A Tale of Grace

Dearest Friends and Family,

More unfortunate news on Shiva.  About 2 weeks ago,  we got a desperate call from Amar Seva Sangham.  Shiva was behaving despicably.  They wanted him out at the earliest.  They were consulting us, as we had been providing funds, and so they wanted our input…I spoke to Shiva, he spoke as though he was entirely innocent and knew nothing of what was going on.  I told him I didn’t know what to do.

It is not possible to accomodate him here, he had blown his chances for  education….at least he picked up the skill of tailoring.  If he ever decides to carry on a simple decent life he has the means now to do so.  This is only due to the grace and efforts of those angels at Amar Seva Sangham.

Then, before he could be sent, he stole some things, and tried to hide them.  A cell phone.  He took a key and opened a locked place where money is kept, took the money.  Took some jewellries that they make there and a book, some cloth…he called some contact on the phone, then buried it behind a building….not good.  When he was confronted, he managed to run away.  A police search ensued, he was found near the Kerala border.  He was held for one day, while ASS consulted with us as to what to do.

Others in our group wanted him to be released and sent on his way.  Neither Link nor I think this is good.  If there had been repentance for stealing, OK, its over, go on your way, start a new life.  But, there was none.  Among other things, we wrote a letter back to them with this paragraph in it which explains our stance:

“While we admire your compassionate stance,  we truthfully are not sure if this type of compassion will help him to reform himself.  As of late, Amma has told some people to press charges against those who have done crimes against them.  It may be that , as a whole, the good people on this earth have been too compassionate with evil and mischief minded people.  We have only to see the state of the earth to see that this is true - senseless wars, bullies in offices….I am very concerned that without rehabilitation Shiva may go in a very wrong direction…young people are the hired gunmen of different political parties, etc.  I recall him saying one night that he had two sides…I do not know how he can be reformed, I am afraid to let someone loose who has no conscience when it comes to stealing, lying and disrespecting people…” from our email to them Aug. 9/08.

I found this quote from Abdul Baha ( I just LOVE Abdul Baha) regarding the use of compassion:

“O ye beloved of the Lord!  The Kingdom of God is founded upon equity and justice, and also upon mercy, compassion and kindness to every living soul.  Strive ye then with all your heart to treat compassionately all humankind - except for those who have some selfish, private motive or some disease of the soul.  Kindness cannot be shown to the tyrant, the deceiver, or the thief, because, far from awakening them to the error of their ways, it maketh them to continue in their perversity as before.l  No matter how much kindliness ye may expend upon the liar, he will but lie the more, for he believeth you to be deceived, while ye understand him but too well, and only remain silent out of your extreme compassion.” ( Paine, M.H. (compiler) (2006). The Divine Art of Living, Selections from the writings of Baha’u'llah, the Bab, and Abdu’l-Baha:76  Baha’i Publishing, Wilmette, Illinois.)

Well, there is not much more we can do.  We are not Amma, who has the capacity to tolerate theives, and take whatever good they do, and bless their souls with that.  Having no such capacity, we have had to distance ourselves from him entirely.  For those who are associating with him, we wanted to make our stance known.  We can have nothign more to do with Shiva, as there are too many innocent people around us whom he could violate.  They also need to be protected. OM.

Loving you,

Kamala Aunty

BLOG: GURU POORNIMA, Shiva Update, ACF

Dearest Friends and Family,

We had Guru Poornima here on Friday, July 18. It is a day of honoring the Guru with love and gratitude. Celebrated throughout India, and for that matter the world, I could not help but reflect that just as we were all sitting in our own understanding of who was the Guru, for all of us here – Amma, for millions of other people throughout the planet, it was somebody else. Yet, the celebration was being done. I looked around at Amma’s devotees, and saw their dear faces all aglow with happiness and intensity – that she is here with us, that we can do these types of things with her in mind. There was a sure confidence in everyone. It made me reflect how, what the Guru is, for everyone, is the ideal. If the Vedic architects had made this day, Amma Poornima, then we would all understand that it was specifically for Amma, but they made it, Guru Poornima, and all over, people celebrate it with their particular manifestation of the ideal in mind. Its such an interesting concept…the form of consciousness…

We continue our studies on our great brother Gandhi, the sadhak of sadhaks. Gandhi claimed never to have found an external Guru. That is to say, the purified form of his own consciousness outside of himself. I found a few sentences that Gandhi wrote when he was on the way back to South Africa from one of his failed negotiating trips to England in 1909. On the return ship, he wrote Hind Swaraj which is a remarkable treatise on the highest potentials, definitions and practice of what a refined democracy would look like in practice. What are also remarkable are the statements he makes about his state of mind. Here is the quote:

“My ideas about satyagraha had now matured and I had realized its universality as well as its excellence. I was therefore perfectly at ease. Hind Swaraj was written in order to demonstrate the sublimity of satyagraha and that book is a true measure of my faith in its efficacy. I was perfectly indifferent to the numerical strength of the fighters on our side.”[1]

For me, in my understanding, such as it is, the words; “perfectly at ease” and then ‘I was perfectly indifferent to the numerical strength of the fighters on our side” indicate that in his exposition of Satyagraha and Swaraj, he had come into contact with his inner Guru. That Guru within, the ethical ideal of Truth he beheld in his spiritual practice of Satyagraha, Truth Force, or Adherence or ‘holding on force’ to Truth. To be ‘perfectly indifferent’ is to have come into contact with Truth so firmly, that one is henceforth fearless. One is fearless, because one is convinced, convinced beyond any shadow of a doubt as to the Truth of the ideal within. He had certainty. For me, from what I can see, certainty and convincement is surrender.

Surrender is a term, which as an American, growing up in a weapons-producing society (with the constitutional right to bear arms), I have always felt uncomfortable with. In the US, we have a certain level of violence that is built into speech in the culture. We say things like, “I could have just died!” (meaning some sort of embarrassment) or, I could have killed him” (here, it doesn’t mean murder, only frustration of some sort) or “Go ahead, shoot,” (when we mean, go ahead and ask a question)…there are lots more, but those come quickly to mind. Surrender in such a culture is a thing that “yeller-bellied” (I think that one comes from bloated dead frogs) fear filled cowards do. Not brave people. “I surrender” is the cry the bad guys make when the cops get ‘em in the movies. It means they give up their own efforts, and will now meekly obey their new bosses. It doesn’t mean necessarily a change of heart. The words convincement and certainty, however, are terms that appeal to my mind and understanding, they point a direction of sureness, fearlessness and correspondent courage of heart and mind. So saying, I think that certainty is effortless.. Once we are certain of the ethical ideal within, nothing will change our course, we will be able to bear everything, as Anni did, without a single painkiller….we will be hitched to an unshakable reality…that allowed Anni to do all that she did, with such beauty and radiance, that allowed Jesus to be hung with all those horrid nails (our human barbarism has changed so little since then) and still seek forgiveness from his ideal for the ignorance around him. What he went through in three days…was terrible. But, I feel Anni had it much tougher. Much, much tougher. One who saw her suffering for days said, ‘What Christ went through, only took three days, What Anni is going through….”

