NEVER TO RETURN:
A MODERN QUEST FOR ETERNAL TRUTH
A Multimedia Spiritual Adventure Memoir
by Sharon Janis
Action in itself is neither virtuous nor sinful.
The error lies in attributing it to our false individuality,
when really it emanates from God.
– PAPA RAMDAS
Chapter Twenty-Eight
SHE STILL THINKS SHE DID IT!
MY TEACHER HAD JUST ARRIVED back at the ashram for the summer, in time for a festive celebration of her birthday. A new devotee, Tony, was on the scene to direct the video filming of this fairly extravagant event. Tony was an accomplished music-video director and would be overseeing the filming of our festivities. The ashram’s video department had three cameras and several novice cameramen. Tony brought a new professional flair to the department, challenging all of us to move our skills to a higher level. He was also a very charismatic, strong-willed, and humorous man who I immediately liked and respected.
After the weekend, Tony was scheduled to fly to Vancouver to work on a music video for Celine Dion, who was just about to become super-famous in the United States.
Ralph, who had been more or less in charge of the birthday bash, was excited about the idea of having a great quality video edit of the celebration, and asked Tony if he'd be able to edit the birthday video while he was in Vancouver. Tony agreed, under the condition that I come along to assist him. Even though I had no interest in leaving the ashram for one to two weeks – certainly not now with my teacher back in town –I nevertheless accepted the assignment, and approached it with a positive and enthusiastic attitude.
I flew to Vancouver and found that Tony had arranged for me to stay in a very expensive five star hotel. Tony was used to having his travel expenses paid by the businesses he was working for, and tended to go first class all the way, however, my hotel bill was being paid for by the ashram, with money donated by devotees, and I didn’t want to waste any of this offered money on unnecessary extravagance. So I spent the first day in Vancouver looking around town to find a simpler and less costly place to stay.
Once Tony and I met, he told me that things were busier than he had expected with his project there. He didn't know if he'd have time to make the video, after all. I asked what I could do to help get it done. He instructed me to log the fifteen to twenty hours of tapes, describing each shot and choosing the best ones for the video. I spent the next few days going through every tape, meticulously organizing and typing up log sheets describing and rating each shot with numbers and stars.
Then we went into the editing room with a professional editor for a two-day session. I immediately appreciated Tony's artistic sense. He looked for unnoticed moments, and would slow them down and juxtapose various images in unique and beautiful ways. Watching him, this style began to make sense to me. It was as though I had tapped into his mode of thinking, and could almost predict the effects as he chose them. Once again,I was witnessing the power of company, as my own artistic sense expanded from watching him create.
Tony hadn't had a chance to watch any of the tapes, and depended on me to recommend the shots. At one point, he actually had to leave for a few hours, and entrusted me to work with the editor on the video in his absence. As though I had been directing edit sessions all my life, I slipped into Tony's chair and somewhat into his mentality. The section I worked on came together with a style similar to his, indistinguishable as far as I could tell. It was a very intuitive process. The editor would look at me for the next shot, and I would quiet my mind and listen for inner guidance, while looking through the well-organized log sheets. I was even giving specific lengths of each dissolve or slow motion effect, down to the frame.
This was all fairly new to me. Our equipment back at the ashram was decent, but not quite professional standard. We didn't even have a way to properly record and access time-code numbers that are usually encoded on each frame of videotapes. This made it difficult for me to precisely control the parameters of each edit when editing on the ashram’s video equipment. But now I was in a big editing room with an expert editor, and it was a very positive experience.
During this week, Tony seemed to be working hard to build up my self-esteem – possibly because he'd overheard Ralph speaking to me in a somewhat disrespectful manner. Over and over, Tony told me what a great editor I was and how the ashram didn't really give me the respect I deserved. Of course, Tony was used to working with professionals and thought that I should insist that I be treated as a professional if what Ralph and others wanted was more professional video productions. Tony’s suggestions were absolutely appropriate in a worldly context, but they clashed with my simple monastic surrender.
