India Journal 2005, part 7
by
Yogacharya David Hickenbottom

Later in the day Carla was relating that in a book she was reading about Master how the author made some comments about something Master had said. Master was talking about saints who visited him on a regular basis. Master said, “Wherever God is, there His saints come.” The author interpreted this saying of Master’s in a literal, outward way; that Master was God.

However, there is a universal way of thinking of this saying, “Wherever God is; there His saints come.” Certainly, whenever there is spiritual love and vibration permeating the air, God’s lovers, both with and without physical bodies, are drawn.

Of course God is not a physical being, but the universal spiritual Consciousness. It is the greatest miracle that God resides within the Being of each man and can be consciously realized!

Master, realizing his oneness with God, felt every aspect of his Being to be one with Him. Every thought, every feeling, every cell of his body resonated with Divine Consciousness.

Lovers of God and those who have attained their oneness with God will feel the charged environment of such a one.

How tremendous this experience of God is, cannot be said in so many words. But when that God-experience comes then, “the stones themselves will sing out” that sacred vibration. Indeed all creation is seen to be alive with Divinity.

Those who are lovers of God must be drawn to one who is so saturated with Him, such as Master, in thought, energy and body.

Om Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram

Evening Satsang: Here evening is known as occurring approximately between 4:00 and 7:30 p.m., sunset to complete darkness. In the tropics darkness comes quite soon after the sunset.

Swamiji moved today to Guru Prasad Building. He has had a cold and has obviously had less physical energy.

Devotees were invited just before sunset to come out on the back porch of Guru Prasad Building. Here was a beautiful setting as thirty to forty devotees gathered at the Master’s feet. They have made it their custom now to bring me a chair. Usually I am placed next to Swamiji, but due to the press of the enclosed space I was placed on the opposite side of the porch.

Several times Swamiji’s eyes gazed in my direction accompanied by the sweetest of smiles. An ashram devotee next to me suggested, “You should start Ram Nam.” I said, “I prefer the silence.” Indeed, peace and silence pervaded the air and was in command of me.

Then Swamiji gave a discourse, the first he had given since our coming on what real silence is. Not the silence of the mouth only, but silence of the mind as well. Devotee: “Swamiji, one can be silent when alone, but in a household there are so many demands, this person asks this, someone else asks that, what can you do?” Swamiji (with a smile), “Sew your lips shut!” (Laughter.)

What a charming scene: the setting sun turning red on the horizon, a hush-full peace filled the air, the Master with all his devotee-bees filled with the nectar of his presence. It was bliss itself.

Victory to Swamiji, Victory to the Light!

February 2
Swamiji came out again and sat facing Mataji’s mandir at the time of its closing. He then rolled on to the goshala as we trailed behind; always content just to be with him.

There I saw Shivananda Das, after we had had a wonderful conversation a few days before. “I feel such joy, so light since we talked” he said. His face glowed as we stood near the fields of growing grass, fresh feed for the dairy cows. I am touched that Grace has reached down to touch this sincere sadhaka, and its power to transform consciousness is always great.

Some ladies came running in order to join the retinue, Dr. Vimala among them. I said to her, “The gopis heard the call.” “Yes, when Swami Muktananda finished closing the Mandir he said we should all join Swamiji, but by the time we got to where Swamiji had been, he moved; we finally found him here.”

*(Gopis- reference to the ladies who dropped everything to go out and meet Krishna.)

Swamiji returned to the Banyan tree and we all sat on the ground in front of him. Once again a chair was produced next to Swamiji, I was asked to move from the ground to the chair. I was given the book, “Stories of Swami Ramdas” to read from, but Swamiji did not refer to me reading after he asked for it. Then he asked for all to chant Ram Nam.

Such a beautiful chorus of Ram Nam began, so loving. As I chanted with the men in alternation with the women it felt to me a healing vibration was invigorating Swamiji’s body.

Papa has assured us that the name of God is all-powerful. This occasion of being with Swamiji seemed designed to bring to bear all the love and power of the name for the rejuvenation of his body so sorely taxed by the burden it carries.

May the all-powerful Name bring its healing strength to Swamiji!

Oh Swamiji
Darling of our hearts
You draw our attention
To God and Gurus alone
Your selfless service
Purifies the world
And makes us clean
In Infinite Love
Hari Om!

February 3
The wonderful Azziz came to visit God in this form once again.

Azziz: I ask for your Grace that I might attain realization—(pronamming at my feet).

David: Grace is already present; you have only to open the door. Faith opens the door; doubt closes it.

Azziz: Then give me your Grace to remove my doubts.

David: As I said, Grace is already there; it has stirred you to seek God. It is like a pebble in your shoe, it will not leave you undisturbed. Others do not care about God at all. You have a pain in your heart that seeks God, liberation—that is good; it is a sign of Grace at work. The thing you must do is to seek God—that opens the door. Think on your Master; Grace flows to you through your thoughts, your faith and your love: these open the door of Grace even further.

Azziz: I don’t see God in everyone—I have a superiority complex—I see some as lower than me. Give me Grace to see God in everyone.

David: First practice seeing God in everyone. That does not mean you greet everyone you see on the street or invite them home to dinner. See that it is God underneath the mask of every person you see.