Shiva. We got a call from Amar Seva Sangh, Shiva had been sent to the Dr. for a check-up, and they found he needed an operation, piles problem. Probably due to those circus tricks where he lived on a bike for 10 days without going to the toilet…drinking just enough to stay alive so he wouldn’t need to get off the bike and urinate….such tapas, for a few coins only…or from glass pieces when he broke the tube lights on his arms and ‘ate them’ collecting the slivers in his throat…So, we all rushed and sent Rs. 10,000 for the operation, which included Rs. 3000 for extra foods to build him up….Today, Lata came ‘round and said that unfortunately, his attitude has been rather unbearable for the people there. He has been verbally abusive…the upshot (that’s another US phrase) of it all is, after 5 months, he has burned his bridge there. Or shot himself in the foot (another phase, meaning, done his own chances there in) When he is given food, he throws it down, demanding chapatti (I think he is on a liquid diet or very soft foods, due to the operation…) and is generally rude…I don’t think he wants to stay there. I think he wants the freedom of the streets…The real problem is that Shiva doesn’t not want to be saved from such a life. If I could take an outside house, and devote my time and energy to loving him up and working with him, one on one, very intensely, I’m sure there could be progress. But, I do not have the resources and energy to do so, plus, Shiva has shifted in his outlook towards those of us trying to work with him here, from friend to a bit of the ‘con’. It takes skills, dedication, patience and undying love to alter these situations. I think having Hindi speaking people around as well as food that is more ‘northy’ will be positive for him…most of all, he needs love….I think nutrition is a big problem…if you don’t get enough of the right kind in the growth and development, some undesirable mental kinks can take place…please pray for him…Shiva….

Anyhow, as a result of all this, we have decided to keep Anni’s Care Fund open for those that want to donate to it. The money that was in it has been given, as we mentioned, per Amma’s advice to a scholarship fund that Amma has for poor children in the M.A.M. Mission Trust. Thats $2200. Two thousand, two hundred) We are keeping one hundred in the account to keep it open. From this point, any money that come will be used to enable us to help emergency situations in the lives of others that come across our path, or to provide interventions that can make a difference. We still want to get Anni’s album out, but those costs will come from elsewhere. Anni’s Care Fund will now be a gift from Anni via all who donate to it for the Care of others in some way. So, if you like, please pass the word….we’ll see what comes, and discuss it all with you as we go along.

Well, I don’t know about you, but those are some of my musings…

We are finally having a day of monsoons…one of the last days of the season, and finally, full rain for the day. I have really missed the monsoon this year – its interesting though, although we had so little of it often the air was cool…perhaps the rains elsewhere made it that way…I dunno, Mother Nature’s really messed up, thanks to all of us…

May we all become certain of the ethical ideals within us.

Loving you,

Kamala Aunty

Dearest Friends and Family,

The blog has been down for some time, but Anand, our genuis Whizz Kid, has managed to get it up again.  I’m posting the entry we wrote for Guru Poornima after this.  There was a pornography problem, then the site had crashed.   To those who want to destroy the efforts of others, please ask yourselves, What for?  I hope that you will find a more loving and positive use of what is left of your life.  The world is in such misery, people are suffering so much, why use the time here given to you in this way?  I hope God will give you some beautiful experiences that will expand the love in your hearts so that you won’t feel like doing these things to others.

God Bless you. PEACE.

KAL

Dearest Friends and Family,

We have to offer our apologies to your eyes and sensibilities. Apparently some brilliant but mischief oriented mind filled this blog with pornographic links. We trust that the problem is now over. One wonders at how people are spending their time on this earth – seeking to hurt or damage others in sick ways…it’s a very strange world. Such a mind that did this is one that has not been exposed to his ethical instinct. I regret to say, I’m quite sure it was a male who thought like this to do such a thing. As such, we see a person in living in their animal instincts – aggression, animality…it just amazes me how many people talk and do things just to hurt or damage others. All of our lives are running out like sand in an egg timer…but we keep ourselves distracted from our great purpose. None of us belong here. Soon we will all leave. Better not to take the whole experience too seriously…

That said, I need to add a bit to the story on Sabari. We subscribe to the newspaper The Hindu. The most worthwhile regular feature in it, is its “Religion’ and ’50 years ago today’ section. I have found a lot of interesting points in these sections. Today’s (July 14, 2008 page 9) was a brief overview of Sabari’s life before she met Lord Rama.

“The manner in which Sabari attained liberation was a testament to the efficacy of service to the Guru. Sabari belonged to the tribal community and hence she had no inkling about the persuit of liberation from rebirth through scriptural study. But her greatest assets was her unalloyed service to Sage Matanga and his disciples who were engaged in austerities and performance of Vedic sacrifices. She took upon herself to keep their hermitage and its environs spotlessly clean. She grew old in this sefless service and when the sage was to cast off his body, she was unable to think of a life without serving them and beseeched him and his pupils to take her along. It was then that Matanga assured her that she must stay on in the hermitage, and that she should await the arrival of Rama who would grace her.

With total trust in the Sage’s word, , Sabari continued to tend the hermitage with great care and gathered fresh fruits and flowers every day to offer them to the Lord awaiting His arrival with great expectation. And her faith was answered when Rama and Lakshmana arrived at her abode directed by Kebandha. With Great joy she extended her hospitality and showed them around. Sabari’s reply when Rama questioned her whether her attendance on her preceptor had been rewarded is a pointer to her spiritual maturity. ‘Today my birth has borne fruit. My asceticism too has become fruitful today and heaven too will definitely fall to my lot, now that You, the foremost of Gods, have been worshipped by me.’”

Indian Kathas are so amazing in this regard, they are all like an onion. You can go on peeling and peeling, each one reveals more connections, more stories, a multi layered and textured fabric of folklore, unbeatable in cultural complexity interconnectedness and the elucidation of different aspects of dharma. Fantastic Stuff…all children deserve to have this moral imprint upon their minds when small.

About Shiva, he’s OK and not OK. The years on the street, living in bus stations, the glory feeling of crowd adulation and management through circus life are making it hard for him to be stable in Amar Seva Sangh. However, the people there are very patient and loving, but I regret to say, our Shiva is not putting his best foot forward. However, while he has balked at studying, he has learned how to stitch tailor work well. He has not yet learned how to cut the cloth. Please give your prayers for him. We hope he will settle down, become peaceful and respectful, and recognize the wonderful opportunity being given to him. The situation for the very poor is one of cultural poverty also. One has to be educated to be considerate to handicapped people, educated, if it doesn’t come naturally, not to make fun of mentally challenged people. Educated not to laugh at someone when they get hurt…its an education – that which draws out of us - into our ethical instinct…and once we go that way, it becomes natural, for it is. But the very poor, faced with the constant oppressions and yellings from those above them, compounded with nutritional deficiencies, often have the natural way educated out of them. Here, educated means conditioned.

I submit that those who have, or consider themselves better than, or ‘bigger’ than, are mostly unaware of how they hurt those who don’t have. To ‘not see’ others who are poor and disadvantaged, is oppressing. To shout at them as though their poverty or physical handcaps has also made them deaf and dumb is oppressing. I was with a friend who was, the other day, getting coconuts. I don’t think she was even aware of it, but she waited until the person who was cutting the coconuts had bent down, cut off one for her – and then said, ‘not that one’, and indicated another. It’s a very small thing, so it seems. But if it were us who was bending down in the heat, preparing the coconut, it is a denial of our effort….and is a demeaning reminder that we are to ‘keep quiet’.

Like our darling angel Satybhama here. She has some spinal deformity, and as I said earlier, may have some form of autism, at any rate, it seems to be difficult for her to speak. Her voice is a whisper. While she doesn’t hold conversations, or make trivial speech, she is totally in the present moment…ask her anything practical, and if it concerns her, she will say the needful and no more. She has excellent control over the gift of speech. I have never heard her say anything unkind about anyone. She has great understanding, and from my close experiences with her, I can testify that she knows exactly what is going on. Yet, some people here feel free to shout at her, and shoo her away, as through she is an unwanted dog. It makes my blood boil. I don’t like it when I see it happening to dogs either. I really wish there were ethical emergency centers throughout the planet, and whenever we see someone abusing someone, we could go there, they would immediately send someone out in a uniform, to speak to the offender, to make them aware of the stupidity of their actions, and how it debases themselves their own soul, when they degrade someone so innocent.

My Satyabhama has no adult ego. She has the heart of a child. Yet, increasingly, I am finding that she is fearful of certain people who feel they are doing God’s work by shouting at her…She trembles when she sees them, and tries to hide behind me…..as her friends, when we stand up for her, immediately the sneering lordsmanship of those who yell at her and put her down is directed to us.

