The Seeker Read online

  The snake lowered its hood, untangled itself from the toilet and moved toward them.

  “Back,” said the Bulgarian and lifted the pole again.

  “Stop,” said Max.

  He caught hold of the Bulgarian’s sweaty right arm and pulled it down.

  “What are you doing, bastard?” said the Bulgarian.

  The snake came closer to them. The Bulgarian tried to wrestle his arm away. Max held his thick wrist tight, pressing hard on his veins with his finger nails.

  “It hurts, man. Stop. Help,” shouted the Bulgarian.

  He lashed out with his left hand.

  Max caught it and pinned the Bulgarian’s hands behind him, still staring at the snake.

  The snake slithered and curved around their feet. It remained looped around their feet for a minute while the Bulgarian whimpered, then it uncurled itself, moved toward the lone courtyard bench and went out of the gates of the ashram.

  Max released the Bulgarian’s hands.

  The Bulgarian shoved him.

  “What the hell you were thinking, man? Why did you catch me? We could have died, man. We were dead. Fucking fuck. We were dead,” he said, hopping around.

  The sweat from the Bulgarian’s brows poured in a steady stream down his face. All of a sudden, he stopped and stared at Max. “You knew it, didn’t you, man? You knew cobra would come toward us and go out.” He made a strange sound with his throat, half laughing, half crying. “Who are you? You are mad, man. You spoke to snake, right? Oh fucking Christ, where the hell am I? The silence, the snake, this Harry Potter craziness. You guys are like devil cult or something.”

  Max left him and went back to his bed. He wasn’t sure the snake had understood, but something had happened between them, a transfer of energy, an awareness of presence, something. Whatever it was, the snake had lived. Max slept comfortably that night.

  The Bulgarian left the next morning. He preferred to walk to the village rather than wait three days more for the tractor.

  24

  The next evening, during meditation, Sophia’s face filled Max’s mind. But it wasn’t the Sophia he remembered. She was thirty pounds heavier, her face was completely white, her eyes sunken and weary. An angry blue scar crossed her pale cheek. Max opened his eyes. She was sick. He began to breathe faster.

  Max closed his eyes again. Now, Sophia was in a flowing, light-green dress. Her hand lifted listlessly to swallow a handful of pills. The veins below her eyes grew larger.

  Max opened his eyes again. By now, he knew enough to know the image was real. Somewhere, Sophia was suffering. His lungs exploded. He had known it when her emails stopped. His throat choked. The silence, the space within him, vanished.

  Back in his hut, he paced around. He walked out to speak to Ramakrishna but stopped. Ramakrishna wouldn’t say much but his eyes would speak the truth. Human attachments tethered man to this unfulfilling cycle of birth and death. Liberate yourself from narrow individual bonds. See oneness everywhere. Max sat down on his bed and meditated. Sophia’s body was suffering. Her mind was ill. The body, the mind, they were fickle and destined to decay, subject as they were to the same laws of impermanence that bound the entire phenomenal world. But Sophia, her true essence was fine. Still laughing when she came down the iron slide, squeezing her date’s hand at Thanksgiving dinner, eyes dancing, hands moving with abandon when she talked. She was so close he could touch her. Max opened his eyes. She had no one but him.

  Max stuffed his backpack with his sparse clothes and left the ashram. The moon, a thin sliver, cast a faint light on his path. He removed his shoes. Barefoot, he connected easily to the ridges and furrows in the hard land and let them guide him to the village. In three days, he would be back in New York. He’d stay only until he had helped her recover. Nothing else in the incomplete material world would ensnare him again. The blackness enveloped him as he walked through the silent, starless night. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the space between his eyes. No new images came. Just Sophia’s pale, worn face and listless eyes. What happened, my dear? I’m coming.

  Max reached the village at dawn. He took the water from the pail hanging by the well and threw it over his burning eyes. A shriveled old woman with scorched purple-black skin came out of one of the huts. She called out to the others. More doors opened. Three women in sarees, four or five lanky men with long white cloths tied around their waists, and a handful of naked kids rubbing their eyes, shuffled out. They greeted Max with broad smiles. The kids surrounded him, pulling his T-shirt, talking and laughing. A boy brought out a pair of sticks and wanted to play gilli-danda—lifting the small stick in the air with the big stick and hitting it as far as it could go.

