Portrait of the Artist
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Monthly Archives: June 2012
Fountain
Being the Tree of Life – the fountain breath
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Grail trees – jhvh – a woodland sanctuary
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My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.
This blog is a vehicle to promote my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books) – along with many other creations in house.
I write, illustrate, design and print my books. Watch this space.
The Tree of Life, with Robert’s teaching
The Tree of Life is my working vessel in the school of the soul. Kabbalah means “receive” and also “balance”. Ain Sof is “without end”. Ten emanations from the One Source, follow the lightning flash down the polarities of the Tree of Life, to earth. These are the pillars of Solomon; the centre stem is Consciousness. The hebrew letters are the hieroglyphs or musical notes of the Paths. After I met Robert Adams in 1996, I put his realisation or way of being (in essence – the Three Virtues, the Three Vessels, and the Four Principles) – on the Tree of Life.
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My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.
This blog is a vehicle to promote my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books) – along with many other creations in house.
I write, illustrate, design and print my books. Watch this space.
Dark Brown is the River
Paper hat boat, 1988
26 June 2012
My boat on the brook – dark brown is the river, golden is the sand … – is a paper one, the little folded hats I launch, to flow and float downstream.
I have a vision, a song, a full journey to the sea: each one we are absorbed in one little thought; they two are universe-i … a vast and private matter.
(See the Avatamsaka Tower sutra in my earlier blog.)
Small whorls turn softly in the brown brook, ever flowing, ever welling from the hill’s heart – they are galaxies. Being identified with “flow”, it is not surprising that pain/blood episodes flow too, until they fade.
The water now – the ripple-crescents are soundless, deep and free of think.
Who am I? A little twig, little particle carries essential dharmas, and is the waters to the sea. The waters to the sea, carrying I, are all and every I. This thread is read in the “library” in a House of the Psyche – but the silence feels it. IS.
Bindhu point contains every circle of sound.
Like a lighthouse, like a bell or percussion, like a growth of tree’s yearly ring, it pulses and resounds. The river moves, trembles and merges as the One. This is everywhere with the rain. In the heart from whence it pours, it vanishes. There is infinitely room for more.
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Portrait of Robert
To Robert, a Sage in Arizona – PART TWO
This is the story of a pilgrimage in 1996 to Robert Adams – PART TWO. He died the following year. Born in New York, he “woke” into the atoms at 14, during a school math class. Then he met Yogananda. In early 1950, still in his teens, he went to India, sat with Ramana Maharshi (December 1879-April 1950) and ran wild on Arunachala for a while. Back home, he became a silent and reclusive wanderer, but people always found him again, so he taught them Self-enquiry. The drawings and portraits in this memoire, are all posthumous – done shortly after his mahasamadhi. People were very generous, and gave me photos – around Robert, these were rare.
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Robert and Friend
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Give the gift to Him. As soon as I fall to silence, love comes.
Mr Swiftie took his passengers along a long and very bumpy road around the mountain fringes of the Secret Wilderness. We would not have time on this visit to explore the Secret Trail itself, which is quite long. We walked up instead through a pine forested dry valley trail to Vultee Arch, a single web strand of sandstone stretched by the wind over a precipitous gully. Ja clambered up the steep hillside to sit on it and take a photograph. Aj lay down comfortably at the foot of a tree to sleep.
Returning to Sedona, Aj and Mr Swiftie dropped Ja off at the end of Soldiers Pass Road so she could go for an adventure on the “Coffee Pot Vortex”, and then prospect a better way back to the tent from there, than she’d managed the day before. This rock, which is more like an Indian eagle, is spectacular, leading a row of terracotta pinnacles out from the “Thunder Mountain” like giant molars set in a landscaped jaw bone. At first it seemed very difficult to reach. Ja had not consulted the map, and was set down at the wrong place, and had to negotiate a settlement of pretty painted villas.
But then I sat quiet for a bit, and gave in. Just as I was about to walk home, I spotted some small friendly stone signals which, when followed one to another, some of them difficult to find, led me back, up and through to the wonderful high place with the setting sun glowing through it. The terrain everywhere is a mixture of stony red earth and hills, with a varying density of green juniper and impoverished conifers, and you have to watch out for cacti. It is navigable in the cross-country sense, but the strong ecological consciousness of the region makes me want to keep to the paths, wherever there are any.
The earth is red, dry and gritty, but looks and feels as if it recently received the dew. It is hard to tell in places like this, which are human paths, and which were made by a coyote or mountain lion, which follow no human sense of purpose. But a gentle pilgrim had left, to blaze the trail, a small pile of two or three stones in every doubtful place, to beckon and direct. It uplifted me, like finding an angel, to come upon this, and lean upon the enchanting guidance. The adventure around and along the contour of the glorious great rock at twilight, was secret, privileged and beautiful. The cross country hike back to our tent, encountering some deep feline footprints, was lit by a silver splendour of shredded storm. In the night there was strong wind, rain and sleety ice. It was noisy in the tent.
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Every morning, just before sunup, we hear the coyotes in dawn chorus, a haunting cacophony of little shrill barks and howls. It is rather a wonderful sound, as soon as I know it is not a kennel. We saw a coyote at night, lean and grey, crossing the suburban road. Nobody worries about rattlesnakes, as they are very shy, and so are the mountain lion and bobcat. The ring of bright mountains is no limit to the wilderness. All the Arizona desert is there. Solid birds of bright plumage chaff one another solemnly in the juniper, and large rabbits go about their business.
We explored many long trails. We visited Cathedral Rock. I enjoyed another long and arduous rocky climb, while Aj snoozed gently with Gems from Bhagavan near the waters in the shade. Cathedral Rock is much bigger than it looks: the ascent up the massive rugged shoulders to where the pillars begin to soar like organ pipes, was guided by discreet cairns from place to space. The sunshine blossomed bright with birdsong, and melted pockets of snow. One night as we turned in – the comet is moving away now – I noticed the exceptional brilliance of the evening star. Her gloaming brightness shone greater than Jupiter. She catches a spark of the hidden Sun in her web.
Starlight points to Self-light, and at moments among my sleep I saw this Star on a clear and soft blue radiance, like that which falls among the hills at twilight. The Star and hint of elven blue – like the moon blue lotus of Ramana’s look in Ramana Gita – help me to Self remember. Aj is astonished at himself. He has not read one of the dozen or so books he brought with him, and they are still tied up in a bundle in the tent. He wrote, “As everybody starts early here, in Robert’s Kingdom of Sedonia, where even the ordinary citizens behave like hobbits in a childrens’ picture book, greeting all and everyone whenever they pass, we landed outside the Satsang house at 6pm, to get a place upfront … “
They played a wordless voice to God, like a bird and a cello, a Yogananda song. There were readings, pointedly, from Arthur Osborne, Lex Hickson on Zen, and Rumi. Robert entered the room in a white tracksuit, shades and no cap, reached for the mike and began his bird song: the sphurana began to glow… At the end of Satsang, Robert announced – through Richard – “a special warm welcome for Ja and Aj, our visitors from Ramana Foundation in England, they are the editors of the quarterly journal Self Enquiry, and it is a wunnerful magazine” – Richard held up a copy of the Winter issue. I was in no condition to deal with the sudden stampede for new Subs – had come to Robert’s Satsang without address book, receipt or pen …
At Dennys, which is open all night, we enjoyed the company of Mrs Rich, an old flame of Robert’s from LA. She came and sat with us affectionately, dressed all in white, with white hair, white straw hat, face like an old apple, and round blue eyes. She seems to be a lady of some mobility and means, and said she is a Desert Person really. She is not fond of valleys or water, and needs to build her new house high up on the mesa. As a visit to Poonjaji is on our vague agenda, Mrs Rich beamed at us, opened her purse, and gave us ten dollars. Aj contorted into a polite British “No please, really.” “Go on, go on honey, take it, it’s a Present!”
We retired to our tent behind Keren’s, much refreshed by the Sedona Night Life.
