Nachiketa

The story of Nachiketa is as follows, the account being lifted from the Upanishad called Katha, which was from the Krishna Yajur Veda. Nachiketa in tradition is the great Yogacharya. My text follows the text of the Advaita Vedanta Printing House version of the Ramakrishna Math and was done by Swami Madhavanda. If it is not a good translation, it is because of my rewrite.

It was many years ago in the age of the Vedas. That would be about 1200 BC when the Arya (nobility) as they called themselves swept down and across an already weakened and partially defunct Harrapan civilization. The Arya had settled the Gangetic plane in successive waves and had established a new civilization. A bungalow civilization with a very developed farm culture and many memories of the Indus Valley and probably the steps. The scythians are relatives of the people who came to the Ganges and were called Arya (Nobles). The dyonesian stage of the India of Krishna and Rama, the warrior kings of the Lunar and Solar dynasties of the trans-Arya, the most famous and significant of the presumed kings of early India, was yet to happen.

This story about a Brahman hotra priests yagya and his son's propriety. One Auddaalaki "Vaajashravas (the gift-giver or food-giver)" Aruni by name decided to give away his possessions in order to earn some good Karma. He had, however, at that particular ceremony, called the vishvajit, given only those goods which were defective. The cows were old and the skin barely hanging on their bony frames. The udders were not giving milk and the teeth could hardly chew. This was the sacrifice which Vajrashravas intended to give in order to get into heaven in the afterlife. His son, called Nachiketa by name, a very astute young man. saw his fathers dilemma. By way of rectifying the situation he suggested to his father that he be given away. In this way, since the son was the prize possession. His father could earn the necessary merits and his sin absolved for his paltry offering which must surely have offended the Gods.

"Father" he demanded, "to whom wilt thou give me," he said in the Vedic language which probably resembles the Sanskrit still used today for many of the scriptures of India, the Sanskrit which inherited from Prakrit and which is the origin of the many root words of the Indo-Aryan languages which are the common stock of European civilization. "I repeat," he said, "to whom will you give me?" Dad was outraged. The most precious son was trying to give himself away. Father Vajashrawas could not bear his son's obvious snicker and turned on him, "I'm giving you to death!"(It was the curse of Vajashrawas). The son Nachiketa was not phased at all. He was ready. His ingenuousness led him to speculate as he walked toward the woods. "I'm no so bad. I never came last and as often as not I came first. I'm not just middling. Dad must have his reasons for sending me to death. There must be more than meets the eye to this. Anyway people are born and grow like corn only to be harvested in the fall. They are plowed under and grow back again in the spring. It is always the same. You have to go sometime, so it might as well be now."

We don't hear how he got to the death god, one Yama by name, but suddenly there he was at the doors of death asking the wife of the God of Death, "Where is the God of Death?" he asked very politely. Nachiketa was a most dutiful son. In his uprightness and his innocence he was very powerful. The wife said, "He is not here right now. You will have to wait." Wait he did. Three days. Three days without food or water. The Death God returned and his wife said to him, "Yama, there is a Brahman boy waiting outside. He has been waiting for three days." Yama went out right away. A brahman should be well treated in anybody's house, and even though he was the Lord of Death he still lived by the laws and custom of the Veda. He went up to Nachiketa directly and said, "Sorry to keep you waiting for so long. We didn't know you were coming. But by way of recompense I will give you any three boons that you wish." Nachiketa was flattered by his offer and bowed most genteelly to Death. "Thank you. I would first that my father should forgive me."

Death said, "So it shall be on your return that he will forgive and will no longer be angry."

Then Nachiketa asked, "What is the secret of the sacrificial fire which alone leads to heaven." He was asking—for the modern reader will no have a clue what this question really means—why is it that people use sacrificial rites. What good does it do? Does it really mean anything to burn incense and sit around a fire throwing in ghee and herbs and chanting all night long? Does that mean we are going to heaven as if there is some sort of causal connection between these rituals which look so completely silly to the Charvaka (the materialist skeptic or the modern scientific mind) and going to 'heaven'.

Yama said, "I love your forth rightness and your inquiring mind. You have come to me and you can ask for any material thing and you have asked for knowledge, so I am just tickled. I am going to do you a favor. This sacrificial fire will now be called the Nachiketa fire. Come closer and I will teach you some things which are the key to this sacrifice."

Nachiketa took a seat beside him.

Yama said, "There are three kinds of knowledge for the Knower of the Veda. There is a knowledge of the Veda or scripture, there is a knowledge of the direct perception of the state or the immediate experience of the state, and there is inferential knowledge, as for example when you see some smoke you can presume that there must be some heat, if not some flames. When these kinds of knowledge converge into one stream and they concur on some object then it can be concluded that is real knowledge. The sacrifice is the focus of this kind of knowledge. No one goes to heaven by putting little spoonfuls of liquefied butter in a fire. He goes to heaven because he has refined his soul, so that the heavenly people are glad to see him. The sacrifice is the vehicle of purification of the soul. It is ritual symbolism and its only use is to bring our minds to focus on the purity of consciousness in our selves. So do this sacrifice and build a little alter make of bricks like so ( he shows him). Do this and keep being a good person and you will get to heaven. Don't be greedy or heavy or pushy and respect the life and just keep meditating and you will have a wonderful afterlife. Take this Maalaa made of multicolored beads and tell them remembering all the attributes of the pure space . . . . ."

And I who had been reading the original Upanishad which is not really that much like my version but older and less comprehensible to the untutored reader, looked up at Shyam, and thought, "he gave me a Maalaa and he was teaching me to meditate. That is just like the death god teaching Nachiketa." I looked at Shyam and said, "You did not tell me that you were the Death god." And he said, "You did not know that you were Nachiketa." That is how I got the name.

And now back to Ancient India. into the Gangetic plane. some old cows are still standing in the yard of Vajashrawas, and he is wondering if his son will come back. His son Nachiketa is still talking to Death in the other world.

