Travel Reference
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occasionally contracting as if in pain.
Om Sivaiah, Om Sivaiah
- the
throbbing chant continued with solemn power, every eye in the
room fixed on the tiny figure. After some fifteen minutes he suddenly
clasped his throat and convulsed, rocking back and forth in his
chair. Only fifteen feet away, I thought I saw a kind of dreamy agony
in his eyes. There was something truly awesome, rather than
frightening, about this spectacle. The
bhajan
was gradually
increasing tempo now, the entire hall thumping with it like the
great heart of some vast machine. Then Baba lurched forward,
opening his mouth. Inside it I glimpsed an odd green glow. He
heaved violently, his eyes closing as if he were in pain. Then, with
one hand, he began to pull from his mouth what looked like a large,
crystalline egg. Indeed, so large was it that blood appeared at the
corners of his lips as the object came through. Like a new baby, it
was suddenly out. He caught it in a handkerchief, wiped it clean,
then transferred it to his other hand as he dabbed at the blood around
his mouth and smiled, every bit the proud new mother.
The crowd roared. It was such an extraordinary sight that I felt
no one seemed quite sure how to respond. Baba stood, holding up
this egg of greenish crystal, inside which a light pulsed like a
heartbeat, like something alive. Then something burst inside my
heart and I started sobbing uncontrollably. At that moment it was
exceedingly hard to doubt that Baba was indeed who he said he was.
Here was the symbolic re-enactment of Creation itself: the Siva-
Shakti force, the yin and yang, the mighty opposites, the bisecting
circles giving birth between them to the
lingam
that represents life
itself, life plucked from nothingness. Because of what I felt and saw,
I have never for a moment thought that he had swallowed the object
earlier and then regurgitated it.
Long after Baba left, leaving the glowing, pulsing
lingam
in a little
stand on his table, everyone sat, as if held like spokes on a wheel to
the hub of creation symbolised before us, chanting
bhajans
until dawn
broke. It seemed the only conceivable response to what had
happened.
Seeing the rose, separating it from the thorn and the shrub, is
Concentration. Plucking the rose, separating the heart from the
