Some one left behind a penetrating gaze from which very few are able to escape. Very few are able to look into this gaze and stay the same. Somehow most of the people that have stumbled across this thousand-year-old stare have been raptured forever. I never knew, that just by coming across the eyes of a sage on a picture, one’s heart could be taken.
My first trip to India was full of excitement, illusions, desires; waiting for miracles to happen to take me all the way into what I had heard was possible, spiritual enlightenment! I had no real understanding of what enlightenment was about, but the ego was seduced by everything that was for sale in the spiritual marketplace: fulfillment, being eternally in peace, rising above human limitations and an ongoing party with the divine. Of course within this cocktail of wanting there was an authentic hidden desire for truth.
How foolish I was, thinking that the mind and the ego could attain what is only possible when they are both gone--even for a split second--but gone.
During my time in India I was surprised by the unfolding that took place. I was ripped-off of everything that I thought I knew and was connected to. My ego-ic structure was shaken, torn apart, jolted and broken everywhere! There wasn’t a place to hide as I faced my assumptions and mistakes, my judgments and desires. At times I found myself on the ground under the rain pleading to outside forces for help when that could only come from within. The pay off was precious, because after so much noise by the cathartic kicking and screaming of the ego, I was able to catch a glimpse of silence from which I didn’t ever want to depart.
During my second trip to India, I got lost in my search, though I had touched the profound silence that I thought I could keep forever, I could not keep it. I totally failed the Guru that I was with! I was unable to be a good follower, a disciplined student and didn’t know where to turn.
I became disenchanted with the path I had taken and couldn’t make sense of anything. I just knew that it was over for me, that there was no clear direction to go in my exploration of what I just had glimpsed again.
One day a monk from the ashram where I was staying that knew what was happening within me, broke the rule that no one was supposed to be reading books and he sneaked one to my room and said, “take a look!” I had no idea what the book was about, but hiding from everyone, I opened it to a page upon which was the image of an old man looking directly at me. The only thing that I could do was to look back at him because something broke open within me when I recognized that was what I had been looking for.
That was the real thing, unmistakably, not a doubt anywhere within myself. I was struck by the simple, naked look of the beautiful innocence and grace that emanated through his gaze. There was something else happening than just looking at a picture in a book: Those eyes were alive, transmitting truthfully the essence of what I only can call… emptiness… pure humble presence.
The gaze was limitless, open ended penetrating through me like the wind, weightless and free. The transparency of his light didn’t allow any thought to arise, but took everything away leaving only tears dropping from this profound transmission where the truth that I had been looking for was revealed. From that moment I was enraptured by the gaze’s transmission that some one left behind and by a deep longing for what had awakened within me through this gaze.
Who was he? Where was he? To my disappointment he already had attained Mahat Samadhi, no longer in the flesh. When I was told that I could go to the ashram that he left behind, I didn’t even try. It was too late, I thought. He is gone!
Those were my last few days in India, but this time I left with a deep longing in my heart -- a longing that I had never felt so deeply before. What I was feeling nothing could satisfy except the truth that permeated through the luminescent, empty gaze of the sage.
Coming back home had a different flavor than before. I had been profoundly touched by my glimpse of silence during my first trip to India, but this time it was a full picture of what was possible in this human incarnation. As I began to find out more about him, I received the only thing that apart from his gaze was left behind, the question: “Who am I?” “What am I?”
A question that when asked silently and being fully present can dissolve the mind. When the mind stops, what is left is what is always present and eternally alive revealed freely to anyone.
Finally I was able to understand who he was. He transcended his transient human personality and was named Ramana: “That which is at the Core of all Being.”
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