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We saw some art in the local galleries. The standard varied, but helped me to perceive more clearly how holy these rocks and sky are, in the native-Amerikan spiritual culture, as subtle intermediaries, half creature, half angel. Eagles, coyotes and legendary medicine men soar out of the “crack between the worlds.” These rocks have homely and banal domestic-American names, but a hundred years ago they were cryptic messengers and gods in the wild wilderness – no houses, roads or Safeways – and I review the Mystery. The script is written by the wind in the stone. Sedona is a place of power, now settled by affluent New Age soothsayers. Any settlement here, breathes in the colour of the land, its geology and colliding frames of the Dream Time consciousness. As I read all the Carlos Castaneda books at an early stage in my sadhana, I recognize the Sonora desert resonances of not-doing and seeing the space between the leaves. Any sensitive sojourn here, involves a great deal more than just looking at the view.
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At supper, someone took my camera and kindly snapped me trying to understand Robert’s whisper in my ear, through the jolly voices all around. Robert said Don’t publish pictures of him in our Journal; then the words from him began to fade, to run together indistinct, like the rain, and I couldn’t hear. Could it possibly be “you can camp in our garden next time”? Again and again the words, the husky, rapid whispered sound from wide eyes of a fearless child who has all the time, urgency and endless patience in the world to make me understand, a word at a time, but I still can’t understand, I’m so sorry. Is this physically painful for him? Then he smiles and lets it go for now. Some things translate only with pain and diffculty into the crude cradle of speech or writing. The universe has something to spell, and I am distracted by the sounds of the table.
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There was some lively discussion around Robert, that with “I-am-no-body”, the preordained idea of our physicality disappears. Everything is preordained, and set up so long as we are identified with our mind-body’s Karma. As soon as this identification discontinues, then there is no preordination, nothing. This moment changes everything.
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One of our new friends – Rolfing Rob – invited us to come for a hike with him and his dog Wolfie. We followed him to his rented house for him to change into his blue baseball hat, bumbag, clean socks and sneakers. He emerged like an angel, carrying water. We left the cars in Dry Creek wilderness, and climbed a very steep and little used trail towards Lost Canyon. We never saw Lost Canyon, because we had a wonderful time on the path, doing Douglas Harding experiments. Only a star can perceive a star. Atoms. Every word we say comes straight from the Sun – think of that! The Sun speaks through the food-chain hierarchy. He that is in you … now feel in here the endless, bottomless no-centre of His radiance. We also practiced Forest walking – attending to the seer who smooths out the bumps – and Upside-down-ness on the precipitous path. Aj fell down and sprained his wrist. Rob held and completely healed it with a Rolf technique of concentration and pressure. The Rolf massage “reinvents” the landscape of the inner body, and dissolves structural tensions. It is a scientific manipulation of the collagen fascia, or connective tissue, and the body’s innate ability to let go of protective armouring.
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We looked out from our highest point over the vast basin of the mountain-ringed Secret Wilderness, and didn’t complete the trail. I found this a useful exercise in dispassion.
“Our way becomes clear, and what we need to do becomes apparent. We no longer exult in our personal darkness, but accept the Divine Will in life, and its orientation of our life towards the light. We learn to shine in the presence rather than to dwell in the darkness of our personal thoughts and emotions based on memory. We learn to have faith in life, to love and to accept the truth, to be open and humble and giving to a reality that is pure grace.”
Vamadeva Shastri (David Frawley), Wisdom of the Ancient Seers
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I have pre-conceptions about the simple and unworldly nature of the Jnani’s residence, within walking distance of the supermarket – no doubt based on Annamalai Swami’s little ashram in Tiru. Perhaps I imagined a relaxed and scruffy sort of place, like one of those outback bungalows in Phoenix.
The famous Tea for the English visitors was at Robert’s house… We gasped and entered his living-space, Vogue-interior designed, white-washed, teak timbered, booming with New Age quadraphonic sounds, plump blue furnishings on a cool expanse of powder-blue carpet. We saw pairs of gold swans, giant posters of Robert and Ramana, candles, vast plants and framed family snapshots on glass shelves: Nicole welcomed us: ‘It looks much larger than it is’. The model English tea party laid out on the dining table, with the famous cucumber sandwiches, a mountainous strawberry cream cake, two big round hedgehogs of cheese and fruit bits on cocktail sticks, and an array of gold rimmed cups, saucers, knives and spoons, with a special little jar of marmalade placed right at the edge for our “English taste”, would put Fortnams to shame. I thought Robert was an old hippy like me – he’s lived in the jungle – and visualized comfy stuffed old chairs and dog hairs. It bemused me almost to tears, and a painful shyness. “You see, I didn’t forget the marmalade!” cried Nicole joyously. “What do you think of the cucumber sandwiches?” said Adele, who always glows – “I put chilli in them!” I couldn’t eat a thing, and was terrified of breaking something. With everyone swanning around and effortlessly at ease with the jnani, I sat paralysed on the carpet and let Robert’s fluffy dog Dmitri wash my hands.
In shock, I managed to join a girly chit chat at the table, with their daughters. Nicole said she was born in Grand Cayman – I thought she said “I was born in the Grand Canyon” – and she got a work permit for two years to the States. The permit was inexplicably renewed – “do you think a certain Indian gentleman with a white beard and a walking stick had anything to do with it?” – and then she dreamed about Robert three times, and met him a day or two later. This was 42 years ago. “It was enormous love, darling, not just romantic,” she said, “since then, I’ve been learning to become less selfish.”
Don’t try to prevent your thoughts. There’ll always be thoughts, just watch and let them pass, and do not belong to them. Presently you’ll discover none of them have anything to do with YOU. Let the beggars be. Robert, like the sea, is a private mirror to everyone. Mine – after he hugged us – is a childlike sharing of a happy secret. When he turns to Aj his manner re-shapes to something more solid and man to man; they could be talking football.
There are no EGGOS, not even a recalcitrant one. As the Self never moves, and as you have taken the Jnani into consciousness, and he has taken you into his, he never leaves you, wherever you are. Step behind your spine. Let the body walk and move and be touching ground in This.
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Sedona town was named in 1908 by a Dutch settler after his wife, the fair Sedona Schnebly. They built their house down by the Oak Creek. We went a little way up towards Schnebly Hill, but not as far as the wonderful Ravine. In an otherwise unremarkable spot, I met a young black New Yorker with cultured dreadlocks who desperately needed a pair of tweezers. A big chunky wood splinter had gone in by his thumb nail. Surprisingly, I had one in my bag, and I sat with him during the operation which, after about ten minutes or so of intense pain, patient curses and stoic bravery, was successful. It is nice when time and place are precise for a need to be met. Our Sedona adventure politely claimed its due.
Robert arrived at Satsang dressed in blue like the sea, with cassettes from his piles of sounds and love-songs to the Lord. I wept, like a well running over, because we were leaving tomorrow. Robert’s speech was clearer today, and he played with us and made us repeat after him: I am Brahman. I am That. I am awareness. You’re not what you think you are. Feel free. Be quiet. All is well. Rivers joined – the Los Angeles students with the Sedona people. A lady asked, “How to deal with fear?” “You don’t,” he said shortly. “You don’t deal with fear.” Much laughter from those at the end of the road, who are pushed by him in the chest, straight into silence … the silence between the words, from which they arise, into which they vanish.
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“Supper” was at Enchantment, the rich little resort at the mouth of Boynton Canyon – a very swish bar with a panoramic view of the roseate cliffs, sheer and glowing, and twin pinnacles high above, which like Ardhanarishvara – the Lord whose half is Woman – focus the shakti energy. I longed to go for a walk. The loving-kindness of our new friends eased a place for us next to Robert. I couldn’t manage small talk, but fortunately Nicole was there, telling us how she spent all morning yesterday cleaning that fine blue carpet for the tea party, because Robert’s small dog Dmitri is very old, and chronically incontinent. As soon as Aj moved into his chair next to Robert, I found it easier to converse, my block diminished; we ate yet another fine feast with the gods, and discussed the difficulties of the British Royal Family, whom Nicole and Robert adore. Nicole is essence-exuberant: Robert said he married her “because she looked like Rita Hayworth”. Aj got to talk with her, and I love her. What a couple.