Yama continued, ".. which as you know are purity, peacefulness, intelligence, love. That pure consciousness is the heavenly abode which every body hopes to achieve with the fire sacrifice that I have taught you. You keeping practicing and you will one day be fit for a heavenly afterlife. It's a promise."

"Now my son you have one more wish. What will it be?"

Nachiketa was quick to understand that heaven may be promising but what about the here and now. He framed his question for maximum depth and let it go to the Death god.

"When a man dies there is some doubt: some say 'he exists' and others say 'he does not', this I would like to know. You are the perfect one (person) to ask. this is the final boon I would like from you."

Death was totally pleased but he pretended to be somewhat upset. "Well the Gods don't even care to discuss this. It is too technical. It is a very subtle question, hard to understand. What will your friends say if you start talking about this sort of thing. It just makes everybody uncomfortable. Don't ask me about this, try for something else."

Nachiketa did not get ruffled at all even in the face of such an imposing character as the Lord of Death.

"Well sir if even the Gods have trouble with this one, and if it is so subtle, then in fact you are just the ideal God to ask such a question (the Gods were closer to the earth in these days and mortals were more disposed to talk with them. Now with mortals flying around the heavens in rockets, the Gods withdraw to other worlds when they need peace and quiet and only come to earth when they have to work. . . . just kidding!). I would like you to answer the question."

Death was a bit flushed by now.

"Choose sons and grandsons, herds of cattle and elephants, horses and gold; choose a vast territory on earth, and live as many years as you desire. Ask for any boon, equal to this. Be practical. Wealth and long life are at your command. Be a king, I shall make thee enjoyer of all desires. Take all these celestial nymphs and their chariots and musical instruments—you can't get these in any store you know—and they'll lavish attention on you, these girls. Hmmm, how about it. Take all this. Think Nachiketa, don't ask again about death."

Nachiketa was now really interested.

"All these things you have offered are really just transient. They wear you out. The senses get jaded. They shorten your life. Keep the song and dance to yourself. No one is satisfied with wealth. I am here addressing you in person and you taught me the sacrifice that leads even to the immortal heaven. I don't really need these things. To have been so near to you, Death, gives life an entirely different meaning. I need to know the answer to my question. What then Death is Self realization?"

Death spoke at length.

"It is one thing to do what is pleasant and another to do what is good. if one does what is good, good befalls him. He who does only what is pleasant loses the goal. Both the good and the pleasant come to a person. The wise man discriminates between the two having examined them well. The wise man prefers the good and the fool chooses the pleasant, through avarice and attachment. You, Nachiketa, have turned down all the items of romance (or rhose that are pleasant in appearance) which I offered you, and have stubbornly insisted on knowing about Self realization. Bully for you. The two are very different; Ignorance and its results and Knowledge and its results. I feel Nachiketa that you are a worthy disciple because the thought of so much pleasure did not shake you. To the careless child who is deluded by the path of much wealth and family involvement, who gets caught up in the world, and who goes round in circles without ever giving any time to their souls and the need of the innermost being, the way to the eternal bliss never appears. 'This is the only world and there is no other' they cry, while falling into my noose again and again. To even hear about self realization is not given to many. To really know, even after hearing about it scarcely anyone makes it. The real teacher or Sat Guru is a world wonder and the student of such a man is also a world wonder - a prodigy. Incredible it is to see someone receive instruction about the Self and to realize his own true nature while living. It is the stuff of legends. Great tales are told of it from old. It is a miracle, I say, a miracle of the first rank. No inferior teacher can teach about Self realization. The soul is too subtle. Without a Guru it is supremely difficult to realize the paramatma. It is so difficult, it is an insult to even think of it (i.e to say go realize God to someone). More subtle than nuclear physics or pure math, it is beyond even the intellect. It is unarguable because it is beyond any symbol. Totally transcendental. Your resolve in getting to this knowledge will be legendary. Great concentration power is required to get to this focus of the Soul (Atman)."

Nachiketa was all fired up at this point.

Yama continued, seeing that he was still following the discourse and had not gone into Nidra (or sleep like middle range state), like many students do.

"All treasures are transient and I gobble them up in the end. No sooner does a man have a grip on that treasure box than it is taken away from him. Death comes to every man sooner or later. The eternal cannot be had by the non-eternal. God knows that I did that Nachiketa sacrifice anyway, just because it was good exercise for me and for me it was the entertainment. The consummate fulfillment of all desires and the stay of the universe the endless fruit of all the rites and rock of freedom from fear, most adorable and great, the exalted, even all this you have given up for the point of Self realization. The wise man turns away from this merry-go-round of good and evil, joy and sorrow. By meditating within on the ancient effulgent one, hard to be seen, subtle and immanent, seated in the heart, and residing within the body and soul, one reaches it. That person who knows the subtle seat of the law, he truly can rejoice. He can rejoice because to achieve this state, to have this knowledge and to reach this evolution are all the same thing. This is real happiness and this house I think is open to you—the house of Self realization."

Well, believe it or not, Nachiketa had followed all this on the first pass and was able to ask a question that was pertinent. Listen carefully to his question and tell me if you understand it.

"Death! That which you construe or perceive as different from Dharm (Law, Righteousness, Essence) and Adharm, as different from cause and effect, as different from what had been and what shall be, (please tell me that)."