  Max hit one into the distance. The kids clapped. Max smiled at them. He knew every kid’s name now. They played with him whenever he came to deliver food supplies to the village. He had taught them a smattering of English and he understood some of the local dialect. A woman gave him a glass of tea. Someone or the other always served him food on his visits. Just like a second family.

  Max set the stick down and began walking the six miles to Pavur. A girl with tiny pigtails pulled at his khakis, asking him to stay. In the distance, an infant cried in an old woman’s arms. Max looked into the eyes of the little girl who was smiling through her cute, chipped teeth. He felt hollow, sinking, disappearing into space. Breaking into pieces, melting, merging with the girl. Max had never felt such helpless love before. He stood still, allowing his breath to return to normal. The feeling passed.

  Max resumed his walk to Pavur. The girl waved at him. The kids cheered.

  Soon, they would bind him too.

  Max walked faster.

  Seeking but not finding the House Builder,

  I traveled through the round of countless births;

  O painful is birth ever and ever again.

  Something, someone, this person, that family had tethered him in every life. This time though, he was so close to liberating himself from the bondage to this sense of self, to becoming just a channel of the universal. He couldn’t let this narrow love hold him back. Max stopped. Sophia’s pale, sickly face came before his eyes again. His throat tightened. Max looked up at the sky. Hari’s family had pulled him back. The need for comfort had called Shakti. Max wouldn’t let his attachments get in his way. He turned around.

  The kids jumped and shouted upon seeing him again. Max tried to smile. Each one of them, everyone in the world, was the same as Sophia. Tears stinging his eyes, he began to walk back to the ashram in his bare feet.

  25

  Ramakrishna didn’t ask him where he had been when Max returned later that day. Max remained restless through the afternoon. In yoga that evening, his body felt heavy and his limbs moved with effort. He paced in the courtyard after yoga, then skipped meditation and lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling.

  Late that night, he awoke with a start. His back was on fire.

  He jumped out of bed. The fire spread from the bottom of his spine to the middle of his ribs when he stood up. The bones in his back felt as if they were being grated into a paste, then being burnt into ash. He lay down and got up again. It hurt so much. He rushed to the bathroom and doused himself with bucket after bucket of cold water. Nothing helped. Max had never disturbed Ramakrishna at night but he couldn’t help himself. Whimpering in pain, he ran into Ramakrishna’s hut well past midnight.

  “Please help me,” said Max. He was disintegrating, dying. “My back. It burns so bad.”

  Ramakrishna’s concerned face broke into a smile.

  “Your kundalini has awakened,” he said.

  The fire flared up. Max’s head spun.

  Ramakrishna made him sit cross-legged on the floor and straightened his back.

  “Soon, you’ll be better, better than ever,” said Ramakrishna.

  Max inhaled and exhaled slowly. The fire turned into hot liquid that surged from the bottom of his spine to its middle, up the back of his neck, and down, again and
again. Max removed his T-shirt and put his naked back against the hard, cold mud.

  “It’s not getting better . . . ”

  His eyes closed.

  The flame had disappeared when he awoke the next day but his spine tingled with alternating warm and cold sensations. He stepped out of Ramakrishna’s hut. The usually odorless air was alive with smells. He could distinguish each note. There was the fragrance of mud mixed with morning dew, the sweat of the two German girls, the lingering smoke from the previous night’s fire and the heavy aroma of tomatoes that had been cooked the day before in the afternoon. Each smell had its own texture. The morning colors were different too. The sun hadn’t risen yet but the dawn was a white light far on the horizon. The orange mud in the courtyard was a shade darker than the one around Ramakrishna’s hut. Why hadn’t he noticed these sights, these smells before, each so distinct, so wonderful?

  Ramakrishna was instructing the German girls in the courtyard. Max heard every sound the girls made, their inhalation, their exhalation, their heels shuffling below their thighs, their knees shifting on the floor. A little overwhelmed, Max joined them for asanas.

