The sage of Sindhula

It is now a week since we came back from India…the stomach is slowly settling back to the North American sterility…the glow of the warmth of the humanness that dominated the last four weeks alongside with the constantly upset stomach is beginning to become a memory…and the snow banks bring one back to the reality of the moment…the warmth was there, gone, the cold, snow is here, that is all that is real…the search for the next trip is the mind’s desire to re-enact enjoyable experiences and ignore the coldness of the snow…

As I sit back and look at the four weeks one experience stands out for me as going beyond words…and being the fool that I am, I shall try to put it in words…

Whenever in Bombay I have always tried to go and spend sometime in the presence of the sage of Sindhula (on Nowroji Gamadia Road), Ramesh Balsekar…this time, with my constantly upset stomach I was not sure that I would be able to do so…however, one morning, I think it was on Christmas Eve, I was able to manage to make it in between a breakfast date with my daughter and son-in-law at the Taj President and a shopping appointment…

After a quick breakfast at the Taj President I caught a taxi and got off about kilometre ahead of the correct intersection, more by mistake than design…as I walked through the early morning Bombay traffic I realized how out of shape I was, physically, and, mentally ?

Balsekar’s satsangs used to start at 9.00am and the watchman would let us in by 8.50am. So, when I reached at 8.45am, I was a little surprised when he told me that the satsangs now started at 9.30am, and, I could go up at 9.20am. My North American efficiency was offended…why had they not changed the posting on the website ? I could have spent another half hour in air conditioned comfort at the Taj President ? Supposedly the anger of an organized mind…in reality the sputterings of one’s ego that is caught up in ideas…

I sat myself down on the steps of Sindhula building and watched the motley crowd of satsangis come…a white woman who looked like a relic of the hippie revolution…a forty something Indian woman who looked like a liberated lesbian from Lamington Road…men in shorts and a man trying to find place to park his Mercedes…and then, of course, Shirish who is Balsekar’s aide de camp…Shirish recognized me and we spoke…I didn’t see his wife Kalindi, didn’t ask him…maybe they are no longer together…

The watchman let us in at 9.10 and I used the somewhat rickety lift of Sindhula

Balsekar is now past ninety and has undergo surgeries…he is very frail and uses a walker to move around…so much has changed since I first met him in 2002…there is still fire in him, but, it burns differently, not with the crackle that was there in 2002…

These days Balsekar does not talk much…they play a video of one of his talks and he sometimes makes a comment or if someone asks a question responds to the question…

He came in, and, the Liberated Lesbian gave him a hug…he sat down, wiped his mouth with the clean hand towel he always has…looked around to survey the motely crowd in front of him…I was swinging away on the jhoola and somehow decided to be more respectful when he caught my eye and moved to a chair…

The video came on and a Balsekar of some ten years earlier was talking with a person who was a medical doctor…the difference between the sage and the common human is that the sage has no sense of personal doership…the sense of personal doership is what distinguishes the human from the sage and the animal…

JP Singh who records Balsekar’s talks had told me to jot down any questions and ask Balsekar towards the end…he gave me a book and I made furious notes…Why does the Source create a sense of personal doership as the sense of personal doership seems to the cause of all trouble ?

Waited, like back in the IIMA days to get the maximum impact for my question…my friend Ramki whom I met in Chennai with whom I appeared for the IIMA group discussion tells me that in 1969 I was adept at making a comment in a group discussion at the most advantageous moment…creating a stir and then going off to sleep…

And then, I caught the sage’s eye…went in front of him, sat down on the cushion, and, introduced myself as Dr Phadnis’ friend, uncle of Radha, Dr Phadnis’ daughter-in-law…unlike in the past, the sage nodded in recognition, not with much warmth…I was disappointed…I remember how happy I had been when once he told me that ‘Yes. I can see you are Radha’s uncle…she looks like you very much…’ the mind had been hoping for that sort of a stroke…the guru had a different message this time…

With all the deftness of the logic that years of academic learning has given me I logicked with Ramesh, like I had with Swami Chinmayananda forty years ago…”If the feeling of doership is the root cause of the problems, why does the Source, supposedly infinte in compassion give us that ?”…I asked the sage…

Diamond cuts diamond is what comes to my mind…but that is presumptuous for I am no diamond…the diamond of Balsekar’s mind honed with enlightenment and his own academic training at LSE bore down on me…

“What are you ? He raised his fingers, pointed at me, ‘you are just a three dimensional object’ How do you presume that with this limited, defined in space time and mind you will understand the infinite ? Just accept that it is part of the divine hypnosis, Leela and stop struggling…”

I bent down to do pranam and he accepted the bowed head…I was about to get up and go when I sensed that the sage was not done with me…
“What did you think of the video ? All the questions that the doctor kept asking ?”

I hesitated, not knowing what to say…”I think his search was deep and hence all the questions…” I uttered the words without really having something to say…

The sage looked at me deep…picked up his clean hand towel and wiped his mouth and swallowed…”You know when you ask a question, try and see why you ask a question…there has to be sincerity in asking a question…not the pride that goes with the assumption that you have the answers…the sense that I have to cross examine this man to get at the truth…the Guru does not work that way…when you come to me, keep yourself open, not full of your ideas…if you have too many ideas that keep surfacing you will never be able to hear what the Guru has to say…to hear the Guru you have to be humble, not cross examining with pride…”

The sage had nothing further to say…he once again wiped his mouth with the clean hand towel…beckoned to the next questioner…to me it sounds like the words of Krishna

Athava bahunai tena
kim gya’tena tava’rjuna
vishtabhyaham idam sarvam
ekam sena’stito jagat

Of what use is this knowledge to you Arjuna ?
All that you need to know is that in a fraction of myself I sustain the whole Universe

I am still not listening with emptiness…the mind is still showing off, dancing a jig to show how much I have read and now…when all that shit diarrheas out of the system then I will be ready for the sage…
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