"Oh Nachiketa you are very beautiful. The goal which every scripture trumpets and which is the aim of all strenuous effort and sacrifice (penance, austerities), and desiring which they lead the life of Brahmacharya (one who directs all his energy to the God head, who live only for the union of god and his own being) — it is Om. If you know really the sound of this Om which the syllable Om represents, everything will come to you. You can get anything you want. If you can penetrate the depth which that cosmic sound or inner soul vibration or song of the absolute which is suggested here by the sound OM, people will turn to you with devotion in their eyes because you will be the fountain of Joy for them, a miracle worker in the service of the Absolute Consciousness. This soul is pure Knower. The Knower that Knows the Knowingness. It is the consciousness that is the consciousness of the eternal consciousness. God consciousness as human consciousness. It is never born and it does not die. The names pure Being, Lord, Pure Consciousness are all the same. The soul in essence does not emanate nor does anything emanate from it. It remains pure and without modification. It is unborn and undying, without beginning and without end. It suffers no destruction when the body is destroyed. Since that is so, know one can really kill the man, because the man is soul and the soul is unborn and undying. The one who thinks that the is killed and the one who thinks that he is dying are both mistaken. The Param Aatmaa is both smaller than the smallest and bigger than the biggest, and it dwells in the hearts of all creatures. The desireless one on being free from grief, realizes that glory of Aatmaa through purity of mind and senses. Though sitting still he travels far, though lying down he goes everywhere: who can know besides me that effulgent Being who rejoices and rejoices not. The wise one does not grieve over the dead, having known the bodies, all pervading supreme Aatmaa who dwells in all the impermanent bodies. This Aatmaa cannot be attained by study, nor by reasoning, or scriptures of any kind but is attained by him whom it chooses. The Self of his self chooses himself through great efforts. Those who do not refrain from bad news, troubles and sorrowful hateful activities and who do not meditate, whose minds are always out of control cannot know this that I have said."

Death finished with a flourish;
"Otherwise how can men know the 'who' and 'where' and 'why' of IT (Brahma). It, whose food is the priest and the warrior and whose condiment is the Death--myself. Do you catch my irony Nachiketa?"
"Yes Sir. I'm working on it already."

Well that is just the beginning. They continued talking and Nachiketa realized his own true nature, the almighty lord within his heart. That all permeating consciousness which is pure and blissful he knew as his own being. In other words he and God were one spirit and one soul and one essence or one consciousness pure and simple. The drop became merged into the ocean.

One day I had been sitting with Shankar and Manoj at hill house and Shyam had come in and started talking. It was just chatty stuff and we mentioned the story Nachiketa. I joked about him calling himself the Yama. He looked at me and said, "or perhaps Vajashravas". He said it under his breath and I did not quite hear it. I looked at him and questioned what he said but he then turned to Shankar and made other comments and finally got up and left with out explaining. It was only later when I studied the Upanishad in Canada that I realized he was making a terrible threat.

Summer 1976: Back in Montreal.

I started working on myself even more.

There is a classical teaching from India. It is a metaphor about the inner person and its structure
The person is like a chariot. The horses are the senses, the reigns are like the mind, the driver is the intellect and the rider in the chariot is the pure spirit. It is the senses which propel us along the road. The inner man has been divided into senses, mind, intellect and ego, and finally spirit or essence (the ground which is pure consciousness). If it were not for the mind and intellect the horses would act at their own whim. The mind is something that collects sense data and identifies objects as desirable or adverse, it constantly spills out new and recreated material for the intellect to review. We can understand the sense to have a will of its own in terms of conditioned responses. The smell of Grannie's cherry pie, practically makes us salivate, we suddenly need some hot pie with ice cream. Better still a beautiful woman or man, comes down the street, we are turned on and start making plans. Part of us wants to satisfy the sense and another part wants to be totally free from it. Some part of us wants to remain totally satisfied and at peace. The senses become a tyranny, we go against our better judgment, we go against our better nature in the unending quest for satisfaction by the senses. It is unending because the sense can be satisfied but the mind will continue to create new needs, in order to quench the thirst for true and lasting satisfaction. And in fact we more often reach this satisfaction by eliminating the needs, or at least reducing them to limited and attainable scope. But ultimately the feeling of centeredness and ease that is the real desire of any man is found only in his own true nature, his real and eternal self, and this transcends the senses and even death. If we are needless we can use all our energy to give, to be positive, to create, and to enjoy what one already is before the desire for the object has over powered oneself (the man becomes totally identified as individual). Once out side the grip of this attraction for things outside of oneself, or things apart from oneself, there is no need for others to participate in gratifying our egos. By letting go of ourselves we gain the whole world. By ego we mean the doer or actor in the body which identifies itself as the whole man. To be egoless is the same identification which apprehends or reflects the true Self and doesn't necessarily show itself as piety, weakness, meekness, self nihilating and self mutilating thinking or whatever, but the knowing one's real nature to be grounded in pure Being and expressed as body mind senses and intellect. Whenever the ego becomes very strong in its identifying with the individual body pain is sure to follow - death being the limiting factor. Whenever the ego is strong in its identifying with the whole, the universal and the essential joy is sure to follow - the universal does not die.

"The fire sacrifice of Nachiketa is the individuality being offered to the Cosmic Whole and that certainly is attained after the Kundalini that has two ends the bottom and the top meet ant one point and become One whole which again can be explained that when the praanic energy rises from the bottom of the spine and keeps rising and rising and ultimately meets the top crown, the Sahasrar, then the fire sacrifice becomes successful. Which means the fire is taken from the bottom and is sacrificed or offered to the top. Which is the absolute field of knowledge that is called the Nachiketa-fire, the Gyaan Agni. The result of which is that all the darkness and the ignorance gets burned or removed. So knowledge of the self everywhere as One reality is the Nachiketa fire.

As and when it happens for him to talk, he speaks otherwise everything is silent. thank you very much for your being as Nachiketa." Shyam said.

