused life in front of him. He picked up the magnesium stick lying at his feet and the knife beside it. He struck a flare and walked gently to the front of the cave.

  The bear turned around.

  Max stepped outside with him.

  The bear ran toward the stream.

  The chiseled cliff face shimmered like a ring in the moonlight. The boulder sparkled, dripping with snow.

  The bear disappeared into the night.

  Max’s eyes swept over the moon-like landscape, the ancient rocks eroded by centuries of glaciers, tall, still yet breathing and alive. Not a whisper for miles. Max turned around and walked inside the cave. He didn’t know if it was good karma or samyama that had made the bear leave. But he knew now why he had struggled with his meditation thus far. He had lost the life and death urgency that had brought him to the Himalayas. His hiking trip was over now. It was time to get back to work.

  29

  From then on, Max focused less and less on the mundane business of living. When he couldn’t collect pine needles and build a fire, he fasted. If he ran out of water, he ate snow directly without worrying if he was eating enough to be fully hydrated. Spiders and scorpions stopped bothering him when he left them in peace. If rainwater seeped into his cave and wet his bed sheet, he accepted it for what it was and didn’t build a fire to dry it. He stopped his routine of washing clothes every three days. Instead, he spent more and more of his time immersed in meditation. Early in the morning, he sat outside the cave and performed samyama on the sun, flowing his entire living, breathing energy into it. His skin blazed and he became one with it and the stars, planets, and galaxies that surrounded it.

  In the beginning, there was no space, no time, just a shimmering, vibrating energy, the sum of everything, good and evil, beautiful and ugly, right and wrong, active and dormant, containing millions of possible universes within it. The energy fluctuated, helpless with its desire to experience itself, and out of the hundreds of possible outcomes, the universe we lived in came to be. The energy now lived both within and without the universe. The elements in the manifested universe burst, exploded, contracted, evolved, forming combinations, then rejecting them, forming them again, powered by the intelligence of this consciousness and governed by the singular law of cause and effect, action and reaction. Hot lava gushed within him and the sun, the moon, the entire visible universe emerged from tiny, radiating elements and billions of years later, life sprang out of molecular mass. From single cell to multi-cell organisms to animals and man himself, all were made of the same substratum,
each linked by the same vibrating, intelligent energy, separated by their sense of “I”, governed by the same law. Every effect had a cause, every cause an effect.

  Max studied man’s cause and understood it was the same as that of all animate and inanimate cells—the original desire of consciousness to manifest itself. He saw the desire, a burst of light, manufacturing a body to find an expression. The body with its five senses interacted with the world, creating more desire and the desire individuated itself in another body when the old body was worn out. And so the cycle went on. The human paradox was now clear to him. The nature of life was desire and the nature of desire was its infiniteness and its inability to be satisfied. Earlier, it had been necessary to further evolution, to allow consciousness to express its full potential. Now when man had reached the peak of self-awareness, it was just an infinite circling loop. As long as it lasted, man would never be satisfied and would always be subject to the cycle of suffering. Again and again, Max would be born, again and again he would live, want, suffer, and die.

  Max arose from such samyamas, shaking, his body ablaze with energy, too exhausted to even walk up to the stream to collect fresh snow. He would recover after a few days of rest and practice samyama on the people who had found their way out of the cycle; Jesus, the Buddha, Mohammad. And when he merged with them in meditation, the answers emerged, simple, logical, and decisive.

  The way out of the cycle was to sublimate the “I” principle, relinquish all individual desire, to restrain the naturally outgoing mind fueled by the senses and turn it inward. Once it focused within, the mind saw its real nature of pure consciousness and rejected the individual desires and thoughts surrounding it. Jesus had sublimated his desire with helpless compassion for his fellow beings; the Buddha had silenced his craving with intense meditation and the practice of yoga; Mohammad had done it by losing himself in complete devotion to his God. They had all become vessels of pure consciousness without any thought of their own individuality. Different paths but they all converged. All fingers pointing to the same moon.