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The mountains as we said goodbye, were like wild flowers in sunset. It spilled the well again. All you can do with Advaita is eat it, taste and enjoy. Perhaps the British stiff upper lip makes it difficult to talk of Love, but the heart is being it, all the time.
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There is nothing I have to do right now; I am helpless.
Wide, slow, in-singing song of the heart is planted here
of its own accord.
There is nothing I have to do right now.
Right now I am everything I ever want to be.
Right now I am the Self, right now this moment.
Let it all go.
Let this fill my helplessness.
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“It’s like paper and the print on the paper. When you read a newspaper, you look at the print, you do not think of the paper the print is on. You were concentrating on the print only, the words. Yet, without the paper, there would not be any print, don’t you see?
“So it is with the Self, with REALITY. REALITY is like the paper; the print is like the people, places and things on the paper. Only, you are the paper, and you identify with the paper, and you KNOW you’re the paper, and the print has nothing to do with you. It cannot influence you or do anything to you, for you know that without you, there’s no Universe. There’s no ink, there are no words, there is no alphabet, no alphabetical letters. You have become free.”
Robert Adams 1928-1997
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photo by Hale Dwoskin
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Ramana Maharshi with cow Lakshmi on Arunachala
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Drawings, text & pictures copyright (c) Jane Adams 1996-2012
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My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.
This blog is a vehicle to promote my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books) – along with many other creations in house.
I write, illustrate, design and print my books. Watch this space.
To Robert, a Sage in Arizona – Part One
This is the story of a pilgrimage in 1996 to Robert Adams. He died the following year. Born in New York, he “woke” into the atoms at 14, during a school math class. Then he met Yogananda. In early 1950, still in his teens, he went to India, sat with Ramana Maharshi (December 1879-April 1950) and ran wild on Arunachala for a while. Back home, he became a silent and reclusive wanderer, but people always found him again, so he taught them Self-enquiry. The drawings and portraits in this memoire, are all posthumous – done shortly after his mahasamadhi. People were very generous, and gave me photos – around Robert, these were rare.
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A JOURNEY TO SEDONA IN ARIZONA, APRIL 1996
The elephant in his dream beholds
the lion that wakes him up from sleep.
Even so, the seeker in his dream-like
waking life of ignorance sees
the Guru, and wakes from slumber dark.
Garland of Guru’s Sayings 28, by Muruganar
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In Phoenix, we picked up our hired car without too much disorientation, and resisted Alamo’s businesslike attempts to persuade us to take a larger, more powerful model for the 4,000 foot climb to Sedona. Our vehicle was the smallest car in all America; we christened him “Mr Swiftie”. We had no trouble, except in getting out of it; for the doors were electronically calibrated to seat belt fastenings and the foot-brake, and often baffled us. Presently, on a high mountain road of uncertain camber, Mr Swiftie met a Big Bad Guy, chewing gum, real mean. Finally the confrontation allowed some passage.. The hummer jeep shot by with a scrunch of stones, splattering a spray of dust. Mr Swiftie’s beautiful green skin was baptized powdery red all over.
In Sedona, vastly girt with red rock Gothic cathedrals, we pitched our tent on a hill behind Keren’s house. The bright stars were our canopy. One of them looked brilliantly fuzzy and strange. Was it a comet? A long misty tail followed a cloudy cluster of tiny stars at great speed; thoughts of strange lands and sages. Slept surprisingly well.
In the morning, Mr Swiftie took us to a millionaire’s paradise settlement called Enchantment, at the mouth of Boynton Canyon. We walked far into the canyon, under the noble red and silver cliffs; deep in its heart of peace, tall pine forests grew, like a marital garland of Arunachala with mid-Wales. In the godlike majesty of the rocks overhead, the silent breath has carved everywhere the elephant Ganapati, seed of speech and poetry. Every hiker and tourist we met on the path, lit up with total and untiring pleasure in greeting another human. We decided Sedona is a truly ethical town, as no one locks their doors. Is this red cavern of angels a spiritual antipodes to Arunachala?
We were too tired to find a Gaz canister for cooking, after all this. We returned to the tent to rest, and then went to Satsang with Robert at Mountain Shadows Drive in the town – our first meeting with him. His speech has become completely indistinct, but I could hear “be still”. He wore smart white trainers, a US general’s baseball cap embossed with a golden quail bird, and shades. His movements are slow, casual and careful, rather stooped. As he enters, he turns and gives a direct, unreadable glance towards the visitors from England through the dark glasses. He sits down, looks around the room quietly, and jokes with his intimates. He mouths the Siva bhajans, and others join in and chant. A gentle devotional fervour is engendered.
For a first time visitor who has traveled a long way, Robert’s fast slurred whisper is bewildering. The mind wants words and forms. It does its best, hearing “be still”, “no fear”, “be free” to open into the heart of this authority. It feels shut out of understanding. After fifteen or twenty minutes, Robert puts away the microphone and we all listen to a live three-piece traveling band; a blend of Oriental and native-American instruments perform a couple of Sivaic bhajans …
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Robert is father to a large family. He keeps a sort of eye open, and came up and gave Aj and me a hug. The Jnani comes gently towards, a bit at a time, comes through the people to meet and to whisper. His tongue is stricken by Parkinsons disease. This protects him. There are other ways of speech. Since he came to roost in Sedona, his curvy wife Nicole has turned into Queen Shakti, and makes his appointments. “I do just love to hear an English voice,” she said, with warmth …
We went to recuperate in Red Rock State Park – silver white cottonwoods, red earth, wild blue sky, a serpentine vortex stroll to Gray Fox, and the stunning surrealism of it all. Then we came back to Sedona and had a gigantic slice of cream pie and tea. The “recalcitrant ego” is in a state of culture shock. Finely tuned to the ancient gentle landscape of the Welsh hills, Devon and the Chilterns, it is disorientated by the deluge of red rock rivers in this millionaire’s Shangri-la of endless elemental grandeur.
Learn to turn the red rock angels inside out to percept the colour which floats them. Turn points into cavities. Crimson inner light, wings, wide landscapes, corn gold.
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Look at this elderly man in a grand restaurant, with a big family party around a table; the vivacity of his brood of youngsters! I see sometimes, in the interplay, the gleam of the eyes. They shine, empty, rimmed dark with the night, bright and searching. A young child comes impishly out of them, clean like a light.. This makes his close friends love him desperately. They laugh and kiss and play with him. He plays fool with the food and cocks his baseball hat to a rakish angle over his ear, but cannot speak; yet he is their realized Master. An alchemy shines from his eye to the opened soul which tries to hear beyond the words it cannot hear, the Unknown. A secret personal alchemy works from this jnani to each of our openings. It is love, our Self. Beware of statements too often used, which enclose! I am baffled, bewildered, rebuffed. He takes his time to come through when we are ready, not when we think.
In the evening, we couldn’t get our act together to cook al fresco. It was cold and windy, and I couldn’t understand the little stove – a new one since the old one got stolen last year at Chartres – and I was neurotically afraid of spilling Gaz. It was not to be, and everything was rather overwhelming. Desert of failed doership and tears, then early and exhausted retirement for the night. Aj dined imperturbably on cornflakes.
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White limestone strata in the beds of sandstone, outcrop an uninterrupted line of faery castle battlements along the fluted flanks of the red peaks. I cannot believe it is not built by man. Walking on great tablelands of rock within the ravine, I found myself inside this painting, done about 10 years ago; it is called Ravine … an adventure (I knew not what to paint next, it emerged as I traveled) of coloured rock forms, huge interior abysses of fallen sky, a green complementary horse-head mirror, a “netzach” man I loved, flipped upside down, a white bird flying. The range of rocky peaks are carnival mounts of a merry-go-round; each tells a story. The “hod” man with an eye floating away is called Adam Kops. When he saw the painting he said, “Hey, look at the dancing rabbis!” Another visitor to this painting at my home, called it a furnace of life. Beyond the dancing rabbi peaks, is a wide, pure land, from whence blue-winged raven messengers fly.