Essay on Oneness. It is all One. It is all One. It is just one space, the context of everything, the underlying ground of existence. It cannot be defined but must be experienced to be known. It is pure bliss, truth awareness, love being and one essence in which manifests all the knowable universe. This goes on moment to moment, knowing of the underlying order as oneself (dwelling within as one's own highest nature and without as the ground of the whole matrix), and becomes the liberating being in life, the Self Realized. This pure bliss absolute consciousness is Yog or the supreme life. This state is encountered in pure silence whether in action or in rest. In rest or repose it is the highest states of Samadhi, in life of action it is realized as concentration happiness, wisdom, centeredness and compassion. In response the body and mind are absolutely still, the body like a log and the mind like a rock. It is a state combining and transcending the states of waking, dreaming and deep sleep. This is called Nirodha when the whole person is transformed into the God like being which is the full development of his original nature. When this state becomes natural to the man he is Jeevan Mukta or free while living. It is the culmination of all life and beyond fear and despair or angst. When we say Yoga or Yog (Northern Sanskrit, Shyam explained), we mean both the practice and the result of the practice. There are many Yogas those being variations on the same theme which answer to various areas of life and to differing personalities. Here the culmination of faith results in a direct experience of the God essence. This God essence one already is. It is the spark of the God within man—although to say so implies that the spark can be separated from the whole which it can't. The realization lies in seed or potential form within every person, and in fact you could say that everyone is already realized but since they don't know it, they aren't enlightened at all. When a man fails to know his enlightenment he begins to feel something missing in his life. He will only feel partly content and not quite comfortable unless he does so. If it should happen that a man has great potentials for enlightenment and yet has not been brought or not brought himself to this he will feel the difference most acutely and in fact like the Buddha or Ram (as in Yog Vashisht), become quite desperate about the condition of the world and the apparent pointlessness of any life without Self Realization. The greater the difference between a person's potential for Realization and his actual present condition the greater will be his discomfort. Oneness means everythingness. The is no separate subject and object. Duality and unity are one also. The unmanifest ground and the manifestation that arises from it are the same thing. When a man goes within himself and perceives what he is, he actually transforms himself into a knower or experiencer of this new dimension. He knows that the world or the appearance of what he calls the world is what appears to be multifold and divided by the many forms of what he perceives, but that this multifold world wraps into a single thread which he himself is an inseparable conscious and timeless oneness.

What appears to be the inevitable and irresistible burden of pain and misery is in fact not a necessary concomitant of life and that the dwelling in pain is really an indication of a lack of self realization or self understanding. Liberation from pain means Kevalya or the final release from the bonds of duality. This means absorption in the plenitude, the Oneness.

Accepting others, appreciating others is not to be offended but to lift the space, your own included.

Ego and Self worth. It is very easy to misunderstand what egolessness means. People in Western cultures often are very misguided in this respect due to the emulation of the spiritual practice of Christians which were self naughting to the extreme. It does not mean that one should not recognize what is good and beautiful in oneself, or of value to one's society, or of anything in fact we know as a healthy pride or feeling of adequacy and self worth. To denigrate oneself for the sake of humility before God is to forget the basic fact that we are in our own natures embedded and born of God. Whatever is of highest value in man is what is termed the Godly nature. If we set out to naught out the humanness so that the God may appear we have made a basic error. The root of the error lies first in metaphysics and then in theology and then in the common sense so called. We know that God consciousness transcends the individualist or egocentric view of life, but that does not mean that any particular person should not feel good about himself and his accomplishments. If he succeeds at something he should not now try to turn around and say that it is nothing. He should feel good about himself and see that as a part of the good of life—to be able to work to succeed and to enjoy the fruit of that whole cycle. Self worth becomes negative and counter productive of not life-supporting when it turns totally into oneself and does not base itself on the understanding that the individual who is experiencing this, is not fundamentally separate or distinct from the entire web of life in which he lives and that his accomplishments are never entirely one's own and are shared with the root and branches of the same tree. We, from the point of view of timeless existence, are transcending every momentary and fragmentary part, and can afford to give up the feel of mineness and separation that is inherent in the ego identification with body and senses (personhood or creatureliness). But, on other side, every individual must have a center and a point of well being. Since the world often centers on the struggle for existence there is a real need to see in oneself the confidence and strength to go ahead against the counter tide of negativity. People need to feel effective, needed, useful, accomplished, successful and so on. Man needs to value his existence. But if in his valuing he makes the overall distinction between himself and others and values things only for his own sake then there is a problem of pride. This problem becomes more acute as one approaches the state of self realization. But for the ordinary man it is enough for him to feel good about himself and his family or society, to pride himself in his culture, but to remember that this all ultimately falls into the terrain of Oneness.

Ego is not something that can be given up merely by a proscribed ethos. A set of directions values and rules, habits or customs will not make a man egoless. Only Self Realization will do this and in that case he is not really egoless (without the basic sense "I am" something), as we conventionally understand. No one is ever really selfless because there is not such thing as without Self. That means make to great a distinction between the lower side of consciousness and the higher. What we really mean by selfless means to act for the whole self, the cosmos and this is what is meant by following God's will. It does not means that we wake up every morning to the sound of angelic bugles and listen while the cherubic mess sergeant gives us our daily orders. it means that we know ourselves as united with God in his essence, and therefore our minds ego and intellect are perfected reflections of that supra cosmic person which we take for God (the manifest God in this case - which is the whole universe with its consciousness). So the true path to enlightenment means a healthy world view and healthy self evaluation as man in his world.

In the West we tend to see consciousness as something derived from the ground up so to speak. We see it in terms of its physical correlates and evaluate the content in terms of history and psychology. It has become very trendy for the molecular biologist to spell out theories of consciousness on the basis of brain chemistry, neurophysics, genetic theory and so on, leading to endless debate on the true nature of man. In the East on the contrary they presume that the pure consciousness has sprung from being itself, which then gives rise to mind and then the physical world. Creation is drawn from the wells of the thought of God. It is assumed that a man creates his own world. In contrast to seeing man as dwelling in awareness beneath the skin, in the East the physical body is seen as the reduction and holding pot of the immortal consciousness. The soul is the bundle of memories and powers of the ego intellect bundled together by the glue of Karma. The essential nature of this soul is free being and so when a man is liberated it is seen that the plasmic bag which we think of as the immortal soul is dispersed back into its constituent elements leaving the undying essence without any identification whatsoever. Thus Vedant sees man as constituted essentially as space or of the free vital energy—Praan (called Chi in the far East), and as such immortality really means something beyond 'Heaven' as an ordinary man thinks of it. This way it is thought that to reach some sort of garden of Eden is merely a transitory point for the evolution of the soul which is expected to evolve and dissolve back into its universal God nature which does not have any specific locus or time frame. The liberated being then is seen to be in his nature higher even than the Gods (the celestial persons) who are still bound by space and time and must return to earth for the final liberation.