Nevertheless, I returned to New York with a beautiful video and a determination to receive more respect -- and also with a fairly inflated ego, though I didn't quite realize this at the time. I met a friend in the hallway and told her all about Tony's encouragement, explaining, "I think he's right. I need to insist on being treated with more respect and on getting the time code equipment I need to do a good job." The power of company had affected me on more levels than I knew. I must have sounded like a typical Hollywood player – but we were living and working in an ashram, with a focus on attaining the even greater respect that comes from self surrender and communion with the Divine. A definite clash was taking place in my mind, heart, and soul.
Soon after this discussion with my friend, I walked into the video room and prepared to show the new birthday edit to my guru through a cable connected to her house. She had gathered there with a few devotees so they could watch it together. As the video ended, the phone next to me rang. I picked it up and heard a woman's voice. I couldn't quite tell if it was my guru or another Indian woman, saying, "That was a great video."
I replied, "I'm glad you liked it."
The person on the other end was on a speaker phone, and I could hear some giggling in the background. This made me a little uncomfortable. Were they laughing at something I had said?
The unidentified voice continued, "We didn't know you had such a great skill. Tell me, from where did you learn this great skill?"
I was confused. The wording of this question alarmed me. It seemed to be a set-up. The truth is that I didn't know I had so much skill either, until this past week. Tony had mentioned that he was going to tell my teacher and Ralph what a great editor I was. Maybe she was referring to something he had said. I hesitantly replied, "I don't know. Through the years, I guess."
Again, I heard giggling, then a click, and the phone went dead. I was left feeling perplexed. I had a sense of having done something wrong, but couldn't imagine what it might be. All morning long, I tried to figure out what was going on.
While walking through the woods after lunch, I encountered one of the monks. He called me over and hinted, "It seems that you still haven't lost what you came here to lose."
It took me a moment to understand that he was talking about my ego. I asked, "What did I do wrong?"
He looked off into the trees. "You took credit for Tony's work."
I was surprised to hear this. It hadn't occurred to me that my words might have sounded that way. I tried to explain to him that I had been responding within the context of our guru’s questions, and also that I had substantially contributed to the video. He didn't seem interested in hearing my explanations.
That afternoon, while describing to one of my friends what had happened, I predicted, "I just know she's going to talk about it during the program tonight." I remembered our guru’s birthday talk several years earlier when she had praised me so publicly, and wondered if the karmic scales would be balanced tonight?
Late that afternoon, I sat down with several thousand other devotees for the evening program in our beautiful outdoor pavilion. I wasn’t really so sure if my prediction would come true. It didn't make sense that our guru would take up public time to denounce me publicly for something so insignificant, yet something inside was preparing me for a new challenge.
Our guru began to speak. "The poet saint Kabir said, "When I was enrapt in myself, O beloved, your face was hidden from me. Now that I see you, I am no more I. I know now, this path of love is much too narrow. Two cannot walk here, only one.'"
I wasn't quite sure what this poem had to do with my situation, but I suspected it might be the opening to a talk about my ego.
My suspicions were correct.
Our guru told the whole story about how this wonderful music-video director had edited an extraordinary production of the recent birthday celebration, and how an unnamed person in the video department had dared to take credit for his work. She even imitated my response to the question asking where I had learned such a great skill? "Through the years, I guess," she recounted with a look of incredulous astonishment. The audience made tsk-tsk sounds, as they shook their heads in judgment.
The story sounded especially awful the way she told it, because it appeared as though I had stayed in the ashram while this guy flew somewhere and edited the video all by himself. It wasn't that our guru didn't know I had gone to Vancouver – in fact, she had seen me right as I was leaving with my suitcases. By fudging the story, she was also giving me a clue I needed to receive this experience of public humiliation, the blossom hidden beneath these barbed thorns. I understood that this lesson was not about anything I had done specifically. It was not a call for me to start analyzing my actions or feeling guilty and getting all down on myself. I had come back to the ashram from this editing trip with a budding arrogance, and she was going to chop it off before it took root in my karmic soil.
I sat in the audience listening to the story. If it hadn't been about me, I would have been laughing with everyone else about this poor schmuck who clearly didn't have a clue. But this time I was the schmuck!
Our guru continued, "If I hadn't liked the video, the person would probably have said, ‘Well, I didn't have anything to do with it, it was that guy in Vancouver.'" The audience roared with laughter. I actually don't remember all the exact words, because they weren't all recorded. Something strange happened during our guru’s talk about me — the power went out.
