Bhagavan: The great Transition

[Guest guest]

The Great Transition

 

On Friday the doctors and attendants knew it was the last day. In the morning he

again bade them go and meditate. About noon, when liquid food was brought for

him, he asked the time, punctual as ever, but then added, "But henceforth time

doesn't matter." Delicately expressing recognition of their long years of

service, he said to the attendants, "The English have a word 'thanks' but we

only say santosham (I am pleased)."

 

In the morning the long crowd filed past the open doorway silent with grief and

apprehension, and again between four and five in the evening. The disease-racked

body they saw there was shrunken, the ribs protruding, the skin blackened, it

was a pitiable vestige of pain. And yet at some time during these last few days

each devotee received adirect, luminous, penetrating look of recognition which

he felt as a parting infusion of Grace.

 

After darshan that evening the devotees did not disperse to their homes.

Apprehension held them there. At about sunset Sri Bhagavan told the attendants

to sit him up. They knew already that every movement, every touch was painful,

but he told them not to worry about that. He sat with one of the attendants

supporting his head. A doctor began to give him oxygen but with a wave of his

right hand he motioned him away. There were about a dozen persons in the small

room, doctors and attendants. Two of the attendants were fanning him, and the

devotees outside gazed spellbound at the moving fans through the window, a sign

that there was still a living body to fan. A reporter of a large American

magazine moved about restlessly, uneasy at having been impressed despite himself

and determined not to write his story till he got away from Tiruvannamalai to

conditions that he considered normal. With him was a French press- photographer.

 

Unexpectedly, a group of devotees sitting on the veranda outside the hall began

singing 'Arunachala-Siva'. On hearing it, Sri Bhagavan's eyes opened and shone.

He gave a brief smile of indescribable tenderness. From the outer edges of his

eyes tears of bliss rolled down. One more deep breath, and no more. There was no

struggle, no spasm, no other sign of death: only that the next breath did not

come. For a few moments people stood bewildered. The singing continued. The

French press-photographer came up to me and asked at what precise minute it had

happened. Resenting it as journalistic callousness, I replied brusquely that I

did not know, and then I suddenly recalled Sri Bhagavan's unfailing courtesy and

answered precisely that it was 8.47. He said, and I could hear now that he was

excited, that he had been pacing the road outside and at that very moment an

enormous star had trailed slowly across the sky. Many had seen it, even as far

away as Madras, and felt what it portended. It passed to the north-east towards

the peak of Arunachala.

 

After the first numbness there was a wild burst of grief. The body was carried

out on to the veranda in a sitting posture. Men and women crowded up to the

veranda railing to see. A woman fainted. Others sobbed aloud. The body was

placed garlanded upon a couch in the hall and the devotees thronged there and

sat around it. One had expected the face to be rock-like in samadhi, but found

it instead so marked by pain that it gripped one's heart. Only gradually during

the night the air of mysterious composure returned to it.

 

All that night devotees sat in the large hall and townsfolk passed through in

awed silence. Processions streamed from the town and back singing

'Arunachala-Siva'. Some of the devotees in the hall sang songs of praise and

grief; others sat silent. What was most noticeable was not the grief but the

calm beneath it, for they were men and women deprived of him whose Grace had

been the very meaning of their life. Already that first night and much more

during the days that followed, it became clear how vital had been his words: "I

am not going away. Where could I go? I am here." The word 'here' does not imply

any limitation but rather that the Self is, that there is no going, no changing,

for That which is Universal.

 

Nevertheless, as devotees felt the inner Presence of Bhagavan and as they felt

the continued Divine Presence at Tiruvannamalai, they began to regard it as a

promise full of love and solicitude. During the night of vigil a decision had to

be taken as to the burial. It had been thought that the body might be interred

in the new hall, but many devotees opposed the idea. They felt that the hall

was, in a sense, an adjunct to the temple and would make the shrine of Sri

Bhagavan seem subordinate to that of the Mother, reversing the true order of

things. Next day, by general agreement, a pit was dug and the body interred with

divine honours in the space between the old hall and the temple. The crowd,

packed tight, looked on in silent grief. No more the beloved face, no more the

sound of his voice; henceforth the lingam of polished black stone, the symbol of

Siva, over the tomb was the outer sign, and inwardly his footprints in the

heart.

 

Continued Presence

 

The crowds dispersed and the Ashram seemed an abandoned place, like a grate with

the fire gone out. And yet there was not the wild grief and despair that has so

often followed the departure of a Spiritual Master from earth. The normality

that had been so pronounced still continued. It began to be apparent with what

care and compassion Sri Bhagavan had prepared his devotees for this.

Nevertheless, during those first days and weeks of bereavement few cared to

remain at Tiruvannamalai, and some who would have cared to could not.

 

Many years previously a will had been drawn up stating how the Ashram was to be

run when the Master was no longer bodily present. A group of devotees took this

to Sri Bhagavan and he read it through very carefully and showed approval, after

which they all signed as witnesses. Briefly, it stated that puja (ritualistic

worship) should be performed at his tomb and that of the mother, that the family

of Niranjanananda Swami's son should be supported, and that the spiritual centre

of Tiruvannamalai should be kept alive.

 

Everywhere his Presence is felt, and yet there are differences of atmosphere.

Morning and evening there is parayanam (chanting of the Vedas) before the tomb,

as there used to be before his bodily presence, and at the same hours. As the

devotees sit there in meditation it is the same as when they sat before him in

the hall, the same power, the same subtlety of guidance. During parayanam, puja

is performed at the tomb and the 108 names of Bhagavan are recited. But in the

old hall is a softer, mellower atmosphere breathing the intimacy of his long

abidance.

 

 

 

This was a snip..

 

 

 

>From Mountain Path 1964