So for a Western man to really understand consciousness he must see his waking consciousness as stripped of every transitory and variable identification and reduce it to its essential component which is the knower of all the states. This knower is not an entity but the reflection of the Knowingness which is the foundation or ground.

We cannot really talk about unmanifest existence. It is not an object and therefore we cannot symbolize it with words which are laden with meaning taken from the manifest world. Thought itself is manifestation and in manifesting is reduction or reflection of the space in which the thought is held. We can use metaphor and poetics to point to this or to induct a similar understanding in the consciousness of the hearer, but the hearer must then himself bridge the gap between the thoughts which brings him into the contact with the unmanifest existence. The unmanifest is not non-being. Non-being is an attempt to construe something by blocking it out of our terrain of importance. It is strictly nugatory. Unmanifest is not non-being or nothingness but the plenum from which the manifest is unfolded. In other words the existence comes to be from this center or plenum which is simultaneous and everywhere and does not imply nothingness. That is why it is completely mistaken to think of Nirvana as nihilism. it is the Buddhist expression of the movement into the state of Self realization and the implications are world affirmation and self affirmation despite to language to the contrary. Because we think of the world as transitory does not mean that we cannot say that it is actual.

When I came back from india in 1976 I stayed at the Ashram for a while and then couldn't stand being in Montreal.

1976 Veena meeting M. on the front steps of Lincoln 1976. she looked at him and he twinkled on sensitive to her every whim of having sex with anybody she knew and then he put his hand on the rail close to hers and she slid her hand down the rail to his and patted it it.and she was a senior student already and he was a senior crook already and friend to heroin and cocaine addicts everywhere. "Hi M.," she smiled, and she really thought he was was a really nice guy. But then she called everybody in the ashram gods and goddesses or sages and saints and things like that. and they sure weren't as I found out much later on. These two, Prem and Veena, were on their way to the top and without the cash at hand I could not compete. I didn't have the commitment to Shyam Space as I was not yet completely persuaded. They were creating structure for themselves and others. Nootan had later gone off to spend time with Prem and Veena (Weena as it is pronounced in India).

M. let me stay at Morgan's house in Senneville for a while after we had been ejected out of the ashram by Prem and Veena. Morgan showed me the original rifle with that extra section welded on the top that had been used to cheat the Natives for furs. I got a job and at Ogilvy's later and found myself a room beside the ashram. Later I stayed with M. and Irene until I saw one day that they were still users. I had to leave.

I went to Ottawa then and stayed at Broadway with Annalee, Leela, Manoj and sometimes HansRaj. We worked on Light of Knowledge and Leela gave me some tapes to copy. She was so upset about me taping her precious collection she wrote to Shyam and asked him if I was allowed to do it. He said yes and she shouldn't get too attached. Later we moved to Besserer in Sandy Hill and Annalee went to Toronto. At Besserer it was crowded, again. RamDev and Vaani, Shankar and Shakti, Dikpal and Leela. Shashi for a while. Then Dikpal and shankar were in a power struggle and I was spending loads of time out of the house. After RamDev and Vaani and Shashi got a house of their own and we moved to 108 First Avenue. That was Shankar Shakti, myself, Dikpal Leela. that worked for a while and then we went our separate ways and Dikpal and leela got a place of their own and started talking about marriage.

Got a job as a consultant in computers.

16.10.77

"I have no exact plans as to what I'm doing. I seem to recall you said finish the money question of something to that effect. You must realize that finishing the money question means earning an awful lot of money. So short of aiming at being a millionaire I don't know what to do. Maybe I shouldn't aim at anything except doing Sadhana day by day, and trying to remember the Vision of Oneness is what I'm working on and nothing else.

By the way, what happened to Nachiketa after he came back to his house. He realized in Heaven, but does the story just end?

I believe that tonight we will be doing the Havana ceremony at Wilson street (Steve E., Bernice, Rhonda). Should be great fun
Love
Nachiketa"

No answer, Often no answer.

Leela (a student of Shyam living in Ottawa) once did a little test with some of her students. They made a list of five things they valued and five things they didn't like about them selves. Then she had giving up all these things. She found that they could easily give up the good things but clung to the negative. Strange eh? People love to complain. Negativity is so familiar, comfortable, easy. Swami was right, I had been sending him mental movie letters. If you read my letters you would think only that my life is a total bummer. It isn't really. It is full of joy. In the last few months I have had a lot of success. I have made some money, I met a doctor who I feel will solve my health problems, I have found many friends and some wonderful spiritual lights. There is love all around me and prosperity knocking on my door. I feel really pretty lucky too have experienced the things that I have experienced.

I was having a problem purifying myself. My health was not very good at the best of times although there was no obvious signs of disease. I was run down and felt bad especially mentally. I had had a habit of smoking and a medical prescription for tranquilizers (valium) which I found hard to beat. Valium as I found out later can be a very heavy habit to beat. Barbara Gordon the media type wrote a book "I'm dancing as Fast as I Can" in which she describes the Hell she went through in order to withdraw from it. She had ended up spending almost a year in a hospital on account of her withdrawal and unfortunate circumstances and misunderstanding surrounding the medicine. She was first perscribed the valium for he back pain. I was nervous. I was always trying to repair myself and was frequently writing to Shyam to ask about this problem and that problem.