These kinds of power outages happened occasionally during talks in India, but this was the first time it happened in upstate New York. Her mike lost its power. The video decks scrunched the tapes, and clicked loudly as they snapped off. The entire sound system took a power hit. Here was my teacher trying to bust me publicly, and nobody could hear her words. She stopped and waited for the power to come back on.
In a minute or so, the video and audio machines snapped back to life and began rolling once again. The sound system popped back on, and the public reprimand continued. "Can you imagine? What a big ego this person must have to take credit for somebody else's work!"
By this time, I was roasting. I didn't know if it was a wonderful or an awful experience, but it was unquestionably intense. This powerful moment blotted out everything else in my mind. All of my thoughts stopped. I was just there, an outlet of consciousness observing the play. It had nothing to do with me, and yet all of it had to do with me.
Many other hints about the deeper nature of this lesson were also woven through her talk, but I was too stunned to really digest them at the time. She described our first guru by explaining, “No matter what Baba did — no matter how much work he did, no matter how much he sacrificed himself — he always repeated, ‘I do nothing. My guru does everything. I sit under the wish-fulfilling tree of my supreme guru, and through his grace, everything takes place.’”
Suddenly, the power went out again.
I became alarmed as this coincidence repeated. My first thought was, "Who is doing that?" I felt as though some ethereal being was trying to protect me. But I didn't want to be protected from this blessing, regardless of its harsh form. I looked at the picture of my first teacher hanging above our current teacher's chair. "Baba, please," I prayed, "It's okay, I can handle it."
I heard the videotapes being scrunched again as the electricity came back on. It was all so dramatic and confusing. A part of me wanted to laugh, while another part was horrified. And beneath it all was a deep peace, just watching in a nonjudgmental way.
Eventually the talk ended, and we began to chant. Usually, I'd sway and sing loudly, but this night I sat stiffly, barely able to recite the words. I looked at my guru and mentally asked for her grace. "Please help me to have right understanding about what is happening."
After a few moments, she looked at me. I expected a scowl, but she surprised me with a big, bright smile. I could almost hear her saying, "What can I do? It's my job to free you from your ego!"
I couldn't believe that she would give such a generous smile after expressing so much displeasure with me. Nevertheless, just in case I was mistaken and the smile had been intended for someone seated next to me, I chose to not go up in the darshan line that night. I didn't quite have the guts to meet her face to face.
The next morning, I was working on a new video edit. We were going to be having a new course entitled "From the Finite to the Infinite," and I had been asked to come up with a video for it. I started by mixing Sanskrit chanting with classical music, over video footage of flames licking up in slow motion around shots of galaxies twirling.
While compositing all this, I received a phone call. My guru wanted to see me outside the front door of the ashram. I took a moment to center myself and put on my mental and emotional armor, then headed toward my fate.
My guru was seated outside with a few devotees. I bowed and sat before her. She was not smiling as she spoke, "How dare you take credit for Tony's work?"
It was clear that we were not going to ease into this.
I mustered up my courage and tried to explain the situation. "I knew that you knew that Tony made the video. I thought you were saying I did a good job assisting him."
My words seemed to shock her. Turning to the other devotees, she exclaimed, "She STILL thinks she did it!"
They seemed to be just as appalled by my explanation. What had I said wrong? I tried again, this time adding a little more detail. "You see, Tony was working on another video project at the time, and I chose the shots and also helped with the editing."
My guru looked as though I had just uttered the most ridiculous statement in the world. "She STILL thinks she did it!"
Now I was sweating. I decided maybe it might be good to abridge my description significantly. "I logged the tapes."
"She STILL thinks she did it!"
I was practically ready to say that I had just made the coffee, when I glanced toward the monk seated next to me. He gave me a look of kind encouragement that somehow helped me to know what to say. With an inner shift, I started to realize that this was not about who did what. It had nothing to do with the video or with Tony or me. I glimpsed that we were dealing with an entirely different level of identification with action.
It is the universal energy that does everything. Every moment is born anew for that ever-creative consciousness. The person who logged the tapes in Vancouver was not the same person sitting before my teacher today. In that moment, I opened up into a new vision of the universal play. I had heard the words "I am not the doer," being quoted in the past, but now I glimpsed the deeper meaning behind these words. I looked my teacher right in the eye and said with complete honesty, "I had nothing to do with that video."
