My Amritapuri Experience: Part 15

September 28, 2003

Continued from Part 14...

Many months ago in Part 14, I announced with needless flourish that I

would return to the chronological flow in my narration. Life

intervened, and I found myself unable to maintain the posting routine

that I had set for myself. I now return to post with your kind

indulgence. However, I feel the need to deviate from my stated intent

to stick to the time-line of events. In any case there is no gripping

story to tell; all I have to offer is a jumbled collection of

impressions. (There may not even be any audience; it may all be in my

head, but that is another matter. For the present, I shall hang on to

the soothing fiction that there is a readership out there) So no

matter how we proceed, chronologically or thematically, be warned

that tedium is likely to be your companion as you hack your way

through my thicket of words.

In the next few 'episodes' I plan to profile some of the individuals

I came across during my stay at Amritapuri. Although my interviews

were impromptu and weak in direction, some subjects ended up leaving

indelible impressions on my mind. On the whole, I came away with a

deep respect for and serious appreciation of the ashram life. My

objective in this exercise is going to be nothing more than simple

portraiture. In meetings that were totally unscripted, I came across

a number of individuals, some of whom I found to be remarkable. In

fleshing out these impressions I plan, in the main, to place before

you the same basic views that I experienced first hand. Expect

occasional light commentary but no other garnish with this offering.

Elements in these portraits that grate may be ascribed to the

impurities in my lens ie. my own biases and judgments.

"De Darshan Ma, Devi Ma

Ambe Ma, Bhavani Ma"

I am listening to this bhajan as I type. The invocation seems

appropriate. I hope She will guide me through this post. I don't even

know if I should be here. From pillar to post, that is the story of

my life.

I was introduced to a Brahmachari. Let me call him X1. The ostensible

reason for my being introduced to X1 was a degree of commonality in

our countries of origin/domicile. He hailed from country A and was

now settling down in India while I had migrated out of India and was

now domiciled in his erstwhile country.

X1 had been with Amma for nearly nine years at the time of my

encounter with him. His age was about the same as mine in biological

terms, but reckoned in Amma years, he was clearly my senior. On my

probing, he told me the story of how he came to be with Amma. When he

was 25ish in his original country, he was a regular young fellow.

Whatever 'regular' is usually taken to mean. He had not been

particularly inclined towards spirituality although his parents were

old-line religious, Hindu traditionalists. He himself had led

the 'good' life with girlfriends, alcohol, sports and other 'fun'

things being the order of the day. There seemed to be no overt

intellectual component to his personality either in his rendition of

the past, or in the present where I stood absorbing his account. I

envied his lack of intellectual baggage. For much of my life I have

forced myself to carry a ton of stuff - impressions, analysis,

doubts, theories and what not. It is only recently that I have come

to savour the virtues of travelling light like a business passenger.

Carry no check-in luggage, only a handbag with the bare essentials -

that is the new paradigm, but I am still working towards it.

One fateful day, in the 25th year of his otherwise average and

prototypical (of the average middle-class young adult in any country)

life, X1 happened to accompany his family to Amma's darshan program

in his city. X1 and his brother dropped their mother and sister off

at the darshan venue, while they waited outside by their car. They

were 'cool dudes' then and were not about to go in and hug any 'Guru'

character. They barely even knew what was going on inside the program

and did not really care. All they knew was, "Not our scene, man!",

and that was enough.

The mother and sister had gone into the hall and there seemed no sign

that they were about to come out any time soon. Smoking and fidgeting

with his car-keys, X1 had been waiting for them to come out, so he

could get on with his life. Growing more impatient, he put his

cigarette out and walked towards the entrance of the hall, to try and

locate his family and discover what was holding them up. At the

precise moment that he entered the hall, he saw a diminutive woman

dressed in a white sari enter with him. They were both poised to

enter the hall at nearly the same instant. She looked at him and he

looked at Her and that was it. She was AMMA and he was ZAPPED! He

told me that in that very instant he knew that he just had to be with

Her, that it was his destiny to follow Her. I marveled at how such

solid certainty could descend unceremoniously on the shoulders of

this young man, who had shown no signs up to that point of being a

fit or even likely receptacle for such Divine Grace. This was a real-

life example of life turning on a dime, an expression that I knew

previously only in a hackneyed, proverbial sense.

The contrast between X1 and my own life could not be starker. There

were similarities too, but we shall look at those later. Here I was,

frittering my forces in efforts to understand the world, applying my

puny intellect to squeeze a layman's understanding out of Bell's

Theorem, how the quantum world decoheres into the classical world and

such other arcana, and what did I have to show for all my

intellectual exertions? Not a thing! And here on the other hand was

X1, presenting a study in contrast. He might not care for

Schrodinger's Cat or tingle at the thought that mind might not just

reside in the brain but also be found in the body ('Molecules of

Emotion' by Dr. Candace Pert. Psst, I don't want to preen here, I

confess I have not read the book either) but he knew which end was

UP! I prostrated to X1, in my mind.

To be continued in Part 16...

Om Amriteshwaryai Namah

fg

September 28, 2003

-

faintglow

Ammachi

Sunday, September 28, 2003 3:46 AM

My Amritapuri Experience: Part 15

Dear Faint Glow,

You indeed do have an audience of at least one! You raised a question that I

continue to struggle with and posted last week: am I not awakening because I am

in my own way? I'm still struggling to find out why I have faith but apparently

not belief....and why, knowing that, do I continue to mentally rail against

whatI claim to want most?

I have great faith that Amma is indeed an avatar and I do know without doubt

that she is intervening in my life in myriad ways -and I know that, ultimately,

all I need to do is accept that as the young man you wrote about did. And yet,

my mind keeps crashing about trying to explain this to itself...sometimes I

laugh that I lived in the "Show Me" state too long. I am virtually unable, at

this point anyway, to let go of my mind and feel like the proverbial monkey who

gets trapped by a hunter when he refuses to let go of the peanut he's grasped so

he can withdraw his hand from the trap!!!!

Someone on the list agreed with me that enlightenment should (and apparently

does) occur in a moment - the old "in the twinkling of an eye." I get SO

frustrated because I know within my heart that this should be the absolute

easiest thing to do-it feels like there's a threshold and all I have to do is

take that one step across it and the whole issue will be resolved

-unfortunately, I either can't find the threshold at all, or I know exactly

where it is and what it is, but have, for some ungodly reason, decided to

dismantle and examine it bit by bit before I'll believe that it is indeed, THE

threshold! Intellectual baggage, I think, does indeed bite us in the butt...but

I feel like I continue to be tempted by every new piece of scientific Samsonite

that comes down the pike!

Does anyone else struggle with the "AHA! It really COULD be this way!"

syndrome while knowing full well that the statement should be "It IS this way -

case closed, deal sealed."

Namaste,

Dixie