Justification : or that I had to be somebody . . . then later realize that Self is the justification. Being requires nothing but a little honesty, a little effort. People may not see you, may not even like you. but what can you do? BE with yourself and live the moment. Be secure in simple centeredness. If one is centered then one has attained to everything, accomplished everything that a man really needs in this life. Truly being with the moment is full justification of one's place in the world. We look outside ourselves for explanations of ourselves and get caught up in how other's see us, rather than looking into our own nature. We see ourselves only in relation to others and begin to depend on them. If we see ourselves we see ourselves as one without an other. Without relation in fact, in essence, and remain secure in the knowledge that what comes from the whole, is whole and we are already perfect. Just to sit is an expression of god.

1978 second India back to the Guru In the Himalayas sitting in meditation room

The former lower land meditation hall. The Beas river was by now a familiar sight. There was a room behind the empire Hotel for me this time and it was fairly large. I had my own kitchen. The householder outside would get up every morning (even in winter) and have a bath beneath the tap in the yard. He would chant for half an hour of so, from the Bhagavad Geeta.

The vision of astral nootan: One day in mediation room Shyam was sitting very quietly with us. The space had become very profound and I was seeing him as if he were drifting in and out of existence in the same place. It would appear as if his body was at once material and then would become a mere hologram. The whole room began to look as if a crystal or an image projected by some as yet invented camera unto pure space. Then I was looking out the north well. There were no windows on this side, but I could see a figure advancing towards the hall. it was though my minds eye that I was seeing it and yet it was plainly three dimensional. It was a woman and she appeared to be walking on the grass. Yet all of it appeared as if in astral form. Her outline sparkled with some form of dust such as Walt Disney contrives to show on Tinker Bell. As I continued watching, the form advanced closer, and then turned to the side of the hall. I heard the shuffling of shoes being removed and then Nooton physically entered the building. I was amazed, for I had seen her coming through the wall.

The vision of web of life. I saw a complex web of lights covering the whole world. Myriad and uncountable numbers of lights like and web covering the whole planet. At first I thoughts of city lights. But then I realized that it is the light of living beings. Among these lights were the large fixed stars which were the biggest and brightest. They were the saints. Among these saints and very bright was Shyam. (well, he was close by). Ibelieve this is more like a dream than a vision.

SAMADHI: this is the transformation of the mind stuff which leads to heaven (or hell sometimes). Self realization is the fruit of the knowledge which is found in Samadhi. It is the state of the consciousness in which the subject, the object and the state of cognition are reduced to the single ground of all three. It is the Unity state of consciousness. It is beyond ecstasy and rapture. It is bliss and pure wisdom. it is the direct experience of both God and Soul—that means God and soul are found to be one in this unique state of consciousness. It is the fourth state which is the foundation of waking dreaming and even deep sleep. It is existence in truth, the perception and life in the real. It is the release of the mind from the bounds of the material life. It is the ultimate evolution of the human spirit. Samadhis are of greater and lesser kinds but they culminate in the unitive state. Samadhi is the state of meditation. It is God realization or God consciousness.

I was asleep in my room behind the hotel. A candle was lit and was almost burned to the butt. Suddenly I woke. There was a centipede crawling across my pillow not two inches from my ears. It was about three inches long and red and white stripped. No doubt it could be lethally poisonous. I got up and put it in a jar and watched it for a while. It had even a nasty vibe. I was meditating for a while on it and decided that it did emanate bad vibrations. I chucked it out in the morning and asked around if anyone knew about these kinds of centipede. Nobody in the ashram knew.

Prakash: Shyam as St. John the Baptist. Sitting at the hotel discussing Yoga with Prakash. She remarks that she had seen Shyam's body disappear and the head remain. She freaked because she felt it was St. John the Baptist reincarnated. I asked if it was like him or was it just the circumstances reminded her of him, or did she feel that he actually was St. John. She said that she felt that it was really him. I stared at her. But she didn't even blink.

The voice of god. One day I had been sitting meditating and writing all day long. Toward the evening I got into Samadhi and was just feeling in deep space. A wave and a voice came as if from out of this space and said to me "You are my beloved son." I couldn't take it. "Oh no," I said out loud, "you'll have to find someone else I don't want that to happen to me. No way." I dismissed it as a hallucination.

The joy of guru: There is no doubt that having attained one become a dynamo of joy. The joy is beyond description. On the occasions that I spent some time with a guru in close personal contact I would find that I would imbibe or absorb his vibration and the feeling was incredibly smooth and clear, it felt like confidence juice. To meditate with him meant a tremendous boost in my personal happiness quotient. It is like the strings of a guitar. When one is plucked the other begins to vibrate in sympathy. In the same was his bliss would rub off on me. It is this certainty and feeling, secure mature fearless, compassionate and energetic nature that makes a Realized Being such a value to the community. The are two sides to this joy. First is that he transmits it and second and perhaps even more important is that once you know how good it is for him, then you know it is possible for yourself also.

Dearest Nachiketa the. Sweetest of all. I am sure you are doing fine as I hear. Your letter had come. I wish you "Poornam - adah" ,"Poornam - idam." So be great & know your true nature.

Shyam

Dear eric
You must be happy by now. I often recollect your silent space & imagining mind. It's so wonderful that you are living Shyam Space.

Shyam

1978: Archana (Sheila Wright) and Rajneesh: she won't read Rajneesh books anymore as Shyam has said that he is a creep and she had come from his ashrams at Gibbie's request to kullu in 1976. she came up with Karuna who was born at the rajneesh ashram at Pune.

