THE GREAT TRANSISTION Part 1

[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 a direct, 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 (world famous - michael bindel) reporter of a large American magazine (LIFE mb) 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 pressphotographer.

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 pressphotographer 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 placedgarlanded 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: The word “I am not going away. Where could I go? I am here.”

The word ‘here’ 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 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.

 

 

End of Part 1

To be continued

 

 

 

THE MOUNTAIN PATH

(Quarterly)

Editor: Arthur Osborne

L1 JANUARY 1964 No 1