Guruji Krishnananda...Finger pointing to the Moon

One evening, not so long ago, we were talking and I asked him matter-of-factly, “After you, what’ll happen here? Who’ll take care of things and guide...?”

 He smiled and said something but what’s amazing is my total insensitivity and stupidity in asking someone about his own death! No doubt, I was dumb but it hardly mattered because he took no offense. With him, it was okay to be dumb and stupid. Emotional and Open. He spoke warmly as ever about many other things.

The warmth of that moment still lingers on. And those were blissful days. We were young, idealistic, thirsty for new spiritual knowledge and madly enthusiastic about bringing the heavens down to Earth—a small group of focussed youngsters who gelled together with an amazing rapport. And we had Guruji as our guide and mentor—a wise, old man weathered in the ways of the world and seasoned in the mystical realms. The scene looked straight out of mythology. Take any episode from the epics/myths, where a rag-tag bunch of nobodies are taking on the might of an empire, with nothing but their raw, honest energy and an experienced elder’s guidance to fall back on. We all would perfectly fit in there!

No, we never thought that the old man wouldn’t be amidst us. Although I asked a hypothetical question-‘who after him’, there wasn’t an ‘after him’ thing. There wasn’t a life imagined without him. Neither was there a life imagined without the company of that group. We were bonded for life—that’s what we thought.

First, the group frittered away. It took something like his Death to bring most of us back together, briefly.

***

‘The past is another country, things happen differently there,’ who said this, donno. But yeah, the past is a crazy different place. So many things happened in the last decade, and the one before that. I almost died and came back to life. Lost hope and found a purpose. Made great friends and lost a few. Put anchor into life, caught hold of a dream and before long, woke up from the dream world.

Guruji gave us that dream. And we embraced it and held it close to our hearts. For me, who had just come out of days of despair and aimlessness, the dream became my purpose.

It was simple. Just wake up. Find spiritual light, not away from life but right there, in the middle of it all. Experience Spiritual enlightenment. Open up your dormant faculties. Establish contacts with the mystical realms. Travel astrally. Become capable of bringing down new knowledge and energies from the higher realms. Commune with the Highest Reality. Most importantly, transform into a better human being, slowly, step by step. Be in the thick of life and find God. Just awesome!

The second part of the dream was equally spectacular. Be a part of a commune. A place to share your gifts, knowledge, love and presence. A place full of unconditional love and freedom, free from judgement and all vices. A self-sufficient community of enlightened individuals, living a righteous life of the New Age, in total harmony and balance. The first citizens of an entirely new World! Nothing less than another Shangri-la!

I am not kidding. Think Christ and his disciples at the beginning of 2000 years of history. We were staring at something more magnificent. And the seeds were beginning to sprout—we could feel it. The awakening had begun. There were transformations--subtle and also profound. And the bonding and camaraderie we felt in that group... perfect for a budding commune

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Then we woke up, one by one.

They say ‘you never know the twilight zone between dream and reality.’ But when the dream started turning sour, I heard this...

Things fall apart
the center cannot hold
Mere anarchy is loosend upon the world
The blood dimm'd tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
are full of passionate intensity
-W B Yeats

How could Yeats guess our disillusionment, predicament and sorrow?

***

There are innumerable memories of the times spent with Guruji and others. One, I gotta jot down, because it's important.

One day, in a volunteer’s meeting, someone asked him: ‘Now, you can contact the Higher realms and bring down knowledge, guide us etc? When will we too become capable of doing this? How long it takes?’

Guruji pointed towards a girl and said: ‘She too can do it. All of you will be able to. It’s just a matter of time. Until then, take my guidance. Or you can refer to her and seek guidance’.

Suddenly, there was a gush of hitherto unknown knowledge. There were fantastic revelations. Guruji wrote a very interesting book ‘Beyond 2012’ which had many fascinating facts. An unstoppable enthusiasm began surging through us. The spectacle of 2012 was looming right in front, just a few years away. We were all geared up, gung-ho, ready for big, mad sacrifices.

Most of this new knowledge and revelations came from that girl. After quitting, she and her brother launched a website called VishwaAmara

***

Why does it matter, after all? It matters. Because you stagnate if you hold on to what’s handed down to you. To stay alive, you need to move on. Gather new knowledge and energies according to the changing times. Find your own light and direction, right at your core. And if you’re guided to do so, point the way for others.

That was what was expected. And these two youngsters did it with Vishwa Amara, even when Guruji was very much alive. The dream hadn’t perished! Although he didn’t express much, heart of hearts, he must’ve felt proud and ecstatic. Because he knew that...

...the dream didn’t come from him. It came through him, he was just a conduit. And the source was something beyond. This subtle difference between ‘from’ and ‘through’ is what differentiates a ‘devotee’ and a ‘disciple’. A Devotee latches on to ‘from’, worships the master and finally destroys His message. The Disciple recognises the ‘through’ factor and goes beyond.

That’s the imagery of the finger pointing to the moon. ‘Look at the Moon’, says the master, ‘not at my finger’. That’s what he meant when he said once, ‘I want disciples here, not devotees’.

It’s easy to worship and sit pretty. But to transcend and go beyond... it takes balls. Pure balls.

That balls gives you the ability to channel this knowledge, at critical times like the present.