Meeting the Master - Archive

Meeting the Master – Part 2

The sun slips below the horizon, outlines clean and sharp. The sky is reflected multi-coloured in the still clear water. Pollution hasn’t hit this place at this time.

Two weeks later – a time warp. I am in this mountain hill station called Matheran in the Ghats between Bombay and Poona. No road up there, no cars – only little horse-drawn buggies. Huge trees meet overhead and I walk everywhere under a canopy of green. The houses are pure British Raj. I feel like I am in history. I find a small hotel, check in and wander my way over to the ‘meditation ground’ – a big open space under the trees. It is evening. Stars sparkle through the leaves and branches, there is a soft silence – that magical mystique of India pervades. I am transported I am not sure where.

I look curiously at the other twelve westerners grouped together at one side of the 300 strong crowd of Indians. Everyone is dressed in orange and wears the locketed mala. Suddenly the excited chatter ceases and Bhagwan, dressed in a white lungi and shawl, steps onto the small platform and seats himself cross-legged. He gestures to the westerners to come closer and then begins to talk in Hindi. (Later he explains that it is good for the westerners to be close as it keeps us more alert. We might space out as we don’t understand anything!) I am captivated by his presence. He emits an air of peace and calm yet incredible vitality. And what he says seems to be very funny as the crowd is laughing continuously.

Suddenly I jerk upright. He is talking in English! Just for us thirteen people! He speaks simply but poetically and I am enthralled. Then he suddenly switches back to Hindi and I subside, bemused. For an hour and a half – without any notes – he keeps us all captive and I finally drift off to bed thinking this was not such a bad idea after all.

The next morning it is time for my first attempt at dynamic meditation. Bhagwan is sitting on a much higher platform now, seemingly to enable him to orchestrate events. He carefully instructs us on the procedure with a few asides in explanation.

Sounds OK to me. Before donning the blindfolds which have been handed out, I look around. Three hundred people are quite densely packed into the area. Could get hot, I think. I attack the breathing stage with energy. Takes some time to get the hang of it but after a few minutes I am hammering away at it as good as the next. Drums roll and it’s all OK. Then suddenly the drums stop, Bhagwan says something – and all hell breaks loose!

In shock I tear off my blindfold. The scene is like something out of an asylum. People going mad, tearing their clothes and their hair and screaming their heads off. I can’t believe it. What have I got myself into? My only thought is escape – and I run as fast as I can back to my hotel room. Panting I consider, and decide to get out while the going is good. I quickly pack my backpack, throw some rupees at the receptionist and run down to the train station. Frustration arises as I find escape is not so easy. There are only two trains a day. The next is at 6pm. It is now 11am. Well, I’m not going back so I sit down on my backpack and proceed to wait, alternately fuming and freaking out. Toby has left for Bali, I am all alone in India, and I don’t have enough money for a flight back to London. What do I do now?

Three hours later I am still waiting when an Indian sannyasin woman appears.

"Bhagwan says please come and see him," she says.

I am adamant I am not going back there so finally she gives up and leaves. Half an hour later an Italian woman appears with the same message, very insistent.

"Fuck Bhagwan and all of you!" I rage. "I am not going to see him!"

She gives up and leaves – only to return a second time. She tries to calm me down and tells me that Bhagwan doesn’t want me to stay, only to see him before I go.

I guess her persuasive skills are good – and it is hot and there are still another boring four hours to wait. I defiantly leave my backpack at the little station and return to a colonial-style bungalow with the usual surrounding veranda. At the entrance she melts away and I brave Bhagwan alone. He invites me to sit down and asks me what the matter is. Despite my fear and anger, I am still touched by the beauty of the man and I calm down enough to slowly articulate my feelings. He explains that what I had witnessed was simply the madness buried in every human being which needs to be thrown out before the healing of the psyche can begin. Well, such is his gift of the gab that I am convinced against my will. He asks me to stay another twenty-four hours and to come back at the same time the next day. If I feel the same as I do now, of course, he agrees, it is best I go. I tell him I am really afraid of the scene and that the Indians are too wild for me. He suggests I find a place on the outskirts of the crowd. "Find a nice tree!" he says.