Yet these same people caught at another moment appear sane, balanced, pleasant, communicable…but somewhere along the line, in their educated conditioning, they got this other warp….not that we don’t have our own, but, we are saying this in the hope that it will be of some help.

Perhaps it is seeing this all over India, not just in Shiva, or the ‘educated people’, or children of the better off – I do feel India could benefit greatly from the study of sociology and anthropology. Such studies enable us to see ourselves objectively in our cultural, social and environmental experience. Once we can begin that intellectual separation from total identity with the behavioral patterns around us, we can begin our education into who and what we really are. If it were to happen, the imperialistically dominant stance of theses spheres of study would have to be examined also…studies of people who are the ‘natives being studies’, tend to be from rich, white countries. There are some studies that go the other way also.

I remember as a youth, I took an Anthro course called, ‘Monkeys, Apes and Humans’, with Dr. Jane Goodall. The course and Dr. Goodall, with her simple and modest bearing gave me much food for thought. During that semester, I used to spend a part of each day, sitting at a café, called ‘Peanuts Cafe’ observing human beings in light of the things I was learning and musing as to what Truth is.

One thing I learned in that course was how female monkeys present their bottoms to males when they are in estrus, or able to be impregnated. Prmates do numerous things to draw male primate attention to their bottoms. Not only is there the swaggle walk, but tail movements, lots of little cues to the male primate. They do this only when they want to be impregnated. Dr. Goodalls course was based upon her detailed research in the quiet forests of Africa on primate behaviors.

Sitting in the Café, watching the busy streets of San Jose California, it slowly dawned on me that I was seeing some humans acting like primates. Some ladies were wearing tight pants or jeans, high heels which cause the body to stick the bottom out more in order to gain postural balance, and swaggle walks… and some men with the corresponding aggressive walks of the male primates – arms out slightly from the sides, head down and forward a little…there is an undeniable connection between a lot of human behavior and primate behavior. This connection was my own mental association, I don’t recall if it came up in the course…I think not…as the study was so clinically oriented that it didn’t allow a lot of common sense connections….

India doesn’t realize how refined and civilized her culture was. Everything in India is geared to awaken the ethical man, to deny the animal man…the indigenous clothing for both males and females down plays the gross accentuation of bottoms and breasts… Men and Indian men don’t realize how ridiculous they look in their western pants when they could be in flowing robes which always look dignified, graceful and to an extent, princely. The Sari and Munda or Lungi or dhoti, even the Punjabis of yore, ensured that people minds, though their eyes were potentially lifted out of their animal instincts… – of course, I have seen people manage to stress their primate natures through whatever clothes they are wearing…And people who look dignified wearing practically nothing…its all in the mind. We often see photos of indigenous peoples who were virtually naked, but there was no sense of body consciousness as our media depicts. They exhibit great dignity. They are the human being, tied to their ethical sense. Its been so many generations now under globalized media madness that I don’t think people are even consciously aware of what they do or why they are doing it. Yet, subliminally, we are, we should not deceive ourselves. I wore jeans as a teenager, I grew up with them. Habituated to them, I was less aware of my body, but, definitely, the effects of the media and body consciousness are unescapable without mental isolation or social and cultural examination and reflection, which is why I think Anthro and Sociology are such a great idea. Once one mentally accepts tight clothing, it no longer feels awkward or constricting. I know that in 2003 when we were in the US, I felt like an average Joe when I put jeans on…it was part of social acceptance. Anni wore jeans in the US, but they were not tight. She always looked decently dressed no matter what she wore.

Its sad to see the changes in the student body attending institutions around . The girls, this year, - many of them came in tight jeans and T shirts. In India where it is so hot that close fitting clothes - well, its all a matter of the conditioning of the mind. Less than 6 months ago, there was respect for the association of the ashram…but, we are seeing that each new wave of students brings in minds that have been exposed for that much longer to the sick models of globalized media madness and its effects upon them.

Of course, one can’t change the world, but it sure would be nice to see India not lose her sense of social and ethical responsibility that her citizens adhered to just 40 years ago…dress is just a symptom of that eroding loss…really, whats going on here is worse than the Spanish inquisition. One can’t even yell though for those who are being dumbed down and denuded of their cultural beauty and dignity are willing for it to happen….and its considered a ‘right’. Their parents encourage them to ape the west…and its an aping….Its all very sad to see India shift from her ideals of duty.

I remember Anni telling me about 6 months after we came that she was relieved that hair was just hair here. Not something to show off to others, or flip around in the air, or make a statement of individualized self identity with, just something on the body to be kept orderly and neat (as in her case) and out of the way. She was glad not to have to devote her mind’s energy to it. I had always kept her hair in two neat braids, and didn’t realize that she had felt some pressure from her school environs in the US to do otherwise. Even here, some girls have told her to wear her hair loose…she never did. I think many children, given a chance to grow in ethical awareness would take to it like fish to water. But we aren’t giving our children the chance. They are accosted everywhere by the sick adult minds around them at work to get money, broadcasting into their homes, ears, eyes, magazines, through every conceivable avenue. Its an inundation that surpasses any military invasion…but no one bats an eye in protest….it astounds and dumbfounds….My dear dear India, precious heart of the world, where is your Soul going?

Some rumors we have been hearing that we want to correct:

1. Anni did not have Animal TB, Amma said no such thing, We never took care of sick animals, only injured; if they were sick, we kept them outside of the room, I am the one with the habit of kissing animals, neither Link nor I got sick.

2. Amma told us to go to the USA which is why we went. We did not want to go. The rest of that story is in the blog at that time.

3. The “Amma said Anni’s an angel many years ago “ rumor, we have already addressed. Amma did this in June 2007 itself only to prepare our minds. Not before. Yes, Amma has said our Beloved is an Angel. To some children who lost their pet dog, she once said, your dog was an angel, and angels don’t live too long. People have since made their own connections and associations.

4. The concept of Divine Revenge. This one I will take up with Amma. I don’t believe in this for one piece of a half second. In all, we find people are so fearful and keep themselves terrified when they are not, and oppress themselves with terrifying thoughts. Don’t any of you do this. Embrace fearlessness.

OM OM OM.

Loving you,

Kamala Aunty, Anni and Link

Dearest Friends and Family,

We find these words to be very inspiring for us right now, and wanted to share them all with you, so you can see how they are for you. It is meant to be a dialogue between Jesus, as the ideal, since he was no longer around physically, in the normative sense when Kempis wrote this, and the sadhak or spiritual aspirant or seeker. Enjoy!

From: Kempis, Thomas, A. The Imitation of Christ. Translated by Tylenda, J. Vintage Spritual Classics. Book 3, Chapter 53.

God’s Grace is not Granted to the Worldly Minded.

Jesus:

Son, My grace is precious and it allows no intermingling with worldy affairs or earthly comforts. If you desire this grace, you must remove very obstacle to receiving it.

Choose some quiet place for yourself and love to dwell there alone. Don’t look for occasions for idle conversation, but pour out your devout prayers to God so that you may continue to preserve contrition in your heart and maintain an unblemished conscience.

Look upon the whole world as nothing and prefer serving God to everything else. It is impossible for you to serve Me and at the same time take delight in ephereral things.

Withdraw from your acquaintances and close friends, and keep your mind detatched from all worldly comfort. This is what the apostle Peter meant when he instructed the followers of Christ to regard themselves as strangers and pilgrims in the world.

Great is the confidence of the man, who is about to die, when he knows that he has no attachment whatever to anything in this world. But a weak individual cannot bear to have his heart detached from everything, nor can the unspirutal man understand the liberty enjoyed by the spiritual man.

2. When a man sincerely desires to be spiritual he must renounce all his friends, those near and those far away, and must beware of himself most of all.