  His body had changed overnight. He felt light as a feather. Warm fluid flowed from the base of his spine to all his nerves. He got into a headstand. The blood didn’t collect in his head. There was no pressure on his face, no throbbing in his heart, no pulsing sensation in his neck. He closed his eyes and fell into a meditative state. He didn’t emerge from it until he felt Ramakrishna’s hands on his back.

  “If you want, you can come down now. An hour is quite enough for the headstand,” said Ramakrishna.

  An hour. It couldn’t be. Max had never stayed up for more than twenty-five minutes at a stretch before and it had taken him eighteen months to build up to that. That day, though, standing on his head felt as comfortable as standing on his feet. He could have stood like that forever.

  The German girls were staring at him. Again, Max had the same, overwhelming feeling of seeing everything as if it was under a magnifying glass. One girl’s skin was slightly torn under her eyes, the other’s eyebrows was uneven. If he stared at them any longer, he would know every thought in their heads. Max averted his eyes and continued with the asanas.

  His spine elongated and stretched, he flipped forward and backward, farther than he had even on his best days before this, without a hint of discomfort. Max had learned not to be surprised by coincidences and intuition and the glimpses of cosmic energy that had entered his life, but when he began Kakasana, the crow pose, and found his whole body inverting in the air of its own accord as soon as he touched his fingers on the ground, he couldn’t stop himself from looking up straight into Ramakrishna’s eyes.

  Just what was happening to him?

  We’ll speak after meditation tonight, said Ramakrishna.

  Max came down. How had he heard that? Ramakrishna hadn’t moved his lips.

  Yes, it is related, said Ramakrishna.

  Ramakrishna had just answered a question Max hadn’t even framed in his mind.

  Max took a sharp breath. An ocean of cool air washed down his body.

  The rest of Max’s day passed in the same hyper-aware state. He sensed the slight movements of earthworms below the surface of the mud and moved his plow away from them. He corrected the placement of one of the thirty seeds that Anna, one of the German girls, sowed twenty feet ahead of him. His ears registered every thud of the tool against the earth and the murmuring of water on the crops. His tongue tasted a hundred notes of sweet and sour in the eggplant. Everything felt stark, intense, as if he had awakened from centuries of slumber.

  Later that day, during meditation, a rainbow of colors merged into him. Om resonated again and again within his body. The sun, moons, stars, oceans, mountains, the whole universe revolved around him in concentric circles. He was the beginning, the middle, and the end, the center that held everything together. Suddenly, everything was snuffed out in an instant. A deep, indescribable silence arose within him. It had the tranquility of water and the stillness of air, the alertness of a predator and the repose of a rose petal, the brightness of the sun and the coolness of the moon. Yet, it was none of those for it was quite apart from the world. He remained suspended in the silence until Ramakrishna shook him gently.

  The blacks of Ramakrishna’s eyes shone in the yellow-white light of the courtyard lamp. Max’s heart overflowed with love. He was gripped by the same boundary-less feeling he had experienced with the little girl from the village but he wasn’t overwhelmed this time. He was complete. There was just oneness. Nothing separated him from Ramakrishna. The words that were about to come from Ramakrishna’s mouth were already alive within him. Max breathed slowly.

  “You have received the rarest of the rare blessings. For so many lives, you have worked for this,” said Ramakrishna, his voice echoing in the still night. “The universal consciousness is awake in your body.”

  “What happens now?”

  “If you keep striving, the active consciousness will slowly move from the Muladhara Chakra at the base of your spine to the Sahasrara Chakra at the top of your head, the home of the static, creating energy—or God,” he said. “This final union is yoga. Individual consciousness has merged with divine consciousness. You will become the universal, God as it were. This is the end of the individual, of birth and rebirth, this endless cycle of suffering. You will achieve the very goal of the human form.”

  Max trembled. The bottom of his spine tingled.

  “You have to work harder than ever before. Only the most accomplished of yogis can achieve this union,” said Ramakrishna. “You will become the sum of all knowledge. Many powers will come to you. But all that must be left behind. Falling from this state is easy if you develop even a shadow of an ego.”