She gave a slight nod, and paused for a moment. Even though she was acting stern with me, I was feeling peaceful and exhilarated. I loved being carried into new understandings, even though the external circumstances seemed to be harsh. My heart was happy just to be in my guru’s presence. Her bright energy soothed my soul as we began the next phase of this lesson.
She began insulting me. "Look at her face, her ghost face. See how stiff she sits? She's more stiff than that pillar. Have you seen how she walks? There is so much ego in her walk. And none of her videos are any good." She turned to a woman sitting there. "Aren't her videos lousy?"
Now, this woman had worked with me on a few videos, and had always told me what a good editor I was and how much she liked my work. But this was a game, and she had to play her role. She agreed with my teacher, "Yes, her videos are quite mediocre."
This drama went on for some time. Strangely, not one particle of me felt insulted. There is no way that anyone watching could have known what was taking place beneath the surface of this external event. First of all, every time my teacher recited another criticism of me, I would immediately turn it right back and mentally ask her to heal and remove that fault. She was pulling out qualities that had been blocking me from the freedom I sought. She handed them to me one by one, and I offered each one back to her purifying force. We were working together.
This process was intuitive and natural. I didn't understand all the deeper implications of what was happening, yet my subconscious intelligence saw this as an opportunity for inner cleansing, and embraced it.
My guru’s words also reflected back to me certain insecurities I sometimes had. I worried that I was stiff and boring, and that beneath the outer surrender I still had a lot of ego. Everything my guru mentioned had a ring of familiarity – these were my fears about myself. However, as she enumerated my faults for the next twenty minutes or so, I began to notice how silly they sounded. I realized, "Hey, I'm not really that bad!" Her vocalization of my deepest fears helped to dissolve my identification with them.
All I could do was look at my beloved guru with a totally open heart. I was so grateful for whatever karma-surgery she was doing. With each passing minute, I could feel myself becoming lighter, and more and more filled with a vibrant energy.
She continued speaking to the small group, "Look at her. Nothing gets to her. She's like Mount Meru (a mountain in India)." Then she turned to me, "You've got the toughest shell of anyone here. I've been trying to break your shell for years, and I can't do it!" She threw her hands up in a gesture of exasperation.
I looked into her eyes and prayed silently with all my might, "Please don't give up on me. Break my shell. Make me free!"
Here I had been trying not to respond emotionally to her taunts, and now it seemed that was exactly what she had wanted me to do. She wanted me to get in touch with my deeply hidden emotions, but even after all her efforts, I had remained completely still and unmoved. I knew this shell she referred to was the hard covering of defense mechanisms that had sheltered me through my difficult childhood. I wasn't quite ready to let go of this dear old friend, my protective shell.
Eventually, I was dismissed and went back to the editing room. Still in a state of shock, I took refuge in continuing my creative work. But as I looked at the images on the screen, I began to see blue flames over them. I closed my eyes. The blue flames continued to play across my inner field of vision. I opened my eyes and looked around. Still there. For four days, I saw blue flames.
The next day I ran into the friend who had participated in the discussion about my editing skills. She'd had her own amazing vision during the meeting, which synchronized surprisingly with mine. As our teacher had started to question me about taking credit for Tony's work, my friend saw blue flames shooting from her toward me. But, she said, they stayed circling around my body. Each time I gave an excuse and received another reprimand, more blue flames would surround me. Finally, when I uttered, "I had nothing to do with that video," my friend saw the mass of blue flames enter into me.
Years later came another chapter of this lesson. After leaving the ashram and meeting with immediate success in Hollywood, I wrote to my teacher about the discomfort I was experiencing with all the praise that was being directed toward me. After all the effort she had offered to help free me from egotistical identification with my actions, it almost seemed as though my co-workers and bosses were conspiring to puff me up with almost daily praise.
My guru responded to my concerns in a letter. "You should understand that I am very proud of you, particularly with the praises of your boss, because if he is praising you so profusely, that means that your stay in the ashram has borne complete fruit. All your training comes from living here, therefore you need not feel shy about the compliments that you receive. You should learn to offer them to the Shakti, to the Great Guiding Force."
On to
Chapter
Twenty-Nine
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