Sand

1996, we are offered satsang in ShantiMayi’s garden daily. I always take care to be early for satsang, drinking in the scene that so timelessly calls upon my heart’s desire: The desire to realize the essential nature from within. In fact, the word “desire” is far to casual to cover my deep, deep longing. I have heard ShantiMayi use the word “tapasia” for this essential thirst of the heart.
Anyway, I am burning beyond what words can explain……that is certain.

All my senses are sharpened to the extreme when ShantiMayi starts speaking. I wish to extract the sacred message, and am dedicated to extract it NOW! Some words are resonating so deeply, as if they stand out in the sentences she speaks.

I hear:
What you truly are, is unchanging, ungraspable, unspeakable, unmoving and beyond comprehension. The essence is same in all, all pervasive, omnipresent and resides in the silence of the Heart beyond concepts.

These words keep circling and circling with the intensity of a bolt of lightning. My mind is raging like a storm to grasp what she is saying: This must me “it”. I feel like I am exploding and without taking in consideration my “turn” to speak, I exclaim: “Where is it?!!”
ShantiMayi’s head shifts into my direction in an instant. Her eyes represent the same lightning intensity. I hear Her say: “It is not mental gymnastics, you are sitting in it!”
I am dumfounded and grasp the sand where I am sitting on with both hands as if this were my last anchor point. I make a firm decision: I will not leave this spot before I see what She is speaking about. When I am sitting in it, I would be sitting in it everywhere. Why move an inch? And so I sit… and sit…. not caring about anything, anyone or any time.
I simply sit and am ready to keep seated forever. One notion was lingering in the back of my mind: ShantiMayi would be guarding. This notion gives me the last peaceful push to rest in my decision.

The next thing I am aware of is a light ray. It comes from a torch. As time must have been passing by, the night fell, and ShantiMayi shines her torch from her veranda on me without saying anything. I do not react; it is just a passing experience, and I disappear into a void again: timeless no-thing-ness. In this timeless-no-thing-ness, a pristine transparent awareness surfaces; completely impersonal. Un-named sounds without direction or meaning are perceived: Sounds of Silence in Boundless Eternal Awareness.

“How is Ambani?” Another sound… in silence….
Again: “How is Ambani?” Some “form” is coming to that sound; a notion of “meaning”. Yes, this must mean something. I notice that someone stands next to me… a human being; yes must be human. I realize that this is ShantiMayi, and She is my Guru and She is asking a question. It needs to be answered. Ambani? Ambani? My mind is searching quickly to find an answer. Do I know someone by that name? It sounds familiar.
Yes, now I remember, it is the name of one of my daughters…
Forms, time, relations, mother-daughter, it all comes back slowly slowly, in a very detached way. “Ambani is fine”, I reply with a neutral voice.
ShantiMayi disappears in the silence of the night as unseen as she came.

By “calling me back” she has thought me a Great Teaching.
I realized that Her message had been to see that the silent, unmoving essence is Pure Awareness and does not know any contradiction as it cannot be touched or grasped by whatever appearance. Awareness permeates all realms of consciousness and is not ‘more’ or ‘less’ by sitting unmoving. It includes motherhood and all other concepts without being touched by anything.

I am getting carefully on my feet, barely able to get my body moving.
All forms appear to be transparent. I feel as stable as a grain of sand in a desert storm… nothing to hold on to… all is passing in silence: stable silence.

I feel completely drunk while walking to my room…..
Drunk of the Divine…

Nothing to grasp… and all to be.

Jivanjili