"For Those with Little Dust."

[Guest guest]

"Bhagavan was affable and courteous to all visitors. He expressed no

pontifical solemnity in his exposition. On the contrary, his speech,

whether on daily affairs or on doctrine was vivacious and full of laughter.

So infectious was his laughter that even those who did not know Tamil would

spontaneously join in.

 

"Right up to the end he joked, and yet his jokes also bore instruction.

When the doctors were alarmed to see a new tumour pushing up during his

final sickness, he said, laughing, "Why do you worry? Its nature is to come

up." When a woman beat her head against a post outside his room in grief,

despite his insistence that the body's death was no cause for grief, he

listened for a moment and then said, "Oh, I thought somebody was trying to

break a coconut." A devotee asked why his prayers weren't answered, and

Bhagavan replied, laughing, 'If they were, you might stop praying.'

 

"His face was like the face of water, always changing and yet always the

same. He would be laughing and talking, then he would turn graciously to a

small child or hand a nut to a squirrel that hopped onto his couch from the

window, or his radiant wide-open eyes would shine with love upon some

devotee who had just arrived or was taking leave. Then, in silence a moment

later, his face would be rock-like, eternal in its grandeur.

 

"The love that shone in his eyes, the luminous understanding, cannot be

described. Someone came to the Ashram broken down with the hopeless grief

of bereavement, and after hearing his story, Bhagavan simply looked, no word

spoken, and peace flooded the visitor's soul."

 

(from "For Those with Little Dust." Arthur Osborne, pp49-50.)