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LIGHT IN DARKNESS
Excerpts from ANDHARE ALO translated by S. Chakrabarti
By Sri Sri Sitaramdas Omkarnath
Next?
Start calling.
How can I? The mind is so restless. The tongue and the mind, you know, can never meet. While the tongue says 'Hari' 'Hari', the mind broods on heaps of rubbish.
Let the mind do what it will. Go on simply repeating 'Guru Guru Ram Ram’.
If saying 'water water' with the tongue could slake thirst, who would have bothered to spend piles of money to sink tubewells. This at any rate is often urged.
What a far cry indeed from tongue to water! What a distance between physician and patient! Naturally, repetition of 'water water' can't slake thirst any more than telling the name of a drug can heal an ailment. But that's not the case here.
Pray how?
The tongue that tastes sweetness and He who is all sweetness, well, they are interlinked. As one repeats 'Ram Ram’, sweetness oozes out.
Can't quite follow.
The Ganges that Issues out of Gomukhi and falls into the sea, and the Ganges that flows by Calcutta, are the two identical? Or is the latter a different Ganges?
Identical, to be sure; why should they be different?
The Ganges of Benares, then, is different, eh?
No it's the same Ganges.
The Ganges of Haridwar surely is different?
The very same Ganges. How does the question arise?
The same Ganges, doubtless. But this is irrelevant talk. We were discussing water and drug. You drag in Gomukhi and the Ganges. Please don’t sidetrack the issue, reply honestly to my question.
Do please listen, speech courses through four stages. Para, Pashyanti, Madhyama, Vaikhari, you know?
No, I don't.
Whatever we say passes through four stages. First, there's Para, faint Initial flutter of the capacity for oral utterance. It has its seat at Muladhara, a microcosmic centre lying at the rectal region.
The second is Pasyanti, at the navel. The third is Madhyama, at the heart.
Well you remember I asked you how water and drug could be one!
That's what I'm going to explain. Word at Para and that at Vaikhari: do they differ?
How can they? The same para comes gradually to be Vaikhari.
Quite, quite! Well, you know, eh, that a thing dissolves finally into that out of which it had its origin?
Yes, they say so.
Do you know what Para vani is?
No.
Para Vani indeed is God Who is all bliss. Will you now admit that 'Ram Ram' which I utter at Vaikhari is linked with Him?
Yes, it is. Para, Pasyanti, Madhyama, Vaikhari, run a straight course with no notch or scotch anywhere.
Sitaram! Well, you see then the tongue that tastes sweetness and He who is all sweetness, are interlinked? They don't stay apart as water and drug do.
Why then do people object?
Those who do, take a superficial view. They don't think before they speak. However, Ram Ram Sitaram!
Will it then do even if the mind thinks of other things while the tongue repeats ‘Hari Harl'!
Certainly, it will. Dance and shout and clap your hands as you say:
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare,
Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare.
And at one bound you will pass from the World of darkness to the very realm of light.
The Ganges of Kashi and Haridwar, as you know, is innocent of wave; but the Ganges of Calcutta is all billowy-bosomed, ruffled by wave mounting on many-coloured wave and subject to flow-tide and ebb-tide, owing to the attraction and repulsion of the sea. We too are being similarly driven by the turbid ebb and flow of human misery. How can this tumult of waves, this eternal material attraction, cease by mere repetition of "Hari Hari” with the lips?
The flute will start its music.
How, pray?
As you go on repeating 'Ram Ram, Hari Hari, Durga Durga, Siva Siva' the flute, bathed in light, will begin to sing within.
What will it lead to?
'The Jumna will swell and rush in tune with the flute.'The hairs will stand on end and the tears trickle from the eyes.’
What will it lead to?
'Wave' and 'material attraction' will melt. You will be listening to the flute and be saying like Radha Rani. Dear friend, there plays the flute who knows whether in my heart's core or in the recesses of the wood.
Next?
And at one bound you pass from darkness to radiant space saturate with bliss. Jai Sitaram?
Dear friend of my heart, oh my own,
Wait a while and let me recount the ways of Shyam
Shyam's flute, dear thing, it robs you in broad daylight
It has stripped me of all I owned
How It sears the heart and scalds the soul
I wonder why it has brought me to this pass
Eating or sleeping, naught else can I recall.
The flute has made me deaf.
Shorn of all, driven crazy as it were,
I've become its slave and maid,
Lost to all sense of family duty, of patience and virtue,
Left without shame and scorn.
Chandidas says the flute therefore is
All in all to Kanu.
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