Never to Return: A Modern Quest For Eternal Truth, Chapter 23: "Smash the Idol"

NEVER TO RETURN:

A MODERN QUEST FOR ETERNAL TRUTH

A Multimedia Spiritual Adventure Memoir
by Sharon Janis

Chapter Twenty-Three

SMASH THE IDOL

SPIRITUAL PATHS THROUGHOUT history have incorporated representational images of divinity into their faith. Many Western churches include statues and paintings of Jesus and various other saints. Temples in the East often house holy figures, from golden Buddhas to a pantheon of Hindu gods and goddesses.

These icons are not merely admired; they are worshipped as manifestations of the Divine. They are looked upon as portholes to the heavens, placed amidst our earthly surroundings; the formless Absolute, assuming form for the sake of its devotees. At one time, this idea seemed strange to me. Yet in the wake of my first teacher's death, I began to transfer the devotional relationship I'd had with him to the statue of his guru, Bhagavan Nityananda, which sat atop a large marble pedestal in the small meditation hall.

Sitting quietly before his image, I would hear the answers to my questions being revealed inside myself. I'd feel as though I were in the presence of a living saint. Was the statue actually alive with the consciousness of the great being it represented? I had no means to measure this objectively. To me, it felt conscious. While standing or seated in front of this statue, I found guidance, which seemed to be coming from him. Perhaps I was not yet able to tap sufficiently into my own inner wisdom, and his form was a mirror through which could reflect what I really wanted to give myself. Regardless, what mattered was that it worked.

I'd had an ongoing relationship with the statue for several years. During my first winter, more than half the ashram had been closed down, including the smaller meditation hall he was in. The only inhabited section in that whole half of the ashram was my little video room, tucked behind the meditation halls. Being the only person walking regularly past the statue during those months, I felt obliged to pay him some special attention. He was, after all, an image of my guru's guru. I would occasionally stop and wave a light to him while singing a chant to honor the greatness of the being represented by this statue.

During the winter after my first guru’s passing, the statue took on even more importance in my spiritual life, and my devotional worship of him became more regular. Every morning, I would light incense sticks, wave a flame, and sing songs of worship. Engulfed by devotion, I would often be moved almost to tears. While staring into the eyes of the statue, I began to feel I was looking into the eyes of God.

He wasn't all that well made, to be honest. One of the devotees who was a pretty good artist had made him out of plaster. The previous year, a new, improved bronze statue of the same "grandfather guru” was placed in the recently constructed outdoor temple. So now we had two statues of him – the classy new one and the older, funkier one. I was partial to my friend in the meditation hall.

One of the traditional ceremonies I'd perform was to bathe him and change his shawl once a week. This is called an abhishek in India. I didn't necessarily know or follow all the scriptural rules about the practice, but I offered this worship with love and enjoyed it nevertheless. I was able to hop up on the marble pedestal with this great guru statue and express my devotion in a more personal way, bathing him and even kissing him on the top of his head as I finished.

How did I get so hung up on idolatry? Who would have ever imagined I would be relating to a carved block of plaster as though it were a great spiritual being? I’d hardly even played with dolls as a child. This did not sound like logical old me. And yet, the statue became very important to me after the passing of my first teacher.

The relationship I'd had with the Divine through my teacher was transferred to this statue, which had become alive for me. Through this process, I was also learning to believe in what was not quite believable, knowing that from the viewpoint of the ultimate, all our beliefs are inaccurate, or at least incomplete. If the adoption of a particular belief system allows us to open up to new depths of consciousness and divinity, then it is useful and worth believing. For example, there may be an inherent potential in certain symbols or objects, which our society does not yet understand. If we limit our experience and beliefs only to what we can clearly see, hear, feel, taste, smell, and completely explain, then we may be seriously limiting the potential of what is available to experience during this life on earth.

For example, even before human beings understood all about the chemical complexities of water, they could still recognize and drink it. They just had to accept that it was there and available. Whether they thought the water appeared through pleasing the Gods or through scientific processes, the important thing was that they had a belief system that allowed them to recognize the water and drink it.

Spiritual power may be similar to the water in this analogy. Because it is not understood by science or society at large, we may need to access this elusive force through faith, intention, willpower, or through an external image. It can be useful to intentionally project an image of greatness into this symbolism- laden universe. If divinity exists in and through all things, why not choose an image that is familiar and comforting to us?

