Never to Return: A Modern Quest For Eternal Truth, Chapter 21: "From Heart to Heart"

NEVER TO RETURN:

A MODERN QUEST FOR ETERNAL TRUTH

A Multimedia Spiritual Adventure Memoir
by Sharon Janis

Chapter Twenty-One

FROM HEART TO HEART

AFTER MY TEACHER'S PASSING, I wanted to spend some time in solitude to keep myself centered amidst all the potential confusion. During the first week, I moved into a little room behind the main meditation hall. Sitting there alone for many hours, contemplating all this great being had given to me, I was moved to make an offering in honor of his presence and memory.

Several months earlier, my teacher had taught a powerful selection of mantras to his close disciples in India. At the time, I was overseeing the audio department, and had access to an audiotape of this half-hour arrangement of hymns and mantras. I contemplated how he had made these mantras available just before his passing, and decided to memorize them as an offering to him. For eight days, I lived in this little room, fasting and singing his special mantras over and over until I could do them without looking at the pages.

Everyone else in the video department, and most residents of the ashram had rushed to India to participate in the massive ceremonies taking place there. At the time, I did feel a twinge of disappointment that I was once again expected to hold down the video department fort back in the Catskill Mountains. However, looking back, I can’t imagine a more appropriate way for me to have experienced and honored the passing of my guru, than to sit quietly for those eight days, and to perform the practices he had taught, in honor of his memory.

One thing I noticed in the ashram was that whenever I made an effort solely for the sake of offering, or for the purpose of spiritual growth, it would often bear unexpected and wonderful fruits. It was to be so with this offering of mantras that I’d memorized after my guru’s passing.

After several months, two monks came to our ashram from India in preparation for the continuing work of this path. They had also learned these special mantras from our guru, and had been chanting them with him and the other monks and ashram managers every evening for about one year or so. These monks wished to continue chanting them during their visit. Every afternoon at four o'clock, the monks and ashram manager would gather in our teacher's bedroom to chant for a half an hour. Their problem was that none of them really knew the intricate melodies very well, and the only tapes available were extremely slow and difficult to follow. Even though I wasn't a monk, they invited me to join them, since I knew how to chant the mantras.

And so it was that every afternoon, at the magical hour of four o'clock, I would leave my daily work to enter the wonderland of my teacher's holy room. It was like having a chance to go to heaven for half an hour every day. Feelings of reverence and gratitude would leap up inside me as I walked through the entrance into his quarters.

One day, the woman who prepared our guru’s room for these daily chants was unable to get back from some errands in time, and she asked me to set up the room in her place. I readily accepted.

One hour before the chant was to begin, I entered my teacher's room. At first, I just stood there, soaking up the pure vibrations. Then I put together the silver tray with a flame to wave before the pictures on the wall. This practice is called puja, and it is a form of devotional worship.

As I stood before each image of the great saints along each wall, I would try to erase my ego personality and become a clear channel of reverence. Slowly, I would wave the flame in clockwise circles around each photo. It created a wonderful and intimate connection with each representation of divinity. Finally, I walked over to the large picture of my teacher's teacher, the grandfather guru, Bhagavan Nityananda. I’d always had a special connection with him, and invoked even more care while honoring his image.

As I moved the flame down toward his feet, my glance fell upon the shelf below his photo.

I immediately recalled a time several years earlier, when I was about to spend my first winter in the ashram. As I exited the morning chanting session one morning, the ashram manager came over and invited me to attend a special farewell meeting that our teacher was going to hold with the thirty or so people who were going to be staying in the ashram for the winter. The meeting was going to be held in two hours. The manager had almost forgotten to tell me, because I was only a recent addition to the winter staff list.

In India, it is traditional to bring an offering to one's spiritual master. I looked in the snack shop for a beautiful piece of fruit, but found only mediocre oranges. That was not the quality of gift I wanted to give to my sweet guru during this special meeting. A friend had loaned me her bicycle for the winter, and I decided to ride it into town to find a more appropriate offering.

It was pretty cold outside, and I didn't quite know the route. I rode up and down hills for several miles and got a bit lost before finally finding my way into the small town. It was Sunday, and most of the stores were closed. But there was a small shop that sold Indian goods, and it was open.

