NEVER TO RETURN:
A MODERN QUEST FOR ETERNAL TRUTH
A Multimedia Spiritual Adventure Memoir
by Sharon Janis
In the external universe there is ceaseless turmoil, change, and unrest;
at the heart of all things there is undisturbed repose;
in this deep silence dwelleth the Eternal.
– JAMES ALLEN
Chapter Eighteen
THE FRUITS OF SURRENDER
IT WAS THE SUMMER OF 1981. The outer sheathes of my body, mind and heart were being whittled away by the intensity of each day in this vibrant monastic environment. This was my first summer as head of the video distribution department, duplicating and sending videotapes of our guru to the whole international worldwide web of ashrams and meditation centers. I was not only head of the department, but also the only person working in the department. At first this job was easily doable, however, video tape decks were quickly becoming the hottest new household commodity in 1981, and our output quickly expanded from sending out a few tapes per week to sending out more than 200 some weeks. I was suddenly swamped with all of the required duplication, bookkeeping, labeling and packing of videotapes.
Not only was I busy, but the summer was in full swing. My teacher was in town and had brought thousands of visitors with him. There were programs nearly every evening and long lines to wait in for meals. My wintertime video room temple was now filled with grungy piles of equipment and way too many people. My teacher had decided to spice things up by putting three people in charge of the main video department at once. A swarm of scriptwriters, cameramen, technicians, engineers, and other peripheral workers assembled in one medium-sized office and a few small cubbyholes. There was often a line of people outside the video door, waiting to introduce themselves to me and ask questions about our catalog of videotapes. There wasn’t even time to consider training someone to help with this very detail oriented work. So much for my peaceful solitude.
We offered videos in three tape formats, available for devotees and centers to rent or purchase – the old 3/4” tape format, the soon to be extinct betamax format, and the increasingly common VHS format. All of our video decks were connected together in the main office, where the same set of decks was now being used to record the daily programs and courses. These were the five decks upon which I was meant to duplicate 200 tapes a week, and now they were constantly being used for other purposes! If a situation like this had occurred anywhere else, I would have declared it to be impossible, but “impossible” was not a word used lightly in this place.
I came up with a plan. I would copy tapes all night long. That would also give me some quiet space to get my work done while everyone else was asleep. When I became tired, I'd set up a thirty or sixty-minute tape to be duplicated and go into the small meditation hall next to the video room. I'd set a timer for thirty to sixty minutes, and curl up on the floor next to the statue of our guru's guru to fall into a well-earned sleep.
Often, I would awaken just before the timer was to go off. The most wonderful, blissful thing started to happen. I began to hear music. I was listening to unbelievable symphonies in my sleep. I would hear them echo out while moving through the tunnel into waking consciousness. It was like legions of angels singing in full, rich harmonies. Sometimes, they seemed to be singing specific chants, other times there was just a thunderous symphony of sound that would shock me as the “speakers” were suddenly unplugged during my passage back into conscious awareness.
Awakening in a state of happy awe, I'd get up and change the tapes, then lie back down and do it all again.
Two of the security guards who walked through at night to check the small meditation hall were upset that I was sleeping in this public area, like some homeless person finding a place to crash. They woke me up and told me to leave. Even when I explained the situation, they said I couldn't sleep there. But fortunately, in the ashram, we had people in charge. One could only hope the people in charge had enough common sense to do the right thing. It was always a gamble. The fact that there was no other way to get the tapes duplicated made my phone call to the manager's office quite easy. It was either let me sleep there, or immediately buy many thousands of dollars worth of new equipment, or close down the entire video distribution department for the summer – an easy choice.
One of many lessons I learned during this period was the value of living in the present moment. In the present moment, everything is always fine. All the work could get done as long as I stayed completely focused on each moment. Whenever my mind wandered to the past or future, the flow would be distorted and interrupted, and I would feel an enormous burden on my shoulders. This gave me a chance to receive immediate feedback whenever my mind strayed away from living in the present. If I could keep all my energy directed to whomever was stepping into my office or whatever tape needed to be labeled at that moment, a great deal of productivity was able to move through me.
Toward the end of the summer, it was announced that we were going to have a seven-day, nonstop chant. Only eight drum players were available to play for all these long hours of chanting.
I was assigned to play three hour-long drum shifts each day, one in the morning, one in the late afternoon, and one in the middle of the night. I was also scheduled to play the harmonium organ for one hour each day, in the midafternoon. Plus I still had a line of people outside my door, wanting to talk with me about ordering videos. And I had hundreds of videotapes to duplicate and send out each week.