1978: Shyam sitting on a platform set up near the upper kootiar, some five or six of us were with him. The news comes that Akhilesh has run a young person down with Dan's car and she is dead. A child killed by his irresponsible driving, and the court case will be held soon. He had returned the car to the Ashram and Suresh had taken his place and driven back to take responsibility. Shaym says, "he is just young and shouldn't be hurt too much." He looks around and has something in his mind that I don't like. The son is perhaps getting away with it. Still I have my own problems and soon I am forgetting. Only when I need to figure out how I got hurt so much and where I didn't figure it out fast enough do these things begin to be important in my mind.

1978 Lawrence (Laleeta) he is angry with Vaani who isn't his girlfriend anymore, while Rick (Rakesh) his brother is sure that Rekha Srivastava is in love with him. Veena still doesn't wear her underwear and Rakesh is making jokes about it. Prem is her husband, why Shyam needs her to wash his back when ever he had a bath. He has been reduced to childishness by a wasting disease where he comes(climaxes) without having sex so often his energies are completely depleted. Because both Vaani and Veena were really sexed up by Shyam and their husbands Prem and Ramdev started to leak their semen all the time.

Fact: Akhilesh driving the car in 1978 hits a child and kills it. Probably stoned and probably didn't have permit. He doesn't go to jail. parents are paid off. Fact Suresh himself almost kills somebody in Konch area. they ran from it, as they often do in India. Fact: Son Suresh smokes so much dope in India in Kullu valley with Hippie friends of Shyam that he goes nuts. Smokes cigarettes in his room in the ashram. So does his brother Akhilesh. Believes that people are with the CIA or CID if they have certain look of the feet. Sits at home trying to develop mantras to knock the tops off mountains. Goes nuts over Mary in 1975 runs chases her around the ashram pulling on her hair and yelling what a bitch she is. The daughters never love the angels in their own society and can't be bothered to work They only love the rich Westerners. The daughters Rekha and Alka neither marry nor take vows of celibacy.

1978 Kullu: Prakaash had come there also, that was when they ganged up on Prakaash and told her she had no friends there. There was a scene where they throw her cushion to the back of the room and started to say what was bothering them. I was sitting in the back of the room when the cushion came my way. So she sits beside me and I smiled at her. Shyam asks me what I have to say and when I say that I don't know her very well to say anything against her he rebuffs me and says, "well she'll be your friend then." It was a railroad. Nevertheless they continued to sell her books at the ashram, those which she dedicated to Shyam. She a first thought it was some effort to blow her big ego. She was a Pouliot a very string french canadian family and her father had been professor at the University of Montreal. He used to go to a chess club and there occasionally an admirer would come by. Prakaash said that her father's mind was so expanded that when he taught people would have openings— just like Socrates, and the elenchus, the dialectic method that opens. She had dated Trudeau for a short time and had planned on being a race-car driver. She had gone to a cave in New Mexico, where she had meditated despite the constant threat of scorpions falling off the wall, and she knew Ram Dass (Dr. Richard Alpert).

1978 Kullu: Sometime ago I was meditating on the ledge when there was a sudden flash between my head and my heart area above the throat. I used to mediate there for hours on end and my nervous system was becoming very strong. I was drifting into a very pure state of consciousness where I felt that the physical environment was more like a transparent and mobile crystal instead an opaque mass. Sitting on the ledge meditating, looking out over the Beas River valley. Suddenly I had seen my mother looking very youthful dressed in her nurse's outfit (she was nurse until she married my father and then had stopped working in order to have children). She was saying something like please don't leave or don't hurt me. These are heavy sanskars from my youth; there was a great pain in my heart and upon opening my eyes the remained there before my eyes darkening against the background of the mountains. Then slowly it faded. I felt as if I was about to float off the edge of the ledge and my inner being seemed like crystal about to shatter. I turned and crawled out onto the grass off the shelf of the ridge that the meditation room was parked on. I saw that Shyam had just been passing by and despite my distress had not stopped to help me out but had proceeded into his house. He made no comment and neither did I. I just wanted to be alone with my thoughts anyway.

I realized that in fact for all out troubles my mother had really loved me. She had been very concerned for me and had constantly extended her love to me in the best way she knew how. In fact when sometimes I would see her sitting on the sofa in the living room and we were in company she seem as if she were really quite regal. She was quite sage about people and had a very good continuity. She didn't often yell at me and did not get drunk. She persisted in these graces and I thought that I should really be appreciating my mother and looking out for her. During my teens I had started failing to love her. I wanted to distance myself from her and used to get quite angry with her every suggestion about improving myself. She was not without faults as she herself will say, but I really regretted being so unable to be more loving toward her. She is still my good old mom.

Shortly after that my mother and father called to India from Canada. I wronged them somewhat because I was annoyed about it. The phone lines were dreadful and as good as it was to hear from them the conversation was very doubtful and very worried whether I was all right in India, 'lightning call lightning call' (phone calls in India can be more annoying that satisfying). Having spent half an hour trying to assure them that it was all right I gave up on it. Wondering whether they really love me for this. What a coincidence though that my parents should call so soon after having that experience.

Shyam had taken some time off and had gone south to Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh and then to Konch in southern most tip of Uttar Pradesh. He was visiting his ashram there. Occasional he had sent them money as I heard from time to time. I gathered that most of his family was in either of these two places. Vaani had said that in the early days she and Ram Dev along with Geoff Stirling, Dan and Scott and a few others (Doug Pringle DJ from CHOM) had gone to see Konch and had resided there overnight. It was really the epitome of rural India and they had completed the last part of the journey by oxcart. It seems there was a temple to Shyam there: this puzzled me as that would make it seem that Shyam Charan was lionized in his home town. I believe that Vaani got that quite wrong as actually it must have been a temple for the classical Shyam after which he was named. However it seemed that his associates (or family) were in charge of it.