I had only spent one month with our new teacher, and already my entire world was turned upside-down. After cleaning bungalows for several weeks, I was hired by one of the local town residents to help him write a book. Instead of living my usual peaceful, monastic life, I was now spending my days with this elderly man.

He was writing a somewhat angry book about how screwed up the world was. The title of this book was You Cannot! – not exactly a good positive affirmation title! I became the copy-editor for this book, and did my best to uplift as much of it as possible into something less negative and more useful.

Beneath this external job of copyediting was the fact that this man was lonely. He really just wanted to have intelligent discussions with someone. It was actually a fairly cushy job, but after three years spent in near silence within the walls of an ashram, I found it challenging and disconcerting to have to deal so closely with someone else's convoluted thoughts.

During this time, my statue guru became even more important to me. He was an emotional anchor I could depend upon to keep me centered through all the changes and excitement. One week into the job, I came back home with a smile and a light step. Today was Thursday, and that meant I would be giving my statue his abhishek bath.

I hopped up the back stairway, past the video rooms. My boss was in her office chatting on the phone. I waved a quick hello, not wanting to be sidetracked from the task before me. I walked into the hall, and immediately saw that he was gone.

How could he be gone? He was bigger than lifesize. He was made out of heavy plaster. And he had been sitting on top of a huge, heavy marble pedestal, which was also gone. I still can see the image in my mind, the bright pink square in the middle of the old, faded, dull carpeting. This untouched spot, where the carpeting had been covered for so many years by the statue. I couldn't figure out what had happened. No theory made sense. Where was he???? He was too heavy to have been stolen. There was no reason to move him out of the room. I couldn't think of any possible reason. I just sat down in kind of a stupor, and stared into the empty space.

As I sat, two people walked through the hall talking about how the statue had been sent, as a permanent gift, to the meditation center in Philadelphia.

I was devastated. I sat there and wept silently, wondering why nobody had told me about this. After all, I was the one who took care of him. I couldn't believe it was true. My rock of Gibraltar, torn out from under me without the slightest warning. My image of God — gone.

I think I felt more grief in that moment than when my teacher passed away. This was final. Now they were both gone.

Eventually, I stood up and walked toward the stairway. This time my boss, Gail, called me into her office. She saw from my face that something was amiss.

Immediately, she knew who I was talking about and apologized, "Oops, I'm sorry. I forgot to tell you."

It turned out that a week earlier, my teacher had been sitting out for one of the lunchtime gatherings, when she told everyone that the statue was going to be given away. We now had this new bronze statue, and she wanted the Philadelphia center to have the benefit of the older one. While explaining this to those gathered, our teacher also mentioned that some of the winter residents had become too attached to the statue.

She had turned to my supervisor Gail and asked, "Do you know anyone who is too attached to him?

Gail said, "No." Actually, I had never told her about all of my responsibilities with the statue. It was my personal practice, my private spiritual relationship. As I was told later, my teacher had asked her, "Isn't Kumuda attached to the statue?"

"Well, you should tell anyone who is attached to the statue that it will be gone in one week."

So here, one month after praising me to the skies in front of everybody, my teacher had taken away the one thing that was most important to me, the image that represented my relationship to God.

From this side of the event, I can see how important it was that my dependence on this object be broken. A living spiritual master was back in town, and the next path on my journey was about to unfold.

Nevertheless, this image had served an important purpose for me. Just as the square of pink carpeting stayed clean and unworn under the protection of the statue and pedestal, so a part of my heart had been kept unsullied by this statue as well. He had been there for me during a time when it might have been easy to lose faith, when the physical form of my spiritual master was removed.

I was not yet ready to expand into the state of knowing the divine in its all- pervasive formlessness, and so my first teacher's role of divinity in form had been transferred to the statue, giving me the support I needed to be carried through that time.

And now it had been removed by that which was to take his place. It is said that when God enters a heart, He removes all that is not Himself. So it was with my second teacher. Once the connection was made, she took me into herself and pulled off even the sweet pacifiers that had kept me comfortable and steady through the previous year. And like a mother pulling off a Band-Aid that has served its purpose, she pulled this spiritual attachment off fast and clean — and with a sting.

A few days later, one of the monks came to my office to give me a gift from our teacher. It was a photo that had been taken of the statue before it was moved. It's just a poorly lit Polaroid, but every time I look at it, I am once again touched by the compassion that came through this gesture so many years ago.