The face of truth

Revelations

Chapter 14 The face of truth

Neela didn't need much persuasion. When informed that the shaman had approved his return to the village, he had wept. Leaving the hotel in the care of the staff, he had packed up a few things to visit his parents.

The Swamy, on the other hand seemed reticent.

“I have so far only catered to those who come here to dedicate themselves to a personal journey of discovery,” he had said. “My message is something a person must ponder upon. I don't think I can win an argument with it.”

Peter continued to press on. In was in the interest of the Swamy to appreciate fully the mechanics of irony, in his attitude. Besides as Peter pointed out, the outcome of the study was for UNESCO, to better understand the needs of the world's communities.

On the latter issue, the Swamy had responded favourably. But two weeks later, returning from the panel discussion the faculty had organized, he was visibly shaken.

“I have to do several hours of meditation to regain my calm,” he told Peter after they returned to the accommodation the university had provided.

Peter took out the recorder and placed it on the table in front of the Swamy.

“What are your thoughts about the event?” Peter asked.

“Fortunately for me I identify with the need of my community for the role that I represent, otherwise I'll be inclined to think that I'm a charlatan.”

“This is a different crowd from what you are used to,” Peter offered.

“Achah, that's true,” the Swamy responded,” but since the pro-American attitudes have caught on in the world media, the young people today appear to think it might be possible to communicate the most esoteric principles in a simple form.”

“Is that what the world seeks to do....in your opinion?” Peter continued, allowing for the Swamy's gambiratattva nature of the heart to allocate the issues accordingly.

“I can't forget that I was a young man once and I myself had thought that what my father was engaged in was a lot of self delusion....you're right,” he said after a while, “I needed this at this time to reorganize my experiences and place it in a greater context of the world.”

“Is there something you have encountered that is significant?” Peter asked.

“I wish I had the words for it....,” he began, “ the world is in an experience of globalization. What we perceived as symbolic natures before is today coming very quickly to present itself in a physical world experience. The point is, are we ready as a society to understand and to accept them?”

“Is there something in particular, you could refer to?”

“I seem to recall as a child, how the Indians believed that as a society, we were in some way realistic in our experience of the living, but the west appeared to be living a …..fairy tale.....no that's not fair.....that the west was trying to discover true love, in the way we live our lives in the world. I used to think that it was crazy....that it is the stuff of stories.”

“And what do you think of it today?”

“Well...I've had many thoughts of it in the course of my Brahmin training....I came to find that a person cannot live merely with reason and thoughts....that one needed a base of passions that eventually comes to match with reason.”

“Can you match that today?”

“I can't,” he replied, shaking his head, “ it would take a better man than me to do that. My training is in recovering the mind through ritualized practices. A mind, incidentally, which has fallen on account of having followed the path of true love.”

“But to recuperate the mind, you'll have to persuade it that true love exists,” Peter commented.

“Yes, we do that,” he replied, “ but in relation to an iconic or idolized substitute for the object of love. That may be in the form of a dream image, a character in a book, one's parents, an idol that is consecrated for the purpose......and so forth.”

“Is it possible to engage the world as such an object of love?” Peter asked.

“Yes....it is the basis of Dharma.....to view everybody in the world as oneself....,” before he could continue, Peter cut him off.

“As an object of love?”

The Swamy took a while to consider that.

“Yes you can but as the great god of creation.....being careful not to mix that image with one's personal beloved or as man.”

“That may imply another dimension of experience?”

He nodded, his manner had relaxed considerably as he applied himself to expressing what he felt. He looked much better.

“It is the path that lies ahead for my jivan....in a new life....when my life comes to encounter the views I've created in this life a little differently.”

 

“How....differently?” Peter pressed on.

“My own practice of ritual behavior and irony is suited only to a certain temperament and social times. In another part of the world, at another time, my attitudes would be considered as self gratification or pedantic in nature. At that point, the living individual would feel disposed to destroy all these and re-cultivate anew.”

“Do you see some of that already taking place in the world.”

“I'm certain of it. It would explain the explosive new sense of our social experience today. It seeks to destroy the old and reconstruct a new world.”