The demands became greater. The exhaustion coupled with the discipline required to keep doing all that needed to be done from moment to moment had a strong effect on my psyche. It simplified me. Whatever energy I had was needed for the work at hand. I was thrust into living in the NOW. When I was playing the drums, that’s all there was. When I was doing bookkeeping or mailing out tapes, my mind was completely focused on that work. While discussing with a meditation center leader what videos they might want to use for a workshop, my attention was completely available to that person, at least for the most part.
Beyond all this challenge was the physical offering involved with suddenly playing drums for so many hours each day. My hands soon became raw from so much drum-playing. Within two days, all the drummers were walking around with gauze and tape on their hands – even the experienced ones who had built up calluses over the years. When you hit your hand against leather fairly hard and constantly for three hours a day (with occasional bumping against the metal rims that hold the leather in place), it can cause pain, rawness, blisters, and even bleeding.
What a strange situation. Here I was with sores on my hands, and I would voluntarily sit for hours and bash the sore hands against the very surface that caused those wounds in the first place. I say voluntarily, because I certainly could have opted out and refused to continue playing. However, then the other drummers would have had to pick up the slack.
The strange juxtaposition was the great happiness I'd feel while playing drums for this wonderful seven-day chant. The energy in the room was so strong and fragrant that even the pain would begin to taste sweet.
I was playing the drums in front of 50 to 800 devotees, depending on the time of day or night. Each chanter would be sitting, often swaying or clapping, each savoring their own inner experience. And every time I hit the drum, there was pain. The constant question was how much to sacrifice the musical quality of the chant just to lessen my personal discomfort. Each beat carried this dilemma. Every time I went to strike the drum, in that expanded space between the beats, I would balance these two issues. Usually, I played the drum with a very strong hand, in part because a loud boom tends to increase the excitement of the chant. Perhaps, I thought, this would be a good time to learn to play with a gentler touch.
And yet, at times the chant cried out for some passion. I would do whatever I had to do inside my being to allow me to play with vigor, regardless of the physical pain. Such a simple task, playing drums for a chant; yet the issues that arose were so significant. This apparently minor conflict brought up important lessons about surrender, courage, sacrifice, faith, and transcendence.
This, again, was one of the most valuable elements about living in this magical place. Even apparently minor considerations, such as whether a particular moment of the chant was as powerful as it could be, became tremendously important and significant. Powerful lessons could be learned without our having to descend into more dramatic or threatening circumstances.
I wanted the chants to be exquisite and intended to play my role well. It was such an honor to be able to play for so many people, especially with our teacher still in residence. Usually when he was there, only the main musicians would get to play. Therefore, this was a special and blessed opportunity, important enough that I was willing to suffer a bit for it. I knew my hands would have a chance to heal, and that I would once again be able to get a full night's sleep in just a few weeks. The whole tour, along with my teacher and his entourage, was preparing to move on to India, and I had agreed, once again, to remain at the upstate New York ashram for the winter, and take care of the video distribution.
Four days into this seven-day chant, I went to the hall a few minutes before my harmonium shift was to begin. It was wonderful to close my eyes and rest in this holy space. Chanting is said to create a very pure energy. When one is internally repeating a mantra, this energy is created within one's own psycho-physical system. But when a group of people are chanting out loud, that energy is said to be released into the room like a shower of grace.
While sitting in a relaxed state, I began mulling over how much work I had left to do. I thought, "Why do I have this harmonium shift anyway?" There were plenty of other players who could have taken the time slot. I enjoyed playing the harmonium, and had offered to play a daily shift, but that was before I’d realized how intense the drum schedule would be. Listening to the music of the chant, I thought, "I'm not such a great harmonium player anyway. There are a lot of people who play better than me."
Regardless, it was too late to change anything now. I had to surrender to playing for the next hour, but made a mental note to remove myself from the harmonium schedule for the last few days of the chant.
I sat down before the harmonium and began to play. As the rhythm of the chant was established, I started to lose my grip on me. There was just the playing of the chant. Falling into the blissful rest of deep consciousness, and with minimal personal awareness, I started playing all kinds of riffs and trills that I could hear inside myself. While singing or playing chants, I would often hear various harmonies and decorative frills around the basic melodies. Sometimes I'd include a taste of them in my harmonium-playing, but this time my filtering mind stepped aside, allowing all these dramatic flourishes to be more fully integrated with the chant. My hands were moving all over the keyboard, dancing around the more simple, basic melody being sung by everyone else in the hall.
In this deep peace, I was no longer fatigued. I was residing in the boundless expanse of pure mind, as the playing moved effortlessly through me. This was the sweet fruit of my surrender.
The exhaustion had taken over my body, and yet my will to fulfill this commitment kept the music going. I rested my head on my arm, and let go. . .
I was awakened by a tap on my shoulder.