My financial resources for this gift were quite limited. After making all the arrangements to leave school and travel to New York, I only had ten dollars to my name. This narrowed my options, yet I still considered each potential gift carefully. Finally, I selected a beautiful alabaster heart-shaped container, which cost seven dollars. The heart was embellished with intricate carvings, its cover was decorated with inlaid mother-of-pearl lotuses. In the ashram, this kind of container was often used to hold kum kum, the red powder that many Indians wear as a dot on their foreheads as a sign of marriage. My teacher nearly always wore one of these dots as a symbol of his commitment to God, and to honor the spiritual-energy center between the eyebrows.

I had somewhat identified myself with this kum kum powder, because the word was so similar to my guru-given name, Kumuda. I asked the shopkeeper if he had any kum kum to put inside the heart, but he apologized and explained they had recently run out.

While riding back to the ashram, I came up with a symbolic interpretation for this gift. I was offering my empty heart to the guru, and asking him to fill it. This made me feel better about not having any kum kum powder to put in the heart.

I rode as hard as I could, but still arrived a few minutes late for the scheduled meeting time. I ran up to my room, took a quick hot shower, and then went down to the small hall, where fifty or so devotees were already seated, waiting for our teacher to arrive. I sat next to the aisle in the back.

Within a few minutes, our teacher walked past me, and sat in his chair. He gave a wonderful and informal talk that touched on a wide variety of topics, from his dogs, to marriage, to Shiva and Shakti, the male and female energy forces that are said to create the entire universe. A beautiful woman from Holland sang Indian devotional songs, while our teacher explained the meaning of each verse.

Within moments, I began to feel waves of energy moving up my body. They were as tangible as any physical sensation I'd ever known. The pulses would start at my feet and move to the top of my head. It felt as though each wave would pick up my scalp and hold it high above my head.

These rushes were dramatically delicious; the music was beautiful; everyone around me was shining with happiness; and my teacher was right there. I wanted this moment to go on forever.

Eventually, it was time for each of us to come up and greet our teacher personally. As I knelt before him, he said something to his translator in Hindi. She asked me, "You're working in video, aren't you?"

She spoke again to our teacher, and he smiled at me and replied, "Bahut acchha," which means, "Very good."

I handed him the heart. He opened it and looked inside. Then he asked, "No kum kum?"

My guru put the top back on and handed the heart back to me. "You should keep this and fill it with kum kum."

I returned to my seat with an immediate appreciation for his symbolic gesture. I had wanted to give my empty heart to him, and he was commanding me to fill it with myself. I closed my eyes and savored this interaction.

After the last person sat back down, our teacher chatted for a few more minutes, and then stood up to leave. He began to walk down the aisle toward the back door. I bowed my head as he passed by, but then he stopped. As I looked up, he smacked his hand down on top of my head, and moved it around for what felt like a very long time. It was probably only a few seconds. A deep and powerful energy filled my body, mind, and spirit.

Our guru left the room, and everyone else slowly filtered out as well. However, there was no way I could move. The funny part is that my mind was still lucid and commenting to myself about all had just happened, yet my body was completely numb and immovable for quite some time. It was a very pleasant and peaceful experience.

After the meeting, I managed to find some kum kum to put into the heart. Instead of the usual dark red color, it was more of a bright orange. But I wanted to follow his instruction as soon as possible, and filled the heart with this unusual orange kum kum. For the next year, the heart sat on my bedside altar.

One year after this winter staff meeting, I was invited to see my teacher in his quarters at six o'clock in the morning. Two other staff members and I were having birthdays that week, and we were going to have a special, more private meeting with him, called a birthday darshan. Again, I contemplated what gift to offer.

I smiled as the thought struck. My heart! I would continue our symbolic dance by having filled the stone heart (my heart) with kum kum (myself), and still offering it to him (God).

Seated before my teacher in his room, I was too shy and awestruck to hand the heart to him. Instead, I left it on the floor next to where I had been sitting. That was the end of the metaphorical heart game, or so I thought.

Coming back to the present moment just months after my teacher's passing, there I was in his bedroom, waving lights before the photo of his guru in preparation for our daily mantra recitation. I looked down and saw my heart on his altar.

It sat upon a delicate, heart-shaped, lace doily. I opened the top and saw that there was only a small amount of that bright orange kum kum left. I imagined that my guru might have applied some of my offering to his forehead, or perhaps to his guru’s photo as part of his own offering to God.