If you have completely conquered yourself, you will easily conquer all other things. The perfect victory is to triumph over one’s self. The man who has so conquered himself that his flesh in now subject to his reason, and his reason, in turn, is obedient to Me is all things, that man, I say, is master of himself and lord of the world.

3. If you wish to rise to this degree of perfection you must manfully begin to lay the axe to the root and dig out and destroy your hidden unregulated inclinations towards self-love and material advantage.

From this one vice of self -love proceed nearly all the other vices that need uprooting and as soon as self-love is eradicated, great peace and calm will follow.

Because there are only a few who strive to die perfectly to themselves and thus, rise far above themselves, countless others remain caught in their own webs and their spirits languish in their incapacity to soar on high.

Whoever wishes to walk freely with Me must put all evil passions and unregulated desires to death and must never cling to any creature through self-love or self-interest.

Thus did our Anni. And so we want to do.

Loving you,

Kamala Aunty, Anni and Link

Dearest Friends and Family,

            Today marks one solar year here, in this very heavy and dense world of awareness.  We can’t say Anni left.  We can’t think like that.  But, we know that we are very grateful to all of you who held her in your hearts and prayed for her.  It was indeed a miracle that she was able to go through such an experience without being dead to herself through drugging, morphine, etc.

            Br. Gurudas – the one mentioned in Anni’s jokes from her diary some months back - gave Link a copy of an article on the scientific evidence of the effectiveness of prayer.  We wanted to share some of its salient points with you.

            Dr. Randolph Byrd, a cardiologist, did a clinical study on the effects of prayer – it was something that would satisfy even Uncle Jeff’s tough standards for research; “it was randomized, prospective, double-blind experiment in which neither the patients, nurses, nor doctors know which group the patients were in.  He recruited Roman Catholic and Protestant groups around the country to pray for members of the designated group.  The prayer groups were given the names of their patients, something of their condition, and were asked to pray each day but were given no instructions on how to pray.  Each person prayed for many different patients, but each patient in the experiment had between five and seven people praying for him or her.

            The results were striking, The prayed-for patients differed from the others remarkably in several areas:

-         They were five times less likely than the unremembered group to require antibiotics (3 patients compared to 16)

-         They were 3 times less likely to develop pulmonary edema, a condition in which the lungs fill with fluid as a consequence of the failure of the heart to pump properly (6 compared to 18 patients)

-         None of the prayed-for group required endotracheal intubation, in which an artificial airway is inserted in the throat and attached to a mechanical ventilator, while twelve in the unremembered group required mechanical ventilatory support.

-         Fewer patients in the prayed-for group died (although the difference in this area was not statistically significant)”[1]

This last point is particularly interesting to us.  For, we really couldn’t understand how it was Anni did not get better with all the prayers that were going on for her from around the world and around the clock.  Besides the Ashram, she was put on prayer lists in numerous churches, convents, healing groups, throughout the US, EU, India…For myself, if I could put in words, I could only pray Please! Thy Will be done!  It was the only thing that would come to me.

           Anni was so strong willed…I am certain that prayer is what sustained her…I remember one afternoon, she was restless due to exhaustion and pain,  and then suddenly at 6:00, fell asleep for 45 minutes.  Later that evening, Priya Raji called and said that she had done an archana for Anni at 6 PM…for the length of the archana, Anni had relief….could rest….

           Some other things the study found were that proximity to the prayed for person appeared to be irrelevant.   There was no ‘energy’ transferred in scientific terms that are currently understood.

“In spite of the fact that many who pray think that they are ‘sending’ their prayers across space to the sick person, or that they are bouncing them off the Almighty back down to the sick person (God as communications satellite), we must not take these ways of thinking seriously because they do not fit with our observations.  That is not to say that God is not involved, only that distance is once again not a factor.  And on this fact, all the major theistic religions agree.  They have never confined God to a specific place.  He is everywhere.  He transcends spatial confinement and location. He is non-local, an attribute shared by our own minds.  Thus we can say without hesitation that something about us is divine.”[2]

All this is helpful to our understandings.

           While joy, as we knew it, will never return to our lives, we are facing the reality of our short lived existence here with more grim determination than before, if such a thing is qualifiable.  Our interest in lighthearted banter, food, everything, is pretty much gone.  It hasn’t returned.  We prefer to be more secluded.  There is nothing to talk about really to anyone.  Either people know they are in a house of cards, or not. Somewhat recognizing our own state, we have only one prayer – for Truth and Reality, for surely, there, we will know our Anni.  We don’t see this tragic event as any sort of assist to spiritual life.  We never felt we were not in that direction.  If anything, we are grimly more concentrated, and try to find times, as today, to make that concentration even deeper…

           After Anni passed, around the 10^th day, I had the idea to do some ceremony.  When my father, C.F.Willey had passed, I felt a tremendous push to do something around the 14^th day.  So I called our Pappu, who was near to Amma, and he asked her if there was anything I should do.  Her reply was that we should follow whatever traditions the family had.  The family had none.  We are all a pretty non-tradition hugging group.  From her answer, I realized that the ceremonies would be for those of us still in the house of cards, our ease of mind.  They had nothing to do with Anni, they would not change anything for her.  Love, will always reach her, ceremonies are for our solace, not much more.  I guess its like when people grab at Amma, and having pounded her body in someway, think they have gotten something for doing so, advanced themselves in the ‘punya’ credits bank…  Really, she is treated like some sort of Irish Blessing Stone.  I find it aggravating, but have to distance myself from all that now…Amma has even said (and I noted that for one full year, she kept on saying at the beginning of every ashram satsang) she doesn’t want to be touched, patted, grabbed at…it hurts her…that by touching her without her permission to bless ourselves, is only in our own minds…but that she would take the poundings it that is what it took for us to uplift ourselves…Such a statement shows that all that we need, in within us already, we just have to let it be (different from Leave it Be),  and trust in ourselves, somehow, to make it through the fog, to greater clarity.

           Nonetheless, Link and I are using the day for silence and more concentration.

           Gandhi was also a real practical person, not much bound to outer rituals.  I like this interpretation he gave of a Bhagavad Gita sloka

“May you propitiate the gods and may the gods propitiate you, and may you reach the highest good by this mutual propitiation,” says the Bhagavad Gita. There is no separate species called gods in the universe, but all, who have the power of production and will work for the community using that power, are gods – laborers no less than the capitalists.¹

            We like that.  Amma has often said, there is no separate heaven, everything, is right here.  We are the devas, the asuras, the human beings, depending upon our ideals and outlooks and what we are self identified with at the moment.

O!  we finally got a chance to ask Amma about Anni’s Care Fund during the room interview.  She said we could give it to the scholarship fund for poor children.  Will do.

I will ask Link to put up a photo of Anni taken when she was about 7 or 8.  I call it Anni of our Vows photo.

We finished the video, “How to Love a Bird” starring Joy-Joy.  Link will try to put it up on YouTube.

Ammu is in India, on break from school in IOWA, which, from what it sounds like, may be a lake state when she returns there.  We want to get her voice recording for Anni’s album, and Karthu and Nirali also want to be able to start work on the album again soon.  The more I see what’s out there, the more convinced I am, that the masses of people would be glad for Anni’s songs….people make a big mistake to go down to the lowest common denominator.  It just makes us all dumb-dumbs in the long run, and doesn’t pick up the ‘lowest common denominator’ in anyway.