No photograph or picture can encompass the Arizona landscape. Kumar the eternal potter of the gods, fashioned this terracotta crucible on the wheel of Sanatana Dharma. The all of it is an altar: Jnana Advaita. It is fitting that the jnani makes his home in such a landscape.
“Take down the flagpole before the gate, and fly awareness!”
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Robert spoke in sibilant streams like a river in flow, with pauses in between; a murmuring on the water. Very few words came out, but some people seemed able to follow, as they laughed and mmmm’d in the right places.
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The comet is at its closest now – as bright to see as the Moon, and 9.3 million miles away, transiting the pole star. Aj said it is a ‘little engine’ 1 X 10 miles, whose 10 million mile trail sprays our solar system right now. It moves unknown materials across the temporal arcs and orbs of solar systems. What a thought. The weather is getting cold. We discovered on Friday night that nothing is open in the evening – no place to have a coffee. A friendly and far-sighted (looking for business) hotel gave us some in the foyer for nothing, and told us there are no discos here either, and no crime. Mad Cow Disease rampages in England.
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Reaching the Grand Canyon, we began in the widening of that crack, that smile in earth whose silence only a raven’s wing of night may cross, to take as usual our humble photographic record. At first one thinks, No pictures, or maybe just one. After a relatively short time, the film is finished and another one being put in. It were better to in silence receive each breathtaking impact unrecorded. But wouldn’t it be nice to show them at home!
We recalled the account of our brother Ganesan who was taken here, who walked to the rim with his dear friends absorbed in spiritual discourse, the river of his voice and eyes; then all of a sudden they told him to look at his feet, and there was … nothing!
The vegetation along the rim of the Grand Canyon is uninterrupted pine forest. But if you descend a little way into the akashic chamber – a golden geology speckled like thrush’s breast, in roseate strata – and look up, those tall, gracious pines are now but a thin dark skin along the summits of the open cliffs of Mother Earth. The same goes for the road, the bubbles of human destiny, the museums and hotels within that skin. They are gone.
Climbed back to the rim, drove on to a Visitors centre, snacked on outsize fast food, and caught sight in the carpark of the friends who played music to God in Robert’s Friday Satsang. They were on the road again, in an eye-catching rainbow-ecology wigwam on wheels. They’d come in to use the phone.
Aj is as happy as a child in heaven. Here he is at sunset, walking in an exquisite forest along a resin scented path, and there in mystic splendour, is revealed to him his Vedic City – the dwellings of the gods that gleam with fire – Brahma Temple, Buddha Temple, Zoroastria Temple, et al. I looked down into the alluring cleft of the Bright Angel canyon trail and decided I must return, and stay longer, and go deeper. (The next year, I did, twice I reached the deep green Colorado River to wash my feet, and back the same day – a round hike of 18 miles, a mountain a mile high, inside out: a climate spectrum from snow on the rim, to sub-tropical Africa in the cleft.)
As the sun sank to the rim, we watched the god Agni at work. The gift of transformation subtly, softly rose-glowed the celestial strata of Earth’s open womb: the fiery sacrifice. Even His creatures, His radiant bulls, kine and cattle, became visible, illumined in worship. Agni is the Lamb of God. As the sun’s daytime colour dissolves, all turns misty grey. Imperceptibly, another light kindles, warming to immensity. When even this light fades, the subtle body of the Canyon dances. Great angel dervishes whirl in gossamer twilight, powder-violet.
Then we got back into the warmth of Mr Swiftie and drove back to our tent, 130 miles of un-towned, unbending, desert darkness. Glen Gould played Bach piano concertos with geological precision. We stopped at Flagstaff to dine at Denny’s under Orion.
There is no time across the time. It is unborn. And yet it dines at table.
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The Self has access to all memory, and to all that is needed. Robert plays with his food and when he laughs his face lights up and two long yellowish fangs appear, because nearly all his upper teeth have been pulled out… they are making him a set of new choppers. He takes (in slow moments of opening or hearing) your heart right out, tears it out and bathes it simply in innocence and beauty.
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After our trip to the Grand Canyon, we took him out to lunch … Robert’s white T shirt was emblazoned with the slogan VISUALIZE WHIRLED PEAS. After greetings, we sat down at a round table semi-out of doors, and Robert took off his dark glasses, put his baseball cap on the table, and after some pondering, ordered soup of the day, veggie burger and a herbal tea, and then inquired, “How’re things in London?”
Aj wrote, “He gave me a piercing look with his eyes and held me in his gaze for some long seconds until I could bear it no longer, and looked down. I felt an intangible gratitude to be in the presence of this holy man, sage or jnani. He told me to Be still and know I am God. If the mind wanders, ask Whose mind? But as there is no mind anyway, the problem dissolves. Any obstacle was an illusion. I am free Now. Who took away that freedom?”
Robert asked about the Ramana Foundation – Mitzi joined us, to interpret – and said our Self Enquiry is “a wunnerful magazine.”
I plucked up courage to tell him about my father’s path to the silence, through his chest of drawers: Zen, Krishnamurti, Gurdjieff, planting potatoes, and playing the violin. Robert took in every word, wide open, to know my parent’s age and state of health, and said firmly, “Give him my warmest best regards.” He held me in his radiant look, wide open, absurd, unborn, unending, a mirror to no thing, his mouth a big dark cave. This made me so happy, I needed to talk about it to him, out of the sea, and couldn’t. He is a bent, elderly fair skinned man with delicate features, white beard, small lean hands with little fingernails, a childish gentle nose, and a hearty appetite for his food. He kindles my heart, like a match. “If you go inside,” he hissed, wide open – “there is no end! No end! It never ends! Be still, be still, be still.” At the end of the lunch he announced “so there’s nothing more to be said.” We could now humbly request a photo – to put in the album at home, next to the Grand Canyon? Robert obligingly sat down again outside, took off his cap and glasses, then stood up, put his arms around us both for Mitzi to take one, and said “Give Nicole a ring tomorrow at 9.30 – and have a wonderful afternoon!” He came to inspect the diminutively green and somewhat dusty Mr Swiftie, laughed and was driven off in John’s red station wagon.
Aj and Ja got into Mr Swiftie and pointed his snub nose up Oak Creek Canyon, for Aj required a nice picnic table near some water and trees, for Virgo-Sagittarius to sit down and write up the notes. Capricorn-Cancer went for a paddle in the crystal clear cottonwood river, in the red rock ampitheatre, to potter on the stones and goatishly digest the input. Sweet music, nut-brown water. Robert is NO THING! My mind opens wide with delight, then shuts like a snapdragon. But it doesn’t matter: be still.
Aj and I think his speech is a divine affliction. He said years ago, “to continue speaking is a waste of time.” Contrast his cavernous mischievous laugh, with the glossy and eloquent Gurus of this world. I can hardly bear it when his light shines in. Saint.
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The next morning, Nicole on the phone arranged a time for tea on Saturday at their house – “I’ll draw you a map, we’re near Safeway darling, just around behind Macdonalds, but it’s rather hard to find” – and said again she couldn’t sleep for the thought of us in our tent in the freezing night, and we might like to stay with them next time, if their daughter isn’t using the spare room? This felt very encouraging: her southern voice is a comfort and an “earthing” here. We struggled through the giant supermarkets. But the cashiers are as cosy as a Holsworthy grocer back home. Mr Swiftie has a strong personality, and is always easy to spot in the car park, among his large and glittering companions.
