siddhas - Tumblr blog

[siddhas]

It’s 3rd October 1982. I woke up confused.

I am finding it very difficult to about about that day. So I’ll just tell what happened. There were not a lot of people at the ashram when I arrived in late September 1982, and Baba had been sending some people away all week, so there were even fewer people now.  The dormitory where I was sleeping was almost empty. Each day at 3:30am a drum was beaten to wake us up so we could commence the daily schedule of meditation, chanting, work, and of course, eating. I had only been there a few days and had not acclimatised to the early rising, so when on the morning of Sunday 3rd October I in until about 6am I woke confused. 

Why had there been no drum? And what was that slow mournful chant I could hear? I got up and went looking for answers.

I splashed water on my face and went to join my hatha yoga class but it seemed to have been cancelled. So I wandered up to the source of the chanting. I found the hall (Guru Chauk?) full of people chanting the slowest version of “Om namo Bhagavate Nityanandaya” I had ever heard. I sat and joined them, blissfully unaware of what had happened.

I must have chanted for 60 minutes or so when I saw a friend stand up and walk out. I got up and followed him. He had been staying at the ashram longer than I had (this was my first Sunday there) and I asked him, “Do they always do this on Sundays?”

He looked at me aghast. “Haven’t you heard? Baba has left his body!”

“What?” I asked, “Has he died?” 

My friend could not answer. He did not have the heart to say. But it all made sense. The mournful chanting, the general mood. It was not a normal Sunday at all.

At some point in the night the other ashramites had been awakened and told to come and chant, but apparently because I was sleeping in an empty dorm I had been overlooked.

There were mixed feelings everywhere. Many people were in denial. “He has done this before,” some claimed, saying he was just in samadhi and would come out of it soon. Many were distraught. I felt a strange peace and elation. The day before, Baba had told me today was going to be a big day and it seemed this was why. 

Soon the doors to Baba’s rooms were opened and we all filed by his body, which was propped up in padmasana, draped in rudraksha malas and garlands of flowers. His body looked collapsed, empty. He was not coming back.

Throughout that day hundreds of people arrived. Soon the ashram was crowded. I spent the day going in and out of the chant, sitting in the cave to meditate, and wandering around the ashram. I chanted the Gurugita. I sat at the feet of the statue of Tukaram for what seemed a lifetime. I don’t remember if I ate at all. The day was long. Now I write about this, for the first time since that day, I really have no words to describe what it was like. But I feel the peace and timelessness again. 

I remembered Baba had told me to go home so I was determined to do so. But he said to wait a day, so I did. The chant continued. At some point it changed to “Om namo Bhagavate Muktanandaya” and the tempo picked up a little. I had no sadness at all. The guru had left one body and entered many. 

[siddhas]

37 years ago.

I hope you don’t mind if I tell a story. It seems very close today ...It’s October 2nd here. Approaching midday...

37 years ago I was in India at the ashram of Swami Muktananda, aka Baba. I had only been there a few days and had intended to stay for several weeks; months even. Baba was not there when I arrived. He was in Kashmir.

I clearly remember my first sight of him when he returned. He was not wearing his teeth and he looked old and tired. Not the smiling Baba of puja photos.

The next few days I was very fortunate to have several close encounters with him. I am a vet and so was assigned to work in the cowshed. One of the cattle, apparently Baba’s favourite, was unwell. There was no veterinary equipment and very limited drugs, but I tried to help her as best I could. Baba would visit her every day and took a close interest in my treatment of her. I remember standing with him talking about the cows and his look of concern and warm smile to me, complete wth teeth now! Being so close to him was electrifying.

So this morning, 2nd October 1982, I started hatha yoga classes. I was not good at it. I am tall and stiff in my body - always have been. At Guru Gita Baba chastised us for poor chanting. In afternoon darshan I spoke with him and told him I was thinking of going home earlier than planned. My original intention had been to stay for many weeks, months even, but a thought had grown on me to maybe only stay one month.

He applauded my intention, and told me, “Yes, your sadhana is your family and your profession.” He went on to say, quite emphatically, “Don’t go tomorrow. Tomorrow will be a big day. Lots of people will come to the ashram. Go the next day.”

I asked a few people what was happening tomorrow and no one had a clue.

Also that day he showed us a movie. They got out a big old 16mm projector and we watched a movie about Bhagawan Nityananda’s mahasamadhi. He was preparing us, but we didn’t know.

...

I’ll write some more tomorrow.

[siddhas]

A biography of Maurice Frydman.

[siddhas]

Nityānanda of Ganeshpuri.

[siddhas]

Nisargadatta Maharaj.

[siddhas]

Tukārām on Flickr.

