by Gurani Anjali
I was once asked by a young man: “Please GuruMa, help me to leave the body. Help me. This body has a lot of suffering and everybody wants to snatch this body of mine. Please help me to leave this body.” So I said, “Ok, tell me how far would you like to go. Where would you like to go? The depths of the ocean? Or would you like to go to the highest mountain? Where? Tell me where you would like to go.”
So he said, “It doesn’t matter where. You be the judge of it. Just help me to leave my body. I want to leave this animal,” and he touched his hand and pulled his flesh and said “This animal, I want to leave this”.
I said, “You really want to do that? How would you feel? How would you eat? How would you drink? How would you enjoy the pain and the pleasure of life.” He said, “Oh, I’ll come back. I want to come back.” I said, “Supposing I help you to get away, and then I disappear and I can’t bring you back. How will you get back?” So then he said, “It doesn’t matter. I know wherever you send me, it will be a place better than this.” So I said, “Are you really sure you want to do this?” “Yes, I’m really sure. I really want to do this, I want to get away. I’ve had it. I’ve had it.”
He was a young man and he just wanted to get away from it all. I said “Why don’t you reach 60 and then ask me that. You don’t know what it means to even live a little.” He says “Whatever I had so far doesn’t thrill me.” I said, “Are you looking for thrills?” He said, “No, I don’t want the thrills, no, I don’t want the pain. I don’t want anything. I just want to get away.” Now I was stuck there with this naive young man. He just wanted to escape, to get away from everything. So I turned to him and said, “Well, you first have to take responsibility for who you are, what you are and what you’re doing.” He said, “I think I’ve had enough responsibility for my life.” He’s had it all.
I said, “Ok, I’ll help you, but if you can’t come back, I don’t know, I’ll just let you stay where I put you.” I said, “Ok, do this: walk around the room.” He began to walk and I walked along with him. And then I said, “Isn’t this pleasurable, walking?”
Then I told him to stand facing me. I said, “We stand face to face, neither I see me nor you see you. Om shanti.” We began walking again. Then we stopped and faced each other. “We stand face to face, neither I see me nor you see you. So, if I don’t see me, and you don’t see you, then what do we see or what do we do? Om shanti.” We walked some more and then I stopped him again. “We always find ourselves facing each other, facing the other in circumstance. We are compelled to stand face to face. The self, looking at the self, yet the body is in the way. Name, form, color, ideas, they are standing in the way. We stand face to face, neither I see me nor you see you. Om shanti.”
I told him to continue walking again and then asked him to stop after a short while. I said “Face north. Face south. Face east. Face west.” I repeated that four times then said “look up, look down. Look behind you. Look in front of you. Look up, look down. Look behind you, look in front of you. Look up, look down… Now look to yourself. Om shanti.” Then I said “Now that is the place you have to get to. You have to find that which you cannot see. You can travel all over the world, look in many mirrors. Keep looking until you find that which you cannot see.”
“That’s a faraway place,” I told this young man. “It’s a place far, far, far away. Now I sent you to that place. I showed you how to get there. Now find that place, live in it and come back. Om shanti.”
I gave that young man this exercise and I was alone with him in this large room here, and I walked along with him. I told him what I’m telling you to do. It’s a place far away. He fell right on the ground and he started to cry. And he cried, and he cried and he cried. He said, “Nobody ever showed that place, but I feel it all the time. I feel it all the time.” I couldn’t stop him from crying for hours. I stayed a long, long time with him. He said, “I’m going to find that place.”
You get a glimpse of that place every time the exercise is done, but to stay in there and to learn of the nature of that place, you must work in circumstance.
Om shanti.