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I wrote: “At this stage in our adventure, I feel the small-town of my psyche, its aridity. This makes sense for the moment, I guess. With the jnani at the end of the road, I feel in various ways my emptiness. Sometimes it is awareness and beauty, full of light and love and song. But sometimes it is just dense and tired, non-relating, the hard metalled road waits for the sun to break through again, like it does with his unearthly smile. I feel shy, with nothing to say or ask, and not knowing how to negotiate this end and birth of all relationship. The beggars in the basement are scared perhaps. Tears somewhere. Funny – I just noticed the word ‘sacred’ is also ‘scared’. I envy the other people, their intimacy with him.”
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Give the gift to Him. As soon as I fall to silence, love comes.
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END OF PART ONE
Drawings, text & pictures copyright (c) Jane Adams 1996-2012
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My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.
This blog is a vehicle to promote my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books) – along with many other creations in house.
I write, illustrate, design and print my books. Watch this space.
A Peach of Yin and Yang – an Advaita sequence from “Poems of Eclipse”
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24 June 99
A BIG PEACH OF YIN AND YANG
In a sense that each engenders the others' seed, the polarities are not fixed. In a sense that a curve is an arc of a hidden sphere, polarity is never fifty fifty, more like seventy thirty. In a sense that Light and Dark may manifest at any point of growth, some lives have wide lenses, a capacity for the tapestry; and some lives can only see at any point a fraction, fragmenting wholeness; and in frustration mode, must fumble, try to fix. With innocence the littlest point of light in all the dark is the peach. There are no localised opposites. You cannot fix the flow. The attempt to fix right now, the flow is a trapped nerve later on. I cannot fix life any more than I can fix a river. Problem solving, therefore is a mug's game on a seesaw plank. It spills.
(with gratitude to W.Liquorman)
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SATURN OPPOSITE SATURN 24 June 1999
Getting the wrong end of the stick he saw the snail's frail horn withdraw from intimate confrontation and felt an implacable hostility to him personally directed. A door appears shut to one who tries hard to batter it down. There is no door at all. It only shows what we try to get through. Softly, openly I know nothing of you, being your space. Let it be a muddle. Let it sink into itself. Let it be tenderly obvious and obscure.
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INDEPENDENCE DAY – A Modern Neo-Advaita Fable 24 June 1999
A brave and tall hero from from the battle propped up bars, until one day suddenly his bottle got taken away. Oh, Californian tragic tale! Un-propped, and unresisting heroism, into a pit of darkness one day fell his pendulum. Orgasmatic egoism poured out, both sides, when thwarted. The bottom of the bottle upturned fell down. The liquor unsupported is A Anonymous unlearned. A giant takes baby steps around this place like a beanstalk which has lost its stake. Within the boldly sprouting carapace is the Sage's empty lake. 'Tis vulnerable to be a has-been, even have Jack climb your leafy stalk looking for his cat that went to heaven. Cut down so far, 'tis strange to walk. And yet, the long careful construct to butcher the Californian hero - whodunnit, the evidence self destruct, was a thriller a minute, the plot had nothing to show. The Sage unlearned, found out his learned friends. His hanging glide, to sure destruction bound, crashed on the web world wide, and there remains out of depth, an inch or two above ground. His pillar now - "no others*" to uphold - is a wayward tender plant. Talking this non-resistant stuff, the bold stalk itself stalks ... the occupant. ______________ *Advaita-speak: "there are no others"
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MORSELS 26 June 1999
Rose petals turn now brown and brittle around the edge of the phenomenon.
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27 June 1999
FOR A MOMENT
On a rattling Bombay omnibus shunting from Chowpatty Beach to Peddar Road, where baking beggars squat, the passenger stops. It is clear (though still in place) that my NAME is a veil upon my nose, which I cannot remove, nor from IT, remove myself. Only the sun cooke smell of the bus and beggars can stop the world and in my absence for a moment, bus runs on. To be, and to be NOT the passenger is where my naming stopped; and the in and out of this occurring is a key to beauty.
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PONDERING PROJECTIONS : CLAY FEET 28 June 1999
It is a wonderful thing to discover my guru's clay feet walking along in life and to ponder projections of perfection that I place in my limited way, on his way of living. Those teaching truth, are supposed to appear like expectant mothers of conformity, but they don't. They are what they are. A controversial deformity such as eight mis-fittings in the womb, which poor old Ashravakra endured, cannot by one jot or tittle sway the herd.
I**
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DYING IN THE BAVARIAN ALPS 1 July 1999
When the guru in the rosy cloud is gone real peaks appear, rain fresh. There is a huge four-dimensional ripe peach of yin and yang. The scroll unwinds, mile upon mile paints an Alpine amphitheatre: everything that was, and is to be, is here. When I step back a way to see, both past and future glaciate as now upon that mountain. The face in bright cumulo-nimbus shredding paper thin, transforms; rabbit in a pink and golden meadow burrows home. Over every rock of living and loving I climbed since infancy, was splashed the difficult obscuration of that face in the cloud commanding. Rocks re-emerge rain washed, bright from the passing of inappropriate projections of the Beloved sacred muse. I think the underlying nature of the change is more profound than anything I can say, because the Guru was "I want" and this I see, is fading. Life is - with no figurehead to limit it - un-personed, a fruity wonder. Life is the being of mountains, valleys and rivers. My name however tired, does not get in the way. My name is a visiting card in the thunderstorm soaked right through and dying. Dying. Dying. Dying. My feet that stumble in the flood downhill with tumbling clouds of rain, have trodden grape, and in earth's blood are drenched with ebony stain and dying. Dying. Dying. My bones are melting to the ground, to worms, metatarsal grace of feet and limbs the dainty step, and every one of us in this manner is dead, unveiled skeletally the same, and bare mountain veins above the vale review indestructible being and dying. Dying. Dying. This alone is sure; that I and you and the stranger over the road all, all are bones, and wrapped around with one bright cloth of sky, our dying, the wine drunk, the end of our tiny lives, of time; and birds and bare bones of mountains over the vale review indestructible being.
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THE WEATHER 1 July 1999
My depression, tiredness jails. Yet, my GOLD isn't wanting "something else", isn't judging it "not good", but as if I newly arrived in the body with no preconceptions how this should feel. The world-earth is heavy or light-foot with various weathers.
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SORROWING 1 July 1999
There is no escape from my recurring sadness. It is the same pole, I suppose, as my joy. As Self is traditionally said to be joy without cause can it be, that uncaused in like manner is sorrow? There is no definable reason for my state tonight apart from her own tendency to groan. I carry tendencies to judge and criticise and cut my cloth. Hallo. I love you un-personed, this state of being. I love you because I AM and discover you. You are eye in the dark; because I do not know why. A baby might grizzle so ... grey driftwood on a soaring beach of crying gulls, wood saturated with salt and bleached with sun.
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AND SHARING SORROWING 1 July 1999
The world is a legion of untapped sorrows. The air in this room vibrates the Armageddon homeless in war zones, and the stricken. The air is thick with the universal kind. Thus a sad film on the water grows. The raft attaches to itself, like a sail, some I-thoughts of more local kind. My friend Mrs B would dance and sing and weep her sadness. She knows and has it too: the humanness. Some of the Master's messengers don't actually say anything wrong but they don't get it right either. It is kids' stuff, far out bliss, in-speak.
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CATS PLAY 2 July 1999
My problems are an entertainment for the beloved. Cat's paws: mouse play. The cat is loving the mouse it gently, deftly kills.
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ONLY FOR THE TIME OF MEANING 3 July 1999
I am struck, this afternoon by an imponderable - life following no formality yet precise, recognises no penal codes nor morality, for these are manufactured flotsam needful for their time of meaning. Human values require some guilt to bring to order; but God is more often opposed to the social capital. Comes then no label but an act from God willing the pregnant void. A secret glimpse through ordinary things into the limitless stops my voice.
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ABOUT JOHN 4 July 1999
He tells the truth. He gives no teaching but a way of being. His acupunctural point upon the meridian discharges Being turning tables in the anteroom. His razor edge softly opens a named and aching contour from the nameless peace be still. This is a perilous yet fluid position of the Master. Ever increasing numbers gather, adore, and project upon him the moving hunk. Because he isn't there, I'm not either. In the deep and inner sense, settle for less, he says, not more.