Here, the monsoon is coming in very poorly.  Meterologists were hopeful that Saturday would see the restoration of normal monsoon vigor here in Kerala,  but, it hasn’t happened.  So, you can imagine, its very hot.  A type of heat that just sucks the bones into sappiness. Today started off with nice and glowering skies,  but, it was just spitty, and behind the clouds, a sense of lightness was there…it hardly rained, and now its blazing sun.  Normally monsoons are so delightful…this time, every day, we can dry our clothes.  There have only been about 3 good days altogether of rain, and we are half way through the season.  Its sad and a little scary to see how fast we are all approaching our planetary crisis…famine is in the offing – the unseasonal rains in spring and untimely government distribution of harvesting tractors ruined that whole crop of rice paddy – now its going under due to lack of rain…two seasons gone…somehow, we can rest assured, that the idols of the media, the rich will still eat well during human famines…. Meanwhile, in other parts of India, Bengal, UP, some 6 states, massive flooding is happening…

Kerala is home to birds that migrate all over the world.  As Kerala develops following western models and ideals, the wetlands are filled in, the migrating birds have no where to go, rest, eat….and now with drought, everything is going to get worse…I don’t know why our leaders, seeing the writing on the wall, can’t all agree to halt all production of unnecessary manufactures.  Make moratoriums on all vehicular travel, use tax dollars to fund alternatives to petroleum – and there are so many other alternatives out there, but the biggies haven’t figured how to make a buck off it yet -  instead of military spending…anyhow, we obviously live in painfully ridiculous times. 

Well, on this day, we want you all to know that we are eternally thankful to you all for all your heart prayers and love for our Anni.  In her memory, let us all pray for our earth, and the life of the Creation upon it.  May we all know and grow into truth and love.

Loving you,

Kamala Aunty, Link and Anni.

1 Harijan. June 25, 1938. Age 68.

[1] Dossey, L. M.D.Recovering the Soul: A Scientific and  Spritual Search. Bantam Books.

[2] Dossey, L. M.D.Recovering the Soul: A Scientific and  Spritual Search. Bantam Books.

Dearest Friends and Family.
I wanted to discuss Sabarimala and gender equality. Since coming to the Ashram we learned about Sabarimala. It’s a place of pilgrimage in Kerala– meant to be the hill that Lord Rama went to eons ago. Rama had an old lady devotee, named Sabari who was far outside his ‘inner circle’. She didn’t care for any of that, she just adored Rama. For her, he was the ideal, and nothing but. I think, frankly, although it may be said otherwise, that he probably never even knew about her. I mean, he was in a human form, after all, and if you read the literature, he seemed subject to a lot of human failings and delusions as well. Anyhow, as he approached the area she lived in, word spread among the gentle inhabitants of the thick woods, and people came up to him and told him about Sabari. She lived on the hill. She probably had the whole hill to herself, population being much sparser than today. My sympathies and frustrations are all with Sabari. This lady, by the time that Rama got there, was quite the old woman. She only had a few teeth left in the front. She had this ideal conception of Rama that wouldn’t quit. Every day of her life, she had cleaned the pathway to her hut, in the event that Lord Rama would come. She drew little designs on the side of the path, put flowers in harmonic little nooks…She had this idea, prayer, dream, expectation, hope, vision, (it was really a bunch of little knowings all rolled into one big knowing) that he would come. After sweeping and fixing the path for him, she would go and gather fruits, so that when he came she would be able to offer him something. That day, that Rama was hiking through with Lakshman, he actually came up the path to her hut.
You can just imagine Sabari’s state. As it was, it was mid afternoon, and Sabari was sitting on the tiny porch of her hut, looking out, down the path, half seeing, as she always did, Lord Rama walking up. Then, up he really comes. For a few moments, Sabari was still lost in her reverie, Rama could see the shift from reverie to Reality in her as he came close. In seconds, she was up on her spindly legs, laughing and gasping, all at once. With trembling hands, she led him into her hut, places him on her kitchen peetam, and washed his feet, his hands, and then, chuckling like a dervish, got the bowls of forest berries she had gathered that morning for him. As she pirouetted from the shelf in the wall where the bowl of berries had been kept, back to a kneeling position at Lord Rama’s side, she half glanced at the berries.
Doubt, and dark suspicions about the quality of the berries flushed into her mind. She looked at Lord Rama, the Rama of her heart, that had finally come, to be adored by her, who had walked up the path…his path,…, after so many years…and shook her head violently, shuddering slightly. No, she had to make sure the berries were sweet for him. Rama reached to pick out a berry… Kneeling by him, she smiled sweetly at him, and nodding in agreement with his desire, she held the bowl back, inspected the berries for the best one, bit it, to make sure the juice was sweet, and passed it approvingly to Lord Rama. For that visit, in the hut, Lord Rama went into his Omniscient consciousness. He and Sabari were one, it was a movement of complete harmony – Sabari biting each berry gently with the remaining front teeth, then putting them to Rama’s mouth, and Rama eating and nodding…
Anyhow…that’s why the place is called Sabarimala – Sabari’s hill. There is a statue of Lord Ayappa there. His story is also quite long and detailed, in a gist, he was a noble prince was from a dysfunctional rich and royal family. He was the first born, and the crown prince. There was deceit and cunning, his father’s second wife wanted him out of the picture. She plotted. He ends up volunteering nobly to go and get tiger’s milk to cure her. He goes off into the forest, and returns, riding on a tigeress. His fearlessness and friendship with the tigers blew everyone’s mind. Ayyappa then renounces the kingdom, then 16 years of age, since it means so much to these people that they would plot murder to gain it (experience is a great teacher of dispassion)…and heads to the forest. His father wants to commemorate him in some way, and so Ayyappa tells him that he will shoot an arrow, and where it lands, build a temple to him, with only 18 steps. So said, so done, and later with the assistance of really inspired architects, the temple is built on top of Sabari’s hill (Sabari by now, is long, long, long gone). After this, one of the minister who started the plot with the confused queen, falls sick and has a dream in which he is instructed to bathe in the river then go to the Ayyappa temple, and chant loudly “Swami Sharanam Ayyappa” as he climbs each step. This he does, and he is healed.
Tremendous faith in Lord Ayyappa is present all over India. He was a pure brahmachari. For centuries and centuries, people have trekked from all over India to go to Sabarimala.
Traditionally, only males are allowed to have the darshan of the idol. Many of the male students here take advantage of the pilgrimage season. There are a lot of restrictions that people going on the pilgrimage must observe. One must wear a black munda or lungi, travel barefoot, have no thoughts about women for at least 40 days before going…( I don’t know what thoughts men are having, but they are instructed to have no thoughts. This indicates that probably the general quality of their thoughts about women is not very refined) there are many more, I don’t know them all. During the pilgrimage season we often see many Sabarimala pilgrims coming through the ashram. Traditionally, the pilgrimage is done on foot. Nowadays, it seems that only the very last parts are done that way for many people.
Apparently, until the advent of faster transportation, the pilgrimage to Sabarimala was fraught with danger, as men made their way through lovely thick forests, that blanketed much of India, filled with tigers, leapords, bears, snakes and other hazards. Amma has suggested that as a result of this, women were not allowed to accompany them. To accomplish the pilgrimage with all the restrictions of diet, thought, speech, dress, etc., etc. was arduous, and required great devotion on behalf of its participants. Probably the biggest qualities needed were patience and endurance, qualities that Amma has said are naturally inherent in greater measure in those whose sense of Motherhood is awakened. Some family members would be gone for months at a time, even years, depending on where they lived accomplishing these arduous pilgrimages.
At some point, it became permissible for young girls before the age of menarche, and old ladies, after the age of menopause, to be able to accompany the men and boys.
Our point: Recently there has been a lot of agitation to have all the restrictions regarding women on the pilgrimage and at the temple removed.
I want to express my views on this.
Frankly, we have only to look, or listen , or touch what is around us, to see the applications of human intelligence in our lives. Children all over the world now, especially in ‘developed’ countries, live in fear of the bomb, other bombs, guns, other inventions of human intelligence. Our earth, waters and skies are massively polluted due to the devices and concoctions that human intelligence has created. Manhattan, NY, seen from the 30th floor of any building there, is, in my mind a clear example of ‘the mind of man’. Very little can grow, all tarred and cemented, huge buildings, security measures everywhere in evidence, it’s a reflection of the inner mind of its creators.
Mostly, the authors of all of these things, the inventors, creators, are men. We can see from the directions, and values, that human society is progressing in, that the authors are men. Women’s bodies are used to sell everything, even dog food. Aggressive selfishness and competition is economic law rather than ethics. Who authors most of this? Men…..the male mind.
We live in a world where undeniably, more than 98% of the violent, heinious crimes are committed by men. Raping. Killing. Stealing. Looting. Arson. Beating. Mugging. War. Most women on this earth are not comfortable with men. They may be able to handle them, they may trust their husbands, sons and brothers deeply, but with other men, there is a bit of an edge of doubt and mistrust. Its due to the conditioning and experience that women have with men. 99% of the time, it hasn’t been positive. Men are quick to use brute force.
Gandhi noted the facts plainly in his own life, and we shouldn’t let false concepts about openmindedness make us deceive ourselves now:

As I discuss this mattber, I feel ashamed of being a man. Is man, who was born of woman, whose mother carried him for nine months, for whom she suffered pain, who slept only after putting him to sleep and ate only after she had fed him – is man born an enemy of that mother’s kind that they should live in fear of him? A woman does not run away form a tiger; she runs away only from man’s lust. I have already pleaded with women. I wish to plead with men as well. Is not a man bound to remove the fears of women, of whom his mother was one? Should he not always pray: “Take my life before I cast lustful eyes upon any woman. If I ever incline to immorality, give me the strength to kill myself. Remove from me all uncleanness so that no woman will fear me but will feel safe with me as with a brother?” I pray to God that, as long as our men are incapable of protecting our women, he should keep us in slavery. If in a country the men do not protect the women, they are not men at all and are fit only to remain slaves.1

1 CWMG 22:187. Navajivan. January 15, 1922. Age 53.

I frankly feel, that if men want to take on specific restrictions, focus their minds on an ideal of truth and purity, for 40 or more days, it’s a blessing. Lets not stop them. It appears that they urgently need that time and focus. It may help them to behave better. For sure the ones who enjoy going because it is an all male bastion, need that succor more. As all consciousness is connected, maybe if masses of men undertake the pilgrimage with piety, keeping their thoughts clean, their actions clean, transcending for a few days the strong body identifications that make them so crazy for sex, it will help them and others. Cultivating patience and endurance, they develop the feminine strengths within themselves. I think all male pilgrimages are a great idea, and I would not want to deny or get in the way of anyone having that kind of need met. I fully respect their effort to improve themselves ethically. Go for it.
I would personally love it, if there were a few places on this planet where only women could go and delight in nature as the face of God. Where they would have an absolute guarantee of no intrusions or disturbance from male mindsets, a place where covert or overt sexuality was absent from other females as well. Places of deep prayer and adoration of God. I would personally enjoy the peace and security. There are some lovely spots left on this planet, in Kashmir, Kerala, Russia, Tasmania, - somehow, we should find all of Nature’s beautiful temples, and dedicate large sections of them as sanctuaries to the Goddess in all women.
I don’t want the equality I see many women pushing for – the equality that says we can also go and kill people in war, shoot animals, beat others up in Lathi charges, use jack hammers, I want to see a different type of equality for women. Definitely, women should be priests, teachers, airline pilots, doctors, scientists, sportswomen, politicians and numerous other fields of intelligent intellectual endeavor and capability. But I don’t want to see us seek to express the brute that is inherent in men, or cultivate it in ourselves. Its not helping the situation here. There is just too much brute going on. As women get into these other arenas of activity, we should seek to turn them slowly into more refined agencies for ethical qualities to be expressed. I am confident that women’s participation and contribution anywhere will lead to the expansion of meaning and definition of whatever field they enter into. For example, a woman priest would expand the notion of priest hood, to include several other aspects of ritualized care than is currently be availed of. Women’s influences in the sciences will bring harmony and confluence to those spheres, bringing strength through intellectual unity in multiple endeavors…in every sphere of activity, if women participate, the field is bound to become more stable, congruent and harmonious with its contextual reality.
I want women to be seen as having at the very least, equal value, not necessarily equal capacity to express brute strength. Women should be valued, highly valued, for what they are – or what they can be - a bit of grace and sanity here on this earth.
Amma has spoken extensively about this, from all that I have read, I must say, I totally agree with her. Here are some of her words from her speech at Geneva in 2002, when she received the Gandhi/King award:

“The rules and superstitious beliefs that degrade women continue to prevail in most countries. The primitive customs invented by men in the past to exploit and to subjugate women remain alive to this day. Women and their minds have become entangled in the cobweb of those customs. They have been hypnotized by their own minds. Women have to help themselves in order to extricate themselves from that magnetic field. This is the only way.
Look at an elephant. It can uproot huge trees with its trunk. When an elephant living in captivity is still a baby, it is tied to a tree with a strong rope or a chain. Because it is the nature of elephants to roam free, the baby elephant instinctively tries with all its might to break the rope. But it isn’t strong enough to do so. Realizing its efforts are of no use, it finally gives up and stops struggling. Later when the elephant is fully grown, it can be tied to a small tree with a thin rope….because its mind has been conditioned by its prior experiences it doesn’t make the slightest attempt to break free.
This is what is happening to women.
Society does not allow the strength of women to arise. We have created a blockage, preventing this great strength from pouring forth.
The infinite potential inherent in women and men is the same. If women really want to, it won’t be difficult to break the shackles – the rules and conditioning that society has imposed on them. The greatest strength of women lies in their innate motherhood, in their creative, life-giving power. And this power makes woman able to bring about at least as much change in society as men can accomplish…
Women were not created for the enjoyment of men….”
The essence of motherhood is not restricted to women who have given birth, it is a principle inherent in both women and men. It is an attitude of the mind. It is love – and that love is the very breath of life…for those in whom motherhood has awakened, love and compassion for everyone are as much part of their being as breathing. Amma feels that the forthcoming age should be dedicated to re-awakening the healing power of motherhood. This is the only way to realize our dream of peace and harmony for all. And it can be done! It is entirely up to us. Let us remember this and move forward.1

1 Amma (2002).The Awakening of Universal Motherhood:61.

Gandhi also made every effort during his lifetime for women to realize our great strength, to not compromise ourselves in light of the false ideals that are held out before us:
I am uncompromising in the matter of woman’s rights…As women begin to realize their strength, as they must in proportion to the education they receive, they will naturally resent the glaring inequalities to which they are subjected. But to remove legal inequalities will be a mere palliative. The root of the evil lies much deeper than most people realize. It lies in man’s greed of power and fame and deeper still in mutual lust [women as co-sharer’s of husbands power, fame]…That mutual lust too has played an important part in bringing about the disqualifications of the fair sex hardly needs any demonstration. Woman has circumvented man in a variety of ways in her unconsciously subtle ways, as man has vainly and equally unconsciously struggled to thwart woman in gaining ascendancy over him. The result is a stalemate. Thus viewed, it is a serious problem that enlightened daughters of Bharat Mata1 are called upon to solve. They may not ape the manner of the West which may be suited to its environment. They must apply methods suited to the Indian genius and Indian environment. Theirs must be the strong, controlling, purifying, steadying hand, conserving what is best in our culture and unhesitatingly rejecting what is base and degrading. This is the work of Sitas, Draupadis, Savitris and Damayantis2, not of amazons and prudes.3

1 Bharat Mata – Mother India.
2 Heroines from India’s itihasas, puranas, and other legends.
3 CWMG 42:4-5. Young India. October 17, 1929. Age 61.

Gandhi saw that women have to be educated as to their rights, and to the right to resist men. To resist the unspoken demands and media models of false ideals that we use our life, bodies and times for the enjoyment of, or to be pleasing to, men.