  Max shifted on his mat, suddenly afraid. “Will you continue to be my teacher?”

  “The universe is your teacher now. Consciousness will guide you to merge with it,” said Ramakrishna. “See it, hear it, feel it everywhere, within and outside everything. You have nothing more to learn from me.”

  Ramakrishna looked up at the black sky and waved his hands around. He didn’t move his lips but Max heard his voice in his head.

  It will come. All will come. You will surpass me very soon, in mere days or months. I haven’t reached the end of yoga but you can.

  What does the complete dissolution of self feel like? thought Max.

  I don’t know yet. Perhaps you will know for me, for all of us. Ramakrishna’s thoughts merged with other voices in Max’s head.

  “Come back and teach me. That will be your gurudakshina, your gift, for whatever little you’ve learnt here,” said Ramakrishna aloud.

  Max bent down and touched Ramakrishna’s feet. “I have learnt everything from you,” said Max.

  “You knew everything. Everyone knows everything. You just chose me as a channel in this life,” said Ramakrishna.

  Just a day before, Max was about to leave the ashram. Even now, Sophia hadn’t disappeared completely from his mind.

  “I was lost when I came here. I still feel a little lost,” said Max.

  “The awakening of the kundalini is unsettling. Stay here for as long as you like. Teach yourself how to use the power, how to progress,” said Ramakrishna.

  Max stood up, straightened his back, and felt the warmth spread out from his spine. He felt one with the great sage in front of him, the blackness of the night around him, and the moon and stars above him. His body was as light as the air that hugged him. For a moment, he thought he was floating. He looked down to check.

  Soon even that, maybe very soon, smiled Ramakrishna without speaking. May you never fall from the grace of yoga, Mahadeva, may you always be a yogi.

  Max walked back to his hut. He sat on his bed and closed his eyes, concentrating on Sophia. Her pale, heavy face came into focus. He directed the light, buoyant energy coursing through him toward the middle of his forehead, just above the junction of his eyebrows. Hi
s heart seemed to have become her beating heart, feeling her sadness, her longing, her sickness, then soothing her, making her still, silent, complete. A touch of color appeared in Sophia’s cheeks. He concentrated harder so that nothing existed in the world except the shimmering blackness between them. Blinding white light poured from him. The redness spread across her cheeks, her nose, and filled her face. Max’s body burned. He lay down on the bed, his temples pounding, a blazing flame spreading through his torso. He saw Sophia’s eyes lighting up. He spread his hands wide, toward the ceiling, allowing the universe to take revenge on his body for manipulating the laws of nature. The effects of Sophia’s actions would now become his own. Sophia sat up on the bed she was lying in and smiled. Strive, strive, strive for perfection, don’t be caught again in these ceaseless ups and downs, the world of polarities. Max drifted off to sleep.

  The Sage

  Seeking but not finding the House Builder,

  I traveled through the round of countless births;

  O painful is birth ever and ever again.

  House Builder, you have now been seen.

  You should not build the house again; Your rafters have been broken down; Your ridgepole is demolished too.

  My mind has now reached the unformed Nirvana.

  And reached the end of every kind of craving

  Gautama, the Buddha

  26

  “Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ.”

  Max turned around and smiled at the kids who were chanting and pointing at him. They’d been following him from the bus station in Madurai, the nearest big city to Pavur, twelve hours away by bus. He glanced at his reflection in the dusty glass door of the freestanding ATM kiosk in the market next to the bus station. Loose shirt, long brown hair, light beard, sunburned skin, sharp eyes, weighing at least sixty pounds less than when he had first come to India, he had to admit he did look a little like Jesus. Although he didn’t feel much like him right then. He couldn’t produce gold coins from air. He couldn’t even get an ATM to work. The ATM in Pavur had rejected his card as had the one inside the Madurai bus station. He needed money for his journey ahead even though he didn’t quite know where he would go next. After spending three years at Ramakrishna’s ashram, he felt overwhelmed by people, smells, shops, traffic—and getting simple things to work.