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HOME
Masters upset standard notions. They tend to break the world; break up concepts and ideals that form around them. The Rose of many teachers, many messengers, over-blooms its petals. There is no place for me to be but home. Home has no script. The teaching flits around and through it like birds. Home is a magic mountain being revealed by melting clouds.
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My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.
This blog is a vehicle to promote my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books) – along with many other creations in house.
I write, illustrate, design and print my books. Watch this space.
* Advaita-speak — “there are no others”
Nisargadatta – A Notebook Page … (circa 1998, left hand writing!)
Visit to Arunachala 1993
Visit to Arunachala 1993
Day One
In a mud village at the foot of Arunachala, the setting sun is glistening pink sky in a silver tank. Boys are fishing. Sound of music – the strident shrill horns of buses and lorries. “Hal-lo!” – the radiant smile of children in Tamil Nadu, bowling hoops in red earth alleys.
When I arrived in Ramanasramam last night, it was bundled up like a wounded buffalo in the back of a taxi. I had fallen ill early that morning in the train approaching Madras, with sickness, cramps and dehydration. My body was an alien disaster – my teenage daughter was embarrassed and concerned: Mum going to pieces when abroad. My first night here was an agony of weakness in an inhospitable room of stone, far away from everything. I had looked forward to it so much. It was a nightmare.
Very slow and cautious recovery during the day.
In the mid afternoon, I ventured out and into the Ashram, and up the path towards Skandashram a little way. The warm stones to my bare feet, and the lithe smiles of twig-like dark children began to heal and open my cells again like a plant. I began to recognize and understand where I was. With wonderful relief the pain went away.
My first time in India. India!
During a visit to the Temple’s flowering stillness, and sitting in the Old Hall in Ramana’s presence, and doing pradakshina around the chanting of the Vedas, I understood that my bodymind had been thoroughly squeezed, wrung of all its juices like a pressed mango, in obligatory fast, and could now like an empty sponge, open to take in this experience fresh and clean. There is now, after barely a day here, and after the grim gallows grimace of yesterday, a quiet happiness. Arunachala stone is of roses and fire. The sun is steadily hot with a fresh breeze. There is everywhere a tender growth of green. Young trees are planted on the dry slopes in protective cairns of stones. In the spaces of Ashram – the word means, I think, ‘shelter’ or ‘spiritual refuge’ – sphurana is vibrant, ringing within my thoughts. It is good to feel Bhagavan’s smile, wisdom and tenderness percolate softly, powerfully, through the matter. It says to me, “Have no worries. Hand them all over.” Living and washing and eating off the ground gets to feel very good as it becomes accustomed. Leaf plate stitched concentrically, rice and yellow food, fingers, hot milk, banana.
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The only thing I can say about today, is the pressure of peace, an inner intensity that slowly infiltrates, and is kindled in the Maharshi’s presence like a river of fire, deep and strong in the stem. It is often imperceptible; but the reminded awareness may tap this Source. Sitting in the Old Hall is best. The path of light up the Hill. The russet granite rocks illumined. The thin, dark limber legs descending; they bear white-toothed smiles and eyes that gaze slowly, openly into mine, straight and fearless as Bhagavan’s from the same earth. During the Vedic chanting, I did pradakshina of his mahasamadhi shrine, with the members of our Satsang at home in mind, their faces. This helped me to concentrate. The chanting of the Vedas is cosmic, like the sound and deep of the sea.
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Day Four
India is something to embrace very gently, all the time. Climbing Arunachala mountain – rose-fire stone, garlanded with lemon-grass; repeating Arunachala Siva whenever my mind quietened, my bare feet were not separate from the ground. The stones of the path, the rocky foot-holds and spills of sharp grass coming to meet them, flow into the soles as the whole surface of Arunachala is their friend, the friend of my body to receive. There are moments of non-doership, watching those feet. This thought is Siva climbing, dancing upon the steep path of pilgrims. The climb to a holy place, is up the benevolent body of the Great Lord. All of the racket of the town Tiruvannamalai below, floats up to meet and merge with the Divine in His silence.
On the summit, in the smell of burnt ghee over the blackened rock, there is a tremendous wind, and a veil of cloud. The whiteness parts to reveal spurs of the Mountain in breathtaking beauty, which fall away into space, into His sun-shot hazy dance-floor, sheer below. Parvati peak is very near, and shining. A community of monkeys up here maintains a pecking order for Prasad.
At Skandashram on the way down, the stream is full, because there has been rain. Like hot buffaloes, my daughter and I thrust our salt-doll heads and sweat into the water in bliss. Then in cool wet clothes I went into the dark holy shrine to sit. A fire lit up in my heart, here in Bhagavan’s mountain home among the falling water, whose sound is everywhere. I felt moved to tears, coming out, with the stature and abundance of this day – really beyond speech.
Some of the high contours of the Mountain form a strange echo chamber or ear. It takes all the noise of life and turns it into a song whose note rings a hymn of sages, somewhere in the upper slopes.
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Day Five
In the Old Hall, I begin to make a discovery; to bathe in the inner Current. Light from the window by Bhagavan’s sofa falls on the floor, on polished flags of stone, dark grey and white. A silvery stream beginningless of the Self, is generated here, like a mountain spring. There is a brightness, there is repose, there is no thing, there is the deep. My I-thought is a worry-fly. It buzzes around and over the surface of the current of awareness.
I walked around the Song of the Gods – the Vedas – a few times, too. The ground walks these feet. Here in this land, all is softness. All is interwoven, even hardnesses lose their nature. The actual life of the Ashram is this silver stream. It plays among the silent beings that come and go, that sit or stand, that bring their burdens. Within all conversations and encounters, is the truth of silence, slow waves of earth, of water – no solidity is here. In this place … just listen – to the sounds of water, the monkeys, the wailing peacocks and priests. Immerse; receive the blessing.
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Now it is afternoon, and am resting from the heat, with my feet in a waterfall upstream from the Sadhus’ colony. This is a sylvan valley under the Hill and to the west. There is only the abundant sound of the water, gold shadows of ripples that cross the sand. Sivaic beetles are dancing. A spindly flock of tiny black baby goats, fleshless, come to drink. Hot clear sun, fresh breeze, a mountain stream in a rocky meadow, green grasses bright – this is any place in the world.
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Ganapati Muni as Manu, the Hierophant
The Sacred India Tarot copyright (c) Yogi Impressions Books 2011
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In the evening, the Path of Peace – the climb to Skandashram and seeing the sunset – is a causeway. If I let the ground flow into my bare feet and hear Arunachala Siva within, He might do the walking for me. Hand over the feet to Him. How loose and supple the body glides with them. The rose-subtle radiance of the evening sky illumines the path of broad stones with a secret fire which glows and is immanent in everything. It is not flame, but the essence of life, Divinity’s spark. Far above, the mountain sings as one Song all the discordant notes offered up to Him from the town. He receives them in His throat, and transforms them to a musical vibration, an echoing sphurana, an OM.
The secret fire which makes the stones glow rose-orange in the twilight after the sun has set, is Siva.
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Day Six
The I-thought is a banana being fed to monkeys and beggars. Follow this bright banana to its stalk on the stem, and stay there for as long as possible …
Frantically floundering about in the Old Hall, trying to be quiet with Bhagavan, and stop worrying about small and colourful transactions in the market place in town, and about whether my new clothes will fit or shrink. A new world of acquaintance takes shape simultaneously where the sacred Mountain interfaces the profane, the dusty, tumultuous and exuberant world of the street, the grass-roots education. We immerse, we SWIM downtown with the crowd, the exuberant tide of life, like ducks.
When we arrived here, it was totally foreign, I couldn’t understand any of the shops, hadn’t any proper clothes, felt naked, laughed at, and sore.
The art of not being the doer must be the key to … everything? Be not the doer, but the door.