“Woman must cease to consider herself the object of man’s lust. The remedy is more in her hands than man’s. She must refuse to adorn herself for men, including her husband if she will be an equal partner with man. I cannot imagine Sita ever wasting a single moment on pleasing Rama by physical charms.”1

Without education of this caliber, Gandhi did not see how India or women could rise: “I can only say that until women establish their womanhood, the progress of India in all directions is impossible. When women who we call abala [weak] becomes sabala [strong], all those who are helpless will become powerful.”2
Refuse to be slaves of your own whims and fancies and the slaves of men. Refuse to decorate yourselves, so not go in for scents and lavender water. If you want to smell well, the scent must come out from your hearts and then you will captivate not man, but humanity. It is your birthright. Man is born of woman, he is flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone. Come to your own and deliver your message again.3
Lets let the boys have Sabarimala. Hope it helps. Let us come into our own selves, and make this world anew….
Our Anni was a tiger, there was nothing of the ‘femme fatale’ in her. She had the purest convincement in the power of Truth and Love within her. Her absolute fearlessness is our constant inspiration.
We hope you will all pray for her on the 22 of June.
Closing on these thoughts,
Loving you,
Kamala Aunty

1 Mohan Mala:105. Young India. July 21, 1921 Age 52.
2 CWMG 64:165. December 23, 1936. Age 68. – All India Women’s Conference.
3 My Gandhi:40.

Dearest Friends and Family,
May 29 marks the day when we moved to San Ramon. This was the last phase of Anni’s earthly life. For us, it feels to be sacred time. Her suffering was so intense. So, So, So INTENSE.

We feel we have to make some small sacrifices. For us, it is a type of Lent. We don’t know who and what is Anni, why she had to suffer so much, what it was all for. Nothing has been explained to us. When we said to Amma last August, that Anni had suffered sooooooooooo much, she said, “Many of the Mahatmas have had to suffer. Look at Ramana Maharshi, and Ramakrishna Paramahansa – they both had cancer and suffered terrible pain. Vivekananda also got very sick and died. ” She also mentioned that when a person has cancer, every pore in their body is in agony.

I don’t know why Anni suffered so much. I don’t know how she bore it. She never even cried out. For everyone else, it was one year ago almost, that she passed. For us, it is still last night. I don’t think that ever changes. I met a dear friend after Anni passed, who lost her daughter nearly 20 years ago. She said, the nightmare never ends.…. As my beloved advisor said, you find those points of communion….we can function when we feel her somehow to be with us in what we do for that we need quiet and concentration, although she is there in activity too.

Anni was totally fearless. She was 100% accepting of what was happening with her life. She had a full surrender. I hear a lot about surrender, but Anni surely lived in surrender. She had no resistance, but in her heart also, she wanted to stay with us. Pema Chodron, a Buddhist Abbess stationed in Canada said: “Impermanence is a principle of harmony. When we don’t struggle against it, we are in harmony with reality.” Anni did not struggle against the impermanence of her body nor the directions her life was taking her.

I don’t know why the Creator didn’t let someone so good and wonderful air-condition this earth for longer. She wanted to stay and serve, but apparently that’s not enough.  To want to serve is not a reason that we may be allowed to stay here.  Our wishes and deepest desires apparently matter very little.  None of us are here to stay.

When I see the horrendous loss of human life in the last two spasms of Nature – cyclone Nargis and the earthquake in China, I don’t know how those dear people are managing. If they lost family, how they are coping, considering their homes, their places of memory, their communites and entire life is torn permanently apart. I pray their minds will somehow be strong, that they will get the places and spaces they need inside and outside themselves. I saw a photo where there was a city of huge tents, and one made into a school, and a thousand or so survivors of one area were starting their kids in school, so they won’t lose out, and be able to make the exams.

On one hand, I think the routine of school, the hellish stress on exams, will be a place the children can put their minds, and somehow give themselves some sort of stability. On the other, I think its ridiculous to heap that kind of pressure on people who, are human, and therefore, deeply traumatized from the event. They might actually benefit from being allowed to commune with nature quietly….

All our lives are so fragile, none of us will be here long, yet we get so distracted from the only real duty we have. Sogyal Rinpoche, who wrote the Tibetan Book of the Living and the Dead expressed some thoughts I find useful to reflect on:

“Western laziness consists of cramming our lives with compulsive activity, so that there is no time at all to confront the real issues.”

Another Tibetan Buddhist student, Matthew Ricard, talks about this compulsiveness and self distraction like this:

“Simplifying our lives does not mean sinking into idleness, but on the contrary, getting rid of the most subtle aspect of laziness; the one which makes us take on thousands of less important activities.”

Anni lived without much distraction from her self. Even when she was healthy, she always had a part of her that was tied to and focused on her true self. She had detachment combined with ineffable sweetness. I remember how Anni would spend many moments in a very pensive state – she had complete concentration…She was never ‘out of it’ until the end, and even then, it wasn’t that she was out of it, it was that something had gone wrong in her body and she could no longer master it.

From before my Anni, during Anni and after the end of her physical body, I find I am still trying to find ways to make my life useful to this earth. When the kids were small I used to read them a story about “The Lupine Lady”. She grew up in a small town, and traveled around the world, and had adventures, and became a teacher, and finally retired, and in her retirement, went around and around her country on her bicycle, broadcasting lupine seeds, which, sprouted and made the waysides of the road very beautiful. In her very old age, she was in her bed, looking out the window, and saw the lupines come up in springtime. She sighed, and said, something to the effect of that she was happy she could have made the world a little more beautiful for having lived in it.

Irena Sendler, was a woman from Poland, who during the horrendous murdering of Jewish men, women and children, under Hitler, managed to cleverly sneak out over 2500 Jewish children to countries of protection and safety. The grateful survivors have always sought to honor her. In a letter to the Polish Senate after a lawmaker lauded her efforts, she firmly wrote:

“Every child saved with my help and the help of all the wonderful secret messengers, who today are no longer living, is the justification of my existence on this earth, and not a title to glory.”

We think we have time to spare, time for distraction, no power to stop the social obligations and etiquettes that waste the precious seconds of our lives. In studying Gandhi’s words and Amma’s teachings, I increasingly find, that there is the reality of which they speak, which they say is the purpose of life. I find the de-brainwashing, the de-conditioning that needs to happen can only happen in silence and seclusion, with the assistance of numerous scriptures that can again and again tell the mind – you are not the body, not the mind, you are something else….what is it? In stillness, watching nature, even an ant, we see the fragile life consciousnss….that operates in a totality of harmony…We find it takes great effort and concentration, because everything, everything that exists in this differentiating world of individuality, conditions and distracts us….

It is to convince myself of the Reality that transcends physical life, that is all around me, everywhere, that I have written this, and the purpose of which – my own re-conditioning into Truth, that I write anything.

And, to let you all know that we hold you in our hearts as we make our own efforts towards Truth and Love, and hope that you will hold us in yours.
Loving you,

Kamala Aunty, Anni and Link

Dearest Friends and Family,

            I have been meaning to write.  Anni’s birthday was on Sunday, April 20^th.  She would have been twenty years old.  I remember the day she was born.  It was a cold April day, in Connecticut, USA.  There were still chunks of snow around – at that time of year, the snow that remains is kind of ‘ricey’ in the way the ice breaks up.  Ice is really a fantastic thing – so many forms, it’s so beautiful…as frost it makes exquisite swirling patterns against the glass panes of houses, icicles, ice storms coat all the little twiglets in a thin sheet of ice – then they glisten like diamonds in the next morning sun…ice is another whole celebration of what the creation can do with water in the frozen direction.   That day, the first spear blades of grass were pushing up through the last year’s mat of brown grasses,  the frozen grasses crunched underfoot….  After the birth, I walked outside alone for a while in silence,  the air very cold…She had been silent at birth, it wasn’t until a few hours later that I heard her sweet voice calling me.

            I can’t go there too long.  Those days and these days are hard.

