Its your real birthday when….

September 20, 2008 Kamala Amma's Grace

Dearest Friends and Family,

The last few days have been very tough….I try to keep going, to keep my mind full of good thoughts, to at least be of some service to the creation someway…but…one can only bury the grief so far. My dear friend who is like a fellow sister came over….I knew it would not be good to talk with her when I saw her last August, ‘coz her pain about Anni was so strong…so, somehow, I avoided it…I have to keep walking and talking, after all…onward, through the nightmare that never ends….we have been through alot together in the ashram, our children getting into difficulties they didn’t cause, supporting each other when public opinion was against us both or our children in every way….sharing our griefs and concerns for our kids…it was her two daughters that really saved my life after the heart attack (of which there is no trace now, three years later, according to a cardiologist ) That’s another amazing story, maybe later….we were family….so….she was very sad, she held me, and I felt her
Mother’s Love in my heart, and all the pain which I work on carefully managing moment by moment…came up…..and up….

So, it was some fairly terrible days. Couldn’t stop crying. At one point, I just cried out for God to at least send me a friend…God, to me, is greatest, as FRIEND. A Friend just selflessly helps for no other gain, that to be a friend….its a great thing…with others, basically, our Poustinia family, I scraped myself back into a bowl again…sat near Amma for some time….sitting near her, without her invitation or acknowledgment in anyway, is still a powerful experience…as she said once:

A true Master is a presence, the presence of Divine Consciousness. He does nothing. In his presence everything just happens, without any effort on his part. There can only be effort where there is an ego. A true Master is egoless. There is therefore no effort involved from his side. Even the situations that allow the seeker to dive into his own consciousness arise in the presence of the Master. That is simply how it is – it cannot be otherwise. The sun doesn’t make any effort to create its light, yet the sun cannot do anything but shine. A flower doesn’t make any effort to be fragrant; being fragrant is just part of its nature. A river doesn’t make any effort to flow, it simply flows. It is all so natural. Human beings create unnatural things, but nature can only be natural. Likewise, the perfect Master doesn’t do anything in particular to create a suitable situation for your progress. His very presence makes what is needed happen spontaneously. There is not effort involved on his
part. His presence is the most conducive atmosphere for the opening of your heart to take place. That is how it is. From Awaken Children 8:155.

After sitting around for a few hours, things were a little better that evening, but not much…who can hold a dam on the Ocean of Pain?
Then, on Firday, Amma came out to see the ashram guests in the early afternoon. As I was hastening to the prayer hall, upon hearing the bell, I mentioned to someone, ‘I hope she will talk to us…’ When she came, after the guided meditation, she said she had no time to talk, to much to do, the birthday celebs are coming, she has tons of party details to take care of…for her its a chance to do something for the poor…and Amma has mass weddings planned, (in which she not only arranges the marriages, but also gives the bride all the gold jewelries that are tradtionally expected, etc…she doesn’t deviate far from the cherished archetypes in people’s minds) On her birthday, she gives out new Sari’s to many poor women, sewing machines, scholarships, pensions, homes, etc…its a massive undertaking, in which the masses feel their own participation….
Then she said, Anyhow, the real birthday is when you realize you have never been born.

Anni certainly realized this. We all realize it when we die. Amma knows it from her birth here itself. Death, does not exist in reality. So why do I cry? The Brhad Aranyaka translated by Swami Krishnananda of the Divine Life Society, who lost his eyesight before he could get to the problematic translation of the section mentioned in the last entry, says in his introduction to the Brhad Aranyaka,

The grief of the mind, the sorrow of the individual is not brought about by outer circumstances. This is a very important lesson we learn form the Upanishad. We do not suffer by incidents that take place outside. We suffer on account of a maladjustment of our personality with the conditions of life and the knowledge of this fact is supernatural and super-sensual….

The bondage of the self is intrinsically involved in the structure of the individual. We bring sorrow with us even when our birth takes place; and it is often said that we bring our death also together with our birth. The meaning is that all experiences – joys, sorrows including our last moment of life – all these are a fructification of circumstances with which we are born from the mother’s womb. We are born under certain conditions, and they are the seeds of what will follow later, so that the entire life of ours may be said to be an unfoldment of that which is present in a seed-form at the time of our birth. We do not pass through newer and newer experiences unexpectedly, as it were, but they are all expected things only. Every experience in life is expected, as a corollary is expected from a theorem in mathematics. It follows, it has to naturally follow, logically , from the principle enunciated. Likewise, the experiences of life are natural phenomena that follow logically from the
circumstances under which we are born. And these circumstances which seem to be powerful enough to condition our future are again the consequence of certain antecedents, and so on. There is, thus, a vicious circle, as it were, in which we are caught up, so that we cannot know which is the cause and which is the effect of any event or experience.

This vicious circle of suffering is Samsara, the sorrow of the soul, and it cannot free itself from this sorrow by merely undergoing experiences though births and deaths, because the experiences in life, the sorrow and the joys, whatever they be, are powers which come out automatically from the nature of individual existence, and unless this character of existence as the individual is studied, its sorrow cannot be diagnosed, or eradicated. – from pps.18-21. Intro. to Brhad-Aranyaka

At night, in our nighttime reading, we are working our way through Paramahansa Yogananda’s The Bhagavad Gita: Royal Science of God-Realization. As a friend commented on the last blog, its a great blessing that the interpretations of a real Jnani exist on this scripture. I can’t find the Chapter or the verse that I want to share right now, but, in Edwin Arnold’s version of the Gita, called the Song Celestial, at one point, he states;

“Fire cannot burn you, water cannot wet you, weapons cannot harm you, wind cannot dry you, you are unborn, permanent, eternal…death is nothing to you.”

Really, this is what we need to know, and how we need to think. For us, it is crucial to get rid of all of our false conditioning that makes us see it otherwise….the false conditioning, the incorrect perception can literally kill us. It distorts our minds entirely, wastes our days… It was as clear as day to both Link and I, when Anni left her body, that she had left her body….we were left with her body, but, it was not Her….
I feel I must know these facts for certain, while yet in life, otherwise, my time here is simply that of a rat on a treadmill, in a cage…of delusion….
Anni is pure and true to her being, that is where we want and need to get to, if we would be with her, even now….it is our life’s goal….
As Amma said,

“The real birthday, is when you realize you have never been born”

We all will realise this, sooner or later. We want to know it NOW, for certain. Among other conditionings, we are American, from a culture of reasonably instant gratification. And we want to know, feel, and be certain, NOW, that we, KAL, have never been born! As her mother, I want to revel again, in the knowledge of our existence together. Thats all that matters to me.
Give us your prayers in this regard,
Loving you,
Kamala Aunty