Today was our first pradakshina around the mountain. The beauty of it all sang inside me, especially to see Parvati peak enthroned in grace with her Lord, around the North faces. Exuberant and light hearted are the namastes, with all the enchanting children, naughty old crones, cows, boys demanding school-pens, and raucously squawking little auto-rickshaws along the path. Their bulb horns are the ego, danced upon by Siva. Aaoh Ow! they cry out … for miles around the mountain. Meeting and receiving all this, eye to eye, look and be seen, isn’t Bhagavan’s grace the indifferentiation which – in the highest sense – is love? The laughter is deeply moved along the joyful road. We strayed off it, into stretches of quiet country inland to the Mountain, and picked up many stones, red, white and black for the Three Gunas. Around the rocky flanks of Parvati, water-courses glisten in the sun, like milk.
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Day Seven
The Maharshi’s current of peace is strong in the morning, a ringing in my heart where he plays the instrument, a river, an intimation of an in-looking sweetness, mysterious and awesome. Being near the well, I can dwell a little more in the silent, simple music. I don’t need to greet everyone or maintain conversational grimaces, among the rich green trees, the birds, brilliant peacocks and limber monkeys … the quiet white stone, where Tamil peasants squat and drink their breakfast out of cans. There are not many flies in the fresh air by the Hall. I am a peasant with a load of cattle seeking oasis.
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Day Eight
Utter paradox: the unholy racket, discord and commerce jostles up to the utterly pure flame of the Hill and shatters its peace with cinema music, like piglets to the sow; the rapture with the Hill remains unchanged under all that desecration. Thought for the day: Remember everything which occurs is truly His grace. Then love is the door, which opens.
The Munchkin Man (he’s from the States) tells me the soil in these parts is exhausted of minerals and trace elements. After a few days, I feel my body weight disappearing, even with my enormous appetite for the delicious vegetarian sambars. My substance collapses into the inner vestal flame of Bhagavan’s grace – the vichara or Self enquiry. The Indian climate, allied to the discreet power of his presence here, is a tropical blossom which folds around, embraces and drains me of inessentials. It is enough to be not doing, but sitting about. You can lie on the hard ground. The warmth coming into body and bones, cushions it. There are no edges, no surfaces other than this friend. You can make a palace wherever you are. For the last few days I have a bad, tickly cough. Last night I got up, went out and did a few surya namaskayas and stretches under the clear stars, with slow breaths. The consciousness reached beyond the scratchiness. The cough settled, and let me sleep.
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Day Ten
On pradakshina before dawn: Ramana who sports in the Self, used to roam wild on the hill like a goat. They took him and shut him up in an Ashram.
Siva Arunachala Majesty abides in peace under siege of urban cacophony and some local entrepreneurial piranha. You can’t get away from the noise of thought, of the plains. You can at moments praise, pray and wonder at His silhouette of power and grace before dawn, with His Queen, Parvati. The divinities are bathed each instant with milky offerings of the NOW, destroying clouds and vapours – oh Great Ones of Grace, denuded, manifesting dignity and perfection – they unchangingly are changed. The profane and tinsel tide of superstition and commerce inundates but touches them not. Oh, silver grey unformed Self at dawn unborn – Arunachaleswara preserves in mouna – silently – His purity.
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This afternoon, Sri Annamalai Swami, who lives in a white house at Palakottu, the Sadhus’ colony by the water, gave darshan to a group of people. He is a realized being. To sit in his presence, realizes this. The mind, turning inward and hearing the song of birds outdoors, becomes one pointed, intense and quiet. He is good, gentle and peaceful. Later he answered some questions, pickled in vintage Advaita. The mind is to be absorbed into the heart – he points to his sternum just to the right of centre – the body comes and goes (the wheel of births) – the Self alone is constant. And he spoke a great deal about the Snake and the Rope.
His eyes are soft and filmy, downward turned. It seemed to me, they met mine for an instant, a burning light went into my inner sight through the sockets, and I rejoiced in the smile of this beautiful being who sports in the Self. I felt, for much of the time, “thank you” in fullness to him and Bhagavan, and happy. Bhagavan hugged him when he was young, and he ‘never recovered’ from it. Beautiful, childlike, grave, stick-like old man, brown-golden, with a kind twinkle, a soft husky voice and abrupt, precise gestures. The space where he sits leaves a current of delicious repose, and no need to belong to any sort of club of followers.
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Day Eleven
The darshan of Swamiji Annamalai feels very satvic the morning after. On waking, the busy cacophony of India is an all embracing marvel. In my heart, a tender caress opens to it all, on the extraordinary comfort of my hard bed. Walking up through Ashram at dawn, I greet Lord Arunachala, mighty with some silvery potency; it is all my friend. Something turns my I-thought to water, sinking inward to clearly reflect, like the wide well in the courtyard, the soft veined centres of leaves. There is a transparency unmoving. A watery veil that is fathomless, shimmers in here.
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We hired big pushbikes, and rode to visit Sri Ramanananda Saraswathi, who lives near Adi-Annamalai on the other side of the mountain. His house is terracotta, the colour of the earth. His garden is a busy green forest of lively shrubs and trees from the mahasamadhis of sages and saints. Ramanananda is a warm welcome of delight, rather stout with a monkish fringe and horn-rimmed spectacles, a lover of Bhagavan deep in the Mountain, a voluble repository of Sivaic legend and the secret life of plants. To his house arrive Sadhus like sailors, men and women in ochre, who smile and make jokes; they discuss the science and psychology of awakening – I sit among the angels. The house is like a ship. The trees outside sway past it, in the breeze. In Ramanananda’s fireplace shrine are many stones from the Mountain and a portrait of Bhagavan’s feet on a tiger skin; on the wall are Ramanananda’s watercolours of Arunachala. The Higher Power gave him the job of raising money to restore Adi-Annamalai Temple, so his hermitage is now an office. He said “it is good to take in the Mountain so intimately, through your open feet. Did you see the way He glows at night? …” and he recounted many legends and medicines. “Realising the Self,” he said, wagging his head “ is an egg being hatched. A hen sits on it to warm it, a tortoise thinks of it, and a fish eyes it. These are initiations by touch, by silence and by look. Arunachala is immaculate. He is indifferent to the flies and bits of time and the world …” And he smiles.
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We rode our bikes away from the road, along earth paths into spaces of deepest rural India … towards strange hazy mountain ranges, and lumpy rock projections that encircle Siva’s mountain. Red glowing earth, crystal stones, soft green grass and coconut palms. There is no where to go, beause it is every where … the Self-landscape, timelessly. So entranced, we wander deeper into it. Over it, the Mountain Natarajan danced with such awesome grace and beauty that the silence, vibrant with the colours of this land, made my heart roar, and my knees feel weak. In the changeless, uncitied, terracotta dance-floor of the god, the smile with peasants, children, goats and cows, is huge. In a special prayer to Lord Arunachaleswara in His glory, my question crystallizing is – “what is your will? How do you want me to be?”
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Day Thirteen – Winter Solstice
I told them I wanted to go round the Hill by the ‘Inner Path’ that Swami Ramanananda told me about. Today a guide was provided to take me along it. We set out, about 7.30am. The air after rain was clear, pearly bright and green, with a soft wind and views of the jagged mountains in the distance, all cleansed. I followed my guide over a sylvan silent landscape of thorns, conifers, goat paths, and small streams. He spoke no English, and we understood one another very well. We smiled joyfully at the beauty of the Mountain in the morning. Siva was veiled in His white headcloth. The air was sheer song. We climbed a col or spur by a rocky, steep path, following telegraph poles; the feeling of the young Bhagavan and his friends scrambling about all over the Hill and having fun, was very strong and fiery indeed. Over the other side, in a fragrant silence far from the road, we hugged the Hill through moorland and glades of feathery trees. Parvati appeared overhead. For a while, she became a great linga herself, concealing her Lord with her prakriti or magic veil, while she merged with Him. Then, around her as we walked, Siva Himself unveiled, resplendently. We visited and worshipped at many secret shrines of sacred ground along the way, and rubbed our faces in dust, vermilion and white ash.