Tired and upset I recheck into the little hotel, collect my backpack and go to sleep for the rest of the afternoon.

For the session of dynamic the next morning I distance myself as far as I can from the nearest person and start the breathing. By the madness stage a dead inertia seems to possess me and I have to lie down. This goes against my innate drive to conquer my fears and suddenly I hear a voice inside of me calling from my belly, "Bhagwan, help me. Please help me!" Before I can register the strangeness of this I find myself blasted with a kind of electric shock and I am up going mad with the rest of them. By the ‘hoo’ stage I am well into something my mind cannot fathom but it all feels OK so I keep on going. At the end I stagger back to my room wondering what had hit me and fall into a dead sleep.

Then I have a dream.

Bhagwan is at the end of my bed saying, "Wake up. You are supposed to come and see me."

I jump up, look at my watch. It is 2 o’clock exactly. I throw on my clothes and race up to the bungalow.

"Sorry, I’m late," I puff. "I overslept."

"I know," he says. "I called you."

Sitting in front of him on the floor I look at him in surprise. In slow motion he seems to disappear. I feel like I am disappearing too, floating into space. It feels beautiful so I just close my eyes and let it happen. I have no idea how long I sit there. All I am conscious of is a stillness and a light and an overwhelming feeling of total rightness. I am in the right place, in the right space, at the right time. It’s a kind of certainty, a kind of knowing, a kind of coming to an eternal home.

At his voice I wonderingly open my eyes.

"Well," he smiles. "You will stay?"

There is nothing else to do but nod my head.

The next day I get a message to please see him again at 2 o’clock. Seems like the witching hour for me! More assured, I meet him again. This time he is all down-to-earth business and it transpires that he wants me to take sannyas. This is too much to ask! As best I can while sitting cross-legged on the floor, I again draw myself up haughtily and inform him that I am an individual and I don’t join groups. He looks quizzically at me, sits back into his lecturing stance and proceeds to give me a discourse on why taking sannyas is not losing one’s individuality but gaining one’s real self. I remain unconvinced and show it. He stops in mid-flight and I can literally see the thoughts going through his head: hmmmm, wrong approach. This is the masculine logical approach and I’m dealing with a female. Have to try something else.

I maintain my ground while he seeks another way.

Then, "I have a beautiful name for you," he murmurs.

Shit! He’s found my weak point like an arrow hitting bull’s eye. I have always hated the name my mother gave me and since leaving home have changed it twice. It’s a big thing with me. But I still don’t feel right with the current name I have given myself – so my interest is provoked.

Resentful, however, at being hooked in spite of myself, I kind of growl, "What is it?" Not looking at him. Trying to keep my distance.

Totally undeterred, he starts to talk about the musical instrument called a veena. He says it is a rare instrument, difficult to play and chosen by the goddess Saraswati because, when it is played by a master, its sound is so sublime it will instil a state of euphoria, of bliss, of love, of meditation into all who listen.

"Your name will be Prema Veena," he says. "You will be my instrument. Through you many people will be helped to meditate."

As I gaze at him I feel myself being suffused with a sense of absolute love; a kind of love I have hitherto never encountered. I realise I am in the presence of a being and an energy far beyond my small perceptions and understanding and I am overwhelmed with an enormity of vision which I can only glimpse, guess at. My head bows in abject humbleness. For the first time I touch his feet as the Indians do. It is the only way I can give some expression to what I feel. I am honoured to be in this presence; I am grateful to be allowed to be here.

And I know with total clarity that I have a place and a purpose in this universe and that it is he that will be able to point me in the right direction – until my understanding of the mystery of myself and the existence is complete.

The mala round my neck glows with beauteous light and grace as I stumble back to my little hotel room.