Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
there was something I had missed. Mangled, oozing, one wing
buckled into a squashed abdomen, it looked like any other dead fly
I'd ever encountered.
The yogi watched me intently, puffing and counting those
invisible beads, a big, generous smile swelling through his high
cheekbones. 'Very dirty,' he said, nodding at the fly. 'Put it there.' He
indicated the spot where the fly had just met its abrupt end. A tiny
stain was still visible on the wood.
I tipped the speck down near the stain.
'What can death be?' the yogi asked.
I shrugged, not about to offer an answer to that.
'It is a question we are interested in - is it not so?'
I nodded.
'Watch.' He pointed to the fly.
I watched the raisinlike blob, hearing the yogi's breathing become
faster and faster - until it suddenly stopped. He then held up his
right hand a yard or so from the fly, becoming incredibly still. This
stillness was all the more dramatic after his perpetual motion, and it
really
was
stillness. As I continued to watch, the fly started twitching,
shaking its buckled wing out, then getting up, testing its legs with a
few unsteady steps. A second later, it flew away.
The yogi remained motionless for another minute, then
immediately became his old self again, lighting up and fanning.
My first thought was just how dead the fly had been. Surely I
had seen enough dead flies to know the difference. This fly had
been crushed, split open.
'How did you do that?' I asked.
He looked over through the gloom, the whites of his eyes
sparkling. 'Life is a force,' he said quietly. 'Death is the absence of
that force - is it not so?'
'I suppose.'
'Fly needs less force than the human - is this true?'
'Probably . . .'
'Can this beggar not give the fly enough force to live?'
I asked how he could transfer his life force and how the fly could
repair the damage to its body even if it received new life force.
'Is it not so that God can do anything he wishes?'