Towards the far side of this sacred ampitheatre, we visited a yellow temple, which sprawled on the slopes like a lion. It was filled with blazing aspects of Brahman as Kali, ancient and crumbling. Into its innermost dark shrine we slowly entered. We shared again puja, the power and potency of the inner cavern. In the chamber of cool rock, of flame and black ghee and vermillion, lived stone sculptures of Siva and of Parvati – their marriage – which stunned me with their power – the silent furnace of their blessing.
We returned along the back streets of Tiruvannamalai, where they lap the Hill, and up the steep stairway to Skandashram, via the flambent dark oasis of Virupaksha Cave. Here again I knelt in gratitude, cleansed. Stone blocks are removed from my being, to let in light, all that ash and earth and strength, face to the ground, the sweetness.
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Day Fourteen
Very tired today. Rain and mud the day before, make a maelstrom of dust and exhaust fumes today. Swimming into town isn’t any fun now, in that thick dirty gritty air. Lord Siva’s mountain is shrouded in weather, wreathed in inky veils. Is He swallowing the poison of the world, holding it all in His throat?
Out in the great open spaces on our bikes the other day, my splendid girl announced that Lord Siva is quite a guy – perhaps it’s time for a change – adjust the life style, change her colour code and untangle her hair. When she washed it, it blew around her into a soft reddish cloud, to her dismay. “May I come here again next year?” – she loves to watch the animal life. Tales and myths of Lord Siva, bedtime stories on the road …
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Day Sixteen
Yesterday, she came with me to see Annamalai Swami, who gave another darshan. Annamalai has soft, intense, enquiring eyes which gaze upon no thing. If they meet yours, you are cleansed. He has an endearing way of rocking or shaking his head or hands, in an impish Tamil cadence, as the Being looks out – “No no – no questions yet!” with a droll half-smile, a kind and tender nod. We bow down one by one to the Self all seeing, unseeing, seated in the temperance of a form, skeletal brown legs folded like winter leaves, puckered dark workmans’ hands, the nobility of that frail investigating head, the adorable Child inward.
At dawn today, we went on the Hill, climbed to a good flat rock and settled down in the morning hush to wait for sunrise, and discuss Self realization. I am delighted with her quick understanding of the philosophy, but it is too early; she hasn’t yet lived and suffered the idea, or made it her own. The eastern sky was ablush through a milk-white haze of promise over the silver land. Looking up, you receive the blazing, colourless jewel of the morning sky. We talked of the teachings and the play of the 3 Gunas and the sage we visited yesterday. She said he seemed to look at her a few times, but it was very uncomfortable sitting in that hot room with so many people. We looked down onto Ramana Ashram, the cupolas of the Mother Temple in a cradle of lush forest. Suddenly a delicate rose pink arc of the sun appeared from absolutely nowhere, subtly, out of the white haze; it hung over the tank of the town, seemingly in mid-distance. It is the way the Lord speaks. It grew in intensity to a little sphere, brilliant pink, sadhu orange, glowing and utterly still – almost close enough to touch. All the world moved around and beneath it like a mirage in the Absolute Reality. We saw what we had just discussed – the bindhu Point of Self with world in paradox, strange anomaly juxtaposed. The morning sun hung in mid-air outside, yet deep inside time and space, and gave us darshan of His being. We stood-under Maya, the shimmering screen of the world around Him – the watery book of changes. After a little while He fired too bright for us to see. We went down the hill to breakfast.
I began to glimpse, when we were with Annamalai yesterday, that there is nothing in this room but the Self – no independent states, individuals, objects or thoughts. And so the judging habit is persuaded to get lost.
Far out in the timeless, placeless land again, on a bike ride, there is the radiant slow smile of children ‘without a head’ among emerald paddy fields, nutty palms and ragged warts of igneous rock. Lord Arunachala in the distance, a stupendous silver being, dances pradakshina around Himself. His ridges, his contours of power and grace, flow ever to the right. With titanic beauty, He swirls: Lord of the Dance.
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Tomorrow, Christmas Day, is the birthday of another being who realized the Self in Bhagavan’s presence – Sri Lakshmana Swami. This morning, he gave a public darshan in the open porch of his house. Balloons and glittering birthday greetings fluttered in the wind. Before he appeared, there was darshan of the entire peak of Arunachala bathed in bright sunlight from top to bottom, framed in his porch.
Then Lakshmana came out and sat down, in front of the Presence. He focuses and amplifies it. His dark face has the nobility of great paintings, poetry or music. His white whiskers frame an impish pleasure, and his eyes are everywhere mobile, snagging no identity. Again, the flow of gratitude for this being who allows us to see Him and share His seeing; who helps me to glimpse what it may have been like to live with Ramana every day. The Being is beauty; and all we crave and love is beauty. I am trying to receive this insight not as an individual, but as the vibrance of the same Tree. The darshan lasted half an hour. At the end, cooked beans were distributed as Prasad; he stood up suddenly and went in. My daughter liked him best; something in her moved, with him.
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On Christmas day in the morning – at 8am – here we are standing on the top of Arunachala again in a gale, and blackening our bare feet with greasy burnt ghee, with sun and sky space all around. The current is very strong. There is nothing to do about it.
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On Arunachala rocks today at sunrise – the orange welcome of the sun shimmers up through a sky of silver and aquarelle, to the profane, happy uproar of the town; seed of life swims in the ocean, fireseed in the Motherwater kindling. Gleaming jewel-bright – too bright now to see.
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Day Twenty
Because Arunachala in winter has young growth of lemon grass – a tangy citrus fragrance, perhaps like Ramana’s own – it is at dawn ahush with baby green among the silver grey note of the Self. The Indian landscape before dawn is an open, sleeping creature, intense as it lightens and silvers. An old man totters raggedly up the road with a saucer of glowing embers to incense the Ashram. Long before light, a woman, graceful and spare in her movement, draws today’s Mandala on her earthen doorstep with white chalk powdered through her fingers. At Palakottu, the Sadhus’ colony, Mandalas are already born on the ground like stars at night; sadhus lie sleeping in the porch, in bundles of ochre cloth, some of them already stirring, squatting, talk-talk.
Among the trees gleams the dark still water of the tank or square pond by Sri Annamalai Swami’s white house, with moonlight rising full over the silvered peak. Behind Annamalai’s window there glows a little light, a motionless spark in his room. Walking the path by his house, by the water, by the chirping song of frogs and crickets, I am in the vicinity of a Self realized sage, in whom all is the Self, all is Love. I sit as still as I can, to share the boundless dew. What an extraordinary boon, to stand so near, to be lit up and burnt in that invisible flame. Does He know a questing I-thought hovers near, in the cool coal of the night? Is he other than the river of Ramana who sports in my Self? Somewhere in that house with the little lamp, the Divine rests, never asleep. The night is a glowing coal in motionless water, the moon almost full. Earth and cool sharp stones and soft dust to the tentative soles of my feet; before dawn, the vibrant stars are drawn on the dark ground.
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I was shown the rocks where Bhagavan used sometimes to sit – my favorite photo of him, with kettle and walking stick – and here the questing root in my stem sinks deep and plants itself. In the golden light after sunrise, the warmth of the rock, the red earth and tender green grasses, the inner entity – sphurana – silently roars, consuming my heart in a substance-solvent transparency. It melts to unsounded clear water, the morning, the view, the landscape He contemplated often – the unbounded substratum from which things appear. I turn inwardly into a lake, perceiving the surfaces of the world and their vivid beauty. Depth, unformed without end, gives birth to fields, trees, rocks, people, troubles and sound, with immaculate purity.
My I-thought buzzes with various ideas over this watery knowledge. Losing substance, losing that which thinks, it sinks into brief moments of unfeatured clarity, and is less willing to fabricate Time. The Lord Mountain swirls enrapt in His Divine Being, Natarajan. Fortunate they, who are born in Him.
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My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.
This blog is a vehicle to promote my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books) – along with many other creations in house.
I write, illustrate, design and print my books. Watch this space.
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