What was Shyam's position on the family and parents and what not? He didn't love parents that heaved him about their children being in India or with guru's and there was as often as not a heavy reaction from the folks and frankly about whether they were getting involved with some twisted teacher who only wanted their goods. In these days there were some phenomenal bad scenes in North America: Jimmy Jones (a supposed Christian priest or minister) went down drawing 300(?) people to their deaths by suicide, Reverend Moon and his unification church, not to mention the innumerable Christians scandals that filled the air. Some people in this society began to call all the Gurus fake and phonies, this was equally wrong. I heard a priest of the Catholic kind giving a speech about cults and identifying Jimmy Jones as a "guru" when actually he was false prophet, but this priest had reframed the story, as if he were a leader of an Indian religion.

The founders of India's religions are gurus and mahatmas and if you say they are all false and the religion is false I fear you are just a bigots. It is especially bigoted to call the leader of one of one's own sects a guru; that is merely smearing the whole religion. That is being prejudiced. The fact of the matter is that the majority of people in Canada who love the religions of India and practice any kind of yoga outnumber the actual number of practicing Catholics on the same level. Or, in other words, if it were representation by strength of interest and making efforts to realize God or know God the greatest number of people today would be known as free spiritualist which resemble a predominately eastern and guru/Rimpoche/Roshi oriented devotions. One should not confuse the faith of any nation with the flops of that faith but with the majority of that faith's leadership.

There have been many saints in India and there is no doubt that there are a substantial number of living saints (yet to canonized - so to note by the Christian communities here.) Note that saint Teresa (God bless that woman) was living in Calcutta. Father Bede Griffiths can attest to the influence of this Christian woman of saintly disposition.

There were quite a few bad gurus however in North America, along with the failed Christians, i.e. certain evangelicals, the monastic scandals and the decline in general of the Christian faith.

There were, likewise, some really bad gurus, for example Maharaji. The young and flashy guru had come to town and had done some weird scene about him being the avatar. He used to wear a business suit. I think in the end some members of his family tried to recall him as being bad for their reputations and in fact I don't know where that guy is. It was said that some of his followers had heavied one of their own kind, with a hammer to be exact. I had gone to a meeting Montreal where there was one of His mahatmas (Premis) who he had started up with in north America, a Caucasian fellow who had been primed with some yogic technique that amounted to pressing on the eye balls and saying the subsequent light's were the divine bliss generated by the ever loving Mahabudji. This was a total fraud and had be exposed by the whole earth catalogue and the East West journal among other Eastern style cognoscenti magazines. Yes, I met one of his mahatmas and he was more arrogant than magnanimous or generous, more obnoxious than compassionate and more deluded about God than many. The swami Prabhupad thing had also become totally corrupt.

My parents were justifiably worried that my head would be copped. There were the some problems, but that is no reason to slander the faith.

"Laya-Yog. Laya means absorption. it is one kind of practice prevalent in India with Yogis that they sit down quiet and absorb their attention into that field of pure existence where there remains no more mind. "It is laya-Yog where the individual consciousness gets dissolved and gets absorbed and becomes one with the Lord, Lay; dissolved, absorbed— that is called laya Yog. The state of perfect Laya which you have already been doing—our system is Laya Yog also." Shyam said.

"You reach the source through action especially at the time of meditation and that is Nishkam Karm Yog. When you get connected with that Royal Space and meditate continuously days together, that is Raj Yog. When you come back and remember it and feel loving, devoted to it that is Bhakti Yog. and when you remember it, know it, bring it on your word level and speak it out that is Gyaan yog. And when you remember it, know it, bring it on your word level and speak it out that is Gyaan Yog. Keep remembering and studying and reading and just getting connected it is the same Gyaan Yog. So laya - Yog is when all your individual personality as Nachiketa separate from the whole becomes One then it is called Laya Yog. The end result of everything is laya - One with the Lord," he said.

Out from ages ago, old flames never die, but stay with us forever. The cave. To be alone as depicted in the Vedant classics—is almost a disaster for modern man. This kind of renunciation is anyway. In Canada there is simply no place to be without ownership. The idea of renunciation of one's own household and ownership of things is greatly over done. One is impelled to deal with these things unless one wants to go into institutional care, in which case the institution owns the property and one is owned by the institution. Mother Cosmos I fly into your arms, your starry smile to greet me. Let me dissolve into your lap, get me from this grip of unknowing and allow me to expand into your ever great heart. This body is but of speck of dust but the consciousness is of the nature of infinity.

My nature is volatile and not steady. I go to heights and depths in minutes and do not hold an even keel. I do not progress inch by inch but by leaps and bounds alternating with wallowing in stagnation. I am your average common man. Middle upper class background environment, parents stable and sincere. not progressive terribly. No special schools no special scholarships. No angels attended my birth to blow the trumpets. Even in illness I went only to neurosis. But you know I have seen a bit of what there has been in Gospels. I realized a bit of the life of Christ though, no, I couldn't turn water into wine, or heal leapers, but I could understand Jesus laying on hands (transmitting his energy) or even his seeing Andrew coming at a distance (because of seeing Nootan). That made Christ so much more real to me, God bless Him.

Back in Canada Spring 1979

1979-1980 Shakti Breck had gone off the deep end, according to Shankar, and had been sent back to Canada. She was in a crazy mood. We were in the kitchen in First ave. ashrams and there was lunch going on. She had been moving around doing things and I was making idle chat. She suddenly had come over and leaned on me and then turned sideways and sat in my lap. I just looked at her and she was very playful. Then I asked her to get up as she was too heavy for me. She eventually went off and had sung some songs at a club somewhere where it was pretty well received and then she wrote a book and published it which is more than Shankar ever did. Neither could he sing neither did he write books. So he called her crazy, so did Shyam. She wasn't. It was he and Shankar that were pathological. Neither of them could ever know God about anything as it turns out.

In a dream Swami, tea, a shepherd, disciplined, narrow path. on top of mountain. A goat ate leaves of tea plant. It was sad and sorry but after eating leaves turned into lively goat. The shepherd sees the goat is in such a state and checks the plants. He shouts at the goat. Gone crazy. The goat ate the original leaves and plants.