All men to me are god-like Gods! My eyes no longer see vice or fault. Life on this suffering earth is now endless delight; the heart at rest, full, overflowing. In the mirror, the face and its reflection — they watch each other; different, but one. And, when the stream pours into the ocean… no more stream! - Sānt Tukārām Tukārām was a poet-saint of 17th Century Mahārāshtra. This statue of him is on the grounds of Swami Muktānanda’s ashram in Ganeshpuri, India. I post this now because I just read about him and remembered I had this photo somewhere… So I went and found it. A Kodachrome I took on Sunday 3rd October 1982, just hours after Muktānanda’s mahāsamādhi, or death of the physical body. I was staying in the ashram at the time. Camera was an Olympus OM-2. Lens unknown but likely a Zuiko 50/1.8. Film Kodachrome 64.

[siddhas]

Nisargadatta Maharaj - “I shall tell you how my Guru’s Guru died. After announcing that his end was nearing, he stopped eating, without changing the routine of his daily life. On the eleventh day, at prayer time he was singing and clapping vigorously and suddenly died! Just like that, between two movements, like a blown out candle. Everybody dies as he lives. I am not afraid of death, because I am not afraid of life. I live a happy life and shall die a happy death. Misery is to be born, not to die. All depends how you look at it.”

[siddhas]

Nisargadatta Maharaj, "I am that" - Ch. 1.

The Sense of "I am"

Questioner: It is a matter of daily experience that on waking up the world suddenly appears. Where does it come from?

Maharaj: Before anything can come into being there must be somebody to whom it comes. All appearance and disappearance presupposes a change against some changeless background.

Q: Before waking up I was unconscious.

M: In what sense? Having forgotten, or not having experienced? Don't you experience even when unconscious? Can you exist without knowing? A lapse in memory: is it proof of non-existence? And can you validly talk about your own non-existence as an actual experience? You cannot even say that your mind did not exist. Did you not wake up on being called? And on waking up, was it not the sense "I am" that came first? Some seed consciousness must be existing even during sleep, or swoon. On waking up the experience runs: "I am - the body - in the world." It may appear to arise in succession but in fact it is all simultaneous, a single idea of having a body in a world. Can there be the sense of "I am" without being somebody or other?

Q: I am always somebody with memories and habits. I know no other "I am".

M: Maybe something prevents you from knowing? When you do not know something which others know, what do you do?

Q: I seek the source of their knowledge under their instruction.

M: Is it not important to you to know whether you are a mere body, or something else? Or, maybe nothing at all? Don't you see that all your problems are your body's problems - food, clothing, shelter, family, friends, name, fame, security, survival - all these lost their meaning the moment you realise that you may not be a mere body.

Q: What benefit is there in knowing that I am not the body?

M: Even to say that you are not the body is not quite true. In a way you are all the bodies, hearts and minds and much more. Go deep into the sense of "I am" and you will find. How do you find a thing you have mislaid or forgotten? You keep it in your mind until you recall it. The sense of being, of "I am" is the first to emerge. Ask yourself whence it comes, or just watch it quietly. When the mind stays in the "I am", without moving, you enter a state which cannot be verbalised but can be experienced. All you need to do is try and try again. After all the sense "I am" is always with you, only you have attached all kinds of things to it - body, feelings, thoughts, ideas, possessions etc. All these self-identifications are misleading. Because of them you take yourself to be what you are not.

Q: Then what am I?

M: It is enough to know what you are not. You need not know what you are. For, as long as knowledge means description in terms of what is already known, perceptual, or conceptual, there can be no such thing as self-knowledge, for what you are cannot be described, except as total negation. All you can say is: "I am not this, I am not that". You cannot meaningfully say "this is what I am". It just makes no sense. What you can point out as "this" or "that" cannot be yourself. Surely you cannot be "something" else. You are nothing perceivable, or imaginable. Yet, without you there can be neither perception nor imagination. You observe the heart feeling, the mind thinking, the body acting; the very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive. Can there be perception, experience, without you? An experience must "belong". Somebody must come and declare it as his own. Without an experiencer the experience is not real. It is the experiencer that imparts reality to experience. An experience which you cannot have, of what value is it to you?

Q: The sense of being an experiencer, the sense of "I am", is it not also an experience?

M: Obviously, everything experienced is an experience. And in every experience there arises the experiencer of it. Memory creates the illusion of continuity. In reality each experience has its own experiencer and the sense of identity is due to the common factor at the root of all experiencer-experience relations. Identity and continuity are not the same. Just as each flower has its own colour, but all colours are caused by the same light, so do many experiencers appear in the undivided and indivisible awareness, each separate in memory, identical in essence. This essence is the root, the foundation, the timeless and spaceless "possibility" of all experience.

Q: How do I get at it?

M: You need not get at it, for you are it. It will get at you, if you give it a chance. Let go your attachment to the unreal and the real will swiftly and smoothly step into its own. Stop imagining yourself being or doing this or that and the realisation that you are the source and heart of all will dawn upon you. With this will come great love which is not choice or predilection, nor attachment, but a power that makes all things love-worthy and lovable.