iMonk | January 2009

Navadwip, India — Wednesday, January 21st

Memories...

I go up to the second-floor veranda of Srila Guru Maharaj's bhajan kutir here at our Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Math in Navadwip dham. I have only been up here two or three times since Srila Guru Maharaj left...

So many memories!

This is the famous veranda where Srila Guru Maharaj engaged in his bhajan, where he enlightened us and raised our consciousness, where we sat, enthralled, when he delivered his analytical disquisitions on the subjective evolution of consciousness, where he astonished us with his unique explication of the brahma-gayatri mantra, where he so eloquently and so definitively established service to Srimati Radharani (radha-dasyam) as the highest conception of divinity...

These are the stairs that I used to climb in the mornings when I used to come for Srila Guru Maharaj's darshan during those four incredible weeks in October, 1983, when, by his grace, I was eventually able to come to Navadwip from South Africa, to celebrate his holy Vyasa Puja...

This is Srila Guru Maharaj's room where His Divine Grace whispered the gayatri mantra into my ear, and this is the armchair, just outside the door, where Srila Guru Maharaj sat when I posed for a photograph with him after the ceremonial second-initiation fire yajna...

And look! Here is the chair where Srila Guru Maharaj sat, and here is the place where I sat, at his holy lotus feet, when he chastised me so severely on that fateful day, a little over a quarter of a century ago...

It was on this veranda that Goswami Maharaj, Yudhamanyu Prabhu, so many other devotees and I sat, spellbound, as Srila Guru Maharaj told us the story of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's sannyas lila. (A recording of this talk was later published as the A Tragedy of Separation chapter in The Golden Volcano of Divine Love.) It was a mystical experience, like Srila Guru Maharaj (jnaninas) was right there, actually observing that heart-rending ceremony (tattva-darsinah), drawing our consciousness up into that higher realm (upadeksyanti te jnanam), to show us what we could not otherwise see...

So many memories...

But at least these recollections are not as mundane as some of the other "lost clusters of data" that I have "stored in subliminal fragments of my memory"...

And since these memories of Srila Guru Maharaj do have the slight semblance of a connection with reality (albeit a tenuous one), there just might be some hope for me yet!

Tags: Gurus & Guardians | Slokas

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