Papa told the story: a mother was telling her child some stories. The mother thought it would add to the story telling to wear masks. So one day she donned a scary mask while telling the story. At first the child was really frightened by the mask, and then the child thought, “I think that is my mother behind the mask!” The child reached up and slowly pulled down the mask. And what did the child see? The smiling face of its mother!

Azziz: Oh—that is a wonderful story.

David: Yes. Likewise learn to see it is your Divine Mother, God, who is behind the mask of every person you meet. At first it is a practice of the mind, later the Reality is that you see God in everyone, in everything, in the air surrounding you, within your heart as well.

February 3
Each morning in the flower ceremony there are five stations in the Bhajan inner sanctum that I bow to. A separate prayer at each station issues from my mind. The first station is a lighted lamp in a glass box.

      “Oh Purusha (light of my Being) Ever illumine
 my Ajna”

Next is a round lotus carving.

   “Oh Sahaswara* realization. Open fully the petals of
 Thy Infinite realization.”

(*Sahaswara:  the thousand petaled lotus at the crown chakra, top of the head.)

Then comes Papa’s bones stored in a box of marble. 

“Oh, Name of God, may you so saturate my body and being, that your purity will permeate the very bones of     my body.”

(One of Papa’s bones has the sign of Om in its cracks).

I come next to a carved lotus with Papa’s feet in the middle.

“Oh Purushottama (complete Godman, with and
       without form, symbolized by the lotus and the feet).
        May I be Thy full manifestation.”

Finally Mataji’s feet in the lotus.

“Oh Mataji, bless me that I render perfect service
               with body, heart, mind and soul.”

Five prayers for the five stations.

Today a “fever” has come to visit. Fever is a “convenient” word for what is occurring. The cells of the body feel as if each one is a tiny sun burning in a purification rite.

I welcome the fever as a favored guest, though I also welcome a wet rag on my head and the cooling fan above me as my other guests as well!

These mysterious workings of some inner power and intelligence sometimes make their purpose known, sometimes not. Whatever the purpose, I feel their purifying presence, that is enough.

While chanting in the mandir I am aware of the power of the Name. The vibration of “Om Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram” is transmitted to every part of my body. The cells in my spine, my hands and feet; in every part of the body I feel the Name. The Aura of the Name expands to fill the mandir so that every part of the room sings with the Name.

All singers, some in harmony and some in dissonance, are included in this unifying consciousness. The walls, ceiling and floor lose their materiality and merge into an expanding light and Bliss. What joy there is in the Name!

Bliss is Thy Name: Light, Love and expanding Joy! A devotee can dive in and swim in the ocean of Bliss as a fish swims naturally in its ocean. The fish cannot know the full extent of the ocean, but it knows what it is like to swim in it; so to does the devotee know the ocean of Bliss.

Then unlike the fish, the devotee may dissolve into the ocean, feeling itself as dimensionless Being; a knowing oneness with all that is.

Nirguna is that formless aspect of God, Spirit without limitation. Saguna is Spirit as form. Like a hand in a glove, Nirguna permeates everything we see. Once we establish ourselves in the Nirguna aspect of God we then see it is that same spiritual consciousness that has manifested Itself as all creation, the Saguna.

In this way the vision is completely purified. Seer and seen are known to be one blissful expression of the Divine.

Azziz visited me again today; he wants to send a car for me to meet his family (he had brought them all here the week before, from Kaunur, 2 hours each way, when Carla and I were in Coimbatore.) He had rushed here, thinking this was my last day (I had said that I would be here at least until the 3rd.) 

Azziz told me this story of his Guru, Sri M:

When Sri M was 8 years old he met a saint who walked up to him and said, “I am your Guru. Just stay where you are now, I will meet you later.”

When Sri M was 20 years old he was in the Himalayas. He was hiking in that area—it was starting to get dark and he decided not to go further. He looked for a place to rest when he spied a cave.

Sri M entered the cave and saw the same yogi he had met when he was eight years old. Sri M calls his Master Babaji (Assiz assures me this is a different Babaji than our Guru-lineage.) Then Sri M looked around the cave for a place to sit for meditation. He tried one place, then another; neither felt right. Finally on the third try he felt comfortable and settled down. Babaji, watching all this, broke into laughter. He said, “That is the exact spot you meditated in this very cave in your previous life!”

He lived with his Master in that cave for three years.

 Today while I was carrying hot water down to our room a lady on the balcony pointed to a man also standing on the balcony. “He had a miracle today!”

“Yes,” he said, “I was on a bus; it had a head-on collision with a lorry (a large truck.) Suddenly the bus was going down a steep ravine, off the road. I said loudly, three times, ‘Papa, Papa, Papa.’ No one was hurt on the bus but for a few cuts and bruises. I have just a bruise on my leg,” he said ecstatically.

“They were fortunate to have someone on the bus chanting Papa’s name,” I said.

Jai Papa, Jai Papa!

I had a lot of electrical heat in my body today. Only later this afternoon did it abate, when Azziz arrived. This is the first I have had of this kind of heat since coming to India, each cell a burning sun, a purification rite of the first order!

Strangely, when talking to Chandra, she said how Swamiji was suffering from an unexplainable heat until this afternoon when they rubbed his body with Ayurvedic oil.

What to make of this? Ram knows.

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