            This year,  on her birthday,  Sunday,  around 7 AM, a friend knocked at the door, as she stepped over the threshold, a beautiful bhajan composed itself in her mind…we recorded it later on in the evening. We want to make a short home movie – How to Love a Bird –  featuring Joy-Joy,  for Amma, and use the music as background soundtrack…if we can get it done, we will try to put it up where you can all see it.  We felt that the day was sacred to us, that we needed to utilize it to refresh ourselves in our spirit – for that is what we are, and where we are really.  So, we fasted till late at night when we each took personal vows on her birthday to keep ourselves true to her, to bring us to her presence when the time here is done. As they are personal,  I can’t reveal them here.

            A few days before her birthday, we found a wonderful book in the ashram trash.  It has been a lot of the inspiration, that and the studies we have done on Gandhi’s use of vow, and what Amma has said about it…  In fact, I couldn’t believe it was in the trash, and I said to the Sorter (one lady in the ashram has undertaken a huge effort to handle the ashram waste responsibly, one dimension of it is careful sorting into recycyleable, burnable, compostable – each with their many sub-sorting divisions,  I must say, ‘Hats Off!’ to the ashram waste sorters!) – ‘This book is in the waste?! Do you want it?  You don’t want it?! It’s a fantastic book!.  I mean, it was flabbergasting to get such a jewel – as Link said, the ashram waste has really picked up over the years….electronics, stainless ware, pens, calculators…    More than 30 years ago, I looked at Kempis’ work, but it was a different translator.  Translators make a big difference Although I recognized that there was something vast that he was touching, the translation turned me off….Tylenda has translated the book, as a service of love to his relative, who sought to join a Catholic monastery.  While the self denigration tone of much of Christian literature is there,  its more in place, and one can get around it easily to the point that Kempis is trying to make in each verse. I can’t quite appreciate the self-flagellation of medieval Christianity…although I suppose it was necessary for those, there, then. 

Amma often says how on a grassy field, one trip through will produce tracks.  Young minds are like that.  Whereas, on a rock covered mountain, countless trips will hardly make a dent.  It is to assist in the denting that I will write it out.  I do see, in both Link and Anni, that they have taken in what they have understood Amma to say….I am endlessly grateful that they were here in their early youth…as grassy fields for her feet…

Link was elated at the find.  We poured over it greedily, and while we let people look at it, we don’t let it out of the room…its our new night time reader.  I hope to start handcopying it into my own format,  to help get it through the rock….

For your reference:

Kempis, Thomas A.  Translated  from the Latin by Tylenda, Joseph N., The Imitation of Christ. Vintage Spiritual Classics. NY.

When Swami Vivekananda traveled to the West, and later spoke at  the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1895 – (100 years before Amma addressed the same organization), he had two books in his pocket according to Eknath Eswaran – Thomas Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ  and the Bhagavad Gita.

The book is divided into 4 books.  The first is: Book One.  Helpful Counsels for the Spritual Life. I’ll just open the book, with a prayer for all of you, and see what comes – here it is, I’ll write the first quote my eye fell on to give you a taste, Chapter 12.1:

“Sometimes it is to our advantage to endure misfortunes and adversities; for they make us enter into our inner selves and acknowledge that we are in a place of exile and that we ought not to rely on anything in this world.  And sometimes it is good for us to suffer contradictions and know that there are those who think ill and badly of us, even though we do our best and act with every good intention.  Such occasions are aids in keeping us humble and shield us from pride.  When men ridicule and belittle us, we should turn to God, who sees our innermost thoughts, and seek His judgment.” ( 1. 12. 1)

            We are finding that a vow is a very useful thing, especially, a vow to God.  We find it to be a great protection.  As when one is a child, our mothers will tell us – Listen, if any of the classmates ask you or tell you to do something you don’t want to do, just say, ‘My Mother won’t let me do it.”.   Taking a vow of this nature, is like that – it brings one into the constant presence of the inner Mother, the ideal, held there through the vow.  It actually relieves one of self responsibility.  The vow bears the responsibility.  As such, vows are wonderfully freeing.   All of this, we are just coming into.  Probably, many of you are much further in your experiments in this direction…In this life, we are permanently stuck at the beginner stage.  As my dear Friend from childhood, a Bahai, once said, “We are always just beginning to Touch.”

            Here are a few quotes from Gandhi on the use of ‘vow”:

 “If we resolve to do a thing, and are ready even to sacrifice our lives in the process, we are said to have taken a vow.  It is essential for every person to train himself to keep such vows; one can strengthen one’s power of will by doing so and fit oneself for greater tasks.  One may take easy and simple vows to start with and follow them with more difficult ones.”[1]

Gandhi found vows to be essential for character building.  I like this quote, as I see in it the conditioning many of us receive from our more ‘therapeutically oriented society’ in the west that somehow does not allow or encourage us to come into moral and ethical character building:

“The same law, which regulates these heavenly bodies, applies equally to men.  A person unbound by vows can never be absolutely relied upon.  It is overweening pride to say, “This thing comes natural to me.  Why should I bind my self permanently by vows?  I can well take care of myself at the critical moment…To shirk taking of vows betrays indecision and want of resolution.  One never can achieve anything lasting in this world by being irresolute.  For instance, what faith can you place in a general or a soldier who lacks resolution and determination, who says, ‘I shall keep guard as long as I can?’”[2]

 

            We found this format for vow taking, suggested by Gandhi, and followed it for ourselves:

“What are the factors to be considered before taking a vow and whether it can be modified afterwards?”

“Any vow to be taken must be written out in precise terms.  It should be done in the presence of a witness, if available at the time.  If a doubt arises, it must be interpreted rigidly, not loosely.  Nothing should be appended to it, under the excuse of being left out, which would weaken it.  For instance, say, I pledge not to touch liquor.  No country has been mentioned in this pledge.  I then go to England and someone persuades me to take liquor on the grounds of health.  Now, I cannot argue that since I happened to be in India at the time of taking the pledge it applied only to my stay there and that I was free to take liquor while abroad.  Nor can I permit myself to take liquor as a medicine on the ground that there was no mention of medicines in the pledge.” [3]

“By these resolutions, you bring the body under subjection.  Body is matter, soul is spirit, and there is internal conflict between matter and spirit.  Triumph of matter over the spirit means destruction of the latter. …The spirit can express itself only through matter or body.  But that result can be obtained only when the body is used as an instrument for the uplifting of the soul.  The vast majority of the human family do not use the body in that manner….We who know the soul to be imperishable living in a body which ever changes its substance and is perishable must by making fixed resolutions bring our bodies under such control that finally we may be able to use them for the fullest service to the soul.” [4]

“No one need take fright at my observations or give up the effort in despair.  The taking of a vow does not mean that we are able to observe it completely from the very beginning; it does mean constant and honest effort in thought, word and deed with a view to its fulfillment.  We must not practice self-deception by resorting to some make-believe.”[5]

            This is what I could find that Amma has said about vows ( a sadhak is a spiritual aspirant):

“To observe vows is not a weakness.  Wooden planks are useful in building a boat only if they can be bent.  In order to bend them, the shipwright beats them. Likewise, by observing spiritual discipline, the sadhak can bring his/her mind under control.  Without taming the mind, the body cannot be controlled.”[6]

 

            I imagine you have all heard about the devastating cyclone in Myanmar – the death toll is nearly 50 K so far and rising –  satellite photos are showing the entire Irawaddy Delta as being underwater….I don’t know if Aun Sun Suuki ( is that her name?)  is still under house arrest… I don’t know what our prayers can do, but its all we can offer from this distance.  Things aren’t looking too good for the planet…

Loving you,

Kamala, Anni and Link

[1] CWMG 12:238 age 45.

[2] CWMG 41:273 August 22, 1929 Age 61.

 [3] CWMG 56: 127 October 22, 1933 Age 61.
[4] CWMG 15:77 January 25, 1919 age 51.

[5] WMG 44:79 August 12, 1930 Age. 61.
[6] Matruvani  August, 2004. Vol 15. No.12. p.12  Sadhana.