Time has no meaning
I was a seeker for as long as I can remember. I had arrived at the logical conclusion that I needed a guru to find God, although I had read that some had attained their Self Realization without one. I had also made the conscious choice to find a wife to assist me in my search, again despite the fact that I had read that many had chosen the path of solitude and celibacy.
So it was that I found myself married and in India. Although my wife’s primary reason for traveling in India was not entirely spiritual, by the end of sixteen months there, including two extended treks in the Nepalese Himalayas, it was.
Ironically, despite visiting numerous famous and not so famous ashrams, gurus, fakirs, temples, shrines, pilgrimage points and retreats, much in the style of Paul Brunton when he wrote the book A Search in Secret India in the early 1930s, it was a book or books written by a Cambridge University Professor named Juan Mascaro that not only made the most sense to me, but also gave me such joy that I could not put them down.
They were The Dhammapada, The Bhagavad Gita and The Upanishads — translated by the man who was at that time the western world’s authority in Sanskrit and Pali. I include this background as it relates to what was later to happen.
In May of 1979, we arrived in England to stay with my wife’s parents for an extended time, before either returning immediately to India to continue the search for a guru, with increased determination, or to return to America to work, to make and save money, and then to return to India in search of a guru. For both of us by this time, there was nothing more important.
And so it was that I discovered a guru by means of a book I’d bought and read in India, but oddly, it was written by a man living in England. But the best and even more surprising thing was this, on October 28 of 1979 I would meet the Indian guru I’d sought in England, who would not only change my life forever, but would give me what I had been searching for all of my life.
About a year after getting Self Realization from Shri Mataji in Caxton Hall in London, we happened to be living in Cambridge and attended a lecture given by Juan Mascaro. As soon as he walked into the room and began reciting passages from the Gita and Upanishads in Sanskrit, the whole room lit up around him, a fact confirmed by my wife and other Sahaja Yogis who were also there.
Apart from Shri Mataji Herself and a couple of incidents on the tour in India — a visit to the samadhi site of Janeshwara, for example — I had never felt such strong vibrations and yet I was still not sure what I had experienced at that lecture.
When Shri Mataji came to Cambridge some time later for a program, it was only natural that I would want Mr. Mascaro to meet Her and so I arranged a meeting that should occur the day after the program, at his house.
As it turned out, an interview had been arranged in the morning with a lady from a local BBC station and it went on much longer than we had anticipated and afterwards we got caught up in a traffic jam, all of which resulted in Shri Mataji desiring to have a nap before departing for Norwich, a city of some sixty miles northeast of Cambridge, where we had arranged another public program.
Shri Mataji seemed to sleep quite soundly and we knew that it was inauspicious to wake Her, but it was now getting late and obvious that we would not be able to visit Mr. Mascaro after all.
When She awoke, She said, “I slept so soundly, it must be quite late.”
I replied that yes it was and that we would not have time to go see Mr. Mascaro, to which She replied, “Better go and phone him.”
I could feel his sadness and disappointment on the phone, but we agreed to make it some other time. But when I reported back to Shri Mataji, She said “Well, you know, he is an older man, better phone him again and tell him I will come.”
By this time my emotions had gone through the entire spectrum and when I reported back to Mr. Mascaro, I couldn’t tell whose relief and joy was the greater — his or mine.
When we all arrived at his very humble thatched cottage in a small village about ten miles from Cambridge, he was standing in the doorway with a single beautiful white rose that he had picked from his garden and, to our amazement and delight, began to sing the ancient sloka that we all Sahaja Yogis were very familiar with because in those days we used to sing it to Mother following the aarti, Sabo Ku Dua, at pujas. Loosely translated it says, “You are my mother, You are my father, You are my brother, You are my friend. You are the beginning, You are the middle and You are beyond the end,” and ends with, “You are my guru, You are my God, You are my everything.”
There were no dry eyes that observed that scene, I can assure you. After presenting Shri Mataji with the rose, he invited Her, then us, inside and what was to follow was even more amazing.
As we four sat and watched Shri Mataji and Juan talk, we would occasionally hear a few words, but the words were the least important aspect of what was really taking place.
At this point, any hope of getting to Norwich anywhere near the scheduled meeting time was so far out of the question that at one point I almost thought about phoning the hall to tell the caretaker to put out a sign saying that the meeting was cancelled.
Meanwhile, the vibrations in the room were so strong that I envisioned the walls of the house collapsing from the power of it. Afterwards, we four all agreed it was like seeing the long lost son finally finding his mother. Of course, in reality it was — and no different that Mother had found all of us — and despite the fact that he was at least thirty years older than Shri Mataji.
I can’t recall to this day whether I had ever looked at the time after we left the house to go visit. I do know that I was resigned to the fact that we were going to be very, very late and that, one, that really didn’t matter anyway because we are beyond time — sounds nice, but we don’t often believe it; two, that if anyone did show up, they would have left hours ago; three, that I was going to have to give the introductory talk and that I was going to be very embarrassed and apologetic.
The drive to Norwich is very beautiful — no motorway — but very slow. Normally, it would take an hour and a half to two hours depending upon the traffic, as it is primarily a two lane road. I don’t know how long it took on this occasion either, with Hari Jairam driving Shri Mataji’s crème-coloured Mercedes and my wife and I in the back, but I do know two things — one, that the meeting was scheduled to begin at 7 pm and that, two, as I opened the door to let
Shri Mataji out at the front entrance to the hall, the clock on the church tower across the street began to chime seven times.
“How many times do I have to tell you people,” joked Shri Mataji, “we are not bound by time.”
In the car on the way to the meeting, Shri Mataji made this statement, “It’s very rare, you know, that a great scholar should also be a great realized soul.”
Jim Thomas
Awareness, Enjoyment, God, Knowledge, Meditation, Spirit, Truth, Understanding, human brain, ydig
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