"Oh no!" I thought, "I must have played the wrong notes!"
I opened my eyes in a state of confusion, watching as my hands continued to play the chant. The hall monitor leaned over and whispered in my ear. She told me that my teacher's translator had phoned to send a message that "Baba really loves the way you are playing."
I would have laughed if I wasn't so shocked.
How exactly was I playing? I continued to watch my hands moving across the keys. In my mind's eye, I could imagine my teacher sitting in his room, listening carefully to what these very hands were doing. Fingers, don't fail me now!
Suddenly, what had been so easy as to be practically unconscious now required great focus and effort. At the same time, my subjective sense of time seemed to slow down. Although I was playing 1-3 notes per second, I found myself with ample time to have an internal discussion between each one, debating which note to hit next, and then watching as my fingers played it. It felt as though I was suddenly privy to processes that always existed on other levels of my psyche, beneath the outer façade of my outer actions.
Though surprised, I was delighted. What a great phone call! Nevertheless, I couldn't indulge too much in the ego-pleasure of this flattering message, because I was still on the hot-seat. If I hit the wrong notes, my teacher would know that a little praise could blow my state.
Eventually, my hour was up, and I moved on to the next task at hand. Things were so busy in video distribution that I had all but forgotten the entire event by evening. But then my teacher's translator came by the video room and expressed to me once again how much he had liked the way I was playing the harmonium. I decided not to cancel my future shifts, after all.
Journal notes:
I composed and then offered this poem to my teacher as he stood behind the lobby curtain one evening. He handed the pages back to me, saying, "For you, for you."
My Light of Truth
You are always right here.
When I can see you, I know you so well.
Awakening to that freedom,
The knowledge far beyond knowledge.
Beyond even the regret of previous ignorance.
For in the light of that knowledge,
Ignorance never was,
Or could be.
How could it be?
And how could I ever dislike this world?
It's my world,
My very form,
My own creation.
What can I do but enjoy and love it?
And understand it as an artistic piece
That is erased and recreated,
Erased and recreated over and over again;
Molded from Consciousness,
As a dream is molded from consciousness.
What is a dream made of?
You pick up a solid object in a dream.
What is it made of?
What is your hand made of?
Look at your hand now.
What is it made of?
Who is the One who is watching this dream?
Just as you watch dreams while sleeping,
Not moving yourself —
But with yourself moving on you, or in you.
And not really moving at all, because it's just a story,
An illusion or fantasy.
Freud suggested the dream's function to be
The acting out of unfulfilled desires.
Look at your own life, your dream.
What desires have you had in the past?
Watch them play before you now.
What are you doing here?
Why are you here
If you're not doing anything really worthwhile?
And what action really is worthwhile?
So why don't you leave for good?
Why continue to leave and then come back?
Going and returning,
Creating and then forgetting;
Becoming lost in your own dream,
And then remembering that you never really were lost,
And then forgetting again — so quickly.
As day follows night follows day,
Revolving and oscillating continuously
In time,
In the mind, the ego,
In the sense of limitation,
The sense that includes all physical and subtle senses.
Close that sense
As you would plug your ears
Or shut your eyes.
What will you see?
Who are you without that sense of limitation,
of separateness?
Do you have the courage to face it?
If you need more courage,
then you haven't let go enough —
The limitation and separateness are still there.
How can we become totally free of that sense of limitation?
Only through Grace.
Through the Grace of the One who is dreaming this dream,
The One far beyond even our highest concepts and ideas
Of God, of Consciousness.
Beyond any construct of the mind at all.
Use your will to reach that Will.
Desire and pray only for liberation,
true freedom and bliss.
Think of nothing else.
Let your next dream be an acting-out
Of only a pure desire for liberation;
A desire to know that which is so incredibly
beyond even God,
How could we possibly call it anything less than God?
It's everything that's inside, outside, and everywhere else,
It's the only One
I mean, what can a person really say about That?
So if you can't desire and pray for only That,
Then desire and pray for the ability
to desire and pray for only That.
Be tricky.
After all, it's a game
That you've already won,
And your intellect is a wild card.
It can turn even the poorest hand into a winner
Instantly,
Without changing anything.
Through a shift of knowledge,
A new sense of understanding,
A change of focus - waking up.
That pure intellect is the Grace.
It is that intellect which creates the world,
And also takes you past it.
It remains with you there as pure awareness,
And then contracts with you back into limited memory.
It's very difficult to even think about,
Much less describe.
How can I think about it
When it is that which is thinking,
How can I serve it?
When only That can act,
How can I love it?
When That itself is love.
What then can I do,
but stop all thoughts, and bow with reverence.
On to
Chapter
Nineteen
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